One day, a couple had an appointment in Boston, MA.  While walking down the street, they saw this thin, fragile elderly woman on the corner.  She was very well dressed, her hair was done, and she was even wearing some makeup.

Supported on her cane, she was looking around kind of confused, and the couple was concerned as it was a very hot and humid day, so they approached her and the wife asked her if she needed help.  With a sweet smile on her face, she said she was looking for her dentist’s office, but was not sure she was going the right way.

She explained she suffered from glaucoma and could not see very well.  She mentioned the doctor’s address, and the couple assured her it was just on the other side of the street; they were more than happy to help her get there.  While they walked with her, she explained that although she was not blind, she could not see the curb clearly so she could trip and fall.

The couple guided her onto the sidewalk and she told them she could make it to the doctor’s office by herself, so they wished her the best and she started to go her way.  All of a sudden, she turned and started talking to them about her life and family.  She was 90 and her older sister was 95 and alive.  Even as the couple explained they were late for an appointment, the lady went on talking.  She talked about her late husband, osteoporosis and her son, who happens to be one of the best bioidentical hormone doctors in the city, among other things.  She was very excited to be talking to someone and didn’t want the conversation to end.

She was THAT lonely.  The couple really wanted to stay and listen to her for as long as she needed, but they had an important appointment and had to leave, so the conversation was finally ended in a clumsy way.

As they left her, they turned around to watch her struggling to get to the dentist’s office, and they wondered if the doctor son knew his mother was walking alone to go to the dentist in such a hot day.

Everything that happens to us has a meaning, and when you experience something like this encounter it makes you think.  Do we think enough about our parents?  Do we cherish what they did for us, how they sacrificed themselves and do we show them our deep love for them?  Are we able as kids and young adults to leave ourselves behind a little and think of others in a selfless way?

Some mothers, by being who they are, are able to motivate kids so much as to prompt them to help them and spare them some work, and some adults have been blessed with being able to give a lot to their parents, not just financially, but emotionally.  Even though, many elderly people are neglected and set aside; and the reason for this is that today’s society is not only up to its head in materialism and self-love, but has gotten used to disposing of the old.  Instead of fixing things, we throw them away and buy new ones, “better” ones, more modern ones; and we do the same with people.

The elderly are not getting any younger, so they have to be tossed out; and this is a shame.  There is so much an elderly person can offer; so much wisdom, purity of thought and peace.

We are all headed that way, and although there are many ways to enhance life quality today- like the one provided by the sweet lady’s doctor son- and enjoy great health for much longer years, everyone will eventually get there, and one can only hope we will be holding a loved one’s arm instead of a cane while walking down the street to visit the doctor.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

Breast cancer is the black shadow over every woman’s head.  In 2008, it killed 40,480 women, and 182,460 were diagnosed with it, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In view of this, it is frightening how most women wait until the next mammogram or a self-exam reveals the dreaded lump.  At that point, cancer is already inside the body, and it must be fought.

The wise action is to learn how to prevent that lump from revealing itself, ever.  Dr. James LaValle wrote the article “Breast Cancer- Real Prevention” where he explains:  “Most breast cancer is determined by how estrogen is metabolized in the body and whether it is balanced by adequate levels of progesterone.”

Knowing this is key to a woman’s health, because with the correct testing and nutrition, there is no chance for cancer to creep in.  So, know this and pass it on:

Test your estradiol, estrogen metabolites, and progesterone levels.  A progesterone deficiency makes you four times more likely to develop breast cancer.  If tests reveal there is a lack of this hormone, you can find a bio identical hormone therapy available to suit your needs and balance your hormone levels.

An estrogen test will reveal if your body is separating estradiol, the primary estrogen, into safe or dangerous metabolites.  20H, an estradiol’s metabolite, suppresses breast cancer, but 40H and 160H increase the risk, so you want to keep those levels down.

Luckily, you can make your body create more good estrogen and dispose of the bad by keeping your intestine flora healthy and by adding more antioxidant-rich and omega-3 foods and less carbs to your diet.

The thyroid affects breast health also.  A deficient thyroid or thyroid antibodies may prevent you from developing enough natural killer cells, which look for cancer cells and destroy them.  Thus, check your thyroid regularly to ensure its activity is normal.

The essential thing to understand here is that women have the power to reduce the risk of breast cancer simply by balancing their hormones and eating nutritiously. It is not a sickness left to fate or genetics.

If you thought that a yearly mammogram was the best you could do to be safe, you are wrong!  Make hormone and thyroid testing a yearly routine and ensure you never have to face one of the deadliest battles women are threatened with today.

Education is key in every aspect of life.  Imagine how many lives could have been saved if women knew about these preventive procedures.  There is no excuse today.  Information is everywhere, and as you are reading this blog today, many women will find similar information in other places, and they will start investigating more about it, and they will learn.

Do not wait for the medical community to teach you, they won’t!  Sadly, the majority of pharmaceutical companies need you to get sick so that they can make money, and most doctors get the information on research from them.  Obviously, these companies only research what “cures” diseases, not what prevents them.  It is your responsibility to care for your body, so, take control of your life and health right now and eliminate the threat of breast cancer from your life.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

One of the biggest secrets to feeling happy is not paying so much attention to yourself.  The more attention you give yourself, the less happy you feel.  You will never be good enough, beautiful enough, or strong enough.  If all you see are your problems, your hopes, your worries, or your gains, you end up feeling miserable.

People who live their lives talking about themselves never improve their lives and do not understand why.  They think that if others feel sorry for them that will get them out of the hole and, on the contrary, the seeking of so much attention sinks them even more.  What you think and talk about, you attract.

There is an interesting theory that may explain this.  There are basically 2 impulses in the Universe: contraction and relaxation.  Everything in this world is constantly becoming more or less dense, and the ultimate denseness is a black hole, sucking in all the light and providing nothing.  Every human being’s consciousness is always  moving between the contraction and disintegration of the ego.  Self-centered motivations are what drive us in lots of our work and artistic creations, but these also provide us with lots of stress, fear, and illness.  Altruistic motivations surround us with love and peace.

Contraction provides the self-centered pleasure of receiving love; recognition and appreciation.  Relaxation provides the altruistic pleasure of giving love; in our work and in life.  Both provide pleasure, but one is temporary and the other is permanent soul pleasure.  Personal attention feels good in the moment, but once it disappears and the ego feels unattended, sadness creeps in.

So, if you are feeling depressed at some point, follow these steps to loosen up your ego.

• It is OK to feel down at times.  If you are ambitious, this is normal and healthy.  These are moments of truth when you prove you can deal with anything and still succeed.
• Forgive yourself.  If you messed up, focus on the next move, instead of dwelling on the past.  Everyone makes mistakes; it is the only way to learn the right way.
• Do not take things personally.  People act and react in response to their moment of living, not because of you.  You  cannot control how they feel and act, but you can separate yourself from the situation and respond with control.  Stop blaming and see the bright side of the situation.
• Be realistic.  Do not expect people to change.  Accept and love them as they are.  Do not allow this to make you unhappy because a specific action does not define a person.
• Recognize when things are out of your control.  There are situations you have to cope with and others you can solve.  Accept it.  What you resist, persists.
• Care for what you do.  Find joy in your work.  Is all about choosing how to view things.  You either focus on hating your boss or focus on how much your work helps in a certain area.
• Choose demanding exercise.  Something that makes you stop thinking to just concentrate on it; like a forced meditation.  Yoga is a good example.
• Take care of your health.  A constant feeling of sadness or lack may mean you need to make some changes to your health habits.  Select healthy balanced food to keep you energized.  Get the sleep you need, at least 7 hours.  Talk to a doctor and try to look for natural medications.  Hormones imbalance is a great catalyst of depression, so visit a bioidentical hormone doctor to identify more natural ways to balance you organism and keep it working for you.
• Focus on others.  This doesn’t mean you neglect yourself; on the contrary, you are blessed more by giving yourself to others.  Make your friends happy. Be a loyal and reliable colleague just because you care.  Do something for someone less fortunate, give money and time.  Positive and negative energy are universal, we all share it and the Universe delivers it to us according to our feelings and thoughts.  If you act out of love, you command the Universe to give you more of it in all its forms; and it works the same the other way around.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

We may say a person cannot BE happy, but can FEEL happy.  What is it that makes you feel happy? A great job? Lots of money in the bank? A fulfilling relationship?

Normally, when you get what you want, you feel happy, but immediately lose that feeling when that thing you wanted disappears; and it eventually will, as life is change and most probably, what you enjoy today will not be there tomorrow.

So, how would you feel if you knew you don’t need anything to feel happy all the time?  How would you feel if you discovered a way to feel happy even after losing what you cherish the most right now?

Believe it… it is possible!  There is a way to feel at peace and content regardless of your external situations.  The secret is to bring happiness into your daily life activities instead of trying to extract it from these, and you can learn to do this easily!

Follow these 5 tips and stop pulling the world’s strings up and down to make yourself happy.

1.    Choose Joy.
We humans tend to focus on the negative instead of the positive.  Our minds give more importance to the negative aspects.  If you don’t believe it, think about this: a person is complimented six times in a day and criticized one, what does this person think about the most in the following days? Yes, the negative.  And most people are like this because it is a survival mechanism. To change this, make it a habit to feel the positive things in your life; the smile of your child, the taste of food, the melody of a song you love, kind words from others towards you.  Take your time to savor these moments and think about them for 30 second periods during the day.  Remember to wear a smile on your face all the time.

2.    Trust the Universe.
Happy people believe the Universe is friendly.  If things go wrong, they try to identify the lesson and gift in the situation instead of feeling victims.  So,     when something not so good comes along, reflect on it and ask: What is the     higher purpose behind this happening?

3.    Surrender to Love.
Make it a habit to focus your life on love.  Love for your family, friends, and strangers.  Feel how everyone is in your same situation and bless them while on a traffic jam, on line at the bank or supermarket or just when walking next to them.  Just by wishing others good you will boost it in your life.

4.    Take care of your body.
Your brain is in charge of producing the endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin and     dopamine which are essential natural chemicals that thrust happiness into     your     system.  Your eating, exercising, resting and even, expression habits     greatly influence the way these chemicals spread through your body.  So,     again, smile all you can to get the ball rolling inside you and, if you feel kind     of imbalanced somehow, get some help, there are excellent natural balancing procedures like the bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, check it out!

5.    Choose Happy People.
The energies of other people affect us directly, so select your friends and     acquaintances well.  Get close to people who are happiness magnets and     keep your distance with people who like to be doomed.  Meet regularly with     friends who cheer you up and make you have great hope.

Feeling happy all the time is not difficult, you just have to understand what your life is all about and see it as the blessing it is in itself.  How everything that happens, good or bad, has a greater motive of wellness for you and the whole Universe and if you catch that opportunity to grow, happiness and bliss will fill your life every single day of your existence, no matter what.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

Many middle-aged women struggle with keeping a physical exercise routine due to many reasons, including hormone imbalance. Bioidentical hormone replacement will help you find relief from the most uncomfortable symptoms, but everyone knows that the best way to lose weight is through exercise. However, some women who have exercised begin to experience fatigue and injury more and more often, which makes them think about quitting altogether. In addition to this, the aesthetic benefits of exercise become more difficult to attain as women get older, barely keeping their bodies in shape but not really improving as quickly as they would wish. This reduces motivation.

In spite of exercise becoming more difficult and its apparent benefits less evident, it is important for middle-aged women to continue to remain physically active. Most of the benefits that come from exercise are not visible: bowels work properly, the heart and circulatory system are kept in good shape, diabetes, blood pressure abnormalities, and even cancer can be prevented – not to mention that feeling of accomplishment we all get at the end of a workout.

There are several strategies that can be used to remain active and, at the same time, beat the stress injury and fatigue that come along after years of exercising. Here are some tips to restore your motivation and continue to pursue an active life:

1-Try variety.
If you have been doing aerobics for years, then it’s not surprising that fatigue has set in. There comes a day when you’ve tried every kind of aerobics with every kind of music, with or without the kickboxing, indoors and outdoors. You should try picking up bicycling, power walking, hiking. Some women come to realize they enjoy learning a new sport such as tennis, basketball, kickball, or soccer. Depending on your level of fitness and your specific likings, you can surely find two or three physical activities you enjoy and can alternate them during the week to prevent boredom or fatigue.

2-Seek a partner or group.
Having another person or a group one is committed to exercise with is of great help. Usually the partner or group will experience some of the same injuries or fatigue symptoms that one experiences, and they can be a support group. It is also easier to come up with ideas and motivate each other on how to vary routines to accommodate any injuries or discomforts.

3-Watch your diet.
As active women age, they sometimes don’t watch the fact that their eating habits and activity levels remain pretty much the same, while their bodies require a change to adjust to the aging process. Middle-aged women require supplements to remain adequately prepared for physical activity.  You should make sure you eat at least three times a day, avoid processed foods, eat protein in every meal, eat carbohydrates in good balance with non-starchy vegetables, and drink enough water to keep your system hydrated. You should also avoid alcohol, caffeine, processed sugars, and engineered fats and fat blockers you see in the market. Young bodies can take a lot of abuse. Middle-aged bodies need to be nourished with more care to perform well.

The most important decision to make is to remain active. Injuries, fatigue, and the lack of motivation that comes from not being able to see physical improvements as quickly as in our younger times is what makes us want to quit.  This should be put outside our minds and in perspective. The above tips will help put you back in charge of your body.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

Skin care and anti-aging products have been around forever. Age is revealed most by skin appearance, thus the effort to prevent the passage of time from reducing the youthful appearance of our skin. Bio identical hormone replacement therapy could aid in fighting unpleasant menopause symptoms, like acne and dry skin, but you may need a more specific route to tackle skin-care issues. There are many products available in the market today that claim to be (each of them independently) the one ingredient to achieve the objective.  This text is meant as a short and sweet description of available products and their functions.

The first group of ingredients is humectants. Humectants are substances used to retain moisture. Their chemical name is hygroscopic. This term simply means that a substance is able to absorb ambient water. The most common humectants added to creams, lotions and such other skin care products is glycerin (sometimes also called glycerol). Glycerin can be synthetic, in other words, made by man – mostly from petroleum derived raw materials; and glycerin can also be natural. It can be obtained from both vegetable and animal fats.

There are other common humectants, such as mineral oil. This product occurs in many cosmetics, but it can build up under the skin and cause it not to be able to absorb nutrients. Therefore, mineral oil has been gradually but surely retired from skin care products.

Humectants are important because they absorb water and can actually bring it into the epidermis (the outermost layer of the skin). Humidity helps reduce degrading of skin cells.

The next type of ingredients is occlusives. The function of occlusives is basically to prevent water from leaving the skin by evaporation. Evaporation is the process through which liquid water turns to its gaseous phase and is released onto the atmosphere.  Castor oil, beeswax, and lanolin are some examples of occlusives. The disadvantage of occlusives is that they are often greasy and can leave an undesirable coat on the skin that can cause pore clogging. Keep in mind that occlusives are best applied to damp skin.

Emollients are meant to reside on the outermost layer of skin and lubricate. Lubrication is needed to maintain pliability and smoothness. Sunflower oil and soy bean oil are examples of emollients.  These substances are supposed to “fill in” gaps between skin cells that are in the process of being shed and those still in good condition.

There are other ingredients present in skin care products, but the above three are the basic ones. You can make more educated choices by determining what you are after and reading the ingredients disclosed on product labels. Some products such as coenzyme Q10, vitamin E and other antioxidants are added to skin care products due to their acclaimed restoration properties.

No one product is all-effective and human kind has yet to discover a true anti-aging ingredient, but the above are helpful in maintaining a healthier and more resilient skin.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

These women were girls in the 80’s, when they discovered friendship, loyalty, treason and yes – love. The Brat Pack made their debut back then and brought these then young girls their first taste of silver screen emotional roller coasters. However, you may be surprised by the fact that only two of the top five picks are 1980’s films. Women between 35 and 45 were asked about their favorite all-time movies, and these were their top picks:

1-Titanic (1998)
Why did this not surprise us? Let us see; great period outfits, unbelievable hairdos, a leading actress who doesn’t have a wasp’s waistline and huge chest, a leading actor who looks more dreamy and innocent than your three-year-old, the jerk fiancée, and three-and-a-half hours of syrupy  romance. Boy stows away on ship, boy impresses uppity first class passengers, boy gets girl, ship sinks.

2-The Body Guard (1992)
Ah! To be carried to safety in the arms of a strong, silent type with boyish looks… Whitney lost her mojo after that flick, but we’ll never forget what her sweet and potent voice did to Kevin Costner’s tough guy. The prize was such a confident straight-shooter, with a mysterious and exciting past as a secret service agent to boot! A movie for women who still seek real men…

3-When Harry Met Sally (1989)
The angst! The angst! Meg Ryan actually makes us feel compassion for a dumb blond! It’s all thanks to her honest and lovely portrayal of the single professional woman – tired of trying and still hoping for love true and pure. Billy Crystal is the comedic, unlikely beau – which makes for an even better movie about love triumphant over self-centeredness and social formulas.

4-Pretty in Pink (1986)
A true 1980’s teen movie in the style that Howard Deutch made so famous and successful. The Brat Pack – as the group of young actors came to be known – started their meteoric and – sadly – short careers (ok, there are exceptions) in the movie business back then. It doesn’t matter if you saw this one when you were twelve or twenty-two, you were surely captured by the conflicts faced when Andie must choose between true friendship and popularity… the eternal high school dilemma!

5-Pretty Woman (1990)
This was a surprise to us, as we did not expect a movie about a rich, arrogant loner and a hooker to make the top five. But that’s only the surface of the plot; this is really a classic fairytale. The witty, street-smart , gorgeous and ever-aspirational  sex professional meets a gorgeous man in his forties who appears to have everything but is terribly empty inside. Aside from the oft-times annoying Roberts laugh, the plot is excellent and the outfits – oh my God! How many times did you dream about spending a day walking into every top boutique on Hollywood Boulevard, trying on everything you like and taking it with you? Personally, I think that’s what the women who picked Pretty Woman loved best.

There you have it, the top five movies for women 35 to 45. Agree? Disagree? If any of these make you bawl like a baby, ladies, it doesn’t mean that your bioidentical hormone therapy is not working. These are classics no woman would dare to watch without a handy box of Kleenex nearby.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

Try driving your convertible to work on a winter day without getting funny looks from the other drivers. The vision of a middle-aged woman indulging in such eccentricities brings more than a chuckle or estranged glance, it can actually disturb a traffic agent enough to pull you over – believe me, it happened to me. I’ve even been seriously scolded by my physician for going to those extremes to escape the smothering despair that comes with hot flashes at 8:00 a.m. He strongly believes I put myself at risk of an aneurysm due to temperature shock.

Many unashamed women have been known to pull such shenanigans to both vent their frustration and get some fresh air to alleviate their symptoms. I once heard of a lady who would invariably get hot flashes at dinner time, and got so tired of it that she would keep a cold pack in the freezer ready to place on her seat when it was time to sit down. This obviously got the attention of her husband and kids, who just could not believe that she could sit on an ice-cold cushion through dinner. She would have continued the practice, but her butt skin started suffering the consequences and she had to stop after a couple of weeks.  She even thought about inventing and bringing to market a version of her ice-cushion that would insulate a bit more to protect the skin. She found out just how crazy she was; a marketing study found most women wouldn’t go for freezing their butt as a remedy to hot flashes.

But it’s not just unannounced hot flashes; we have to endure all manner of strange symptoms when we get to that dreaded time in life with a name just as dreadful: menopause. It is not really so, but we all believe it symbolizes the end of womanhood and that admitting to its arrival is tantamount to joining the ranks of knitting grandmothers. Therefore, we try to look composed and unaffected in those first months of discomfort and then, having accepted reality, develop all manner of quirks to placate the awful manifestations.

Fortunately, relief did come for me at last. No, it’s not that I finally made it through menopause and the discomforts stopped. Rather I found out about bioidentical hormone replacement, which is a therapy designed to balance hormonal problems by using hormones formulated to be equal to those made by your body. I was already comfortable in my role as a crazy middle-aged woman by the time I visited a specialist to look at the possibility of being treated. However, after consultation and some tests, the doctor determined it would be very simple to treat me. He explained the much lower risks involved in the use of bioidentical hormones vs. the use of synthetic hormones. I decided to go ahead with the treatment, and have never driven with the top down in winter ever since.

If you suffer premenopausal or similar symptoms, you should find yourself a specialist immediately and stop the unnecessary discomfort. Here are three good reasons to do it:

Reason 1:  No woman should have to suffer through the embarrassment of having to wipe sweat off her forehead at a perfectly air-conditioned French restaurant.

Reason 2: The Witches of Eastwick might have been an interesting movie, but we want to remain lovely women, no matter how appealing the role of sexy witch might have seemed to you in the movie.

Reason 3: If science has brought us women bioidentical hormones, reducing the risk of after-effects to negligible in most cases, why would we continue being eccentric and not rejoin the feminine human race?

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that, according to the most recent information available (from 2005), breast cancer is the number one cause of death in Hispanic women and the second most common in every other racial group. For 2008, The American Cancer Society estimated 184,450 new cases of breast cancer in both sexes. Because of the important threat that this condition poses as a cause for death, it is advised that women practice a simple, tactile examination of their breasts at home in order to find any lumps or inconsistencies in their breasts. Any physician or OB-GYN can quickly train a woman on how best to conduct this test. If you are currently undergoing a hormone replacement therapy, you should seriously consider consulting bioidentical hormones doctors; experts have found there is a higher risk of breast cancer among women who take synthetic hormones. Bioidentical hormones pose no such threat.

In addition to screening and examinations, other ways to defend against breast cancer are diet, exercise and a healthy lifestyle.

In general, antioxidants are considered beneficial in the fight against cancer or any other degenerative disease. There are, however, other beneficial nutrients that every woman – and certainly every woman diagnosed with breast cancer – should include in her diet.

If you are or have been diagnosed with breast cancer, you should be more assertive in including certain ingredients. The following is a summary of these. The ones marked with an asterisk are considered more important and beneficial for someone at high risk of breast cancer.

• ANTIOXIDANTS *

Flax seed oil, preferably cold-pressed, is a very good source of antioxidants and omega 3 fatty acids

• LYCOPENE

This substance is contained in tomatoes, grapefruit, and guavas, among other produce. Its cancer-fighting reputation has been known for some time

• FATTY ACIDS*

Fatty fish, such as tuna and salmon, contain omega 3, 6, and 9 fatty acids

• ANTHOCYANINS (Antioxidant flavonoids)*

You can get these from blackberries, raspberries, and the like. Eggplant is also an excellent source

• GO NUTS*

Nuts contain selenium, vitamin E, and fiber. All very beneficial in cancer prevention and fighting

• DARK VEGGIES*

Spinach is a good example, so is broccoli. Brussels sprouts are also a great source of beta-carotenes, calcium, folic acid, vitamin A, and vitamin K.

• CITRUS FRUITS

Of course, here we’re looking for vitamin C and fiber.

• WHOLE GRAINS*

Eat only whole grain cereal, bread, crackers, etc. Your intake of soluble fiber (fiber that is soluble in water) should increase markedly.

• LOW FAT DAIRY

Certain nutrients in dairy have been found to help in cancer fighting and prevention. In particular conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

• MISCELLANEOUS

Shiitake mushrooms, green tea, beans, and chickpeas should form a part of your diet.

In general, the rule is you should take a lot of fiber, antioxidants, and vitamins. Avoid drinking alcohol and caffeine.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).

The stereotypical image of a yoga master is that of a slender, nimble, strong-featured person with a tiny waist line. Therefore it’s no surprise to find out that the practice of yoga is an excellent fat buster.

A recent National Cancer Institute study found that people from 45 to 55 years old gain about a pound per year. However, within the study sample, those people who practiced yoga gained three pounds less in that same ten year period. Even better: the study found that people who were overweight had a bigger benefit, at five pounds less weight gain in the ten year period.

The reasons for the above remain unclear, although one can assume that any kind of physical activity helps with weight loss. Some experts theorize that correctly assuming yoga poses (called asanas) require the development of a body-awareness that gradually brings about a heightened desire to take care of the body. Others explain that the physical effort in yoga comes about when a position has to be held, for a certain amount of time, against a mild discomfort.  This discomfort of course lessens with practice, and more difficult asanas are then tried. The adaptation to tolerate discomfort brings about a tolerance for other discomforts or urges, such as the urge to overeat, drink alcohol and other stimulants, or slouch in front of the television with some comfort food. It can also help you combat the discomfort caused by menopause symptoms, such as leg cramps or aching, sore joints; it is an excellent complement to bioidentical hormone treatment.

Whatever the reason, yoga students report weight loss, increased flexibility and strength and, more importantly, a newfound inner peace that allows them to lead a healthier life. These are benefits that no one can underestimate.

Middle-aged people need a low-impact, high-effectiveness physical activity to keep them from gaining too much weight and to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Both anecdotal and study related data seem to indicate that this activity meets the requirements.

There are several styles of yoga, nine of which come from India. Some are tougher than others, and the instructor’s style plays a big part in defining the overall yoga experience. If you are considering starting yoga training, consider the following:

• Working smart, not hard, is the rule in middle age. You want to preserve your joints.
• A yoga instructor is not a coach. He or she is not meant to push you, but to guide you.
• Yoga is more about long-term gain than short-term effects.
• The style of yoga you choose to practice should fit your lifestyle.

Above everything, look forward to both the physical and emotional benefits that come from this ancient practice.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention our Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy blog as the original source).