Vitamin N and Southeast MN Park Rx.

By Sara Holger, Whitewater State Park Lead Interpretive Naturalist

Being outdoors in nature makes us feel better, but have you ever wondered why? Hundreds of studies show nature exposure has a profound impact on human development and well-being. It’s not surprising knowing humans evolved over millennia, deeply connected to the outdoors. Only in the last 50 years, have we transitioned to a mostly indoor, sedentary lifestyle. 

Vitamin N (Nature)

The elements of the natural world shaped our species and sustained our physical, mental and spiritual health. In her book, “The Nature Fix,” Florence Williams shares how intricately connected we are to the natural world. For example:

• Sunlight interacts with your skin to trigger the processing of Vitamin D in your bloodstream. Vitamin D is critical to healthy bones, immune system functioning and disease prevention.

• Trees, especially conifers, emit fragrant essential oils, called Phytoncides, into the air to attack invasive fungi threatening forest health. When we walk in the forest and inhale these chemicals, our body reacts by increasing the amount of certain white blood cells, called NK (natural killer) cells. These NK cells target and attack tumors in the body.

• Grounding (walking barefoot outdoors) allows ionized energy from the earth to radiate through our body, providing various health benefits including improved sleep and decreased pain.

• Research suggests myopia (near sightedness) is caused by lack of contact with natural sunlight and outdoor landscapes in the first few years of life. Infants and toddlers need the natural light spectrums and textures found outdoors to exercise their eyes and develop proper vision.

• Countless studies demonstrate time in nature can reduce stress, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness and isolation, while enhancing mood, appetite, creativity, and problem solving. Studies of children show they have stronger confidence and ability to focus after being outdoors and students who are difficult to manage in the classroom often transform into leaders when given the opportunity to learn and play outdoors.

Park Rx

With growing awareness of this topic, a national movement known as Park Rx has gained attention. The organization works to educate and inform health care providers about the importance of nature for health and wellbeing so they can prescribe time outdoors to patients. Wabasha County Public Health has joined in the Southeast Minnesota Park Rx effort to share information with local health care providers and to encourage area residents to spend time outdoors. Last spring, the Wabasha County SHIP program helped support a Park Rx intern through Winona State University. The intern worked to inventory 44 Wabasha County parks and upload the information into the Park Rx America national database for health providers. 

Nature Dose

So how much Vitamin N should we be getting? Doctors recommend we spend at least 120 minutes a week outdoors. This could be one or two long visits or short, daily 20 minute outdoor activities. What’s important is to adapt outdoor time to fit into your schedule and eventually it will become an eagerly anticipated part of your regular routine.

Finding Nature

Explore local parks and nature sites in Wabasha County by clicking on one of the following towns which has a local resource website:

• Lake City parks

• Kellogg and Wabasha

• Plainview parks

• Zumbro Falls

Want to adventure further from home?

Use the Recreation Compass on the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources website to explore Minnesota public lands near you. Click on the map to learn about state forests, wildlife management areas, scientific and natural areas, state parks, and other locations.

Discover our 75 Minnesota State Parks! Find virtual tours for each park, maps, program and event schedules and learn about the Hiking Club and Passport Club programs. Use the interactive map to find and explore each park.

Our closest nature center is located at Whitewater State Park, 10 minutes southeast of Plainview. The 2,700 acre park welcomes 350,000 visitors each year and is known for its blue-ribbon trout fishing, excellent hiking trails, year-round naturalist programs and variety of camping options. The Whitewater Valley Visitor Center houses exhibits and displays and park naturalists offer on-site and off-site programs.

Ask your local provider if they have prescribed through Park Rx, if not, they can learn more on the Park Rx website and reach out to SHIP to discuss partnering in implementing this change.

SHIP is a state-based program that works at the local level to support healthier communities by expanding opportunities for active living, healthy eating and commercial tobacco-free living. If you would like information about partnering with Wabasha County SHIP, please email Tina Moen or call her at 651-565-5200.

Working together to develop a dementia friendly community-Still Alice project is making a return.

“Where’s Alice?”

Most people have seen the “Where’s Waldo?” Books. It’s a game of sorts to see how acute your observation skills are. The challenge is to find a tiny little guy dressed in a red and white striped shirt, stocking hat and glasses amidst different busy scenes with massive amounts of people and colors that seem to blend Waldo incredibly well.

Members of the Wabasha County Senior Action Team feel like we may be playing that game!

Last spring, we launched a project to educate residents about dementia and develop a dementia friendly community! Our first step included distributing 50 copies of the book Still Alice at sites across our community. This book is an award-winning New York Times Bestseller written by neuroscientist Lisa Genova. Her book has been critically important to advancing the public’s understanding of Alzheimer’s disease. We encouraged the public to read the book and share it. Subsequently, we planned to follow up with a book discussion and a movie showing of Still Alice. Well, you all know what happened. In a word: COVID.

So….Where’s Alice?

Our books are still in circulation. Look under your coffee table or bed, on your bookshelf or in your car and help us increase the readership in the community!! If you did not get to read it, please do so or read it again, pass it to someone else or return it to Wabasha Library so books can be passed along to others.

So...What’s next?
The Wabasha County Senior Action Team invites interested community members to mark your calendars for Thursday, September 30. The evening will feature a resource expo highlighting available dementia programs and resources, a Still Alice book discussion, and a public showing of the movie Still Alice. More details about this educational event will be shared in the coming weeks.

Thank you for supporting our efforts to make Wabasha a Dementia Friendly Community!

SHIP is a state-based program that works at the local level to support healthier communities by expanding opportunities for active living, healthy eating and commercial tobacco-free living. If you would like information about partnering with Wabasha County SHIP, please email Tina Moen or call her at 651-565-5200.

Stay Active and Independent for Life (SAIL) - A class offered in Lake City invites you to participate.

Exercise is medicine. If you ponder this statement you realize how true it is.  Research around exercise and physical activity has shown that regular participation in all forms of physical activity offer great benefits in many areas including: Strength, flexibility, heart health, balance, diabetes prevention, mental health, cognition, sleep and longevity.

Exercise and physical activity benefits are more than any medication can offer.  It just takes a little more time than swallowing a pill to receive its benefits.

Stay Active and Independent for Life (SAIL) is an evidence-based strength, balance and fitness program for adults 65 and older offered locally. Performing exercises that improve strength, balance and fitness are the single most important activity that adults can do to stay active, improve general health and wellness and reduce their chances of falling. The entire curriculum of activities in the SAIL Program can help improve strength and balance, if done regularly.

SAIL classes have been held regularly in Lake City at St. Mary’s Church on Lyon Avenue since 2017. Community members attend the FREE class twice a week.

The Lake City SAIL class is presently held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:45 to 10:45 AM and is lead by 4 trained instructors. Anyone interested in joining the class can stop in and sign up on class days.  All are welcome!

Find other similar classes on Juniper which delivers programs to help adults manage chronic health conditions, prevent falls, and foster well-being. If you are coping with high blood pressure, heart disease, COPD, arthritis, diabetes or other chronic conditions, Juniper can support your efforts to live life as fully and independently as possible.

SHIP is a state-based program that works at the local level to support healthier communities by expanding opportunities for active living, healthy eating and commercial tobacco-free living. If you would like information about partnering with Wabasha County SHIP, please email Tina Moen or call her at 651-565-5200.

Minnesota Department of Health updates Safer Social Activities guidelines.

Fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing except where required by federal, state, local, tribal or territorial laws, rules and regulations. This includes local business and workplace guidance.

If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, find a vaccine and follow the updated Safer Social Activities guide.

Gundersen St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center recruits participants for the Veggie Rx program.

Veggie Rx aims to increase access to fruits and vegetables for members of the Wabasha community and surrounding areas by partnering with the Wabasha Farmers’ Market.

How does Veggie Rx work?

• The program gives participants $20 per week over the course of 8-10 weeks to spend on produce at the Farmers’ Market.

• Over the course of 8-10 weeks, participants will participate in a kick off meeting to be introduced to the program, attend a midpoint meeting, and attend a final meeting to gather feedback on the program.

• All meetings will be conducted virtually using Zoom and are required to participate.

• There will be a newsletter containing healthy recipes and cooking tips for how to use the produce participants receive from the Farmers’ Market.

• The Wabasha Farmers’ Market has an online platform that allows participants to easily and safely select their produce.

 “Our goal is to recruit 25-50 participants to the Veggie Rx program,” said Dr. Amy Sapola, Pharmacist at Gundersen St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center. “We plan to recruit at least 50% of individuals in the Veggie Rx program who are experiencing some degree of self-identified food insecurity.

“This project was originally piloted in 2020 with 10 participants at $10 per week. Participants provided overwhelmingly positive feedback as well as suggestions for improvement. This year we have decided to increase the weekly amount provided to participants and will be providing training on how to use the online Wabasha Farmers’ Market platform, as well as weekly reminders of when to order and pickup produce,” Dr. Sapola added.

“The long term goal is to integrate questions related to the social determinants of health into the electronic medical record at Gundersen St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center so that all patients are screened for food insecurity. We would then plan to have a process in place for referral to the program, to the Wabasha Kellogg Area Food Share, and/or to Minnesota Hunger Solutions.”

To learn more about participating in this program, please contact email Amy Sapola. This project was supported with SHIP funding. If you’d like to learn more about partnering with Wabasha County SHIP, email Tina Moen, SHIP Coordinator or call 651-565-5200.

SHIP is a state-based program that works at the local level to support healthier communities by expanding opportunities for active living, healthy eating and commercial tobacco-free living.

Memory Minder Kits introduced with support from SHIP to exercise and safeguard the mind.

If there is anything that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it’s that our creativity runs wild when we are called to protect and preserve what is most important.

For the Wabasha County Senior Health Action Team (WCSHAT) nothing could be more accurate. When the virus prompted massive shutdowns and prolonged isolation, imagination and resourcefulness took hold to establish new ways of achieving our goal of fostering dementia friendly communities. The absence of group gatherings and the enforcement of social distancing challenged us to explore innovative methods for reaching out and touching lives. This played out in several ways.

WCSHAT members first collaborated with the University of Minnesota to offer an online virtual community education program about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Because we could not gather at the Wabasha Library as intended, we brought the instructor into the homes of Wabasha area residents via ZOOM (now becoming a household name). The virtual platform has also made health and wellness programming more available and accessible to rural communities.

Memory Minder Kits now available.

The kits, available at Wabasha Public Library can be checked out for two weeks similar to a book.  Call the library at 651-565-3927 for more information or to reserve a kit. Contents of kits are evidence-based and provide a variety of interactive activities to boost brain function. 

With efforts placed on temporary hold to form Memory Cafés for families touched by dementia, the creative minds of WCSHAT sought funding from the Wabasha County Statewide Health Improvement Partnership (SHIP) to develop Memory Minder Kits that are widely accessible through the local library system. The kits are outfitted with instructions, guidance, materials and supplies to facilitate a variety of evidence-based interactive exercises and activities that stimulate the mind and memory. Examples of activities include puzzles; word, coloring and memory games; conversation starter cards and picture books; relaxing music CDs. Kits are modeled after a similar project in another Minnesota community, which has proven to be highly successful in helping caregivers lead meaningful interactions that enhance cognitive functioning for people with all forms of dementia.  

Based on the level, activities are designed to prevent cognitive decline for older adults that want to maintain their mental functioning. Other kits target caregivers of seniors who are experiencing mild to extensive memory loss. 

WCSHAT includes representation from Ace Brain Fitness, Elder Network, Gundersen St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and Clinics, Southeast Area Agency on Aging, Wabasha County Public Health, Wabasha Statewide Health Improvement Partnership (SHIP), Wabasha Public Library, community members, and senior advocates. This team works collaboratively to implement Dementia Friendly initiatives as part of the Community Health Improvement Plan. 

If you would like information about partnering with Wabasha County SHIP on healthy eating, physical activity, and/or tobacco-free environment projects, please email Tina Moen or call her at 651-565-5200.

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