I first became aware of meditation as something the hippies did in the 60s and cartoonists drew pictures of men struggling to reach the top of a mountain to locate their meditating guru in India who could solve all their problems. Meditation seemed far out to me back then.

Meditation came down to earth when I started my business as a freelance health and business writer. I wrote about all the positive impacts of meditation and that it was only worthless if you spent money taking classes and never practiced. My husband and I even took a 4-week course in which we were taught how to meditate. And yes, I still remember my mantra. I never practiced it consistently and I seldom practice now. I think of my daily walks as meditation. Although after writing these blog posts about stress and meditation there is enough information here to induce me to consider the possibility of some meditative practice.

There are many mediation techniques and practitioners tend to apply their own descriptions and emphasis when teaching. The terms don’t really matter because all of meditation involves arriving at a peaceful, a calm state of mind.

At one of our local hospitals with an Integrative Medicine department, patients who want to decrease their stress level and their blood pressure often engage in mindfulness based stress reduction. So do cancer patients who are trying to keep a more positive attitude as well as boost their immune function. The hospital found that participants in this program were able to reduce their sleep disturbances. There were also significant reductions I stress, fatigue and negative mood.

Medical research repeatedly demonstrates that the power of the mind really does influence the body. When you think, for example, your brain is firing various neurotransmitters and other neural activity. This is the same neural network that is responsible for all your physical activities such as walking and breathing. By learning to actively calm your mind you figure out how to be your own best ally in the mind and thought response reaction you have to what is taking place around you and play a support role  rather than staying oblivious to the role you’re playing.

For example, cancer patients need to learn positive self talk and practice meditation, yoga, tai chi to help them feel grateful for all that that they do have instead of always being fearful and feeling lost. The point is most of our thinking is habitual and we’ve been preconditioned to think this way or that whether we’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer or haven’t found a job in 10 months. Once we understand the trap our thinking has become, then we can focus on whatever energy it takes to focus on promoting our own health.

The thought behind the philosophy is that once we learn to stay in the present we develop the ability to experience life in richer ways.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you are currently meditating as part of your daily routine?  And are there some who are more like me? We learned and dropped it?  Let me know in the comment box.  In the meantime I’ll be doing my daily walk to set up my day in about 30 minutes.

My advice: exercise works for just about everyone when it comes to reducing stress.

To your success at healthy aging.

Ruthan

PS  You also may want to consider this series of recordings that contain background for meditation together with some training for stress reduction. They’;re pretty good and they were even endorse by Dr. Phil much to my surprise.  Check it out at

ReduceStressWithoutDrugs

I am an affiliate of the program and will receive a fee should you purchase the package

Ruthan Brodsky
Copywriter & Content Marketer
Health & Business Writer

http://ruthanbrodsky.com
http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

Stress is a major health topic these days. It seems that that the constant contact with media, whether it be your IPod or smart phone, twitting or just texting,  or answering your email at your Mac or PC, your constant contact with family friends and strangers  is causing more stress than a fax or TV commercial could ever have hoped. These communication devices plague us at home, at work, on the road, and for many they sleep right next to us. In fact, the more you read about stress the more you realize just how pervasive it really is.

Just about everyone in the medical area, whether it be a family physician or a podiatrist, is concerned with the unhealthy impact too much stress can have on their patients. It seems that stress is a major factor even for kids in elementary school who show concern about getting good grades or being in the good graces of a friend or getting on the baseball travel team.

I recently received a mailer that a local hospital was giving classes on Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction or MBSR. The concept of Mindfulness has been around for some time. I remember reading about mindfulness-based stress reduction in the 80s and 90s. At that time it was considered a way of learning to relate directly to whatever is happening in your life so that you can take charge of your life. It was considered a way of doing something for yourself that no one else could do for you. It was a question of paying attention to what was causing the stress so that you could deal with it better whether it is dealing with your job loss, the fact that you have breast cancer or your marriage is falling apart.

The concept is that being mindful you can consciously and systemically learning to respond to your own stress, pain, illness as well as the challenges and demands of every day life

Some call it a new area of interest where medicine and psychology meld but those of us who have been long aware of the mind body connection simply see the concept as another how to for making the connection. I’ve always thought that mindfulness would work well with adults who are ADHD because basically what it is  training the mind through certain exercises to stay more focused on the present rather than letting the mind ruminate about the past and agonize over the future.

In other words being mindful, being in the present is another way of approaching reducing stress. If we learn to stay in the present we are likely to feel more at peace about where we are.

Mindfulness stress reduction works for many especially those who must deal with serious illnesses. It also works for many people who are becoming ill because of their stress. All of which are very good reasons to talk about it more in my next post.

If you are interested in finding out if classes on mindfulness stress reduction are available where you live, check out hospitals that have a department in integrative medicine. If they don’t have a program, I’m pretty sure they can help you locate one somewhere in your neighborhood.

To your success in health and aging.

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Copywriter & Content Marketer
Health & Business Writer
http://ruthanbrodsky.com
http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

Heel pain can be very uncomfortable and make it hard to walk. The pain can feel sharp like a knife sticking in the bottom of your foot. The pain gets worse when you stand and after a while it feels like a dull ache. This type of heel pain causes soreness and tenderness only on the bottom of your foot, not in the back of your heel or along your sole.

Resting your foot or trying anti-inflammatories may work. You may want to eventually consider an insert or an insole made to fit your foot by a podiatrist. This can give your foot some support, reduce pressure and help relieve the pain.  Some doctors suggest s injections of corticosteroid drugs if the pain continues but there isn’t much research to show that they work.

Another option is shock wave therapy which uses high energy ultrasound waves to hammer the injured area and stimulate your body’s healing response. Shock wave therapy can be painful and sometimes does cause side effects. Moreover, keep in mind that most insurance companies don’t cover this treatment and there have been conflicting results. They don’t cover laser treatment either.

Surgery is a last resort of most people. Most people do get better without surgery. There isn’t enough data to report whether having an operation to cut away part of your plantar fascia, which is called a fasciotomy, can stop the heel pain. There are also complication risks from the surgery such as more pain, nerve damage or infection.

You can find more self treatments and prevention approaches in this digital book, Plantar Fasciitis Pain Relief Guide. It’s worth checking out.

Some years back, the New York Times published an interesting study on plantar fasciitis stating that it was the major cause of heel pain for many of the elderly. In this study, the Times indicated risk factors that our increase your chance for this condition. Interestingly, it wasn’t athletes that were most at risk but your age.

The cause for that is your feet actually widen and flatten as you age putting more stress on the fascia. The fat padding also becomes thinner so more stress is put on the heel bone. When you put into the mix that the skin on older people’s feet often becomes dry and uncomfortable, and that the elderly have more circulatory problems, it is obvious that as we get older we need to take care of our feet better and have more professional care.

The best advice is to always wear comfortable shoes that support your arch and provide some cushioning. If your job involves standing on a hard surface in one sport for a long time, place a padded rug on the floor to cushion your feet, and take a walk periodically.

If you have remedies that work let us know. Type them in the comment box and we’ll share them with our readers.

To your healthy aging.

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Health and Business Writer and Content Marketer

http://secretstohealthandaging.com

http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

In my last post I wrote about the hows and why of plantar fasciitis causing you pain. Your doctor diagnoses the condition by reviewing your medical history and symptoms and usually performing a physical exam. In some instances, an X-ray or other image study may be necessary to rule out other conditions.

A stretching program is usually the first line of treatment.  The stretching targets the heel cord or Achilles tendon. It’s also a good idea to stretch your Achilles tendon and your calf muscles daily even when you don’t have pain. Here’s an easy exercise you can do for stretching:

Stand straight with your hands against a wall and your sore foot behind your other leg. Keep you heels flat on the floor and slowly bend both knees. Hold the stretch for 20-30 seconds and repeat with the other foot. Do 6-8 repetitions three times a day.

Another stretch, this time with you sitting down, is also simple:

Sit down and cross your sore leg over the other leg.Place your fingers across the base of your toes. Pull the toes back until you feel a stretch in the arch of your foot. To relieve your pain as an initial treatment consider taking an anti-inflammatory medication such as ibuprofen.

• During the first week of pain you may want to ice the sore heel three or four times a day.
• You might also want to try a spongy heel cup that you put inside your shoe to cushion your heel.
• You can buy cushioning for shoes in a drugstore and heel cups and heel pads can be made from felt, foam, sponge and silicone.

• Many people also wear a splint at night that supports the sore foot at an angle usually 90 degrees that relieves some of the heel pain.

Other advice is resting your foot and stop doing those sports and activities that require putting too much weight on your foot such as jogging and even yoga. My best advice is to first stretch, wear the night splint and take anti-inflammatories and wear the heel cup for 10 to 12 weeks before you purchase any custom insert.

For more information on treatments check out Foot Pain Treatment Tips.

To your  success at healthy aging.

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky

Copywriter and Content Marketer

Health and Business Freelance Writer

http://ruthanbrodsky.com

http://FootPainTreatmentTips.com

Three of the women I worked with as volunteers for yesterday’s used book sale were complaining about their feet hurting. We were all standing up helping customers find the books they wanted while keeping the tables laden with books looking relatively neat.

When I politely asked for more details about their discomfort, two women said they had heel pain and the fourth pinpointed her problem as plantar fasciitis.

Plantar fasciitis may not be a household word but it is very common. There is a risk it can happen to anyone, not just someone over 50 or 60. The pain can last for weeks or for months which makes it difficult to walk. The good news it usually gets better on its own time which makes it even more frustrating. There are some treatments, however, that do improve and maybe even speed the recovery of the condition. They are inexpensive and simple and most can be used to reduce the risk of plantar faciitis in the first place.

The plantar fascia is a band of tissue that forms the arch of your foot. It extends from your heel to each of the bones that make up the ball of your foot. There is a pad of fat in your heel, over the plantar fascia, that helps absorb the shock when you walk.

What Causes the Pain?

There are a couple of theories about why older people are at higher risk than someone who is twenty years old. The first is that as we age the plantar fascia loses its stretch. It could also be that the fat pad on the heel gets thinner and does not absorb shock very well. Or you may also have a bone spur growing where the plantar fascia joins your heel bone. This makes your heel hurt even more.

Doctors are not really sure why some people have this pain and others do not. One theory is that the plantar fascia is inflamed from too much pounding on a hard surface. The result is experience pain when you first stand up and walk in the morning or when you stand after sitting for a length time.  However, the pain usually diminishes once you start walking.
One of the problem is that plantar fasciitis is so painful it causes many to walk with a different gait. A different gait could bring on knee and hip problems and back problems. Now you are really in trouble. You may also want to learn more about fallen arches as the cause of plantar fasciitis in an earlier post.

In my next post I’ll describe some of the treatments you can do for yourself to reduce the pain. If you have questions, be sure to type them in the comment box so I can answer them in my next post or by email.

To your healthy aging.

Ruthan
Copywriter & Health and Business Writer

http://ruthanbrodsky.com

http://secretstohealthandaging.com

There was a study published in the British Medical Journal of 20,000 British folks which showed that you can cut your risk of having a stroke in half by being active for 30 minutes a day, eating 5 daily servings of fruit and vegetables and avoiding cigarettes and excess alcohol.

You know, those are all good things to do but I for one believe there’s a lot more. For instance, I read somewhere that in societies where people retire and stop working, the population becomes obese and the amount of chronic disease skyrockets after retirement. I’ve also read that the best thing you can do to prevent dying at an early age is to buckle your seat belt when driving.  These are all good things to know too but I still think there is more.

I am one of those people who feel strongly that rather than focus on your problems as you get older, you have a better chance of a quality life if you make changes, find meaning in your life, and focus on the opportunities life has to offer.

If you are 40 or 75 you still need to ponder your current life and your life dreams and figure out who is it that you want to be in your near future. Granted, introspection is a challenge, regardless of age. But assessing who you are and where you are can allow you, can permit you to make changes along your passage.

Let me ask you, what is the next step you’ll take to gain clarity about what you plan to do after you retire? How are you going to make effective transitions from one stage of your life to your next?

Aging well is more critical than ever in the U. S. or anywhere for that matter, as the world gets older. The longer you can hold off any disabilities and maintain your health the more you will enjoy your life.  There’s a big difference between aging well and growing frail and less independent.

That’s not to say your body doesn’t change. It does – not matter what you do. The brain processes information more slowly. Social isolation and depression are common as we age. On the other hand taking care of your gums will help you keep your teeth. At age 40 your ability to see close declines. Cataracts and glaucoma are more common when you’re 60.  And so many people start losing their ability to hear especially the high sounds. The list goes on but researchers are learning that the aging process, that is how well you live as you age, can be manipulated at least in animals.  They don’t know how well it will work in humans.

Actually, you too can manipulate the quality of your aging: staying active, eating less, and stimulating yourself mentally. Keep in mind that aging is not a disease. However, postponing aging would certainly put us all at a lower risk for disease.

So what do you think? Is it positive thinking or organic foods that keep us alive and healthy as we get older? Love to hear what you have to say on this topic.

To your healthy aging success,

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky
Copywriter & Content Marketer

I am working with several clients in their 50s and 60s and one in his 70s and each one is facing new life issues. The younger boomers are encountering identity shifts, moving from their role as full-time parents and wealth builders to anticipating a long life expectancy without a model or road map. A few of them want to continue doing what they are doing. Most of them want to go beyond building a resume and move on to something else. What is interesting of this last group is that they still want financial stability in their new roles but they also want to bring more meaning and purpose to their lives.

Meaning and purpose are big issues. I find myself often thinking about how effective I could be with these clients if I had in place a process for helping them find the broader answers to the broad questions and still help them define a clear path for their future.

Working with my clients to give them an online presence often brings up these concerns because they begin comparing how business is done today to the process 10 years ago. For instance, one of my clients remarked that she and her husband were playing bridge with another couple. All four people were wearing watches. If their group were under 25 no one would wear watches. They would tell time through their  cell phones.

The reason why I encounter clients with these life passage challenges is that  when they face creating an online business for their business or profession they become very much aware of their limitations. Their one time sense of unlimited energy and learning possibilities has shifted to what can I accomplish and how much help do I need?

I only have one client who remains interested in ascending his career ladder even higher. Observing him he  seems to focus on collecting more power, prestige and possessions. Since the economy has been challenged I think he’s become very empathic to the economic condition of others but feels stuck because he is providing jobs.

I also have a couple of clients who are doing the same procedures in their business which were done 10 years earlier.  They are not very happy or pleased with themselves.
Then there is the third group which have searched around and sometimes floundered to find meaning in what they are doing. Many of them now work with life coaches or therapists or read a lot of self help books. As their journey moves more inward the external measurement of success has less meaning for them. I find these clients so much fun to work with because they bring a fresh, positive energy to their business and it’s far easier for me to be creative.

More on finding your meaningful journey as you get older in my next post.
In the meantime, let me know what you want to discuss. I am thinking about creating a monthly teleseminar on health and aging. Do you have topics you want discussed?  Type them in the comment box and I’ll make a list of topics and share it with my subscribers.

To your success at healthy aging.

Ruthan
PS You may want to check out my blog on working in retirement which talks more about this topic.

In my last post I described my personal experience with my mother that gave me the wake up call about the possible issues with a medication. In the past few days I’ve received several emails describing other people’s experiences. It is more obvious than ever that the adverse effects of medications knows no age barrier. The symptoms can impact your kids, your grandchildren or your grandparents.

Older people are at high risk of drug toxicity but it can also happen to a younger person in their 40′s and even in their 30s. Most negative drug responses take place because a person’s ability to metabolize the drug has changed.

You eliminate most drugs from the body through the kidneys and liver. The problem begins because as you reach your 40s you start accumulating fat and you lose muscle mass. You also lose some ability for your kidneys and liver to process the medications. Even though there is a well established connection between aging and drug toxicity, doctors often don’t recognize the patient’s symptoms as an adverse drug reaction and see it as a new medical condition caused by a virus for instance.

Part of the answer to recognizing this problem may require changing the tendency for physicians to prescribe a medication for every symptom. Not every symptom requires a medication. The concern is that the more medications a patient takes, the more likely one of them will build up to a toxic level.

Still another side of the coin is that most of us see multiple doctors and they don’t always communicate with each other. They could end up prescribing similar drugs which can also reach a toxic level. Going to electronic medical record keeping will help eliminate this part of the problem because each doctor will be able to view your medical record.

In the meantime it’s not a bad idea if you kept a record of your medications and bring that list to each of your doctor’s when you visit them. This should include over-the-counter medications also. And some of your doctors may want to know which vitamins and minerals you’re taking and the dosage for each. It’s also a good idea to read the safety inserts that come with your prescription because your physician may not disclose everything to you or may not be aware of them.

Paul, for instance, was a heavy snorer. His doctor prescribed nose drops that contained steroids to open his clogged nasal passages. They worked except over time Paul’s vision became blurry. The first ophthalmologist he saw did not diagnose cataracts because Paul was young and the condition was sudden. He forgot to ask what medication Paul was taking. When Paul’s eyes became worse and he went t a specialist, he learned that taking steroids can cause cataracts. Fortunately for Paul, cataract surgery restored his vision.

Then there are all the drugs that can make you sick when you drink alcohol. Some antibiotics in combination with alcohol can cause serious nausea and vomiting. If you’re on the blood thinner Coumadin, alcohol decreases your protection from blood-clotting disorders and you can have a life-threatening hemorrhage.

Think about it. You’ve heard the ads on TV and the radio: 10 seconds touting the benefit of the drug and 20 seconds of fast talk telling you all the things that can go wrong.

My advice: you are the captain of your ship. Know what is going on in your body.

To your success at healthy aging.

Ruthan Brodsky

Ruthan Brodsky

Business & Health Writer

Copywriter

http://RuthanBrodskycom

Http://fromRetirementToCareerChange.com

Most of us have some understanding that there are medications that aren’t going to agree with us. For instance, we have this vague understanding that if we take too much aspirin we may end up with stomach problems. We know that there are allergic reactions to antibiotics because whenever you are prescribed one or one of your kids were prescribed something the first question is do you have any known allergies to this medication.

What we don’t realize is that our response to medication, even medications that we may have been taking for 10 years, may result in a problem as we get older. Or it could be that normal adult dosages of medication may create problems because the dosage should be smaller.

I will always remember the time my mother was in the hospital because she fell down at the adult recreation center and cracked her head. She was about 82 years old at the time and taken to emergency at a hospital. Apparently she became very anxious and distraught and the resident in charge gave her a simple dose of valium. It took this poor woman at least 3 weeks to get back to normal.

It took me nearly a week to figure it out. The head injury was mild and required no stitches but it bled a lot as head injuries do. Her snow white hair was pink and there was no concussion. My mother weighed about 105 pounds at the time and it took a long time for the valium to leave her 82 year old body. In the mean time she could not function, didn’t remember anything from one minute to another and acted like a zombie.  She went from a screaming wild woman (I’m told) to a very quiet, can’t do anything for herself in less than an hour. What I subsequently found out was that the dosage was probably too much for her

My mother lost a piece of herself with that incident. I already knew that she had a difficult time recovering from anesthesia when she had a couple of minor surgeries. The medications did what they were supposed to do but they were making it tougher for my mother to live an active, normal life. Her reaction wasn’t much different from the 55 year old woman who lost 25 pounds and still received the same dosage of baclofen for multiple sclereosis that she had taken for the past 6 years to control muscle spasms in her leg. Only this time, with the weight loss, the drug built up to toxic levels and her behavior completely changed.

It is so interesting that drug toxicity and reaction is a common problem yet we don’t think about it and neither do our doctors suspect it as a symptom, especially of mental problems. Dizziness, blurred vision, memory laws, loss of balance are all symptoms that someone is having a bad reaction to a drug .and  It may be that, like my mother, the dosage was too high or it may be that a person’s ability to metabolize the drug may have changed.

And this isn’t just a problem for older people. More about that in my next post. If you are 40 years old or older, you need to know this.

To your success at healthy aging.

Ruthan Brodsky

Ruthan Brodsky
Health and Business Writer
Content Marketer   Copywriter

http://ruthanbrodsky.com

Http://fromretiremnttocareerchange.com

Your normal weight could be unhealthy for you. Apparently it’s not enough to look at your bathroom scale or to your body mass index or BMI. Your BMI is a measure of what your weight is in relation to your height to help you figure out if you are healthy. For example, normal BMI is 18.5 to 24.9. Overweight is 25 to 29.9 and obese is over 40. You can calculate your own BMI at The US department of Heath and Human Services.

You also need to consider your levels of fat. Part of the problem is that BMI can be misleading. If you are very muscular, for instance, you may have a false high BMI because it does not account for the weight of the muscle. Besides, BMI does not factor in what is called central obesity which is when weight is carried around the abdomen and considered an increased disease risk.

Mayo Clinic did a research study in 2008 and identified the term normal weight obesity. This takes place when a person has a normal BMI but a large percentage of body fat, such as more than 30 percent for women and 20 percent for men. They observed over 2000 normal weight adults, men and women, and found that over half of them had normal weight obesity or NWO. They estimate that up to 30 million Americans have this condition.

The problem is people with normal weight obesity do not have much muscle mass and their bones are not very dense. This condition is more likely to take place in elderly people. People with NOW are also more likely to have metabolic syndrome which often leads to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. An earlier study reported that NWO women had higher biomarkers of inflammation putting them at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.

One of the better programs that I’ve encountered is Healthy Weight  Loss Success Guide. The author not only discusses how to get your metabolism going but show you how to include foods that provide you with nutrition. Check it out; I think the author may have a trial version still available. If you purchase the program I do receive a commission but I bought it and I think it’s good and helpful.

If you are skinny it’s unlikely you have NOW. If someone is overweight they already know their BMI is high. It is the folks in the middle range that need to measure their body fat.

The answer to having a healthy weight is exercise. If you are dieting and losing weight you could be also losing muscle. A combination of aerobic exercise and strength or resistance training exercise that involves all muscle groups is probably where you need to look.
The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends that adults, age 18 to 64, do the following:

• 2 hours and 30 minutes a week of moderate intensity or 1 hour and 15 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity.

• Increase to 5 hours a week of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity or 2 hours and 30 minutes weekly of vigorous intensity physical activity for extra health benefits.

• Muscle strengthening activity for all major muscle groups at least 2 days weekly is probably where you need to focus.

Looks like we all have our worked cut out for us.

Much success to your healthy aging,

Ruthan Brodsky
Health & Business Writer
Content Marketer