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Englewood Voices

Columns or blogs by Engle­wood people.

The effects of obesity on arthritis

Car­olyn Schoner

By Car­olyn Schoner

Doc­tor of Ori­en­tal Medicine

The effects of obe­sity on arthri­tis can be devastating.

Lets talk about this. Have you ever car­ried a gal­lon of milk? Remem­ber how heavy it felt as you car­ried the milk from the gro­cery store to your car and then from the car into the house. Your arm felt like it was going to fall off and maybe you were out of breadth. It gets heavy. A gal­lon of milk weights eight pounds.

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Questions to answer before refinancing

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

The Realty Column

My Doc­tor used to tell me that even when he was in the gym, peo­ple who knew him would come over to the machine he was using and ask med­ical ques­tions. He felt he was never away from giv­ing advice, and so it is with real estate and me. This week I had a chance to visit an old friend in Mary­land. The con­ver­sa­tion came around to real estate, and her ques­tion was, “ is this a good time to refinance?”

As my read­ers already know, we are at a 50-year low in the rates avail­able for mort­gages. And now is the time to refi­nance — unless you are plan­ning to sell in the next year or so or are already at last year’s very low rate. As I write this, the rates are in the mid 4’s and are likely to be steady or go up slightly as we come to the end of  sum­mer. But, as a caveat, my crys­tal ball has been a lit­tle cloudy recently.

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Bushes and beauty

Herb “Padre” Agee

By Herb “Padre” Agee

Engle­wood United Methodist Church

Last week, when I talked about exer­cis­ing by work­ing in the yard, a friend responded to my story by ask­ing, “Pick-ax, huh. .. How tough is your yard?” I sent her a newslet­ter arti­cle I had writ­ten on Tues­day, Aug.  30, 2005. It explains a lit­tle bit about my yard. Here it is:

We have got­ten the house unpacked and together enough that Candy wants to start on the yard. She loves beauty and needs to have it around her. Evi­dently I don’t quite ful­fill that beauty need enough myself, so the only solu­tion is to cre­ate some. I, per­son­ally, don’t seem to have the same need for beau­ti­ful bushes and shrubs.

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Confusion aside, ‘Inception’ lives up to the hype

Jenna Lons­dale

By Jenna Lonsdale

Film and TV

Christo­pher Nolan has proven that he can dom­i­nate the box office with­out the help of the Caped Cru­sader. Not only is his lat­est film, “Incep­tion” cur­rently No. 1 with an open­ing week­end gross of over $62 mil­lion, but it’s also the high­est opener of star Leonardo DiCaprio’s career.

When I first saw the teaser for “Incep­tion” I was beyond confused.

Peo­ple were fight­ing in zero-gravity and the tagline was “Your mind is the scene of the crime.” I sat there think­ing to myself, “What just happened?”

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How do you pick a good real estate investment?

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

The Realty Column

Ques­tion: I’m think­ing of mak­ing a real estate invest­ment. What is the magic for­mula investors use to deter­mine if a prop­erty would be a good investment?

Answer: This is a good ques­tion and you might not even find the answer at a four-year col­lege offer­ing a real estate diploma — so I’ll try to keep my answer sim­ple. Always remem­ber com­mon sense should rule the day. Invest­ment prop­er­ties take your time and money, so be sure to get your spouse’s approval.

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Arthritis is one of the most common ailments

Car­olyn Schoner

By Car­olyn Schoner

Doc­tor of Ori­en­tal Medicine

The def­i­n­i­tion of arthri­tis is any inflam­ma­tion of the joint. But arthri­tis is more than just inflam­ma­tion. It is bone spurs, degen­er­a­tion of the joint or bone, repet­i­tive move­ments, loss of syn­ovial fluid, tight mus­cles, osteo­poro­sis, deple­tion of cal­cium or mag­ne­sium, obe­sity, side effect of med­ica­tion, lack of exer­cise, sprain, strain, mis­align­ment, incor­rect diet and short­en­ing of the tendons.

More than 55 mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from osteoarthri­tis, rheuma­toid arthri­tis and related con­di­tions includ­ing fibromyal­gia, gout, lupus, pso­ri­atic arthri­tis, bur­si­tis, scle­ro­derma, Reiter’s syn­drome, Sjogren’s syn­drome and anky­los­ing spondyli­tis. There may be audi­ble crack­ing or grat­ing noises when the joint move, called crepitus.

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Working out again

Herb “Padre” Agee

By Herb “Padre” Agee

Engle­wood United Methodist Church

I started work­ing out again. I’ve done that some­thing like once or twice a year for the past 40 years. It goes back to the arti­cle on not hav­ing devel­oped my gifts and tal­ents. Work­ing out and exer­cis­ing takes dis­ci­pline and con­sis­tency. These are two attrib­utes that have been pretty for­eign to me.

I used to be a run­ner. While in sem­i­nary in Kansas City, Mo., I took a Youth Min­istry class one sum­mer that focused on activ­i­ties rather than any kind of the­ol­ogy or the­ory. I took it because I thought it would be an easy credit.

Not!

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Don’t walk away from equity

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

The Realty Column

Ques­tion: We are try­ing to decide whether we should strug­gle to keep our home or deed the house back to the bank. The value is cur­rently $180,000, but, because we lost so much value, we only have about $10,000 equity. I heard home val­ues were going to drop again.

Answer: Every­thing we know about real estate is all turned around. Expen­sive homes are cheap, mort­gage rates are in the 4.5 per­cent range, and now, accord­ing to the New York Times this week, the “well-to-do” have stopped pay­ing their home loans in greater num­bers, and appar­ently with less guilt. I am also notic­ing that cer­tain finan­cial plan­ners are begin­ning to take what I would con­sider to be a less-than-ethical approach by sug­gest­ing to their clients that default is a finan­cial plan­ning option.

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