ReBootYourLifeToday

Marjorie's Doing Exercise - Her Way

 
Marjory loved playing soccer while growing up and was a champion player in college.  Her daughter Nancy was a single mom with two little boys, Mark age 7 and Steven 5.  Their Dad had moved to another city and was rarely active in their lives.  Nancy moved close to her family for help in raising the boys.  Marjory’s doctor informed her that her blood sugar test was at the top of normal.  He advised losing weight and exercise.  Marjory volunteered to coach the boys’ soccer teams.  This plan would give the boys support in their sports activity and she’d get exercise and lose weight at the same time. 

The boys thought having their grandmother as a coach was cool even though she wasn’t a dad.  Marjory worried the dads might not accept her as one of the “boys” but they were supportive.  Marjory at 61 took on 4 practices a week plus games on Saturday.  She ran up and down the field with the kids teaching and nurturing. The kids loved her, but not as much as she loved them. This exercise plan was a sure winner as she couldn’t make excuses for slacking off and let her boys down.

By the end of the season both of Marjory’s teams won the play-offs. She lost 10 pounds and her blood sugar levels were normal.  How’s that for a creative exercise program!

Muscles don’t tone overnight and extra weight doesn’t go easily or quickly.  You need to watch your diet.  But I’m convinced that if you don’t have an eating disorder (where you binge on   quarts of ice cream while watching TV at night or load up on snacks all day) dieting alone won’t take the weight off and keep it off.  If you’re a couch potato or an occasional exerciser make your goal to exercise 5 days a week.  A great book on exercise for those in our age group is Younger Next Year for Women by Chris Cowley and Henry Lodge, MD., Workman Publishing, 2005. (www.crowcreative.com/default.php)  This book convinced me to exercise.  I can highly recommend it. 

Once you start exercising on a regular basis you’ll feel more alive.  You’ll have more energy and you’ll be thrilled with the changes in your body.  Toning and tightening will do wonders for your morale too.

Estrogen Is Back! - The Gurus Have Flip Flopped Again

 
Remember when the gurus said if you ate one egg a heart attack was right around the corner?   Well now they’ve found that the cholesterol in eggs is a good kind, not so good we can eat a dozen a day, but not the artery clogging stuff they originally pronounced it to be. There’s a lot of those flip flopping experts who find cure-alls that turn out to be junk or who tell us things like vitamin E and C are magic prevention potions.  Nothing wrong with vitamins, but turns out they are just vitamins, not magic .  (The latest vitamin craze is vitamin D, I’m suspicious.)

 Well the flip floppers are back.  Estrogen got a bad rap for several years.  Premarin the synthetic estrogen has been around for decades to relieve menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, insomnia, memory loss and all the rest of  menopausal miseries.  I have 3 female cousins who are 10 to 15 years older than I am and they have all taken estrogen for 30+ years (yes 30 years) with no ill effects.  I don’t know where I’d be without it – nothing contributed more to my re-invention than estrogen.  (If you are one of the women with no problems at menopause then be happy for your many sisters who are not so lucky.)

 Then the famous Nurses Health Study started by Dr. Frank Speiger began reporting that estrogen was bad for women.  Birth control pills and estrogen for menopausal symptoms were causing problems.  

Well, guess what – those findings are being refuted.  The latest findings I’ve seen was an article in the April 6, 2011 issue of the Los Angeles Times by Shari Roan entitled, Estrogen Therapy is Found to Be Less Risky,  shari.roan@latimes.com  The article reported that, “New analysis shows dangers fade.  This study is very good news for women without a uterus.”  (If a woman has had a hysterectomy the dangers of taking estrogen are minimal.  If a women still has her uterus she should take progesterone to protect the uterus.)

Over the last 2 or 3 years I’ve read many similar articles addressing the fallacies  of that infamous Nurses’ Study.  Good news for all of us that have suffered for years with no help from our doctors.  Well there’s help now and there’s the bio-identical estrogen which is a manufactured estrogen formulated to be an exact replica of the estrogen we make.  That way we don’t have to take synthetic estrogen.  Good news all around!

 

 

Nobody Cares More About Your Health Than You Do

 

Here’s the thing, the advances in medical science are stunning.  However, I promise you your health is a million times more important to you, than it is to your doctor no matter how good and dedicated he/she is.  It’s your body, your life and your health. 

According to conventional wisdom there’s only one certain thing about reaching a “certain age,” and that’s illness. If you’re not sick now, you’ll soon be. That’s what conventional wisdom indoctrinates us to believe and since we generally get what we expect, the expectation of a diseased old age is widely believed.

These ideas are deeply rooted in our culture.  Conventional wisdom about our old age seeps deeply into our frame of reference from childhood.  Television ads peddle all manner of “fixes” for what ails old folks like arthritis, osteoporosis, and high cholesterol 24/7. These ads do the job. They feed into our belief system that we must decline and become diseased.

Mail comes daily warning us to get long term care insurance so we won’t use up our kid’s inheritance during our grossly expensive “end of life care”. This post is going to run full force in the face of that kind of “wisdom.”

We need to take a U turn and take the responsibility for our health away from the medical establishment and assume that responsibility ourselves. What exactly should our responsibility be? We can care of our bodies as if they were precious gifts, which in fact, they are. We can stop abusing our bodies through addictions, poor nutrition and couch potato-ism. And we can take time every day to de-stress in healthy ways.  Take a bubble bath, work in the garden or chat with a friend. Find ways to appreciate all day, every day. 

Even while we negotiate difficult situations we can take time to appreciate the beauty of flowers, the laughter of a child, the distraction of a good movie. We must treat our bodies and psyche as if they were priceless jewels and cater to their well being at every turn.

If we assume responsibility for our good health, what does that mean in terms of seeing a doctor, taking screening tests, medications and so on? Perhaps if we’d taken first-rate care of our physical and emotional selves all along, we’d never need to see a doctor or take medications. But that’s not the case for the vast majority of us. I have hypertension and take medication for it every day. I appreciate the medicine and the benefit it gives my body. Modern medicine is a wonder and we owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of what it has to offer while not abdicating our responsibility for our own well being. 

The second U turn we ought to consider comes in the form of a caveat about the marvels of modern medicine. If we go on abusing our physical and emotional selves, we can’t expect the medical establishment to swoop in, care for us and fix us. Every good physician will tell you that at the end of the day, we “fix” ourselves. The doctor can help, but we fix ourselves. Everyone who has worked in healthcare, as I did for many years, can tell you stories about people who walk into a hospital for a minor procedure and die while someone close to death is carried in and walks out.

Why is that? One of life’s mysteries or is something else at play? Perhaps a strong will to live and some pretty compelling reasons to go on. Only we can provide the will to live and give ourselves reasons to extend our lives. The doctor, the drugs, the surgeries can’t give us an abiding passion and that’s what it takes to live a long, healthy, interesting life.

If you have a good relationship with your doctor and feel more secure seeing him/her regularly, by all means you should. If taking all the screening tests available today for bone density, cancers and so on, makes you feel more secure, but all means continue. But there’s a caveat here too. A lot of people feel if they take all the screening tests, they are free to continue to live unhealthy lives.  That won’t work because maybe sooner rather than later the bad habits will catch up with us.  But probably the most important thing is that a healthy life is a happy, fun filled one!

 

The Aging Process Is Under Our Own Control

The latest research shows that the infamous aging process is to a great extent under our own control.  I spent many years in healthcare administration and I learned a lot of insider things.  If you’re under 50 and they can’t find what’s wrong with you, they blame it on a virus.  If you’re over 50 and they can’t find what ails you, they blame it on aging.  The aging process is a useful and often profitable catch-all for physicians, pharmaceutical companies and cosmetic manufactures, but it’s a trap for women.  It dis-empowers us.  We must re-empower ourselves.   One good way that helped me was to keep a journal.

Keeping a journal is an easy and free way to organize your thoughts and keep on track of where you are in life and where you’re wanting to go.  You don’t need a fancy diary - any spiral ring notebook will do.  A computer journal works well too.  

Find a time when you can write without being disturbed. If you feel frazzled or scattered  tell yourself you have entered a worry free zone. Your concerns will keep for a few minutes while you write.

(One woman told me she assigned herself a worry time period during each day.  She gave herself 15 to 30 minutes to rehash her problems.  At the end of that time, she tells herself that she has served her troubles long enough and can go on to something more productive. )

Don’t bother about spelling, grammar or even full sentences.  Make lists or jot down two or three words.  Nobody is going to read your thoughts except you, so don’t censor yourself or judge your thoughts.  Don’t worry about priority, just write down whatever comes to you. Take your time and make it as complete as possible. 

Write in your journal often.    Once you get in the habit, writing will become easier and more productive.  Here are some assignments which will help you gain a clear perspective of your current life and help you see how you can take full advantage of the years to come.

Journal Assignment 1 - What brings you the most pleasure in your daily life?  Do you have a grandchild that puts a smile on your face? Is your garden a source of fulfillment and relaxation?  Is your work the source of your greatest satisfaction?  Is your family the best thing in your life?  Identify what brings you the most pleasure day to day.  Identify as many pleasurable experiences as you can. These are the ordinary things that promote well being in your life. It’s difficult to make big changes all at once.  Small changes add up to a far better day to day life. 

Our lives are made up of ordinary moments, and these moments are very powerful because they are all we have.  Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not here yet.  We have only the present.  Small changes add up and the ordinary moments are the building blocks of our lives.    Making “right now” better is a powerful way to make big changes over time.

Here’s an example of what this first assignment might look like:  Best time of day - sitting in the back yard playing with the dog after work.  Checking email for something interesting.  Going to church.  Centering - feel stronger when I leave.  Good novel – relaxing, time away from worries.  Monthly bridge game.  Family time spent with kids, grandchildren, old friends.

Journal assignment 2 – Review your life as a whole.  What has been the most meaningful experience of your life so far?  Have you found the most satisfaction in your family, in your marriage, in your career, traveling the world?  Write down two or three experiences

Journal Assignment 3 - Look at the things in your life that you find the most difficult. 

Do you have to care for a declining and dependent parent?  Do you have one or more difficult family relationships?  Are you facing serious financial or health problems?  You’ll need to find ways to make these situations less burdensome as your empowering and re-invention process proceeds.  This assignment can be revealing and somewhat painful to think about, but it is an important step in designing your new life.

I repeat, don’t worry about spelling, grammar or priority.  You might even get yourself a small tape recorder and record your thoughts while driving or doing household chores.  When you have time, you can listen to your thoughts and write what you feel is important into your journal.  There is no right or wrong way to do this.  There is only the way that works for you.  Remember this is your time.  Make the most of it by investing in the most important person in your life – you.   

Journal Results - Look over your journal adding anything that you didn’t think of at the first writing. Now you have some invaluable information. You’ve focused on the most pleasurable parts of your day to day life.  You’ve identified experiences that have been the most meaningful and impactful so far.  You can see what you value the most – work, family, travelling for the next chapter of your life.  What have you learned from the difficult times?  You can avoid making the same mistakes again by seeing what these lessons are. Now you have direction. 

Set aside some quiet time to reflect on your writing.  When have you felt the most joy, the most fulfillment or the most peace?  When have you felt like you were doing exactly the right thing?  Are you still angry, bitter or regretful? The hard times are of great importance because they can teach us many good lessons, but often leave some negative emotions that will hold us back from achieving our new goals.  Later we’ll explore how holding negative emotions impacts our lives and attracts more unhappiness.

Ponder your journal results carefully. These will provide you with clues about who you are, where you’ve been on your life’s journey and where you’d like to go next.  

Hormone Replacement Therapy and Breast Cancer in Women Over 55

Some women get through menopause saying, “What’s the big deal?” Some women have easily controlled symptoms. Then there’s the rest of us. I had a terrible time of it.  What saved me was the much maligned Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).  Today in the New York Times they reported on yet another study saying that women who take HRT are at greater risk of breast cancer.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/health/20hormone.html?th&emc=th

But wait a minute.  I had to take biological statistics in grad school.  (The emphasis is on the “had to” part as math and I have never been good friends.)  But I did learn some important things that have served me well over the years.  One of them is before you run really scared about any study do some math yourself. 

 The study in question followed 12,000 older women who were past menopause.  I did the math and looked at the findings:  They found the increased risk for those women who were taking or had taken HRT for more than 5.5 years was .01%!  I also learned in Bio Stat that .01% is statistically insignificant. 

Let’s compare that .01% increased risk to that of drinking more than 2 drinks a day which will give a woman nine times the risk of developing breast cancer!!!!  Why don’t we ever see that in the New York Times or anywhere else in the media?

 In researching out this subject I found some other important studies that haven’t received much press:  Estrogen-alone hormone therapy does not increase the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women at all, according to an updated analysis of the breast cancer findings of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Estrogen-Alone Trial. These trials were conducted by the National Institute of Health not some pharmaceutical company trying to sell its’ drugs.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/health/20hormone.html?th&emc=thmen's

If you’ve had a hysterectomy the above is good news.  Women with a uterus are given progesterone as well as estrogen.  Those were the women who were studied in the New York Times article and had the .01% increased risk.  However, if you’ve had your uterus removed as so many of us have, you can skip the progesterone and have no increased risk.  So if you’re one of the millions of women having trouble with menopause, we just got a cancer free card.  How good is that?

And there’s more good news:  “New results from a sub-study of the Health Initiative (WHI) Estrogen-Alone Trial show that younger postmenopausal women who take estrogen-alone hormone therapy have significantly less buildup of calcium plaque in their arteries compared to their peers who did not take hormone therapy.  Coronary artery calcium is considered a marker for future risk of coronary artery disease.” 

Results of the WHI Coronary Artery Calcium Study are published in the June 21, 2007, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The WHI is sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.   http://www.nejm.org/medical-index

So if you’re suffering take the HRT in bio-identical form which works well for many women or the tried and true Premarin which has been around for over 50 years.  By the way, I’m sure that if men had to go through menopause, the good news about HRT would be front page news every day!

The New Health Care Law and How It Affects Women Over 55 Part Two

 As promised here’s the insurance side of the health care industry.  Readers of this blog know my last post was about the medical provider side of the health care business.  This time we’re examining the role that insurance companies play.  It’s very complicated too, but I’ll do my best to make it interesting:

Insurance companies are basically middle men.  There are many middle men (brokers) of different stripes in our economy.    But insurance companies have far more power than any other type of middle man.

 Here’s how insurance companies work.  They collect money from employers and individuals in the form of premiums. They collect large sums of money, but pay it out at their own discretion.  The premium payer (your employer or you ) are never in charge of what the insurance company pays out. The insurance company can say, “We won’t pay for your health care because it was not pre-approved.”  They can say, “You have a pre-existing condition so we won’t pay.”   They have many more excuses to leave you with huge bills.

 In other words just like the provider side of health care, the insurance company is the one who decides what care they will pay for, where you get your care, and how much care you can have.  They work under the new Golden Rule: He who has the gold, rules.  The company has all the gold so they make the rules.

 There is no other middle man in our economy that has that kind of power.  

So how did the health insurance business get such overwhelming power?  I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories and I’m not going to tell you that a bunch of fat, bald men sat in a smoke filled room 50 years ago and dreamed up a scheme that would make them billions decades later.  I worked in health care over a long period of time and I watched how they got their power first hand.  In the first place, for most of our history insurance companies were headed by doctors, former hospital administrators or other health care professionals who knew a good deal about providing health care on a large scale. 

All that changed in the age of greed we’ve been living through for the past 15 to 20 years.  All of sudden the health care professionals were replaced by MBA’s whose specialty was upping the stock price and making huge bonuses for themselves just like their Wall St cousins.  Now the name of the game was to make lots of money by cutting corners and paying out the minimum, obviously leaving loads of money for their bonuses.

How did they do that?  They loved the concept of pre-existing conditions.  That liberated large profits. The daughter of a friend went to get some medicine for  acid reflux. She was denied coverage for the doctor’s visit and medication because she had recently been pregnant!  You say she wasn’t going to the doctor for anything that was pregnancy related, so how can that be?  Well it be because they told her that pregnancy by itself was a pre-existing condition and she was not eligible for any coverage at all. 

What a great money maker since about 90% of women have been pregnant at one time so that would exclude over half of the population.  What a brilliant idea!  (My friend’s daughter appealed and won.)  However, you get the idea:  The more ways they can dream up to declare an illness as a pre-existing conditions the more money they can put in their bonuses.

Insurances companies were furious about the part in the new health care law that banned pre-existing conditions.  But that’s not what’s got their hair on fire.  What they will spend any amount of money to abolish is the condition that all Americans must have coverage.

You say, that means they’ll get millions more customers, doesn’t that make them happy?  No, it makes them weak in the knees.  Why? Because that means they can no longer cherry pick, as they call it.  They want to find the groups of people who are least likely to be sick.  Under the new law they have to take everyone.  And it’s this provision of the new law that is being challenged in court.  Why would anyone not want to have health insurance?  Because they have to pay a certain amount of the premium themselves and some people don’t what to do that.  Well the insurance industry saw an opening and ran with it.  They could protect their profits by making the “big, bad government” the villain.  Now they say the big, bad government is going to make you pay for something that you don’t want – how unconstitutional! 

 OK, let’s look at this.  A young person says, “I’m healthy so why do I have to pay for health insurance?  Here’s the reason:  This guy may be healthy but what happens if he gets run over by a truck and has to spend months in the hospital?   He doesn’t have insurance, who pays his bills?  Or, you’re a young woman who  accidentally gets pregnant and goes ahead with the pregnancy.  The baby is born prematurely and weighs 3 pounds at birth.  Those premie babies literally cost over $1 million each.  This young woman doesn’t have the $1 million dollars so who pays?   The big, bad government pays in both these cases because the bills bankrupt the patients and they are eligible for Medicaid (MediCal in California) and it’s those huge uninsured bills that are helping to bankrupt the country.

 So now everyone must have insurance which is how all other developed countries run their health care programs.  And now the insurance companies will have to pay for the guy who got run over and the girl with the premie baby.  That’s what – and they desperately don’t want that because there won’t be enough money for their bonuses or their huge salaries.  Got it?  Well, they got it right away and got the fierce battle over health care reform going in the Senate just like they have for over 50 years. They brought out the big guns and used every politician they supported over the years to make a cynical and nonsensical fuss.  They made life miserable for all those politicians who actually wanted to do some good for the people that sent them to Washington.  Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to judge whether we need reform or whether insurance executives get to keep their yachts. 

Let’s Talk About the New Health Care Law and How it Affects Women over 55

The health care business, and it is a business, is extraordinarily complex.  At least it’s the most complex thing I ever worked in. I worked in health care administration for 18 years after I got my master’s degree in Health Care Administration.  So I know for a fact, that the health care law can’t be boiled down to handy sound bites like death panels or socialist take over.   (Think about it.  All the western European countries have nationalized health care systems and they live longer than we do.  So if they were killing grandmas with death panels how could their life expectancy be higher than ours?)

Five presidents over the last 60 years have tried to get health care reformed.  So how could there have been such a media blitz of outcry?  The average guy could not possibly understand what was going on, so the protests were well organized and generously funded by those who stand to lose big bucks under the new law.  (The president of Wellpoint took home a bonus of $11 million in 2009 that’s in addition to his regular salary.) This is not new, we’ve seen all kinds of fat cats organize and fund so called “public outcry” before.

 So what’s going on here?  We have the best health care in the world.  Our physicians are the best trained and have the most advanced equipment to work with.  So what’s wrong?  It’s a long story but here goes:

Providing health care grew up in this country as a for profit sector of the economy.  That’s not the case in any other developed country in the world.  We work under a capitalistic system. One of the things that makes our system work so well is the rule of supply and demand.  Our economic system is the envy of the world, but it’s not working for health care as the costs are bankrupting the country.  The reason the supply/demand paradigm doesn’t work in health care is that the supplier of the product is also the provider of the product. 

What am I talking about?  OK, if you want to buy a car, you can do internet research, chose a car with the features you want at the price you’re willing to pay. Then you go to the dealer and test drive the car.  If you still want the car you start negotiating the price and financing.  All the way you are in control.   

 That’s not how it works if you’re sick.  Let’s take a simple little example to illustrate.  You have a rash on your tummy, it’s getting worse and it itches all night.  So you go to the doctor.  He looks at the rash and says he needs to order a panel of tests.  You’re thinking he would give you some ointment and send you off.  But he’s the doctor so you go along with the tests, after all maybe he knows a rash like this is the first sign of something really bad.  When the tests come back they’re all negative except one which was a little off, so he orders more tests.  All the while you’re itching and worried that something is really wrong.  At the end of this experience you find that the rash is caused by the strawberries which you were allergic to as a kid. 

You had grown out of the allergy, but years later it’s back.  And since you’ve been eating those beautiful organic strawberries you bought at the farmer’s market, you’ve got a rash.  However, you’ve also got $2,500 worth of tests.  But, oh well, the insurance company will pay some of it and after all, you’re not dying so that’s the good news.

 As you can see, buying health care is not like buying a car.  You, the consumer, are NEVER in control.  You make the decisions when you buy a car, the doctor makes the decisions when you’re sick.  And to belabor the point, the doctor is the one who determines what care you get and he’s the one who supplies the care as well.  Thus the supply/demand dynamic does not work.

 The doctor in our story ordered up a ton of tests that were not needed and built up a big bill.  Is the doctor a crock?  No, he’s practicing caution medicine.  But there’s still a lot wrong here. We can talk about two things:  lawsuits and training.  This is a litigious society with people who live to sue, so doctors are very cautious and don’t want to expose themselves to malpractice law suits.  The second thing wrong is that physicians are trained to use the “rule out” rule.  In other words when you present a condition they think up every possible disease you could have and they start ruling them out one by one which mean lots of unnecessary tests.   

 With all that said there’s no way to rule out greed as a factor.  Doctors know what an insurance company will pay for.  They know the codes to use to build up the bill.  They know how much that CAT Scanner cost and they know they need to pay for it. They also know how much their Mercedes payment is.  All this and much more tends to build up the bill but not increase the quality of care at all.

 With the above I’ve just touched the tip of a huge iceberg called the health care industry today.  I could literally write a book on hundreds of other issues.  For now let’s look at:

 The bottom line is: the new law is the best thing to happen to Americans  in 50 years – period.  There’s no argument.  We are being bombarded with nonsensical arguments against the new law by those extremely rich folks who run insurance companies and all the other fat cats that make their billions from sick people.  Not a pretty sight for anyone who knows the inner workings of the industry.

 Stay tuned for the next post where I’ll cover the role of insurance companies in this labyrinth of almost 20% of our economy.

Exploding Myths About Aging

Aging is a funny thing.  We don’t think so much about it until climbing stairs our knee hurts or a friend gets diagnosed with a deadly disease.  Then the “I’m getting old” thing comes to the front of our mind to scare us.  And why wouldn’t it be scary, conventional wisdom paints such a dismal picture for the “older woman” that anyone would get heart palpitations. 

So let’s take a look at some conventional wisdom that’s neither wise nor true.

Myth #1:  There’s no way around losing your marbles, your hearing, your sex drive, your ability to take care of yourself. According to the New England Centenarian Study, "Think aging is all about losing your memory and becoming hard of hearing? Think again. Many people sail through the aging process without walkers or pacemakers. In fact, researchers now believe it's those diseases—diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, osteoporosis — that leave us frail or disabled, rather than the normal aging of our bodies.” www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian

What this study and many, many others are saying is that just because we’re getting older, that doesn’t mean we’re automatically going straight to what I call the 3 Big D’s – Decline, Disease and Death. In fact, the New England Centenarian Study found that, “The vast majority of those who live to be 100 are able to live independently on their own well into their 90's.”

Myth #2:  After menopause women lose their interest in sex.

The New England Journal of Medicine August, 2007 reported that a survey of women between 57 and 80 years of age found that the majority (54%) were leading active sex lives, reporting engaging in sexual activity with at least one partner in the 12 months preceding the study.  http://www.nejm.org/

They also found that, “Two thirds of those aged 65 to 74 and 54 per cent of those aged 75 to 85 reported having sex at least two or three times a month. Almost a quarter of sexually active septuagenarians and octogenarians claimed that they had sex once a month or more. “

Richard Suzman, Director of the Social and Behavioral Research Program at National Institute on Aging,  National Institutes of Health (NIH). , said that the study, “Suggests a previously uncharacterized vitality and interest in sexuality that carries well into advanced age, which perhaps has not been appreciated as an important part of late life”.

So much for women don’t like sex especially after menopause. 

Myth #3 – Going partially or completely deaf is a natural part of aging.

Well, even the makers of hearing aids agree that only 35 percent of 80-year-olds need a hearing aid, and many folks in their 90s still have perfect hearing.

These are only three of the many myths that we all have come to believe.  What do you believe about aging?  Here’s a test you can use when you get a bad feeling about aging:

 Remember a relative or family friend you knew growing up or know today that was or is physically and emotionally healthy and vibrant.  For example, my mother was  mowing her own grass at age 78.  My mother-in-law had a perfect memory at age 85.  She remembered the birthdates of all her 12 grandkids and 10 great grandkids!

 Think back and find some people like that and tell yourself you are going to be like those people rather than someone sitting in the corner staring into space with no purpose or reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Free Ways to Defeat Your Fuzzy, Forgetful Brain

 Are you taking any supplements to keep your brain sharp?  That’s good, but  new research has an even easier, cheaper and more effective way to keep our brains in top form:  exercise. 

 Harvard Psychiatrist John J. Ratey, MD has written a book called, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.  In his book Dr. Ratey says  “There are new ways to defend ourselves against neurologic decline.  For example, exercise increases levels of a substance called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) which has been called Miracle-Gro for the brain because it helps nerve cells transmit information better.  In fact, low levels of BDNF are associated with memory loss and depression.  So increasing BDNF through exercise, functions as a means of natural memory support and an antidepressant in a more permanent way than drugs, or even the surge of endorphins, which exercise also causes. ” (Endorphins are the brain’s feel-good chemical which keeps us in an even and upbeat emotional state.)

 “Every day I have patients who come to ask me for supplements to prevent or treat memory loss, depression or “brain fog”.  There are good supplements, but there is one prescription that is more proven, consistently helpful and accessible than any pill, prescription or over the counter supplement.  It’s called exercise.”  This according to Myles Spar, MD, Medical Director of the Akasha Center for Integrative Medicine.  http://www.akashacenter.com/

 Not only does exercise increase BDNF, it also impacts the density of brain gray matter.  Gray matter makes up the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to process information.  Research shows that the more dense the gray matter in the brain, the higher functioning the brain is.  So keeping the brain’s gray matter in abundance is essential to keeping your marbles all the days of your life.

 Bottom line: Exercise is like a great, free insurance policy to prevent brain decline.  Of course you’ve heard of all the other terrific health benefits of exercise on your overall health and ability to keep yourself in shape to enjoy all the days of your life.

In order to get maximum results aerobic exercise is best for brain functioning.  Aerobic exercise is called aerobic because your body calls for more oxygen and your heart rate goes up.  So any exercise that accomplishes these two things is aerobic.  You don’t have to go running on the street or get on a treadmill.  You don’t have to do anything that is bone jarring either, in fact the less impact on our joints, the better.  Here’s the Mayo Clinic’s heart rate calculator:  

Subtract your age from 220. This is a rough calculation of your maximum heart rate.  Determine the lower end of your target heart rate by multiplying your maximum heart rate by 0.7.Determine the upper end of your target heart rate by multiplying your maximum heart rate by 0.85.

Check out the Mayo Clinic site for tons of good information: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise-intensity/SM00113/NSECTIONGROUP=2

 Ok, are you all excited to start a new exercise program?  I know we have a lot of excuses:  No time.  Too much trouble.   Hate the smell of the gym.  I’ve heard all of those.  Well, I’m a lousy athlete, would much rather sit and read a book than exercise.  But I also don’t want to lose my brain function and I want to be healthy, so I came up with a program that works for me.  Maybe all or parts of what I’ve done will work for you: 

 I live in a 2 story house so to get some aerobic exercise I walk the stairs 10 times 3 times a week.  That really gets my heart rate going!

 I walk 10,000 steps with 1 pound weights on my ankles 5 days a week .  (I got the weights and pedometer at the sporting goods store - pedometer $15.00, weights $10 ea.)  Walking 10,000 steps translates into 5 miles a day.  It sounds like a lot and it is, but that counts every step I take from the time I get up till I go to bed. Just ordinary walking on flat ground is excellent exercise, but it does not get my heart rate up high enough to qualify as aerobic exercise, so I walk up hills in the neighborhood for 30 minutes a day as part of my 10,000 steps.

 I will admit that walking takes some effort.  Here are a few tricks. 

•  I park as far away from where I’m going as possible and walk the rest of the way.
•  When I’m in a store I get what I came for and then I walk the perimeter of the store, if I have time, I walk it twice. 
•  In the morning I go out and walk in the neighborhood for 15 minutes to give myself a good start. 
•  Since I talk on the phone a lot for my business, I walk in the house or in my back yard while talking.

Once you get the drill down it’s easy – no gym fees, no special clothes (except good walking shoes), no need for any organized groups.  And the results give a lot of bang for your time: I’ve lost 20 pounds, given my brain a good work out, strengthened my heart and toned my lower body.

 Even if it were a lot of trouble I’d do it anyway because the alternatives are so unattractive.

Let's Talk Turkey About Weight Gain and Weight Loss

Here’s some facts: 

Americans spend over $45 billion a year on weight loss products.

According to the CDC 34% of US adults are obese.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htmg

Again according to the CDC, 90% of the weight the average person loses is gained back within 2 years.

Clearly overweight is a big deal in terms of good health and self esteem.  Why is it so hard to lose weight and keep it off?  Yes, we move less and eat more as time goes by, so weight gain must be about diet and exercise, right?  Well if you listen to the commercials it’s a no-brainer:  Calories in vs. calories out – period end of story.  That’s what every ad for some magic weight loss pill or system tells us.  But the truth is far too complex for TV commercials.  Of course, food intake and exercise are important variables in this equation.  But weight is a complicated physiological process.  Consider the following analogy:

If you asked someone, “Where does the water come from?” and they answered, “You turn on the faucet and out comes the water.”  That would be a completely true statement.  But it’s only the very tip of a long, involved story.  The water comes from snow and rain which is stored in dams and piped to treatment plants and then piped to your faucet.  Like the water, gaining weight is a long and involved story.  It is in fact, a medical puzzle.

There are many factors in weight gain that you’ll never see in a Weight Watchers ad.  For example, did you know:

25% of the calories we eat go to fuel our brain?  The brain is the largest fuel consuming organ in the body.  So if you go on a 1,000 calories a day diet, you’re leaving only 750 calories a day to fuel the rest of your internal organs and to provide enough calories to keep you moving all day.

A completely different slant on weight gain is reported in the November 12, 2009 issue of the online version of Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/health

In that issue Alice Park reports interesting new research in her story, Another Cause of Obesity:  The Bacteria in Your Gut?  Researchers have found that certain bacteria in the gut can cause a person to gain weight while someone else with different gut bacteria will not gain weight on the same diet/exercise routine.  Ms. Park talks about the November 12, 2009 study published in Science Translational Medicine which suggests, “That the particular type of balance of bugs you harbor in your gut may help push your body toward either obesity or leanness and that these microbe populations might even be manipulated to potentially change your weight.”

The bottom line is science is just now realizing how complex weight gain and loss is. Scientists are now starting to explore the weight puzzle by starting with our brain.  Down deep in our reptilian brain, located in the medial temporal lobes, we’ve stored two important survival mechanisms.  First, is the critical need to survive famine, so the ability to have a good supply of fat storing cells was a key element to our survival when food was scarce. 

The second trait can be seen to this day in your cat and many other animals.  Have you noticed that when your cat is threatened he’ll make his fur stand on end?  He’s trying to look bigger to his enemy.  When we feel threatened, we too at times subconsciously feel the need to appear larger, more formidable possibly to a bullying male boss or to an abusing husband.  The importance of looking bigger to a predator is as old as time.  When you combine these two age old, hard wired traits, you have the perfect, no fail weight gain recipe alive in your brain. 

 But there’s more, as the TV pitchmen say.  Another piece of the weight gain puzzle is our genetic make-up.   For example, for the most part Asians are slender all their lives.  Is that because their diets are so perfect or they exercise more than others?  Asians have a good, healthy traditional diet.  But what about the millions of Asian-Americans who eat more or less an American diet along with the rest of us?  Why do they stay thin and the rest of us don’t?  Do Asians have skinny genes?  Do Asians have better bacteria in their gut?  Geneticists are looking into these factors for the first time.

Here’s another aspect of weight gain to consider. A woman who has been sexually abused as a child or adult unconsciously gains weight to assure she won’t attract men. According to the study conducted by Jennie Noll, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology at the Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center and the Dept of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, “Women with documented histories of sexual abuse were more than twice as likely to be obese as their non-abused peers.” These women feel that overweight will give them a measure of, at least perceived, safety they would not have if they were slender and attractive. 

It is estimated by the Department of Justice that 25% of women have been sexually abused at some point in their lives, so there are millions of women in this category.

So much for calories in and calories out!  Stay tuned for more on weight in future posts.