I am embarrassed

Between computer issues and life - I have not been writing on some of my blogs for a long long time... My pre-new year's resolution is to write weekly...

One major change I made was to join a health club and work out almost daily. What enticed me to do this was yet another announcement from my AARP medigap plan that rates were going up again. I joined last January with a notice of what I would pay monthly during 2005 yet my rate went up in July [their plan year I guess]. Then came a notice that the rate for 2006 was to be another almost $25-30 per month..but I suspect if I had remained with them the rate would again go up in July...

In my search for another plan I found one that is LOWERING their rates in January and offers a FREE health club membership - so I switched quickly and have been working out since mid October!

I did forget that working out takes time...then of course I still work, still have to walk my dog and since it's winter I still have to ski....Oh and there are squash courts at the club [why I joined the one I joined] and I've gotten back to playing squash!

Am feeling super duper great and I know it's really good to stay in shape but I need to learn how to fit all this good stuff into my life :)

I am growing older better and better - and I'll get back to blogging now too...

Scary stuff

This morning I saw an article online from the UK's Independent [http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article321838.ece] about the toxins in your bathroom... Even tho we've talked about environmental toxins even I forget about the toxic stuff in many of the products we use regularly like shampoo, shaving gel, hair coloring, bubble bath and more.

I admit that I color my hair - and have for a long time... I use a natural product from the health food store but now I'll double check to make sure it does not contain any of the mentioned "stuff." I use a toothpaste without sugar in it and try to limit the intake of things I can't pronounce but sometimes it's impossible especially when eating at a restaurant or at a friend's home.

Word to us wise - beware and be careful!

When Free is NOT Good!

Not all freebies are good... like the saying "there is no such thing as a free lunch"... There are such a things as free radicals but they are things we do not need or want in our bodies.

What are free radicals? They are molecules with one or more unpaired electrons and are formed when oxygen reacts with the molecules. They are "free" in that they are unpaired and essentially "free" to roam and harm other cellular structures. We all know that oxygen in the air causes iron to rust and if not cleaned up and stopped, the rust continues to "grow."

Well the oxygen in our bodies does similar damage when it creates free radicals which, once they are formed, start a chain reaction of damage. Thus we need antioxidants to combat the effects the free radicals by delaying or stopping the oxidation.

Some fruits and vegetables have antioxidant components but if you read back to the earlier entries in this blog, you'll see that most of our food, including organic food, is not as nutritious as it was in years past.

So, yes do eat your fruits and vegetables but take antioxidant supplements to combat the free radicals.

Back to work

Busy is good! Been doing some and all sorts of outdoor activities but then came a day of "oopsies" :) - skipped some of the blogs....sorry - this was one I skipped : ( - maybe it was "that" time for my cells and my cells were rejoicing..hmmm.... this better be the week for the brain cells to rejoice - I need to get back to blogging and working on a lifespan book....

If you take a look at: http://spanninglife.blogspot.com/ - you'll see that I am doing a lot of writing on the lifespan - partially for a class I will be teaching and partially to put together chapter for a supplemental text. My other blogs are devoted to parts of the lifespan - so if you want to know something now about say children or teens go to my profile and click on "view my complete profile" for a list of the other blogs..

But back to us - the healthy aging "kids"

"Our environment is filled with toxins... Toxins exist everywhere!

Here is just a glimpse of what you face NO MATTER where you live!

Pharmaceutical drugs are now showing up in our tap and ground water!!!

[The first drug was found by accident. Scientists doing their routine tap water tests for pesticides in Berlin, Germany, found Clofibric Acid, a cholesterol-lowering drug. The instruments that found it were calibrated to identify pesticides!!... The scientists did not recognize the pattern, so they took it to a toxicology lab, which readily identified it.]

Now many other drugs have since been found in our wells and ground water:

Many other drugs have since been found in our wells and ground water:

Lipid lowering drugs
Analgesics
Chemotherapeutic drugs
Antibiotics
Hormones

A summary article on 100 cities found identical results (Chemosphere, January1998).

Antibiotics: Stuart Levy, Director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University in Boston, MA, states: "Our concentration of antibiotics is 1000 times higher than in Germany, high enough to affect the growth of E-Coli. This may be causing the bacteria to become medication resistant."

E-Coli has been discovered in the drinking water of some major and minor US cities.

Estrogen: Shane Snyder of Michigan State University found enough estrogen (mostly from birth control pills) in Lake Mead to cause male fish to produce female egg protein, and to attempt to lay eggs that they were not equipped to lay. Disbelieving the results, Mr. Snyder repeated his tests 30 times.

Each year the United States produces over 400 billion pounds of synthetic organic chemicals that are all toxic. This is equivalent to 80 pounds of chemicals per year for every person on the planet. There are currently 55,000 chemical compounds in production. Of these, less than 1000 are even tested for toxic effects.

Research shows that there are between 300 and 500 toxins in our tissues today that were never found in the tissues of anyone before 1940. In fact, even the air at the North Pole is polluted with dioxin, one of the worst air pollutants and cancer causing agents. You are breathing dioxin right now and hundreds of other chemicals that you cannot taste, see or smell.

Obviously, toxins are GOING to be a part of our lives whether we like it or not. All we can do is make sure our body is properly cleansing itself of these harmful toxins so they don't stay in our system!

In order for this to happen, your body's cell's need to be communicating properly so they can determine what belongs in your body and what doesn't! Makes sense - right?

Copyright 2004 Golden Keys Mentoring Group, LLC

The above was taken from an ebook - The Ten Deadly Health Myths of the 21st Century which you can ask me for - it's a .pdf file. Fill out the want more info form near the top.

next "free" radicals - and why free is not a good thing

Proper equipment

Listen to your body - it talks to you and tells you what it needs and it can do a lot if given the appropriate equipment.

I'm a skier so let me use a ski analogy. Skiing can be tiring and it's even more so with older equipment. When I first skied we had leather boots with laces and very heavy long skis with heavy bindings. But I was a lot younger then - in my 20's and I hardly noticed how tiring it was - it was too much fun. As I aged- into my 50's - I began to think there had to be a solution to all the work skiers knees do and I fell in love with what were called shaped skis or parabolic skis. I was the first I know to buy a pair..and it made all the difference to my body. The skis DO THE WORK ! I'm into a newer shorter pair these days and will continue to monitor newer models of skis ...

While learning of new ski equipment I also came across new inner body equipment - food supplements. For sports fans, think of supplements as the nutritional version of shaped skis, lightweight bikes and titanium softball bats. It's all about helping us do what we do better and to keep at it for many more years than in the last century.

The ingredients in supplements are not "new" - they used to be found in our daily food - but no more. These are products that help us live well, feel great and look great!

We are the TimePrimers©

Older - wiser - and ..... better.....

We are the TimePrimers© - we do our best over time - we are prime and we prime time -shining it to perfection - we love our life and we want to hang around for a lot more of it..

So what do we do? and how do we do it?

When we were young we heard what are called "old wives tales" about health and food...We rolled our eyes and looked at our mothers as if they were aliens...Now we are learning that our mothers were correct. Maybe they knew what Hippocrates said:

"Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food."

"Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food."

Or maybe they read Maimonides:

"Let nothing which can be treated by diet be treated by other means."

or this Chinese proverb :

He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician.

Whatever knowledge they had - those old wives - our parents and grandparents - they seemed to know a lot about nutrition....

My mother was adverse to seeing a physician unless absolutely necessary - something I took note of - she lived to 95 - she believed in eating well and letting one's body take care of itself... She fed us well and grew most of the vegetables we ate...

But - and it's a big BUT....the soil was in better shape when I was a kid.... and that was NYC !

Today we have depleted the soil and no matter how organic our food - it is missing what it used to have way back when - and what is missing are many essential nutrients.

The environment is more toxic than it was, food is more processed, and it is usually picked before it is ripe and very often cooked to death.

Egads... is there anything we can do to grow older better?

Stay tuned - come back and learn about glyconutrients....

Glyconutritional products will play a leading role in the 21st century's emerging wellness industry. The driving determinant will be the growing realization that optimal cell-to-cell communication is one of the most critical functions of the life process and is fundamental to immune system health.

And if our cells do a better job of talking to one another, who knows what they can start talking about!