Gaia: 50+stars*~Half a century & more on earth - Healthy after fifty

Volunteer for VITAL

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:03:22 GMT

If you are a woman at least 65 or older or a man 60 or older, consider volunteering for the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL). You must have NO history of heart attack, stroke, or cancer (except non-melanoma skin cancer).

The goal: to find out if Vitamin D3 (2,000 IU a day) and EPA plus DHA (1,000 mg a day total) can lower the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses.

"It's an opportunity to make an enormous contribution and to get important answers", says lead investigator JoAnn Manson of the Harvard Medical School.

You will get pills and forms by mail, so you don't need to visit Boston to participate. If you qualify, you will be assigned to take Vitamin D, fish oil, both, or a placebo, but you won't know which you are getting. You'll still be able to take some vitamins on your own. "We will ask people to limit Vitamin D supplements to about 800 IU a day", says Manson. "But you wouldn't be able to take fish oil on your own since that would dilute our results."

Are these supplements safe?

"We will be doing extensive safety monitoring - checking hospitalizations, clinic visits, symptoms, bleeding problems, and other adverse event outcomes", says Manson. "But we don't expect any safety concerns with these doses." The Institute of Medicine considers 2,000 IU of Vitamin D safe, and the American Heart Association recommends 1,000 mg a day of EPA and DHA for people with heart disease.

To learn more, go to www.vitalstudy.org or call 1-800-388-3963.

The study will begin in January 2010.

For those (like me) that don't qualify (I'm too young) -

> 700 to 1,000 IU of Vitamin D a day is safe

> You will usually only fin 40 to 150 IU of Vitamin D in fortified foods

> 2 servings of fatty fish (Salmon, Trout, Sardines) per week supplies about 400 to 500 mg of EPA + DHA per day

> Take 1,000 mg of EPA + DHA a day if you have heart disease. You need about 3,000 mg of fish oil to get 1,000 mg of EPA + DHA.

This information is courtesy of Nutrition Action Healthletter, Nov 2009, a publication of Center for Science in the Public Interest

Re: Whole foods-bananas

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:25:06 GMT

the goodness of bananas

If you want a quick fix for flagging energy levels there's no better snack than a banana.
Containing three natural sugars - sucrose, fructose and glucose - combined with fiber, a banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.
Research has proved that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes. But energy isn't the only way a banana can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions making it a must to add to your daily diet.
Anaemia: High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of haemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anaemia.
Blood Pressure: This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it the perfect food for helping to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.
Brain Power: 200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.
Constipation: High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.
Depression: According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain trypotophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.
Hangovers: One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.
Heart-Burn: Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body so if you suffer from heart-burn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.
Morning Sickness: Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.
Mosquito Bites: Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.
Nerves: Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system. Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and crisps. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods such as bananas every two hours to keep levels steady.
PMS: Forget the pills, eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.
Ulcers: The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronic ulcer cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.
Temperature Control: Many other cultures see bananas as a 'cooling' fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand, for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Bananas can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer, trypotophan.
Smoking: Bananas can also help people trying to give up smoking, as the high levels of Vitamin C, A1, B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal.
Stress: Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water-balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be re-balanced with the help of a high-potassium banana snack.
Strokes: According to research in 'The New England Journal of Medicine', eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%!
Warts: Those keen on natural alternatives swear that, if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of banana skin and place it on the wart, with the yellow side out. Carefully hold the skin in place with a plaster or surgical tape! So you see a banana really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around.
So maybe its time to change that well-know phrase so that we say, "A Banana a day keeps the doctor away!"

Whole foods

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:24:25 GMT

There are some foods that are considered to be 'whole' - you just have one and get a lot of nutrition.

Any examples?

Re: What's most important to stay healthy after 50?

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:02:17 GMT

The iliotibials can also be overstressed especially if your bicycle shoe/pedal/cleat is misaligned. Or if one leg is appreciably longer/shorter than the other and you overcompensate with the other leg. Look up forefoot Varus. Look up LeMond LeWedge.

Re: Keeping the brain tuned

http://benchside.gaia.com — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:31:08 GMT

I play Jeopardy most nights and it does help me with memory .
Playing bridge is also good.Reading books will allow comprehension to stay intact.Being relaxed,being mindful and learning new things all help.
Keeping a daily journal will allow you to have better recall.

Re: Keeping the brain tuned

http://HolEssence.gaia.com — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:14:48 GMT

This is a great discussion thread. And remember, the brain needs lots of water to stay fully hydrated. So drink up -- water, water and more water -- cheers!

Re: What's most important to stay healthy after 50?

http://HolEssence.gaia.com — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:54:15 GMT

"Staying optimistic and looking forward. Learning to let go of past hurts and mishaps." Well said, roamer.

Re: What's most important to stay healthy after 50?

http://benchside.gaia.com — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:47:26 GMT

Staying optimistic and looking forward.Learning to let go of past hurts and mishaps.Strangely enough,as this topic was being disussed with so much interest and feeling,I had the good fortune of attending the 93rd birthday of a friend who is a professor emeritus of Architecture.His love of life,passion about his profession,the love and admiration of his friends all were amazing.As the champagne flowed so did all the love in the room.He sang in avibrant voice-You are nobody till somebody loves you-find somebody to love you etc etc.

Re: What's most important to stay healthy after 50?

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:28:56 GMT

Weight. Maintain healthy weight.
You never see obese centenarians.
Approximately two thirds of Americans are overweight, even obese. You reduce all sorts of health problems by being your "correct" weight. Less heart attacks, less colon cancer, less diabetes, etc, etc. Less stress on your knees, hips, bones and joints.

Re: Keeping the brain tuned

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:21:25 GMT

There is a direct correlation between your physical health and brain health.
Especially circulation. The brain needs blood, lots of blood. Poor circulation in other parts of our bodies is indicative of poor circulation in our brains, If you have a clogged heart, you probably have a clogged brain.

If you would like to know more about brain fitness, read some of Dr. Amen's books or watch his seminars on PBS.
http://www.amenclinics.com/my-brain-health/

Re: Links- Health Resources from Different Groups on Gaia

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:04:11 GMT

Realizing Health has articles on health, wellness, yoga, tai chi, exercise, environment, eco, sustainability, green, organic, holistic and natural ideals.

Links- Health Resources from Different Groups on Gaia

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:03:27 GMT

There are groups around Gaia that can help with us staying healthy after fifty.

We can still discuss age-specifc issues in this room; while we take the help of other groups as well.

Remembering that health is physical, mental, emotional, relational--holistic.

If you know of groups around Gaia where discussions are taking place about health, please link to them here. We can then discuss on other threads in this room.

If possible, let's keep this thread for announcing the discussions and not for actual discussions.

A Beautiful Enclosure

http://inlink2009.gaia.com — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:09:15 GMT

She’s only a bird in a guilded cage,
A beautiful sight to see.
You may think she’s happy and free from care,
She’s not though she seems to be.
‘Tis sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth cannot mate with age.
Her beauty was sold for an old man’s gold,
She’s a bird in a guilded cage.

Her space, limited by lawyers in an ivory tower imposing their will on the American people, in America’s Declaration of Independence, we read, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that is, rights that can’t be transferred or otherwise taken away for any cause, no matter how good they may be thought to be.

"All men have the right to live their own lives. All men have the right to defend themselves, to choose, to conceive, assist, or support. All men have the right to own organizations, churches, and governments. All men have the right to think and talk freely, to write freely their own opinions, to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others. All men have the right to the creation of their own kind, that the souls of men have the rights of men, that the study of the mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religions or condoned in nonreligious fields, and that no agency less than God shall have the right to set aside these rights overtly or covertly." This is the creed of the Church of Scientology, whose creed was authored by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church’s founder. Hubbard was a twentieth century world traveler, student of religions, and nuclear scientist who came to a scientific understanding of God’s presence in our lives.

In Scientology’s creed, and in the Declaration of Independence, God is not separate from the state. Man is separated from reason and nature’s law by authoritarians in control of the law. Hitler was legal. Under "lawful" in Black’s Law Dictionary, "The principal distinction between the terms ‘lawful’ and ‘legal’ is that the former contemplates the substance of the law, the latter the form of law. . . The latter goes no further than to denote compliance with positive, technical, or formal rules. . ."
In the Nuremberg trials, Nazi officials did not get away with saying they were only following the law, in other words, they were "legal." Mankind possesses higher than man’s particular form of law. A Latino woman is no better judge of the law than a white male. America’s lawyers don’t know this: mankind has the right to own governments; governments do not have the right to own men, nor the fruits of their labor. Men have the right, as stated in the Declaration, to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In reference to the pursuit of happiness, in Justice Jackson’s opinion (one of the Nuremberg trial judges), speaking for the majority of the U. S. Supreme Court in West VA State Board of Education v. Barnette, "fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." Do tell! One of America’s Founding Fathers, John Adams: "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God anarchy and tyranny commence." America’s lawyers don’t know the law. Their’s is humbug.

Speaking of humbug, Justice Brandeis, a Roosevelt appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court declared: "Property is only a means. It has been a frequent error of our Court that they have made the means the end." America’s lawyers have it wrong. Property may not be the means to someone’s more desirable end. It begins and ends with individual rights. Today’s courts do not have the rights they claim to have, nor do Abraham’s religions have it rights they claim. "Those who instill guilt in children and the frail of mind, and those who have inflicted pain, inflamed hatred, and fostered wars in the name of this or that religion(or the law) sadly these have indeed been legion," wrote brain doctor and quantum physicist Evan Harris Walker in The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life.

Walker has been accused by the establishment of trying to smuggle God into science. And America’s lawyers, living in the ancient past, don’t know the law as told by the cutting edge of science. Wrote Walker in Chapter 18, "A God for Tomorrow," "Matter, objects—a physical domain exists that is governed by immutable laws—but these laws leave open a range of happenings. . .this trinity of man, mind, and God—of brain, consciousness, and collective will—it has only been with the advent of quantum theory that we have discovered proof that we exist as something more than pieces of matter. In the development of quantum theory (as laid out by nuclear physicist Hubbard in Scientology’s creed), the observer emerges as a co-equal in the foundry of creation. . . The tests of Bell’s theorem have shown us that objective reality as it has been conceived is not the true fabric of reality. The observer interacts with matter. Consciousness, the substance of this new-found reality (the substance of the law as well) that defines the observer has fundamental existence. It is the quantum mind that is the basic reality."

Unaware of the basic reality of life, the American lawyer’s law conveniently—and lawlessly—separates the law from religion and science, and as well the people from their lawful rights. So how now brown cow? It all goes back to the idea that all men have the rights stated in America’s Declaration of Independence. America’s lawyers don’t accept this as law. Thus America’s current law, a beautiful enclosure, her beauty was sold for an old man’s gold, she’s a bird in a guilded cage. Too bad. . . So sad, America.

Re: Healthy Heart & Exercise

http://HolEssence.gaia.com — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:13:49 GMT

Good job Emily - it sounds like you are taking action steps that are positive, uplifting, constructive and healing!

Re: Healthy Heart & Exercise

http://celebrantemily.gaia.com — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:25:56 GMT

Thanks Laurie and Meenakshi. Don't worry, I don't have to go back to the cardiologist for another year. I just have to do better with my cardio in the meanwhile. I used to take yoga classes but the 90-min. classes were too long for me. And it's the cardio I have to work on. This morning I put on the heart monitor Mark gave me last Christmas and walked as fast as I could, taking all the hills I used to avoid!

I should have said I'm on a low-animal fat diet, because I do eat lots of nuts, cook and make salad dressing with olive oil, and I love avocado! I also indulge in some dark chocolate EVERY day, and I do eat some chicken, fish, etc.

Anyway, thanks both of you for your input!

Re: How do you let go what no longer serves you?

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:40:19 GMT

Talk of a really painful way to let go what no longer serves you - by substituting one pain for another; and then needing to let go of that one!

I have found the technique of "clearing the mind" an easy an effective way to start ridding ourselves of patterns and blocks.

Re: How do you let go what no longer serves you?

http://benchside.gaia.com — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:02:45 GMT

Yes,the wrist band technique was really used few yrs back-I dont know about now---it was mostly for recurring thoughts and so on.

Re: How do you let go what no longer serves you?

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:22:51 GMT

once one works thru the emotions associated with the particular memory,it probably will fade away

You know, this is an important point. We often say that we can let go, forgive, not hold resentments, but we won't forget. Perhaps it will be as you say, roamer.

Do psychologists really use that jolt to the wrist or were you joking and I didn't realize?

Re: Healthy Heart & Exercise

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:20:22 GMT

Last I checked, the heart was okay! Did the doctor suggest further tests or did he ask you to build up stamina? I ask because a friend of ours recently had a stress test and fortunately, his doc suggested a thalium test that in his case led to a bypass. It's not everyone who will need it; but in this case, I have to say the test was life-saving for him.

I have found that qigong [which is 'like' taichi] has reversed uterine conditions in me; so yes- like Laurie, I'm all for these ancient ways of exercising.

I hope that once you get over the funk, and not blame yourself because after all you are exercising , you find the right thing to do, dear friend.

Re: Healthy Heart & Exercise

http://HolEssence.gaia.com — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:10:53 GMT

Hi Emily - I will be 52 years old in a couple of weeks. I'm 5 ft. 8 inches tall and weight 135 pounds. You asked if anyone has advice for people who hate to exercise? My exercise of choice is Tai Chi (which I recently blogged about HERE).

As a Holistic Health Practitioner I do NOT eat a low fat diet -- we need a certain amount of healthy fat (i.e., almonds, avocadoes, etc). The food I ingest is healthy and natural (organic whenever possible) -- with an eye to portion control. Three days a week I additionally brisk walk (3-miles in 60 minutes, or a 20-minute mile). Another fantastic form of exercise is Yoga!