The day before my 36th birthday I suffered a vascular rupture in my leg. How appropriate considering three days later I would be covering the campus health fair, where I found out about medical services for disadvantaged individuals and help for women with children along with such fascinating subjects as antioxidants and mangosteen.
National Health Services Inc. was one of the vendors at the Wednesday health fair. It is a federally qualified non-profit organization according to Javier Arreola, health promotions associate.
“When you are a federally qualified clinic you are geared toward what we call a medically underserved population. We take Medi-Cal, CDHP, healthy families and if you don’t have insurance then we go by a sliding scale and offer full medical, dental and mental services.”
Another group promoting its services was WIC, a nutrition education program for pregnant women and young children. WIC gives food vouchers to women with kids up to age 5.
“We also provide breast-feeding support and referrals throughout the community for women who are income eligible,” said Christine Dodd, a WIC representative. “We have lots of locations in Bakersfield and surrounding areas so there are lots of options.”
Health products were a big part of the fair. Mary Darrah, a representative of Juice Plus, said that the product has been on the market for about 10 years. Juice Plus takes fresh fruits and veggies and juices and dehydrates them, then pulverizes them into a fine powder to be put into capsules.
“Most people don’t eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables to give you the required amounts of antioxidants needed to fight cancer and heart disease,” says Durrah.
Another health food vendor was Danny McKay, grocery manager at Lassens Natural Foods & Vitamins. “Atkins is only about 10 percent of our different marketing. We specialize in natural products, no refined sugars, no saturated fats; we stay away from all of that.”
Perhaps the most unusual health food product was Xantho, made from mangosteen. Mangosteen is a fruit from the rain forest of Southeast Asia that Queen Victoria once referred to as “the queen of fruits,” said DeeAnn Dyas. “It is a powerful antioxidant that helps mop up the free radicals that we get from the pollution and the air and the way we eat,” she said.
Xango comes from the word Xanthones. Dyas maintained that this is a powerful antioxidant and analgesic that prevents dementia.
After writing this article I think I can use something like that myself. My leg still hurts but perhaps with the advice given to me at this year’s health fair, I’ll be skipping to class in no time.