In lieu of a post today, I’ll gladly refer you to the excellent byjane and her new child, midlifebloggers.com. The site — which is the result of a long conversation on Blogher — is still deciding what it wants to be, but several interesting mid-lifers are on board hoping to be regular contributors. (Me! Me!) If you are interested, please give Jane your input.
Archive for the 'Adventures at midlife' Category
Adventures at Midlife: Midlifebloggers.com
April 28, 2008Adventures at Midlife: Alternative medicine
April 24, 2008
An article in Arts and Letters Daily, one of my favorite sites, inferred that middle-aged, middle-class women are the biggest consumers of alternative medicine, from homeopathy to massage to aromatherapy to vitamin therapy. Says Rose Shapiro in Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools Of Us All, such women are “educated enough to know what they’re paying for and if they prefer to spend money on an aromatherapist than a stiff gin, it’s hard to cry too many tears for them.”
Shapiro is, as the title of the book indicates, a scoffer.
Did you know [says reviewer Natalie Haynes] that traditional Chinese medicine, described so often as dating back thousands of years, was actually a rag-bag of ideas put together under Chairman Mao to try to fill in the gaps left by a shortage of “the superior new medicine”? Me neither.
Shapiro reserves her real fury for the snake-oil merchants who knowingly prey on the weak: terminal cancer is a favourite. After all, the dying will often believe anything. She reveals case after case where someone has been talked out of chemotherapy or palliative care by a quack with a big bank balance.
I’m a pharmacist’s kid, so I grew up on pills. Pills, in our house, are good, but I also have friends and relatives who pride themselves on taking no medication of any kind, which I find a bit extreme. Most of my friends who have turned to alternative medicine have done so because they weren’t getting the results they wanted from traditional medicine or because they wanted to explores more “natural” rather than chemical ways to health.
I became a convert to vitamins when I read an article about a group of geriatric specialists who couldn’t agree about much of anything when it came to theories about and causes of aging — but who all took multivitamins religiously. A chiropractor has helped me overcome some serious sciatic pain. I’ve also found that, for me, massage and light exercise are among the best treatments for chronic pain, stress and fatigue. But I haven’t ventured into alternative medicine much further than that.
With costs for pharmaceuticals increasing and most insurance co-pays shrinking, I suspect we may look for more low-cost, low-impact and local ways to maintain our physical quality of life. But how do we separate the effective and sensible treatments from the snake oil?
Adventures at Midlife: Older and happier?
April 20, 2008
At last, some good news about the March of Time:
Americans grow happier as they grow older, according to a University of Chicago study that is one of the most thorough examinations of happiness ever done in America. The study also found that baby boomers are not as content as other generations, African Americans are less happy than whites, men are less happy than women, happiness can rise and fall between eras, and that, with age the differences narrow.
The increase in happiness with age is consistent with the “age as maturity hypothesis,” [author Yang] Yang said. With age comes positive psychosocial traits, such as self-integration and self-esteem; these signs of maturity could contribute to a better sense of overall well-being.
As for his finding that baby boomers are less satisfied with their lives?
“This is probably due to the fact that the generation as a group was so large, and their expectations were so great, that not everyone in the group could get what he or she wanted as they aged due to competition for opportunities. This could lead to disappointment that could undermine happiness,” Yang said.
So maybe we BBs will mellow with age, eh? It wasn’t enough that we got to slurp up more than our fair share of planetary resources, and that the media and the marketplace have been catering to our every whim since we were toddlers? We didn’t get to be Meryl Streep or Bill Gates or Carly Simon or Magic Johnson or Bill Clinton? We didn’t all get our hearts’ desires? Poor things, we.
As I used to tell my children, let’s just be happy anyway, okay?
Adventures at Midlife: It, um, Depends…
April 17, 2008
Okay, here goes.
Dear readers, a confession: When I turned 50, it was as if the warranty on my body expired. Within several months of that landmark birthday, I spent a week in the hospital — and several months thereafter — recovering from the effects of a blood clot. I developed sciatica down my left leg (and overcame my suspicion of chiropractors). My face started looking, well, a little saggy. The gray hair that had been lurking at my temples began a death march throughout my scalp. My eyebrows began disappearing, only to sprout on my chin and upper lip. My shoulders and hips drew strangely closer together. My once-reliable knees began to balk at stairs. And what in the hell were these brown spots on the backs of my hands?!?
Those developments, however, were trifles compared to the ultimate indignation: I can no longer depend on my ability to start and stop. I mean, you know, eliminating. And I’m not talking a little leakage problem here. This is a major gather-yourself-up, get-yourself-home, and shower-and-change problem. I cannot tell you the times I have wept with frustration and embarrassment over this.
No one warned me about it. Not a clue or a hint. My gastroenterologist was sympathetic, but not very helpful. He told me of patients who, when they begin to have physical signs that a bathroom stop is necessary, can calculate how long they have before they will be in real trouble, usually 20 minutes to a half hour. Me? I have five minutes — or less.
So, as with so many crises in my adult life, I had to find my own solution. I know the location of every available restroom in my building and on my commute route. (And I can rate them on cleanliness. Just ask me.) I know what food and beverages will likely trigger a crisis, and I know what hours of the day are particularly deadly for me. (Mornings, almost always, and immediately after I have a meal.)
And (she said, bracing herself) I have added one more item to my stash of indispensable toiletries. In my bathroom cupboard, where the tampons used to be, is a package of adult undergarments. You know: Depends, or their less-expensive generic counterparts. I also have some in my trunk and my bottom desk drawer. Now, when I have an event or excursion where I will likely be unable to have immediate access to a restroom, I take an anti-diarrheal, moderate my liquid intake, and wear the damn undergarment under my Spanx. (Believe me, no one can tell I have them on.) It has lessened my stress level ENORMOUSLY.
I have several friends who are approaching landmark birthdays of their own, and I am tempted to pull them aside and present them with a gift-wrapped package of Depends. I like to think they would ultimately thank me for it.
I would have.
