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Monthly Archives: September 2015

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‘The Joy Keeper,’ self-portrait by Christopher Reisman

By Melissa Arnold

Some people say they see the world through rose-colored glasses. Contemporary artist Christopher Reisman sees the world in technicolor.

‘Think Tall' by Christopher Reisman
‘Think Tall’ by Christopher Reisman

His acrylic and mixed-media paintings mostly showcase people and animals with a whimsical, kaleidoscope-like color palette. Some of his paintings are abstract, but for the Rocky Point resident, it’s all about experimentation and play.

A selection of his abstracts and animal portraits will be on display throughout the month of September in an exhibit titled “Paintings by Christopher: All Things Sacred” at the North Shore Public Library in Shoreham. The art show will feature paintings, some as large as 48 inches wide by 60 inches high, and several prints.

This is Reisman’s second appearance at the library, says art coordinator Hildegard Kroeger. He had an exhibit there six years ago. “He’s doing a lot more freestyle work now,” Kroeger says. “He’s very colorful and people really pay attention to his work when they stop by.”

Reisman’s talents — which also include sculpture, music and sewing — are more than just hobbies. They have been his lifeblood since he was a toddler.

“I drew on the walls as a child and was always getting big pads of drawing paper from my parents, who were very encouraging,” says Reisman.

His creative streak would lead to an art-intensive high school education and some study at what is now Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, but Reisman’s mostly self-taught. He spent more than 40 years as an art educator in a variety of settings before an illness led him to retire in 2000.

‘The Visit’ by Christopher Reisman
‘The Visit’ by Christopher Reisman

Since then, Reisman has been able to focus fully on enjoying and sharing his gifts, which have healed him inside and out. “Even in the darkest times in my life — and I’ve been through plenty, trust me ­— I was drawing and playing the piano,” Reisman explains. “[Through my illness and later recovery] I’ve learned that we need to learn to let go — whether that’s of a bad habit or an old way of thinking — and if we can do that, we can come to a place of healing. I hope to reach as many people as possible with that.”

Today, Reisman enjoys long hours painting at his home, which he calls the “sanctuary.” The property, which he shares with his partner Robert McDonald and their two cats, Dolly and Joey,  is also home to hundreds of birds, fish and other animals.

The artwork he creates is for more than display. Anywhere from 10 percent to the full value of each sold painting supports charitable interests close to his heart.

Reisman and McDonald have worked together to support a number of animal shelters on Long Island, including SAVES, Inc. (Spay Alter Vaccinate Every Stray) of Riverhead, Little Shelter Animal Rescue & Adoption Center in Huntington and Save-A-Pet Animal Rescue & Adoption in Port Jefferson Station, among others.

They are also big supporters of the global Wildlife Conservation Society, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and many cancer benefits that cross their path.

McDonald, who does not have an art background, loves to sit back and watch Reisman’s creative process, which usually begins with several days of research, drafting and prayer.

“It’s like miracle work to me, that [Christopher] can start with a blank canvas and in the course of a few hours or a day have it completely drawn out and ready to be painted,” says McDonald, who has been with Reisman for 16 years. “He’ll say to me, ‘Today I’m going to paint a tiger,’ and the next day it appears. I would never be able to do something like what he does.”

‘Wake Up’ by Christopher Reisman
‘Wake Up’ by Christopher Reisman

Some paintings have specific stories — like his chimpanzees,“The Visit,” inspired by the work of famed primatologist Jane Goodall, or his self-portrait, “The Joy Keeper,” painted at home in his hall of mirrors over an old abstract painting ‘to show the joy we can all feel if we allow it’ — but others are just subjects Reisman or his family members enjoy.

For abstract pieces, Reisman says that he likes “staying spontaneous and moving color around that excites me, without judging.”

The couple believes that sharing their gifts, both physical and emotional, is just the first step toward a healthier, more peaceful world. They are currently searching for a publisher to get the art to a wider audience.

Reisman has gained many fans through the years and  has received rave reviews from his past art exhibits. Newsday art critic Jeanne Paris wrote that his artwork projects “unspoken eloquence in visual imagery that is not to be forgotten,” and “I Had It All the Time” author Alan Cohen stated “Christopher Reisman creates with passion, power and purpose. His heart is in his art. If you look deeply you will see much.” Even “Good Day New York’s” Rosanna Scotto has purchased one of his paintings.

“When people see my work, they’ll see lots of bright, happy colors and find they feel a joy and peacefulness that’s very powerful,” Reisman explains. “I believe that power comes from within each of us. It’s been my mission to turn as many people as possible onto their own innate creativity. I find that it’s very healing.”

Explore some of Christopher Reisman’s artwork from Sept. 1 through Sept. 29 at the North Shore Public Library, 250 Route 25A, Shoreham.

An artist reception, hosted by the Friends of the Library, featuring a larger selection of Reisman’s art, will be held on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 2:30 to 4 p.m. at the library. All are welcome.

For more information about the exhibit, call 631-929-4488. To learn more about Reisman or to purchase his art, visit www.artbychristopher.org.

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Deer rutting season means more of the animals running out on local roads. Photo by Rohma Abbas

Belle Terre residents are up in arms, or ready to take up arms, over a village government proposal to allow bow hunting as a means of reducing the community’s deer population.

The village board of trustees set a public hearing for Sept. 15 to consider a law amendment that would allow the hunting, a notion that has split the community, with some calling for more “humane” approaches to the issue.

The deer population, in the absence of predators, has increased such that “people are having multiple deer sleeping on their lawns at night and eating all their vegetation,” and making driving in the area more treacherous, Trustee Bob Sandak said in a phone interview this week. “We’ve had an outcry from the population to please do something.”

According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which manages the state’s deer, the Long Island deer population has been steadily increasing since the 1980s. It calls hunting, or culling deer “still the most efficient and cost-effective way to stabilize or reduce deer populations and alleviate associated damages to private property and natural resources.”

But calling bow hunting “a very cruel way to kill,” resident Natalie Brett said she worried an injured deer would wander into her yard and die.

Brett said she has noticed the deer population increase and the animals eat her plants, but “I don’t have a problem; I just go with it.”

She said she wants to see a more “humane” approach to the deer, using sterilization to prevent breeding, tick control to prevent Lyme disease, or stop signs to slow down traffic in deer crossing areas.

But her main concern is whether allowing bow hunting will “open the door” to other types of hunting in a residential area.

“I didn’t move to a state hunting ground and put up a sign, ‘You shouldn’t hunt,’” Brett said in a phone interview. “I don’t want my neighbor, if he’s 150 feet from my house, having a hunter come in.”

Sandak said any Belle Terre bow hunting would be subject to the same state regulations as in any other community. Among those regulations are minimum distances from homes where hunting can take place, ruling out smaller properties. Sandak estimated a property would have to be three acres or more to legally support bow hunting.

The DEC said fertility control is not as effective as hunting in managing deer populations and does not “quickly reduce deer-human conflicts.” And Sandak said he would not necessarily count sterilization as a more humane method, as it puts deer under “unnatural stress” and could leave the animal open to infection.

It is also costly to pay for anesthetic and a marksman to hit the deer, and “doesn’t reduce the size of the herd because you’re not taking any of the herd away, as hunting would do,” the village trustee said.

Dori Scofield, founder of Save-A-Pet Animal Rescue and Adoption Center in Port Jefferson Station, confirmed that sterilization is a costly and tricky method that unnaturally stresses out the deer, but she also said she has at least six veterinarians who would donate time to sterilize deer, and the village is small enough to monitor such a program.

Scofield, a Stony Brook resident, also said in an email that having fewer deer would not reduce Lyme disease cases, as other animals like mice and raccoons also carry ticks. Furthermore, killing deer would not necessarily reduce that population, because it would leave more food for deer from neighboring areas to move in and motivate them to procreate.

“Ideally I would like them to leave the deer be,” Scofield said. “We need to protect the animals in our towns.”

Belle Terre is not the only area considering deer hunting as a means to control the population. The Town of Huntington is mulling a similar proposal for parts of Eaton’s Neck and Asharoken, and residents there are equally split.

Scofield said people who move to a wooded area should expect wildlife.

“I have deer in Stony Brook and, yes, they eat my shrubs and I sip my tea and watch them,” she said. “Then I feed them some horse feed and we all go about our day.”

Sandak said he is leaning toward allowing bow hunting in the village because “I don’t have strong feelings against it” and he wants to vote for what the majority of the community wants.

The Sept. 15 public hearing on the amendment to Belle Terre’s code chapter on hunting and firearms starts at 8 p.m. in the Belle Terre Community Center on Cliff Road.

“I would like everyone to come to the public meeting and express themselves,” Sandak said.

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Hello, ladies,” the gentleman at the front door said. The blushing and grinning reminded me of middle school, where the athletic star walks into a room and the girls swooned.

Except that, in this case, it wasn’t a group of middle school girls, it was their middle-aged mothers.

“Hey, bub,” I wanted to shout, “back here, behind the considerably taller women sits a man.”

Of course, I didn’t say that, because I didn’t want to stand out, or even up, for that matter. I had a good seat and was waiting for a key moment to contribute something or to clear out.

I was at a do-gooders gathering. That’s not the name of it, because people don’t generally come up with such generic sounding names for a collection of people who want to make a change, to help people, to make a difference in the world. But, really, that’s what they were.

Why were they there? Who knows? I didn’t ask them. I suppose it could have been that they all felt a strong calling to contribute. It could have also been that they had friends who would be there that night and they wanted to do their part, alongside their close friends, to effect change. Or maybe it was because they were required to be there, because their daughters played on a sports team and the parents of the team captains had the responsibility to make sure everyone, and they meant everyone, as email after email said, attended and contributed.

After all, for this effort to be successful, they needed 100 percent participation. Lovely, lovely, lovely. But wait; I seem to recall reading this book called The Chocolate War, which kept springing to mind as I was furiously typing details of this meeting to my wife.

For instance, I told her that I’d never smelled such a powerful combination of floral scents. The host of this gathering had gone deep into the well of potpourri for a scent that, I’m guessing, carried over the river and through the woods all the way to grandma’s house. I also told her that I was the only man in the room and that there was a plate of cookies in the center of the island that no one touched.

Anyway, in The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier, Jerry Renault, on an assignment from a group of unofficial student leaders, is told not to sell chocolates as part of a fundraising campaign. When the assignment ends and he’s supposed to decide to accept the chocolates, he continues to refuse. Ultimately, he suffers serious consequences from rebelling against the school and the Vigils, the student thugs who effectively run the school.

I’m not suggesting that these delightful women, with their floral-scented kitchens and earnest, sincere, and heartfelt grins and plans are anything like the Vigils. They are working toward a great cause and are encouraging complete participation. But, something feels wrong about the compulsory nature of a good act.

Instead of everyone working for one, particular effort, perhaps this group could encourage full participation in a charity, good cause or effort of each player, or a family-choice activity. I get it, of course. The complete effort of the players and all their families could easily be greater than the sum of the parts of small efforts from each person.

Maybe it was because I was the only man in the room, or maybe it was because I am such a fan of The Chocolate War, but I couldn’t help wondering if there was a coercive undercurrent to all this cheerleading.

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File photo

Police charged a man with driving without a license Tuesday night after a crash that sent two officers and two civilians to the hospital.

According to the Suffolk County Police Department, 4th Precinct officers John Kurklen and Adam Tuthill had recently stopped a 2013 Hyundai Sonata for a vehicle and traffic infraction on the westbound side of Route 347 in Hauppauge when another vehicle, a 2001 Toyota Corolla, crashed into the back of their police cruiser. The police car then struck the two officers, as well as the two people who had been in the Hyundai.

Kurklen and Tuthill were treated at St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center in Smithtown and released, police said, but the pair from the Hyundai, a 25-year-old woman from Levittown and a 37-year-old Farmingdale man, suffered multiple internal injuries and are in serious condition at Stony Brook University Hospital.

Police said during the traffic stop — which happened east of Route 111 around 8:30 p.m. — before being struck by the Toyota, officers recovered drug paraphernalia and heroin from the Hyundai, of which the Levittown resident was the driver.

The Toyota’s driver, 24-year-old Brentwood resident Orvin Antonio Gabriel, was charged with unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle and with operating a vehicle while approaching a parked, stopped or standing emergency vehicle.

Attorney information for Gabriel was not immediately available. He was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.

No charges have been filed against the Hyundai’s passengers.

Police impounded all three vehicles involved in the crash for safety checks. Vehicular Crime Unit detectives are investigating the case, and ask that anyone who may have witnessed the crash to call them at 631-852-6555.

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Jessica Ward, center, surrounded by supportive red shirts, holds up a sign in favor of aides. Photo by Giselle Barkley

Jessica Ward sat in a united sea of red shirts before taking to the mic at Rocky Point’s Board of Education meeting on Monday.

“For some of the … board it might just be another item to get done with tonight,” Ward, a Rocky Point resident, said about agenda item No. 22, to eliminate two teacher aide positions. “But it means much more to me, as I am item No. 22.”

Ward’s position at Rocky Point elementary was one of four recently abolished special education aide jobs districtwide. The first two were eliminated at a July school board meeting, the same night the board hired five teaching assistants. When trustees — with Sean Callahan as the lone dissenting vote — terminated Ward and another teacher aide on Monday, they were met with boos from other aides, members of the New York State United Teachers and some residents.

Ward, the former vice president of Rocky Point’s Parent Teacher Association, put blame on Trustee Melissa Brown. She claimed in an interview that Brown wants Rocky Point to emulate the Sachem School District, where teaching assistants are used in the classroom instead of aides.

“She would like to bring teaching assistants because, in her opinion, it will serve the children better. The teaching aides disagree,” Ward said about Brown. “We do a lot more than what they think a teaching aide does.”

Aides give “health and safety support to children,” Brown explained in an email, and are assigned to those special needs students on a case-by-case basis. Many aides build relationships with the children and can identify their moods and needs more easily than other individuals in the school. Unlike teacher aides, teaching assistants are allowed to teach the curriculum in the classroom.

“There are many [special education] teachers who are charged with teaching multigrade levels of instruction in math, social studies and science, on top of trying to teach the students to read,” Brown said. “Teaching assistants provide the students with another teacher in the room to assist in providing academic instruction.”

She hopes more teaching assistants will raise graduation rates for special education students.

But some at the meeting emphasized how important aides were for their children.

One woman said her daughter needed more attention to pass her Regents exams.

“Those teachers could not give that one-on-one to my child,” she said. “She learns differently and those aides saw that and helped her.”

Superintendent Michael Ring said that one of the aides whose position was recently eliminated is working toward a teaching assistant certification, and in the meantime is still working for the district. Executive Director for Educational Services Susan Wilson said other aides could follow the same process.

While Ring said this school year is the first phase of Rocky Point’s move toward more teaching assistants, and there may be more teacher aides replaced with teaching assistants next fall, for now, the staff changes are over.

“I have no intentions of recommending any others to be eliminated,” he said.

But for Ward, losing her position as a teacher aide is a big setback.

“I am a single mother of four children under the age of 12,” Ward said, as her eyes began to tear. “I carry their health insurance so [being eliminated] is very upsetting to me.”

This version corrects the attribution on a statement about the Rocky Point school district’s staffing plans regarding teacher aides and teaching assistants.

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Barbara Chapman on the side of a pyramid during her trip to Egypt. Photo from Chapman

If the smartest people in the world gathered in a room, they might struggle to collaborate. An Australian astrophysicist might have a different way of solving problems from the Spanish sociologist. That doesn’t even address language barriers.

Similar principles hold true for the world’s best super computers. While each may have an ability to perform numerous calculations, gather information, and extrapolate from patterns too complicated to discover with a pencil and paper, they can be limited in their ability to work together efficiently.

That’s where a leader in the field of parallel computing comes in. Barbara Chapman, who has been at the University of Houston since 1999, has taught rising stars in the field, written textbooks and enabled the combination of supercomputers to become more than the proverbial sum of their parts.

And, this week, she is bringing her talents to Long Island, where she’s starting the next step in her career as a professor of Applied Math and Statistics, and Computer Science at Stony Brook, as part of the Institute for Advanced Computational Science and as an affiliate at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Calling Chapman a “pioneer in the world of parallel computing,” Sunita Chandrasekaran, who was a post-doctoral researcher in Chapman’s lab, predicted Chapman would “attract top graduate students from across the globe. Many students would love to do research under Chapman’s supervision.”

Lei Huang, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, considers Chapman his “mentor,” and said she is “always patient with students,” making her a “valuable asset” to Stony Brook. Huang, who did his Ph.D. and worked as a post doc in Chapman’s lab, added that she proposed and implemented innovative language features to improve performance and productivity of programming on supercomputers.

Chapman, who grew up in New Zealand, said she left the more temperate region of Houston driven, in part, by the intelligence and personality of Robert J. Harrison, Stony Brook’s director for the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. Additionally, Chapman sees opportunities to work with local collaborators.

Chapman works to make it easier for scientists and other users to get computers to solve their problems and gain insights from massive amounts of data. She strives to get high-powered computers to work together efficiently.

Scientists need to give computers a way of telling the cores how to interact and collaborate. Dividing up the work and ensuring that these computers share data are among the challenges of her role.

The new Stony Brook scientist helped develop OpenMP, which can be used to program multicores and is an industry standard used in cell phones, among other things.

President Obama unveiled plans to build an exascale computer, which might be capable of performing a billion billion operations per second. Building this computer will have numerous challenges, including hardware, power, memory, data movement, resilience and programming.

Chandrasekaran, who recently joined the University of Delaware as an assistant professor, said software programming needs to be more intuitive, portable across platforms and adaptable without any compromise in performance. Chapman, she said, is a leader in these fields, bringing together national laboratories, vendors and academia.

As a part of a group of researchers asked to identify opportunities for collaborations between the United States and Egypt, Chapman also journeyed to Egypt. While it was a “wonderful experience,” Chapman said the efforts were put on hold indefinitely after the revolution.

Applications that exploit supercomputers range from astrophysics to the automotive industry to analyzing old texts, to determine if the works of classical scholars were written or translated by the same person, Chapman said.

Chapman and her colleagues work to design features to support the next generation of computers. In the next few years, Chapman expects computers to have more complex memory, while the cores will be more heterogeneous.

At the same time, hardware manufacturers are focused on green computing, enabling the same computing power while using less energy.

Chapman enjoys working in an academic setting, where she can inspire the next generation of computer scientists. She will start teaching at Stony Brook in 2016.

While Chapman’s work centers around helping computers get the most from their collaborations, she also believes the workforce would benefit from attracting, training and supporting people from a broader range of backgrounds, including African-Americans, Hispanics, and women.

“If we had a much more diverse group of people, how would our use of computers change?” she asks. “Would we find other uses of computers?”

Chapman is encouraged that her concern about diversity is a matter numerous people in Washington are discussing. “I chaired a small study on this last year for the Department of Energy,” she said. “There’s a lot of buy-in to the notion that it’s important to change that.”

Chapman said an early experience working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ignited her interest in computer science. She worked with people who were exploring what happens when a spacecraft re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. They were designing materials that are better able to withstand the heat and speed of returning to Earth.

“People can use machines for finding out what’s going on in the universe in the big picture,” she said. “That got me hooked.”

This version corrects the title of Sunita Chandrasekaran.

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Norman Samuels and Herb Mones clean up the Greenway Trail.

By Karen Jillian

“It’s not a surprise that many people are calling the Three Villages ‘Long Island’s Bicycling Capital!’” So writes Herb Mones regarding the Setauket to Port Jefferson Greenway Trail. Mones, a member of the Friends of the Greenway, says “the Greenway Trail [protected open space constructed for conservation and recreational purposes] is a great community resource. Its second phase finished, it has now become “the longest paved greenway in Suffolk County — 3 ½ miles long.”

The Greenway Trail runs between Limroy Lane in East Setauket and the New York State Department of Transportation parking lot in Port Jefferson Station, near Route 112 at Hallock Avenue.

Due to the overwhelming amount of positive results associated with the path, Mones has decided to “engage the community in a program to enhance and beautify the Greenway through monthly cleanups and having the public adopt and maintain portions of the trail.”

A biker enjoys a section of the Greenway Trail.
A biker enjoys a section of the Greenway Trail.

A cleanup was held this past Saturday morning. The 28 volunteers were ably assisted by Brookhaven Town Councilwoman Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station) who believes that “the development of the Greenway has been nothing but a positive asset and resource.”

“When I speak to people in my district about the trail, they mention they enjoy that it connects communities. At the beginning, when a new idea like this is introduced, there is always a level of fear from some in the community until people see what an asset it can be, especially once people use it,” said Cartright.

Local resident and volunteer, Norm Samuels, echoed her sentiments. “People are generally very happy with the trail and use it in many different ways:  walking, running, biking and dog walking. During the right weather I go cross-country skiing! Only complaint some have: no port-o-potty.”

Another hardworking elected official at Saturday’s cleanup was Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket).An obvious environmental enthusiast, she said, “I was always excited about this idea of a trail. From social community, health and environmental  perspectives, we are all better for it. The good use of the trail drives out any bad use.”

The volunteers report that “bad use” consists of the occasional strewn trash, which is a light amount. As for people being worried about kids hanging out, non-usage of the trail or any negatives, the trail, has, instead, brought many positive attributes. Usage of the trail is very high. Most people have cleaned up after themselves and their dogs and traffic on Upper Sheep Pasture has slowed down dramatically because of the enhanced safety crossings and alerting of drivers to crosswalks.

But the best may be yet to come. This trail, which began as an acquired stretch of property in the 1960s and had originally been pitched as a bypass to 25A, had, in the 1990s become part of an alternative plan to become a Greenbelt Trail. Today the Friends of the Greenway are working with North Shore Rails to Trails “in an effort to extend the path from Port Jefferson Station to Wading River, which would create a 15-mile ribbon of bike paths,” according to Mones.  Not bad for something that started out over 50 years ago as a paper road for a vehicular bypass!

The trail, though, needs the community for it to survive and be maintained. The next clean up is scheduled for Sept. 26 from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. If you would like more information on being a part of this growing community that uses the trail or would like to volunteer, you can call the Three Village Community Trust’s Friends of the Greenway at 631-689-0225.

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I’ve noticed quite a few runners and bikers in the neighborhood this summer. I’ve also noticed an increase in the number of folks lined up at the local ice cream shop and wondered at the intersection of these two groups — the exercisers and the summer eaters. Conventional wisdom tells us that if we’re going to eat calorically dense foods, we need to be prepared to work off the potential extra pounds.

Before I go on, let’s take a little quiz. A little knowledge goes a long way in feeling good about your plans to exercise.

Unfortunately, the answer to question one is “d.” Exercise without dietary changes may not actually help many people to lose weight, no matter what the intensity or the duration (1). If it does help, it may only moderately reduce fat mass and weight for the majority of people. However, it may be helpful with weight maintenance. Therefore, it may be more important to think about what you are eating rather than succumb to the rationalization that you can eat with abandon and work it off later.

Don’t give up on exercise just yet, though. There is very good news: the answer to question two is that exercise has beneficial effects on all the choices plus many others, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, fatigue, insomnia, and depression. Let’s look at the evidence.

Weight loss attenuated

The well-known weight-loss paradigm in medicine is that when more calories are burned than consumed, we will tip the scale in favor of weight loss. The greater the negative balance with exercise, the greater the loss. However, the results of one study say otherwise. They show that in premenopausal women, there was neither weight nor fat loss from exercise (2). This was a preliminary study that involved 81 women over a short duration, twelve weeks. All the women were overweight to obese, although there was great variability in weight.

However, more than two-thirds of the women gained a mean of 1 kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of fat mass by the end of the study. There were a few who gained 10 pounds of, predominantly, fat. There was significant variability seen among the participants, ranging from significant weight loss to substantial weight gain. These women were told to exercise at the American College of Sports Medicine’s optimal level of intensity (3). This is to walk 30 minutes on a treadmill three times a week at 70 percent VO2max —maximum oxygen consumption during exercise — or, in other words, a moderately intense pace.

The good news is that the women were in better aerobic shape by the end of the study and that women who lost weight at the four-week mark were more likely to continue to do so by the end of the study. Though this is an interesting finding about variable effects on weight with exercise, this was also a preliminary study, so there needs to be a larger and longer duration study to confirm these results.

Other studies have shown modest weight loss. For instance, in a meta-analysis of 14 randomized controlled trials — the gold standard of studies — results showed that there was a disappointing amount of weight loss with exercise alone (4). In six months, patients lost a mean of 1.6 kilograms, or 3.5 pounds, and at 12 months, participants lost 1.7 kilograms, or about 3.75 pounds.

Weight maintenance

However, exercise may be valuable in weight maintenance, according to observational studies. Premenopausal women who exercised at least 30 minutes a day were significantly less likely to regain lost weight (5). When exercise was added to diet, women were able to maintain 30 percent more weight loss than with diet alone after a year in a prospective study (6).

Chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease affects about 1 in 10 people in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (7). The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has indicated that there is insufficient evidence to treat asymptomatic CKD. In fact, the American College of Physicians has said that asymptomatic CKD, which includes stages 3a and 3b, or moderate disease levels, should not be screened for, since the risks outweigh the benefits and lead to false positive tests and unnecessary treatments (8).

However, in a recent trial, the results show that walking regularly could reduce the risk of kidney replacement therapy and death in patients who have moderate to severe CKD, stages 3-5 (9). Yes, this includes stage 3, which most likely is asymptomatic. There was a 21 percent reduction in the risk of kidney replacement therapy and a 33 percent reduction in the risk of death when walkers were compared to non-walkers.

Walking had such an impressive impact, results were based on a dose-response curve. In other words, the more frequently patients walked in the week, the better the probability of preventing complications. Those who walked between one and two times per week had 17 and 19 percent reductions in death and kidney replacement therapy, respectively, while those who walked at least seven times per week saw 44 and 59 percent reductions in death and kidney replacement. These are substantial results. The authors concluded that the effectiveness of walking on CKD was independent of kidney function, age or other diseases.

Rheumatoid arthritis

Unfortunately, more than three quarters of patients with rheumatoid arthritis are affected with varying degrees of hand dysfunction. Well, it turns out that a randomized controlled trial that included supervised (physiotherapist or occupational therapist) exercise for six sessions, and exercise at home showed more than twice the improvement in hand function than those in the usual care group, over a 12-month period (10). There were no changes in drug therapies or pain.

Therefore, while it is important to enjoy the remaining weeks of summer, which officially ends September 21st, it is food choices that will have the greatest impact on our weight and body composition. Exercise will not be the solution for most of us to overcome weight gain. However, exercise is extremely beneficial for preventing progression of chronic disorders, such as CKD. Improved functioning of the hand with exercise in rheumatoid arthritis patients reduces disability.

So, by all means, exercise, but also focus on more nutrient-dense foods. At the least, strike a balance, rather than eating purely calorically dense foods. They are unlikely to be rationalized with exercise.

References:

(1) update.com. (2) J Strength Cond Res., Online, Oct. 28, 2014. (3) ACSM.org. (4) Am J Med. 2011;124(8):747. (5) Obesity (Silver Spring). 2010;18(1):167. (6) Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1997;21(10):941. (7) cdc.gov. (8) Ann Intern Med., online, Oct. 21, 2013. (9) Clin J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014 July 9(7):1183-9. (10) Lancet., online, Oct. 9, 2014.

Dr. Dunaief is a speaker, author and local lifestyle medicine physician focusing on the integration of medicine, nutrition, fitness and stress management. For further information, go to the website www.medicalcompassmd.com or consult your personal physician.

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By Bob Lipinski

Quotes are like recipes for our happiness. We enjoy their wit and often cite them; they inspire us, guide us, and often make us laugh. And sometimes, we need them just to keep our sanity. Below are 20 of my favorite cheese quotes.

■ “A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.” (Clifton Fadiman, American writer and editor; New Yorker book reviewer)

■ “A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.” (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1755–1826; French politician and writer)

■ “Age is not important unless you’re a cheese.” (Helen Hayes)

■ “Apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without the squeeze.” (Old English rhyme)

■ “Cheese complements a good meal and supplements a bad one.” (E. Briffault, French gastronome)

■ “Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love.” (M. F. K. Fisher, “How to Cook a Wolf,” 1942)

■ “For lovers of wine or beer, cheese would have had to be invented had it not grown up with these two drinks.” (Edward and Lorna Bunyard, “The Epicure’s Companion”)

■ “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” (Charles de Gaulle, 1890–1970, president of France, 1962 speech)

■ “I don’t want the cheese. I just want to get out of the trap.” (Spanish proverb)

■ “If I had a son of marriageable age, I should say to him, Beware of young women who love neither wine nor truffles nor cheese nor music.” (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette “Colette,” 1873–1954, French novelist, “Paysages et Portraits”)

■ “Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it.” (Thomas Sterns “T. S.” Eliot, 1885–1956, British poet and critic)

■ “Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.” (Gina Barreca)

■ “The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath.” (W. C. Fields, American comic and actor, 1880–1946)

■ “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” (Stephen Wright)

■ “The only way to learn about cheese is to eat it.” (Ernest Oldmeadow, English gastronome)

■ “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874–1936; English poet)

■ “There were cheeses from the North, there were cheeses from the South. There were dozens of one which melted in the mouth.” (T. A. Layton)

■ “What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions?” (Denis Norden, English comedy writer)

■ “Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.” (M. F. K. Fisher, introduction, “Vin et Fromage”)

■ “You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.” (Anthony Bourdain)

Bob Lipinski, a local author, has written nine books, including “101: Everything You Need To Know About Whiskey” and “Italian Wine & Cheese Made Simple” (available on Amazon.com). He conducts training seminars on Wine, Spirits, and Food; and is available for speaking engagements. He can be reached at www.boblipinski.com or [email protected].

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The Pax Christi Hospitality Center is on Oakland Avenue in Port Jefferson. File photo

Pax Christi Hospitality Center needs help supplying guests with sanitary products.

The center, which shelters local homeless men and is under the umbrella of Port Jefferson-based nonprofit Hope House Ministries, founded by Father Francis Pizzarelli, has asked for donations of toothbrushes, small soaps and small shampoos, like the ones found in hotel rooms. The items will go to guests who visit the facility for a shower.

Pax Christi is located at 255 Oakland Ave. in Port Jefferson, near the Long Island Rail Road tracks. It is a 25-bed facility for males older than 16 that provides emergency shelter, food and social services. Call 631-928-9108 for more information.

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