Have you seen the headlines? Yup, that’s right! That morning caffeine fix might just be the ticket to a longer life, at least according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week. Mind you, whether or not daily consumption of coffee directly causes a longer life or simply associated with it has yet to be determined. But this is truly the type of news that all of us can use, right?!

In this study, researchers from the National Cancer Institute examined data compiled from over 220,00 men and 173,000 women who participated in a larger diet and health study. They analyzed intake of a broad variety of foods ranging from fruits and vegetables to meat and other source of saturated fat, and coffee consumption was assessed terms of frequency, i.e. 0 to 6 or more cups daily.

Although coffee is rich in antioxidants, its consumption has been linked with increases in cholesterol and blood pressure levels. And, in this particular pool of individuals, coffee drinkers were likelier than nondrinkers to smoke cigarettes, have more than three drinks (alcoholic) a day and eat more red meat.

And yet, after adjusting for all of these confounders — in particular smoking — researchers found that drinking coffee actually appeared to prolong life. In fact, men who drank 6 or more cups a day had a 10% lower risk of dying and women who drank this much had a 15% lower risk of dying compared to non-coffee drinkers. Even better?  It didn’t appear to matter whether or not the coffee was caffeinated or decaffeinated.

The researchers say that their findings add evidence to other data that show inverse associations between coffee drinking and risk of diabetes, stroke and death from inflammatory diseases. Importantly, they caution that even though smokers appeared to gain the same benefits as nonsmokers, lowered risk from dying appeared to be the strongest amongst participants who never smoked or had stopped smoking.

So, should you start drinking more coffee than ever? Well, this study is an observational study and one that relied on self-reports. Therefore cause and effect is inconclusive. However, in this extremely large pool of men and women, drinking coffee more frequently appeared to confer a moderate degree of protection from dying of heart and respiratory disease, stroke, injuries, accidents and infections. Of course, more coffee may mean less sleep and more jitters, depending on your constitution and the degree of caffeine. Regardless, it appears that more is less when it comes to dying.

Got life? Have another cup!

Bet you were going to say 30, right? Or 25?!

According to a recently published paper in the journal Advances in Life Course Research, the definition of midlife (and 50) isn’t as cut and dry as you may have thought. However, the findings likely won’t surprise you; gender plays a huge role in perception. And women? They don’t like to believe that they’ve reached the milestone…yet.

The researchers, who harken from Florida State University’s Pepper Institute on Aging say that most ‘life course’ studies pay little attention to subjective factors that affect our perceptions, such as how young or how old we feel, financial stability or health. So, they looked at longitudinal data that was compiled during two time periods: 1995-1996 and 2004-2006 and evaluated it on the basis of age in years (aka chronological age), gender, race, socioeconomic status and age identity (how old or young survey participants felt). Then they took a deeper dive and analyzed education levels, income, physical and mental health, and marriage status and parenthood status (biological or adopted children and adult children status).

The findings are pretty interesting:

• Our conception of the timing of life change with age and shift as our lives and our perceptions shifts. BUT…women and older individuals tend to elongate life and postpone the middle age time marker.
• Men believe that midlife starts as much as three years earlier for women; this is consistent with the societal perception that when it comes to aging there is a double standard. Women, on the other hand, tend to postpone their idealization of middle age — at least for their female peers — as long as two years.
• If you feel old, you tend to believe that life is shorter (and that middle age occurs earlier).  And if you are young? Middle age starts a heck of a lot earlier than older adults believe it does.
• Finances and poverty tends to shorten life. And shorten life perceptions.
• If you are in poor health, began your family at a very young age, are divorced or living without parents? You are likelier than individuals who don’t fit into these categories to think of your life as shorter. And as middle age occurring a hell of a lot earlier.

It all sounds very clinical, doesn’t it? But the key take away is that life is not necessarily a straight and narrow path. And more importantly? As women, we are often viewed as middle aged perhaps before we are prepared to view ourselves there. Mostly? If you/we feel young, more power to you/us. Those life bookends all depend on you. Associate Professor Anne Barrett and a key researcher in this study believes that the majority of people believe that middle age begins at 44 and ends at 60.

It’s what you make it. And to heck with that individual next to you who is believes that fifty is not the new…[fill in the blank]. But truly? Fifty is the new fifty. And what you make of it. I’m about to turn 51 in less than a week. Look out world; I am really only me and that me feels pretty darn young on some days.

P,  as in “progesterone.”

I get a lot of questions on Flashfree about progesterone and whether or not it’s use is as dangerous as estrogen and combined hormone replacement. I have stayed away from the subject for some time now because the evidence has been pretty scarce, at least as far as natural progesterone goes.

Fortunately, a new review has appeared that provides a comfort level for a brief discussion. But is all progesterone alike? A good place to start, right?

Progesterone is a reproductive hormone produced after ovulation and during pregnancy; it is also produced by the nervous system and adrenal glands. It occurs naturally. Progestins are synthetic and manufactured outside the body and work differently depending on their structure. Progestins are often combined with estrogen therapy.

Although experts know that levels of progesterone decline as a woman transitions to menopause, the relation between this decrease and symptoms has not been well understood, thereby limiting practitioner’s — at least those who specialize in Western therapy — ability to make decisions regarding its use in ameliorating symptoms.

Following is what researchers learned by scouring the literature:

• In most cases, progesterone is prescribed as an oral pill ranging from less than 20 mg daily to more than 200 mg daily, or as a patch that delivers more than 50 mg daily. It is also available as a topical cream (the most reliable standardized formulation is manufactured by Emerita (Pro-Gest).
• High dose, oral progesterone and patch forms appear to provide the greatest benefits for lessening hot flashes.
• How well women respond to progesterone patches appear to be related to how severe their symptoms are; those women with the worst symptoms appear to gain the most benefit.
• Use of progesterone may help reduce bone loss, although more studies are needed.
• Use of topical progesterone may possibly help reduce the effects of aging on the skin by increasing elasticity.
• The oral forms have also been shown to hell women whose sleep is disrupted by increasing time spent asleep.
• Most importantly, low dose progesterone treatment, including oral agents, does not appear to increase heart disease risk. Even better? There is some indication that when combined with estrogen, progesterone may counteract negative effects int terms of breast cancer risk. Progesterone formulations also appear to be well tolerated, will only minimal side effects associated with their use.

The key take-away is the natural progestogens (progesterone) appear to safely alleviate  many of the most troubling menopausal symptoms. The rub here is that the evidence for this be fit comes from small studies. Still, it is refreshing to learn that there are safe hormonal options for women who desire that route.

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I love vintage advertising, namely because it’s so medically and politically inappropriate for today’s times.

I stumbled across this doosie in my weekly research:

Barbituates – they’re not for the 60s any longer. In fact, even Wyeth Pharma got ‘down’ on this triple barb combination first produced in 1936 and taken off the market in 1996. That’s sixty years of drug haze-induced. hypnotic sleep, including Marilyn Monroe’s. But I digress.

Ethobral was also used for menopausal women in dire need of a few ‘zzzs – check out the small copy above the graphic:

Sleep for the menopausal patient. 

I put a spell on you? Indeed. A spell called Ethobral. I wonder how many women were hooked on these baby barbs in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s!

What are the odds that I would run across yet another cooling product? Seriously, it’s like a flash went off in someone’s brain that every menopausal woman in the United States needed to solve her issues through cooling. Mind you, I do believe that thermoregulation is an interesting strategy to combat the body’s out of whack thermometer. But when does the menopausosphere  reach its saturation point?

Evidently, not yet.

This week, I bring you the Polar Pillow, guaranteed to “calm, cool and soothe you into the best sleep of your life” (as well as soothe hot flashes and night sweats).

This nifty 12+ pound pillow contains cooling gel infused with micro air beads and according to the manufacturer, works on its own by absorbing coolness from the air and then releasing it upon contact. The ‘science’ behind the Polar Pillow is an abstract presented at the Associated Professional Sleep Society 2011 meeting. In this study, researchers asked 12 people with insomnia to wear a cap that contained circulating water at cooling and varied temperatures. With the cap on, study participants with sleep issues took an average of 13 minutes to fall asleep (compared to 16 minutes for the healthy comparators) and they slept for about 89% of the time that they were in bed. Theoretically, the benefits are related to the fact that the brain (namely the frontal lobe) remains too hot to sleep and by cooling it down, one can turn down processes that keep the brain active and alert.

So, where do the night sweats and flashes come in?

They don’t.

At least not in the small pilot research that was conducted thus far.

However, rather than asking you to take my cynical word on the Polar Pillow, I decided to ask my friend Richard Laermer (who I inadvertently learned has used the pillow) to weigh in. And while Richard told me that he likes it because he’s a “hot” sleeper and it does cool him, he said that “it’s ugly and it seems to smell sometimes,” adding that it’s not him since he’s “fairly clean!” But here’s the rub:

” There are really really rough pointy edges that almost blinded my partner,” said Richard. “Go figure. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t recommend it…we can do better for a hundred bucks.” (Richard received it as a gift.)

So, let’s see:

• It’s ugly
• It smells
• It has really rough pointy edges making its utility in bed dangerous for one’s partner

And while it may cool the average hot sleeper, it has not actually been shown to help menopausal women. (Clearly, Richard is neither a women or menopausal.) And, despite being the target  hot sleeper, Richard still wouldn’t recommend the Polar Pillow.

My take away?

Thermal is in. Cool is the new black. Enough said.

You may recall that about a week ago, I took the mick out of ColdFront, a new personal cooling system designed to cool those hot flashes. The day that the post ran, ColdFront inventor and Personally Cool Founder Susie Hades posted a comment with an offer to provide with me a sample so that I could try it for myself. Although I turned Susie’s offer down, I did reach out to her via email and phone and we had a lengthy conversation about her vision and the product. And you know what? I was impressed by her philosophy and approach, so much so that I offered her a guest spot on Flashfree.

Part of my mission is to reveal products and agents that work and that don’t, to uncover snake oil approaches and provide data-driven alternative solutions. Mostly though, I believe that information is truly power AND empowering, and that by educating ourselves, we are in a better position to play a role in driving and shaping decisions about our health and our healthcare.

Susie’s goal is not unlike mine and I encourage you to show some love. And Susie? I am glad that we had a chance to exchange ideas and start what is certain to be more than one conversation. We need more of those exchanges if we are ever going to move menopause out from under the Menopause Industrial Complex and into the hands of women who want viable and safe solutions.

I founded Personally Cool in 2007 because I couldn’t find what I call an “and” product for hot flash relief: drug-free; AND effective; AND safe; AND convenient; AND discreet; AND elegant; AND eco- and wallet-friendly.

I must have bought and tried one of almost every type of hot flash relief product available with the exception of bio-identical or hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Even though the efficacy was unquestionable, the data tell a larger story for HRT.

In 2002, increased risks of breast cancer, stroke, and a number of other side effects were widely expressed across various studies. As a result, prescriptions of Prempro (a leading Wyeth/Pfizer HRT product) dropped 80% by the fourth quarter of 2003.[1] Women, frightened and confused by the findings of these studies, wanted other choices.

Our own research (both initial and a just-completed survey of 300 women) confirms that women are still looking for safe alternatives to HRT. We also learned a number of other interesting facts – from how often and with what severity women hot flash, to how they handle them. Two poignant realities were derived from this last point. First, more than 80% of the women we surveyed had either never used HRT or they stopped at the advice of doctors or of their own volition. Second, more than 55% of the women currently experiencing hot flashes – given the choices they’ve faced until now – deliberately choose to do nothing at all. In other words, they literally sweat them out.

I invented coldfront to be the “AND” product that other products aren’t, and I am proud to say that it is. A test panel conducted late in our product development to make sure that we got it right was critically helpful. We abandoned certain product features that we loved but that our intended audience didn’t. After testing coldfront for three days, over 80% of our panelists reported that they’d never use anything other than coldfront to relieve their hot flashes. This was huge!

Yes, coldfront is great at cooling a hot flash, but we couldn’t ignore larger forces at work – the enormous need for psychological and social relief from the stigma of menopause. Although we’re living up to a third of our lives post-menopause, our society still sees menopausal women in an unflattering light. Among women my age, there is a growing desire to reassert control over our own lives and bodies, and to put a stop to allowing other people to define for us what this time of life should mean. Personally Cool wants to change the perception of midlife women and create our own conversation. When we say, “we make menopause cool,” we mean it – on a number of levels!

With coldfront, we are encouraging women to take charge of their own relief, which – in our case (pun totally intended!) – is no farther away than your handbag and no more complicated than what we already know works – cold – especially when it’s in the palm of your hand. It is so discreet and convenient that it allows most women to get through a hot flash without letting anyone know they’ve even had one.

And this, ultimately, is what sets coldfront apart from every other cold therapy product available today:

1. coldfront was designed in every way to be compatible with the life of a menopausal woman who defines herself, simply, as a woman. It is the least intrusive, most effective, complete, and portable cold therapy system for hot flashing women on the market.
2. coldfront can go right from the freezer to your bag because it was engineered to be condensation-free. Your bag, phone, or iPad will not get wet; you won’t be uncomfortable; and you don’t have to worry about batteries or enlarging your “carbon footprint.”
3. Each woman experiences hot flashes differently and in different parts of their bodies. The two palm packs are formulated to last the average length of a hot flash, 1-3 minutes, and they can go wherever a woman needs them. After replacing them back in the case, within 20 minutes they will be cool again and ready for use.
4. Hot flashes make you sweat! The antimicrobial super absorbent cloth wicks away moisture and is easily washed.
5. Your day is long, and you’re not always near a freezer. coldfront will continue re-cooling the palm packs for up to 12 hours.
6. Unlike one-time use cold packs, which can create over 600 pounds of toxic waste over the course of five hot-flashing years, and literally cost thousands of dollars, coldfront is phthalate-free, non-toxic, and costs less than $100 over the life of the product.
7. Everything in the system is reusable and is designed to last.

Liz, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your community and to speak about our product. Because women all experience menopause and hot flashes differently, we know that coldfront won’t be for everyone. But, we believe deeply that coldfront is something special – not just because it works, but because it speaks to a societal issue we believe we can change.

Here’s to a new kind of coldfront moving in!

Susie

When you think ‘Bootcamp,’ you probably think fitness or the military, right? But what about a boot camp geared towards helping you grow professionally as a speaker, boost your self-confidence or develop new skills? All within the safety and support of two of your most trusted colleagues or friends? That’s what is so intriguing about my longtime friend Jill Foster’s Unleash Your Talk program.

I contacted Jill when I first heard about Unleash Your Talk, namely because I was so intrigued. And when we started to delve into exactly what it was, format resonated deeply — not only because of the deep respect I have for Jill and her skills — but also because it reflected on of my long time goals to encourage women to support one another.

No matter our age, situation, relationship status, creed, religion, or color we rely on our friendships and networks to raise us up and bring us out of the darkness into the light, to fully blossom, thrive and grow, to create, express and love.

• Data from a study published in Psychological Review in 2000 suggests that women’s inherent response to stress is to ‘tend and befriend’ rather than ‘fight or flight;’ in other words, there is a biologically-defined strategy or pattern that involves caring for offspring, joining social groups, and gravitating towards friends under stressful circumstances. This is driven, at least in part, by the release of the hormone oxytocin, which coupled with endogenous opioids and other sex hormones, promotes maternal behavior as an alternative to the male-oriented fight and flee response.
• Findings from the Nurses Health Study have also shown that friendships help prevent the development of physical impairment and facilitate a more joyful existence. What’s more, having a strong social network can lower blood pressure and heart rate and improve cholesterol levels.

The bottom line is that Mama Nature has provided us with a built-in prompt to maintain those ever important bonds. Our inherent tendency to nurture completes the picture. It appears that as women, we possess the strongest alternative strategy to aging in existence: our friends.

So, let’s get back to Unleash your Talk.  Jill has taken the premise of achieving long term gains in health and wellbeing, i.e. strengthening friendships and support networks and has applied the same philosophy to public speaking. Unleash Your Talk provides a means for women who want to explore new facets and avenues for growth in their professional lives to do so in an intimate, supportive environment. The ultimate goal is not only to identify your personal, professional beliefs that drive you but also to provide a strategy that allows you to share those skills with others in a meaningful fashion. And Jills says that whether or not participants select a four-hour or full-day intensive, they will achieve, at minimum, a stronger ability to assert and present themselves in a public setting,an approach to communicate persuasively in power situations (e.g. client/boss scenarios) and means to break through the barriers that keep them from achieving success, whatever that looks like (e.g. what if I look or sound imperfect?). The more intensive full day also includes three take-away speaker proposals, a video content/performance project and review, and ongoing access to a coach for 30 days.

For women in midlife, reentering the job force, changing careers or delving into more professional speaking roles can be paralyzing. I love that Jill has taken the basic tenets of health and wellness, i.e. support, caring for one another, trust and communication, and applied them to a strategy to empower and enable. When we think about it, most of us have one or two people we bounce ideas off of consistently, whether they are personally or professionally-oriented. Unleash Your Talk promotes the medical and social concept of trusted peers and utilizes this dynamic as a means to move us forward in a professional, structured capacity.

Jill says that “public speech is public power.” I would like to add that public speech is personally empowering and personal power.

Check out this recap of a bootcamp that Jill conducted a few weeks ago. Isn’t it time to unleash your power? And Unleash your Talk?

Based in the Washington, DC region, she is a speechwriter and delivery coach, helping people develop distinct message & voice as public speakers.

About Jill…

Cited by ForbesWoman as one of 30 women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter, Jill Foster is principal of Live Your Talk. Based in the Washington, DC region, she is a speechwriter and delivery coach, helping people develop distinct message & voice as public speakers. Believing strong communities come from strong conversations (and public speaking skill) — Jill works with award-winning entrepreneurs, CEOs, and innovators makin’ it happen as public speakers — on stages likeTED and TEDx, Ignite, plus a variety of keynotes around the globe. A social technology advocate, her work has been in conversation in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Guardian UK, Washingtonian Magazine, and a range of media outlets.

[Image: http://bedrock.deadsquid.com/information/profiles/index.php?profile=wilma]

You need Hot Girls Pearls! 

I’m giving full credit to my BBFF Amy Zimmerman for this fantabulous find. And if you are wondering about these baubles, they’re for all you flashing fashionista babes who think being cool and confident isn’t just a cliche. In fact, Hot Girls Pearls contain an icy gel to make sure that you won’t be sweating at the office or during a dinner date. Going out for a hot night on the town? The only thing that’s gonna be hotter than you sister is that woman next to you without her pearls! That is, if you dig the “Wilma Flintstone” look (as Amy points out). And lordy lord, how much do these babies weigh, anyhow? Just looking at them causes me to break into a sweat.

Still, I haven’t tried them and you know what they say “don’t knock it til you try it.’ Personally, this isn’t my look and big pearls are just baubles gone bad in my book.

Yikes! This one’s got ‘burstable’ written all over it.

p.s. show Amy some love and visit her wonderful blog post about these babies…

Watercress and exercise? Who would have thunk that this peppery wonder veg may help to protect against cellular damage that results from high level exercise? Mind you, this initial information comes from a miniscule study of 10 men but it may carry some important information to file for the future.

Watercress is one of the oldest green vegetables known to man and evidently can be traced back to ancient Greece and Persia. But regardless of its history, this salad green is a good source of vitamins C, A, E and K, and is rich in antioxidants, so much so that when ingested, it may help to reduce oxygen free radicals that can cause damage to cells, including those that are generated during extreme, exhaustive exercise (i.e. to the point near fatigue).

In this study, which appears in the British Journal of Nutrition, 10 healthy men in their early 20s ate roughly 3 ounces of fresh watercress in a single sitting for eight weeks. They then got on a treadmill and were tested to exhaustion.  Thereafter, they stopped eating watercress for another 8 weeks and repeated the test. Both times, researchers drew blood. In the second half of the study, half the men stopped eating watercress, and half ate the same amount as before with water, rested for two hours and then completed the same exercise test while the other half didn’t eat watercress but did drink water and repeated the test.

The results?

Exercising to exhaustion did induce damage to the men’s DNA. However, eating watercress appeared to reduce the degree and extent of the damage, both in the short and long-term and men who did not eat the watercress in the second half of the study had more DNA damage than those who did. What’s more, watercress did not have an accumulative effect; in fact, eating it just two hours prior to exercise appeared to boost its protective properties.

In a related press release, lead researcher Dr. Mark Fogarty explains that “the increased demand on the body for energy can create a build-up of free radicals which can damage our DNA. What we’ve found is that consuming a relatively small amount of watercress each day can help raise the levels of important antioxidant vitamins which may help protect our bodies, and allow us to enjoy the rewards of keeping fit.”

In fact, watercress is one of the most antioxidant-rich green leafy vegetables available. Its protective effect  may be the result of high concentrations of sulfur-containing nutrients known as glucosinolates (which are also found in broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage) and carotenoids (plant pigments that the body converts to vitamin A that also protect against free radical damage). Watercress is also known to boost the beneficial action of other antioxidants, including beta-carotene, alpha-tocopherol and ascorbic acid.

Clearly, watercress needs to be studied in greater numbers of men and women and in different age groups. In the meantime? Eating watercress can’t hurt and may even help with much needed post-exercise repair.

I know a few fine women with birthdays this month. Bet you do too. So in their honour, I am simply saying, if you can’t find any matches…

It’s Friday! Time for some folly and fun!