As we contemplate leaving the morning of our life, where ego has played a commanding role, and entering the afternoon (and evening), where meaning and purpose replace ambition and struggle, we may encounter unexpected occurrences that accompany this new direction. It’s almost a universal law that we’ll experience a fall of some kind. Yet these falls or low points provide the energy we need to move away from ego and into a life of meaning and purpose.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, click on the Hay House “tile” on this website’s home page to view his tour schedule (he’ll appear in seven additional cities this year) and to order tickets.  San Francisco tickets are discounted until April 1.

I found these beautiful fans in a small, Barcelona shop last month and just couldn’t resist buying one.  There was a time when I considered a fan a mere tool for alleviating menopausal hot flashes.   Now, I see it as a feminine, fashion accessory that I can whip out on hot days or during a particularly claustrophobic plane trip. Who has to know why you’re fanning anyway?  If you have a fan that’s as pretty as these are,  you’ll likely be asked where – not why – you bought it.

Though Oprah has mentioned in the past that Dr. Christiane Northrup’s book on Menopause was helpful in figuring out what was happening to her, and her website offers several links to articles on the topic, Oprah nevertheless attributed all of these symptoms to thyroid disease (cured now) and the fact that her life was out of balance.  But to me, and probably every other 50-something viewer who has been through the same experience, it sure sounds like Menopause. Unfortunately, she didn’t utter the M word once during the one-hour show. What a missed opportunity to educate millions of women!

Not only are her symptoms typical of menopause, her experience over the years with physicians who focused on each individual ailment is remarkably similar to how most women are advised to manage the symptoms of menopause.  One doctor told her to reduce her salt intake. Another prescribed medicine for the heart palpitations and yet another for her creeping blood pressure.   As I’ve written here before, it’s easy to find yourself taking a handful of meds, including sleeping pills, in an effort to feel better (and help you function) during the menopausal transition. But a healthier approach to take is to look at the bigger picture, acknowledge the fact that it’s Menopause, and work with a medical professional to help balance your hormones and guide you on a journey of overall wellness. (keeping a diary of the symptoms you’re experiencing can help you “connect the dots” and see the big picture).

We all tend to behave like we’re the first woman to go through menopause when it happens to us. But in recent years, there has been more sharing of information (my goal for this blog) and a lot of good books on the subject.  Some that I recommend for Oprah and other women in the same boat include:

• The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine
• Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause, The Boston Women’s Health Collective
• Dr. Nieca Goldberg’s Complete Guide to Women’s Health
• The Wisdom of Menopause by Dr. Christiane Northrup
• Is it Hot in Here? Or is it me? The Complete Guide to Menopause

If you have found other books on Menopause to be especially helpful  I hope you’ll share your recommendations here.

Why is this important to menopausal women?

If you are considering hormone replacement therapy and looking to your physician, the findings of clinical research studies, or organizations like The North American Menopause Society for guidance about its safety, it is important to know if their opinions and recommendations are influenced or “colored” in any way by a financial relationship with a manufacturer of conjugated hormones, such as Wyeth, maker of PremPro and Premarin.

I recognize that researchers often rely upon funding from pharmaceutical companies for their studies and physicians enjoy the honorarium that a speaking or advisory board role can bring. But when it comes to making recommendations that affect the health and well-being of patients, the medical community should be required to prominently disclose these relationships.  After all, stock analysts are required to disclose their (and their families’) ties to the companies they cover when issuing stock recommendations. Why shouldn’t doctors be held to the same standards?

As the New York Times editorial concluded, “patients have a right to know who else is paying their doctors and why.”   Do you agree? I urge you to contact your senators to express your support for this legislation.

Because it’s Menopause Awareness Month, I’ve been receiving a lot of emails about products aimed at helping women ease, or at least cope with, the most disruptive symptoms of menopause – hot flashes, night sweats and insomnia. I haven’t tried them myself, but you might find them helpful.  Here are a few to consider:

From Nature’s Inventory- an organic line of therapeutic-grade essential wellness oils to aid the body in its own healing.  They recommend two in particular for women who are having trouble sleeping:  Sleep Aid, with jasmine and lavender, and Night Time Leg Calm, for those who suffer from restless leg syndrome.

Chill Towels are for women who are experiencing night sweats and hot flashes. They’re made of 100% all natural cotton and are individually packed. When you’re ready to use one, you shake the towel to activate a formula that makes it 20 degrees colder than your body temperature. They can stay cool for two hours – give or take.

If you’re experiencing hot – then cold- flashes that are keeping you and your partner awake, try the dual zone version of The ChiliPad. It regulates the temperature of your bed by using circulating water to keep the bed surface a constant temperature (from 46 to 118 degrees Fahrenheit), which you can adjust using a wireless remote. It’s available in all mattress sizes.

Two companies have developed moisture-wicking pajamas and lounge wear for menopausal women who are experiencing the dreaded-duo – hot flashes and night sweats. Cool Sets uses fabric that wicks away moisture and helps to “thermo-regulate” your body temperature. They describe their line as “fun, flirty and functional.”   Cool Jams also makes light-weight, wicking nightgowns made of fabric that dries twice as fast as cotton or a poly-cotton blend. The company’s founder, Anita, keeps a blog on health and life issues for women called Cool News for Women.

I hope you’ll share your opinions about these products if you’ve tried them.

This past weekend, I attended a confab of women bloggers here in San Francisco. I thought I’d be the oldest one there, but I was fortunate to have participated in a “meet-up” of “Boomer & Beyond” bloggers and I met some terrific, wise women with pretty cool blogs.

One woman I met from Austin co-authors a blog, Geezer Sisters,with her sister who lives in Poland. She told me that it has been a great way to keep in touch and share stories and memories. What a great idea.

Mary, a talented writer and artist has a very clever and touching blog at www.pursestories.com. It’s based on the premise that some “wonderful, weird and poignant” moments in our lives are often attached to a purse. I hadn’t given it much thought before, but she’s right. If you have your own purse story, share it with others on her blog.

Continuing on the purse theme, visit Diane MacEachern’s blog at Big Green Purse, an informative and thoughtful site that sells and offers advice about environmentally safe and socially responsible products and services.

If you’re looking for inspiration for losing weight, visit Janice Taylor’s (pictured here) blog at www.ourladyofweightloss.com (be sure to see her before and after pictures) and join her “Kick in the Tush Club.” Then order her book, “All is Forgiven: Move On.” Don’t you like her already? Her blog is there to help other women, so take advantage of her generosity and visit her often!

Debra Collins, a Bay-area psychologist, therapist and life coach offers insights and wisdom on her “Messy Life” blog. She writes about parenting, relationships, and a wide range of “messy” feelings that all of us experience at one time or another.

Myrna’s blog about “midlife madness” as a 50-something Mom is unique among the mostly young-ish “mommy” bloggers on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

Finally, if you’re a Baby Boomer, and like to read about the Boomer culture and exchange views with like-minded souls, be sure to visit Aging Hipsters.

These are just a few of the fabulous women – and their blogs- I met at BlogHer. I think you’ll enjoy meeting them too.

I followed the link he provides to Amazon where, for an additional sum, you can also get a copy of Staging Your Comeback: A Complete Beauty Revival for Women Over 45. (Is 45 the new 50?)

If that’s not enough advice, you can read Redesigning 50: The No-Plastic-Surgery Guide to 21st-Century Age Defiance and learn how to dress better for your (thicker in the middle) mid-life body in Dressing Nifty After Fifty. For fans of reality TV, The Learning Channel has a program called “Ten Years Younger,” (not to be confused by TLC’s equally compelling “I Can Make You Thin” ) that judging by its website, is focused on women. They step into a sound-proofed booth and passers-by critique their looks and guess their age prior to a life-changing make-over. (Don’t we get enough of this without asking for it?)

If you’re still not feeling badly about your estrogen-starved body, read Lisa Johnson’s story in the WSJ. She’s a 49-year old woman who, after a year of unsuccessful job-hunting, rejuvenated her career by hiring a stylist to make her appear younger.

Apparently, declining bone mass, creeping blood pressure and poor sleep are not our biggest concerns as we age.

Over the weekend, I turned on the TV for one hour in the afternoon and just about every commercial was for a pharmaceutical drug. I was appalled. I think the ads condition people to think that there’s a magic pill for nearly every ailment, so why be vigilant about your health? I wondered what a foreign visitor to this country would conclude about our culture after watching this endless promotion of drugs.

What is not so widely known is that many of these medications can be so detrimental to your health that even some physicians won’t take them, according to a recent Men’s Health article . Here’s a list of eight drugs that physicians told the author are on their own “do not take” list.

• Advair (for asthma)
• Avandia (to control diabetes)
• Celebrex (anti-inflammatory)
• Ketek (antibiotic)
• Prilosec (for acid reflux)
• Nexium (for acid reflux)
• Visine (for eye redness)
• Pseudoephedrine

These are well-known, commonly used medications and for some people, they’re life savers. But the decision to use them shouldn’t be taken lightly.

It’s a sign of the times. Every one is talking or writing about middle-age memory loss, or so it seems. I doubt that anyone who is 25 years old has noticed the same thing, of course. They probably didn’t notice when vibrantBrains, a “gym” for improving memory function, opened recently in San Francisco. And they certainly weren’t interested in a lecture there last week by Cathryn Jakobson Ramin, the author of “Carved in Sand: When Attention Fails and Memory Fades in Midlife.”

A young, 20-something person probably didn’t catch David Brooks’ op-ed piece, “The Great Forgetting” published in the New York Times earlier this month, in which he wrote, “in the era of an aging population memory is the new sex.” He counted himself among “those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.”

Nor would someone with a young brain be interested in yesterday’s New York Times article, “Memory Training Shown to Turn up Brainpower,” about the findings of a just-published study that focused on the type of memory that is closely related to fluid intelligence. The researchers concluded that “it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent; increasing the brainpower they had at birth.”

Perhaps the best solution to an aging brain’s declining memory function was suggested by Gary Marcus, in a New York Times Magazine article, “Total Recall.” Dr. Marcus, a professor of psychology at New York University and the author of “Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, suggests implanting a small memory chip in our brains, arguing that a brain equipped with a Google-like master map “would allow us to search our own memories – not just those on the Web- with something like the efficiency and reliability of a computer search engine.”

Now that’s an idea that a young techie’s brain can get excited about.