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  • Still Figuring Out What is and What is NOT Age Related

    The last few weeks have been stressful. Major bad weather in the form of snow followed by a day where we got over 3.5 inches of rain! My friends back East have emailed and called as Portland OR has made the news back there. I assured them that as long as the Columbia River does not breach the levee – I am safe. But I do mention the stress levels.

    Then late yesterday afternoon as I walked my dog, I saw snow sticking to his fur! I won’t repeat here what I said :D. The snow kept coming and coming and sticking. I was ready to pack up and leave – me the New Englander…

    It stopped snowing at some point during the night and the temperatures rose – but this morning I was still in a state of some sort of stress wondering what the weather would throw at me next and decided my stress was age related – that I am just getting too old to keep dealing with too much snow, too much rain and too much mud.

    Then late this afternoon I ran into some neighbors – “What did you think when it snowed last night?” I said my comment was not fit for polite company and they laughed. “Ditto” they agreed. Then they added that this been a stressful period for them…Hmm.. Not much later I ran into another neighbor who said much the same things..

    My poor brain had to reassess the age factor as all those people are at least 20 years younger than I am. It was an awakening that even I, who teaches and writes about aging, fell into an easy thought pattern that my stress level in dealing with this weather was age related. It was not…Not if people much younger than I were experiencing the same emotions and using the same foul language!

    We live in a society where we read and hear so much about the perils of aging and we live with so many age related biases that we often forget to do our own reality checking.

    So – for 2009 I now resolve to put “it’s aged related” way way back in the schema that my mind wanders to when thinking about my own thoughts and feelings.

    Just because we are older does not mean that everything we do or feel is related to a number!

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,

  • Osteoporosis medication warning and a happy 2009

    Hope everyone here has a super duper life – in 2009 and beyond.

    Hate starting the year with a warning – but as many readers are women who might be taking pills for osteoporosis you need to read this because esophageal cancer has been linked to osteoporosis drugs.

    Please check into safer solutions for maintaining bone density…

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,

  • The End of the Snow and the Beginning of New Ideas

    What an unbelievable week. From feet of snow and ice – burst pipes in homes and moorages [my moorage included ] to pot luck dinners with friends, from hard to navigate roads to: TA DA – a night of warm rain and now no snow in sight! It went away that fast….

    Even the spring bulbs that had started growing in our warm Fall are perky and green – that after being covered with ice and snow for the week. Now we do the fixing up and I have figured out how to replumb the kitchen without pulling up a floor board or 2 or 3 which would have to await warm weather. Got the idea from a neighbor – the crawl space between roof and ceiling!

    It’s hard to think outside a box and in this case the box is that most have homes here have the plumbing under the floors and therefore close to the river. It took a mention of pipes in the “attic” to joggle my brain…and it’s not age related at all….it’s that we think first along lines similar to what we see on a daily basis or along familiar thought patterns.

    The message is that we need to let the imagination run free and imagine what can be – not what is….it’s something I think we all need more practice doing….

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,

  • Do You Know What Your Med Mixtures Do To You?

    More about seniors and medications…

    CHICAGO (Reuters) – Older adults in the United States are popping prescription pills, over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements in record numbers, and in combinations that could be deadly, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

    They said more than half of U.S. adults aged 57 to 85 are using five or more prescription or non-prescription drugs, and one in 25 are taking them in combinations that could cause dangerous drug interactions.

    “Older adults in the United States use medicine and they use a lot of it,” said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau of the University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    “While medications are often beneficial, they are not always safe,” she said in a telephone interview.

    She noted a recent report that estimated U.S. adults over 65 make up more than 175,000 emergency department visits a year for adverse drug reactions, and commonly prescribed drugs accounted for a third of these visits.

    Full article

    They did not ask the question about why these people were taking so many prescription drugs but that is one that needs to be asked in a study. Do these people go to several physicians to get the medications? Do they not tell each physician what they are already taking? Or worse – does their one primary care physician not realize the interactions of all the medications that are being prescribed?

    These are important questions and need to be asked… and so maybe I should get back to doing research….

    After the new year I will put forth a questionnaire here [and elsewhere] for readers to respond to.

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,

  • Life During a Major Snow Storm on the River

    Again – thankful for friends, neighbors and local pets…..

    I am thankful I have great neighbors and that river living produces lasting friendships – when the possibility of serious weather related issues is high, like this week, everyone helps out – no one gets bent out of shape about anyones stress levels…and we all watch out for each other.

    Yesterday I had to go on my roof to shovel off some snow and ice and did it only when I knew neighbors were on hand to pay attention. My roof is relatively flat so as long as I stayed in the middle where my vents are I was ok – and the snow shoveling crew just kept looking up to check. We all had work to do to keep our houses from tipping to one side …an aspect of winter life on the river…photo below is my roof and the vents – I went back up later to do more.


    Then we had a pot luck dinner at one friend’s house and we all brought portions made with what we had in our own houses. Overall we had a great meal – and superb deserts.

    Good friends, great neighbors and playing with all the dogs in the snow and watching the one cat that seems to be loving snow [not mine] makes life great in the midst of some pretty bad weather. My fearless cat has met her match – she does not like deep snow 😀

    But we will welcome the normal warmer rain days predicted for this weekend….no one will say UGH more rain this year….

    PS Note our high tech snow removal equipment – brooms!
    [and one shared moorage snow shovel]

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,