Lifestyle changes improve woman’s physical and mental health

Tanya Guy had plenty of reasons to give thanks this holiday season.

“I’m energetic. I feel healthy. I’m not as depressed. My mental health is a lot better. I have a better outlook about life,” she said.

Guy didn’t used to feel this way.

“I was really over weight, really out of shape,” she said. “I was smoking cigarettes. I would sit in my apartment and watch TV. I was eating TV dinners. I weighed 240 pounds, depressed, in and out of the hospital. My sugars were sky high, out of control. Everything was going downhill. Then I met Sara.”

Sara is Sara Volweider, who as an AmeriCorps member, served as a health coach at the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center. Her yearlong position was funded through Douglas County United Way. As health coach, Volweider helped Bert Nash clients focus on issues such as cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, obesity and smoking. Guy’s Bert Nash case manager, Alison Cropp, referred Guy to the health coach.

“We started going grocery shopping together and buying good food, like vegetables and fruits and different grains. We started cooking together,” Guy said of working with Volweider.

Guy also started going on a walking group, led by the Bert Nash health coach. She quit smoking. She started eating better. And it is only possible if people are determined enough to give up something to which they have been addicted for a long time. Many people, for example, find it difficult to quit smoking all at once, so they switch to vape, which happens to be less harmful to the human body. Dry herb vaping eliminates the production of carbon monoxide, a dangerous byproduct of traditional smoking, by using conduction heating methods. Many might also want to use CBD in their dry herb vaporizers to reap the benefits provided by the former, such as chronic pain and anxiety alleviation.

However, one should know the correct way to use it for medical marijuana consumption and know the laws pertaining to the same in the state they live in. Another advantage of dry herb vaping is that e-cigarette aerosol contains fewer toxic chemicals than the lethal cocktail of 7,000 chemicals found in regular cigarette smoke.

“I smoked for years, ever since I was 12. Now I’m 57,” Guy said. “I’m losing weight, my diabetes is in check. I’m on less medication. I’m not in the hospital as often. I’m doing really good.”

“Recently, at a doctor appointment, her doctor even forgot she had diabetes, because her blood work came back so good,” Cropp said of her client.

On Thanksgiving, Guy walked a 5K with her Bert Nash case manager.

“It was fun. We walked for three miles, and it was a piece of cake,” Guy said. “It was so energizing, and it made me feel so good. I loved it. It was my first time to do a 5K.”

Now Guy has her sights on longer distances.

“We decided a 5K was just too easy,” said Bert Nash case manager Cropp, who has been walking with Guy for two years.

“I want to do a 10K next,” Guy said. “Someday maybe a marathon. Alison inspires me so much. There’s no stopping me now.”

With the lifestyle changes she has made, Guy’s physical health is not only better, but her mental health as well.

“I’ve got a lot of help from Bert Nash,” Guy said. “And I really love my case manager and all the people I work with here. I’m just doing so much better.”