Wrinkle Creams, Moisturizers, and Beauty Sleep

This blog is beginning to take on schizophrenic attributes, switching from paeans of praise for menopause (or, more precisely, life after menopause) to suggestions for losing weight to downright preachiness. But it’s my blog, not a paid newspaper column or a homework assignment, so I can write whatever I wish.

And today I wish to talk about wrinkle creams. You’ve all seen those ads here on the Internet where a wrinkled woman regains her youthful looks after using the advertised serum, an exceedingly expensive serum, I might add. Like many of you, I salivated over the idea of looking young again, but when I had the opportunity of testing one of those products, I found that it did less for me than the cream I bought at a grocery store.

So why do we see the old woman becoming young and beautiful before our eyes? The magic of computers. A young woman was aged electronically, then her youth was restored. How nice for her. The rest of us have to do it the hard way: using sunblock; taking anti-oxidants; drinking lots of water; slathering on creams that promise to restore our skin but don’t.

If you read the small print on some wrinkle creams, it’s no wonder they don’t work for postmenopausal women. They help with premature aging, and I think we’re past the state of aging prematurely. It’s just plain aging from here on out.

I came across an interesting tidbit the other day. Moisturizing creams don’t moisturize; they merely keep the skin from losing moisture. In order for the skin to be moisturized, it must be dampened before the cream is applied. I’ll have to try that, see if it works.

I have noticed that there is one youthing agent that definitely works: sleep. After sleeping well, my wrinkles seem to be less pronounced. But since I’ve been spending way too much time at the computer, I don’t have many good nights, so I am aging faster than I’d like. Turns out my aunt who used to talk about getting her “beauty sleep” was right.

So I hope we all sleep well tonight.

Menopause: Paying Homage to Today

When I was growing up, I had a delightful neighbor who brought joy into my rather bleak young life. I haven’t talked to her in many years, but I have never forgotten what she did for me. Yesterday I heard that her two oldest sons died of heart attacks within six weeks of each other. I didn’t know the men, and I didn’t know them when they were boys (they were a few years ahead of me in school) but it still hit me hard. By today’s life expectancy, they should have had a good fifteen to twenty years left. And just like that, their lives were over.

In death, though, there is life, if only to remind us that today is all we have; yesterday is thousands of miles behind us, and the future is waiting for us somewhere far ahead in space. In recognition of this, we are often told to live each day as our last, but that is not realistic. To quote my brother, “If I really were to live today as if it were my last, I’d have blown all my money, pissed off all my friends, and impregnated 10 girls.”

I don’t mean to sound callus, but after all, this blog is supposed to be a celebration of life. One thing menopause has taught me is that the best we can do is pay homage to the day, to be aware of it, and get what we can from it. Then, if it turns out to have been our last, at least it will have been worth living.

Diet Sodas Can Make You Fat

Everyone knows that regular soda can make you gain weight; a twelve ounce can contains nine teaspoons of sugar. But a can of diet soda has no sugar, no calories, so how can it also make you gain weight? By creating an artificial hunger.

When the tongue detects a sweet taste, the body thinks it is going to be getting an infusion of energy, so the liver stops manufacturing sugar from the body’s reserves of protein and starch, and waits for the ready-made sugar to enter the body. If no sugar enters the body, the liver starts clamoring for the promised energy, which translates into an urgent need to eat. This urge can last up to ninety minutes after drinking the diet soda. So unless you have a will of iron, you will eat. If you do have the will to resist the liver’s demands, those hunger pangs could torment you.

And all for what? To satisfy your thirst? You’d be better off drinking water.

Besides, the phosphorus in the soda is bad for you, especially if you are a menopausal or postmenopausal woman. A high phosphorus intake throws off the calcium/magnesium ratio, which puts you at risk for bone loss. Its hard enough getting the calcium you need to save your bones without sabotaging your efforts with a worthless drink.

So do yourself a favor. The next time feel like drinking a diet soda, don’t.

The Good News About Being Overweight

If you’ve been heavy for most of your reproductive years, you already know what the drawbacks are: lack of respect, poor self-image, perhaps even poor health. But here’s the good news: in essence you have been weightlifting all those years, and so you should have strong bones and more muscle than you thought possible. As you age, then, you should not lose bone and essential body mass as fast as thin women.

Now for the bad news. That extra weight puts you at a higher risk for many diseases.

There is more good news, however. You only have to lose ten to twenty percent of your total weight to gain the health benefits. And ten to twenty percent is easy to lose. You don’t even have to diet. Diets don’t work anyway, which you already know; you’ve probably tried dozens of them over the years.

So how do you lose weight without dieting? Follow these five simple guidelines:

1. Walk almost everyday, working up to six hours a week. It’s one of the best ways of burning fat.
2. Air bicycle if you can. (This can be included as part of your walking time.) It helps tone your abdomen.
3. Drink six to eight glasses of water a day. Drink water in place of sodas, sugar-free sodas, and juice, etc.; those don’t count as your water intake.
4. Replace the starch (bread, rice, pasta) in one meal with a large raw vegetable salad. Go easy on the lettuce; it soaks up salad dressing and doesn’t really have much nutritional value.
5. Put away the scale. Fat weighs less than muscle, so at first your fat loss may be offset by muscle gain, which is good news in that muscle burns more calories than fat, and eventually it will help you lose more weight.

 Good luck. Let me know how you do.

Menopause: My Rebirth

I had a great day yesterday. It wasn’t just that the weather was lovely, it was also that I felt good. There was even a spring in my step when I took my walk. This is new for me. During all those years of premenopausal depression when I seemed to be trudging through a dark tunnel, I don’t think I ever once told myself I had a great day.

Menopause has been good to me and good for me. Of course, I’d been working toward this end for a long time: exercising, eating properly, and taking handfuls of supplements, but the blessings of menopause still surprise me. I feel new and reborn, with more energy than I’ve had since . . . never.

This energy feels odd, almost like hope, and for one who has been a stranger to hope for a long time, it is certainly appreciated. I believe that in many ways my life is just beginning. Even if I don’t achieve the financial rewards I would like with my writing or with my resurrected jewelry business, I am achieving joy. I never realized that one of the joys of life is actually feeling joy.

As soon as I publish this, I’m going out for a walk. I keep stressing this, because I know much of my easy menopause has been due to my walking. It is a great hormone equalizer, and has the added benefits of burning fat and reducing stress. As Dickens said, “The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy.”

So, I wish for you a good walk.

Coloring a New You

We are what we wear. Young women often try out different colors while trying on new personas, but as we get older, we seldom vary our colors; we know what looks good on us and we tend to stick with it. But now is a time of change, a time to rethink our color choices, focusing on who we want to be.

If you are introverted, for example, and wish to become more extroverted, put away those neutral colors and start wearing red. Women generally feel more confident, smart, and sophisticated when wearing red. And if you want to feel powerful, combine the red with black.

If you are naturally a negative thinker and wish to become more optimistic, wear yellow.

If you are too serious and wish to become more playful, add orange to your wardrobe, even if only as an accessory.

If you wish to become more compassionate, wear green.

And if you want to add a spiritual dimension to your life, increase your creativity, or strive for meaning and purpose, wear purple.

If you wish to get rid of mental tension or to control your temper, wear pink. Pink is an enervating color. Even if you wish to be aggressive in the presence of pink, you can’t be. (Makes you wonder at the choice of pink for little girls. It’s the color of sweetness, and is not conducive to helping girls become strong women.)I haven’t yet made my way up the color scale to the warm colors. I’m still down with the cool, calming blues, but I am developing quite a fondness for purple. Maybe maroon will be the next color I gravitate toward. It’s the color for rewarding oneself and for being carefree. After that, can red be far behind? 

Passwords, a Daily Affirmation

A few years ago I decided to see if the daily affirmation could help me change my life. Every night before I went to bed, I would write down what I wanted and what I wanted to be, but the only thing that changed was that I regained my love of writing. So perhaps it did work, though in a rather oblique way.

Now that I am spending much of my time on the internet, I am accumulating passwords the way the junk drawer accumulates worthless bits and pieces. Unlike most of that junk, though, I use the passwords every day. So, to keep from wasting those extra seconds that it takes to log onto a site, I am turning them into affirmations. On the website for the writing contest I entered, I use “iwill!win.” For my email, I use “iMHappy2.” Another one is “luvmenopause.” I’m not sure this will help me in my quest for serendipity, but you never know. It could work.

And no, I’m not stupid. You don’t think those are my REAL passwords, do you? 

Resurrecting Myself

One of the hardest things about aging is that we leave bits of us in the past, and after losing bit after bit, we begin to feel as if we are losing ourselves. Though we can still appreciate a lovely sunset, somehow it doesn’t have the visceral effect it once did. With fading eyesight and bifocals, it’s not as easy to get engrossed in a novel; the words keep getting in the way. And then there’s all those foods we once loved that we can no longer eat because they give us gas or diarrhea, or both.

Today I discovered I might be able to resurrect one of those lost bits of me.

I used to design and sell jewelry, but my market shrank then disappeared. (I won’t go into the details; this blog is supposed to be a celebration, not a whine festival.) Now a friend is starting an internet business. Named Zerana, it will be an upscale boutique selling clothing, accessories, and jewelry by up and coming designers, ranging from those fresh out of school who are trying to make a name for themselves to those simply trying to sell their products. If everything works out, I am going to be one of her clients.

I can’t help wondering if this is the serendipitous moment I have been searching for, the turning point that will bring me to my new life. Even if it isn’t, I can still have the satisfaction of designing earrings and selling them to people who will actually wear them. And maybe make a little money. I can hardly wait.

So, watch for the opening of Zerana in the next couple of weeks.

And watch for me.

(For those who are coming here to find the meaning of the name Zerana, it comes from Zorana, which means sultan in Hungarian and sunrise in Slovak.) 

Flatten Your Belly

No matter what our age, we would all like flatter bellies. My eighty-five-year-old mother, who is dying of cancer, is still bothered by her belly. She is too weak to do anything about it, but the rest of us can strengthen our abdominal muscles. It’s simple, and takes just minutes a day.

During a recent test of abdominal exercises and exercise equipment, it was discovered that air bicycling is the best way to tighten the abdominal muscles. The best way to lose belly fat is walking, as I mentioned an earlier post: It’s Never Too Late to Lose Belly Fat. But unless you walk with your shoulders back and your tummy pulled in, which is hard to do for any length of time, you will probably still need to exercise those abdominal muscles.

Unlike others who try to tell you how to flatten your “abs,” I have nothing to peddle. (Couldn’t resist the pun.) I am not trying to sell you DVDs, books, or exercise equipment of any kind. I am just promoting what you already have: a back and legs.

To air bicycle, all you have to do is lie flat on your back, lift your legs, and peddle. To keep from getting bored, you can vary body positions. I do 100 peddles with my head on the floor, 100 with head and shoulders on a pillow, 100 with my weight resting on my elbows, 100 with my head raised and punching the air as I peddle. Then, on the days I still have energy left, I repeat the sequence. As with any exercise, start out slowly; when I first began air bicycling, I could only peddle about 50 times. And if you notice any sharp or severe pain, stop. No pain, no gain is for young people who do not consider the consequences of injury.

You may never be able to gain or regain the completely flat belly you desire, (I probably won’t considering that I inherited my mother’s body type) but any tightening of the muscles will help with posture, back pain, and perhaps even digestion.

That reminds me, I haven’t peddled my air bike today. How about taking a ride with me? 

Menopause: Playing the Game

  When I started going through menopause, I considered writing a book about my experiences, focusing on what did and did not work for me, but also including the latest research on the problems of menopausal women. Then it dawned on me that there are thousands of professional women out there with long strings of letters after their names who would be writing the same type of book. Since I have no alphabet soup to my name, I figured publishers wouldn’t want to buy my book, so I gave up the idea and concentrated on writing a novel. (Which, to date, no publisher has bought, though yesterday I did send the manuscript to an agent who wanted to read it.)

But now, in this blog, I can write my menopause book in bits and bytes, jumping from philosophical rambles, to personal experiences, to suggestions, to current research without any regard for the cohesiveness that would be necessary in a published book. So far, though, I haven’t been writing much about current research. I don’t find it very impressive.

One study, for example, concluded that menopause is linked to weight gain. The study showed that estrogen helps control food intake and body fat distribution, which is why after menopause women’s fat shifts to the belly. This might be true, but it sounds to me like a plug to get more women to take estrogen replacement therapy. The vast majority of us don’t take it, and that’s lost income for the pharmaceutical industry.

Two things the study does not explain are why some women, for no apparent reason, begin to lose weight after menopause, and why, in our younger, estrogen-rich years many of us gained weight, also for no apparent reason.

It seems to be an extension of the same diet misinformation we’ve been force-fed for the past several decades, with one diet after another promising help, though few ever did. The simple fact is, that for a certain segment of the population, calories don’t count. If you come from peasant stock, particularly in countries that routinely starved their peasants, your legacy is a body bred for fuel efficiency. The less you eat, the less you need to eat. And, to make sure that starving peasant women could continue to bear children, their bodies stored fat under the abdominal muscles guaranteeing that the unborn child would be fed. You probably inherited that, too. After menopause, the fat and the extra weight are no longer needed, and they come off.

Here I’ve linked estrogen to weight loss instead of weight gain like the experts did. See how the game is played? And my conclusion has the added benefit of not trying to stick the entire postmenopausal population into a one-size-fits-all category. We were individuals when we were young, and we are individuals today.

That’s why, in the end, I decided to write my book even if only as this blog. So what if I don’t have a string of letters after my name. I still have a voice.