Healthy Aging: Body, Mind & Spirit

Vitamin E and YOU!

I heard yesterday on Dr. OZ that vitamin E is helpful in keeping our lungs healthy.

Want to know more about what foods it comes from and how it works?   I did.

Check out this report from the National Institutes of Health.

And here’s how it impacts your health!

Do you think aging needs re-branding?

The International Council on Active Aging had a valid point when it said aging needed to be re-branded from a burden to an opportunity, writes Thom Forbes.   But how do we do that when the experience of aging varies so much?

“In the end, it has nothing to do with slogans, or some assignment editor’s cockamamie notions of a trend.   Given our genetics and fortune in avoiding injuries and illness, aging is, in fact, a story we each write for ourselves,“  Forbes writes.

Truer words were never spoken!   When it comes to aging, attitude is everything!   As I got past 50, my slogan soon became:  “KEEP MOVING!”

This I meant in every aspect of my life:   mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.   Don’t give up on growing and changing and becoming more of who you are, someone who has something important to offer the world.

Aging is tricky.   With increased physical challenges come more mental and emotional challenges.   It can be easy to lose interest in what life has to offer us.   But I learned a long time ago that longevity is determined by how much we truly wish to keep on living.

Depression and doubt can easily creep into the thoughts and feelings of  even the most resilient person.   When it does, I ask myself: “Are you finished living now?   Have you done everything you came here to do?”   The answer for me is NOPE, not yet.   And so I continue on with my blogs, my books and my coaching, because every now and then I do change lives, and when I do, it feels wonderful!

I sincerely hope you can embrace this brand new year with some hope of your life improving bit by bit!

Happy New Year!!!

P.S.  Just sent my new book to the printer!

Why do we overeat?

According to the World Health Organization, there are more than 1 billion overweight adults worldwide, at least 300 million of them obese.   That can’t just be about hunger.

Learn more about hunger, temptation and the complex relationship between food and emotion over at BRAIN WORLD!

Could you have ADHD?

Many adults are misdiagnosed before they learn that they have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and start doing what they can to fix it.

Here is a short video from ABC News on this misunderstood problem in adults.    (Sorry about the short commercial at the beginning!)

Sunshine is again deemed healthy!

New health advice recommends short spells in the sun – without sunscreen – and in the middle of the day, to improve vitamin D absorption.

Read more about it here.

The Latest News on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

In the UK, a new study has cast further doubt on the idea that a virus called XMRV causes chronic fatigue syndrome.

Read more about it here.

A woman’s brain on menopause

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by how our brains work to create our emotions, our relationships and our lives.   That is why I picked up the new magazine Brain World when I saw it at my MD’s office.   I love even more their byline: HUMANITY’S NEW FRONTIER and their mission to educate the world about the latest findings in brain research, through the International Brain Education Association.

Our brains are so amazing!

Then I started reading The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine.   In this book, Dr. Brizendine does a tremendous job of summarizing all we have learned in the past 20 years about how the biochemistry of our brains effects our behavior towards ourselves and others.   Here we all thought our experience of life was so uniquely ours.   Turns out our estrogen and progesterone levels have much to do with how we are, and we are not all as different as we might think!

This well-written volume traces our brain development and behavior from birth through menopause, as we learn chapter by chapter why we feel and act the way be do as children, teens, moms and then menopause.   She also does a great job of contrasting the brains of men and women, explaining our differences in responding to things like anger, anxiety and depression.   I have learned so much from “The Mature Female Brain” chapter!

Turns out midlife crisis is a very real biochemical experience for women worldwide.   It is a time when our innate care-taking behaviors towards husband and children recede, because of natural drops in our levels of estrogen, progesterone and oxytocin, and we finally get in touch with what matters most to us as individuals.   That stereotype of husbands who turn fifty and decide to leave their aging, chubby, post-menopausal wives for fertile, younger, thin women couldn’t be further from the truth!   Dr. Brizendine says,  “Statistics show 65% of divorces after age 50 are initiated by women…rooted in the drastically altered reality of post-menopausal women.”

If you need a reality check on all the emotional changes you are going through right now, or you want to understand why your mom or wife seem to have changed so much lately, go read this book!

There are very real biochemical reasons for “the change.”

A cautionary tale about anti-aging treatments

Don’t be taken in by the booming anti-aging business which relies on OTC steroids and human growth compounds.

“Critics say anti-aging practitioners, operating in a gray area of both medicine and the law, too often cross the line by peddling powerful and potentially dangerous substances on the basis of medically faulty diagnoses.”

Read more about it here.

Need to keep your memory sharp?

If your inability to recall where you put your keys, parked your car, or remember the name of someone you just met has you convinced you’re losing your mind, you’re not alone!

What can you do everyday to improve your memory?

Here’s a great article on how to keep your memory from the magazine BRAIN WORLD. I love this new magazine so much, I just ordered my own copy.  Check it out!

The creator of this new journal: the International Brain Education Association is on a mission to help “the world realize the potential of the human brain.”

Sounds like a great cause to me!

Love is important as we age

Are you coming off a traumatic divorce or feeling utter disillusionment with love?

My new book: How to Believe in Love Again:  Opening to forgiveness, trust, and your own inner wisdom can help you feel hopeful again!

This book is designed to help you become a private detective in service to your own self-awareness and development.  If you wish to gather a deeper understanding of why you fear love so much, and then search out those experiences in your past that have kept you stuck in your old ways of perceiving love, this book can help.

Together we will explore those negative love experiences from your past where you lost your trust of others; those bad times which now sabotage your present faith that you might ever find love again.

It is only by first raising your awareness of sensitive areas around your own personal roadblocks like shame, trust, and forgiveness, and then creating new ways to work through past emotional obstacles, that you may access a healthier belief in all that love might have to offer you now.

I know.   I have felt utter disillusionment with love.   And yet I also knew deep inside that I was still determined to find it.   So, using my extensive background in self-awareness and transpersonal counseling psychology, I decided to fight back.   Using all of my strength and inner wisdom, I turned my situation around.  I started my own matchmaking service, hung out with others equally disillusioned and slowly changed my mind.   Then one day I suddenly realized, I did believe in love again!

Soon afterward, at age 49, I finally met the love of my life.

Trust me, this battle is not for the meek, but the rewards are so worth it!

Available in paperback, Valentine’s Day 2011.