Doctors are trained to treat an ailment, a disease, an affliction, a broken this or that. Something I’ve learned in my decades of writing about health topics is that whatever it is that needs fixing, it’s not black or white. It depends. Read the rest of this entry
Paul had a wild ride with a detox regimen. When he turned 49 he made the switch to a more healthy lifestyle. He started working out, drinking less beer, stretching, and watching everything he ate for preservatives and chemicals.
Paul was feeling good and figured he would feel better if he flushed his system so he started one of the more popular detox regimens, the Master Cleanse. For 10 days he ate no solid foods but drank 8 glasses of a cocktail of lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. In the morning he drank 2 full quarts of salted water and a laxative tea at night.
He felt terrible after 10 days but he did lose 10 pounds. He also was irritable and had headaches and people told him he didn’t look very good. He went off the diet and gained the 10 pounds back almost immediately. A few months later he went back on the detox diet but didn’t follow it so closely. As a result he only lost a few pounds but he didn’t have the adverse effects and is now a fan of detox regimens.
I’m convinced detox regimens can be dangerous and that they don’t add anything to your over all health. I do think they give people a sense of security, that they are protecting their health by detoxing, but it is simply not so. There is no scientific evidence that points to this conclusion.
True there are pesticides, artificial sweeteners, sugar, processed foods that surround us. And it’s also true that without a cleansing these poisons can accumulate in our bodies and cause headaches, fatigue and chronic illness. However, your wonderful body has several systems already in place that are continually taking care of you.
Your liver, your kidneys, and your gastrointestinal tract do a superb job of eliminating toxins from your body within hours of consumption or exposure. You don’t have to wait to go to the spa and get detoxed. And none of those diets even help what your body already does naturally.
My advice: save your money and envelope a more healthy lifestyle.
To your success at healthy aging.
Not only do detox diets not work, they could be dangerous.
It is so easy to keep looking for that magic pill or the perfect system to make you feel like you are 30 and look at least 15 years younger. People flip from the latest and the greatest to the next latest and the greatest as they seek the secrets to healthy aging.
Recently, for example, manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon with their latest detox diet product to lose weight, to look younger, to be relieved of pain, or to have more appeal to the opposite sex. Commercials show very slender young women in their twenties or thirties prancing around in their very high heels and declaring they owe their success to this or that detox diet. The truth is there’s a much better way to search for health and energy as you get older than to participate in a detox diet.
Detox diets typically involve fasting or food restriction together with nutritional supplements and sometimes a tea that is actually a laxative or a diuretic or even a stimulant. Most of these regimens also recommend frequent colonics or enemas as part of the cleaning process.
Although there is almost no evidence to support that a detox diet is healthy, they are touted as holistic and made popular by TVs finest starlets. The lure of losing weight draws lots of people to these diets. The vendors promise that these diets will cleanse your body of toxins is very appealing today when news headlines scream about preservatives, carcinogens, and additives.
We are interrupted by the videos on TV showing strange things coming out from our colon after we follow the detox regimen. It’s the basic fear factor, warning us to stay in touch with our families and friends over the holiday.
My advice is to be careful. Most of these detox diets contain a lot of liquids. In fact, some of them are liquid diet only. If you’re taking medication for your heart or to regulate blood sugar, it would be wise to avoid these diets because you could have a serious complication from changes in your electrolyte mixes.
Healthy aging doesn’t need a detox diet. You don’t need to go to extremes to cleanse your body of toxins. Your body can do that by itself.
Let me know what you think about detox diets. If you have had any success with them or found them to be a waste of money, share your experience with us so we don’t duplicate mistakes or make some of our own.
Research projects are many regarding how not to succumb to the couch and shrivel up after retirement. Here are a few tips that will keep you going whether or not you are working and employed. Read the rest of this entry
I described the French research project in my previous post which reported people were happier not working after retirement. In this post, the flip side of the coin. Research that says people are happier and healthier when they are working and staying active after retirement.
In fact there is a 6-year study of 12,000 people which found that there were definite health benefits for people who keep working beyond the age of 58 and beyond retirement. This study was a joint project of the University of Maryland and California State University and published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.
This study reported on what they called “bridge employment” which is part-time employment, self-employment or temporary employment after retirement. The major finding was that retirees who continued to work in a bridge job experienced fewer major diseases than those fully retired. They also found improved mental health but only when the person was working within their career field. Even considering the health of the participants before retirement, employment status caused a difference in health.
What does that mean for you? My suggestion is that if you are not retired just yet, you may want to seriously consider looking for full or part time employment when you do retire. It seems reasonable to assume that what is called bridge employment is certainly justified when it comes to your health.
Are you thinking about working full or part time after you retire? If your decision is your choice and not because you can’t afford to retire, tell us why you made that choice. I am betting it will help others make their decisions.
To your success and healthy aging.
Ruthan Brodsky
I have this dear friend who closed his business 11 months ago and is floundering about what to do now. His father retired over a period of years and stayed in a warm climate for a couple of months and then for 6 and 7 months. His father could afford to enjoy a leisurely life when he retired and he did. He also had a couple of major health issues that curtailed his activity so retirement was a perfect fit at the time. But that was then and this is now.
My friend has been thinking about starting a new business, something part time I suspect, and is even willing to work for someone else if the person and work are suitable. So far he has arrived at a fat zero and encouraging him to look in this or that direction seems to make matters worse. So I mention the idea search when I see him because that’s all it is now, but I quickly move away from that topic.
Today a new version of retirement is emerging from the trauma of the credit crunch and the simple fact that we are living longer. Some of us will be living 30 and 40 years after retirement.
The messages are mixed. A European study recently reported that the newly retired are much happier since they stopped working. The same group of researchers also reported that workers slept better after retirement than previously. The participants were 15,000 French workers, most of them men, who answered questions 7 years before they retired and 7 years after their retirement. Workers who felt worse before retirement reported greater improvements when they retired.
The other side of the coin in my next post.
If you are retired are you at a happier place or has the economy made that question too difficult to answer. Let us know what you think.
To your healthy and successful retirement
Ruthan brodsky
Strength training is known for treating osteoporosis and helping to enhance bone density. It just so happens that strength training can be very powerful in reducing the signs and symptoms of other diseases and chronic conditions such as: arthritis, diabetes, obesity, back pain and depression.
Tufts University completed a strength training program with older men and women with moderate to severe knee osteoarthritis. The results of this 16-week program showed that strength training decreased pain by 43 percent, increased muscle strength and general physical performance, and decreased disability. The effectiveness of the strength training to ease the pain of osteoarthritis was just as potent if not more potent than medications.
Here’s another number crunching fact. Post-menopausal women can lose 1-2 percent of their bone mass annually. Tufts published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which showed that strength training increases bone density and reduce the risk for fractures among women aged 50-70. What’s more strength training helps with poor balance and improves flexibility, reducing the likelihood and severity of falls.
I am one of those people who believe strongly that you should try other approaches to prevention and treatment before you start taking pharmaceutical drugs for specific conditions and face the consequences of their side effects. One of those happens to be preventing loss of bone density. Sometimes my opinions have powerful backing such as in 2004, the Surgeon General studied osteoporosis in the United States and wrote a report over 330 pages long about the best ways to promote bone health and prevent osteoporosis and fracture. His advice was to work with nature. His concept of prevention started with nutrition, physical activity and fall prevention as the base. The bottom line is your bones are meant to last a lifetime. In most cases, they don’t need drugs to keep them strong or prevent fracture.
To your healthy aging.
Ruthan Brodsky
Fitness and health are more of a concern now than they were a decade or so ago. At the Last New York marathon men and women in their 70s and 80s were interviewed about what motivates them to run the marathon and how do they stay in condition. The same could be asked for our daily marathons – what do we need to do to stay in good physical condition and lower our risk of falling and fracturing bones? Read the rest of this entry
Most of us recognize osteoporosis as the potentially crippling, even deadly, condition it is. Women still deliberate about hormone replacement therapy to increase bone strength. Men and women scrutinize calcium supplement labels with or without magnesium so they don’t succumb to loss of bone mineral density and run the risk of breaking a hip because they weren’t strong enough to step down from a curb without falling.
Then there are the many prescription drugs usually recommended to patients who show bone density loss on the bone density scan. Most of them, such as Fosamax, belong to the bisphosphonate category only now we’re told that prolong use of these drugs have negative and serious side effects.
What I am amazed at is that one of and what seems to me the most beneficial way of protecting our bones is strength training or lifting weights. Yet it is this activity that receives the least amount of notice. Read the rest of this entry
Baby boomers will spend up to $100 monthly for technology if it helps them stay independent and keeps them healthy.
That is what the focus groups with people age 50 to 65 responded when asked if they would pay for such technologies as electronic monitoring and medication reminders. They were also interested in owning a device that kept their medical records and provided them with control over the information.
The focus group was sponsored by the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) and were reported at a Healthcare Unbound conference. Some of the other key findings include:
Do any of these findings sound like something you might say? What would you hope for in technology that might make life easier for you as you age? Send me your thoughts. Let’s take our own survey.
To your successful aging.
Ruthan
