Do you know what a “low energy femoral shaft and subtrochanteric fracture” is?  If you take a drug like Fosamax for osteoporosis or osteopenia, now is the time to get informed. These words, added to Fosamax inserts, warn that taking this drug increases your risk of fracturing your femur, or thigh bone, even during low impact activities. As the femur is among the strongest in the body, the unusual incidence of fractures in Fosamax users prompted the FDA to require manufacturer Merck to include the warning. For the full story, see yesterday’s ABC World News’ Osteoporosis Drugs, Like Fosamax May Increase Risk of Broken Bones in Some Women. This is only the latest in serious problems associated with this class of drugs, called biphosphonates. Start with our report on the FDA alert last June warning of “the possibility of severe and sometimes incapacitating bone, joint and/or muscle Read more

What fresh hell is this? It seems that the ante has been upped for couch potatoes, people who drive or who sit in front of computers for a living.  Specialists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden are finding that prolonged periods of sitting are more harmful than what we’ve heretofore thought of as simply a ’sedentary lifestyle.’  Their new model of “inactivity physiology” suggests that sitting, or non-muscular activity is in a class by itself – it’s not the same as simply ‘not exercising’.  Actually, being sedentary – a normal day at home without exercise, carrying groceries, washing dishes, pulling weeds – is looking pretty good by comparison. From the New York Times: It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk Read more

According to Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, co-author of Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution, and CEO of 20-first, a company that helps organizations develop more inclusive leadership styles, gender-balance in their management teams and better respond to women as employees and consumers – one in three new US jobs in next 8 years is expected to be at a woman-run company Here are the stats from a recent newsletter: Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute predicts that about one-third of US jobs created over the next eight years are expected to be at women-owned small businesses, a projection even the Institute calls “striking”, since jobs at women-run businesses now make up only 16% of the total. More than half of all jobs created by small businesses Read more

This is a special post for our special intuitives and Carolyn Myss fans. She is offering an online audio course with Dr. Norm Shealy, The Proven Power of Medical Intuition: Self-Diagnosis and Healing with Your Body’s Energy System beginning on March 16. I attended this course live with these two pioneers in energy medicine and medical intuition years ago, and can tell you that they are a fabulous and potent duo. They are focused and specific in describing energetic anatomy, guiding you through exercises to access intuition, offer perspectives on what may be blocking you, and they do it with trademark humor and compassion. Most of you know Caroline Myss as a legend in the field of intuition and energy healing, but it was neurosurgeon and first president of the American Holistic Medical Association, Dr. Shealy, who pioneered Read more

Skip the Botox, Do Facial Yoga Instead

March 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Posted by: k daniel

For some common sense about face lifts we turn to the ancient art of yoga to discover that your facial muscles are like any other muscle – exercise tones them, and regular practice can keep sagging jowls at bay, your forehead smooth and eyelids in place. Who knew! Well, I jest, but I was happy to find this simple routine of facial exercises laid out within easy reach of a bookmark for an on-the-spot workout. And they do double duty by relieving stress in your face, jaws, neck and shoulders. And speaking of relaxing, my cosmetician tells me that the main benefit of facials actually come from the 20 minute massage, which, like exercise, increases blood and lymph circulation in the skin to stimulate nutrient transport and flush toxins from the skin. At my local salon I can opt to only do a 30 minute face (lifting) massage, which includes a light cleansing, peel and a good quality facial cream. It’s always instructive how much moisturizer a massage pushes into your skin – spoons more than the usual dabs I use. Try it for yourself.

Many women who diligently watch their daily intake of calcium from greens, dairy products and supplements to protect their bone health, are unaware that they lose the benefits of their careful attention when they reach for a can of soda – while also increasing their risk for diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses. This article is reprinted with the permission of nutritionist and health educator Dr. Judith Valentine, Ph.D., who is delivering a program on bone health and osteoporosis Women Doing It For Ourselves: How to Build Strong Bones for Lifelong Vitality with us on aheadofthecurveatmidlife in April. To be on our mailing list for this program, sign in here. You’ll receive our free report, The Selling of Osteoporosis, and we’ll keep you in the loop. Read more

Defining Moments: Act on Your Insights

February 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Posted by: k daniel

I found this beautifully written essay simple and powerful. Psychotherapist Mel Schwartz describes insights as initiators of change – but only if we pay homage to them. As forerunners of our growth, he says, they need our attention. If we don’t commit to our fragile new insights, we simply aren’t taking ourselves seriously enough.

From time to time, many of us tend to experience an occasional insight. An insight is simply the ability to change our filter and look at things differently. In moments of insight, there’s a sudden burst of clarity where there had previously been static; there is an epiphany of movement. It’s the a-ha moment. When we are firmly entrenched in our beliefs and rooted in our certainty, we’re not typically open to insights. To have an insight we need to temporarily suspend our beliefs and open to new Read more

While you’re reviewing your intentions for the year and deciding what you want to let go of and what you want to take with you this year, releasing a hurt, thought, injury or old issue may well be on your agenda. Use this simple process as a tool to help you. A ritual is a series of focused actions taken with a specific goal in mind. Use this process to analyze, specify and release a hurt, thought, injury or issue in your life. Part of the extensive site of the Love and Forgiveness campaign by the Fetzer Institute, its series of beautiful panels set to music takes you through a powerful ritual of focused questions and thoughts with the goal of helping you to let go and forgive. Leave the past in the past and free more of your energy to help shape an open future of possibility.

Eckhart Tolle TV: Creating a New Earth Together

February 24, 2010 | 1 Comment

Posted by: k daniel

Eckhart Tolle, the runaway bestselling author of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, and The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, continues to inspire with his stated goal of creating an online community intended to help usher in a new state of consciousness into the world. A long time in the making, you can tune into Eckhart Tolle TV with a monthly membership that gives you live guided meditations, access to a private seminar series, an online community to chat with, and short question and answer clips of Eckhart answering member’s questions. You can also submit your own questions for upcoming recordings.

An Eater’s Manual for Anyone Who Eats

February 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Posted by: k daniel

Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto put forth three simple “rules” for eating healthily while being mindful of the impact your food choices make on the planet: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” His latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual uses these categories, but adds what he’s learned about the psychology of food and eating. “The games we play with ourselves about food, about how we confuse lots of food with lots of food experience. They’re not the same thing. You can have an intense food experience with less food. Europeans have intense food experiences but eat less food.” Pollan questions the premise that science is the only authority we have on matters having to do with food in our bodies. Long before nutrition science, culture guided us, with what’s now relegated to old wives’ tales. His goal is to resurrect that cultural wisdom, and the book is full of the rules of our grandmothers’ – 64 of them. Read more