Are any of these websites favorites of yours? Perhaps you know others that aren’t on this list.

For one thing, there’s so much available on the web to help us plan our workouts and monitor how we’re doing.  Here are just a few examples.

To begin with write down your goals. Becky Williamson, who calls herself “America’s #1 Fitness Coach for Boomer Women”, says this is your secret weapon for success.   You can download the goal sheet that she provides to her private clients and watch her video that explains how to create “smart, specific and time-based goals.:

Visit the website of the American Council on Exercise and click on “Get Fit” to view their exercise library and illustrated workouts.  You can indicate your target body part, experience level, equipment needed and workout type. This is the website for the organization that certifies fitness trainers, so you’ll find good instructions here.  While you there, try out their handy fitness tools and calculators for estimating percent body fat, daily caloric needs, heart rate zone and BMI (Body Mass Index).

If you’re into Pilates, download a free 15-minute Power Pilates Beginner Mat Class with Dana Eisenstein. If you find that you enjoy it and want to do more, you can purchase 30 -minute Pilates Mat Class videos (for beginners and advanced, in Spanish and English) for only $15.00.

If you enjoy working out with an exercise ball, you’ll find tips and workout ideas in a series of free videos on this website. For core exercises using the fitness ball, watch these slide show demonstrations produced by the Mayo Clinic.

You’ll also find dozens of free mini and full-length workout  videos that you can follow at Exercise TV. If Comcast or Time Warner is your cable service provider, you’ll be able to view many of these videos on the on-demand exercise channel.  (I bet you didn’t even know you had it!)

Finally, if you want to monitor your progress, check out the “trackers” at The Carrot. Their exercise database includes thousands of activities so you can see how many calories you’re burning. It’s free to register.

If you know of other no-cost or low-cost online resources for workout support, please let me (and other readers) know in the comment box below.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists  has recently launched a website for women who are approaching or going through menopause.  The website and the companion magazine, Pause, covers a lot of territory – from hot flashes to urinary incontinence.  The section on Menopause will likely be most helpful to women in the peri-menopause stage, who are still trying to figure out what’s happening to them.

However, there are sections on the site about Tests & Procedures, Conditions or Health Problems,  Cancer, and Your Annual Check-Up (about health screening tests women over 45 should have annually) that are all informative and important to know about.

If you’d like some help finding a blog that’s informative and relevant to your interests, check out this list of 100 Best Blogs on Boomer Health.   It’s always nice when someone does all of this research for you and even provides links, so be sure to bookmark it for future reference.The list is organized into 15 different categories and the section on blogs about women’s health includes this one on menopause (#35) and several that I follow and have included on my blogroll, including Aging Fabulous, and Our Bodies our Blog.

One blog that I’ve recently discovered that isn’t on this list is The Perimenopause Blog.  Women just beginning the mid-life transition will find this site particularly helpful, so if you know any 40-something women who are complaining about insomnia, weight gain and other unexpected changes to their bodies, send them to this blog for help.

Do you have a favorite blog that’s helped you on your mid-life journey?

There’s no shortage of information about Menopause on the web.  When you Google the “M” word, more than 13 million results show up.  If you search “symptoms of menopause,” you’ll whittle the list to just over 1 million, but that’s still a lot of information to sift through.  Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone who would review all the health sites and just give us the most relevant, high quality results? Neatly organized, of course. If that appeals to you then check out Organized Wisdom, a search site for health information that’s distinguished by its “hand-crafted, doctor guided” approach.

Organized Wisdom uses human guides (or physician guided human advocates, as they describe them) rather than a search engine, to find and organize the best and most relevant health information.  And it is well organized.  Search results for a particular condition or topic are collected and indexed by category onto a WisdomCard.  The one created for Menopause is chock full of information that is presently organized into twelve categories including:

• Treatments & Medications
• Holistic and Alternative Treatment
• Wisdom, Personal Experiences & Blogs
• Clinical Trials
• Foundations and Support Groups
• Stages of Menopause

To begin your search on Menopause topics, I suggest starting with the Menopause Health Center, where you’ll find links to the Menopause Wisdom Card and dozens of related health topics such as diet and nutrition, alternative and holistic care, and osteoporosis.  There are presently sixty other health centers on important, frequently searched, conditions such as allergies, fibromyalgia and breast cancer. 

Because human eyes are doing the searching, you won’t find any spam or broken links. The service also welcomes user input, so if you know about a great resource on the web that’s not included on the Wisdom Card, you can register to add the information and subscribe to updates on any topic that you’re interested in.

If you’d like an overview of what Organized Wisdom has to offer,  start by browsing the directory of health centers, categories and wisdom cards.

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.

This approach to healing requires a physician to spend more time with a patient than a traditional ten minute office visit allows, so you may want to consider doing what I did:  add an integrative medicine physician to your “team” and let them work with you on hormone balancing, preventive medicine and issues of aging.  I have been fortunate to find a physician in the San Francisco Bay area who graduated from this particular Fellowship program and she has helped me tremendously.

If you too want to find a physician who takes a more holistic approach to medicine, go to the website of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. In the left navigation bar, click on “clinic.” Then, on the right side, in the blue box, click on “find an IM practitioner.” Then use the pull down menu to select the state where you live.   A list of doctors, along with their contact information, will appear.

Of course, there are outstanding medical centers and private practices throughout the country that can also be a resource for you, depending on where you live.  Here are a few examples:

Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine (San Diego area)

Mayo Clinic’s Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program (Duluth, MN)

Duke Integrative Medicine (Durham, N.C)

Women To Women Clinic (Yarmouth, Maine)

Center for Integrative Medicine (Oakland, CA)

Is there an integrative medicine physician in your area whom you would like to recommend?

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.

Why is this so important? Research is showing that vitamin D, which is made by our bodies in sunlight, may protect us against certain cancers, cardiovascular disease and is vital for bone health.  Vitamin D deficiency is also associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 1 and 2 diabetes. See this chart which correlates certain diseases with various serum levels of vitamin D.

Who’s behind the D*Action campaign? According to the campaign’s website, a “consortium of scientists (see their call to action here), institutions and individuals committed to solving the worldwide vitamin D deficiency epidemic.”

So here’s the deal. When you join the D*Action campaign and do a quick health survey and agree to test your vitamin D level two times per year during a 5- year program, you will receive a test kit to be used at home (except in the state of NY for some reason) and the results will be sent directly to you.  You can then discuss the results with your own physician.  The cost is $30 for each test kit.  A spokeswoman for the campaign assured me in an email that “all health data that you provide in the survey, is protected under patient confidentiality.”

If you’ve had your vitamin D level tested in the past, you know that this is a fantastic bargain.  Some commercial labs charge well over $200, making it difficult to monitor as frequently as we should.  So do yourself a favor and sign up to participate on the D*Action Campaign website.

I’ve always admired Consumer Union – the non-profit publisher of the magazine you know so well – for providing unbiased, fact-based information about the products we use in our daily lives – from vacuum cleaners and televisions to cars and food products.  I’ve relied upon their ratings for just about every major purchase I’ve made.

Last year, they expanded their research and ratings to include treatment approaches for 200+ conditions, prescription drugs  (see the one for Menopause shown below) and natural medicines; nutrition, wellness and fitness product ratings; and even health care services like nursing homes.  They also launched the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center for rating hospitals and other health-care providers.

In describing the mission of Consumer Reports Health, they state; “as consumers become increasingly involved in their own health decisions and turn to the Web for answers to their questions, they need unbiased, accurate, evidenced-based information to compare their options and to make appropriate choices for themselves and their families.”

At a “summit” for health bloggers and journalists held at the consumers Union headquarters last week, I had a chance to meet the folks behind Consumer Reports Health and to participate in discussions about 1)  the role that health blogs can play in helping individuals make informed choices about their own health care and 2)  the benefits and challenges that come with rating physicians and hospitals (the latter are too numerous to bring up here).  We were also treated to a tour of their testing facilities, which I’ve always been curious about!

Who attended? Physicians bloggers like Dr. Val Jones (“Get Better Health”),  and Dr. Jan Gurley (Doc Gurley);  journalists from the Chicago Tribune (Julie’s Health Club), and The Washington Post (“Check Up”) and The Wall Street Journal ; and those who write about brain health (Sharp Brains Blog), insomnia (The Insomnia Blog), diabetes (Diabetes Mine) and obesity (Action Against Obesity) among many others.  I also met the founders of an incredible health search site called Organized Wisdom (more on this site later).

As I’ve complained on this blog before, it’s challenging to find research, product or treatment recommendations that haven’t been influenced by big pharma or medical professionals pushing their own products. Consumer Reports, with its iron-clad reputation for integrity, can be a great resource for helping you decide which hormone treatment to take or even which nursing home is best for your parent.

Have you found the Consumer Reports Health site to be helpful?

There’s a new brochure, available online, that offers detailed information on non-hormonal treatment options that may alleviate menopausal symptoms. It was developed jointly by the The University of Calgary (Canada) and Alberta Health Services to help women make sound decisions about complementary and alternative treatment options.   It’s an excellent resource for any one who is seeking straight-forward, unbiased information and it can be downloaded at no cost!

The well-designed brochure can be used in two ways: you can search for information about treatments for a particular menopausal symptom including prescription drugs; herbs or dietary supplements; and therapies like acupuncture and paced breathing.  Or, you can look to see what symptoms a particular treatment may help alleviate.  Colored dots are used to reflect the safety of the treatment as rated by evidence-based sources.  Ratings fall into one of three categories:

• no known side effects or interactions; generally considered safe
• caution should be taken when using these treatments
• proven risks but may be appropriate on an individual basis.

When there is strong, scientific evidence of a real benefit, the letter “E” is used to indicate effectiveness.  When there is no “E”,  that means the treatment  lacks clear and conclusive evidence of a benefit or lack of benefit. Finally, whether it’s a treatment such as Tai Chi, or an herb or dietary supplement such as Black Cohosh, the chart offers definitions, details about dosage & duration, interactions, and possible side effects.

Here are some examples, taken from the chart, of treatments and the conditions they’re considered effective for:

• Black Cohosh – for hot flashes
• Calcium – for bone loss,  sleep disturbances and restless legs
• Fish Oil – for heart disease, mood disturbances and vaginal dryness
• Soy (Phytoestrogens) for bone loss and hot flashes
• Paced breathing – for hot flashes and stress

If you find this brochure helpful, why don’t you let the good doctors and staff in the Alberta Health Services’ Womens Resoure Center know by leaving a comment below.

I’ve just registered for the second BHRT World Summit, which begins this Monday and continues for two weeks.  The (Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy) Summit consists of a series of 10  one-hour video seminars that you can view online, at your convenience either on the date of broadcast or anytime during the Summit period, depending on the admission package you select. Costs begin at a reasonable $29 for access to all ten seminars and includes a free one-year subscription to Life Extension Magazine.

This will be a good opportunity to learn more about bio-identical hormones as well as other therapies that can improve the quality of your life as you age.

Here is the list of seminars that will be presented over a two week period.  A complete description of each seminar along with registration information can be found on the BHRT World Summit website:

• Peri-menopause & Menopause: Gracefully & In Good Health
• Clinical Uses of Insulin & Growth Hormone
• SottoPelle Therapy & How it Can Help You
• Get your Diabetes Under control
• Osteoporosis- Preventing & Reversing
• Natural Methods for Vaginal Health & Comfort
• Energy Medicine, Hormones & Health
• Menopause: A Journey Toward Self Love
• The Secret of Pueraria Mirifica Root
• Did you know that your Digestive Tract Can Be Your Biggest Drain on your Body’s Hormones?

If you do tune in beginning Monday, please let others know your opinion of it by leaving comments below.