Posts Tagged "aging"

Use it or lose it – more on osteoporosis

Posted by Liz on Jul 15, 2011 in bone health, osteoporosis | 0 comments

Bone health and osteoporosis. Yes, I know I keep writing about it. The reason is simple: you ARE at risk of losing your bone density and strength, especially if you are a woman over the age of 35. And if you are 50 or older? You have as much as a 40% risk of suffering a fracture due to osteoporosis during the rest of your lifetime. Moreover, during the first five years after menopause, women can experience as much as a 30% loss of bone density.

I can’t emphasize it enough. The risk is there. It is inevitable. However, you can reduce your risk a little bit by incorporating the following message into your life:

Use it. Or lose it.

In other words, you need to move.

The latest news out of the esteemed Cochrane Collaboration (an international organization that extensively reviews medical research) is that exercise specifically designed to promote bone growth and preserve existing bone mass, namely the type that places mechanical stress on the body, is necessary.  The newly-published review of 43, scientifically sound (i.e. randomized, controlled studies) is an update of a review that appeared in 2000. Of the 4,320 postmenopausal women included in the reviewed trials:

• Those who engaged in any form of exercise had slightly less (0.85%) bone loss than women who did not.
• Those who performed combinations of exercise types, i.e. walking, jogging, dancing, progressive resistance training, vibration platform had, on average, as much as 3.2% less bone loss than those who did not exercise.
• Non-weight bearing exercise, such as progressive resistance strength training targeting the lower limbs, was shown to slightly preserve bone mineral density at the hip, while the combination of exercise, per above, was most beneficial for slightly preserving bone mineral density at the spine. (Did you know that spine and hip fractures are the most common among women with osteoporosis?)

The conclusions are pretty clear: long periods of inactivity lead to reduced bone mass.However, here is a simple way to mitigate some of this loss, albeit slightly, and even help reduce the costly effects of osteoporosis: Exercise.

The best exercises? Those that stress or mechanically load the bones, meaning the type that make the bones support body weight or resist movement, such as aerobic or strength training, walking, or Tai Chi.

Ultimately, your goal is prevent osteoporosis from occurring in the first place. While some amount of bone loss is part and parcel with aging, resistance training is critical.

Move it or lose it.

An age-old problem: public relations as science. Guest post by Dr. Brian Hughes

Posted by Liz on Jul 8, 2011 in aging, women's health | 2 comments

When I saw this post by Dr. Brian Hughes, an academic psychologist at the National University of Ireland in Galway, I knew that I needed to run it on Flashfree. In it, Brian discusses how ageism has become the advocacy project of the month, a hook to attract attention to a specific cause by feeding into the fears and anxiety that often accompany aging. Not only are women a primary target for these campaigns, but by couching the propaganda within a scientific context, it can be difficult to discern truth from fiction.

Although this post is a bit more verbose than what I typically run, I felt it was important to include it in its entirety. I hope that you’ll show Brian some love and spread the word, not only about the post but also his work on The Science Bit Blog. Many thanks Brian, for lending me your prose this week.

There is no doubt that in our increasingly image-conscious and superficially focused times, age discrimination presents a creeping civil rights problem. The tendency to judge the professional and social worth of a person on the basis of his or her apparent age can present artificial barriers to employment and respect. Moreover, age discrimination can dramatically compound sex discrimination, as such problems are often felt more acutely by older women. Therefore, it is no surprise to see recurring campaigns to promote positive attitudes towards people right across the age-spectrum, run by charitable organizations such as Age UK as well as by publications such as Mature Times.

As with any advocacy campaign, new research that provides insights into age discrimination must be seen as important. Scientifically gathered empirical evidence can be crucial in debunking negative stereotypes and in bolstering positive claims. But, alas, not all research is the same – some is little more than advertising propaganda promulgated by capitalists who see vulnerable social groups as lucrative target markets, whose concerns about social exclusion simply make them more likely to spend their money on a solution.

Unfortunately, it appears that advocacy groups are often ill-equipped to identify the difference.

Have a look at this recent lead story on the Mature Times website: “Women feel ‘invisible’ at the age of 46, a study has revealed“. The story describes new research conducted in the UK that pinpoints 46 as the age when women’s confidence begins to “plummet“. According to the research, this is how women begin to feel after they reach that age:

…two thirds beginning to hate what they see in the mirror – most blaming the fact that they now start to have grey hair, feel uncomfortable in their clothes and have to wear numerous pairs of glasses…

…more than a quarter of women feel embarrassed at having to pull out their reading glasses in restaurants and supermarkets as they feel it’s a clear sign they are older, knocking their confidence, and adding to their ‘invisibility’…

The survey also revealed that men no longer hold doors open for four in ten, and two thirds say that they never get offered a seat in public transport. A third of women surveyed said their partners were ageing better than they were which annoyed them.

According to the Daily Mail, which covered the study in their Femail section, the research was based data gathered from more than 2,000 British women aged 40 or older. By any standards this is a very large sample. The Mail were also able to describe more of the findings:

Grey hairs, failing vision and putting on weight all make some women feel increasingly less confident as they grown older…

The researchers found that women in their mid-40s also begin to fret that their views and opinions are no longer valid…by the time they reach their mid-50s, the majority of women say they no longer receive admiring glances from strangers or compliments from the opposite sex…

…This coupled with the steady increase of over 50s requiring glasses for reading, shopping and driving add to that feeling of being older and more “invisible”…

And just in case we were having difficulty visualising a woman over the age of 46, the Mail also provide a photograph of this nice lady to illustrate what they are talking about:

Hmmm. So what’s the problem with all of this then? Surely such findings can be seen as a reasonable depiction of the experiences of British women, given that over 2,000 of them were surveyed for the study? And do they not convey many of the subtle ways in which women (and presumably men also) can become ostracized by mainstream society once they reach a certain age?

The big problem is that this is not an orthodox research study. It was not presented for publication in the scientific literature, or — as far as we can reasonably surmise — peer-reviewed prior to dissemination by independent editors (or even by a research ethics review committee). In fact, this is nothing more than market research, which means its findings are likely to be skewed by the motivations of its sponsors. And in this case, the group who commissioned the research – Clarivu – have a hugely conspicuous conflict of interest.

Clarivu are a commercial company that specialize in vision correction. They perform refractive lens exchange procedures in which the eye’s natural lens is replaced with a synthetic alternative in order to improve failing vision. Their method offers an alternative to laser eye surgery, and is effective for both short- or long-sightedness. In other words, Clarivu are in the business of offering people an alternative to wearing glasses. Yes, glasses! Those things that are repeatedly described by British women as part of the reason they feel “invisible“. And guess what — Clarivu’s services are aimed specifically at people over the age of 50. Just the age at which women begin to realise the extent to which wearing glasses is ruining their lives!

Of course, Clarivu are not a charitable organization — they do all this in return for cash. In fact, in return for UK£3,395 (around US$5,400). And that’s just forone eye. Assuming you’d like to be able to see out of both eyes rather than just the one, the full treatment will set you back the bones of £7,000/$11,000.

One amusing feature of how these results were promulgated in the media can be inferred from Clarivu’s own website. Have a look at the testimonialpresented on their website’s front page:

Look! It’s the SAME LADY as was in the Daily Mail! So, in other words, not only did Clarivu’s PR department circulate copy for publication in newspapers such as the Daily Mail, but they also provided the illustrative photographs. And, by all appearances, the Mail just transferred the lot into their own newspaper without much questioning or analysis.

What we have here is a clear case of a conflict of interest. Can we rely on the media to be an effective gatekeeper in promoting objective reporting on newly claimed research findings? Can we really rely on these findings from Clarivuthat the aging process is an emotionally negative psychological experience? Is it merely a coincidence that this large-scale survey confirms Clarivu’s marketing stance that women over 46 should seek alternatives to wearing glasses? Unfortunately, given that Clarivu have a financial interest in particular research outcomes, we simply cannot rule out the possibility of bias in their execution, analysis, or reporting of these results.

This isn’t to say that we cannot rely on Clarivu to display impeccable moral integrity. We have no evidence that they are anything other than honest in their activities. It’s just that human nature itself will create the possibility of bias whenever conflicts of interest arise. This is why the scientific method promotes principles like objectivity and replication, as well as associated practices, such as blinding and peer-review.

It is disappointing that the study was reported as actual news in the mainstream media. It is particularly ironic that it was reported as news in outlets that would ordinarily see themselves as championing the cause of, on the one hand, older adults, and on the other hand, women. This is because these so-called research findings do little to advance the cause of marginalized groups. In fact, they help maintain the social exclusion of older adults, and older women in particular, by perpetuating negative stereotypes about the aging process.

So when Mature Times report this as news, they are essentially promoting age-discrimination; and when the Daily Mail’s Femail section do so, they are encouraging readers to judge the value of women based on superficialattributes, such as whether they wear glasses after they turn 46.

Age-old problems indeed…

I got all my sisters with me…redux

Posted by Liz on May 27, 2011 in Inspiration, mind-body therapy | 0 comments

A celebratory year… Guest post by Laura Bowman

Posted by Liz on May 20, 2011 in Inspiration | 2 comments

I’ve run across two ponds to get away from turning 50. But evidently, you can run but you can’t hide. At least according to my friend Laura, who’s agreed to guest post while I’m gone.

Enjoy and thanks Laura!

It’s been a big year for celebrations; mostly 50^th birthday celebrations.  Yup, the big five-oh.  Fifty, freakin’ fifty.  I’m a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to celebrations, so it’s also been an uncomfortable year.  Discomfort has found me wondering why we have to make such a big deal about birthdays and other milestones.  Much to my surprise, my pondering has landed me on the favorable side of the whole celebration issue.  Here’s why. Forget year, it’s been a whole decade for disappointments – Disappointments in career, disappointing health news, disappointments in relationships.  If it really is true that negative emotions impact our health, shorten our life span, etc., then I need a big ole load of counteractive medicine.

I don’t think I’m in the minority here.  As we grow older, the stakes are higher.  We become parents, bosses, and caretakers.  Our knees fail.  Our memory goes.   We’re passed over for a promotion.  By someone younger. The calls come in.  Someone is very sick, and it’s not a cold.  Some days, there aren’t enough cupcakes in the world to make us feel better.

So on those occasions when we mark an important event, be it a birthday or just making it through a work week, it seems important to form some sort of ceremony that lifts our hearts and makes us smile, or better yet, laugh.

It shouldn’t be news to you that laughter appears to really be the best medicine.  If the Mayo Clinic is to be believed  laughter not only reduces stress, long term laughter may improve immune systems and ease pain!  (There, that’s my little health plug, since this is, after all, a health related blog.)

However, the health angle isn’t enough to get me psyched about a celebration.  For me, the attraction of the celebration is to focus on something positive and to create a memory that will get me through hard times.  I want reasons to laugh hard, from my belly, until tears are rolling down my eyes.  I want the intangible comfort that comes from being with people who really know you and still want to be with you.  I want, if only for a fleeting moment of time, to believe that it really is all about me and the people I love.  That’s gotta be good for me – right?

Of course, planning a celebration can be a stressor all in itself.  At least, that’s my favorite reason for avoiding the whole party.   So, I’m starting a list of very simple tried and true ideas that I’ve picked up from my friends–most of who have fearlessly faced down fifty:

• There is always the dinner party – cater or reserve at a restaurant if you can.
• Organize a kayaking, hiking, biking, or other activity adventure
• Participate in a community event (one friend got a bunch of girlfriends together to walk the Cooper River Bridge in Charleston – over 6 miles one way)
• Learn something you new – I’ve tried cross country skiing and one year plan to take a cooking class.
• Go someplace you’ve always wanted to go (now who do we know that’s going to Spain?)
• Play miniature golf!!  Or go to a batting cage!!!  Or both!!
• One friend wants to dress up in thrift store evening gowns and go sing at a karaoke bar; we haven’t indulged her yet.  Maybe you will.
• Remember slumber parties??
• And, of course, there’s everyone’s favorite – the spa…

Feel free to add to the list.  What do you do to celebrate?  And Liz, Happy Fifty – Fifty, fantabulous fifty!!!  May your celebrations last all year long.

About the author…

Laura Bowman is a health policy analyst with the Department of Veterans Affairs and, like so many of us, trying to figure out how fifty came so fast and how best to approach the next third of her life.

Creativity and the menopause

Posted by Liz on May 9, 2011 in Inspiration | 1 comment

I happened upon a tweet by my friend Amy Palko over the weekend:

“What effect does menopause have on our perception of ourselves as intrinsically creative beings?”

For those of you who don’t know Amy, she is a writer, educator and creator of a wonderful site called Bloom by Moon, where she explores the moon cycles and the goddess narratives in order to help women reconnect with their sacred feminine. Those of you who are regular readers of this blog may recall that Amy graced the pages of Flashfree last year and contributed a beautiful piece on acknowledging our inner dark goddesses, a piece that remains close to my heart.

So, back to Amy’s question on creativity and menopause.

Menopause, as those of you who are in the throes, are swirling around the “peri” or fully past it know, is time of great change, not only in women’s reproductive systems but also in their lives. Although Western society in particular uses menopause as an overall characterization of an aging woman, it actually goes much deeper than surface and physical changes. In fact, it is possible that the emotional changes that coincide with the transition may be what fuels creativity, particularly as a woman moves deeper into her life and her ‘self.’

Consider that creativity is not an easily defined construct, nor does does it manifest the same in everyone. Just like menopause.

Consequently, perhaps we should change the paradigm, shake up the system, shake up our systems, our beliefs, our viewpoints and our “selves.” Isn’t it time to view the transition the start of the second half of a life’s journey, where the lines that have been etched over the time period leading up to menopause become more jagged, looser and flexible, and where women finally start to allow themselves to “be” who they are rather than who and how others define them? Is it possible that menopause is an opportunity to expand how women view the world and their roles as opposed to shrinking into a self-imposed myopic state of nothing? Can hormone-driven mood swings and depression be spun into threads of passion, ink on paper, colours on a canvas, wherever and whenever the creative impulse strikes? Can we take the anger we feel as parts our bodies betray us and use that anger to fight harder for better, less dangerous menopausal remedies?

As I said, creativity takes many forms.

The opportunities are endless.

I am literally standing on the precipice of age 50 and swirling in the ‘peri’ of the menopause. I have made a promise to myself to take the reins and to stop asking for permission. I am ready to control as much of my journey as I can. My creativity may ebb and flow but at the end of the day, I’d like to believe that it is what I will use to guide the rest of my life’s journey.

You too, have a creative self and a creative soul just ready to emerge. What is it telling you? Moreover, when are you going to take charge of it and allow it unleash its beauty on the world?

Let it out. There really is no other choice.