Can you be "fit" and overweight?

Short answer - NO!

There have been articles around saying it was okay for women to be overweight as long as you got some exercise...

A recent study says that is not true:

Exercise will not cut the risk of heart disease in those who are overweight unless they also slim down, according to a study of thousands of U.S. women published on Monday.
"Even high quantities of physical activity are unlikely to fully reverse the risk of coronary heart disease in overweight and obese women without concurrent weight loss," Dr. Amy Weinstein and colleagues at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center reported.

Full article here: http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN2848216220080428

This study was carried out over years as it was begun in 1992 and followed the women and their health issues.

This is why I am always seeming to talk about being overweight...

We have an obesity epidemic in the USA and not only is it hurting aging women, it is killing our kids - who are facing diabetes and other fat related diseases at early ages.

PLEASE - lose weight and be active..you owe it to yourself and your loved ones...

Under the Weather In Many Ways : - )

I almost never get sick but this year I had a little head cold - if there is such a medical term - and it clogged my eustachian tubes for a few days making me feel pretty yukky...

It's all gone now but I wonder how much the aftermath of the "head cold" was the dramatic change in the weather!

We started April with warm balmy days and nights - then sort of normal Spring - then an 80 degree day where I was out in shorts and tank top in my kayak...that of course was followed by sleet and hail and then this past weekend - snow!

It did not stick here on the river, but it did stick on the higher elevations - like a few hundred feet up..

Now it's just rainy and chilly but we are supposed to warm up by May...I should hope so.

We here in the river worried about the new goslings and the farmers worried about the fruit crops and such...

Here are some of April's new babies...

Happy Tax Day

I gave up yesterday and filed for an extension. Extensions and I get along just famously!

First learned of them way back when and have been an avid user ever since - although in the last few years I have actually gotten taxes done before April 15th....[once in February but that was a very rare occasion.]

I shall finish them before the end of April but I can never see why people go crazy on the 15th when anyone can get an automatic extension. Local newspapers have lists of Post Offices open til midnight tonight so one could drop off the forms.

I find it easier to efile using an online tax program. I fill in the info from the comfort of my own office, coffee in hand, and it does all the arithmetic for me putting the numbers on all the lines they are supposed to be on! Then it takes the Federal info I entered and puts it into the State forms....Ahhhh I love computers!

A pet peeve of mine

As advertising of medications is all over the media - every TV station, the daily paper, the Internet, magazines, etc. I do wonder how much less meds would cost if the big pharmas were not spending SO much on their advertising budget.

It's not like we can go to the store and get meds off a shelf - one needs a prescription. So the ad is to make you feel as if you NEED a particular medication so that you contact your physician and ask for a specific drug.

We take so many drugs that we do not need - that we are developing drug resistant strains of bugs! And our drinking water is filled with them:

A vast array of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Full article: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/03/10/pharma.water1.ap/

Do you watch the ads and go tell your medal provider you need a certain drug? I don't - but if I did and the provider gave me a prescription - that's the last time I'd see that provider!

I heard a pediatrician interviewed on the radio a few years ago who said he often gives parents prescriptions for antibiotics for a kid's cold - why? Otherwise they bug him and that was annoying and time consuming.. So the kid is given an antibiotic for a problem that is not bacterial - and the drug will do nothing. But the parent is happy...DUH!

Are these ads aimed at all ages or most of them aimed at people over 50? I'm not sure - but people over 50 tend to take a lot of meds.....

Ducks and Yoga

I have been doing yoga for decades but still can't do this for very long....these two did!