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HEALTH - SENIORS
I received a dramatic phone call from my husband a few years back. He was at work, had bent over and sneezed, couldn't straighten up and was on his way to the hospital for an MRI. Sound familiar? If you're over 50 chances are you know someone this has had a similar experience. It's just another wonderful benefit of aging. The disks in our vertebrae begin to lose their viscosity and all of a sudden, you have a slipped or bulging disk. Well, fellow Boomers, here are the facts. Low back pain disables 5 million people in the U.S. and forces people to lose 93 million work days each year.
When my editor told me that this issue's focus was on health and fitness, it only seemed fitting to address the most important issue in aging: mental health. My husband lovingly refers to me as a poster child for mental health. I'm not sure that's a compliment, but I do know that as we age our mental health issues become more pronounced and certainly affect us physically, too. My quest for the holy grail of mental health ended shortly; the solution is humor and laugher, plain and simple.
Funny, isn't it, that we associate so many feelings with our heart when our brain is really the center of our emotions? Well, in some of us, that is.
I recently read a statistic that was staggering. Cardiovascular disease is the number-one killer of women (that's right, Numero Uno), killing over 500,000 of us each year. That's more than the next seven causes of death combined, including all forms of cancer. So, why aren't we more proactive about it?
I recently read a statistic that was staggering. Cardiovascular disease is the number-one killer of women (that's right, Numero Uno), killing over 500,000 of us each year. That's more than the next seven causes of death combined, including all forms of cancer. So, why aren't we more proactive about it?
"To sleep, perchance to dream, ay, that's the rub." Sleep has been the topic of many poems and plays throughout the ages, as the dear Bard said so aptly in "Hamlet." And sleep seems to be the one thing most of us do not get enough of.
I recently read that Jack Lalanne, who recently turned 90, last had dessert in 1929. Great way to start off my holiday column now, isn't it? 'Tis the season for eggnog, decadent cakes, wonderful cookies, candies and nut breads. Somehow the thought of a low-carb, low-fat, high-protein holiday season just doesn't cut it. Oh Jack, eat your healthy, cholesterol-free heart out!
My friend Cyndi in Santa Barbara recently sent me an e-mail (gloatingly) informing me she had been carded when she went to the store in sweats and no makeup. Let me preface this by saying that Cyndi is tall, lanky and looks a lot younger than her 48 years. I have begged and bribed cashiers to ask for my driver's license, to no avail. And now here's gorgeous Cyndi getting carded. Of course, one recourse might be to move to Santa Barbara. The clerks are probably trained to ask for identification so the wealthy women will come back again and again.
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