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I am excited to announce that I have joined the Panel of Experts for the Fresh Start after Divorce Community. A community designed to be a 24/7 Resource Center and a support system for women during and after divorce.

For more information on how to join the community, go to www.FreshStartAfterDivorce.com. Start your journey with renewed passion and clear direction.

In Korea, there is a trend to experience a “well death”. At some universities, students  experience a mock funeral by reading their wills and then are placed in coffins that are closed and sprinkled with dirt. 15 minutes later, they are opened and “reborn”.  The thought is that you will then experience life on a different level. In order to live well, you must die well.  Continue Reading »

New research on vegetables and aging gives mothers another reason to say “I told you so.” It found that eating vegetables appears to help keep the brain young and may slow the mental decline sometimes associated with growing old.

On measures of mental sharpness, older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger at the end of the six-year study than those who ate few or no vegetables.

Study: Vegetables may keep brains young

By Stephanie Schupska University of Georgia
As female baby boomers crawl toward menopause and retirement, eating disorders among this age group have started to rise.

Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, Inc., reports that some speculate the eating disorder increase in this group, born from 1946 until 1964, is because they’ve consistently considered image to be of major importance.

Connie Crawley, a University of Georgia Cooperative Extension expert, agrees. “Women of all ages are very conscious of their bodies and sometimes have a very negative opinion of their bodies,” she said. “Now that the baby boomers are aging, their body changes are really kind of hitting them harder than probably the previous generation. So now there are women who are becoming much more concerned about the normal changes in body fat distribution that come with age.”

Crawley is a UGA Extension nutrition and health specialist and a registered dietitian. She says many people focus on the physical symptoms of an eating disorder, but “the self-esteem issues, the coping skills, dealing with all the changes as one gets older,” are the real issues.

Read more…

Recent research is showing that those wonderful heart healthy omega 3 fatty acids that are found in fish, may indeed be helpful to our brains - especially in the areas of depression, schizophrenia, substance abuse and attention deficit.

While at this point, I would not recommend using Omega 3’s alone for your depression, it certainly cannot do you harm and will definitely  help our hearts.

(Research was perfromed at the University of Pittsburgh)

OlderWiserWomen presents:
How to Have a Clutter-Free, Stress-less Holiday Season with
Julie Bestry, Professional Organizer

Julie will offer tips for organizing your holidays to maximize serenity and minimize stress, including:

• selecting clutter-free holidays gifts that make the process easier and more fun for the giver and the recipient
• simplifying holiday planning and rituals to focus on what really matters
• saving your sanity by creating a simple system to get everything essential done and still have time to reflect on the meaning and joys of the season

Date: December 8, 2005
Time: 3pm Pacific/4pm Mountain/5pm Central/6pm Eastern
Cost: Zero
Replay: Yes, will be sent to those who have registered

Invite your friends to sign up too!

Register for this lively hour call long by sending a blank email to HolidayClass@OlderWiserWomen.com . You will receive an email back with date, time, phone number and your access code.

Looking forward to hearing you on the call!

Barbara C. Phillips, MN, NP
www.OlderWiserWomen.com
www.ActingYourAge.com

This is just another reason you will want to attend the free teleseminar on December 8th! Keep your eyes here for sign up information.

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SUNDAY, Nov. 27 (HealthDay News) — The demands of the season are upon you. And all that socializing, present shopping, decorating and feast preparations can turn this time of year into a stress fest that can affect your health.
“If you are not careful, the holidays take an emotional toll on the body, ranging from increased blood pressure to weakening your immune system,” said Gina Kearney, a holistic nurse practitioner and site manager at the Integrative Care Center, affiliated with the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.
Though it’s been widely known that stress can boost a person’s heart rate and reduce the ability to fight colds, a new study says that even cholesterol levels can be affected.

Continue reading….

Memory Tricks
Nothing helps you get ahead quicker than a good memory. Whether you’re trying to remember the name of the guy you just met, a state capital, or complex sets of business data, these simple tricks can help you improve your memory skills.

1. Chunking
2. Using Mnemonics
3. Visual Cues
4. Reading with a purpose

Read the entire article for explaination and examples.

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Guides/?article=homeworkmemorytricks

Remember the 1985 song “That’s what Friends are For”? Read on for another very important reason for having friends.

Barbara C. Phillips, NP
OlderWiserWomen.com

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Health News Article | Reuters.com:
By Merritt McKinney

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Looking for the secret of a long life? Look closely at your friends. New research suggests that having a strong network of friends helps people live longer.

‘Older people with better social networks with friends were less likely to die over a 10-year follow-up period than older people with poorer friends networks,’ Lynne C. Giles of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, told Reuters Health.

But in what may come as a surprising finding to older people who rely on their children and other relatives, having a large network of relatives was not associated with longer life, Giles and her colleagues report in the July issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

‘Of course, that is not to say that social networks with children and other relatives are not important in many other ways,’ Giles said.

Study after study has shown that elderly people who are connected with lots of people tend to live longer lives. However, few studies have examined whether different types of relationships — with friends, partners, children and other relatives — have different effects on longevity.

Giles’s team set out to examine the relationship between various types of social networks and longevity in a group of almost 1,500 Australians who were at least 70 years old. Volunteers answered questions about their social networks and then were followed for 10 years.

The researchers took into account several factors that could have influenced how long a person lived, including sex, age, health and smoking status.

What the study showed was that older people who reported better social networks of friends were more likely to be alive at the end of the study than people with fewer friends. Similarly, people who reported strong networks of confidants — people with whom participants shared a close, confiding relationship — tended to live longer.

But relationships with children and relatives did not have an effect on survival in the study.

Giles and her team are not sure why friends seemed to help people live longer. They speculate that friends may influence people to engage in more healthy behavior, such as not smoking or not drinking too much. Another possibility, according to the researchers, is that friends may help boost people’s self-esteem.

‘The list of answers to this question is potentially long and complex,’ according to Dr. Carlos F. Mendes de Leon, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who is the author of an editorial that accompanies the study. Continued … ”

It is possible that having a strong network of friends may have beneficial physical effects, the reverse of the negative physical effect stress can have, according to Mendes de Leon.

As for the lack of a relationship between longer life and family relationships, Mendes de Leon suggests that it may reflect the tendency of people to rely on family members when their health begins to decline.

Whatever the reason for the beneficial effects of friends, Giles believes that “strategies to promote the establishment and maintenance of these relationships in later life warrant additional attention.”

SOURCE: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, July 2005.

BBC NEWS | Health | ‘Alcohol worse for female brains’

Excerpt:

Women who were heavy drinkers lost the same amount of brain volume as the drinking men, but over a much shorter period of alcohol dependence.

Lead author Professor Karl Mann said although men generally drink more alcohol, women are probably develop alcohol dependence and adverse consequences more readily.

Other alcohol-related disorders, such as heart problems, depression and liver disease, also occurred earlier in women than men, he said.
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I believe it is important for women to understand the effects alcohol can have on them. If you drink alcohol, honestly consider how much you drink and take a look at your options to improve your health.

Barbara C. Phillips, NP
www.OlderWiserWomen.com