February 2009

It’s Monday and that means there’s a new Carnival of Blogging Boomers!.  This week, you’ll find it at Don’t Gel Too Soon, Cynthia Samuel’s terrific blog about everything from motherhood in mid-life to politics in the age of Obama.

The Carnival offers links to eight other blogposts (all written by boomers of course) on topics ranging from how all the over-40 female celebs looked so sleek and perfect on the red carpet last night (there’s a one word answer and it begins with an “S”) to twittering.  If you’re curious about what that’s all about, then head on over to the Carnival!

In my previous blogpost, I introduced Dr. Tieraona Low Dog, a highly respected herbalist and family medicine physician. She’s on the faculty of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, and serves as its Director of The Fellowship, a two-year course for medical professionals “that teaches the techniques and principles of integrative medicine.”

Founded by Dr. Andrew Weil,  the Center defines integrative medicine as “healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person (body, mind, and spirit), including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship and makes use of all appropriate therapies, both conventional and alternative.” You can learn more about the defining priciples of integrative medicine on their website. [click to continue...]

Last month, while attending the Scripps Conference on Natural Supplements, I met Dr. Tieraona Low Dog,  whose presentation on Botanicals and Women’s Health drew a packed house of medical professionals eager to learn more about complementary and alternative medicine. And who better to learn it from than Dr. Low Dog, who was a highly respected herbalist before receiving her medical degree.  Naturally, I was  interested in what she would recommend for women who want to go through menopause “naturally.” That is – without the use of hormones. I think you’ll be surprised at her response as I was during our one hour conversation: [click to continue...]

This week’s Blogging Boomers Carnival is being hosted at Deborah Boland’s & Jojami Tyler’s terrific blog, Fabulous After 40.

A blogging carnival is a great way to discover like-minded bloggers who offer insights, advice and just plain entertaining commentary, on topics of interest to you.

You’ll find lots of blog posts to choose from including one on mid-life dating  (written by a woman who has had 91 dates in the past 3 1/2 years) and insights and advice from someone who reinvented herself after a job loss. Enjoy!

I recently wrote about a new home test kit that you can use to monitor your vitamin D levels.  Having an adequate amount of vitamin D is so important to your health that a worldwide public health campaign, called  D*action, has been launched to motivate people to take 2000 IU/day of  “the sunshine vitamin” to achieve adequate levels. [click to continue...]

As someone who swallows six multi-vitamin tabs every day, I was dismayed to read that “Multivitamin Use May Offer No Benefit in Postmenopausal Women,” the headline of a report that was published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine.  Does that mean everyone, myself included, should stop taking a multi-vitamin? [click to continue...]

I’m the newest member of a very interesting group of bloggers who have formed a Blogging Carnival, which is a community of bloggers organized around a particular topic. In this case, it’s a carnival of Blogging Boomers (that is, we’re 50+ in age) and we all write about a wide range of topics of interest to our peers.  It’s like a weekly magazine with lots of contributors.

This week’s Blogging Boomers Carnival is being hosted at Contemporary Retirement Living, written by Ann Harrison, a life-coach in the U.K.  Ann offers a preview and link to nearly a dozen blogs that you will get hooked on.  Enjoy!

I recently attended The Scripps Conference on Natural Supplements in beautiful La Jolla, CA where I listened to a presentation on bio-identical hormone therapy in menopause by Dr. Steven Brody, a gynecologist and assistant clinical professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Dr. Brody’s time slot coincided with another, equally compelling presentation on “Chocolate and Tea: A Scientific Overview and Tasting Demonstration.”  It was a tough call, I admit, yet he drew a full house of mostly female physicians and nurses.  And when the hour was up, no one would let him go. His discussion continued outside the presentation room, as a sea of women, notebooks in hand, peppered him with more questions.  He was still holding court at lunch the next day as more conference attendees (perhaps the ones who chose chocolate over his presentation) pulled up their chairs to join him at his table. Despite all the research, articles, FDA actions, dueling press releases and Oprah shows, there is still a lot of confusion about bio-identical hormones, and an urgent need for unbiased information.

In Dr. Brody’s opinion, conjugated hormones – namely Premarin, which consists of about six different conjugated estrogens derived from the urine of pregnant mares, is “one of the worst offenders for woman’s health in the last 50-100 years.  It’s natural for horses, not for women,” he said. [click to continue...]

The sudden decline in breast cancer after 2002 can be attributed to women stopping hormone therapy following the Womens Health Initiative study, according to the findings of a new study that was published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine. [click to continue...]