In celebration of Women's History Month, Pamela Peeke, MD, MPH, medical correspondent for the Discovery Health Channel and the doctor behind the popular, award-winning National Body Challenge campaign and television series, spoke about the importance of staying fit no matter what your age. Dr. Peeke – the author of numerous fitness books, including Body for Life for Women, Fight Fat After Forty and the upcoming Fit to Live – is also a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the School of Medicine.

Dr. Peeke teaches mostly third and fourth year students, to whom she passes on the lessons she's learned from her own research and experience. "What I like to do is bring it all together in what I call healthy lifestyle science – everything from stress coping to daily nutrition, whether they're treating disease or trying to prevent it," she explained. "It's important that students understand the impact of a healthy lifestyle on any patient, whether it's someone in the CCU or someone you're trying to keep out of the CCU."

Finding ways to incorporate that healthy lifestyle when there's so much else in life competing for your time and energy was the theme of Peeke's speech. She encouraged the audience to put themselves first in their lives, but acknowledged that this was especially challenging for women, who tend to be caregivers to everyone but themselves. Dr. Peeke also noted that women tend to make improving their lifestyle more difficult than it needs to be. "I tell them to go for a walk, and it's 'What shoes am I going to wear? What clothes am I going to wear?' Men just throw on whatever and walk out the door," said Dr. Peeke, eliciting knowing laughter from the mostly-female audience.

Getting up and moving is one of the tenants of Dr. Peeke's get-fit philosophy. Along with this boost in cardio, she also recommends strength training, to keep the muscle mass that naturally begins to fade with age. Getting people to eat less in our super-sized society is also high on her list of priorities. "You have to learn proper portions," she stressed. Eating the right foods is important as well. "Eat more plants," said one of the slides in her presentation. "You want the green stuff, the fruit and the veggies," Dr. Peeke encouraged the audience.

Sometimes, though, an apple just can't do for you what chocolate can. Dr. Peeke was one of the first to study the connection between stress and overeating, and what she's learned probably won't surprise anyone who's ever forgotten their troubles in a pint of Ben & Jerry's. "Research shows that indeed stress has an enormous effect on appetite and weight distribution," she revealed. "And it's age-related as well as gender specific." In her talk, she specifically cited the fact that women produce less serotonin than men, which leads them to seek other ways of producing that feel-good sensation in their brains – a role sugar fills quite nicely. At least until it wears off and you come crashing back to reality under the weight of all that junk you just ate – which causes even more stress and anxiety and leads you to seek out sweetened comfort again.

Instead of reaching for that candy bar, Dr. Peeke encouraged her audience to reach for a friend. "Create an estrogen brigade," she told the women in the group, "find a support system you can turn to." Friends can not only relieve stress themselves, they can give you the most effective tool in fighting it – happiness. To illustrate her point, Dr. Peeke introduced the audience to Sister Genevieve Kunkel, a 96-year old School Sister of Notre Dame who credits her longevity to living a joyful life. "I'm learning from her. She is the living epitome of so much of what we are doing, so why not have living history?" said Dr. Peeke. "She's got the whole stress-resilience thing down to a science. She's having a blast, and that's the way you've got to do it in life."