That's Fit

I vividly remember sitting on the edge of my neighbor's pool as a young girl, dipping my toes in the water and just waiting for an hour after lunch to go by so I could get in the pool. (By the way, the "don't swim after eating" thing is basically an old wives tale.) I remember needing a buddy when swimming in the lake by our summer cottage. I remember my mom warning me to wear a life jacket when we'd go boating and swimming in the bay. But never, not once, did anyone ever warn me about diving pelicans.

A tourist was swimming off the coast of St. Petersburg, Florida when a pelican slammed into her face. Apparently, the bird was diving for a fish and hit the swimmer by accident. The swimmer needed stitches for a gash in her face and is back home in Ohio. The bird, unfortunately, died.

Pixie dust. That's what Ohio resident, Lee Spievak, says helped grow his finger back. But the truth is a little less magical and quite a bit more scientific. Spievak accidentally cut the tip of his finger off in the propeller of a model airplane. The finger was cut down to the bone and the missing tip wasn't found. With such damage and nothing to reattach, doctors told him the tip of his finger was lost for good. But Spievak was lucky enough to have a brother who works in the field of regenerative medicine.

His brother sent him the "pixie dust" (otherwise known as extra cellular matrix). Extra cellular matrix is an experimental medicine made from the cells in the lining of a pig's bladder. The material has yet to go through a complete clinical trial, but scientists hope that the sheets and powdered versions of extra cellular matrix will help reduce scar formations after injury or surgery and help regrow tissue.

In the case of Lee Spievak, that's exactly what the experimental material did. Spievak sprinkled the dust on his fingertip for 10 days. Within four weeks, his fingertip regenerated -- with full functionality, nerves, nail and all. Even his fingerprint grew back intact.

Curious to know how celebrities squeeze fitness into their daily lives? Want to know the secrets of the stars? Bi-weekly our That's Fit fitness expert Fitz sits down with the celebs we want to know more about, and digs out their great and not-so-great methods to staying healthy.

This week I got to sit down on a beautiful sunny day, in The Swamp with the very sweet, smart and athletic ESPN College GameDay Analyst Mr. Kirk Herbstreit. No, we weren't knee deep in mucky water. We were in the heart of Gator Country enjoying the breeze after Kirk completed his workout, running zillions of steps at the University of Florida football stadium, The Swamp. Kirk retired from playing football more than 15 years ago, after four years at quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes. But now, he's one of the major faces of college football. Pandemonium strikes college campuses across the country when he -- along with host Chris Fowler and analyst Lee Corso -- set up shop outside the biggest games of each week.

Kirk brings something unique to the team. Every time the GameDay crew heads to the University of Florida, I find more than just the expected crowd of rowdy football fans swarming their booth. There is always an unusual amount of females in a frenzy to get as close a look as possible into Kirk's pretty blue eyes. He's definitely worthy of the attention. From my interaction with Kirk, I think he's a genuinely nice and genuinely thoughtful person. Before we started talking fitness, Kirk shared concerns over all the violence taking place on college campuses. He's a protective father and husband who tries to excel in his career while taking care of his family. He is just plain old sweet! And even though his professional life has been built around sports, he works hard to squeeze in fitness and manage nutritious eating just like the rest of us. Kirk seems to be an expert juggler of life and shares some great tricks for staying fit on the go. He also dishes a few doozies on football.

Fitz: What types of things do you do to stay in shape?

Kirk: It's kind of a lifestyle really. As an athlete I worked out so hard, I could eat anything without paying the price for it. As I got older, I still had that appetite and I was not able to work out as hard as I did when I was playing football. What I really try to do is control my portions, and mix in cardio and strength training workouts four to five days a week. If I can do that, I feel like I'm in a pretty good place. It's just about doing it though!

Fitz: What do you do while you're on the road?

The Cotton family of Ohio has three good reasons to celebrate October 2nd. All three of their children were born on that date, and no, they aren't triplets. They're three siblings born in three different years, all on the same day, an event that has the odds of 7.5 in a million. Their latest addition, a daughter, was due on September 30th, but she hung around an extra couple of days so she could share her older brothers' birthdays with them. I'm guessing October 2nd will be a busy day in the Cotton household from now on!

A recent study done on college athletes in Ohio has revealed that a large number of them have exercise-induced asthma -- in fact, 42% of those tested had the condition, and for 36% of those, it was the first time they had received a diagnosis of asthma. The reason? The symptoms and their causes are often overlooked in athletes.

I can see why. I have exercise-induced asthma, and for years I thought my symptoms happened because I was out of shape (even though I worked out often.) Exercise-induced asthma causes lung functioning to significantly decrease when undergoing aerobic activity, so it's important for athletes to be aware of.

Wondering if you might have exercise-induced asthma? If you feel like you had a tight band around your chest, whenever you run, preventing you from taking in enough air, you just might. Talk to your doctor.

I'm not so sure that I would call it a vacation, per se, but I did recently take a ten day road trip with my husband and new baby to see both our families. We rented a car and went from Brooklyn, New York to Cleveland, Ohio, down to Louisville, Kentucky (my home town), back up to Delphi, Indiana, on to somewhere in Pennsylvania and then back to New York City.

The entire event was mind-boggling. Trying to juggle dealing with an infant, spotty directions, managing an SUV (and gas) and seeing all our friends and family really put a damper on our efforts to exercise.

That said, I did get a few runs in, all of them in Louisville. There is a one mile track all the way around my parents' neighborhood that I ran around over and over and over. It was so repetitive that at one point I forget where I was and thought I'd gone a lot farther than I had; turned out I had just decided to go the other way for a bit of variety. Sheesh.

I knew going into it that it would be difficult to find time--and places--to run on this trip. Since we were spending so much time in a car, which we're not used to doing, we got less time in walking as well. We sat and sat and sat and sat some more. We tried not to eat too poorly but there were times when we had to eat something and the only thing around was fast food joints.