Health & Wellness

A special section in today’s New York Times offers a “head-to-toe tour of the body” with expert information and advice on how to enhance our well-being as we age.   The articles cover fourteen areas including our brain, heart, muscles, breast, bones and feet.  I was particularly interested in an article by Tara Parker-Pope about bone health, and the medical community’s reliance on density scans to determine a woman’s risk for fractures. [click to continue…]

Bunions, hammertoes, corns, Morton’s neuromas.  Ouch!  When we reach our 40s and 50s,  many women learn the hard way what these foot conditions mean and wonder why they’re having these problems all of a sudden.  Is it punishment for all those years of wearing high-heeled shoes with pointy toes?  Or, can we blame it on Menopause (like everything else that’s out of kilter)? [click to continue…]

Our bodies go through a lot of changes during our middle years. Some of these can be attributed to fluctuating (in our 40s) or decreasing (in our 50s) hormone levels and some can’t. However, according to the Harvard Women’s Health Watch report on Menopause, the four most commonly reported changes include:

• Mood changes and depression

• Insomnia or other sleep problems

• Cognitive or memory problems

• Decline in sexual desire and/or function

The domino effect of sleep deprivation can potentially cause all of these symptoms so it is understandable that these complaints would be at the top of the list.

Other changes that often occur, but cannot be positively attributed to hormonal changes include:

• Weight gain

• Urinary incontinence

• Heart palpitations

• Dry skin and hair

• Headaches

If you’re noticing changes - however vague– in your own body, you can check out a published list of 35 symptoms of Menopause, which was compiled by a group of women for Project Aware.

Vitamin D is one of 13 vitamins our bodies need to function properly, according to the American Dietetic Association. It’s a fat-soluble vitamin that promotes the absorption of calcium and phosphorus and helps deposit these minerals in bones and teeth to make them strong. It’s so important to our well-being that a group of prominent scientists have formed The Vitamin D Council, a non-profit organization with a mission to educate the public and professionals about Vitamin D deficiency and its numerous associated diseases (such as heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, depression). [click to continue…]