An online journal for women engaging the third third of their lives.
The Third Third Topic: Health
The greatest gift on this earth. How to keep it. How to handle your body's betrayal. Medical news updates. Reflections.
Perspectives on Health
Who are you going to call when you start to fall apart?
I have come face-to-face with my mortality in recent days – or, at the least, with some of the vicissitudes of aging – and it is not a pretty picture.
Indeed, “picture” is the right word. It is the images that I find so jarring – depressing, actually -- as if they ar...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 149 Views | 0 Comments
Targeting the Aging
Do you feel it, too – that target that’s been drawn on your chest, centered between your wrinkle-creamed neck and exercised-but-nevertheless-slightly-bulging waistline, stretching from the ache in your right shoulder to the creakiness on your left? It’s a bulls-eye,...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 200 Views | 0 Comments
Cure Cancer with $75?
Ovarian Cancer. The two words have a profound ability to cast a pall over things. Literally. Even a luncheon staged to celebrate life and raise funds for researching prevention or a cure. Even a luncheon that stands as a tribute of a daughter’s love for her mo...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 171 Views | 0 Comments
Betrayed (by my body). And dismayed.
I’m not sure there is enough Advil in the world. My body is aching. Everywhere. And for no other reason than that I am – I mean, it is – aging. I may not be old, but by golly, my body is making it patently clear that it is getting that way. It’s not that I cannot physica...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 243 Views | 0 Comments
My Rx for Health Care
I think that ancient Chinese curse has taken hold: we are indeed living in interesting times. These are, in many ways, the times my Dad has worried about his entire adult life. As a child of the Depression, he was always afraid of running out of money. And as a physician, he was terrified of &ld...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 278 Views | 0 Comments
Fear of Farting
As a mother, I insisted my children could learn the bodily control necessary to stop farting – at least in my presence. I had no tolerance for bathroom humor. But now, for reasons which are probably obvious given that I’m writing about flatulence, I wish I did. On a website titled Fla...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 262 Views | 0 Comments
My Memory, My Life?
In today’s New York Times there is a fascinating story about recent advances in neuroscience that could lead to erasing bad memories and, as a logical corollary, enhancing memory that might otherwise be diminished by age or disease. The scientists describe the painstaking, molecule-by-molecul...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 286 Views | 0 Comments
What’s your Real Age?
As you no doubt know by now, you can take a test online to find your “real age” – and then sit back and be inundated by drug companies offering to fix what ails you for the rest of your life, no matter how long that may be. The folks behind the Real Age concept are obviously on to...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 297 Views | 0 Comments
Sleepless at Sixty
I was going to post this story yesterday, but I needed a nap. Mistake Number One for Insomniacs: Napping. More mistakes: Reading in Bed. It’s for sleep only. Oh, and sex. (But that’s another story.) Sleeping in. Believing that an extra glass of wine will help you sleep. Worr...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 519 Views | 0 Comments
Building Better Bones -- or Not?
Following three women down a hiking trail recently, I overheard their conversation about sleep, energy, menopause, and hormone replacement therapy. One asked “Are you always tired?” The others followed: “Did you have a hysterectomy?” “Are you taking hormones?&rdquo...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 326 Views | 0 Comments
The New Senior Moment
Going back to school makes sense. Especially if you learned the wrong stuff the first time. Really. And it can change the way we look at the world, indeed, the way the world looks at us. For example: somewhere along the line, in the sixties and the seventies, we were taught that the adult brain ...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 510 Views | 0 Comments
Betrayed: The Year My Body Went to Pot (almost)
So many times. So many, many times, the voice in my head scolded me. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Initially, I heard it differently -- more like, “What’s a nice, young girl like you doing here?” I was 56, but still. . . . That pa...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 3217 Views | 0 Comments
A New Take on Caretaking
Once upon a time I read wedding announcements in the New York Times to find a job (back when you could assume the bride was leaving hers); more recently, when my father-in-law was ill, I read the obituaries in our local newspaper -- to find a caregiver. Yes, I read obituaries, and I made cold calls...
Read full article > >
HEALTH | 784 Views | 0 Comments
Blog entries on Health
Be Careful What You Wish For
File this under “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR”:
Two recent articles question the value of advancing some of medicine’s newest diagnostic tools -- unless or until we have the professional knowledge and expertise to interpret them and/or effective health care treatments to ...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 53 Views | 0 Comments | July 23, 2010 11:41:10 am
The Estrogen Dilemma, (cont.)
The Estrogen Dilemma in Sunday's New York Times Magazine (April 18, 2010) re-opens the decade-old debate over multiple risk-benefit analyses of certain hormone replacement therapies in a very thorough, personal, and, I thought, helpful way -- deconstructing and revisiting the resul...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 99 Views | 0 Comments | April 16, 2010 1:52:56 pm
Gym Rats
Three days as a slug have got me thinking I need to go to . . . the gym.
But this thought process itself runs counter to the latest mind-body study which suggests that exercise, nay, the right kind of exercise – the kind that makes you perspire and breathe heavily – can ma...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 247 Views | 0 Comments | September 22, 2009 08:24:04 am
A Conversation About Health Care
A sister blogger, Paula Behnken, has made a huge contribution to the conversation about health care reform. And I do mean conversation -- not inane, or insane chatter. I commend her thoughts -- and others on her site -- to you! Lest this seem self-serving -- Yes, I know my post is there, t...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 250 Views | 0 Comments | September 06, 2009 7:20:07 pm
Don't Call Me Old!
I saw a new, young doctor (aren’t they all?) this week who called my most recent infrastructure failing (a torn bicep, for the record) the result of “Life and Time.” I love that!...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 334 Views | 0 Comments | July 10, 2009 08:57:11 am
You Don't Say
"With fully a third of their lives ahead of them, but with little or none of the hormones that fostered what may have been a robust sex life, many postmenopausal women experience diminished or absent sexual desire, difficulty becoming aroused or achieving orgasm, or pain during intercourse caused by...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 434 Views | 0 Comments | March 31, 2009 4:55:57 pm
What's Your Real Age?
What’s your Real Age? As you no doubt know by now, you can take a test online to find out “ and then sit back and be inundated by drug companies offering to fix what ails you for the rest of your life, no matter how long that may be. The folks behind the Real Age concept are obviously on...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 384 Views | 0 Comments | March 30, 2009 10:56:04 am
Vaccines Recommended for Baby. . . Boomers
The new shingles vaccine Zostavax, approved by the FDA in 2006 is now on the CDC's official list of recommended vaccines for people aged 60 and older. The infection, related to the chicken pox virus, causes severe and chronic pain in adults and poses a increasing risk of complications in individual...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 277 Views | 0 Comments | January 02, 2009 1:19:16 pm
Not Guilty by Reason of Menpause
(From an Interview with the Author, Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant) Interviewer: Can I say right off that you don’t look old enough to be writing about menopause? Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant: (blushing) Thank you. Actually, it’s all the sweating… it’s a natural moisturizer. Why spend thousands ...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 516 Views | 0 Comments | August 25, 2008 3:05:46 pm
1 in 8 May Get Alzheimer's
The same lethal statistic (1 in 8) that confronts women as their risk of getting breast cancer now confronts all of us (again and in addition), as a projected risk of developing Alzheimer's, according to a report on ABC News March 18. I've seen the ravages of Alzheimer's up close and personal in my...
Read full blog entry > >
Category: HEALTH | 382 Views | 0 Comments | March 19, 2008 08:22:53 am
Use your IRA to buy a Vacation Rental for investment, income and personal use.
www.lasaii.com
www.lasaii.com
Most commented on perspectives:
© Copyright 2006 - 2010 The Third Third.