The Daily Spectrum from Saint George, Utah • 11

Spectrum Tuesday, November 29, 1988-11 a Obesity increasing in children Television: Is it turning our minds to mush? Probably not, but it does seem to be turning our kids' bodies to mush. Up to 50 percent of American children are not getting enough exercise to develop healthy heart and lungs. Between 1963 and 1980, obesity increased 54 percent in children ages 6 to 11 and 39 percent in adolescents ages 12 to 17. Television is probably only partly responsible for turning kids into wide bodies, but the tube is a convenient scapegoat. More junk food availability, reduced physical education requirements in school, computer games, poor nutrition education and two- career families are all contributing factors.

Although it seems that we are in the midst of a fitness craze, it is largely an exaggeration, says Dr. Steve Dunn, assistant professor of health, physical education and recreation at Utah State University. "The numbers of persons who report that they participate in sports such as swimming and biking are misleading. These statistics include anybody who gets their hair wet splashing around in the pool or who rides a bike around the block on the weekend. Few people are actually doing these activities enough to promote fitness," he says.

If adults don't set an example, it is unlikely children will exercise, Dunn says. He says another contributing factor to children's lack of fitness is the lack of fitness training going on in the schools. Playground time is usually supervised but no physical requirements are made of the children. In high school you can complete your requirements in the first two years and do nothing during the junior and senior years, Dunn says. He has these suggestions for shaping up the younger generation: Exercise with your kids.

Children modeling your behavior is one the most important predictors to fitness. Buy the traditional toys that require' physical involvement such as balls, jump ropes, and skates. Kids don't need specialized exercise machines. Backyard activities such as rope swings, jungle gyms and ladders promote coordination and imaginative play. Encourage your parks and recreation centers to provide organized activities that promote fitness.

Encourage both team and individual sports. Team sports teach valuable socialization lessons in addition to fitness. Individual sports can generally be done anywhere and when the child is alone. Individual sports such as tennis, running, swimming and biking can also carry over throughout adulthood. Grief driven father forms corporation Saving infants before and after birth ATLANTA (UPI) Pete Petit get through that period of intense ATLANTA HeCllthrlxno fnnnHor rw: i i i focus on the event.

"My initial focus was to develop a device that would prevent the same kind of thing from happening to other families that happened to our family. "I didn't need much more of a goal than that," he said. "I didn't think about building a large corporation or building a multi-faceted international company because I didn't have the vision then." What Petit had was a devotion to children that enabled him to sustain the business through hard times, including near bankruptcy, takeover attempts and a string of quarterly il lvjal rol rem iumwu personal 2 2 er son died of Sudden lnfant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 1971 as he developed a home use monitoring system that keeps track of an infant's vital signs. Here, Petit holds the monitor in his hands while a new product, designed to monitor the pregnant mother, is on his desk. Nearly children die of SIDS each year.

(UPI) Healthdyne helps infant mortality It had been only two years before Brett's death that a group of international physicians issued a medical treatise defining crib death as SIDS and identifying it as the leading killer of children under age 1. The idea for the infant monitoring device came to Petit on a long drive through the north Georgia mountains that he took with his family after Brett's funeral. When he returned home, Petit, who holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech, drew a rough sketch of the monitor he had in mind and brought it to Brett's pediatrician, Scott James. "He was very committed," said James, a member of Healthdyne's board who serves as the company's medical director. "Rather than go off and be mad at the world when his son died he started thinking what he could do as an engineer to help other parents," James said.

"He turned grief into something very positive for mankind." Despite support from James and another medical researcher, Alfred Steinschneider, it took seven years before the American Academy of Pediatricians decided that home monitoring of infants suffering from apnea was an appropriate alternative to hospitalization. Since 1977, Healthdyne has sold about 70,000 of Petit's monitors and no doubt saved thousands of young lives if the letters, poems and cassette recordings received by the company are any indication. "We've certainly had an impact on those infants," he said. "They might not all have succumbed to SIDS but the monitor has certainly played a role in perhaps keeping them from having some severe apnea episodes that would have caused maybe brain damage and some subsequent health care problems." While his home monitor was saving lives, Petit began to focus attention on getting doctors involved in SIDS research and obtaining the money to fund the projects. He founded the American SIDS Institute, based in Sandy Springs, an Atlanta suburb, in 1983 to conduct research and was instrumental in the establishment this year of SIDS Alliance, an umbrella organization in Baltimore that handles fund-raising for the six major SIDS research groups in the United States.

transformed tragedy into triumph, using the sudden death of his baby as impetus for building a multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to giving infants a greater chance at survival. Driven by grief and armed only with a drawing of a revolutionary product, the aerospace engineer left a high-paying job at Lockheed-Georgia to start a health care company following the death of his 6-month-old son, a victim of sudden infant death syndrome, in 1970. When he founded Healthdyne Inc. a year later, Parker Holmes Petit wanted only to develop a home-use infant monitor that would track breathing and heart rates and sound an alarm if breathing stopped or the heart rate fell below a certain level. Six years later, Petit, Health-dyne's chief executive officer, had accomplished his goal and was on his way to turning the company into a $90 million healthcare concern dedicated to high-technology home care services and therapies.

"Initially, I was very much motivated by grief," Petit said. "It gave me something to put my time and effort and talents into and helped us While still worried about the threat Petit's affection for children comes across in the way he refers to them as "kiddos" and "little guys" and in he way he talks about the products his company makes to help infants. It's more obvious when Petit reminisces about the summer evening his son, Brett, died. Until Brett died of SIDS in June 1970, Petit had never heard of the disease that kills between 8,000 and 10,000 American infants each year. Petit was not alone in his ignorance.

Presley name doesn't guarantee a good job manages the considerable fortune HOLLYWOOD (UPI) After five "And they certainly didn't want reverse several years of financial losses. After logging a profit of $5.3 million in 1983, Healthdyne lost $35.2 million in 1984, $21.3 million in 1986 and $5.5 million in 1987. Sandwiched between the losses were modest earnings of $938,000 in 1985. Start-up costs associated with the pregnancy monitoring program contributed significantly to the $2.8 million lost by Healthdyne in the first nine months of 1988, and the company recently took steps to remedy its financial health. Healthdyne launched a restructuring program Oct.

31 in which the company's lucrative infusion therapy and home-care products branches were kept under the Healthdyne name. The company's pregnancy monitoring or perinatal group and the home care services division which rents durable equipment to bedridden patients were spun off into a separate entity. Petit blames much of the company's earlier financial problems on government changes in reimbursement policies that caused an industrywide downturn in home health care services. But with the home health care market expected to expand to $12 billion by 1990 from $8 billion last year, Petit predicts a healthier Healthdyne will emerge. "We're definitely on the upswing and are looking forward to some very exciting, prosperous years ahead," he said.

With approval of the pre-natal monitoring program expected soon from the Food and Drug Administration, Healthdyne is looking for new markets to corner. The company may find the niche with a device that therapeutically treats the problem of sleep apnea in adults. of SIDS, Petit recently moved Healthdyne into another unchartered 'area relating to infant mortality premature birth. As much as 15 percent of all pregnant women are diagnosed at risk of premature labor and about 200,000 infants are born prematurely before 37 weeks in the 40-week pregnancy cycle each year, Petit said, addiig costs from these births total $5 billion annually, or about $25,000 a child. Last year, Healthdyne began marketing a prenatal home monitoring program that allows doctors to monitor a woman's uterine contractions to determine whether she is beginning labor.

day we can extend that pregnancy, it saves a thousand or $2,000 a day," Petit said. "If you can extend a pregnancy one day, you generally cut down a day's stay in a neonatal unit. So we're saving the health-care industry money, plus babies are healthier." Even though Healthdyne's home pregnancy monitoring program is being administered under an investigational permit from the Food and Drug Administration, obstetricians have prescribed it for about 2,000 women so far, Petit said. Once the program is prescribed, a woman uses the equipment twice a day, strapping around her abdomen a belt that monitors uterine contractions. The data is transferred via telephone to 25 Healthdyne centers around the country, where a nurse evaluates the information for the patient's doctor.

Fees for the monitoring program run up to $90 a day, and Healthdyne has control of about 25 percent of the market for the monitors, said Petit, who is counting on sales of the service and new products eventually to person instead of just being labeled the wife of a legend. I don't think many American women enjoy being identified only in connection with the man they are married to, no matter how famous he is. "It's not that I want to forget the millions of happy memories or deny my marriage and relationship with Elvis. I could never do that. I don't ever want to do that, but at the same time I have to be Priscilla." In addition to her acting career, Priscilla has become an astute businesswoman who administers Elvis' Tennessee mansion Graceland now open to public tours and their daughter Lisa Marie will inherit when she turns 30.

"I'd love to make two movies a year," she said, smiling. "I would like to find myself in the position that Kathleen Turner is in. I suppose that every woman in this town would love the same thing. "Like everyone else, I interview for roles, as I did for Jerry and David Zucker for 'Naked They didn't want a comedienne or an actress who had ever played comedy before. They were looking for a surprise element.

me because of the name. My connection with Elvis Presley would not mean a thing to the success of the picture." Presley had never played comedy in "Dallas" and had no idea what was expected of her in the role of a foil for Nielsen's off-the-wall characterization. "On the first day at work I read my lines and used body language for laughs," she said. "Then David Zucker told me, 'Don't play it as if you thought it was funny. Just do years in television's "Dallas" series, Priscilla Presley is making her debut in feature films with billing second only to that of Leslie Nielsen in the "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad." Such high billing is a singular achievement for the 43-year-old actress, who takes pride in the fact that she won the comedic role after competing with several other, better-known, actresses for the part.

"It sometimes enters my mind that Elvis might have been proud of me, too, for the way I am living my life," Priscilla said, relaxing after appearing on a TV talk show. "I believe Elvis would have been happy at what I've accomplished with my life, considering we met and fell in love when I was only 14. I've come a long way in all those years, even though had a late start in my career as an actress. "Studying acting wasn't easy for me, but it was a great deal less difficult than overcoming my association with the popular memory of Elvis. "Before I could do anything else, I had to establish myself as my own A I youorecordialfyinvi'ed Dixie State Bank December i 6:00 pjn- IUBILEEQF TREES -3 Come See The Christmas Wonderland Of Dixie! HELD AT DIXIE CENTER Decorated Trees Sweet Shoppe Christmas Corner Gift Boutique Pictures With Santa Gingerbread Village Junior Jubilee Continuous Entertainment 'All Proceeds Sfay In Dixie For New Cardiac Equipment at DMC Thursday December 1 lOamtilllOpm Friday December2 lOamtillllpm Saturday December3 10 am till 4 pm Our thanks to the following busineses and individuals for their help and donations to the Jubilee Of Trees Sponsors: Ranch Inn Cameo Inn Florist Bookstore I Mechanical Contractors Zlons Loan Center KZEZ Radio Station A-1 Industrial Gas Weling Colorland Photo Ralndancers Youth Service Chrlstensen's Moore Business Forms Peppermlll Resort Trl-Corp Health Care Bloomington Country Club Porter's Nursing Home Metoalf Mortuary Zlon First National BanK KDXU Radio Station Utah Pecan Ranch City of St.

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