Brain Fitness

Somehow, starting Saturday morning while I was working at my computer, I got stuck on PBS television. The woman who was presenting caught my attention because she was talking about menopause and life after. For as intelligent as I feel I am when it comes to health and wellness issues, this is one area I know hardly anything about. Oh I know the typical stuff that every woman knows (myths and all), but I really don’t know too much about the physiology of it all. Having gone through menopause, I knew what worked for me, but the information I put to use on my own body was more accidental than scientific. She gave a lot of helpful information, a lot of warm fuzzies regarding menopause, and what I thought to be a little “way out there” stuff. One of the things that especially caught my attention was what she had to say about weightloss and exercise. It was all stuff I had sort of figured out for myself the hard way, but it was encouraging to have an authority figure back what I generally thought.

Right after her was Dr. Roizen, Oprah Winfrey’s new guru of medicine. As definitely “geeky” as this guy seems to be, I do feel like he truly loves medicine and has a lot of cutting edge info. He also has a pretty good sense of humor which makes the dry subject of health a little more enjoyable. He is really good about suggesting a lot of things can be fixed by diet and exercise. Since I don’t trust doctors at all when it comes to pills, I am glad to see this.

Between these two, I had learned a couple of good effects exercise has on us that I didn’t realize, and then came the icing on the cake. A brain doctor who believes you can “change your brain and change your life”. Most of the stuff I had ever heard was that as we age our brain cell productivity is pretty much non-existent. The best we could hope for was to just keep what we have from dieing out. According to him and the latest findings with all the new technology we have, growing our brain cells and exercising our brain is a never ending process.

I thought all I had to do to protect myself from Alzheimer’s and Dementia was to keep learning new things. I never realized what a profound effect physical exercise (or the lack there of) had on our brain activity. It was phenomenal to see the examples he had. This was enough to make me sit up and take notice. I am one of those that is always going to start my exercise program “tomorrow”.

On top of that I went shopping that nite and there in the middle at the back of my grocery store was a self help blood pressure machine. For some reason I had been wondering about my blood pressure the last few days and was actually looking for my BF’s home monitor, but hadn’t found it yet. I sat down and let the machine do it’s thing. My blood pressure has risen soooo much between the weight I’ve gained and the sedentary lifestyle that I’ve been leading for the last year, I took it twice because I couldn’t believe the numbers! My blood pressure was always around 110/64 which is excellent for my age. Now I’m walking around like a stroke waiting to happen.

Needless to say “tomorrow” has arrived and given me a swift kick in the butt. I started my exercise program Sat. nite while cooking dinner, with weight training. Yesterday I did the “couch to 5K” training in the morning, and weight training last nite. I can already feel the difference in my body. If I get to the point of needing new motivation, I’ll be looking for reruns on PBS or YouTube. LOL.

Have I told you I have practically a whole home gym set up in my kitchen made from all the exercise equipment I’ve gathered over the years? Have I told you about the great Pilates program I bought that I’ve never seen the videos for, or taken the bands out of their original wrappers? Of course all this stuff works just like they say it does on TV. Problem is you have to use it! Unfortunately there is always one reason or another for not using my exercise equipment.

1. I don’t have a routine to follow
2. I don’t have the room
3. I don’t have a VHS/DVD hooked up to the TV in the kitchen for routines

And the list of excuses goes on and on. I found the site “From Couch to 5k” which is a great way to start walking/jogging. Easy start for a sedentary person like me. I’ve done it twice since finding the site right after the AIDS WALK and I was so sore I couldn’t lift my feet. Haven’t been back since.

But now I think I’ve found my magic “exercise” bullet. I have known about Kettlebells for sometime now, but was not that impressed. They didn’t seem much better than “freeweights” and they can be pretty expensive. The other day while skipping thru channels, I fell upon an infomercial for Michelle Khai and “Kettlnetics“. It looks so fluid, fun and possible, I almost bit. “But wait, there’s more. We’ll pay your first pmt of $29.95 making all this available to you if you call right now (credit card in hand) for just 2 pmts. of $29.95 each.”

They almost had me. It looked like an exercise I might finally stick with and do. I caught myself just in time. Looking at the clips of her routine I got to thinking. I should be able to do that with my “freeweights” and try it out before spending one more dime on exercise stuff I don’t use. I still have to come up with some music (currently on CMT) and make up a routine, but I have the basics down I think. I’ll let you know if it works. God knows I need to do something to get this body going. Diet alone just isn’t cutting it!

UPDATE: I thought I would put up a picture of my weights so you can see why I thought I might be able to do this. They are really pretty easy to handle.

I found a really neat site yesterday while screwing around with something else and I just love it! We all know how important it is to set goals, whether it be weightloss, life or whatever. The only problem with that is once I write them down, they’re kinda like resolutions. They’re there, but I don’t really revisit them as often as I should.  This site has fixed that for me. It’s called “My Visionboard” and it is soooo cool.

You can upload your picture, which goes in the middle, and then you pick pictures and write your goals on “petals” that go around your picture. It looks like a flower when you get done, with you in the middle. You can set goals in either every area of your life, or just for weightloss. You can change it any time you want. You can make a screensaver out of it, which I did, so your goals are in front of you every day (it’s really nice). You can print it out and post around you house, and you can email it if you want to share with loved ones or friends. It does cost $29 a yr. (about 8 cents a day) but they have a 14 day free trial, so you can try it out first and see what you think.

I think the site is well worth it. If you take  a look, let me know what you think. Have fun!

I know I’m a spoiled brat because for the most part the weather here in California is just beautiful. This week we are going thru a hot spell…again. Trust me, for the most part fat old ladies and really hot weather are not a good combo. LOL. Thank goodness for the time of year when fresh fruit is plentiful. I’ve been cutting up honeydew, watermelon, blueberries and strawberries in kind of a fruit salad and keeping it in the fridge. I love it so much mixed in my yogurt in the morning, wrapped in fat free Cool Whip in the afternoon. I just keep forgetting to add the banana. I don’t want to do them in advance in the fruitsalad because they turn a little dark, then my kids won’t eat it. So now the bananas are turning black on the kitchen table and I’m looking for lowfat banana bread, etc. recipes.

During the hotspell, I do everything I have to do in the morning. I don’t like to cook and heat up the kitchen more in the evening, so this works out pretty good. This morning on Rachel Ray, there was a lady that made a pledge to cook in a crockpot every day for a year, so she now has 365 recipes for the crockpot. That is one way I am willing to cook in the heat since it doesn’t really throw any heat off.  If you love crockpots the way I do visit her at A Year of Crockpotting.

I also don’t see why in this weather, one cannot have a banana split for dinner. I use fatfree, no sugar added Dreyers vanilla ice cream, 2 scoops. On one of the scoops on top of the banana I use Light Hershey’s syrup, and fresh fruit, blended, on the other. It’s refreshing, not fattening, and hey, I get dessert when usually I only get dinner. LOL.

What I’ve been wanting to try is one of these “cold soups”, but I’m chicken. So if anybody has a recipe for one and you’ve made it and like it, please let me know. I think part of the reason I haven’t tried them is I don’t know what to expect. I can find a recipe, but no one is there to give me a little “inside info”.

I hope everyone’s having a great summer. I know for us, it’s definitely here.

go after the obese. I’ve always said once they started putting heavy taxes on cigarettes trying to get smokers to quit, the next thing they would do is tax fattening food (snack foods specifically) to get people to eat less. It’s always cracked me up looking at the “big picture” when it comes to cigarettes because once everyone quits, they’ll and they are losing a lot of revenue. Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot. LOL.

Well, so far at least in the grocery stores, the taxes on snackfoods hasn’t happened yet, at least not in California. I still say it’s only a matter of time. What really caught my attention this morning was an article about a new law in Japan that went into effect a couple of months ago.

According to an article posted on ediets.com, “Companies and local governments must measure the waists of Japanese citizens between the ages of 40 and 74 (about 44 percent of the population of Japan, or 56 million people).

If people are over the prescribed waist size — 33.5 inches for men, 35.4 for women — then they are given dietary guidance first and “re-education” after six months if the dietary guidance isn’t effective. If companies fail to have their employees meet these new weight guidelines they could face huge fines.”

Boy, talk about “big brother” taking over! Oh my gosh, and if it ends up working in Japan don’t you think they’ll be looking at something similar here? They may not be able to pull out a measuring tape, but they probably could say something like “You’re above the weight limit for your height” or “You’re too round for our health policies here”.
 

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Where does it stop? Is the law against discrimination going to have to say no discriminating against “fat people” as well as race, creed, color, age, or religion? I don’t know, smokers are discriminated against and that just keeps getting worse. Looks like I’m a double whammy. I smoke and I’m fat! LOL.

I just thought I might post this morning about little snippets of news regarding weightloss. I see and read a lot of stuff and thought I might share here. First on the agenda tho, is a nice blog I found for women over on blogger, thanks to Anita stopping by here. It’s called “Cool News For Women” and it’s very informative. Not only that, but there’s a lot of stuff concerning menopause, etc. that concerns women my age instead of the “teeny bopper” set. LOL.

Now, onto the rest of the stuff! There’s a lot of articles in the news lately about how gastric bypass cuts cancer risk. It seems after following 50 subjects for 2 yrs. there was a marked difference in health after only losing just 50% of the weight they had to lose. That’s the upside. The downside is…

It seems that’s not the only proceedure that improves health. The lapband we’re hearing so much about seems to possibly reverse, or at least get under control, Type II diabetes, plus lowering the risk of cancer, etc.

I’ll bet these guys are really happy to have some good news. I have often thought about these two as a way of losing “without having to work at it”. For the gastric bypass surgery, I’m not obese enough. The lapband I find intriguing until they give you all those little warnings about “slippage” at the end of the commercial. Of course the main time we really hear about this stuff is when someone died from it. Another case where I’m not sure the cure isn’t worse than the disease. LOL

They’re working on a new way to drug our obese children now. A new drug they’re working on called Metformin is supposed to help insulin resistant children. They say this new drug, along with a controlled diet, helped insulin resistant children lose weight. I have to tell you, based on the numbers I read, it wasn’t enough weight for me to drug my kid, and then doesn’t anyone who sticks to a controlled diet lose weight usually? Why don’t they just put these kids on a low glycemic index diet, which is made for insulin resistance? Sounds like more “Big Pharma” money to me.

This little jewel I love. They found that fat, sedentary women (of which I am one)who eat a “Big” breakfast which included milk, 3 ounces of lean meat, two slices of cheese, two whole grain servings, one fat serving and one ounce of milk chocolate or candy, lost 40lbs. after 8 months. The control group that ate low carb for 8 months lost only 9lbs. To me, the 9lbs. seems low, but if you figure in the “lose only a lb. or 2 a month for good health” theory, I guess it could be accurate. Either that or in that average, somebody cheated. LOL. This is really a pretty good article on how your body works, cravings, etc over on Forbes if you’d like to read it.

I think that’s enough for today. As usual, I’m starting to get a little longwinded. Just wanted to share.

I was going to write about something else today, but came across this in my inbox. I don’t know who wrote it, I wish I did. I would gladly give her credit for expressing so well how I feel.

When I was a child in the 1960s the bathing suit for the mature figure was boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift and they did a good job.

Today’s stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip.

The mature woman has a choice-she can either go up front to the maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus who escaped from Disney’s Fantasia or she can wander around every run of the mill department store trying to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of florescent rubber bands.

What choice did I have? I wandered around, made my sensible choice and entered the chamber of horrors known as the fitting room.

The first thing I noticed was the extraordinary tensile strength of the stretch material. The Lycra used in bathing costumes was developed, I believe, by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which give the added bonus that if you manage to actually lever yourself into one, you are protected from shark attacks as any shark taking a swipe at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash. I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I twanged the shoulder strap in place, I gasped in horror - my boobs had disappeared!

Eventually, I found one boob cowering under my left armpit. It took a while to find the other. At last I located it flattened beside my seventh rib.

The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature woman is meant to wear her boobs spread across her chest like a speed bump. I realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full view assessment.

The bathing suit fit all right, but unfortunately it only fit those bits of me willing to stay inside it. The rest of me oozed out rebelliously from top, bottom, and sides. I looked like a lump of play dough wearing undersized cling wrap.

As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said, admiring the bathing suit.

I replied that I wasn’t so sure and asked what else she had to show me. I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape, and a floral two piece which gave the appearance of an over sized napkin in a serving ring.

I struggled into a pair of leopard skin bathers with ragged frills and came out looking like Tarzan’s Jane, pregnant with triplets and having a rough day.

I tried on a black number with a midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning.

I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.

Finally, I found a suit that fit…a two-piece affair with a shorts style bottom and a loose blouse-type top.

It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it. My ridiculous search had a successful outcome, I figured. When I got home, I found a label which read — ‘Material might become transparent in water.’

So, if you happen to be on the beach or near any other body of water this year and I’m there too I’ll be the one in cut off jeans and a t-shirt!

I got a little sidetracked yesterday, but here’s the rest of what I learned about dieting and osteoporosis that I was going to share.

First of all, if you are on any of the drugs that are supposed to help build bone mass, please do your research or talk to your doctor. My mother was on Fosomax and it turns out it was a good thing we kept forgetting to give it to her. I have taken her off it completely and her doctor when I spoke to him about it, wasn’t at all surprised nor did he argue with me about it. Many of these drugs are being found to just make the bone harder, not actually help rebuild, causing complications with women’s jaw bones when they go to the dentist, etc. For more info see my blog at http://www.lauriannsnewlife.blogspot.com

Now for the other stuff. I don’t know how many of you have heard high homo-cysteine levels are the true predictor of strokes vs. cholesterol levels, but it turns out high levels aren’t good for your bones either. Both men and women are twice as likely to suffer from hip fractures when their homo-cysteine levels are elevated. Supplements of folic acid, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12 and either choline and/or betaine can lower elevated homocysteine levels. By contrast diets high in fatty meats and particularly processed meats like hot dogs, sausages, bologna and pepperoni markedly increase the level of homo-cysteine in the blood for several hours after every high protein meal. Fasting homo-cysteine levels and LDL levels are also elevated in people who eat more fatty animal products and fewer whole grains, fruits, vegetables and nonfat dairy products.

This one’s a tough one for me. Caffeine, especially in women who don’t get the recommended daily allowance of calcium, is a culprit in the loss of bone mass density. I drink a pot before anyone in the house is even awake, which is probably one of the reasons my BMD is already in trouble. The lifetime intake of the amount of caffeine in as little as 2 cups of coffee per day is associated with decreased BMD in older women. It’s also important to make teenagers aware of their dietary choices to protect them in the future. A diet high in meat, with the regular use soft drinks instead of nonfat milk as a beverage, will likely reduce peak bone mass in the young and increase the risk of developing osteoporosis in later years.

A diet of potassium rich fruits and vegetables is also reported to help reduce bone loss. For many this isn’t really an option as some of the prescription drugs for high blood pressure warn against extra potassium. The drug itself causes your body to collect potassium in your system, so be sure to read the warnings on the labels.

Many trace minerals are essential for maintaining bone density. The American diet is so full of white flour, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and refined fats and oils, that we generally don’t get the amount of trace minerals necessary. Here again are where more fruits and vegetables help fill the bill. Whole grains, legumes and dark green vegetables are the best dietary sources of magnesium and supply trace minerals and other factors that may improve bone health.

We all try to switch to more fruits and vegetables when we decide it’s time to lose weight, but there are so many other reasons to do it, the weight really is more of the “icing on the cake” and should happen as a natural side effect. Right now is the season to take advantage of so many wonderful fruits and vegetables that are fresh and make such great snacks. Have you tried getting in your “9 fruits and vegetables” (it used to be 5) a day? There’s hardly room or time to be eating all the “wrong” stuff. LOL.

For more info on magnesium of vitamin D deficeincies, see my blog at http://www.lauriannsnewlife.blogspot.com

Disclaimer: I am in no way a healthcare provider of any  kind and the stuff I pass on here is only from my own research. You should always consider consulting your physician if you plan on making dietary changes.

I try to pay attention. I know that with dieting you have to be careful about losing muscle instead of fat. I’ve heard about that forever! I know that as we get older we lose bone mass which can lead to osteoporosis. I didn’t realize that dieting could slow closely also result in bone loss. Where the heck was I during that class?

I also didn’t realize what an astounding effect a sedentary lifestyle has on bone mass density (BMD). As I read more, the opposite is also true. Excessive exercise also can lead to a lower BMD. I’m sure I won’t have to worry about that being a problem in my case. What I do need to worry about is making sure I do some sort of weight bearing exercise and strength training, as definite results were shown in greater BMD after just one year.

My mother has osteoporosis. One year she fractured her back 3 times and spent most of that year in the hospital. I don’t want to go there.

Other things we were not made aware of, and I still don’t hear about and I have 2 daughters, is how teenage girls involved in athletics and also frequently diet, are at high risk for osteopenia (low bone mineral content), stress fractures and broken bones. It also puts them at risk for early osteoporosis. This isn’t only common in teenage girls, but men and boys as well who frequently diet.

These are things that seem to help prevent or help cause osteoporosis. First let me say, with all the hype about soy products, there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence of it really doing any good to warrant using soy for treating osteoporosis. There is the suggestion that vegans, etc. use soy milk as a substitute for cow’s milk for calcium and vitamin D.

We all know how important calcium is. That is a given. Luckily there are many ways to get the calcium we need, but remember that vitamin D is necessary for absorption. If you’re getting your calcium from sources other than milk fortified with vitamin D, it’s probably essential to be taking a vitamin D supplement. We should be getting between 1300 and 1500mg. of calcium per day.

Too much Vitamin A may contribute to Osteoporosis. In Norway and Sweden they fortify low fat milk and margarine with retinol. They have seemed to find that the added retinol is at least partly responsible for osteoporosis in these two countries, along with cod liver oil. They advise people at risk of osteoporosis to limit their intake of pre-formed vitamin A (retinol) to the RDA level of 800 RE or 0.8 mg of retinol per day. This means food supplements with retinol should be avoided, as should supplements of cod liver oil. Now there is a slight conflict here in the way that most dairy products also contain retinol. A better way of getting your vitamin D is to go get some sunshine every day. 10-15 min. should be enough and not to much to harm you.

One I was surprised to hear about that isn’t widely publicized is Vitamin K, or the lack there of contributing to bone loss. Unfortunately if you’re on blood thinners, this is probably not a good solution for you. A recent meta-analysis examined 7 studies in which elderly subjects were given either 15 (one study) or 45mg of vitamin K2 or a placebo. Remarkably those taking the supplements of vitamin K had reductions in hip fractures of 77% compared to those given a placebo. Fractures of the vertebrae were cut by 60% and all other fractures were reduced by 81%. If you’re following a good healthy diet, you should be getting vitamin K from all those green leafy veggies you’re eating.

Tomorrow I’ll go into the minerals etc. for preventing osteoporosis. It’s amazing to me how young I should have been paying attention and what I’ll be telling my daughters now that I know.

Disclaimer: I am in no way a healthcare provider of any kind and the stuff I pass on here is only from my own research. You should always consider consulting your physician if you plan on making dietary changes.

I’m also paying attention to how mortal I am. I cannot die from disease or anything else until I have my taxes done, my house in order, and all the good articles torn out of all the magazines I have waiting to be read (from my mouth to God’s ear with a “please” attached).

I’m really interested in this “ph balanced” existence. I started on the hydrogen peroxide cleanse, which actually was working to get infection out of my body, but then I went drinking (drug of choice, 2pts. per cocktail) and didn’t think it was a good idea to keep going with alcohol in my system. I’ve been reading about the “alkaline” diet and since it’s wholesome foods should be easy to incorporate into my WeightWatchers.

It’s a very interesting concept, but I can’t find a whole lot about it. There’s info on what foods are acidic and what foods are alkaline, but not a whole lot on hydrogen peroxide as far as taking the hydrogen peroxide and having my morning coffee (coffee is very acidic). Doing the cleanse and then having my wine in the evening (2pts. okay I cheat a little). I did find a one chart on acidic/alkaline foods and tomato was listed as alkaline vs. acidic. Needless to say that’s a question in my mind.

It’s kind of strange when you get old enough to realize you are mortal. All of a sudden there is so much more involved with the “growing older” than just the “getting skinnier” part.