Birthdays and Water

Birthdays come once a year for each of us. Mine came and went and was a non-event. Last year I promised to have a party every year - that was after 2 good friends had died and I thought I should celebrate each birthday. Good idea - but bad timing :D

I have the good fortune of being an Aquarius - but in North America - in the places I have lived - that is more generally cold/rain/snow or yuk weather for parties.

And this year, like every 4 years, it is right after Inauguration Day. For the last few Inaugurations, that did not matter, but this one did - and I helped organize an Inauguration Watch breakfast on the 20th and went to a big bash that night.

But the final reasons for not having a party, not counting that I was already partied out - were 1] I had an all day meeting on my birthday so having a party the night before or night of was not a good idea BUT the real kicker ? 2] when I tried figuring out how to cook and clean with no running water in the kitchen!

Amazing how spoiled we have become. There are people without running water in the house and I complain about lack of same in the kitchen...It's made me think about getting more involved with organizations that work around the word to help others get clean running water.

Water is so necessary for our health and so easy to come by [except in my kitchen :D] that we who are so lucky to live with running water ought to help those who live without. It would make the world a better place for all of us.

On February 12th the world-wide Twitter community is hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water http://twestival.com/

So go Twitter , meet great people and do good....

Losing Fat in 2009

Months after starting on the product I use, I am again losing inches. My body is odd - it does things in bunches and then plateaus... So I lost inches at first, then plateaued, and now again lost inches.

I do not weigh myself that regularly or measure the inches but for Inaugural evening here I tried putting on a few dresses I had not worn in a while because they had made me "look fat" [you all know that feeling :D] - but on Tuesday evening they hung on me like the old potato sacks ! Ouch I had nothing fancy to wear to a "ball" - but this being Portland, a pair of semi-dressy pants and a jacket passes as "dressed-up" even among the evening gowns... [I hear opera goers can range from gowns to cut offs or tattered jeans.

And I had fun telling everyone why I was not more decked out - while eating the yummy desserts they served ..... mmmm....caramel and chocolate fondues :D

I do not want to do too many of my own heavy hitting ads here so if you do want more info on the fat loss product you can email me lynn_dorman at yahoo dot com or call me at 503.477.5550.

The company is embarking on its own Economic Stimulus Plan. Yes - even in these dire economic times, we call still all make money if we work together...so if the thought of fat loss and/or making money appeals to you - please get in touch with me...I don't do hype..

Tainted Weight Loss Pills - Consumer Alert

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] has updated an alert on tainted weight loss pills.

An FDA analysis found that the undeclared active pharmaceutical ingredients in some of these products include sibutramine (a controlled substance), rimonabant (a drug not approved for marketing in the United States), phenytoin (an anti-seizure medication), phenolphthalein (a solution used in chemical experiments and a suspected cancer causing agent) and bumetanide (a diuretic). Some of the amounts of active pharmaceutical ingredients far exceeded the FDA-recommended levels, putting consumers' health at risk...

The health risks posed by these products can be serious; for example, sibutramine, which was found in many of the products, can cause high blood pressure, seizures, tachycardia (rapid heart beat), palpitations, heart attack or stroke. This drug can also interact with other medications that patients may be taking and increase their risk of adverse drug events. The safety of sibutramine has also not been established in pregnant and lactating women, or in children younger than 16 years of age.

FDA page here:http://cli.gs/LbXPUa

I write much about our obesity problem but I also let you know about the safe products I take. Please be most careful if you are buying something - read the label...my label has no words on it that sound like chemicals - mine sound like foods - because they are!

Make a healthy choice..

Tomorrow

No matter where you live, your age, your political persuasion or who you voted for - tomorrow is a world changing Inauguration..

I used to live in Washington, D.C. and it's nice to see it shine in anticipation of tomorrow's major changing event...It's also nice to see ow the rest of the world is also anticipating the political shine of Washington, D.C. to come back.

As a community organizer Obama "gets it." He has dealt with elderly, poor, young and middle aged people and understands what is needed for and from all of us.

What changes can we who are older expect? For starters - some respect. We won't be seen as a group feeding at the public trough of social security; we will be seen as caring people who have a lot of wisdom to share; a lot of organizational know-how; a willingness to work/help and a lot of experience to pass along - after all most readers here are older than Barack Obama :D

So here's to a brighter future for the world!

Hormone Replacement Therapy: Does it Shrink Your Brain?

In short the answer is: if you are older it quite probably does shrinks the frontal lobes.

About those frontal lobes from Wikipedia:

The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events.

The frontal lobes also play an important part in retaining longer term memories which are not task-based. These are often memories associated with emotions derived from input from the brain's limbic system. The frontal lobe modifies those emotions to generally fit socially acceptable norms.

And from the study:

The National Institutes of Health study looked at women from the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study, which is a subset of the largest study of hormone replacement therapy. The study found that, overall, women taking the hormones had smaller frontal brain lobes than women who did not follow the treatment.

"Older women who took these [hormones] ... they had greater brain atrophy in these brain regions that are critical for the maintenance of memories," said Susan Resnick, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Aging, Laboratory of Personality and Cognition, and the study's primary author.

Full article

It may be that HRT accelerates what brain decline had already started and clearly more research is needed - BUT - this study, added to other not-so-good-stuff about the effects of HRT would make me think hard and long about HRT as an option.

I like using all of my frontal lobes and want them to stay as they are - [or even grow if that's possible]