How Much Television Do You Watch?

We Interrupt this Programming for a Special Message . . . a Look at Television

I decided to go on a "no TV diet" for a week.

Normally, as the days get shorter I can find myself watching more and more junk food TV. Last week, I started a "no TV diet" and have been free of TV for seven days. Do you know that in the U.S. the average person watches 4.5 hours or more of TV a day?

In a yoga class a couple weeks ago my teacher read a quote during relaxation pose: "watching TV is like painting black paint over your third eye." Our third eye is our chakra center for intuition and clarity. Her words echoed in my mind and got my attention. I don't want to hinder my intuition or my thinking.

This started an internal dialogue about my TV habits and I asked myself the question: Is what I'm watching on TV what I want to fill my mind with? The answer was a resounding no.

When we watch TV we go into a passive trance-like state where our subconscious mind soaks up everything we see and hear with little, if any, discernment. Have you ever noticed that once you turn on the TV it's hard to turn it off even if there is nothing you really want to watch? Have you noticed that you'll find yourself channel surfing and settling for the best of the worst?

Some of the detrimental effects of TV that have been studied include: TV increasing the risk of depression, dampening creativity, reducing the power of imagination, decreasing attention span, and increasing our waistlines. TV also robs us of our time. Yikes, none of this is good.

If you have ever gone on a diet, and who hasn't, why not go on a "no TV diet"? You could aim for a few days, a week, or longer and see how it goes. If you find yourself feeling restless check out this article on things to do instead of watching TV. This is your life and you get to choose how to live it.

I don't plan to stay on the" no TV diet" forever, but for now I've noticed a new bounce in my step. When I do watch TV I plan on being a lot more mindful about what and how much I watch.

We often live on auto-pilot failing to realize that every day we can start anew. This is why it behooves us to stop what we are doing and evaluate how we use our sweet time. We can make conscious life-affirming choices starting today.

Choose wisely and have fun.

This was written by my friend Lisa Guyman, Owner of Inner Sanctum.
 

Be Aware - Are You Taking Fosamax?

A growing body of evidence suggests that a popular family of osteoporosis drugs may actually lead the weakening of bones, increasing the risk of fractures.

Use of bisphosphonates such as Merck's Fosamax for more than five years may predispose women to break their femurs (thigh bones), yet neither Merck nor the FDA has made any effort to warn doctors of this fact.

"We are seeing [thigh fractures in] people just walking, walking down the steps, patients who are doing low-energy exercise," said Dr. Kenneth Egol of New York University. 

The injuries in these patients appear more similar to those that would be expected from a car accident than from a minor fall, he said. Noting that "the femur is one of the strongest bones in the body," Egol called the pattern "very unusual."

"Over the last 18 months we are seeing this more frequently," he said.

Fosamax, sold generically as alendronate, has become a best-seller, with doctors now prescribing it even to women who are considered "at risk" of osteoporosis. Yet even before the risk of femoral fractures emerged, the drug had already been linked to severe musculoskeletal pain and a jaw disease known as osteonecrosis.

In 2008, the FDA first contacted Merck about the emerging evidence regarding thigh fractures. Sixteen months later, Merck added the fractures to a list of potential side effects without further comment

"It took Merck an entire year to respond," said Richard Besser, senior health and medical editor for ABC News. "Just six words: 'low energy femoral shaft and subtrochanteric fractures.'"

Because Fosamax is designed to interfere with the body's natural bone-maintenance mechanisms, researchers believe that over the long term, it undermines the skeleton's ability to regenerate.

"When they are on it for five, six, seven or eight years, they lost their ability to remodel and regenerate their skeleton," said orthopedic trauma surgeon Joseph Lane of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. "[Some women] are very vulnerable and they will then develop problems of brittle bone."

This article is from www.naturalnews.com

Hair Loss in Women

On the causes of female hair loss, the human hair growth cycle, and safe, natural options for women to help stop thinning hair and reverse hair loss

by Marcy Holmes, NP, Certified Menopause Clinician (womentowomen.com)

One of the most emotionally devastating concerns I hear about from my patients is thinning hair and hair loss. At Women to Women, we understand that a woman’s head of hair is her crowning glory — and losing too much hair can be a serious and frightening blow to her self-esteem.

Reacting so strongly to the physical state of your hair may seem like vanity, but it’s not. Your hair is one of the first areas, along with skin and nails, to manifest signs of hormonal imbalance, poor nutrition, or illness. Understanding how hair regenerates and paying attention to any changes in your hair growth and appearance are important parts of taking care of yourself.

The truth is, a certain amount of hair loss is normal, but excessive hair loss and hair thinning indicate that something is not right. Unfortunately, many conventional doctors downplay hair loss as an inevitable part of aging for both sexes, treating it with topical products like Rogaine that enhance existing hair but offer no real solution to the causes of hair loss, and therefore no prevention of continued hair thinning. This leads many women — especially those in menopause — to think that there is nothing they can do to stop their hair loss. The good news is that we’ve seen many cases resolve over time with a holistic approach.

While we wouldn’t claim to know the ultimate cure for hair loss (don’t believe anyone who says they do!), we don’t think a balding woman should resign herself to shopping for hair thickeners or wigs when there are so many other natural choices she can make to support natural hair growth where it counts — at the root.

Read the rest of this article 

Scientists have discovered that fish oil can slash the chance a woman will get breast cancer by approximately a third.

(NaturalNews) When you look at statistics about breast cancer, it's no wonder that the very mention of the disease causes dread in many women. After all, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) says about 210,000 Americans, almost all females, will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and about 40,000 will die from the disease. However, although it's rarely reported in depth by the mainstream media, there's actually a lot of good news accumulating about specific ways to stop breast cancer from ever developing in the first place.

For example, a mounting body of data shows cruciferous vegetables like broccoli fight breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/028822_b...) and six studies have shown eating an apple a day can reduce the risk of breast cancer, too (http://www.naturalnews.com/025685_c...). Now comes word of yet another natural substance that helps keep breast tumors away -- scientists have discovered that fish oil can slash the chance a woman will get breast cancer by approximately a third.

How Fish Oil Works to Prevent Breast Cancer

The new study, just published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, was conducted by a research team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. They investigated 35,016 postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 76 with no history of breast cancer who were participating in the Vitamins and Lifestyle cohort study (dubbed VITAL, short). The woman was asked to complete a 24 page questionnaire about their use of supplements other than vitamins and/or minerals.

After six years of follow-up, 880 of these women had been diagnosed with breast cancer. However, those women who reported regularly taking fish oil supplements, which contain high levels of the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, were found to have a 32 percent reduced risk of invasive ductal breast cancer -- the most common type of breast cancer. The use of other specialty supplements, such as the herbs black cohosh and dong quai which are often taken by women to relieve symptoms of menopause, was not associated with raising or lowering breast cancer risk.

As NaturalNews has previously reported, fish oil has been found to have a host of remarkable health protective properties. For example, a study published in the European Heart Journal concluded that consuming fatty fish and the marine omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil protects men from heart failure. And fish oil has been shown to be helpful in preventing mental illness, too (http://www.naturalnews.com/026130_h...).

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...

Importance of Hormones

If you're a woman over the age of 50, your risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, and dementia goes up significantly. Fortunately, the reason is easy to explain. And, more importantly, it's easy to fix.

What's more, this is strictly a female issue. Unless it is his wife who has it, and then it can become a distinct issue, men don't have to worry about this cause. That's because the obvious reason for this increased risk is menopause. When menopause hits, a woman's body slows way down in its production of hormones, particularly estrogen.

Fortunately, of all the hormones, estrogen deficiency is the easiest to diagnose. This is because it happens to women so suddenly - when they hit menopause and stop menstruating. At that point, you know you're deficient. You also may notice other problems. You may start to lose your hair, your breasts might sag, you might see more facial hair, and you may have more bladder problems (including infections and incontinence).

What's more, you can encounter a number of common symptoms of estrogen deficiency. These can include:

Hot flashes
Fatigue
Headaches/migraines
Night sweats
Stiff, achy joints, particularly the fingers and hands
Vaginal and/or bladder irritation
Forgetfulness - "brain fog"
Insomnia
Decreased libido
Painful intercourse
Depression, moodiness, anxiety
Feelings of despair
Crying easily

As I've said before with other hormones, lab tests aren't the best way to determine if you're deficient. The symptoms are all you need. If you have a significant number of these symptoms, ask your doctor to give you a trial of bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. I always start with a cream that contains estradiol (0.5 mg), estriol (2 mg), progesterone (40 mg), testosterone (0.5 mg), and DHEA (2 mg) in every gram of cream. Your doctor can order this cream through a compounding pharmacy.

Yes, it's easy enough to prescribe the estrogen as a separate cream. But the reality is that any woman who needs estrogen therapy is likely deficient in the other hormones as well. So I put them altogether.

Start off with one-half gram per day. Increase the dose by one-quarter gram every one to two weeks. Continue to increase the dose until either the symptoms are gone, or signs of estrogen excess show up. This is easy to spot. You will feel very similar to the way you felt in the days leading up to your menstrual period. You may experience irritability, swollen breasts, water retention, vaginal bleeding, and a swollen feeling in the lower abdomen. In most women the correct dose is the lowest amount that keeps the hot flashes and night sweats down to one to two per week.

For more information, see below. This may be a solution for you. You won't know until you try. This post is from Dr Frank Shallenberger who does a weekly newsletter about Real Cures.

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