Flu Shots: For older adults, it’s the year of the super-powered jab

Posted on October 8, 2010 by

Flu season is coming around again and so we roll up our sleeves for the traditional jab. But wait, this year it’s not the same old, same old shot.

 

By Luis Markovic

 

This year there is a special super-powered flu vaccine made specifically for geezers. It’s got four times the antigens of the regular shot. (Antigens are what set off antibodies. Antibodies are the good guys that fight disease. Older people with their diminished immune systems need all the antibodies they can get.)

This vaccine is called Fluzone High-Dose and where I live in CA, it’s available for older adults now. Docs and hospitals are likely to have it and note this—so are Safeway and Walgreens. The last two are part of an emerging pattern of vaccine distribution through supermarkets and drugstores.

 

By infrogmation

 

Expect to see more and more retail establishments signing on as flu shot distributors this year because it’s a profit leader—profit not just from the shot, but from the other things customers buy when they come in to be vaccinated. This development is good for all of us because it means easier access to preventive care, no fussing with doctor visits and picking up a quart of milk and a shot of vaccine in one place—Stop & Shot.

If you have silver hair (or silver roots), Medicare should pay for the shot.

What else?

This is a new vaccine. Nobody yet knows if it will work better than the regular flu shot. In theory, it should. What is known so far is that it prompts more antibodies. In the face of the yearly flu season, that increase in antibodies was enough to win approval from the FDA for distribution to older adults.  Interestingly, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states that it takes no stance on which flu shot to recommend. They will only say to get one.

The real-world results of Fluzone High-Dose will not be known until 2012. Some people will want this vaccine now because of its greater power to produce antibodies. Others may choose to wait and see its actual record in preventing illness and mortality, aka death. It’s really up to you, your medical advisor and, I suspect, whether the girl at the drugstore counter in Walgreens tells you it’s run out already.

Side Effects?

They are reported to be about the same as the side effects of regular flu shots—soreness and swelling at the injection site, headache, malaise and fever. Actually, slightly more people reported these effects compared to the regular shot, but the CDC paper on the subject claims that “most people had minimal or no adverse events”. What I don’t get is why, if the vaccine is made from killed virus, why viralesque symptoms follow the shot.

Is a mystery.

Of course, if you are allergic to eggs or have had a severe reaction to other flu shots, the CDC does not recommend this vaccine. In that case, console yourself with the proven effectiveness of hand washing and keeping your hands away from your face. The traditional advice over the years has also been to stay out of crowds. Lots of luck on that.

 

By Sreejith K

 

Posted in Health | Leave a comment

Farmergate: When aggie imposters infiltrate farmers’ markets

Posted on September 29, 2010 by

OK, I’m used to the ground shifting beneath my feet…housing prices cracked, retirement investments going into a sinkhole and so forth and so forth, but now—oh perfidy!—it seems that peddlers posing as farmers have infiltrated the farmers’ markets of the world. So some of the produce people pay the big bucks for isn’t organic or local and the money spent isn’t supporting small farming efforts, but instead rewarding non-farmers selling commercially-grown products masquerading as pesticide-free and local. Yes, it’s Farmergate.

By George Foster

One recent incident at a market involved unmasking a “farmer” selling broccoli. He was tracked back to his “farm” and asked where the broccoli was growing. Ooops, no broccoli. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that only 63% of farmers’ markets require vendors to sell products they produce themselves.

Actually, the news about aggie imposters doesn’t shake me to the very core of my Birkenstocks for I have long suspected that the vendors who offered impossibly perfect tomatoes at the markets where I lurk were really buying wholesale somewhere else, putting on a straw hat and slipping into the stall line-up.

If you care that you’re being hoodwinked, there are some things you can do. One is to use common sense. If you go regularly to a farmer’s market, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out who really grows their stuff and who is posing as a farmer.

First, talk to the vendors. Ask how they control for pests if they don’t use pesticides. Note if they have varieties of produce not available in stores. Small farmers often grow unusual varieties of grapes, lettuce, tomatoes, stone fruits and so forth—stuff that is not offered by commercial growers. So if a stand has unusual varieties, chances are you support a small farm when you buy their produce. Also notice if the signs at the stands tell the name of the farm and farmer. If you know your own area, you will actually know the farms and even the people who get up at 4 AM to truck their produce to market. In one of my favorite markets, buyers have learned over time who is the real deal and line up to buy from them. So following the lines is probably a workable strategy for finding the good stuff.

Some people think the solution to the aggie masquerade is to put the peddlers on one side of the market and the real farmers on the other, but this undercuts the small farmers who are trying to grow old-fashioned varieties organically. (The imposters with their cheap wholesale products can undersell the real farmers who can’t sell low and still survive.)

Some people avoid these markets entirely and go to the health food stores where the workers presumably are paid a living wage and benefits. Others just keep to the supermarkets. Still others have revived the Victory Garden in their own back yards.

Me, I think it’s most useful to pull back and look at the big picture and figure that almost any way of getting more vegetables and fruits into ourselves is better than trying to find one perfect source. Me, I buy from the farmers at the farmer’s markets and also buy both regular and “organic” at the supermarket and just pick what looks the best and the freshest at any source. I do grow and use my own herbs.

My kids think I am clueless that I don’t insist on organic, but I have always thought produce was sometimes not what sellers claimed and that greed was probably the only way certain produce was green.

Last, to cheer you this week is a photo called The Farmer in Love:

By Uberto
Posted in Food, Health, Lifestyle, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Botanical meds: What docs don’t know and how you can get the info yourself

Posted on September 20, 2010 by

Maybe you already suspected this, but docs think you don’t know much about herbal medicine. And, in a recent survey reported in Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, they also admit they don’t know much about natural remedies either. They perceive botanical illiteracy on both sides and they are right. Most of us couldn’t tell a ginger root from a day lily bulb.

It’s not always been this way. People grew their own pharmaceuticals. Their pharmacy was called a garden and, in much of the world, botanicals are still the basis of medical treatment. And, though people don’t know it, much of our own “mainstream” medicine comes from the earth. Aspirin is derived from the willow tree and the early contraceptive pills came from the Mexican yam.

By Peter Guest

Luckily, in some first-word countries today—not the US— there are doctors who actually study botanical medicines in school and use them regularly in their practice. In Germany, botanical medicine is taught in medical schools and that knowledge is tested in the qualifying exams. Seventy percent of German doctors prescribe botanicals and these medicines are reimbursed by their public health insurance program.

Where to find information when you live in Botanical Dum-Dum Land

All Americans should be better informed about botanical meds. Some of these natural treatments work very well, without the expense and side effects of prescription drugs. The caution here is that there are sleazy products and sleazy people promoting all kinds of “natural” treatments, so the consumer has to weed out the the good from the bad.

Luckily, there’s at least one doctor in this country who has studied botanical treatments and is also up on the latest in higher tech medical advances. He is Dr. Andrew Weil, graduate of Harvard Medical School and a scholar of natural botanicals. He has a foot in both worlds and practices integrated medicine.

Dr. Weil is the reliable source of information about what to take for what condition–what plant or supplement helps with colds, infections, high blood pressure, arthritis and the many other ills that flesh is heir to. He tells what natural product to take, how to take it, the actual doses, what to watch for, when not to take it and what prescription drugs don’t mix well with the botanicals.

Find this treasury of information at www.drweil.com. On the home page, click on Supplements & Herbs. There’s your little home companion to basic botanical medicine and if your doc needs info about how an incoming cold can be warded off with garlic, that’s the spot.

Will you be believed? I don’t know and have given up trying to convert those who don’t want to know. As someone said, it is hard to convince anyone of a fact when his occupation depends on his not believing it. What I do know is that garlic wards off my incoming colds if I get to the garlic fast enough.

And yes, I still get kissed. And while I’m at it, Happy Wedding Anniversary to Cranky Pants.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Prisoner of Stuff: Solving the Downsizing Dilemma

Posted on September 13, 2010 by

Do we hold on to stuff or does stuff hold on to us? So many people drown in their possessions, I  believe stuff has a gravitational pull, power to suck us down into buying, holding, hoarding and then adding more.

By Betsy Fletcher

And family photos have twice the gravitational pull of other material things. If the Internet hadn’t come along as a place to store family photos, the USA would be covered coast to coast in pictures of Johnny’s first birthday and Jenny’s recital.

Why does it happen?

Each of us has an Inner Hoarder and each Inner Hoarder has a reason. For my parents—it took two of us more than six weeks to clean out their house—it was all about The Depression. In The Depression, there wasn’t enough stuff–even soap and toothpaste were precious, so my parents held on to everything, even last month’s newspapers. And I’m still holding on to some of their stuff, but for a different reason.

The thing isn’t the person

I think I am confusing the possessions of a person with the person. If I give away the old books my mom collected, I will be giving away my mom. Well, at least being disloyal to her.

This is nutty thinking, or more accurately, nutty non-thinking, but I think I have a solution. I will keep one or two of them—a little curtsy to mom—and give the rest away to our local library so someone new can enjoy the words. A simple win, win.

Objects of someone else’s desire

When you give something away, you can console yourself with thoughts of the further adventures of the object. Who will read, wear or use it? I write little short stories in my head about where things will end up. Usually, my stories have happy imaginary endings and sometimes, real happy endings,  as with the many bookcases that have ended up in the offices of our local hospice.

And that is one way to cut loose from the magnetic power of stuff—think of the other people who could use and appreciate it. And the process is certainly green–recycling and keeping stuff out of the landfill, a destination my garage has been mistaken for.

Judging the stuff of others

Cranky Pants and I are gearing up for a move to smaller quarters, the downsizing of the geezer class. Of course, what I keep are the necessities, while what he keeps are sentimental objects. Then, after I finish judging his supposedly foolish choices, I say a little prayer of gratitude when I realize the sentimental choice he holds onto is me.

The joy of simplicity

Friends don’t let friends move without good wishes and casseroles served with side dish testimonials about how good it feels to be free of stuff because they’ve done it themselves. Friends are coming forward now to say they’ve stripped themselves of possessions and are happier for it.

Skip and go naked when it comes to stuff—that’s their advice and I believe it for everything you own owns you. You have to fix, polish, insure, repair, arrange, dust, wash and generally look after what you own. There are better ways to spend the rest of our years on the planet.

So, though I am not getting rid of everything, I am going around the house selecting what really really matters and trying to develop a let-it-go attitude about the rest. Think about it. There aren’t self storage units in heaven. Your kids will just throw it out or give it away, so we might as well say goodbye to all the boxes now.

Truth to tell, I expect to be relieved—the happiness of  a light backpack. Is that joy I see around the next corner of life?

By Cornelia Kopp

Posted in Growing older, Lifestyle | 3 Comments

The important pleasures of age…what are they?

Posted on September 9, 2010 by

The important pleasures of childhood were playing outside on summer nights under the streetlights, going swimming, riding bikes and, now that I think of it, not having to cook. (No wonder people love their mothers—a personal chef on the premises.)

The important pleasures of mid-life were mostly private.

By Mario Annunziata

But what about the important pleasures of age? What are they?

Each of us has personal answers and it’s fun to mull them over and come up with a list. Here are mine and may this list set you off on your own quest:

You no longer have to do what the other kids do. One of the gifts of age is growing a mind of your own. Not that you didn’t have it before, but now the mind is more sure of its own thoughts. Independence has strengthened over the decades because you’ve found that much of what you were taught about life turned out to be untrue. (Despite what you were told, good guys don’t always win and nothing bad happens if you wear white shoes before Memorial Day.)

So, yes, later life is a wonderful time to use and polish the First Amendment and the nice thing is, you can’t wear it out. It’s like old silver…the more it’s used, the better it is.  So we Americans can say just about anything without being tarred, feathered or fired.

Now, if you wonder why this freedom comes into full bloom in later life, it could be that you have retired and escaped from the worker box, the parent box and all the other boxes of life. (I don’t know one single person past 60 who considers herself in a box labelled “senior”.) And once you are out of a box, thoughts loosen and run free and the tongue along with them.

Some people think this is crankiness of age. I think it is the honesty of age. If you aren’t going to tell the truth about life now, when will you?

Another important pleasure of age: That’s the experience of appreciation, of gratitude for still being alive on a tiny planet in a huge universe with other humans who have been afforded the same miraculous privilege. Every day in every way I grow more grateful for what I have and do and did.

So what…you may say. This is pleasure? Somehow it is. Gratitude has a calming effect–like sitting in the autumn sunshine with one perfect cup of tea.

By St. Groove

I wouldn’t be surprised if blood pressure goes down when people count their blessings. Earlier in life, I didn’t have time to count my blessings, only time enough to count the kids in the station wagon.  Were all aboard? Which gets me to my third important pleasure, family….

There are probably some people on the planet whose families have given them more trouble than mine and I’d surely like to go out to coffee with them to compare stories. You name it and family has given me grief–yes, ancestors, peers and descendants. Murder, mayhem and madness to start. Yet despite this, I consider my family one of my greatest assets. Yes, my dad deserted us in the Depression, but it was he who later showed me that life was larger than living in a factory town in Connecticut. Yes, my first husband and I divorced, but he stuck by his kids all these years. Also, he, a devoted fisherman, has helped me thru life by telling me long ago that I was like—no, not like a rose—but a fishing line.

By Dave F.

He said a fishing line looks pretty and graceful moving through the air over the water, but when big pressures pull it down, it holds. That one compliment sustained me through hard times. What a gift.

And so it goes with almost every family member. Each has given me a gift and they continue their charity. One gift that keeps on giving is that I can be myself with them—totally, completely, without reservation. They accept me and I can relax into myself in way that doesn’t happen in other situations.

By Jamie Henderson

I guess appreciating family is a pleasure of growing older because I was not insightful enough when I was younger to notice that I sit in a ring of comfort. Or maybe it was that I never sat. Busy mothers don’t sit.

Now, this post is certainly straying into the personal, but that’s the nature of a diary, geezer or not. However, after writing 233 columns about aging and health for a newspaper over the last few years, writing a personal blog now seems to be—well—too personal for someone whose habit is more journalistic.

However, this post is intended, not to inform, but to send you on a quest to find your own important pleasures of age. Please consider using the comment section below to post your own thoughts on the subject. Just know what you post about your pleasures may be read by all my other readers. But if not the truth now, when?

By Anthony Easton

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

If you ever think of moving….Six things to know

Posted on September 6, 2010 by

Older people, if they move from the family home—-the one where the dog died—-typically do it at two defined times. They may first get the urge to move when they are newly retired and want to trade in the bigger house for a smaller one and maybe take a fling at a geographic adventure. This is when folks move to Arizona, Florida and various Del Webby places. No ice to fall on. Flowers in the wintertime. Yesssss!

By Kevin Dooley

Later in life, when people are in their 70′s on up–deep into the pill-taking stage—they may want to be nearer adult children. Someone to watch over me and so on.

They pick the child who seems most interested in parental welfare and move closer.

Whatever the reason for the move—snowbirding or hoping for a little help through later life—here’s what to think about. Begin with this basic:

The truth about today’s real estate market is that people may need tranquilizers the size of horse pills when they find out what their house is currently worth. Oh, the horror of a 40% drop in value. That’s when people will need to make a decision whether to still try and sell or maybe rent or actually forgo the winter tan and stay put. However, what will encourage them to sell is that there are great bargains to be had at the other end of the move. The prices of houses in sunny places—think the gambling cities of Nevada—have fallen fast and long. So a lateral move from diminished price home to diminished price home is more palatable. Well, not really palatable, but maybe swallowable if you hold your nose.

Also, when imagining a new home, people need to think about what kind of environment makes older people happy and healthy. Scientists have looked at this issue and come up with the following points, all of which make sense to me as I feel my way through my own life. So here’s what to keep in mind—

First, go for a home that is near people—you will need a social life–and near services for seniors. Do not go for an isolated home in the boonies even if you can get the acreage for a song. We who are older don’t need to go back to the earth 20 miles from town. We are past the tepee stage of life.

by Fergie Lancealot

I give this anti-islation sermon to Cranky Pants, but he still wants a fishing cabin in the wilderness. I say get it out of your system on vacation and send me smoke signals about how it’s going back there at the trout shack.

Second, look for good medical care. That means the doctors there will still take new Medicare patients and the hospital has a good rep. If you want to know about specific doctors, ask a nurse. Nurses know the scuttlebutt about who is a prince and who a pain in the stethoscope.

Third, look for decent nearby shopping which could include farmers’ markets to get healthy veggies and fruits and and maybe a Trader Joe’s to fill the grocery cart without paying a king’s ransom and yes, a drug store, preferably one with short lines at the prescription counter. (We now have one where the lines are so long, they find the dehydrated bodies of seniors lying in aisles at the end of the day.)

Fourth, look for good public transport systems. You may be driving now and can’t imagine the day when you hang up the car keys, but begin to imagine. How many 90-year-olds are still driving? And don’t you hope to be 90 plus? So, a good public transportation system is something to look for. It means you don’t have to drive to shopping, medical care and movies. You are chauffeured, m’dear.

Fifth, look for a place that is walkable. If there is anything we learn from other people and other cultures where longevity is routinely achieved, it’s that these people walk. Walkable means out of traffic, pretty flat, without lots of high curbs, hidden bumps and iffy sidewalks upturned by tree roots. Some people use malls and parks as a walking place. Others are lucky enough to step outside their doors into an easily-walked neighborhood or even onto nature’s walkway, a beach. On the other hand, even New York City is walkable. My father walked all over Manhattan and lived into his 90′s, still walking until called to higher places.

Sixth: Stairs are not senior-friendly. Sometimes we go down the stairs head first, so look for single level homes. Young seniors down-sizing to townhouses often forget that two levels will not do when they are recovering from knee surgery later on in life. How long can you sleep on a couch when you can’t make it up the stairs?

Take-away thoughts: The basic task of choosing a new home after 60 is to imagine specifically what you’ll need as an older person. Because if you take care of yourself, you will get older and you don’t want to be out of luck then when it comes to location and services. The other important thing is not to have a nervous breakdown when you come up against the realities of the current real estate market. At least don’t break down alone. Call me and we’ll scream together.

By Mingo

Posted in Growing older, Health, Retirement | 1 Comment

Golden Oldies go missing: What to do when the music of your life disappears

Posted on August 30, 2010 by

Fans of old time swing are finding that Big Band has become No Band. Radio stations that used to carry jazz and swing programming—programming called something like The Music of Your Life or Golden Oldies—are switching their old-time choices from the music of the 30′s and 40′s to music of later decades.

Benny Goodman by Rene Bouche, photo by Cliff1066

Yep, Stompin’ At the Savoy is getting stomped on. It’s demographics, m’dear. Older listeners are going to the great jazz club in the sky, but radio’s audience ratings have to be maintained so advertisers will advertise so stations can survive, etc. etc.

What’s a hep cat to do? Besides staring at the old vinyl records stored in the garage….

The jazz club in your TV set…

Many people don’t know that their cable-enabled TV sets have a run of channels called Music Choice. Think of each Music Choice channel as a radio station with a screen that shows a pic of the talent plus the name of the performer and song. Cable providers typically place Music Choice in the 900 run of channels. Look for two of them among the many: Singers & Swing where you’ll find Big Band and Frank Sinatra and Stage & Screen, where people such as Rogers & Hammerstein hang out. Also note as you flip through the 900 array of channels that there are many other choices, everything from music to meditate by—Soundscapes—to several kinds of classical offerings. Plus no ads or interruptions.

Radio from many lands

If you are computer-literate, and you must be or you wouldn’t be reading this,  you know that stations all over the world stream their programs so that your computer turns into your radio. For a list of jazz stations world-wide, Google—radio locator jazz.

On my iPhone, I have an app called Wunderadio which lets me listen to jazz from all over the world–Switzerland, New Zealand, New York. Wunderadio works with all mobile devices. Download at www.wunderadio.com.

A Lindy Hop in Athens Greece

Music players that Sing Sing Sing

My iPhone has over 4000 jazz and swing songs on it, a big boon while doing some lonesome traveling. And, if you are in a hotel room and wish your little music player had a speaker, it can. Go to Amazon and check out this tiny travel speaker, suitcase-ready for your listening needs. Smaller than a tennis ball, it’s the X-Mini, Sound Beyond Size, $26.95.

NPR

Don’t forget National Public Radio’s longest running jazz show, Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz. She hosts many a world-renowned jazz musician. Google her website for your local time and station.

Plus there are college and public radio stations all over the country that feature some jazz programming. The trick is to find them. Here’s one from Texas…

By Michael Karshis

Listening live

One of the great pleasures of retirement is that you now have time to become a groupie—a jazz head who follows bands and music festivals and even goes on jazz cruises to faraway places such as Alaska and the Caribbean, though I have yet to get on that boat.

Try out one of the great jazz festivals—think Monterey and Newport—but don’t forget the smaller ones. My current fave for Dixieland is Jazz Bash by the Bay, early March on the waterfront in Monterey CA with Dixie, ragtime, Django-esque offerings and just a general worshipping of the Great American Songbook. www. dixieland-monterey.com.

Following the festivals

Swing groupies need to know where to show up and party. Here’s how to follow the festivals. Subscribe to The American Rag, 20137 Skyline Ranch Drive, Apple Valley CA 92308. Phone 760. 247. 5145. www.americanrag.com. Once a month, 26 dollars a year. Send a check or do it through Paypal.

Get out your vinyl records

Last, dust off the 33′s, 45′s and 78′s and get yourself a 3- speed turntable. Amazon carries lots of turntables or try a portable suitcase-type player, the Crosley CR49 Traveler Portable at $90.65.

So don’t let your old-time musical pleasures evaporate. Artie Shaw is worth holding onto, even if Artie’s eight wives didn’t think so.

Posted in Music, Nostalgia | 1 Comment

Simple stuff that works…2 down-to-earth solutions for the health care mess

Posted on August 30, 2010 by

Oh, honey, pass me a cold gin martini.

I’m deeply, truly anxious over the health care crisis in the US,  a problem that exists on a federal level—-too much money thrown at too few results—and, often,  on a personal level, too much food thrown at people who are too little exercised.

But there are two down-to-earth solutions.

Veggies…can’t get more down-to-earth…

By Liz West

And…

By Kekka

Sneakers, also literally down to earth.

Well, maybe I’d better explain or better yet, let Doctors Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy and Andrew Weil explain it for me. These four champions of holistic lifestyles once nailed their views to the cathedral door in a Wall Street Journal article claiming that so-called alternative, holistic medicine was now mainstream and it was the drug-reliant, surgery-happy establishment medicine that is questionable today.

OK, they were more diplomatic—and they really are for integrating mainstream medicine that works with alternative modes that work and so am I.  But they and other experts today are making a strong case for preventing illness in the first place through lifestyle changes such as a good diet—that’s the veggie part—

—and exercise—hence the sneakers.

Still, people have trouble believing that such simple affordable things can keep them out of the hospital and out of medical trouble, but it’s true. As the four experts say: “The evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions.” And one of their goals is to move the US medical system from disease care to real health care and disease prevention. It’s cheaper, safer and it works. What else could we ask for?

The High Cost of Staying Stuck Where We Are

So why are Americans coughing up almost $100,000 for each coronary bypass procedure to the combined tune of 44 billion dollars a year? And why do we pay close to $50,000 for each angioplasty to the combined cost of 60 billion a year?

Because we don’t believe simple prevention works? Because lifestyle change takes a little thought? It is, after all, easier to open a package of chips than to steam veggies—easier to push buttons on the remote than to push oneself to walk.

I don’t know all the blocks to good health behaviors, but thanks to recent studies, I do know what doesn’t work, at least when it comes to heart health.

(Prepare to be surprised.)

What doesn’t work are expensive, invasive operations on the cardio system. Here are the facts as published in the New England Journal of Medicine and summarized by the four health professionals in their Wall Street Journal article: Angioplasties and stents “do not prolong life or even prevent heart attacks in stable patients (i.e., the 95% of people who receive them). Coronary bypass surgery prolongs life in less than 3% of patients who receive it.”’

Wow. We don’t get what we are paying for.

So I think it’s time to stop the stupid behavior, especially mine own. For me now, it’s 45 minutes a day walking……

By Sister 72

….and 5 to 9 servings of fruit and veggies, no matter how many faces Cranky Pants makes about plants on his plate. (Tip: if you have juice for breakfast and heap your cereal with 1/2 cup each of 2 kinds of fruit—think berries and bananas—you have 3 servings in the bag before lunch.)

And, looking at the future high costs of Medicare and the fact the Feds are broke, I ask myself what will happen when taxpayers begin to wonder why they should subsidize older people with bad lifestyles who incur high medical expenses through Medicare. It is time to bypass the bypass lifestyle—which now relies on surgeries and drugs to make up for our foolishness. Certainly, as noted above, heavy medical hitters such as Chopra, Ornish, Roy and Weil think it’s time for a sea change in how we think about health. Let’s preserve and foster health rather than fixing it after a series of bad lifestyle choices.

So it’s veggies and sneakers. And as the sign below says: Give peas a chance.

PS…Please see below about the new direction of my columns….

Give Peas a Chance by sneakerdog

Alert & Action:

August 31 will be my last column in the Union newspaper. Instead, I will be writing here about all aspects of growing older, not just health. So if you want to keep on reading my columns, you can check www.geezerdiary every week or just google the words geezer diary. Or, easiest,  you can subscribe and have a column emailed to you every week with my best wishes and thanks.

Just go to the home page of this blog, scroll down the right hand side and click on subscribe. Tell a friend if you like it.

Natch, I do not sell or share your info. Maybe I’ll think up some way to use it myself, but I doubt it. Thanks.

Mel Walsh, Geezerina

Last and sadly, Rustum Roy, scientist and champion of integrative medicine whose writing was mentioned above, died this week at age 86. Thank you, Dr. Roy, for your contributions to our thinking about the pathways to health.

Posted in Health | Leave a comment

If music made you blind…

Posted on August 25, 2010 by

A threat and four solutions…

If a doctor told you that every time you went to a high-decibel music event, you might lose a bit of vision, would you swear off concerts?

By DeusXFlorida

Or if a researcher said that your music player and in-ear buds could make you visually impaired, would you shrug it off and still go for the high volume?

My guess is that you might change your life and your listening habits. After all, who wants to go blind?

Well, evidently some people are willing to go deaf because they continue the lifestyle of the loud and thunderous even though docs say that continued high volume noise is literally deafening.

Making sense of ear-splitting behavior

I try to understand why so many people refuse to listen to medical experts about the connection between ear-splitting noise and hearing loss. Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association even reported that one in five teens was already experiencing some hearing loss. So teens are losing it and they are just in the first quartile of life!

My guess is that people blow off hearing loss because they just can’t imagine it. After all, it is hard to pretend to be a deaf person. On the other hand, it’s easy to know what it would be like to be blind. Just close your eyes. That’s an immediate, dramatic sensation. But possible hearing loss isn’t as easily dramatized. And if you can’t see a threat, you tend to discount or ignore it. (Case in point: global warming.)

Whatever the cause of indifference, it’s obvious that people continue to go to loud movies, to deafening concerts and to turn up their music players to number 10 on the volume dial.

Four things to do

First, besides nagging your children and grandchildren—you can tell them to listen to their music through noise-cancelling headphones.

By Jek Bacarisas

The usual little buds people put into their ears don’t block out the surrounding noise, so people turn the volume way up so they can hear over the jet engine, the traffic or the bus. But noise-cancelling headphones block out ambient sounds so music can be played at lower volume.

Second, you can protect your own ears by carrying earplugs. I always have a pair in my purse for loud movies and sound systems. I used to tear up Kleenex and stuff it in my ears, but I looked like Peter Rabbit….so I upgraded to real earplugs which cost almost next to nothing at the drug store.

Third, avoid the predictable situations…going to concerts where the drum is so loud you can feel it in your feet or sitting right in front of a sound system or running mowers and blowers without ear protection. (My vacuum sounds like a jet engine and I use noise-cancelling headphones to do housework. OK, I look like a dork, but better dorky than deaf.)

Fourth—this involves nagging again—you can implore the hearing-impaired person in your life to get past the usual denial stage and buy hearing aids. (I have wondered if the high-volume TV needed by the hearing-impaired is deafening their housemates.)

And here’s one last thought about high-volume TV listening or booming music playing—-maybe it’s like smoking. You don’t do it near loved ones.

By Bill Harrison
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Reading your medical tea leaves… plus unexpected humor

Posted on August 18, 2010 by

First, what to make of the spinal tap/Alzheimer’s news…

If you missed it,  researchers reported that doing a spinal tap—a lumbar puncture—and examining the withdrawn fluid for certain proteins can tell who has or will have Alzheimer’s Disease or AD. Last week, enthusiastic commentators fantasized about diagnostic spinal taps becoming as common as mammograms or colonoscopies. Maybe there would be specialty spinal tap clinics. All in all, the media greeted the spinal tap method of obtaining an AD diagnosis as a great step forward.

What got lost in the reporting

One important thing got lost in the headlines and articles—the opinions of consumers. We cottontops are not enthusiastic about spinal taps for any reason, least of all to tell us we are doomed to get a disease with no cure.

Also, spinal taps have a risk, persistent headaches being one of them. And, like other medical procedures, they cost, though a consumer will search in vain on the net for their actual cost, so removed are we from the financing of our medical care. But risks and costs are not the biggest objections I hear from readers.

Their reaction can be summed up this way: Are those researchers nuts? Do they think we want to ruin our present lives with worry over a downer future? Will we want to condemn ourselves to Death Row with a spinal tap?

Well, the standard answer to our questioning is this: knowing ahead of time about AD gives us a chance to prepare for the times to come. But I say we should be prepared with wills, medical directives and plans for our old age no matter what. We shouldn’t need predicted disasters to get us off the dime.

Neglected: Cause and prevention

Truth to tell, it is probably a great help to researchers to have more stable ground, a biomarker spinal fluid test, under their feet, but what I want to know is why the main thrust of research is aimed at a cure. Why not a big push on finding the cause of AD? All things have a cause. What causes AD? And then, how can AD be prevented? But there is profit in selling drugs and procedures once the AD horse is kicking around in the brain barn, and prevention is not likely to inflate anybody’s bottom line.

Anyhow, that’s a consumer take on one of the many unfolding AD research stories. Stay tuned because it’s going to go on and on, including the fascinating possibility of a vaccine.

Humor lives in unexpected places

Last, who would have thunk that people would be able to laugh at Alzheimer’s, but, of course, we as a nation do have a broad funny bone. Jokes like this float around the web:

Doctor: Mr. Green, I don’t like telling you this, but you have cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Mr. Green: Well, at least I don’t have cancer.

There are also many quick one-liners about the benefits of memory loss:

All the wonderful new people you meet every day

A new bed partner every night.

We Americans evidently can find humor in all situations. Mark Twain would be proud.

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