60 is...

VIDEO's

2009-08-26T14:56:00.007-04:00

I know, when you read that title you probably thought that I was going to write something about ...well, videos. But actually, that's a new acronym I just learned recently. It stands for Vaccine Induced Disease Epidemic Outbreaks. I'm not going to attempt to convince you to take sides in this issue, but I hope you will take a few minutes to do a little personal research before you allow anyone to stick a needle in your arm to give you another vaccine for any reason.

I was in one of the very early groups to take the polio vaccine, and I still remember it quite well. My whole family went to the local high school gymnasium and stood in a long line to get our dose. We didn't know at the time that many of the people in that line might actually become victims of polio, and later sue because it was determined that it was from the too-high levels of the polio virus in the vaccine. The later Sabine version was safer, I later read, but the damage was done.

I'll give you just two links to get you started on your personal research.

http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/index.php/news/of-special-interest/10319.html

http://www.wnho.net/response_to_cdc_health_research_guide.htm

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I hope you will come back and share your thoughts with all of us.

Looking for extra income?

2009-08-18T18:00:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure how all this economic downturn has affected you and your retirement, or your plans for retirement, but I can tell you that I was really excited recently when I found an online site where I can put my writing skills to work for some extra income. Some assignments are very long-term, others may be completed in just a few hours. You decide what you are interested in. If you are a programmer, coder, transcriber, technical writer, creative writer, or virtual assistant, you can probably find something on oDesk.com that fits your skills. You can even take tons of tests for free and post your results to show potential employers on the site, and that can boost your chances of getting hired. Rather than try to tell you everything here, why not just go to the site by clicking on this square link below, and see for yourself. I hope you find JUST what you need here. Let me know how it goes, ok?

Just a Quick Note

2009-08-16T13:17:00.004-04:00

Life has become far more hectic since I retired last December. It is a bit surprising just how busy you can get when you don't have a job. I had visions of sleeping late, sitting by the pool with a good book, having a good meal with a glass of wine, staying up too late. Actually, I must admit that I have done all of those things since I retired, but only on a very few occasions. Fortunately I have been very busy with projects around the house and traveling with family, so that other boring lifestyle I dreamed of after retirement hasn't plagued me yet. One thing I do regret is that I haven't found time to keep in touch or to keep this blog up to date like I had hoped. But it is very important to me to thank all of you for your emails and comments. I'm surprised how many of you will email me but are too ...shy to comment on the blog for others to see.
We just returned from the first two-week vacation we've taken in our 37 years of marriage. It was lovely, but I'm happy to sleep in my own bed. I will now be able to schedule some writing time I hope, so I look forward to hearing from you. Keep in touch, subscribe to the RSS feed, and let me know what's on your mind.

Beware of Scams!

2009-03-10T18:40:00.007-04:00

As a service to my friends and loyal readers, I'd like to pass along a website that I have discovered quite by accident. If you have some spare time and not much spare change, so you're looking for ways to make some money working from home, be very, very careful. ALMOST every offer you see online is just a scam designed to make money for someone else. YOUR money. So look before you leap by subscribing to the free newsletter offer you will find at
http://www.mrworkathome.com/ The research has already been done for you, the scams identified, and recommended sites are listed for you to consider. So far I've been very happy with what I've learned here. If you use this site I would really appreciate your feedback here, good or bad.
It is possible to make money online, working from home in your underwear. Just don't fall for the millions in a month offers. It takes work and persistence and patience. Oh, and it might take months before you begin to see any success at all. After that, well, that is up to you. Most people either sign up for the wrong oportunities, or they quit just before the success window begins to open.

FAT TIRE is Coming to Georgia!!

2009-03-10T18:37:00.001-04:00

In May 2009. If you don't know what that is, well, sorry 'bout that. Keep your eyes open.

Stay Tuned, loyal readers!

2009-03-09T11:25:00.004-04:00

Last time I wrote, life was hectic, I was very busy, and frankly I could not make time in my life for my favorite hobby, writing. Thats not a good state to be in. But then the unthinkable happened and suddenly I had all the time in the world. My company invited me, and about 100 of my peers, to take early retirement. They invited me to fire myself, and they offered some nice incentives. Now this was just before the whole economic system fell off the edge. Things were slowing, there were some headline articles using the "R" word. Housing seemed to be the real problem. Greedy lenders, unsophisticated buyers, all riding the crest of a wave that had to break sooner or later. Well, all that has now happened, and we are learning that housing was just one of many shaky bits. We've learned just how special some high level management folks think they are, losing millions for their shareholders while pocketing millions in options and bonuses and other perks, and haughtily saying they "deserve" it all. Well, it seems to me that if you own a bit of my business and I run it into the ground, you are not going to be too eager to give me a bonus for losing your money. Am I just missing something here?

Enough of that. It's all been talked to death already, and there are no quick cures for what ails us now. We have not seen the bottom. We have nothing with which to compare this quagmire. So lets talk about something else. Something much more personal. I'm learning that as we age certain things are likely to happen. Among them is the likelihood that some things won't work quite like they used to, and some things will send us some very painful messages to let us know they are not working so well any longer. The doctors have a nice word for that. Neuropathy, nerve pain. I know. So I'm asking you to please stay tuned here, check in once in awhile, because I'm going to start telling you all about neuropathy and what you might be able to do to relieve some (or all) of your nerve pain, with the advice and consent and help of your doctor, of course. I don't believe in the shotgun approach to resolving illnesses as a general rule. But in my case, I'm throwing everything I have at this because frankly, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I unexpectedly found myself retired, and in too much pain to even celebrate my new freedom. So I'm not really very patient with the idea of being a patient right now.

Either right here on this blog, or on a website or blog I will direct you too, I will provide some information about various therapies I am doing and affiliate links you can use to buy the devices I'm using. This is not intended to be medical advice. I am not qualified to do that. This is more in the nature of a personal testimonial concerning some severe nerve pain and how I am learning to deal with it. I urge you to make your doctor, naturopath, chiropractor, or who ever else you consult, your ally in dealing with this so that you can get on with enjoying your life.

As I began to experience these pains, I was clueless as to what was happening to me, who I should consult with, or how to simply get through the next night. Since it is more narrowly focused than I wanted this blog to be, I am leaning toward starting a new blog or creating a website just for nerve pain, with special concern for the baby boomers who have become loyal readers. I've enjoyed writing for many years, and I do appreciate the occasional e-mails some of you have sent. I hope to hear from more of you and more often, now that I have more time to read and reply. I hope to have this new site ready for you by the end of March, '09.

Stay Tuned!!

The Times They Are A-Changin'

2008-11-18T10:17:00.004-05:00

I have left my post. I've abandoned my writing. I have grown tired.
All of these might have been suitable titles for this post, but the sad fact is that I have just been too busy and could never find both the time and energy to sit here and create. I will soon be retiring and perhaps I will find some time then, though to tell the truth, retirement looks even busier than working every day. There are things to repair that have been overlooked or ignored. There are things to paint that I have conveniently put off. There are bathrooms to upgrade. There is ALWAYS yardwork to be done.

Actually, I don't feel too bad about not posting anything here since August, because I appear to be the only one who ever visits this blog anyway. That's not a whiny complaint, just an observation. I haven't done much to encourage visitors or promote the site in any way. I write as an outlet, and because practice is important. I used to believe that practice makes perfect, but then I learned that nobody is perfect, so I quit practicing. But now I plan to find time to practice and if you have wandered back here again, I hope you will find something interesting to read. Even more important, I hope you will PLEASE leave a comment or at least say hello. Til then (December 19th) I won't try to write more.

Test Your Brain Age

2008-11-18T10:09:00.006-05:00

How "old" is your brain? How alert are you? How well do you concentrate? How well do you recall? Here's a great little brain exercise. Use it often. In case you do not read Japanese, here are the instructions in English.

1. Touch 'start'
2. Wait for 3, 2, 1.
3. Memorize the numbers' positions on the screen,then
4. Click the circle from the smallest number to thebiggestnumber.
5. At the end of game, the computer will tell you how old your brain is. Just click the link.

http://flashfabrica.com/f_learning/brain/brain.html

Nostalgia

2008-08-08T17:32:00.003-04:00

Here’s a bit of nostalgia for you. Young people today live in a totally different reality from the one you and I had a few decades ago. It’s not their fault they can’t relate, or ours!
Jack

Hey Dad," one of my kids asked the other day, "What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?"

"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him. "All the food was slow."

"C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"

"It was a place called 'at home,'" I explained. "Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it."

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears AND Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look larger.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza pie." When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine."

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren.

Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES from a friend:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

This concludes the message I received today from a friend. I didn’t write any of it, but I certainly can relate to just about every line of it. Change is not of itself bad. But not all change is good either, is it?

I have a feeling that not too many of our grandchildren have ever actually used an iron…steam or otherwise. They will probably do ok without that experience.

Newer homes are being designed around the lifestyles of today’s families. There is no “dining room”, since most meals are taken in front of the TV. And driveways have to be wider to accommodate all the cars. Very few homes get by with just one TV, or even one computer. As for phones, soon everyone will have one blinking in their ear 24/7, maybe even implanted if we don’t soon come to our senses. And I just read a few weeks ago that BMW now has a car without a steering wheel. It is controlled by a joystick. So all the whiz kid game players will soon have a head start when it comes to driving skills. Scary thought, isn’t it?

Jack

Help Reduce Consumerism!!

2008-06-26T20:48:00.003-04:00

(Whatever THAT means!)
Who can deny that those of us in North America tend to buy too much "stuff" we don't really need? Then we tire of it very quickly and go buy some more "stuff". George Carlin got a lot of laughs by pointing that out, but it is a sad situation really. Here's one very easy way you can help counter-balance this, and it is totally FREE. In your web browser type the words
freecycle network. Then join a group in your general area. I even found one in Victor Harbor, Australia (I have some friends there). Once you join, read the rules. Basically, everything you OFFER must be FREE. Before you can list something you WANT, you must OFFER something.
The site will be moderated. Instead of throwing away something you no longer want or need, offer it to someone else who might get some use out of it. It's very simple. I passed along a box of books and a few other items and I'm still looking for a few things we need, like an old (but working) sewing machine. Try it out. And then come back here and let us know what you think.

New Link - Try it out!

2008-05-14T08:43:00.003-04:00

Here's a link to a handy wage calculator, and you can use it for US currency or UK. On the left side you can click on whether you want to enter an hourly wage to base your calculations on or calculate your take home pay based on an annual salary. Enter your filing status and deductions and you can quickly see a good estimate of what taxes you will have withheld and what your daily, weekly, monthly take home will be. I have added this link to the "favorite links" at the bottom of the blog so you can come back and use it any time. Let me know if you have other links we might all find useful.

http://us.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/hourly.php

Your Input?

2008-04-19T15:10:00.003-04:00

It costs nothing, but it can be very worthwhile to a lot of people you may never meet. Often people push and shove to give their opinion even when no one really wants it. Others are quick to give an opinion about things they have very little knowledge of. But right here, right now is your chance to give your opinion about the articles posted here, to people who want to know what YOU think. I hope that my articles hit on a topic or two that might be helpful to you, and adding your personal experiences, whether in support of what I've written or to correct some lack on my part, is very welcome. You may have noticed that I'm not selling any products, thought the site is supported by ads. I have nothing to sell. But I check reports that indicate just how many visitors have been here, and I am always amazed that so many people can have so little to say. I've been told that only a very tiny percentage of folks who read a blog will ever bother to make a comment. Maybe that's a good thing. I can't say. For myself, the only way I know that you like what you read, and maybe even benefit from the information in some way, is if you just say so. Tell me what you like, what you don't like, what you want to know more about, or what YOU know from your personal experience. This was not intended as my soapbox, but as a forum for ideas that might benefit all of us as we work our way thru issues that are common to baby boomers. You might save someone else from the mistakes you have already discovered, or avoid problems you already have successfully dealt with. Maybe you can just offer a word of encouragement, or a bit of preventative medicine. Share this blog address with friends and family. There are many articles here and surely something will hit their funny bone or spark some interest. So please, take a minute and either drop me an e-mail (just hit the button provided all the way at the bottom of the last page) or enter a comment here. I KNOW you are out there!! I can hear you breathing.

Older, but not necessarily wiser

2008-04-16T16:41:00.004-04:00

Just because we have logged a few miles, that's no guarantee of wisdom. We should avoid a superior attitude and a condescending approach to young people. In fact, once in awhile a really bright one comes along.

There was a young man who wanted very much to enter a particular university. The interviewer, an older man, for some reason took pride in how tough he was, and how few managed to get past him. Well, the young man had passed the GED and SAT tests and his scores were impressive, but the old man was determined to show him how little he really knew.
"Young man, you have done quite well, but now I want to give you a very important choice. You choose whether I shall ask you one very difficult question to conclude this interview, or ten fairly easy questions." The young man's future hinged on his decision. "I'd like you to ask me just one very hard question, sir." "Aha!", thought the old man, "I've got him cornered now!"

"Ok, young man. Which comes first, DAY or NIGHT?" The lad thought about it for a few minutes and then confidently replied "Day comes first." "How do you know that?" shouted the old man. "Oh no, sir!" the lad said with a small smile. "You said you would ask only ONE hard question!"

There is a lesson somewhere in that.

Soy Protein or Whey Protein?

2008-04-15T10:55:00.000-04:00

So much research is being done about protein supplement shakes, especially since so many diet and weight loss books advocate it. Hard to be sure just which is better. And whether one is better for men and the other for women. The "experts" can't seem to agree totally, but I'm beginning to think that if you follow almost any of the information far enough, someone is making a buck or two off of whatever they have written. In one sense, soy protein might be better for men AND women, but then you come across someone who says just the opposite. My opinion, having considered a ton of writing on the subject, is use either one, unless you have a lactose intolerance. Just use it in moderation, like everything else. Too much protein is very hard on the kidneys and liver. If you are using either one for weight loss, add a healthy dose of exercise to it, or you will be disappointed with whichever one you choose. If you are using protein shakes as a supplement to food sources of protein in order to GAIN weight and build muscle mass, don't overdo it. All the hype is just that, hype!

Well? How Am I Supposed To Lose It?

2008-04-01T16:13:00.003-04:00

Funny how at that "certain age" we wake up, look in the mirror and say "How did this happen?" The wrinkles come on very slowly, so we don't really notice. The pounds and inches seem to add up at an even slower pace for many of us. But now you've taken a good hard look in the mirror and you want to finally DO something about the extra pounds. First, if you believe nothing else you read today, especially from this site, believe this: effort and commitment are required. If you think otherwise, stop reading here please. Go browze thru some of my other articles. I hope you will find something there you like. For those of you who are still reading, I'd like to share a few little tips with you. With just a little regular effort, and with little positive changes, and with a little daily commitment to improve your health, you can easily lose ten pounds this month. And by the way, I don't play April Fools jokes. Now you might be thinking, "Ten pounds is hardly worth it. I need to lose fifty pounds!" Well, by the end of August you could be there, but not if you keep making excuses. Just start. NOW!
First, if you are in otherwise good health, you should still consult your medical practitioner before you make any changes in your diet or exercise level. I am not a doctor of anything, and I do not give health advice. I am just passing along some information.
Here are just a few tips. You may have heard them all before. If so, then apparently you didn't put them to good use, or you wouldn't be reading about losing weight, right?
1. NEVER skip breakfast. Ideally, eat a little solid protein in the morning. Leftover skinless chicken or fish, or maybe some peanut butter. Missing breakfast triggers a survival response in your system. You don't want that.
2. Do not connect weight loss with diet. With eating habits, yes. Diets, NO.
3. Do not assume you have to spend money to lose weight.
4. If you are able to walk to the end of your street, go NOW. If it is raining, take an umbrella.
Don't make excuses. If it is not safe to walk in your neighborhood, make a guess about how long it would take to walk to the end of your street, and walk around your house or apartment for that long. If you have some stairs, use them too. If you walk only five minutes today, GREAT!
Tomorrow, walk at least that far or that long again. Eventually you want to increase both the time and the distance walked. Set a goal in 30 days of 30 minutes a day. If you simply cannot do that, keep at it until you can. You can walk in place in your bathroom for 30 minutes if you can't do anything else.
5. Shake up your eating habits. Learn to like fresh fruit. Skip the bagel and cream cheese in the morning and eat a banana or a few strawberries. Eat them very slowly. Enjoy.
6. Do not drink water or anything else with your meals. Wait at least an hour after eating to drink. Never eat anything until at least 1/2 hour has passed after you have anything to drink.
7. If you doctor approves, pick one day each week to eat solid protein and drink extra water. No carbs. A little chicken in the morning, maybe some fish for lunch. You get the idea. No veggies, no pasta. Just protein and water. You will need extra water.
8. Two days each week plan at least six small meals. SMALL meals. 1/2 portions. Consider a portion to be about the size of your palm. 1/2 portion of pasta or potato or rice, 1/2 portion of veggies, 1/2 portion of lean meat. Use seasonings to make it tasty and interesting. Chew slowly.
Do not snack between meals. Plan your meal times so that your last meal of the day is at least three hours before bedtime.
9. Never allow yourself to go hungry. That sends the wrong signals to your body to start storing fat.
10. Weigh yourself no more than once a week.
11. Whether you like it or not, lean muscle burns calories, fat does not. Weight bearing exercise is essential for maintenance of healthy bone structure and density, and you don't have to be a body builder. Just use fairly light weights if you like, but use them to increase the intensity of your walks, and to tone your muscles while you are watching TV.
12. Make the TV your timekeeper. Each time a commercial break comes up, do one set of some type of exercise, and walk around the room or around the house until the commercials are over. Do this at least three evenings each week. You will find that the later into a program or movie, the longer the commercial breaks get. You aren't interested in them anyway, so why not invest the time in your health?

Well, that's an even dozen ideas. There are many more. If you would like to share some here, let me know. The fact is, you can take control of your weight with just a little discipline, and small changes in your daily habits. Too often, we see a little hill and convince ourselves it is a mountain. Don't defeat yourself. And maybe one evening a week, treat yourself to something you've been craving all week. Have a small bowl of ice cream or a piece of pie. Good eating habits the other 167.5 hours or so every week should earn you a little reward!

It's ALL Good!

2008-03-21T15:26:00.000-04:00

I keep hearing that phrase in reference to a wide variety of situations. Lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps this flood of information in the form of glossy print advertising, telling us the secret to good health, extended years of life, energetic old age, etc. is ALL good information. After all, “they” all claim that there has been a ton of research or at least they provide page after page of testimonials from the thousands who have turned their lives around using a certain exercise product, nutritional supplement, aromatic candle, or mind-altering CD. How are we to know just what is good and what is not? How are we to decide which new product is the one we have been needing to resolve our nagging health concerns, or help us avoid future health concerns? We are clearly suffering from information overload, especially those of us who are part of the baby boomer generation who have eased into that stage of our lives when we finally start paying attention to our health. Oh, we now understand that we should have been paying attention to it a few decades ago, but we cannot turn back the clock. Well, some marketers are now telling us we can even do that if we just sink a chunk of change into their latest gadget or gimmick. With so much information coming at us how is it that I can say that it’s all good? I say it’s good because at least it is causing a few of us to pay attention, and to start asking questions. It’s stimulating some of us to take charge of our own health, instead of leaving it all to chance. But let’s say that you agree with me that there are certain nutrients that you probably should be concerned about, and that there are those that might help you with certain health issues. How can you decide what to take and what to avoid? If we invested in all the wonderful nutrients and herbs and vitamins we read about, we would probably create a few new problems to deal with. For one, we would be broke. So what should we do? Here’s my humble opinion. I am not a medical professional. I cannot, and do not, give medical advice. So what I am about to say is worth every penny you are paying for it.
First, do your own research. Second, ask your doctor or nutritionist. Third, work on only the one or two most important health concerns you have at a time. It is amazing how often resolving one major issue leads to a cessation or noticeable reduction of other problems. To illustrate, here’s a scenario that has been repeated countless times.
Ada Z goes to the doctor because she is tired all the time, she has no energy, her back hurts, her ankles ache, she gets headaches in the afternoon, she is a little lightheaded when she gets up each morning, she get indigestion all the time, her head is stopped up constantly. The list of complaints goes on and on. Ada Z (A to Z) has a very good doctor who takes the necessary time to actually do a good workup on Ada. He orders a few simple tests, and gives Ada a call when he has all the information he needs to help her. Ada visits the doctor and after hearing his recommendations, pays for the visit and leaves, silently vowing to find another doctor. Why? Well, Ada is upset and disappointed that after spending money for the office visits and getting all that lab work done, all this very good doctor did was tell Ada that she needs to lose about 30 pounds and drink more water. Ada is indignant. She knows that she is a little heavy, but that’s what happens as you get older, right? And besides, he didn’t even give her a prescription!
Sadly, that is the reaction of far too many people in similar situations. Sadder still is the fact that some doctors succumb to the pressure put upon them by patients and pharmaceutical companies to write prescriptions. Patients demand drugs, and not just ANY drugs. They want the one they saw on TV this morning. Drug companies have invented illnesses and given them names so they can sell some new concoction and do what they are all in the business for – make money for their shareholders. But this very good doctor knows that Ada is chronically dehydrated, and this causes many of her body systems to function at less than peak efficiency. In addition to that, Ada is putting a lot more strain on her back and her ankles, and soon her knees and hips, because of the “little bit of extra weight” she is carrying around. A drug to put her to sleep, a drug to clear her nasal passages and sinuses, a drug to ease the joint pain, a drug to relax the muscles, a drug for vertigo for her light headed mornings, a drug for her indigestion, a little something for those headaches, and Ada would have left the doctor’s office feeling like she was already on the road to recovery. But she would have still been overweight and under-hydrated. And all those symptoms would have simply returned as soon as she ran out of the drugs, and maybe they would be even worse on the next go ‘round.
So here is my opinion, my non-medical advice. Be honest with yourself. Do some research for yourself. Find and learn to appreciate and listen to a good doctor who is not so quick on the draw with that prescription pad. And last, either be determined to do what you need to do to maintain good health or correct the problems you can correct, or learn to endure those things you cannot or will not address. Along the way, there may be an occasion for some properly prescribed medication. Strep throat comes to mind. Otherwise, quit being satisfied with treating symptoms instead of getting to the root cause of your problems and seriously attacking those. Ada could probably manage to drink another few glasses of water each day without any major disruption to her life. She could probably park a few rows further away from the grocery store, maybe walk up a flight to get to her office and avoid the elevator, and maybe skip a bowl of ice cream or two along the way. But that would mean that she had to make her health her responsibility.

Why are gas prices so high?

2008-03-19T16:08:00.003-04:00

Well, once again, the same tired e-mail is circulating telling us how we can supposedly force the gas stations to lower their prices at the pump. Ridiculous!!! Think about it. why would gas prices be any different than any other commodity? If there is plenty of...milk, and you don't like the price at store A, you drive to store B, check the price and, if it is lower, you buy your milk there. Now, if enough people discover that store B can save them money on milk, store A might possibly be forced to either lower their price on milk to compete, or settle for selling less milk, right? Simple theory. Fundamental example of a free market economy. Now, it is unlikely that one person switching stores would have any impact at all, but this person tells all his or her friends where to buy cheap milk, and together, they all spread the word, so that soon, store B is having trouble keeping up with the demand. To slow the demand, and perhaps to take advantage of the increased flow of customers, store B raises their price on milk. Meanwhile, store A realizes that they have lost business, and to some extent, they lower their milk price. Now both stores are selling some milk, and customers are happy. That is what happens when there is plentiful supply and sufficient demand. But let's look for just a minute at the gas situation. We have, on a global scale, finally crossed the line between a supply driven gas price to a demand driven price structure. Why? That's very simple. We now have more demand than supply. With China soon moving from a few million vehicles to hundreds of millions, that demand is not likely to drop, is it? Here is a whole new demand source for a constantly dwindling supply of fossil fuel, and the supply that remains is increasingly more difficult, and expensive, to get to. So, boycott whatever company you want to for however long you like, the supply won't grow a bit, and the demand will still have grown tremendously. You may SHIFT the demand from one company to another, but you won't shrink that demand. So it is well past time to quit sending this silly e-mail around the world, and focus instead on how to shift a significant part of the demand to some other fuel source, like hydrogen, solar power, etc. We have now produced something over a trillion barrels of oil so far, and some "experts" believe that there is still about 2 trillion more barrels in the earth...somewhere. Much of it might be under very deep water, and we're exploiting that already. Much of it is in oil shale, and technology is making that more practical to get too. But if you believe anything about the oil crisis, believe this. IT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH.

Now, that is just my opinion, based on all that I've read on the subject, and on what I recall of a very well researched lecture I saw on TV several months ago in the wee hours. I'd be happy to hear your opinion, or to try to field your questions. I'm no expert, so your input can only help.

Not in a recession yet, but this may be worse than you think

2008-03-10T18:24:00.003-04:00

Interesting information. At present, with the decline in housing values at around 8.4% nationally, 13.5% of homeowners now owe more than their homes are worth. But this is happening with only with an 8.4% fall in the housing market. What happens with a 15% or 30% fall? Goldman-Sachs, now praised for avoiding the pitfalls of sub-prime lending, projects that this won't bottom out until we reach 15% or even 30%. First American Finance (NYSE:FAF) calculated the effect on homeowners if housing prices started falling, using data from December 2006 (and they certainly have started falling, haven't they?) Brace yourself! These numbers can be shocking. Already at 8.4%, what would happen if the prices drop to 15%? At that po8int about 21% of homeowners would be "upside down" in their mortgages. And to satisfy those who believe it could continue to a 30% decline in home prices - that would leave 39% of homeowners owing more than their homes are worth. Now, you may think that this will not affect you because you have built a lot of equity in your home. Or perhaps your mortgage is paid off. Good for you! Maybe you don't have a Adjustable Rate Mortgage. Good for you again!! But, you will still be hit with the effects of this crunch in one way or another. You see, what frankly scares a lot of lenders at this point is that it might become more attractive, and even financially less damaging, for some of these folks caught up in the squeeze to simply walk away from their mortgages. When and if this happens is large numbers, credit of any kind for anyone will become far more difficult to obtain, and prices of everything could go thru the roof. In addition, the impact on your home value, when so many homes are being seized in foreclosures, may shock you and alter your own financial planning significantly. It has already become far less attractive for many people to own a home. In fact, the new reality maybe that home ownership is not going to be the American dream that it once was. So watch the news, keep your powder dry, and stay flexible. None of us will escape the effects of this trend, recession or not. That's my opinion. What's yours?

Treatment without diagnosis is malpractice

2008-03-04T08:47:00.002-05:00

This is not a political blog and it will not turn into one. But perhaps you would like to know a bit more about this recession we keep hearing about and reading about in the media. We have not been in a recession ...yet. Technically, Bush was correct, though many people don't want to believe that for one reason or another. A recession can only be properly identified after two consecutive quarters when there has been a decline in the GDP. Jul-Sept the economy grew at a 4.6% pace. That slowed to a .4% increase in the Oct-Dec quarter, but still it was an increase, not a decrease. Based on other economic indicators, there are difficult economic times upon us, but not a recession. If we find in mid to late April that the first quarter was a negative, then we still can't declare a recession until a second consecutive quarter of decline. That's the accurate answer to the question that the media seems to have already answered, perhaps driving the nail deeper before the fact rather than being content to simply report what has occurred. Typical. I did a little research in the wee hours of the morning. Warren Buffet says we are in a recession. He's wrong. Sometime in July we might find that the first two quarters of 2008 were the beginning of a recession, but before then it's just hype and hysteria. It's like telling someone they have terminal cancer before any lab results have come back. You will certainly get their attention, just as all this media talk about recession has. But let's not create the news. Do you agree?

Butter or Margarine? Hmmmmm...

2008-02-14T15:57:00.003-05:00

This is interesting ...

Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into this wonderful stuff wanted a payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food appeal, so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever new flavorings.

DO YOU KNOW.. the REAL difference between margarine and butter? Read on to the end...this is just starting to get interesting!

Both have the same amount of calories.

Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 grams.

Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.

Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few, and only
because they are added!

Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.

Butter has been around for centuries while margarine has been around for less
than 100 years.

And now, for Margarine…

Very high in trans fatty acids.

Triple risk of coronary heart disease.

Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers
HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)
Increases the risk of cancers up to five fold.
Lowers quality of breast milk.
Decreases immune response.
Decreases insulin response.

And here's the most disturbing fact.... HERE IS THE PART THAT
IS VERY INTERESTING!

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC!!!

This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is used to change the molecular structure)

You can try this yourself: Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or
shaded area. (open) Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things:

Ø no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)
Ø it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value.
Ø nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic.

Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

Regular readers,
If you have been keeping up with me for the last few years you already know a lot of this. I don’t use butter OR margarine. I use something better than either of those. If you want to know what, send me an e-mail.

I posted this almost the way I received it. I had to do a little editing and cleanup, but the text is mostly the way it came to me. This might be the seventh or even the twenty-seventh time I’ve received this, but I don’t believe I’ve ever posted it anywhere.

The Winter Doldrums

2008-02-11T06:35:00.000-05:00

To those of you who regularly read my ramblings here, I apologize for my recent absence. Though I am humbled to think that anyone would purposely read anything I write, I do appreciate your kind indulgence and try to provide some sort of verbiage here on a fairly constant, if irregular, basis. But the unavoidable fact is that no matter how sleek the sail boat, without some wind to fill the sails it's just a place to sit. I hit a patch of nothingness recently, no wind, or some might say, no hot air to fill my sails. I have just been sitting, taking a small break.
If life is a grand experiment, then mine is still in progress, though at times the progress is too small to measure by any conventional means.

Since all that I write and publish in this space is free, then perhaps I cannot be fired. I hope to soon be fired up though, enough at least to write something. Ideas are percolating, vague thoughts are forming, fingers are itching to get at the keyboard. But for about three weeks I've been just coasting, both in terms of writing and music. If this was a paying gig, I would be near starvation at this point, but fortunately I do still having a J O B. And I haven't been completely idle. My wife, who is enjoying a hopefully brief hiatus from gainful employment, has kept me fairly busy at home sorting and sifting through piles of "stuff", mostly mine, and we have begun to recapture our office/exercise room. Soon we will start on the music room where the wallpaper has already begun to remove itself, either out of boredom with my music or a realization that it is no longer wanted. Then there is the foyer, the dining room, the guest bath, the master bath, and ...well the list is endless. Like the crews that paint the Golden Gate Bridge, once we get to the end of the list, if ever we do, it will be time to start over. Somewhere along the way, I will try to write a few lines here, and I hope you will find time to read them, and more importantly, to comment on them and contribute your own thoughts. This has been a too-solitary work so far. I have hoped that it would become more of a forum.

Today's Recession Update

2008-01-23T16:02:00.001-05:00

How can you protect your retirement finances?
If you are concerned about your 401K or IRA or other investments you hope to use to finance your retirement, now would be an appropriate time for concern, but not for panic.
After the sudden emergency ¾ point rate cut by the fed yesterday, Asian markets recovered nicely, though early news from the European markets was not so upbeat. The Korean market rose nearly 11%, Japan recovered about 2%, Hong Kong eked out a point or two and Australia rose 4 ½ % after the fed announced the unexpected cuts. Will that be enough to stop the decline? I doubt it, but it may be enough to slow it down so that we have a softer landing and a shorter recession period. As I wrote yesterday, just the news headlines seem to trigger panicky investment moves by pension and hedge fund managers and individual investors alike. Cartoonist Bob Englehart had a cartoon in the Hartford Courant on January 17th with the following caption: “DESPITE THE MEDIA'S CONSTANT ATTEMPTS TO BRING ABOUT A RECESSION, EXPERTS SAY THE ECONOMY IS STILL STRONG.” Perhaps it is not so strong, but certainly the media is pouring gasoline on the burning building and shouting for someone to call the fire department. At what point does the media cross the line between reporting the news and creating the news? Or is there a line anymore?

On the flip side, there are a number of economists and fund managers who believe that any major moves from stocks to bonds might be something to regret later. In 1987 those who basically sold their stocks at the bottom failed to benefit from the recovery when stocks later soared. To a lesser extent the same thing happened in 2002. So your protection strategy should be based on just what your retirement timeline is, not headlines. If you plan to retire in 5 to 10 years, it might be best to simply ride this cycle out, because you likely have time to recover any losses, assuming that your present portfolio is reasonably diversified. If you plan to retire in less than 5 years, it might be wise to shift some portion of your holdings into bonds. Some analysts are predicting bond yields in the “high single digits” before the markets shift back to equities. The fact is, no one can say for certain what tomorrow will bring. One thing is certain though.
The is more unstable footing ahead for perhaps the next 5 or 6 quarters, maybe longer, so if you have a longer time till retirement the question is whether you can ignore all the headlines and immunize yourself from the panic while this cycle runs it’s course. One economist I spoke with many years ago put it this way. If you can’t sleep at night, you have too much at risk. If you sleep all night without interruption, you don’t have enough at risk. Maybe that’s not the proper gage for you, but it illustrates my point. If you think you can stay calm amidst all the hysteria, maybe you should just leave your 401K alone for now. Reassess every quarter, re-balance as needed, but stay with your plan. If that causes you too much heartburn, then move a portion of your holdings into bonds and then watch closely. At some point you will want to get back to your “pre-panic” balance. Likely you will miss some of the trends upward before you know it, but I don’t think that will be next week or next month, maybe not even next year. If you find yourself watching your balance every day and wringing your hands, then the next several quarters will be difficult for you.
Tomorrow we’ll talk more about how this whole scenario developed

Recession - What's Happening?

2008-01-22T18:57:00.000-05:00

What is the trigger?

There can be no doubt that we are in the midst of some very troublesome economic times. The meltdown of the housing industry in the wake of all the greedy sub-prime lending coupled with $100 a barrel oil have put the U.S. economy in a real tizzy. Worldwide, markets are being affected by the weakening of the U.S. dollar, and there is no shortage of headlines to stir up public emotions in every major city. The problem is serious enough without the chicken little “sky is falling” headlines. But when I read the leading article headers on three online news sources before 6am this morning and they all were trumpeting the drop of every major foreign market over the three-day weekend, they seemed to me to be a sort of guarantee of panic among investors here as well, as soon as the markets opened today. Investing is so sensitive to emotion that national economies are vulnerable to such media hype. Today was a disaster for the markets in China, and that will have a serious effect on our markets on Wednesday, no doubt. People have their narrow little comfort zone and it doesn’t take much to discomfort them. But it seems clear to me that too much of what drives us is fear, not facts. Headlines, not hard evidence. You see, when the headlines around the world hammer on the topic of the housing crunch, foreign investors get jittery. When they get jittery they steer investments away from the U.S. markets, the balance of trade becomes further unbalanced, and the dollar weakens. The weakened dollar causes a whole cascade of other problems including the impact on American tourists abroad paying more than they imagined for their vacations, and that results in less foreign travel. We really do now have a global economy and just like a mobile, if you touch one part of it, the whole thing moves. What is a little scarey is that in recent times it seems that you only have to look like you might touch it, and the whole thing starts to move.

We know that it is the institutional investor that drives the markets, right? Not the individual trying to eke out another point or two from his IRA or his 401K. But I’m beginning to believe that panic stirred up by “worst case scenario” reporting can galvanize a large body of private investors and they can become a force in the financial markets too. I don’t believe that a single pension fund manager or other institutional investor with a portfolio of $500 million to manipulate is going to have much more influence on market trends than 50,000 individuals all moving around their $10,000, or 20,000 trying to decide where to put their $25,000 401K funds. The point is that if enough momentum develops based on panic created by headlines, $500 million dollars can create a pretty good shift, and I think that is what we are beginning to see repeated over and over, day after day. Abroad, the media is telling foreign investors that the U.S. is headed for a serious recession and they better protect themselves. Not too unlike my whole generation sitting in the hallways of our elementary schools with our heads covered by our arms because we were all sure that at any moment a nuclear bomb was going to land on our heads. Now, I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I do know that sitting on the floor with my hands over my ears is not going to offer much protection from a nuclear blast. But since we seem to now have a very large herd of panicky investors pushing us to the brink of recession, we do need to have a plan for protecting our retirement finances. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to protect your 401K, or at least how to reduce your losses in these turbulent times.

Wealth and Happiness

2008-01-21T18:56:00.000-05:00

As a young person I thought that if I could ever accumulate a lot of wealth I would surely be very happy. From what I observe today, there are still a lot of folks who believe that. They work so hard and devote so much of their time and energy to the accumulation of wealth and the acquisition of "stuff" that they have very little time left for anything that truly matters. I have known wealthy people. I have known happy people. In some few cases I have known wealthy people who were also very happy. But the interesting thing is that the ones who were both wealthy and happy were happy long before they achieved any wealth at all. When they were poor or just making their way like the vast majority of us, they really valued their relationships with friends and family above all else. For a few, they placed their spiritual well-being above wealth, but seemed to have financial success anyway. They worked hard for it, but kept such work in perspective and kept their lives in balance. Once they became wealthy, they had no hesitation in using their wealth to benefit others, to help others in need, to share their time and their wealth. But without exception, they told me they were no more or less happy being wealthy than they were at any other point in their lives. And the few wealthy folks I knew who did not have their lives in balance or their egos in check, were miserable, unpleasant to be around, and obsessed with themselves and their supposed importance. But money alone does not grant happiness or status, at least not among those who know the value of more important things.

Ross Perot found this out firsthand. "Right after my company got successful, as a young man I met some of the wealthiest people in the world. I found that they were such unhappy, lonely people... I learned that money and happiness are unrelated." So, if you are unhappy today, it would be wise to look further than your bank balance for the source of your troubles. There is no doubt that having money makes many things easier, and I recall one very wealthy person saying that "I've been rich and I've been poor. Given a choice I would choose rich." But what if you don't have that choice? Happiness is not something you can buy at any price, nor is it something that another can take from you if you truly possess it. We must learn to love what we have, and not pine for what we do not have, and choose to be happy. Appreciate what we have, reach out to help others, and happiness will find us.

Recession - Will it affect you?

2008-01-19T14:06:00.000-05:00

Many of the folks I know and work with seem to be totally unconcerned about all the recession talk. It is not the most frequent topic of conversation. In fact, many are not even all that sure what a recession really is. Wikipedia provides this information: In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in any country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year. However, in the United States the official designation of recessions is done by the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Feldstein, 2007). That Bureau defines a recession more ambiguously as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months."

Like the law of gravity though, you do not need to understand it to be affected by it. The fact is, if we do indeed continue toward a recession, it will affect everyone in our society in some way, though some far more than others. The phenomenon that interests me most though is the way that the media frenzy over certain things seems to push us in the direction of our fears. The mere mention of recession seems to create in us a tendency to take steps that will make a true recession even more likely, like some self-fulfilling prophecy. Many other factors are at play here, of course, but our own fears must certainly take a significant chunk of the blame for the general direction of the economy. It is not at all unusual for the herd to head in some general direction based on some murmurings and grumblings, without any clear vision of just where they are going...or why. (I also happen to believe that the tendency of the workforce to demand more pay and benefits for less and less production pushes us further from stability and closer to recession, but let's save that for another day)

To reduce or minimize the effect that any cycle of the economy might have on you, it would be wise to avoid the herd altogether. The herd of baby boomers have some things in common that are not at all to our advantage. For example, the herd has not planned well for retirement. The herd does not have the reputation for saving. The herd has not typically learned to deny themselves any instant gratification that the media pushes at them. No, as a group, we have not invested in 401K plans or Keoghs or IRA's to the extent we probably should have. We indulged ourselves with bigger and better and newer and more conspicuous "stuff", instead of fixing up what we have or making do with what we have and realizing that we don't necessarily NEED all the things we WANT. As a result, as a herd, baby boomers might be hit pretty hard by a recession, right at a time when they are least prepared to handle it. What about you? Do you have access to liquid assets to cover 3 to 6 months of basic living expenses? Have you made most of your major purchases with cash rather than plastic? Have you learned to identify what you need, and resist at least some of your wants? Are you impressed by all the "bling", or do you still have an appreciation for the simple but elegant things that are designed to serve us well and last a long time?

My wife and I were talking this morning about a new phone being advertised that has a GPS feature. We agreed that it was a really neat idea and that we would like to have one. Then we both quickly realized that the cell phone with a camera in it also seemed like such an important thing to have, that when our phones were due to upgrade, we both got camera phones. The camera feature seemed like such a great idea, but we both quickly found that the novelty didn't last and we rarely have had any reason to use it. To me, that was just one recent example of how the media helped us to waste money on something we at first knew nothing about. Constant advertising helped to create in us a want for this new technology, and then in time we allowed the constant bombardment to change that want into a need. The passage of time, and very little time at that, turned that into "I have no idea why I thought I needed this thing." And it is not just cellphones, it's everything new that is flying at us from every direction.

Will the recession, if there is one, affect you? You bet it will. but how much it will affect you has a lot to do with how you are living your life from day to day. There is a certain protection in simplicity.

Best Airfares?

2008-01-17T05:37:00.000-05:00

When you plan your next air travel, don't settle for the best fare offered on Orbitz or Travelocity, or any of the other search sites. Use them for research. Find the flights and the fares that best suit your needs, write down all the information, and then go directly to the airlines web site and look up the specific flights there. Often you will save another $10 to $15 or more there. The reason is that these popular search sites derive their income from the airlines. The airline pays them for each ticket they sell. That means the airline must get that additional money from ...YOU!. So if XXXXXXX says your best fare to Minneapolis on Feb 12 at 9am will be $273 on WonderJet, go to the WonderJet website and look up that same flight, date and time. You might be surprised. Sure, it may only be a small savings, but you'll have enough to spring for pizza with the grandkids. One word of caution - DO NOT call the airlines to book your flight. Speaking with a real live ticket agent costs money. This extra savings only works online!

Day 7 - Weigh In

2008-01-15T18:35:00.000-05:00

Well, everything I read and heard was absolutely true. Without any over-the-counter weight loss pills, without any real stress or strain, I lost over 7 pounds my first 7 full days on my "modified" juicing fast. Now, I know that there has been a lot of media lately regarding a book that says you can lose 21 pounds in 21 days, in fact that might be the title. But on that plan, you do nothing but juice, as I understand it. I have no doubt at all that it will work for just about anyone willing to do it. I wasn't. I want to eat something once in awhile. So I dug the juicer out of the back corner of the cupboard, dusted it off and set out to make the best tasting fruit and vegetable juices I could concoct, topped off each evening with a well balanced meal. That's the "modified" part of my plan. Oh, and I must also now admit that each morning I still have my one large cup of coffee. I consider that a moderate intake of caffeine, and my evening meal has a moderate amount of fat. What makes it possible for me to make it through the whole work day with nothing but juice is the fact that I am usually pretty busy all day. I find it harder to stick to the juice only during the weekend, but, except for the buffalo wings (boneless, skinless though), I even managed that. I've added in some time on the treadmill and at least four resistance workouts using my Bowflex.

One week might not prove anything to you, but it has convinced me that a little self-discipline and a good juicer will get me to my goal. At present I'm just making plans to continue one more week. I will reevaluate then whether to go for the third consecutive week, or stop there and do this again in a few months. The real proof, as with any weight loss plan, is whether I will keep the weight off with continued exercise and healthy eating habits. I don't expect that to be a problem, but I'll keep you posted.

Weight Loss Project - update

2008-01-14T19:18:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow evening will mark 7 full days on my modified juicing fast, so I'll weigh in and let you know how the first week went. I actually started my project on a Friday, but didn't add the juice fast to it until last Wednesday morning.

Now I must 'fess up. I broke my own rules this last weekend while watching the NFL playoffs, and devoured an order of boneless, skinless wings. Still, I think they were fairly low-fat, and besides, the weight loss has continued fairly well, so I don't feel too guilty. No, that's not accurate. I don't feel even a little bit guilty. I want to be consistent with everything I've said in the past about dieting. DON'T go on a diet. Just don't waste your time. Instead, change your eating habits. If one certain day you just have an urge, and you keep it in moderation, so what? It is the day to day habitual pattern that will make all the difference in your life. If you are in the habit of eating a big bowl of ice cream each evening, that is likely to be a big problem for you eventually. However, if your daily routine is to eat a healthy, balanced meal each evening and you usually refrain from eating dessert, one bowl of ice cream should be yours to enjoy with no guilt. Just not every night.

Make it your goal to eat a well balanced, varied diet, with lots of brightly colored fresh fruits and vegetables in it. Try to avoid too many meals that fit the traditional pattern of meat, veggie, and a carbohydrate. The typical "white, brown, and green" meal of a baked potato, steak, and string beans. Not good. You would be better off to eat the potatoe and skip the meat, or eat the meat and skip the potato. Also, forget about three square meals a day, and shoot for five smaller meals a day. If you eat every three hours or so, smaller meals each time, you will more completely digest each meal and maintain a healthier glucose level in your system. Just make sure your last meal is at leat three to four hours before bedtime. Don't drink cold drinks with your meal either. A quick fast food burger with greasy fries and a soft drink will not do your long term health much good. Better to skip all drinks during and right after a meal.

Tommorow night - the weigh in!

Weight Loss Project - Day 7

2008-01-10T16:50:00.000-05:00

I am pleased to report that I have lost 4.9 pounds in 7 days. I did not start my modified juice fast until the first week was well along, so I'm very happy with the results. My wife has joined me on the juice fast too. She started yesterday, and I appreciate her help cutting fruits and vegetables. We made a full 2.5 quart pitcher of vegetable juice yesterday in about 15 minutes, including cleanup. So I don't think anyone should blame lack of time for their failure to do this.

Now, about that 4.9 pounds. It is legitimate weight loss, but there is no way to say how significant it may be. Generally, health care professionals agree that 1.5 to 2 pounds per week is a good target for healthy weight loss, but that is with diet and exercise, and it is over a very long period. Not a weight loss project, but a change of lifestyle. What we are doing is more concentrated or focused, and from some points of view, a bit more extreme, though we are still eating one "normal" meal each evening. I expect the pounds to fall off at a faster rate early in the program, and taper off after the first 10 days to two weeks. We may decide to continue beyond that, up to three full weeks. That is a bit of a challenge, I admit it. Several times each of the last two days I wanted a double cheeseburger with everything right in the middle of the day. Instead I drank my vegetable juice and went back to work. About an hour later I felt a bit hungry, so I drank a large glass of water. The hunger went away. I can tell you that I look forward to my evening meal though!

It is worth mentioning here that losing weight is only one of my goals. As my doctor says, nothing much good happens over 200 pounds. With that in mind, one of my goals is to reduce my blood pressure, and another is to have more energy. I did feel more energetic throughout the day today, and I must say that I slept unusually well last night. But what about after the weight comes off? That's where the real test comes in. In order to maintain my new weight, it will be necessary to continue to eat healthy, balanced meals and to exercise regularly. For me, that should not be too hard, since I have been doing that most of my life. The weight I have put on crept up very slowly for the last 25 years, and especially over the last 10 after I quit playing racquetball two or three times a week. A torn ACL and long recovery from knee surgery was good for about 15 pounds all by itself. But I am staying fairly active even without racquetball. The real problem has been that my appetite didn't seem to understand that my activity level had changed, so I was consuming calories I couldn't burn. Doing a juice fast is an opportunity to recalibrate your metabolism and start fresh. Even if you only do it for a week, you will benefit in many ways. My plan is to do it for two weeks, and perhaps repeat it again in the summer. Now that my wife has decided to join me though, we might just stick with it the whole three weeks. Misery loves company.

Vegetable juice

2008-01-09T18:20:00.000-05:00

My recipe is very flexible, but it always seems to include at least these items. Quantities of each vary a bit. If you want specific juice recipes for specific purposes e-mail me @ thenew50@gmail.com and I will try to help with that. Many conditions respond well to juicing. But for general health and specifically right now for weight loss with juice fasting, here's what I throw in the juicer.

1 bunch of broccoli stems and all - just cut off the dried ends
8 large carrots - cut off about an inch of the top, juice the rest
6 or 8 stalks of celery - the whole thing
1 or two stalks of fennel - the whole thing
leaf spinach - about three handfuls, squeezed together, pushed thru with some carrot

Here is where the juicing purists and I will differ. I don't feel like growing and juicing my own barley grass or wheat grass. Actually I like barley grass juice better because it is not as bitter as wheat grass. But what my wife and I decided to do is purchase some commercially prepared green juice that includes wheat grass, barley grass, kiwi, spirulina, blue/green algae, etc, and just pour that into our vegetable juice pitcher along with the rest. To juice the grasses properly requires a different type of juicer (press type) and I don't want to buy one. Besides, although I can buy bags of wheat grass at the farmers market, half of it will rot before I can use it. They don't seem to ever have barley grass. There are some excellent sites online that can help you set up your own growing flats if you really want to grow your own.

After the morning glass of water followed about 45 minutes later by fresh fruit juice, I drink an 8 oz serving of vegetable juice every two hours. I drink one more glass of fruit juice in the afternoon in place of the veggie juice. Then we have a fairly healthy, fairly low-fat evening meal. This is a variation of the juicing fast that makes it more tolerable for my wife and I both. The results are not as rapid or dramatic, but that is fine with us. I suspect that many people shy away from more extreme measures and so do nothing at all. If you decide to try this for up to 21 days, be sure you take a good multi-vitamin every day just to be sure you are getting all the basic nutrients, including folic acid, B6 and B12. These can help keep you homocysteine at a safe level. You may want to read my article on homocysteine posted @ http://wellnessafter50.blogspot.com/.

You will probably really look forward to your evening meals if you follow this plan. I know I do!
If at any time during the day you feel a little hungry, do not drink additional juice. You don't want or need the added calories. Just get a drink of cold filtered water.

Let us know how this works for you. Your comments might inspire others to do something healthy for themselves.

Fruit juice recipe

2008-01-09T04:12:00.000-05:00

For my morning fruit juice I use the following:
4 to 6 apples
1 pear
grapes - a bunch about the size of my fist
1/3 of a pineapple
1/2 cup blueberries

I juice these items, finishing with the apple because it is most firm and helps push through the softer fruits. I find this blend to be delicious and sweet, but as I mentioned in an earlier article, it is rich in calories, so I dilute it with 1/3 water. This gives me enough for about three days, drinking an 8 ounce glass in the morning and one in the afternoon. tomorrow we'll talk about the vegetable juice recipe.

Weight Loss Project - The Juice

2008-01-08T17:00:00.000-05:00

I want to tell you a bit about today's trip to the farmers market for fresh fruits and vegetables to juice. But first let me say that I understand that for some of you, buying and using a juicer is not practical or possible. A good juicer is not inexpensive, and it does take some time to clean and cut and juice the fruits and vegetables, and there is a good bit of cleanup as well. So if it is a matter of cost, we'll talk about some alternatives to buying your own juicer. Ask friends and relatives if they have a juicer you can borrow. You might be surprised how many people own juicers they never use. But if it is a matter of the time it takes to do this, remember that drinking your meals means you don't have to spend time preparing those meals or washing dishes. So don't talk your self out of this because you think you don't have time. You do. You have time for everything you believe is important, whatever it is. Shouldn't your health be pretty high on your list of priorities?

If buying a juicer is not in your budget, can you go to a health food store or natural foods grocery, or maybe a large farmers market? At the very least, can you take some extra time on your next trip to the grocery store to look in the produce area for bottled juices? There are now several companies that grow their own produce and market their own labels of juices, and I'm not talking about orange juice from concentrates. In our local chain grocery store there are many juices with no added sugar or preservatives that contain what juice, barley juice, spirulina, kiwi, celery, you name it. In the farmers market we found fresh wheat grass juice in addition to a number of other interesting choices. The only drawbacks to some of the bottled juices have to do with the inability to add or leave out certain things according to your individual needs or personal taste, and the fact that some are calorically very dense. To reduce the number calories in a single 8 ounce glass of juice, you can dilute it with filtered water. Lets say that you determine that one serving is 280 calories. Why not mix a half glass of water with a half glass of juice and only take in 140 calories? Easy enough. My point is that you can find ways to do this if you really want to. You might not be one of those folks whose results are not typical, losing 30 pounds in 30 days. But would you be happy to lose 30 pounds in the next 90 days?

Ok, back to the farmers market. Where we live there is a huge international market, and I love going there because you can find fruits and vegetables you've never seen before. I like to try new things, so when I see someone selecting some strange looking fruit or vegetable, I politely ask them how they prepare it and what it tastes like. they are always happy to comply. For my weight loss project though, I'm going to stick to what I know for the next few weeks. My goal is not to follow some published book or online system, but to create my own based on all I've read. The principle of of weight loss or weight gain is simple: to lose, consume fewer calories than you burn; to gain, put in more than you burn. Works pretty much like your bank account.

As you decide what juices to prepare, remember this simple guideline. Fruit juices to cleanse, vegetables juices to repair or build. But be sure to drink a good combination of both. If you are trying to lose weight, you will want to drink more vegetable juices than fruit juices. And remember that fruit juices usually have more calories per ounce than vegetable.

My shopping list today looked like this:
BROCCOLI
CARROTS
CELERY
CUCUMBER
FENNEL
SPINACH
WHEAT GRASS/BARLEY GRASS

APPLES
BLUEBERRY
GRAPES
PEAR
PINEAPPLE
GRAPEFRUIT
ORANGE
STRAWBERRY

My total bill today was about $38. I will make two pitchers of juice this evening. Including cleanup time it might take me 2 hours. I will have enough juice for the next four days, or maybe five. Each of those days I will begin with a 10 ounce glass of cold, filtered water. 45 minutes or so after that I will have a glass off fruit juice consisting of apple, carrot, parsley, blueberry, and strawberry most of the time. For variety, I will make grapefruit juice by peeling a thin layer of skin off, leaving as much white pulp as possible, and maybe throwing in half an apple. Same thing with orange juice. It taste nothing like the orange juice you've been drinking! It is thicker and creamier and a lot healthier. Every two hours I will have an 8 oz. to 10 oz. glass of juice. The water first, then fruit juice, then every two hours another glass of juice. Here's the important part, as far as I'm concerned. Each time I drink a glass of fruit juice, the next TWO times I drink vegetable juice. Perhaps because I lack discipline, or maybe because I'm not in a rush to reach my goal, I will eat a relatively "normal" meal each evening. Tonight it is a nice filet of wild caught salmon in an orange juice reduction with some steamed broccoli. Oh, and I will admit to a couple of cookies. See! You can do this! More tomorrow. If you have questions, let me know. Comments are welcome.

Weight Loss - Day 5

2008-01-08T13:04:00.000-05:00

After a few little fits and starts, I'm beginning to settle in to a new routine. I avoided the scale until this morning because I don't see any reason to check yourself constantly. I don't want or need that kind of pressure in my life. Weigh yourself once or twice a week if you must. What is far more important is that you weigh yourself at about the same time of day and that you are in very much the same condition each time. So if you set your benchmark when you begin by weighing in at 7 am after your shower, before your coffee, wearing only your unmentionables, then try to do precisely that each time you weigh in.

Before I tell you what my results were after five days, let me just say thank you to all those who seem to be following along. The number of visitors daily is growing, and that is gratifying to see, though it appears that most of you are too busy or too shy to post a comment. If shyness is the issue, then I would still encourage you to say hello by e-mail and let me know how I'm doing. Your feedback is very important. I would also like to hear how YOU are doing.

Now, day 5. My daily routine is basic and it is not iron clad, but the results in just 5 days are encouraging. I've lost, according to my digital scale, 3.8 pounds. I fully expect that I will not be able to sustain that rate without making some iron clad rules though, so I do not plan to lose 25 pounds in 25 days. Frankly, I haven't exercised as much these first five days as planned to. Maybe I was dreaming. But I did get in several good walks and started doing some upper body work. I even threw in several sets of pushups while I was watching football playoff games.
My job in a manufacturing lab sometimes is sedentary, and on those days I really have to push myself to do more in the evening. I would prefer to get more exercise earlier in the day, but since I start work at 6 am, that's just not a practical plan. One thing I would encourage you to do as you plan your own weight loss project is build some flexibility into your plan. That way if something unexpected comes up, you don't feel like you've lost your way or that your project has been derailed. Remember this, a guided misssile is ALWAYS off course up to the instant it makes the final course correction and hits the target. So you will get off course too, maybe more often than you would like, but don't let that even slow you down or dampen your enthusiasm. If you set out to do something good, something you thought was important, remember that. And always be willing to refocus your mental image as needed. You can do anything that is important to you. Anything!

Weight loss - DAY 1

2008-01-04T07:47:00.000-05:00

First thing this morning I drank a 16 ounce glass of cold water. No food, no coffee, just water. I then waited at least 45 minutes before my next intake. That was a delicious drink called Green Goodness that is produced by Bolthouse Farms. I am not promoting any particular products on this blog, but I will tell you what I like and why. Green juices may be an excellent source of nutrition including phytonutrients and this particular one provides 2 grams of protein in 8 ounces, containing things like wheat grass, spirulina, spinach and blue-green algae in an apple juice base along with kiwi, mango, banana and dragon fruit, that just tastes good. From this one glass of juice I get more than 100% of my daily requirement of vitamins A and C, 30% of folic acid, 15% of vitamin B6, 30% of B12, and well over 100% of Manganese and Zinc. I should also mention that I continue to take my normal daily supplements.

Over the next few weeks I will increase my juice intake and decrease my intake of solid foods. Most of the juice will be made fresh using my own juicer, but for convenience I will also use some juices purchased at the local grocery. For this first day, lunch will be a single boiled egg for protein, and another glass of juice. This time it will be C-Boost also from Bolthouse Farms. As the name implies, it is loaded with vitamin C from all natural sources. Though I really like the taste of this juice, as time permits I prefer to drink freshly made juices. That requires a well-planned trip to the farmers market, so I will have to fit that into my weekend schedule if possible.

Before the evening meal I will walk 30 to 45 minutes, either outdoors or on a treadmill. Every two hours, all day, I will drink either juice or water. This will help detoxify my body and push me toward losing weight. Keep in mind though, that healthy weight loss, and maintaining a healthy body requires exercise. There is no magic way around it, so find something you can enjoy and get busy! I sometimes walk on the treadmill while playing a game on my Playstation2, or watching something interesting on television. Outdoors, there is so much to look at while walking that the time goes by fairly quickly. Add to the walking at least three sessions each week of using some weights or working with equipment to keep the muscles toned. We lose 3% to 5% of our muscle mass every decade we live past 25 unless we actively do something to combat that loss. If you want to be healthy and vigorous well into your 70's and 80's and beyond, exercise is a key component. I'm more concerned with staying physically active than I am with my weight, and I just don't believe the Body Mass Index (BMI) is the sole arbiter of what a healthy weight is either. Good to know, but only part of the total picture. In a few days I'll post an update on how this project is going. I hope you will post your comments and join in!

Weight loss - with Juice!

2008-01-03T16:08:00.000-05:00

I have been asked several times now about safe but lasting weight loss. This seems to be a very common thread that runs through many of the e-mails I receive. The problem for so many of us is that we have become an "instant" society. We want results, and we want them NOW!!! But weight loss generally can only be accomplished in much the same way that weight gain happens - gradually, over time. If you want to risk your long-term health using risky and often totally unproven over the counter weight loss miracle pills, this blog will not be of interest to you. I am interested in staying healthy, and helping others to do the same, not putting our health at risk. But if you are interested in really losing weight at a steady rate, and keeping it off, I will devote articles over the next three to four weeks on proven methods of doing just that. Since I have recently added a few pounds myself, I have decided to make some serious changes including losing a minimum of 25 pounds. I will keep you posted on what I am doing to accomplish this and provide updates at least once each week on how I'm doing. I hope it will inspire others to do the same. Here's a hint on just how I intend to start: juice. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetable juices. So if you have a juicer, get it out from under all the pots and pans and clean it up and let's get started. My first weight loss article will be published on 1/4/08 and I hope you will join us.
If you are willing to provide just a first name and your weight loss goal in pounds in the comment area, we'll try to all keep each other motivated and on target to reach our goals. So, until tomorrow...

Weight Loss With Water?

2007-12-21T08:53:00.001-05:00

It really might be just that easy!

For many years now doctors in Japan have been prescribing this water routine for their patients for all sorts of health conditions. But people who need to lose weight are often told that water retention is part of their problem, so INCREASING their water intake seems counter-intuitive. Let me explain. The body tends to automatically store things it needs when it senses that it might not be getting a resupply on a regular basis. This applies to fat and water too! For this article, lets just stick to water. We'll talk about fat retention another time.

In many cases people who have a water retention problem are those who do not drink enough water. Many of us are dehydrated and don't even know it. If you are fatigued all the time, if you have high blood pressure, poor circulation, frequent headaches, if you tend to overeat, if you can't seem to lose weight --- you may be dehydrated. Think about this. If you are not getting enough water, you may be compelled to overeat because your body is trying to get more fluids by any means. And since you are not giving it the fluids it needs to function properly, it hoards what little water you give it. Sure, you give it a bit of water when you drink coffee or soft drinks, but not enough. And those things may contain caffeine, chemical sweeteners, preservatives, and flavorings that are not of much benefit.

In addition to hoarding water, dehydration makes it difficult for the kidneys to function properly, so you are not able to properly metabolize fats. The result? Your liver can't support the kidneys and soon your body is storing not only water but fat as well. So what have we been told to do? Low fat diets, right? With what you've read so far, can you figure out the inevitable result of a low fat diet? Since fat is essential for proper body function, if you are not getting enough dietary fat, your body will begin to store fat as a protection. So now we have dehydrated people with storage locations of extra interstitial fat. One common location for this fat storage is around the liver. Not good. Again, we'll talk about fat later. Back to the water.

Next weekend, why not begin to give your body the water it needs to stay healthy? Wait for the weekend because for the first few days you will be making frequent trips to the restroom. But within a few days of this increased water intake, your body will begin to regulate it and those trips will become less frequent. Oh, you might also want to taper off the water drinking toward evening so you don't have to get up in the middle of the night. With that said, here is what is now recommended by a growing number of healthcare professionals. First thing in the morning drink a large (10 oz) glass of cold water. Do not drink or eat anything after that for 45 minutes or so. This will "kick-start" your metabolism and rehydrate your body after a night of rest. Water allows your body to flush out waste and toxins, and is essential for proper function down to the cell level. The next step is to increase the total daily intake of water to about two quarts (2-3 liters) every day. This is best done by spreading it out over the entire day. And please do not use bottled water! The bottles are a terrible burden on our ecology and the recent reports indicate that they are leaching harmful substances into the water we drink from them as well.
I use a stainless coffee travel mug, a large one. I will admit that I do sometimes substitute plain water with green tea. But no other fluid counts. Not juice, soft drinks, or coffee.

Once your body becomes accustomed to getting all the water it needs, it will stop hoarding it. Your skin tone will improve. Many people report that they get a "lift" from their morning glass of water. It wakes up the whole system. Given enough water to work with, the kidneys begin to function more efficiently, and the liver can do its job of secreting bile to assist in metabolizing the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E & K and helps the body assimilate calcium. With enough water, the liver can also more efficiently work as the body's detoxifier, and it can produce the GTF necessary (along with insulin from the pancreas) to properly regulate blood sugar levels. Water is essential for the circulation of blood. If you are dehydrated, your blood becomes thicker leading to reduced circulation and a whole cascade of related problems, including high blood pressure.

The body is a very complex organism, wonderfully made with the ability to keep itself healthy if we give it the basics, like water. You don't have to like drinking water, but you must admit it is a lot less distasteful than a lot of medicines, and a lot less expensive!! So, drink up!

2007-12-21T08:53:00.000-05:00

If Not Today, Why Bother?

2007-12-19T20:52:00.000-05:00

The art of procrastination - or, the type C personality.

We all know the "type A" folks who are always overbooked and under pressure. Most of the pressure is of their own making, but don't try to tell them that. They have to get to the airport way early so they can be the first to know that their flight will be delayed. They get angry because the car wash has no passing lane. Then we have the "type B" person who might be heard to say, "Well, I meant to get that done today, but I just didn't get to it. Maybe I can do it tomorrow." They don't put too much stress upon themselves or anyone else. Life is to be enjoyed, experienced, savored, and it just doesn't make sense to get all flustered over every little thing.

But we seem to have a third group that no one is talking about. Maybe we should call them "type C' personalities. These are the folks who never appear to busy doing anything, but never seem to have time to get anything much done. They don't seem too bothered about it either. Some of them have developed procrastination into an art form. Carl Hurley tells about the two fellows sitting in the shade of a tree near the road. One is facing the road, one facing away from the road. A girl walks by and says "hey". The fellow facing the road says "hey" right back. About 30 minutes later, the other fellow says, "Clem, was she pretty?" Clem says "Yes she was". The other fellow replies, "Too bad I wasn't facing that way".

Regardless of our personality type, we all need to come to an understanding about just what we can safely put off, and what we better take care of today. In fact, if we put certain things off, there may be no reason to do them at all. For example, if you are way over due for a checkup, today would be an excellent day to make the appointment, and then KEEP IT! If you have been putting off telling someone you love just how you feel about them, today would be a great time to do that, because tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us. If someone has done something nice for you and you owe them a thank you, it will mean a lot more today than it might if you put it off. And if you owe someone an apology, today is the right time to take care of it. If you wait, there is a good chance they will become less and less receptive as the days go by. In fact, TODAY is just about the best day there is to do almost anything you have a mind to do!

Aztec Super Grain

2007-12-19T15:20:00.000-05:00

What the Spanish referred to as Salvia Hispanica L, refers to the Chia seed, black and white, used by the Aztecs of South America. But more recently, cultivated white seeds have begun to be marketed as Salba. You may not find it in your grocery store, but you might be able to get it in a health food store or natural food supermarket. Just two tablespoons a day added to your cereal, fruit smoothie, or even in the goodies you bake, can significantly contribute to your cardiovascular health, and reduce such risks of Type II diabetes. This whole grain is a rich source of protein, calcium, magnesium, omega 3 fatty acids, iron and antioxidants. In fact, it contains 15 times more magnesium than broccoli, three times more iron than spinach, and it is gluten free. It is also an excellent source of dietary fiber, and it won’t change the taste of the foods you add it to, the way flax or soy products do. It has been described as the richest source of omega 3’s and fiber found in nature. So, if you have been using flax seed for the health benefits, consider trying salba.

Increasing your daily intake of magnesium and fiber has been shown to reduce diabetes risk, so salba might be a good way to increase those in your diet. Many companies promote products based upon Salba, or simply sell the whole grain. Such products are still fairly new on the market, with some few items appearing in stores in the US market only in 2006, though there is a long history of human consumption with no adverse health effects.

Painful Muscle Cramps

2007-12-17T16:02:00.000-05:00

Preventing Muscle Cramps and Spasms - One of the most important things you can do to help prevent muscle cramps and spasms is to work on improving your overall general health and fitness. Improving your cardiovascular fitness will improve the delivery of blood to your muscles, ensuring that they have adequate oxygen and nutrients to function properly.
A second key activity that will help to prevent cramps and spasms is stretching. Keeping your muscles loose and flexible will help to stop them from tightening up and cramping. Be sure to stretch the muscle groups that are most prone to cramping, but be very careful about stretching muscles, ligaments and tendons before they are adequately warmed up. After strenuous activity, stretching is a great way to cool down. Stretches must be done slowly, and hold each position for several seconds before slowly releasing. Don’t “bounce”. That’s a sure way to pull something. Just because it looks simple, don't make the mistake of thinking that stretching won't be effective.

Along with improving your overall fitness, making sure that you are getting sufficient fluids and nutrients is also important. Many adults are dehydrated and don’t know it. How much water or similar fluid (like green tea) you need to drink depends upon a number of factors including your size and your level of activity. On a day when you plan to go for a long walk or hike, for example, begin a little extra fluid intake up to two hours before you start. If the weather is hot and humid, you might want to increase fluids even more. Don’t wait until you are thirsty. Taking a drink then will not help you prevent cramps. You need to take the fluid in a few hours before you put a strain on your systems, so that you are properly hydrated down to the cell level. You have no doubt heard about the importance of drinking 8 glasses of water every day, or even ten. I don’t support that rule. What is adequate for me might be too much for you or vice versa. Too much water can be dangerous as well, because it dilutes the blood and other fluids and can overwork the kidneys. Ask your doctor or health care provider what might be a good practice for you. Get to know your body and what it needs.

Once last thing…If you seem to be plagued by cramps or muscle spasms, you may need to increase your uptake of certain minerals. Some can do this by simply adding sea salt to their diet, using a little in cooking for example. Your doctor might recommend a supplement of calcium and magnesium, along with some extra potassium. While that is not a bad idea, it is usually best to get these and other nutrients in your diet, so ask the doctor about ways you might be able to do that over the long term. I like to eat a banana after a long hard hike to help replace potassium. Oh, I must warn you that if you buy sea salt as a total replacement for table salt, you probably won’t be getting the important iodine, because most sea salt labels I’ve read warn that they are not iodized.

Before I go, since you really should consult your physician if you are having frequent leg cramps, while you are there, you might also want to check whether any of your medications have cramps listed as possible side-effects. I’ve had a problem with certain cholesterol lowering drugs.

Reduce Your Risk of Heart Disease

2007-12-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

Ignore The Advice About Nuts

You’ve been told that nuts are high in calories and contain a lot of fat? Well, it’s a fact.
But does that mean you shouldn’t eat them? Of course not. Over the last decade a number of studies have confirmed that eating certain types of unsalted nuts on a regular basis can reduce your risk of heart disease and sudden cardiac deaths. While they are calorically very dense, they are also an excellent source of protein, fiber, phytonutrients, and antioxidants as well as omega-3 fats. But as with all things, moderation is important.
Eating too many nuts can be a problem because you will be increasing your daily caloric intake. As you know, if you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.
So what’s the solution?

First, eat nuts that can actually do you some good and avoid the rest. In 2003 the FDA approved health claims for 7 different nuts, including peanuts, pecans, pistachios, walnuts, some pine nuts, hazelnuts, and almonds. These nuts provide less than 4g of saturated fats per 50g. You don’t have to limit yourself only to these nuts, but be aware that others may be much higher in fat content. Also, nut allergies are a concern for some, especially children and young adults. But if you decide to make nuts a regular part of your diet, you might also consider pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, because they may provide the same heart healthy benefits.
Second, limit your daily intake of nuts to 1 or 2 ounces. One guideline is to eat only the amount of nuts it takes to fill the palm of your hand. This does not mean a handful of nuts. If you like almonds, for example, just put 8 or 10 almonds in your hand. That’s about the right amount of nuts to consume daily. If you are substituting nuts for some other source of calories you need not worry about gaining weight. In fact, starting your day with a little protein can actually help you lose weight.

I won’t bore you with all the details here, but below I’ve pasted just the conclusions of a number of reports on the subject of nuts in the diet. This is not a magic bullet that will eliminate all heart disease risk, but it is certainly an easy thing to include in your arsenal of weapons against CHD (Coronary Heart Disease).

CONCLUSIONS: Frequent nut consumption may offer postmenopausal women modest protection against the risk of death from all causes and CHD. (University of Minnesota)

CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicates a significant inverse relationship between legume intake and risk of CHD and suggests that increasing legume intake may be an important part of a dietary approach to the primary prevention of CHD in the general population. (Tulane University)

CONCLUSIONS: Frequent nut consumption was associated with a reduced risk of both fatal coronary heart disease and non-fatal myocardial infarction. These data, and those from other epidemiological and clinical studies, support a role for nuts in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease. (Harvard School of Public Health)

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest potential benefits of higher nut and peanut butter consumption in lowering risk of type 2 diabetes in women. To avoid increasing caloric intake, regular nut consumption can be recommended as a replacement for consumption of refined grain products or red or processed meats. (Harvard School of Public Health)

EXERCISES FOR SENIORS

2007-12-12T15:02:00.000-05:00

Let’s face it. Very few people of any age get enough exercise. That’s why we have such an obesity epidemic in this country and many other parts of the world. As we get into our 50’s and 60’s we are pretty much set in our ways and our bodies are a reflection of that. Some stay fairly fit and trim their entire lives, and others just let it go. I believe that there is very little empirical evidence that those who stay fit and trim live a lot longer. But I’m convinced that they stay more active and enjoy more of their later years than those who haven’t made any effort to stay in shape. Well, round IS a shape. Anyway, if you have not done much in the way of exercise for many years and you have a sedentary job, you might be afraid to start now. It would be wise to first talk to your doctor about it, and if there are no medical reasons why you should not get started, then start slowly. The idea is not to cause health problems but to prevent them. Being sedentary can lead to all sorts of problems that regular motion might help you avoid. High blood pressure, lack of appetite, poor sleep habits, low energy, and a whole cascade of other things you would do well to avoid. Since this blog is focused on STAYING well rather than getting well, I want to encourage you to take some action. We’re not training for the Olympics, but we are in training to stay fit and active for as long as we can.

Lets start by just walking. Not far, not too fast, and not for too long at first. You want to get your muscles and ligaments and tendons and lungs used to idea first, so just take a little stroll for five or ten minutes, longer if you are up to it. If you live in an area where it is safe to walk outdoors, that’s best. Distracted by things going on around you, the time goes by more quickly. Walking in a shopping mall serves the same purpose. Just don’t stop to look in every store window. Gradually, you want to increase your pace and total duration of your walks to thirty minutes or more at least three times a week. Vary your route from time to time so you don’t get bored, and if possible, walk with someone else.
In our neighborhood the streets are not all flat so I can get a little more strenuous walk from time to time by going up and down some gentle hills. I have a treadmill, and I always start out at a 3% incline.

After you have made walking a regular part of your week, it’s time to add a little weight training or some sort of resistance. Muscle tone is important if you want to be able to fend for yourself in the years ahead. You don’t have to become a body builder, but you have to counteract the natural aging process. After about the age of 25, you will begin to lose muscle mass at the rate of 3% to 5% every decade. That could mean a loss of 20% by the time you hit 65. Weight training can offset that to some extent. You can’t stop it entirely because your body is changing whether you like it or not. You’re giving up nitrogen, an essential factor in muscle protein, faster than you can take it in. You’re also losing bone calcium. Your body is becoming more acidic. Decrease the acidity in your system by increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables you eat. And counteract the muscle loss with some regular resistance training. You can get some 2 to 5 pound hand weights and do mostly upper body exercise while seated or standing. These include biceps curls, French curls for the triceps, and butterflies. E-mail me if you want more complete descriptions of any of these. For resistance training of the legs and hips, I suggest moves adapted from T’ai Chi Chuan. We call it T’ai Chi, but that’s like saying “foot” instead of “football”. Without getting into the Taoist philosophy, we can benefit from the exercises. These moves will not only strengthen your legs and hips, they will help to improve your balance and ability to recover from an imbalanced move that might lead to a fall. Falls resulting in broken bones are harder to recover from as we get older, so let’s try to prevent them by making ourselves stronger and more stable. But we not only lose muscle mass, we lose flexibility, balance and endurance as well. So here’s a very simple series of moves to help improve all four, along with the upper body resistance training. You don’t need to buy any equipment, but I do suggest that you use the back of a sturdy chair for balance until you feel strong enough to do them without it.

· First, stand behind a chair holding lightly to the back, feet a comfortable width apart (shoulder width). Now, slowly shift your weight to the left until 95% of your body weight is on your left foot. Now bend your knees slightly. Inhale deeply. Slowly lift your right foot and move it beside your left foot. With both feet on the floor and close together, stand erect as you exhale completely. Now reverse the move, inhale and exhale slowly and completely as you go, until the right foot is back in the starting position. Now, very slowly shift your weight to the right foot and repeat to the right side. Once you have returned to the starting position, count as one repetition. Build up to ten complete reps over a period of a few weeks. Take your time. What is important here is not how fast you can do this, but how s l o w l y. And always in total control. If this is too easy, you are going too fast!
· The next series of moves is only slightly more complicated. By now, after several weeks perhaps, you have strengthened your legs with the first series, so adding this should not be too hard. As you shift your weight to the left foot and slowly bend your knees to a half-squat, lift the toes of your right foot from the floor, keeping your right heel firmly planted. Now slowly pivot your whole body to the right, keeping your left foot firmly in place pointing forward. If you are doing this correctly, you will turn 90 degrees to the right, your left leg will be bent at the knee and your upper body will be erect, facing to the right, your right heel will be on the floor, right leg fairly straight, toes pointing up. Now pivot back to the front, both feet back on the floor and slowly exhale as you stand very tall. Repeat to the opposite side.

These simple moves look and sound easy and perhaps pointless until you actually do them through ten complete repetitions very slowly. Then you will see just how powerful they can be. Don’t forget to observe your breathing. Holding your breath is never good.

I know people who have practiced t’ai chi for decades who remain strong, flexible and agile into their 70’s and 80’s. Using these simple t’ai chi moves can help you in the same way. At the age of 60 I can stand on one foot at a time and put my socks on.

I will write soon about this whole problem of acidity vs. alkalinity and aging and how you can combat it with your diet. Here’s a sample: One of my favorite things to add to spaghetti and certain casseroles is parmesan cheese. It is one of the most acidic common foods you can put in your body. Not so good. Spinach is one of the most alkaline vegetables. Look for this article in the next few weeks.

A SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE EXERCISE

2007-12-10T19:48:00.000-05:00

Want to tighten up your stomach without doing crunches? Good! Crunches aren't the best way. In fact, they can cause other problems. Everything I've read consistently says that spot reduction is not possible, and all the fitness gurus seem to agree that unless you remove the layer of fat covering your abdomen, even if you have a six-pack you won't be able to see it. So let's talk about a long term approach that will get results. If you are interested in being a baby boomer body builder (too many B's for me!), then this will not interest you. But if you are willing to do incremental things on a regular basis that will give long-term, lasting results, follow me.Whether male or female, this exercise can be beneficial. It is not a replacement for any other regular exercise you may get, but the nice thing is that you can do this WHILE you are doing something else that is part of your daily routine. Like applying makeup or shaving, or brushing your teeth. It's called the Stomach Vaccuum. Here's how it goes.

First, stand erect, straight back, in a comfortable stance. Now inhale deeply, as you slowly begin to exhale, pull your stomach in tight, as though trying to touch your belly button to your backbone. Now completely exhale, slowly. When your lungs are empty, continue to hold the vaccuum for another few seconds, then relax. In time, you should work up to at least ten repetitions of this exercise, and hold your final vaccuum position for at least ten seconds before releasing each time. You may find that doing this makes you a little light headed at first, and you should probably only do a few reps to begin with. But in time, you can do several sets each day. Remain erect as you squeeze the abdominal muscles. Don't curve your back or hunch your shoulders. Oh, and keep in mind that it is probably a good idea to do this before a meal, not after.

Do this every day for at least six weeks before you decide if this is worthwhile. It is not strenuous, but you will soon see that exercise doesn't always need to be a sweaty struggle.

Trans Fats & Your Health

2007-12-10T15:31:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to an excellent Wikizine on trans fatty acids. http://www.zimbio.com/Trans+fats
Several very good articles there to help you understand just what they are, how they are formed, why they are used in food production, and why they are so terrible for you.

Arm yourself with knowledge and then have the wisdom to apply that knowledge.

Who Likes To Read? Not many!

2007-12-07T20:12:00.000-05:00

􀂃 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
􀂃 42% of college graduates never read another book.
􀂃 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
􀂃 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
􀂃 57% of new books are not read to completion.
􀂃 Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

DIABETES - TYPE II EPIDEMIC

2007-12-07T15:49:00.000-05:00

What’s behind this epidemic? How can you prevent it?

Type II diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and around the globe. What has led to this? There’s really no mystery. There have been a number of trends in our society, especially in the US, that have led inevitably toward this situation.
Consider that news headlines almost weekly have something to report concerning obesity, especially among children. When the number of super-sized fast food meals exceeds the number of minimally processed home-cooked meals week after week, the result is to be expected. Add to this the trend toward more and more time spent on the phone, in front of the television or playing video games, and less time spent outdoors playing, riding bikes, shooting hoops or exploring, what else could we expect? Now we see a nation of middle age adults and baby boomers who get even less exercise than their children, sitting in front of the television every night with a remote glued to their hand, and we wonder what has gone wrong. We eat over processed food that provides less than adequate nutrition, we walk the equivalent of about 100 yards a day, we park as close to the store as possible, ride elevators and avoid stairs, and use every possible excuse to avoid physical activity of any sort. There seems to be general agreement that obesity and inactivity may both contribute to the onset of type II diabetes for many. But even with all these factors at work against us, there is something else we might have missed…another factor that is far less obvious, but perhaps far more deadly.

Go right now to your food pantry or your refrigerator and look at a few food labels. Look for the words, “partially hydrogenated…….”. If you don’t see that, then look for “shortening”. After you’ve done this tiny bit of personal research, come back and read the rest of this. I’ll wait. . . . . . . . . .

What did you find? If you have cookies or crackers or just about any other baked goods on your shelf, you’ve got this stuff in your house. These are TRANS FATTY ACIDS. We’ll refer to them as TFA’s here. The reason we find them in so many processed foods is because they help keep the food product “fresh”. Instead of going bad in a week to ten days, it might still appear to be edible in ten MONTHS! Great, right? Well, if you are a food manufacturer, yes. You can now make your product in Maine in January and ship it to California and know that when it finally gets on the shelf at the local convenience store it will still look great in April.

Do you have a can of shortening (no brand names here) on your shelf. THAT is a can of trans fatty acids. Partially hydrogenated oil. You can keep this stuff for five years and it won’t go “bad”. But YOU will go bad. Here’s the scoop on TFA’s. Your body has no good use for TFA’s. It cannot digest TFA’s. In fact the safe adult daily intake of trans fatty acids is ZERO milligrams. The TFA’s actually harden the cell walls, making it harder for your cells to absorb nutrients or excrete waste. They also make it harder for your cells to communicate with each other. That’s right! So if you get a little infection over here, and you need a little help from over there, the message doesn’t get through. Like the cavalry in the fort under attack by a band of Indians, you send out a rider to get help from another fort. But he can’t get out the gate, so you’re on your own.
Infection gets worse, spreads, and soon you have a serious medical problem. TFA’s seem to be directly linked to heart disease too. Back in the 50’s we were told to stop eating butter. Switch to margarine!!! Hmm. What is margarine? Partially hydrogenated oil, with a little sodium and coloring and a few other tidbits, so it looks and tastes a little like butter. As the use of margarine and shortening in the home and in food manufacturing increased, along with the spread of our interstate highway system, the incidence of heart disease went…UP, not down. We took the advice of the medical community and made ourselves more vulnerable to illness.

What’s the solution? YOU are. If you buy food, read the label. If it says “partially hydrogenated”….anything, don’t buy it. Is it really that simple? No. You will find
it quite difficult to find ANY label in the cookie and cracker aisle that doesn’t have those words on it. But you can get some really great cookie recipes that use applesauce that you can make at home, with no TFA’s. (here are just a couple of URL’s to get you started)
www.baking911.com/healthy/baking_101.htm
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/low-fat-baking3.htm

Oh, I know, we just don’t have time to bake cookies any more. But we are killing ourselves, so baking seems like a good alternative, doesn’t it? The more we avoid consuming highly processed foods, the healthier we can be. And it’s not just cookies and crackers that we need to watch out for. It is prepared foods of all sorts. Buy a prepared meatloaf, or some of that delicious lasagna in the frozen food case. Or maybe read the label and then go home and make your own.

Will this alone help you avoid type II diabetes? Perhaps not. But if you are willing to do this much, perhaps you will also be willing to take a little walk, 30 or 40 minutes, a few times a week. Maybe you will also learn something about portion control. And maybe by exercising some self-control we can turn this epidemic around. Good health to you.

AIRLINE FOOD - The fine art of dining at 35,000 feet

2007-12-04T15:43:00.000-05:00

Perhaps we should begin by establishing one fact, or near-fact: the stuff served on most airlines barely qualifies as food. Now if you happen to be directly involved in the planning, preparing, delivering, or serving of airline food in any form, I apologize. Maybe you provide the 2% that is actually quite tasty and nutritious. If not, then shame on you!

There was a time before outrageous fuel prices and stiff competition when airlines took great pains to make sure that every part of your air travel experience was enjoyable, including the meal that would tide you over on that coast-to-coast or across the water flight. But time marches on. Today, if anything remotely similar to a meal is served, it is often high calorie, high fat, high sodium, and highly processed junk food. More often what you might get is a pack of pretzels or a tiny pack of cookies and a soft drink. Sometimes the soft drink consists of a plastic cup of ice with about three tablespoons of soda poured over it. You might recall very nice meals served on china with cloth napkins in first class, and in some few instances that might still be the case, but not likely. What seems to be most available in first class is alcohol. Maybe it helps one to overlook the poor fare on the tray. In business class or in the back end of the big aluminum cigar tube, you might be given the opportunity to purchase an adult beverage and some sort of sandwich or wrap. Don’t ponder too long over your choice. Just pick one. They are all a bit like cardboard with lettuce on it, though sometimes you can’t recognize the lettuce by the time it gets to your tray.

Let me digress here for a moment to defend the airlines. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. One must keep in mind that the prime directive for your air carrier is to get you and sometimes your luggage from point A to point B safely and somewhat on time. Food is…well, it’s not what you pay for when you book your flight. The airline doesn’t make money on their food service. It’s an added CODB (Cost Of Doing Business) and a pain to manage. If they sell you a sandwich, they might make fifty cents profit, but it takes a lot of sandwiches to keep an airline afloat. As for the on-time thing, they can’t always control that. No one can control the weather, and the pilot sitting on the runway in Cleveland can’t move a storm system out of the way so that he can get you to Atlanta at 8:27 am so that you can make your 9 am sales call. Don’t count on it. Poor planning on your part is not the pilot’s or the airline’s problem. Either schedule your sales call for later in the morning, or take an earlier flight. Also, keep in mind that planes are mechanical things. Mechanical things are subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Put simply, things break or deteriorate. When that happens to something on the plane I was about to board, I’m ecstatic that they found it before we took off. I’m not angry with anyone for breaking it, or making me late for my very important event. I’m happy to be late because someone was careful enough to make me late…but alive. While I’m ranting a bit here, let me remind some of you that the person in an airline uniform standing behind the counter is NOT the person who caused any of your problems. They MIGHT be able to help resolve some of your problems if you give them a chance to do so. Things like getting you on a different flight, for example. Taking out your frustration on that person is not likely to put them on your team.

Back to the food issue. I have come to the conclusion that what I will eat on a long flight is not a responsibility I want to entrust to the airline. Instead, I either make it a point to arrive at the airport early enough to pay the outrageous concession prices there and purchase something to take with me, or take time to eat a sit down meal in one of the restaurants while I wait for my flight. If I plan really well, I could even bring something from home. There was a time when, like a movie theater, airlines frowned on brown bagging. Now I think they encourage it. Don’t make it anything too elaborate. Just nutritious and easy to handle while strapped into your tiny seat. (Maybe we can talk about the tiny seat another time.) If you like pickles and tomatoes on your sandwich, put those in a separate seal-able bag so the bread will not get mushy. You can put a few good cookies or mixed nuts, or anything else you would like to snack on in bags as well. You will know exactly what to look forward to meal-wise, and you will have no one to complain to but yourself if you don’t like it.

For some wonderful pictures of actual airline meals - http://www.airlinemeals.net/indexMeals.html

I’m not saying the meals are wonderful. The pictures are wonderful. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. As you click on each link on the left side of the site, you can scroll down thru many photos of airline meals. To be fair, some actually do look very appetizing. Apparently I keep choosing the wrong carrier. But since my objective is the same as the airlines, to get from A to B safely and somewhat on time, as well as cheaply, I will gladly take care of my own meals, thank you.

NOW What Do You Want?

2007-11-30T22:40:00.001-05:00

Today's mail included three new catalogs and several important looking envelopes. Several trees wasted. With the exception of bills that we all must deal with, nothing much arrives by snail mail anymore except glossy marketing materials designed to convince me that I need a newer or bigger or better something or other. Some catalogs are full of things I never even imagined existed. Gadgets to do things for me that I never thought of doing for myself. Gadgets to free more of my time and relieve me of more of my money. Exotic or at least high-priced items that every home simply must have. I must admit that I have not always been immune to their efforts to separate me from my money. Now, with a few clicks of a mouse, I can empty my piggy bank without blinking. You can shop online for absolutely anything. Let's talk about cell phones, for example. I must quickly say that having such a neat gadget when your car breaks down or when you can't find your way to a friends new home is wonderful. In fact, that reminds me that a GPS gadget would be a neat thing to have as well, but I digress. Back to the cell phone. I first rationalized that I really should get one for my wife so that she could call me or AAA or someone for help is she ever got stranded somewhere. Her safety is of paramount importance to me of course. But if she had a cell phone and I did not, then she could not call me for help. So of course it would be silly for me to do without. Not that I WANT a cell phone, but obviously I NEED one.

Now we both have cell phones. Perhaps they work the way umbrellas do. It only rains when you have no umbrella. Our cars only break down if we forget our cell phones, or if the battery is dead. Or if we are in some area with no cell service. But still, I can see a real need. I don't feel the need to be connected by phone at every moment of every day, but I have become accustomed to carrying this little chunk of technology on my belt almost everywhere I go. I refuse to answer it in the restroom however. But I can't figure out how this or anything else makes the transition from being a want to being a need to being an absolute necessity. That's the progression that all good marketing pros and copywriters thrive on. They plant a tiny seed and water it with pictures and cultivate it with mental images and before you know it you WANT it. Next, you begin to explain to your wife (or to yourself mostly) why this thing you want is very important and why you actually have needed it for some time now. You think of all the times you have been without this thing, whatever it is, and how you would have been so much better off if only you had it. Before long, you convince yourself that you really don't want this thing, but you just have to make the sacrifice and buy it because you really do need it. Now at last you have it. You read all the directions and try all the bells and whistles and just hold it and look at it and feel...special, because now you actually have one of your very own. This elation lasts for several hours or perhaps several days. (If the thing is a new car, it usually lasts either until you run through a mud puddle or you get in a little fender bender.) But sooner or later you find yourself with another catalog in your hands, or watching another in the endless stream of television ads, and you begin to forget this latest thing. But think about this. If you're not hungry, why look in the refrigerator? If you take every catalog you receive in the mail straight to the trash can without ever taking a peek inside, you are not likely to nibble on the bait, and not very likely to get hooked. Now when I get a catalog, I say to myself in a very stern voice, "NOW what do you want?" Since the honest answer is "Nothing" there is no reason to look in the catalog. The next important step is to figure out how to save all those trees and stop these people from sending me the catalogs in the first place. Got any suggestions?

The Fine Art of Doing Nothing

2007-11-30T20:04:00.000-05:00

Baby Boomers come from all walks of life, all educational levels, all ethnicities. Aside from the time period during which they were born, it is almost impossible to characterize them. Yet a few generalities seem safe. Earlier generations may have grown up with a different work ethic because they lived in a largely agrarian society. Chores had to be done in order for the family to eat and survive, and everyone had their own responsibilities, often according to their age. The point is that all had something to contribute. In my fathers farming family, he was the youngest and in his earliest memories he had certain chores to do before school and after school, and a heavier load on the weekends. Perhaps because of those formative years, my father never really learned how to relax. Oh, he would get comfortable on the couch in front of a televised football game and fall into a window rattling snore. But aside from that he was usually busy at something or other all the time. He just couldn't bring himself to sit and relax. He didn't enjoy reading all that much, and he really couldn't understand why anyone needed a hobby. There were always leaves to rake or weeds to pull or lettuce to pick or limbs to pick up. At night, we would have supper (dinner was lunch, supper was the evening meal) and then he might watch one of the three evening news channels. But then he was up and about doing something.

I'd like to believe that I inherited my father's finer qualities, including a solid work ethic and a streak of human kindness, but there is one major difference. I know how to relax and I do have hobbies, including writing. Of course there are always things that need to be done when you own a home. There always seems to be a light bulb that needs changing, grass to cut, trash to take out. But certain other things also demand my attention. Things like playing the piano for a few minutes or an hour, or more. Or writing an essay on something that caught my attention. Or reading. But once in awhile, especially in the spring and fall, when the weather is fine and the breeze is gentle, I can just sit on the deck in the cushioned swing and do absolutely nothing but ... BE. I call it the "fine art of doing nothing", but that doesn't begin to describe it. Relaxation is not a science, though physicians might tout the importance of stress relieving rest. It is an art, and those with a real talent for it can take it to mind boggling levels. I have a friend who believes that exercise of any kind is just bad. He says, "If you never use it, it will never wear out." On that we do not agree. But I believe that one should not over use the body or the mind all the time either. At times I might appear to be doing nothing at all. But that is deceptive. I am not lazy or indolent or shiftless or any of the many other derogatory terms that some might want to cast in my direction. I am developing my art. Some with less talent might start to fidgit after just a few moments of idleness. But when I am really in fine form, I can sit for an hour or more doing absolutely nothing at all. I may idly push myself back and forth in the swing very gently, but not with any real enthusiasm for it. Mostly I'm just sitting. I'm observing how my body feels, how my lungs expand and contract, how my belly moves when I breathe. I'm noticing how often I blink. I'm watching how the cloud formations change and how they might move at different speeds at different elevations. I'm wondering how many squirrels could possibly cross my yard in a single day, or how many chipmunks must now live under my deck. I'm wondering where that jet is going and where it came from. I'm observing all the ways I can move my fingers and how amazing the human hand really is. On a deeper level I am thinking about whether I have any "baggage" that I am still carrying around and how best to get rid of it. I'm trying to weigh the difference between what I want, what I think I need and what I REALLY need. I watch the trees for signs of change in the seasons. I think about how they
offer so much and yet they too appear to be doing nothing much at all.

The value of this art is beyond measure really. It is about being here...now. Not thinking about past or future, but fully absorbing right now. Some folks never stop to smell the roses, others only smell them. I want to observe them and marvel. And in todays hectic world, there just never seems to be enough time for that.

It's all about the music! Don't miss it.

2007-11-26T21:35:00.000-05:00

The message is so clear and so simple. But eloquent. Click on this link.

http://souljerky.com/_media/swf/alan_watts_life.swf

Senior Moments? Eat more fish

2007-11-22T12:10:00.001-05:00

Recent studies in Norway indicate that those who eat more fish, up to 80 grams per day, have significantly improved cognitive function than those who do not. Can't find your keys...again? Have some fish. Doesn't seem to matter if you eat lean or fatty fish, fresh, smoked, canned. All seem to have the same beneficial effect on brain function. However, merely taking fish oil in supplement gel caps does NOT seem to have any positive effect. The positives associated with fish oil are not to be ignored however, because they do have a very important role to play in cardiac health. As always though, it is better to get as much of the necessary nutrients as possible in your diet rather than as supplements. Supplements most often should be used to fill any gaps in your dietary supply of nutrients.

Having read many of the reports over the last few years concerning such problems as mercury poisoning and the accumulation of pesticides and fertilizers in fish, caution is still advised. Where possible, eat only wild caught fish. Even then, you may want to limit your fish intake to two or three meals a week. When in doubt, moderation in all things is still a reasonable guideline.

CRUISE SHIPS: Activities for Seniors

2007-11-19T21:12:00.000-05:00

Increasing in age does not mean what it used to mean in the past. In many cases, the popular stereotype of senior citizens relaxing in a nursing home is thrown right out the window. As medical developments have helped to increase life expectancy, more and more senior citizens are making the decision to get out and enjoy life.
If you are a senior citizen, you are likely to know that there are a number of fun and exciting activities that await you. One of those activities includes travel. Each year, a large number of senior citizens are take a vacation getaway. These getaways may include guided tours, traveling with friends, or vacationing solo. If you are looking for extra excitement, you may want to consider vacationing aboard a cruise ship.
All around the world, there are a large number of cruise lines. These cruises lines often operate multiple ships. With a large number of cruise ships, you are sure to find a number of cruise ships that will fit your needs. When selecting a cruise ship, you are encouraged to examine the services, facilities, and activities that can be found onboard. Many of theses activates are geared to senior citizens. Read more - (used by permission)http://www.zimbio.com/Travel+Cruises/articles/77/Cruise+Ships+Activities+Seniors

Brain Power

2007-11-16T05:46:00.000-05:00

Here's a little exercise to stimulate the gray matter. The following is a quote from a well-known person, but it is typed backwards. Take a minute to figure it out.

eraepsekahS mailliW- .loof a eb ot flesmih swonk nam esiw a tub ,esiw eb ot flesmih skniht loof A

Submit quotes of your own. Challenge your mind with little variations in your normal routine. Brush your teeth with the "opposite" hand. Practice writing with the "opposite" hand.

The "Silver Tsunami"?

2007-11-14T15:14:00.000-05:00

The following article is featured on EzineArticles.com
http://EzineArticles.com/?id=854024

The leading edge of what the US government has referred to as the Silver Tsunami will begin to be eligible for retirement beginning next January. Baby boomers are beginning to reach retirement age and nearly 80 million people retiring over the next 20 years will totally wreck our economy. OR NOT! You see, the generation right before ours was sold on the idea of working to 62 or 65 and then retiring and living a life of leisure. The baby boomer generation is not necessarily buying into that scenario en masse. In fact, a significant percentage of baby boomers have no plans to retire any time soon. Many will work long beyond the age of 65, either full time or part time. More and more US employers are beginning to realize that they will need these folks to keep working beyond the traditional retirement age because there are not enough Gen X'rs to fill all those jobs. And Generation...Y, for lack of a better identifier, those in the generation right behind X, are a much smaller group as well. Right after the baby boom years there was a sort of "baby bust" when far fewer babies were born. So as that group matures, there will be considerable holes in the work force. Perhaps the tension between baby boomers and younger workers won't amount to much after all. Neither group set up the situation that we are all facing, when a very small number of people is expected to support a very large crowd of retirees. It now looks like at least some of the problem will be relieved by boomers working and contributing for several years beyond "normal retirement", and therefore not claiming Social Security benefits for a number of additional years.

Some few companies are already taking advantage of changes in the law that allow them to accomodate older workers taking retirement in phases, or steps. First a reduction in the number of hours per day or days per week they are working, while still retaining full benefits, will keep a lot of seniors employed and happy, and not burdening the system. Some will continue to work because they simply wouldn't know what to do with themselves otherwise. Some will continue to work because they cannot see any other way to continue to take care of their basic needs. Some will change jobs and schedules to try something new, or something they have long been interested in. These variations are not being factored into all the gloom and doom headlines concerning Social Security and baby boomers, so perhaps the problem will not be quite as overwhelming as we are being led to believe. In any case, any baby boomer who has been paying attention and who has had any choice in the matter, is not counting on Social Security as their sole means of support in retirement. Others really have little choice.
Next week this blog will have a poll concerning such matters, and we hope you will participate. For now, please leave your comments below. What plans, if any, do you have for retirement?

Set Them Free

2007-11-13T18:40:00.000-05:00

Baby boomers are not all in this condition, but a surprising number are financially strapped and ill-prepared for retirement. Many failed to plan very far ahead, while others just never expected to face some of the financial stresses they now must deal with. And of course, many have always placed an inordinate faith in Social Security to provide their retirement funding. Well, we should by now all realize that in the United States at least, social security is not all that secure. There is a large, and growing, imbalance between the number of people still working and contributing to the system, and the number of people being supported by the system. As for personal finances, one of the common threads that seems to weave its way thru many conversations among baby boomers is just how much money they have spent, and for many, are still spending, helping to support their grown children who should by now be supporting themselves. I'm not talking about the situation that arises in a family that requires the stop-gap sort of support that we should all be willing to give where possible. What I'm talking about is the ongoing, week after week, month after month, year after year drain on your finances trying to get a child to finally "get their act together." Well, at some point you must realize and accept that you may not really be helping them at all. More likely, you are enabling them to continue to be less-than-responsible for themselves. And if you are caught up in this dilemma, you are certainly not helping your own chances of supporting yourself to a reasonable extent in your post-retirement years. To some extent, you may be preparing yourself to be more dependent upon some social services, and there simply are no guarantees that those services will have the funds to provide even your basic needs. So, perhaps you need to close your child's bottomless bank account with you. Set them free to learn to fly on their own. And certainly tell them why. At what age should they be flying on their own? That's something only you (and they) could possibly decide.

Technorati

2007-11-12T20:14:00.000-05:00

Technorati Profile

Hoodia - we need your input!

2007-11-09T17:36:00.000-05:00

Hoodia is being vigorously marketed for weight loss. With your input and our research, let's put together some useful information for all our boomers. Please enter your experiences and opinions by clicking on the comments tab below. By the way, thanks for your e-mails! I answer every one personally. Your suggestions and input will make this blog a hit.
Thanks again!

COMPUTER VIRUS WARNING

2007-11-09T05:13:00.000-05:00

Before you open any attachments from anyone, go to this link and read the warnings. There are many hoax virus warnings going around. This one is very real.
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp

If not today, when?

2007-11-08T04:43:00.000-05:00

I've heard folks say things like "I'm going to quit smoking", or "I need to lose a few pounds", or "I'm going to start exercising more". The problem is that talking and doing are not necessarily connected. It might feel good to say these things. It might make you feel better to have such good intentions. It might even be a great conversation starter, since lots of people have the same good intentions. My question for you today is, if it is something GOOD for you, what exactly are you waiting for? Each day has 24 hours for us to spend or waste, just like money. Each of those hours will go by and disappear forever, no matter what you may have intended. Today is the perfect day to DO something. Take the first step. If you know you should lose a few pounds and you want to lose a few pounds, then today, do something about it. And tomorrow do something else about it. You probably don't need anyone to tell you WHAT to do. You just need to tell yourself to DO it. Ask yourself each morning "What can I do today that will take me closer to my important goals?" Then go do it. Can you lose 30 pounds today? No. But you can make choices today that will bring that goal closer. Skip the cream cheese on your bagel this morning and feel good about yourself all day!

9.8 million boomers in Canada!

2007-11-07T16:27:00.000-05:00

We'd like to hear from you too! In each of the four major "baby boomer" countries, the experiences are different. In Canada, during the two decades following WWII, the birthrate was around 20 births per 1000 population and people were marrying at a fairly young age. But after that it dropped and the average age at marriage went up. People are waiting longer to marry and having fewer children. How will that impact life in Canada over the next few decades? A report in 2003 indicated that it would open up tremendous job opportunities as boomers retired. At the same time, there would be shortages of qualified workers in many fields. We welcome your comments.

Aussie Boomers!!

2007-11-07T16:20:00.001-05:00

We know that there are about 5 million of you, and we'd like to hear from you. Post your comments or share your new posts with us. Around the globe, boomers have so much in common. Share your experiences with us.

Stevia

2007-11-07T15:59:00.000-05:00

If you have personally used Stevia in any form as a sugar substitute, please tell us about it here. How long have you used it? In what form (powder, liquid.)? Did you notice a taste difference? Will you continue to use it? Do you cook or bake with it? Do family members notice?

This is the sort of information we hope to be able to share on this blog. Stevia has been around for quite awhile, but only recently found it's way into the grocery stores. What do we know about long-term use? Is it a viable sugar substitute for diabetics?

Just post your comments by clicking on the comment link below.

Noni Juice, Mangosteen Juice, etc.

2007-11-07T15:49:00.001-05:00

Just a word of caution concerning any and all of these types of products. I've done a fair bit of reading and found nothing but anecdotal support for the belief that these have any beneficial properties that would in any way justify the outrageous prices being charged. The old saying "follow the money" certainly applies here. In fact, there is so much money to be made that some firms have thrown ethics out the window with their business practices and marketing techniques. So, forewarned is forearmed. Before you spend a dime on any new and miraculous juice, do your own research. So far I have not found a single repeatable study to indicate that these juices are any better than the ones you can find in the grocery store for a few dollars a quart. In fact, there are now some that have spirolina, wheat grass, barley juice, and many others, that have been proven to have significant health benefits. If you have published information regarding any of these high-priced multi-level marketing juices, that either supports their use or refutes their exaggerated claims, please share it with all of us here. Post your comment or e-mail the information. Thanks!!

TFA's = Trans Fatty Acids - How much is safe?

2007-11-03T19:10:00.000-04:00

The cold hard fact is that the safe daily human intake is 0 mg. That's right. ZERO milligrams.
Maybe the math you learned in school was different, but apparently the government thinks that .5 = 0. Until January of this year, manufacturers were allowed to say "Contains No Trans Fatty Acids" on the front of a food product, so long as they actually had less than .5 per serving.
The problem with that is that many of us don't stop with the recommended single serving. If the serving size on the label says 2 cookies, and you eat 6, then you've eaten three times as much of everything on the ingredient label. So, what's the harm in TFA's? you ask. Well, they tend to harden cell walls so that vital nutrients cannot pass thru, and they tend to make it difficult or impossible for the cells to communicate with each other, say in the event of an infection. The result can be that the body loses its ability to protect itself to some degree. They also have an effect on a normal function called apoptosis. We'll talk about that at another time. For now, just consider going BACK to butter in moderation instead of margarine. Get rid of the solidified fats called shortening (no brand names mentioned, but you all know what I'm referring to), and look on every food label for the words "partially hydrogenated...." anything. Those are all trans fatty acids. Interestingly, the incidence of heart disease in the United States seems to have increased at about the same pace as two other factors: the growth of the interstate highway system, and the increase of the use of hydrogenated oils to preserve foods. So we reduced the number of eggs we eat, we switched from butter to margarine, cut down on dairy products, and we started shipping all sorts of baked goods from Maine to California and everywhere in between because we no longer had to worry so much about shelf life. And as a result, we have an even greater problem with cardiovascular problems than ever before. We would all be better off purchasing food that DOES eventually go bad, because the very thing that preserves the food is killing us. Please add your comments. Are you already aware? Or is this your first exposure to this issue.

Are we keeping up?

2007-11-01T15:41:00.000-04:00

Does it really matter whether your income puts you in the top brackets? Not really. The great equalizer is time. Some folks whose income never amounted to a lot have accomplished some wonderful things by using it wisely. Still, it can be helpful to know how we stack up, so here are some statistics for you. 2004 is the most recent available.

FINANCIAL SNAPSHOT: AGES 50-59
Median household income $60,586
Median net worth $182,300
Percent with home equity 80.70%
Percent with credit card debt 50.30%
Median amount owed on cards $2,700
Percent with traditional pensions 38.10%
Percent with minor children 40.30%
Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2004

Where are all the Baby Boomers?

2007-10-31T20:00:00.000-04:00

The term Baby Boomer refers only to those born from 1945 or 46 to 1965 or 66. But did you know that it also refers only to those born in Australia, England, Canada, and the United States?
Today folks from that group live and work all over the world. This is the largest defined group in the world not having solely to do with a specific race or nationality. They present some interesting challenges and opportunities for society in the years ahead.

Hazards of Chlorine

2007-10-31T09:08:00.000-04:00

Chlorine in the drinking water is still a relatively new concept, and the unintended consequences have only come to light in the last two decades. The problem is that the "light" hasn't been very bright. One EPA report back in 1994 got very little attention in the media, and I doubt if you ever heard a thing about it. The problem is not just in the water you drink. If you have chlorine in the water entering your house, it is also what you shower with. The skin absorption of chlorine as well as the inhalation of chlorine vapors when you shower may also have unfortunate consequences. This link will help you get a basic understanding of the risks. http://www.holistichealthtools.com/chlorine.html
At a minimum, it may be wise to put a small filter on your faucet and filter all the water you drink or cook with. You can also buy a shower head/filter that will remove most or all of the chlorine and other heavy metals from your shower. Another alternative is a "whole house" filter system placed on the incoming supply line. Whatever your solution, remember that filters must periodically be changed or you'll wind up right back where you started. Also, a bit of research reveals that there have been many reports published concerning the chlorine risks to swimmers, especially those who compete and are constantly training in the pool. Greatest risks for swimmers are those super-chlorinated indoor pools, because they not only have the skin absorption but the steamy vapors common to the venues. These are not "the sky is falling!" alarmist warnings. The risks are well documented. Abnormally high chlorine exposure is a very common link when bladder cancer (and other organ cancers) studies tabulate their results.

Sugar or Sucralose? You decide.

2007-10-30T15:12:00.000-04:00

Too much suger can cause a multitude of health problems over time. We've all heard that.
But is sucralose a safe alternative? You decide. Sucralose is made by chlorinating sugar.
Hmm. Doesn't sound so good to me. In fact, I'd rather just exercise a little self control and stick with sugar minus the chlorine. Remember the old saying, "All things in moderation." If you have experiences to share concerning this, please do.

Tired all the time?

2007-10-30T15:08:00.000-04:00

Ask your doctor or nutritionist about CoEnzymeQ10. If you take medication to reduce cholesterol, chances are it is reducing the level of CoQ10 in your body as well. No wonder you don't have any energy. CoQ10 is produced naturally by the body and has much to do with energy at the cell level. A supplement may be just what you need.

Every 8 Seconds

2007-10-29T15:51:00.000-04:00

Every eight seconds another boomer turns 60. You're not alone. In fact, with more than 75 million boomers in the US alone, you can have a tremendous impact on the problems or opportunities the rest of the country is frustrated by. Think of the influence you could have on things like TV programming, advertising, the news media, public services, and more. There is nothing wrong with politely but firmly expressing your opinion to key decision makers like television programmers, for example. If enough other boomers do so, maybe some of the gratuituous sex, greed, and violence can be removed. Got any other ideas. Please share them here.

Its a Fact!

2007-10-29T15:49:00.000-04:00

The amount of water you waste by letting it run while brushing your teeth is about the same amount that a family of four has to survive on all day in a number of third world countries.

Water shortage? Tips and tricks

2007-10-29T15:44:00.001-04:00

If you have some house plants or a select few plantings outside but want to conserve water, try placing a plastic bucket in your shower. The water you catch while showering would have gone down the drain anyway. Use it to do a bit of watering. If the soaps and shampoos you use in the shower don't harm you, they likely will not harm any plants either. Do you have other suggestions? Please share them here.

Life begins at...

2007-10-26T20:55:00.000-04:00

You're not getting older, you're getting better! Remember that clever bit of marketing? Well, if you don't wait until you're 90 to start taking care of yourself, it might actually be true. As we age, things begin to wear out, ache, or just quit. But by maintaining this vehicle we call the human body, it can serve us well into the so-called "golden years". Like your car, once you get a lot of miles on the body, you need to do a bit more maintenance. Use high-mileage oil in your car, and supplements in your body.

Now, I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV, but I've been reading and writing about health and fitness for a number of years. For several years now I've done a little guest spot on a morning radio show in Australia where we talk about these issues and a wide array of other topics, including global warming, greenhouse gases (is that even a proper term?), drought, floods, aging, and anything else that pops up in the news. I also occasionally get to read one of my essays. Maybe I can publish some of them here. They are relatively short and sometimes good for a chuckle. In any case I don't give medical advice, and I urge you to consult with a licensed physician, nutritionist, psychologist, chiropractor, or other professional before you go off and do something totally new. What I express here and on my website are merely opinions based on things I've read or heard in a seminar, or discovered in my research.

Now back to the topic at hand for a moment. Life begins at conception, according to all the science I've been able to examine. But this thing about life beginning at 50 has always fascinated me. I couldn't wait for my life to begin. I rushed headlong into 5o. And then I discovered that life really begins at whatever age you finally realize just how precious it is, and begin to take care of it like the wonderful gift it is. I remember several years ago laughing when a friend of mine who was in failing health said "If I had realized I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." Very funny at the time, but there is an eloquent truth there too. Please, take good care of yourself. Be responsible for your own well being. No one will do the job as well as you can.