At-home exercises can chase away blues

Q: Any suggestions for how to motivate myself to exercise and what to do while I am stuck indoors? — Stephen S., Santa Fe, N.M.

A: You can cheer up and tone up this winter at home. The keys to success:

■ Schedule your daily exercise plans and put them into your phone’s calendar with alerts.

■ Provide yourself with a soundtrack of invigorating music.

■ Set realistic expectations. Don’t set yourself up for failure.

By spring, you’ll have a younger Realage, a flatter belly and happy memories of your wintertime indoors.

Q: It’s time for my 4-yearold daughter to get another measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Since it is a second dose — she got the first at 15 months — can I put it off for a while? I don’t like going to the doctor’s office if we don’t have to. — Patricia G., Chicago

A: We are surrounded by discussions about vaccines but somehow it seems to have gone unnoticed that the tried-and-true inoculations that we all depend on to help keep our kids healthy are being skipped over at an alarming rate.

A study of Colorado residents reveals that from January to May this year, there was a 31 percent drop in the immunization rate for kids from birth to 2 years old, 78 percent for those 3 to 9, and 82 percent for tweens and teens to age 17. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the rate of vaccination for 5-month-old kids fell from 67.9 percent in 2019 to 49.7 percent in May 2020.

Please make sure your daughter gets her second round of the MMR vaccine — it protects against measles, mumps and rubella (German measles). When young children catch measles, it can trigger serious health problems such as pneumonia and encephalitis. Mumps cause inflammatory disorders of the ovaries, testes and brain. And rubella may spread to pregnant women with heartbreaking results. In 1964-65, when there was no vaccine, a rubella epidemic in the U.S. caused 12.5 million cases. Twenty thousand children were born with congenital rubella syndrome: 11,000 were deaf, 3,500 blind and 1,800 intellectually disabled. There were 2,100 neonatal deaths and more than 11,000 abortions (spontaneous and surgical).

So, check with your doc to make sure your children and you are up to date on your shots. Then when you and your family can get your COVID-19 vaccines, you will be well-protected from as many infectious diseases as possible.