Fitness expert talks mind and body health for the Bicentennial

That’s the message Pamela Peeke hopes people take from her address at the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Bicentennial speaker series at the Medical School Teaching Facility Auditorium.

The self-described nutrition, metabolism, stress and fitness expert has spent her career honing a message of wit and wisdom about how to live a long, healthy and fulfilling life.

“The goal is to avoid the medical establishment except for three things: prevention, life-threatening situations and wear and tear,” Peeke said.

One key to her message is adaptation and adjustment. “No matter what life throws at you, can you work around it, or do you let it throw you to the defeat and hopelessness place,” she said.

The Pew Foundation scholar in nutrition and metabolism holds the position of assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

She also owns her own media company, serving as The Discovery Channel’s chief medical correspondent on nutrition and fitness. In addition, Peeke talks weekly with WTOP reporter Bob Madigan on health issues and appears regularly on CNN and NBC as an expert.

“I still see patients in Bethesda in my office,” she said. “That’s very important to me.”

And she maintains a healthy speaking schedule.

Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene dietitian Jackie Marlette-Boras said Peeke’s talk before the Maryland Women Infants and Children conference was “not only full of excellent, useful information, but it was motivating as well.”

As for hobbies, she recognizes the importance of mental exercise, but said “I am absolutely pathetic at crosswords. I’m a math person. I love numbers. I like sudoku.”

“One of the things I do is be calm,” Marlette-Boras said. “One of the best things I have found to turn my brain off is prayer. If sudoku is mountain climbing, prayer is sitting on a rock and enjoying the view.”

Add to her long list of routine duties caring for her farm at home in Comus, Md., and gardening, it’s no surprise Peeke describes herself as an outdoors person.

“Just stick me outdoors and I’ll find something to do,” she said. “When you want to see me happiest is in my hiking shorts and my Merrells with some good dirt on my legs.”

Peeke’s lecture, “Seven Secrets of Staying Alert & Vertical for a Lifetime,” from noon to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, is free, but tickets are required. Call University Events at 410-706-8035 to reserve your ticket.

San Francisco native is not yet at her Peeke

A native of San Francisco and a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Pamela Peeke received her master’s degree in public health and public policy before pursuing her medical degree at Michigan.

Peeke completed her training in internal medicine at the George Washington University Medical Center.

After ten years as a specialist in critical care and trauma, Peeke received the Pew Foundation Post-doctoral Scholarship in Nutrition and Metabolism from the University of California at Davis and was invited to come to the National Institutes of Health and pursue her work in nutrition and stress physiology. She was named the first senior research fellow at the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine.

Peeke said she can’t read just one book at a time. Here is a partial list of her current browsing:

» Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama

» Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves by Sharon Begley

» The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being by Sherwin B. Nuland

» Too Soon to Say Goodbye by Art Buchwald

» I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

“I’m really into wit and humor,” she said. “The people who were most effective infected their teaching with wit and humor that stuck.”

Peeke has written a few of her own, including Fight Fat After Forty and Body for Life for Women.

khille@baltimoreexaminer.com