BY JASON GONZALEZ© 2012, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

MINNEAPOLIS — The raw bellpeppers’ crispness muffled thenoise coming from James On-wualu’s mouth as he described thepurpose of the colorful snack.

Red, yellow and green peppers,mixed with broccoli and spinach,are a vital part of living a purifiedlife, the Cretin-Derham Hall HighSchool senior said. It’s the nourish-ment he sees as required to ade-quately prepare for goals that reachfar beyond being the best wide re-ceiver in Minnesota.

Emphasis on nutrition, carefullysculpted to match growing teenageathletes with their sport’s de-mands, are the edge that Onwualuand other talented individuals useto become the best in their sport.

In a generation more accus-tomed to going online to educatethemselves, these athletes formtheir detailed eating habits by heed-ing coaches, personal trainers andeven parents.

“It’s specific today with who youare and to the athlete,” said On-wualu, a Notre Dame-bound footballstandout. “My friends and school-mates think I’m pretty crazy for it.They think I’m already where I wantto be. But in my mind I’m not whereI want to be.”

Across the metro, blue-chip ath-letes are similarly disciplined andcommitted.

At Minneapolis Southwest, soc-cer player Zach Neiberger replacedchips with fruit. Shakopee cross-country runner Maria Hauger eatsloads of spinach and red meat forthe iron boost required for distancerunning. Wayzata swimmer EmmaPaulson starts preparing for a meetfive days in advance through herfood. Waconia volleyball playerAnna Pioske gave up soda threeyears ago to help increase her verti-cal. Fellow volleyball player Saman-tha Seliger-Swenson says no tosweets. Wayzata football playerMitch Underhill stopped drinkingGatorade.

Each of these sacrifices hasmolded this group into the bestand, in some cases, convinced fel-

low teammates to simply pay moreattention to meals.

“(Performance) depends onwhat you eat. I don’t eat candy. Idon’t drink pop. I keep my muscleshydrated and healthy,” Onwualusaid. “I feel my body is more pure.Food has kind of become not apleasure. I don’t love different kindsof food, but there are certain thingsI eat that are good for you.”

Hopkins volleyball coach VickiSeliger-Swenson empowers herteam by handing out articles on nu-trition. She said the awareness hascreated an overall healthy environ-ment regardless of the athlete’scommitment level.

An average week for Onwualubegins with a visit to the supermar-ket with a detailed grocery list, ed-ited by nutrition and training coachTed Johnson. Onwualu prepares hisown meals. Along with peppers, hisrecent lunch included a couple offorms of fruit and three sandwiches— turkey, chicken breast, ham.

This midday refuel is part of a5,000-6,000-calorie diet engineeredfor Onwualu’s needs not only as afootball player, but more specifi-cally a wide receiver.

“Pretty sophisticated stuff” ishow Johnson categorized thelifestyle. Along with the rigorous

no-supplement nutrition habits heinstills in clients, he also pushesthem beyond traditionally acceptedworkouts.

Underhill, training alongsideJohnson after missing all of last sea-son because of a knee injury, gained20 pounds while maintaining 8 per-cent body fat. In-depth analysis ofthe Wayzata running back’s bodytype and its needs produced a dietof six to seven meals a day. At eachmeal he consumes a serving of veg-etables and avoids sugars. The se-nior’s attempts to gain weight allow

for one sweet exception: His finalmeal of the day is often ice creamand waffles.

“I pretty much just eat the samething. We don’t have anything else(at home),” Underhill said. “It’smore about performance and gain-ing weight. And outlasting every-one.”

Found among the Waconia vol-leyball team rules is a section onnutrition. It’s important to coachJim Lee that his athletes are well-fed.

“If we eat healthy, we playhealthy,” Pioske said. “You can tellif you eat a bunch of junk food. Youfeel slower and don’t feel as ener-gized. You’re more awake andalert.”

That means limits — two cans ofsoda per week, no coffee, no candyor cookies Monday through Friday— to help Lee’s group produce amore balanced diet.

Rasa Troup, a sports nutritionspecialist and dietitian for Univer-sity of Minnesota athletics, believessuch guidelines will help creategood eating habits. An advocate forhealthy lifestyles and nutrition-minded athletes, Troup is con-cerned about misinformationleading to exaggerated eating thathas adverse effects on athletes. Herresearch has shown that teenagersoften use unqualified sources, suchas the Internet or teammates, as nu-trition guides, instead of a trainedprofessional.

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BY BARBARA BROTMAN© 2012, Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Harlan Didrickson was amodel of middle-class stability.

He lived with his partner of more thantwo decades in a handsome Victorian on aleafy North Side Chicago street. He workedas manager of executive and administra-tive services for a high-powered architec-tural firm, where he made hospitality andtravel arrangements for large meetingsand oversaw budgets that ran into millionsof dollars.

He was not the kind of person whowould go to lunch with friends and comehome having spent $4,500 on a puppy anda month of obedience training.

Or who would get up at 2 a.m., go toDunkin’ Donuts, then drive to Indiana andback, snacking on Munchkins.

But that’s who he became.Four years ago, his life was upended by

bipolar II disorder, the same illness re-cently diagnosed in U.S. Rep. Jesse Jack-son Jr.

This is not Jackson’s story. People withthe disorder — nearly 6 million in the U.S.— have unique experiences with the ill-ness, which cycles between moods ofmanic energy and deep depression.

“The symptoms of bipolar disorder canbe very different from one person com-pared to another,” said Dr. John Zajecka, apsychiatrist with Rush University MedicalCenter who specializes in mood disorders.

Manic states leave some people eu-phoric, others irritable. “There are peoplewho can function their whole lives in thesehypomanic states,” though they may losemarriages, jobs and money, Zajecka said.

Depression, too, can appear in a varietyof ways. Some sufferers stay in eithermania or depression for decades; otherscycle between them many times a day.And people respond differently to treat-ment.

But Didrickson’s struggle provides onelook at how bipolar II disorder and itstreatment can affect a life.

And he does have one key factor incommon with Jackson. Like the congress-man, Didrickson, 54, had weight-loss sur-gery before being diagnosed with bipolar.

He had a gastric bypass procedure; Jack-son had a duodenal switch.

It became a serious complication in histreatment. The weight-loss procedure,which causes the body to absorb fewercalories, prevented him from absorbingthe full dose of his antidepressant medica-tion.

Didrickson’s illness began when hestarted feeling extremely stressed at work.He considered himself skilled at his jobbut felt beleaguered by office politics.

“I felt as though I was fighting a lot offights on different fronts in my life, andthat I didn’t have the wherewithal, the en-ergy,” he said. “I was profoundly unhappy.”

He changed jobs, twice. He still felt mis-erable. And he also felt trapped, having todo work he now found unbearably stress-ful.

More than 60 percent of people withbipolar engage in substance abuse as theytry to self-medicate their inner pain.Didrickson was among them. At night he

would wash down some hydrocodone, anopiate he had been prescribed for a backinjury, with beer. He would stay up till 4a.m. watching TV, then take Ambien to fallasleep.

“At 6 o’clock I woke up, got dressedand went to work. I was probably stillhigh,” he said. “Then somewhere aroundnoon, I would crash. I would go to themen’s bathroom, go sit on the toilet andfall asleep.”

His partner, Nick Harkin, a publicistwith an entertainment and lifestyle mar-keting firm, had no idea how deeply trou-bled Didrickson had become.

But then Didrickson didn’t show up ontime for a planned out-of-town getaway.When he arrived the next day, he was mo-rose, secretive and exhausted. “It was avery abrupt shift,” Harkin said. “It wasquite obvious that something was very se-riously wrong.”

Didrickson was thinking of ending theirrelationship, he told Harkin. And he

wanted to move to California’s Death Val-ley. He wanted to start a new life.

“I was falling apart,” Didrickson said. “Itwas this desperate: ‘I will do anything toget out from under this pressure.’ It waslike having a heart attack, and if you don’tget out from under it, it will kill you.”

Back home, he called a friend who hadonce been his therapist. She asked if hewas suicidal.

“I was, like, ‘Of course I am. I thinkabout it all the time,’” he said. “’It’s theonly comfort I have.’”

She told him to see a psychiatrist. Hedid, and was told he had depression — acommon initial diagnosis for people withbipolar, who generally seek treatment dur-ing a depressed phase of the illness.

The antidepressant the doctor pre-scribed didn’t work. Didrickson developedmemory problems, to the point where heforgot how to do simple tasks like using aphone.

“I could not take a shower, because Icouldn’t recall the sequence of activities ...turning on the water, stepping into thespray, getting wet, washing,” he said.

He lost 40 pounds and neglectedbathing and grooming. And yet there werealso times when Didrickson felt powerful,energetic, nearly like a superhero. Hecould do anything he wanted, no matterhow dangerous or destructive, with noconsequences.

He ran red lights. He drove the wrongway down one-way streets. “I felt like I wasback to being in charge, like I was back tosaying, ‘It’s going to go like this because Isaid so,’” Didrickson said. “I felt kind ofemancipated.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this (antidepressant)Paxil is really working.’”

But it wasn’t. A psychopharmacologistgave him a new diagnosis: bipolar II disor-der, a form of bipolar disorder with less ex-treme mood swings.

No antidepressant worked. Then afriend with bipolar recommended Adder-all, the stimulant often prescribed for at-tention deficit disorder.

His doctor prescribed a standardamount. It did nothing.

So Didrickson took another dose. Andhe felt a little better.

“I started to feel buoyant,” he said. “I al-ways talk about feeling underwater. I feltlike I was finally breaking the surface.”

He didn’t know why he needed a higherdose. But then he came upon online mes-sage board postings by people who hadundergone gastric bypass surgery andthen found that their antidepressant medi-cines stopped working.

The gastric bypass surgery he had un-dergone years earlier to lose weight, heconcluded, was keeping his body from ab-sorbing the medicine.

Indeed, Zajecka said, gastric bypasssurgery can change how people absorbmedicines given for bipolar disorder.

The Mayo Clinic statement announcingJackson’s diagnosis also noted that theweight-loss surgery he had “can changehow the body absorbs food, liquids, vita-mins, nutrients and medications.”

Many people with bipolar disorder areable to resume their previous lives.

“It’s one of the most treatable illnesseswe have in medicine,” Zajecka said. “If it’sdiagnosed properly and treated appropri-ately, there’s no reason they can’t get backto resuming a normal lifestyle and theirnormal goals in life.”

But Didrickson has been unable to goback to work and still has periods of de-pression and mania, though much milderones. He manages the house, cooks andhas taken up woodworking.

“Going out in the evening can be very,very, challenging for him,” Harkin said. “Ifwe go to a concert or a dance performanceand it’s too noisy, he’ll have to leave. If ...there’s someone in a film who’s violent orcruel, that’s very upsetting to him too.”

“It’s nothing like I thought my lifewould be,” Didrickson said.

“The good thing, I guess, is that I don’thold on to yesterdays,” he said. “That’s ablessing, I think, frankly. But I also don’thave tomorrow. My life isn’t about tomor-row.”

He has gone back to writing, which hedid in college. He writes a blog about hisexperiences with bipolar, under the nameT.M. Mulligan. The moniker stands for“Taking My Mulligan.”

“I’m having my do-over,” he said. “I’mtaking the second chance.”

Bipolar II Disorder Affects Nearly 6M In U.S.

CHRIS WALKER/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/MCT

Harlan Didrickson poses for portrait outside his Rogers Park neighborhood home. Hehas written about his bipolar disorder and also blogs about his cat Charlie, at left.

Heart Attack Risk Lower Than Expected ForStressed-Out Workers

BY MELISSA HEALY© 2012, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — If you still have a job in this economy, you’re sup-posed to feel grateful. But stress is what more people tend to feel atwork these days, and a new study finds that for those who experiencesuch strain on the job, the risk of developing heart disease increases byabout 25 percent.

That elevated heart attack risk, however, is less high than has beenwidely supposed, the authors of the new study wrote Thursday in thejournal Neurology. While addressing workplace stress might help im-prove employees’ health, they said, there’s lower-hanging fruit thatwould yield higher health benefits, including an expansion of efforts toget smokers to kick the habit.

Job stress is defined by high demands at work and/or a worker’s lowlevel of control over work hours and conditions. A 2007 survey by theAmerican Psychological Assn. found that three-quarters of Americanslisted work as a significant source of stress, and more than half acknowl-edged that their productivity had suffered as a result of stress.

For employers, workplace stress is no bargain: Job stress is esti-mated to cost U.S. employers $300 million a year in absenteeism, lostproductivity, higher turnover and added medical, legal and insurancefees.

The latest research is not a fresh study but a compilation of existingstudies, some published in medical journals, others not. It gathers evi-dence of the link between job stress and heart disease from studies con-ducted in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, France, the Netherlandsand Britain. Some published studies have assessed the increased car-diovascular toll of stress on the job at 40 percent. But when unpub-lished studies were taken into consideration, the contribution of jobstress to cardiovascular risk started to shrink.

School Programs Don’t Get Kids To Eat ManyMore Veggies, Study Says

BY MARY MACVEAN© 2012, Los Angeles Times

School-based efforts to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables arenot failing, but they’re no wild success either, according to an analysisof programs involving almost 26,400 children.

The kids ate a quarter portion more a day of produce — and if youjust looked at vegetables alone, the increase was just under a tenth of aportion, according to the analysis of 27 programs published in the Octo-ber issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

So one sweet potato, or one cup of broccoli, would represent the in-crease for about 10 kids.

When juice was included as a fruit, the total went up to a third of aportion.

The research, by Charlotte E.L. Evans and colleagues at the Univer-sity of Leeds in Britain, looked at programs in several countries. Theyalso looked at two styles of intervention, and they found that howschools tried to get kids to eat more produce made a difference.

In what they called single-component programs, kids were given freeor subsidized produce. In multi-component programs, such things asnutrition education and communication with families were included.The latter worked better, the researchers said.

The researchers noted that a previous study showing a 0.4-portionincrease included mainly multi-component programs and did not breakout juice.

Not only is it important for children to eat fruits and vegetables,their childhood habits carry into adulthood, the researchers wrote. Sur-veys report that U.S., European and Australian children eat two to threeportions of produce a day — well below the five portions many govern-ment agencies recommend.

There’s plenty of work ahead, the study noted.A couple of ideas that appear to work were exposing children to veg-

etables for 14 days, which “has been reported to increase liking and theconsumption of vegetables.” And school garden programs have beenshown to increase consumption of produce, the study said.

Top Athletes Believe Diet Is Key To Success

CARLOS GONZALEZ/MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE/MCT

Top high school athletes say eating habits are as important as workouthabits. Wayzata swimmer Emma Paulson starts preparing for a meet fivedays in advance through her food.