Good health - for you and your community

Between The Lines wants to wish Michigan's LGBT community a happy, healthy and politically active fall and winter.
This is why, in our Fall 2009 Health and Wellness Guide, we urge you to not only do things that are healthy for you, but also healthy for your community.
You can spend $40 on one-month's membership at the gym, sure, but you could also spend it on a ticket to Steppin' Out's Step Inside the Box fundraiser. The Royal Oak-based event, which features decorated shoeboxes that will be auctioned off, will help raise money for the non-profit to provide for local HIV/AIDS services.
No money for health? No problem. Raise awareness – and your heart rate – with a brisk walk around any number of Michigan cities this fall. Light the Night, Out of the Darkness and AIDS Walk events will be held everywhere from Marquette to Kalamazoo to Bay City to Detroit. They're all listed in BTL's Fall Health Calendar, along with many other ways to get healthy this fall – like support groups, smoking cessation workshops, AA meetings and many outings with Michigan LGBT sporting groups. Whether your passion is bowling or biking, there will be an event to attend, new friends to meet and calories to burn.
But more than just getting active, the LGBT community needs to get vocal – in their doctors' offices and their senators' offices.
In our Health and Wellness special section, BTL also explores why more and more people in Michigan's gay community are choosing to be out to their doctors – and why those who are silent should speak up, too.
Though fear of ridicule or discrimination is still very real in some doctor's offices, there are places to go for referrals to LGBT-friendly doctors, like Affirmations, which keeps a database of them. Or, if you're already comfortable with a doc but haven't given them this important piece of information about yourself, now is the time to do it.
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" doesn't work in the U.S. military, and it certainly doesn't work in the doctor's office, either. Even if your doctor doesn't ask – speak up!
Being out to your physician isn't just a good idea for your health, but also for our community.
And the more times we speak up for our community, the more our voices are heard, such is the case with the current health care debate. Though health care tops all the headlines in the news recently, LGBT health is glaringly absent from the discussion – except in complaints from conservatives who fear that President Barack Obama's health care plan will cover gender reassignment surgery.
But this health care plan affects us, too – especially while many of us are still not protected from discrimination in the workplace, or unable to obtain health care through our partners' health insurance.
But we're not going to get anything if we don't speak up in the debate. As BTL columnist Jennifer Vanasco puts it, "We have not done a great job articulating to the public and to politicians why our health care issues are so important and why we must be included when policy is made."
So when you think about being healthy, don't just think about eating right and exercising. Healthy LGBT people make for healthy LGBT communities, and vice versa.