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Mother Knows Best - by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

In honor of Mother’s Day, this is my contribution to BlogHer’s Mother Knows Best series.

It seems most of us start off our life blindly believing that our mothers know best. Then sometime during adolescence we are suddenly convinced that our mother knows nothing, and of course, we know it all. But, as we get older, we slowly come back to realizing that our mothers (in many cases) did know best. Why is that? Is it some kind of genetic programing? What ever the case, we almost all experience this phenomena in one way or another.

Mother’s Day is that one time of year we are inclined to take a closer look at how our mothers have influenced us for the better. Since I am a contributing editor for health and wellness, I’m taking a look at how my mother influenced my views on wellness.

I think one of the most important aspects of wellness, is knowing when we need to slow down, and treat ourselves with kindness. And I learned how to do that from my mother. From a very early age, my mother taught me that wellness was more than just a physical thing. She understood the importance of taking care of the mind and spirit, as well as the body. She taught these lessons more from example than anything else, and because of that, there was never any need to disagree. So what were some of these lessons? They were little things; like tea time, bubble bath time, reading time, sitting in the sun time. Basically, they were wellness rituals, for quieting the mind and body.

The older I get, the more valuable these lessons become. Often times we have little control over our physical conditions, so having the capacity to find peace within can be a lifesaver. And as a mother, I realize the importance of caring for myself, in order to best care for my children. I like to think that I am teaching these same lessons (by example) to my own children.

When it comes to issues of health…My mother told me to eat plenty of vegetables, drink plenty of water, and not to eat too much sugar because it would give me a headache (and it does). She also told me not to eat a lot of watermelon when pregnant, especially if you enjoy salt on it (I don’t). Her best sore throat treatment…two baby aspirin dissolved in a teaspoon of warm water. Best cold treatment…Vicks Vapor Rub, and chicken soup. Best sore neck treatment…BenGay and a towel wrapped around your neck. Best treatment for constipation…prunes (but I hate prunes).

My mother recently wrote on her blog (Frances Ellen Speaks) about how her mother often knew best…

I remember her facing off with our family doctor. Often, when I was sick with some childhood illness, the doctor would recommend a penicillin shot. At the time, penicillin was considered a miracle drug, but my mother insisted a person might build up an immunity to it. The doctor strongly disagreed, but grudgingly honored her wishes. One day, on the way home after one of these visits, she sympathized with me saying that she knew I felt very, very sick, but on the off chance I might need penicillin to save my life someday, she preferred to nurse me back to health without it. I was young, could hardly understand what she was telling me, but I felt her anxiety. Now I realize how hard it must have been to stick to her guns when all she had in her arsenal to defend herself was sheer conjecture. All I know is, while my friends almost always got a needle at the doctor’s office, I received very few. My mother took a stand at a time when doctors and scientists denied the possibility of resistance. Now we know that–

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in some way that reduces or eliminates the effectiveness of drugs, chemicals, or other agents designed to cure or prevent infections. The bacteria survive and continue to multiply causing more harm.

What advice did you get from your mother on health and wellness issues? Did she know best? Do prunes taste better if you hold your nose?

Happy Mother’s Day.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan at catherine-morgan.com, The Political Voices of Women, Care2 Election Blog

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Mother’s Day is right around the corner, and I was honored to be asked to participate in an ACORN Mother’s Day Special. I was asked to write a post on how my mother has influenced me politically. In my family, my daughter has become the fourth generation of strong, politically savvy women…that began with my grandmother.

Because I blog about politics every single day, my 14 year-old daughter is exposed to every aspect of politics, and could probably hold her own debating the issues with someone twice her age. When her grandfather (half) jokingly told her that Hillary could never be president because she is a woman, my daughter snapped back at him, “Are you kidding me?” Then she wanted to know if he thought she could never be president, because after all, she’s a woman too? Showing his true chauvinistic side, he responded to her by saying that she could maybe be president someday, but she would have to live in a little pink house next to the While House. Needless to say, my daughter was unamused.

Since I grew-up before the onset of 24 hour cable news, my mother’s political influence on me was a bit more subtle. I remember the first political discussion I ever had with my mother. We had been in a waiting room with many magazines, and I was too young to read any of them, but I did notice covers with horribly graphic photos of men at war. It happened to be towards the end of the Vietnam War, and I asked my mother, “Why is there war?” She told me that people don’t want to be at war, the leaders of the countries make the wars. That was when I realized women were not in positions of political power. Then I said, “We should make women the leaders of all the countries in the world, and then there would never be any wars.” My mother told me that sounded like a good idea, but it probably would never happen. My response was, “Then those men leaders who want a war, should fight it themselves.” I didn’t understand then, and I still don’t understand today, how war solves any problems, neither does my mother.

Anyway, my mother always had an interest in politics, and she voted regularly. Women’s issues were always very important to her, and they still are. She also never voted with a specific party; she always voted for the person she believed was best for the job. So, the way my mother most influenced my views on politics, was by raising me to be an independent thinker, and to believe that any one of us could affect change. I’d like to think that is the way I’m raising my daughter also.

And, my mother was influenced by her mother, who was also a strong, independent woman. I came across a post that my mother recently wrote about her relationship with my grandmother. Here is an excerpt…

I didn’t know it then, but I see it clearly now in retrospect, she was a feminist before that word even existed. Back in the early 50s, she decided she wanted to learn how to drive a car. There weren’t many women drivers on the road back then. Husbands usually did all the driving, or there was public transportation. That wasn’t good enough for my mother. She hired a driving instructor, passed her driver’s test and acquired a license long before her four sisters. As a matter of fact, she became their main mode of transportation, and even though she urged them to get their own licenses, it was several years before the first one found the courage to do it. — read her full post at Frances Ellen Speaks

So, that’s my special Mother’s Day post. How did your mother influence your political views? How do you think you have influenced your daughter?

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Mommy Bloggers and Dooce on NBC Morning Show — by Catherine Morgan

Is it just me or did Kathie Lee kinda “diss” mommy bloggers? Or maybe just minimize their importance? Here is the clip. What do you think?

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Can Ibuprofen Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk? — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

I guess most of us either know or have known someone with Alzheimer’s, maybe that person was even a relative. Like many other diseases, Alzheimer’s is thought to run in families. That is why when I read that there was a new study linking the long-term use of ibuprofen to a decrease in risk for Alzheimer’s, I had to learn more.

Don’t go out and buy a bottle of Motrin just yet. Although this study seems promising, there is no recommendations that anyone should take ibuprofen for the purpose of preventing Alzheimer’s. Much more needs to be studied in order to determine whether the benefits of ibuprofen outweigh the risk of long-term use.

From WebMD…

The long-term use of ibuprofen and possibly other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory pain relievers may help protect against Alzheimer’s disease, but it is still not clear if the risks outweigh the potential benefits.

Use of ibuprofen pain relievers like Advil and Motrin for more than five years reduced Alzheimer’s risk by 44% in a study reported in the May issue of Neurology.

Long-term users of several other types of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) also had a lower than expected risk of Alzheimer’s.

Ibuprofen users seemed to derive the most protection after five years of use, but researcher Steven C. Vlad, MD, of Boston University School of Medicine, says it is far too soon to recommend the use of this or any other NSAID to lower Alzheimer’s risk.

“I would not advise patients to start taking an NSAID to prevent Alzheimer’s,” Vlad tells WebMD. “There are too many known risks associated with this class of medications, and we would need a lot more research to figure out the risk-benefit ratio.”

In researching this ibuprofen study, I came across another recent study. This study seems to link Diabetes to an increased risk for Alzheimer’s.

From A Weight Lifted: Diabetes and Alzheimer’s Linked

Did you know that people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes have a 30 to 65 percent greater risk for Alzheimer’s? Until now, researchers have been mystified as to the reason behind the link, but a recent study (published in the current online issue of Neurobiology of Aging by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies) has pinpointed the molecular connection.

Here are some more Alzheimer’s related blogs…

Rust-Tex: Help End Alzheimer’s Disease

This quilt is up for auction now through May 10 to raise money for the the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI), which is an Internet-driven, grassroots, totally volunteer effort to raise awareness and fund research through art. Ami Simms founded the AAQI in January 2006 because her mother has Alzheimer’s disease. All profit is donated to Alzheimer’s research.

My quilt uses rust dyed fabric, seed beads, plastic beads, metal leaves, cotton boucle. It is machine pieced, machine quilted, couched, and free motion machine embroidered. The cat is made of ultra suede and colored with water soluble colored pencils. The entire piece is 8.875″ x 8.875″.

Mine is not the only one up for auction. You can see them all here. Your generous bid is appreciated by the artists who made these beautiful quilts and by everyone struggling to end this disease.

From ask allison: the middle-aged woman’s go to girl: Alzheimer’s and Caregiving

One of my fellow mid-life lady bloggers, Karen over at Mid-life’s a Trip, has some excellent blog posts related to caregiving and Alzheimer’s. As caregiver to her mother who has Alzheimer’s, and dear friend to a 50 something woman with the disease, she holds the subject close to her heart.

A great informational resource as Karen points out is a recent article in the NY Times. This excellent guide provides information on causes, treatments, exams and tests, and more.

I found this video on Alzheimer’s and Caregivers at Alzheimer’s Notes…

Also See:

Mondays With Mother: An Alzheimer’s Story — In 2002 my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It is a hard road, and we live it one day at a time. This is a chronicle of her disease and my Monday visits with her.

BlogHer Contributing Editor Laurie wrote - Alzheimer’s and Another Love: How Spouses Cope

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How old is your heart? Did you know smoking can add twenty years to the age of your heart? That seems like a pretty good reason to stop. What about stress? Stress can cause as much damage to your heart as smoking. Could you quit stressing?

ALSO SEE MY BlogHer POST ON THIS ISSUE

and Healthcare For All (except the sick)? at The Political Voices of Women

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I originally posted this about a year ago, on BlogHer (where it has had over 17,000 hits), so I thought it deserved an encore. Here goes… Alli: “The Diarrhea Diet” — by Catherine Morgan

I’m not going to try to sugar coat it, I’m an opinionated person. Back at the end of May when I saw an article about an over the counter diet pill being approved by the FDA, and peddled by a pharmaceutical company, my skepticism antenna went into overdrive. The result was a post I did the same day on why you should just say no to diet pills, which included several links of other recent drugs the FDA and pharmaceutical companies had claimed to be safe, and later were taken off the market. In my opinion this happens much too often. And the main thing that sets me off is, it seems to be all about money. (Shocking! Not so much.) The FDA takes money from the pharmaceutical companies to “study” and approve their drugs, then the pharmaceutical companies make millions (even billions) off the American people, then voila, the drug that was once “safe” is no longer safe. It’s a very interesting phenomena.

Glaxo’s Avandia Fuels Arguments For Tougher Drug Laws — The study, released May 21, showed that Avandia, the world’s best-selling diabetes pill, increased the risk of a heart attack 43 percent. Members of Congress are questioning the Food and Drug Administration’s handling of evidence of side effects since the drug won U.S. approval in 1999.

The Avandia report has reignited complaints by Congress that the FDA is too lax in monitoring drug complications after a product is on the market. The agency previously was criticized for failing to act on heart dangers linked to Merck & Co.’s Vioxx painkiller before it was withdrawn in 2004, and for missing suicide risks linked to antidepressants. — read full article

Call me crazy, but it is troubling to me that the FDA considers a drug that basically induces diarrhea as a safe and effective means of weight loss. Sure, you can argue that the drug is blocking fat from being absorbed and a side effect of that is causing diarrhea…but really…semantics. Right? Don’t we consider people that are using drugs to induce diarrhea as suffering from Bulimia, and in need of medical and psychological help? What about this…Lets say that a pharmaceutical company came out with a drug that induced vomiting, does that mean if the person is not sticking their finger down their throat they are not sick, they are just dieting? If that’s the case, maybe someone should consider repackaging Ipecac into pill form, and marketing it as the newest diet plan. Is it really that much of a stretch from where we are now???

Now that you know how I feel about it, lets take a look at some of the facts about the (not so) new diet pill. Then you can tell me how you feel about it.

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Lasik Eye Surgery. Is it worth the risk? — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

I have 20/20 vision…Just as long as my contacts are in my eyes, or my glasses are on my face. So I can totally understand why people are getting Lasik surgery. If I could afford it, I would be jumping on the Lasik surgery bandwagon along with everyone else.

There is nothing worse than waking up in the morning and not being able to find your glasses. Did they get knocked off the bedside table? Did you put them in a different spot? Then you blindly feel around the room until you finally find them. Those are the days I wish I could have Lasik surgery.

Everyone I know who has had this surgery has been happy with it, so I was I little surprised to read this article from the Associated Press…

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Why Is Life Expectancy For Women Going Down In America? - by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

A new study has found that the life expectancy for women in the United States is on the decline. But don’t worry, this is not something that will affect ALL women in our country - just the poor women.

Even more troubling, is that the study doesn’t include any statistics after 1999. What that means is, the Bush years have not been figured into these statistics. I can only imagine how the last eight years of the Bush administration have impacted the reality of these numbers.

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago, that I heard how the US life expectancy had slipped in ranking from 11th to 42nd, behind most European countries.

John Edwards was absolutely right when he talked about two Americas. Try to picture America on one side, and a third-world country on the other. Now picture that third-world country within the United States. Thanks to a failing economy and a serious health care crisis, that is exactly what we face today. It’s really not surprising at all. Very sad, but not surprising.


From The New York Times…

Life expectancy has long been growing steadily for most Americans. But it has not for a significant minority, according to a new study, which finds a growing disparity in mortality depending on race, income and geography.

The study, published Monday in the online journal PLoS, analyzed life expectancy in all 3,141 counties in the United States from 1961 to 1999, the latest year for which complete data have been released by the National Center for Health Statistics. Although life span has generally increased since 1961, the authors reported, it began to level off or even decline in the 1980s for 4 percent of men and 19 percent of women.

“It’s very troubling that there are parts of the wealthiest country in the world, with the highest health spending in the world, where health is getting worse,” said Majid Ezzati, the lead author and an associate professor of international health at Harvard. It is a phenomenon, he added, “unheard of in any other developed country.”

Listen to an interview on NPR…

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Health News: DASH Diet Saves Lives, Healthcare Crisis Affecting Prescription Co-Pays, Breast Cancer Screening.

Are you interested in lowering your blood pressure? Reducing your risk of heart disease? If so, you may want to consider the DASH Diet.

When compared to a typical America diet, women following a DASH diet were 24 percent less likely to have a heart attack, and 18 percent less likely to have a stroke. This is a pretty big deal, especially considering that the number one cause of death in women is heart disease.

Diet Reduces Heart Attacks, Strokes.

A large study offers the strongest evidence yet that a diet the government recommends for lowering blood pressure can save people from heart attack and stroke.

Researchers followed more than 88,000 healthy women for almost 25 years. They examined their food choices and looked at how many had heart attacks and strokes. Those who fared best had eating habits similar to those recommended by the government to stop high blood pressure.

The plan, called the DASH diet, favors fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk and plant-based protein over meat.

Women with those eating habits were 24 percent less likely to have a heart attack and 18 percent less likely to have a stroke than women with more typical American diets.

From WebMD

A healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fat has long been touted as heart smart. Now, increasing evidence suggests that a similar diet reduces blood pressure and decreases a woman’s risk for heart attack and stroke.

Scientists reporting in the April 14 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine have found that healthy, middle-aged women who closely followed the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet have lower rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) than women who do not follow such diets.

“Our study provides, to our knowledge, the strongest evidence to date on the long-term benefits of the DASH diet in the primary prevention of CVD among healthy subjects,” writes Teresa T. Fung, ScD, of Simmons College, Boston.

National dietary guidelines promote the DASH diet as an example of a healthy eating pattern. The diet comprises plenty of fruits, vegetables, and plant proteins from legumes and nuts, and moderate servings of low-fat dairy products. It is low in meat.

Also See:

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Is This Post About Hillary Clinton, Women’s Health, Ellen DeGeneres, or Breast Cancer? All of the above? - by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

Hillary Clinton was a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Monday. I didn’t actually see it, but I did see several reports of it on the cable news channels. The media was very thorough and quick to compare Clinton’s mock bowling with Ellen, to Obama’s gutter ball of last week. [Personally, up until that moment I had been undecided, but after seeing the riveting side by side bowling comparison, I’m now totally committed to one candidate.]

Anyway, one station was even observant enough to report on the differences between Barack’s “Ellen Show” strategy and Hillary’s…It seems Hillary didn’t do a jig with Ellen, but Barack did. So thanks to Hillary’s appearance on Ellen yesterday, the evening news programs had a lot of great election news to cover. The level of journalistic integrity on this important election coverage was nonexistent. I even continued to see the same coverage several times today, so I could only assume nothing politically relevant happened during Hillary’s appearance on Ellen. However, it wouldn’t actually be safe to assume that.

To my surprise I happened upon this blog post from Shakesville: Hillary and Ellen…

Hillary Clinton was a guest on Ellen yesterday, and, although I haven’t generally been in the habit of posting talk show appearances of the various candidates, I watch all of them (even John McCain—grumble), and I thought this one was worth posting because the two Dem candidates’ positions on gay rights have been the subject of much debate around here recently, and Hillary spoke to Ellen about gay rights and told a very personal story about people who influenced her support of equality and fairness (love that framing!). She also spoke about an objective that I thought would be of interest to a lot of Shakers: Making breast cancer curable in the next decade.

Hillary said what? She wants to make breast cancer curable? That seems like a pretty big deal, but all I had heard was that she couldn’t hit more than one plastic pin down with a plastic ball.

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Lisa Stone of BlogHer is asking…

How many women’s lives can we save with donations from the BlogHer community, between now and Mother’s Day, May 11, 2008? — CLICK HERE TO DONATE

If you will download this widget today and encourage your readers to donate, we can find out. Won’t you join us?

Here’s what we’re up to: As part of our BlogHers Act commitment to make a difference on the issue of maternal health, BlogHer has joined forces with Global Giving to help save women’s lives and we need your help.

* Every year, 529,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes.
* Children who have lost their mothers are up to 10 more times more likely to die prematurely than those who haven’t.
* More than 80 per cent of maternal deaths worldwide are due to five direct causes: haemorrhage, sepsis, unsafe abortion, obstructed labour and hypertensive disease of pregnancy.
* Most maternal deaths (61 per cent) take place during labour, delivery or in the immediate post-partum period. Some 3.4 million newborns die within the first week of life.
UNFPA

By harnessing the power of women online, our contributions will improve maternal health and save women’s lives. Your donation to one or more of these projects can save women’s lives by supplying health care, birthing kits, education, trained birthing attendants, meals, and much, much more.

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Weight Loss: Getting Reacquainted With Healthy Food — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

For the last few weeks I’ve been making an attempt at eating healthy. And usually this is where I would tell you that I’ve failed miserably. But, I’m happy to report that I have actually been doing pretty well. I think it is in part because, around the same time I decided that I couldn’t afford to gain another pound, I got an email from Elaine Magee. Funny how we get what we need, just when we need it. Anyway, Elaine is the Healthy Recipe Doctor at WebMD, and she wanted to tell me about her newest book Food Synergy. Even better, she said if I wanted a copy she would send me one. The timing couldn’t have been better.

I’m not sure if it was the book or my total fear of gaining another pound, but I’ve actually lost about six pounds. It’s not that her book is a diet plan or anything…It’s really about eating healthy, and that’s what is so great about it. The book reinforced a lot of what I already knew, but also explained how different food combinations actually work to prevent disease and promote wellness. Not only is the book informative, but it is loaded with great recipes.

Evidence is mounting that certain components in the food we eat and drink (minerals, vitamins and phytochemicals, fiber, smart fats, etc.) interact to provide our bodies extra disease protection and a higher level of health. This advanced nutrition science is called food synergy.

Food synergy is like adding 1 plus 1 and getting 4 or 6 instead of 2; the total is greater than the sum of the individual parts (or nutrients).

From WebMD - At The Healthy Recipe Doctor - Top 10 Food Synergy Super Foods

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Three Tips For Living Healthy — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at Qvisory)

1. You are what you eat, and it is never too late to start eating healthy. Every day, try your very best to put healthy foods and plenty of water into your body. When you have a choice between something healthy and something not healthy, go with the healthy choice. But, don’t be too hard on yourself on the days you fall back into old habits. There is no rule that says you have to be perfect to be healthy. Even if you are eating healthy 50% of the time, that is still better than not at all.

If you are one to never go for the healthy choice, then start today with a commitment to eat one thing that is good for you (just one thing that you would normally not eat), and do that for a week. After a week, start eating two things that are good for you. Continue to gradually migrate toward healthier options. Before you know it, you’ll be eating healthy half the time. And, that’s a great start.

You can start today, loving yourself and your family enough to stop poisoning your body with unhealthy foods. Heart disease is the number one killer in our country and 80% of heart disease is due to eating an unhealthy diet that leads to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Start today, and take a bite in the right direction. Your heart will thank you.

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What Women Need To Know About Environmental Causes of Cancer — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

Last week the Breast Cancer Fund released it’s State of the Evidence Report for 2008. The 2008 report, provides the most comprehensive listing to-date of chemicals linked to breast cancer. It also provides a much more complex picture of breast cancer causation than traditionally accepted, one in which timing, mixtures and dose of environmental exposures interact with genes and lifestyle factors.

In conjunction with the release of this report, they also held a blogger-only telephone conference to discuss the report. The informative conference featured Janet Gray, Ph.D., and Breast Cancer Fund Executive Director Jeanne Rizzo, R.N., and for an hour they took questions from bloggers on the latest studies linking environmental exposures to breast cancer.

Findings…

While each study, chemical and exposure source alone doesn’t tell the whole story, looking at them together allows us to better understand how to prevent the disease. Learn more about major emerging themes in breast cancer causation through the links below.

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Fibromyalgia: An Invisible Disease? — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

I try not to be a complainer, but last week I was seriously not feeling well. I actually resorted to sending a message to the other women in my community to ask for help (and I’ve never done that before).

I thought I would take tonight’s post to talk about what was wrong with me last week, because I know many women are suffering with the same problem.

The good news is, I finally found a doctor in Florida that believes in my diagnosis. I was only changing doctors because I needed someone closer, I had long since given up on finding a doctor that actually understood or had compassion for my condition. So, you can imaging my shock when I went in for my initial appointment, and the doctor told me that not only did he understand what was wrong with me, but he wrote the book, literally. Can you believe it? What are the chances of that happening? I have to admit, my first thought was…This guy can not be from Florida.

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