I got an email today from a group, Nursing School Search, that listed the top 100 women’s health blogs and said this one was on the list!
It’s down there at #78 – in the category called Fit and Healthy over 40….
Here’s the link: top 100 womens health blogs
Thank you…
And PS – I did go for a mile run/walk this morning…it was such fun that I’ll do it again and at some point it will be more run than walk 🙂
I used to run – not far and not consistently. When I lived in Boston the Boston Marathon always was an incentive to start running but…that fizzled in the heat of a Boston summer or cold of a Boston winter…
Then in DC I lived near a track and ran on that with some neighbors and trained a bit with a friend who was into marathons. Back in New England I ran again but since arriving in Portland – I have not run at all – oops.. but I walk a lot 🙂
So when read this today – I thought – hmmm – maybe it is time to start running again..
Regular running slows the effects of aging, according to a new study from Stanford University School of Medicine that has tracked 500 older runners for more than 20 years. Elderly runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of active life and are half as likely as aging non runners to die early deaths, the research found.
“The study has a very pro-exercise message,” said James Fries, MD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the medical school and the study’s senior author. “If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise.” The new findings will appear in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.Full article here
Tomorrow morning – I’m going out for a run!
Many yoga poses are named after cats and dogs….so it’s not a surprise that my dog thinks some poses are an invite for him to play with me. But he weighs almost as much as I do and he’s a leaner – so I have worked hard to teach him to be quiet and watch as I do yoga…
This “training” usually works in the summer as outside is much more entertaining than watching me – he has the neighbors convinced he lacks for food and attention :- ). But sometimes he just needs to be right at the edge of my mat watching….especially if I lie still on the mat [it’s called corpse pose for a reason]
I’ve tried telling him that yoga will keep me around longer so he need not worry that I am actually going to expire – but he doesn’t always listen – and when he worries himself enough – he lies on top of me or hits me with his paw…..The cat also sometimes decides that we can “share ” the mat…and when she tries that – the dog also wants to “share.” And – as It’s a normal sized yoga mat – guess who loses her space and can’t continue doing her yoga?
It’s fun to do yoga with pets around – it teaches lessons that I’m guessing the yogis probably never intended 🙂 or maybe they did?
When not on my yoga mat this is where they are:-)
Sam in his usual summer spot 
And Sheba in hers:
If you have been a reader of this blog, you know I do not take kindly to what are called the Big Pharmas…
Yet even I can be disgusted more than I already was as I just finished reading this book by Melody Petersen:
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs
She was the drug industry reporter for the New York Times from 1999 to 2003 and boy did she do some research!
The disgusting thesis of the book is that the big pharmas “create” diseases and ailments in order to sell a pill that they are designing or have already made! It’s that simple. Are they trying to cure anything? Not really – just pushing pills – especially onto older Americans!
From what I gather, they tried to push the pills in Europe – but Europeans are a bit more sophisticated as are their governments and so did not allow some sales.. Here? Big pharmas run the government and no one says NO to them, their money or their pills.
Got a problem? Take a pill! Pill cause a problem? Take another! That pill create a problem? Here is yet another pill.
Do we care if you are over-pilled and the pills can – and do – kill you? Not at all – we make money and that’s all that matters!
An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than two million suffer serious side effects. [emphasis added]
Reference: Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN: “Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients.” JAMA 1998;279:1200
Adverse drug reactions from prescribed drugs – not street drugs – is the 4th leading killer in the USA and these adverse reactions have been on the increase since 1998.
I had my thyroid gland nuked 20 years ago and so must take that one med.. I have steadfastly refused to add pills for “hormone replacement, “stave off osteoporosis”, “protect your heart” and other such maladies.
I am not suggesting you stop taking meds, but I do suggest you sit down with your physician and talk about the list of meds you take and if yo really need all those newly made up ones that docs are paid to prescribe.
That’s my soap box for another day – [and I’ve said that before] – but yes – most docs are paid well by the big pharmas to get you to take and keep taking your daily doses of pills!
People in their 90’s were obviously born in the 1910’s and on. They survived the flu epidemic of 1917 and the various childhood diseases that killed many. My mom was such a 95-er who died in 2001.
The food they ate, and the food I ate, was nutritious. They got exercise as they went about their daily lives. They walked to school, lived without central heat and AC…and drank clean water. They breathed cleaner air as kids – depending on where they lived – and did without radios and TVs for most of their lives.
What has changed? Even when I was a kid, a lot of what I listed above was still true. Good food, cleaner air [and I lived in NYC] no TV til I was about 10 – and clean water. But then we hit the 1950’s post WWII boom and paved the country, built communities that necessitated driving and encouraged a TV for every house – then every room in every house :-).
We’ve killed the soil as the major corporations took over “farming,” using chemicals to make food bigger with longer shelf lives – or truck lives now…Food is not ripened in the fields – it ripens in the truck or in your home – that’s not nutrition – it’s “filler.”
I went shopping today and wanted some avocados – they were all like rocks. I won’t buy them like that. By the time they ripen in my home, they are usually yukky. And that was from the “better” stores……
So how do we get healthy 90-year-olds in the future? We need to encourage healthy nutrition and life styles in women before they get pregnant and the same for children from the time they are born. To do that we need to turn around the unhealthy lifestyles we are now encouraging – lowering the obesity rate for children and adults – and going back to sustainable farming practices….plus taking food-based supplements – because most of our food, sadly, is lacking nutrition….
We can do it…