Jenkins found out that his left foot carried four pounds more than his right, a common situation, said Michael Boyd, the ergonomics technician who performed the analysis. He recommended that Jenkins see a chiropractor. Boyd also checked the level of Jenkins' shoulders and hips to see whether his spine was in alignment. It wasn't - and that's common, too.
"I thought that at my age I'd be worse," said Jenkins, who used to play basketball and has occasionally painful knees to prove it. When he admitted to Boyd that he sometimes asks his son to walk on his back to crack it, Boyd advised him not to.
Jenkins then did the rounds of the other screenings. "Might as well," he said, as his son waited patiently by his side, professing not to be bored. His dad was unsure what his cholesterol test would conclude. "We all love french fries, but we got to self-contain," he said.
Elsewhere at the conference, visitors were informed about options for medical insurance, organ donations and other matters. In a large meeting hall, Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein and other officials and physicians gave talks on the evils of sugar, tobacco and stress, the wonders of exercise, and the perils of avoiding regular medical counsel.
"Everyone's heart is important - we don't discriminate," said Jean Seiler, a patient-care coordinator at St. Joseph Medical Center Heart Institute, who energetically encouraged anyone who would listen to sit down at her table and discuss a healthy heartbeat.
"People go, 'Oh yeah, I know my blood pressure is high,' but don't do much about it," Seiler said. "There are risk factors you can't change, but there are things you can do, like exercise, eat healthy, cut down on salt, eat your vegetables, don't smoke. And eat less."
Seiler said that African-American men tend to have a greater incidence of high blood pressure than whites, which increases their risk for heart disease, strokes and kidney failure. Her colleague Ruth Linde, stroke center coordinator at St. Joseph, said there are more strokes among African-American men than in any other ethnic or racial group, and that many of them are attributable to hypertension.
"We don't necessarily know why that is," Linde said. "Hypertension is called the 'silent killer.' People feel fine, so unless you go to an event like this, or go to a doctor regularly, you won't have it checked."
Dr. Jean Ford, who directs the prostate screening program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, said African-American men get prostate cancer at a rate 60 percent higher than white men in a given year, and are 2.4 times more likely to die of it. Yesterday's event, he said, is a good step toward bringing down those numbers.
Theodore Wynder, who, as an enrollment counselor for the Maryland Primary Adult Care program, helps people find insurance, said fear "is the only thing that stops us" from seeking medical help.
Murphy, the publisher who spoke of aches and pains, said as he left the conference that he needs "a little maintenance." He even promised to hire a personal trainer.
"Now I know what I'm up against," he said. "A lot of us don't face the facts. I've got grandchildren, and I would love to see them grown."
nick.madigan@baltsun.com
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