the boomers blog

Recent reports find that women with belly fat have an almost 80% chance of dying prematurely, even if they are not overweight. In other words, they can be within standard weight ranges and may not carry any excess fat elsewhere in their bodies, but if their waists are more than about 35″, or if they carry an unhealthy amount of fat around their middle - they’re at risk.

The theory is that because belly fat is in such close proximity to organs, these organs are damaged by toxins contained in the fats. (Hope you weren’t eating as you read this).

Yikes. I’ve been walking and doing yoga, but I ditched the ab crunches about 10 years ago. I’m going to have to toss the Haagen Dazs and start back in with sit-ups.

Tags: ab crunches, fat, lose weight, sit-ups

I came across this three year old survey recently. Why didn’t it rock the world and make headline news in women’s magazines?

 A Spanish inventor has designed a washing machine which will not let the same person use it twice in a row.  So, if you are the designated unloader and you’re sick of being taken for granted - this is your ticket out of domestic slavery.

The idea came from a Spanish company which hired Pep Torres to come up with an innovative Father’s Day Gift.  Torres invented a washing machine which uses fingerprint technology to differentiate between users. The machine won’t allow the same person’s finger to press the start button two times in a row.

Critics claim, of course, that this is more a gift for a woman than a man; rather like your partner giving you sexy lingerie on Mother’s Day when you’d rather have a gift certificate for a day off by yourself at a spa. 

The machine is childproof and there is no way to disable it short of taking the computer out of the machine and re-programming it. No word yet as to whether or not any U.S. washing machine manufacturers have given Mr. Torres the money and recognition he deserves to market his invention here.

Tags: invention, laundry, men, washing machine, women

A poll conducted by Leger Marketing in 2007 for Aero Chocolate found that almost 50% of women agreed with the statement “I could not survive a day without chocolate.” Only 20% of men agreed with this statement.

Wait, it get’s better. When asked what they would be more likely to give up, sex, alcohol or chocolate women weighed chocolate and sex about equally; men were 5 times less likely to give up sex for chocolate. They were 4 times less likely to want to forsake alcohol for sex.

Let’s file this in the category of “And they paid money to research that…?”

Tags: aero, Chocolate, leger, men, sex, survey, women

OMG, as they say in certain parts, check out my post in Femme Vitale “Five Inventions Every Woman Needs”.

Somebody’s gone and actually come up with one of the biggies.

Five young women from the school of Interactive Arts and Technology at the Simon Fraser University in Canada (pretty smart, ey?) have come up with a Lady Bag.  It’s a bag that keeps track of it’s belongings, such as glasses, keys,wallet.  You simply put a little tag on one of the items (in my case it would definitely be reading glasses) and the bag will sense if it’s present or not. If you try to leave the house without, say, your glasses, it shows an eyeglass on the outside of the bag! How cool is that?

I need this bag now. I needed it yesterday when I drove all the way to the Automobile Club sans checkbook and found they didn’t take plastic.

But check it out, here’s where these five bright young things took the ball and ran with it just a leetle bit further than they should have.  They made it into a mood bag.  Yup, they  programmed it to broadcast your moods to the world.  If you are feeling warm and fuzzy and you hug the bag, it will give off one color; if you fiddle with the zipper it will peg you as being nervous or anxious and change to another color. 

This actually limits the usefulness of the bag.  For one thing, you could never take it on a job interview or a date.  What next, a bag which has a built in lie-detector that will “out” you the next time your bgf asks if those stretch jeans really make her butt look enormous?

 A femme vitale would never have taken this second, useless step.  But, the lost item sensor ,I applaud.

You can read about it here or here.

Tags: , invention, LadyBag, tech, women

There are pressing and well-documented health reasons why we should all try to eat organic, locally grown produce. Here is an expanded viewpoint, which you may not have run into yet.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/31/7989/

Tags: organic food, pesticides, Wellness

Findings in recent years show that women rarely make it into the news. Strange, seeing as how we hold up half the sky.

Check out these facts:

• Morning news programs, which tend to offer lighter fare than the evening news programs, rely more on female sources than male.
• The subject women are least likely to be quoted on is foreign affairs.
• The only place in which women were cited as a source more than half the time was the lifestyle section.

If you have any residual doubt that a woman’s viewpoint is missing from the media, consider that only 20% of the op-ed’s at the Los Angeles Times are written by women. Journalist Caryl Rivers says:

“Women’s voices aren’t heard and that de-legitimzes women, which in turn deepens their silence. From op-ed’s by women to brainy magazines to journals of opinion, women’s voices are more muted than they have been in years.”

To read the whole article click here.

Tags: , eWomen news, op-eds, women in media

Having been born and raised in England, I have a great affection and nostalgia for the BBC radio system.  It is unlike anything available here in the U.S.  BBC Radio 4 has entire departments devoted to Science, Religion, Ethics, Current Affairs and Drama.

Their Science department is particularly cutting edge. Many times I’ve used it as my muse when Newsletter time comes around.

Do yourself a favor and check out the phenomenal variety of programs. You can stream them over the internet with Real Audio Player.

Here is a link to a recent series entitled Life and Middle Age.

Tags: aging, BBC radio 4, middle age, Science

As you age, you may tweak your exercise program, add in vitamins and supplements and, generally, do everything you can to increase your wellness and slow aging. Although you may pay a great deal of attention to your body, you probably don’t pay more than lip service to keeping your brain chipper.

Why not? The brain is the the Command Center of your bodies Anti-Aging Project.

A new book, which is also being showcased as a Public Television Fundraising special in most communities, offers several clear and simple ways to keep your brain young and active.

Essentially, there is an aspect of your brain called “plasticity” which is the lifelong ability of the brain to organize neural pathways based on new experiences. The more you can activate this plasticity, the more active your brain is.

Here’s how it works.

When we are very young we are in a state of acquiring new skills and knowledge. As we grow older, we tend to acquire fewer and fewer skills and pursue less knowledge. We then shift from an acquisitive relationship to knowledge to a “user” relationship.  We keep doing the same things over and over again; we don’t learn new skills and we don’t acquire new knowledge.

So, quite simply, a way to keep yourself younger is to learn a new language, or take up a new hobby or develop a new skill every couple of years as you age. No matter how good you are at golf, add in one or two other sports. Your brain will have to figuratively sit up and pay close attention to what you’re doing and that will enable it to wire new neural pathways, which will in turn keep you mentally younger and more active.

There are seven tenets to activating brain plasticity. They touch upon such things as memory and motivation. You can find them all in the Brain Fitness Program.

Tags: , anti-aging, Brain Fitness Program, Wellness

It all started when my Walkman broke. Remember the walkman? It’s a yellow plastic radio for gals on the go which I’d had since – well – since I actually was a gal on the go.

I like to listen to the News when I’m on the treadmill in the morning. It distracts me from the trudging which I find marginally more depressing than the news.

So off I went in search of a replacement. It’d been so long since I’d bought anything like it I wasn’t quite sure what to ask for. Transistor radio was a little too quaint. Kind of like going to a Mitsubishi dealership and asking to test-drive some horseless buggies. So I hit my first store and launched into an explanation of my fitness habits to the 16 year old sales clerk.

“I like to listen to the news when I work out so I want a personal radio with headphones”.

He showed me a little plastic box which, he said, could house 500 hours of music. This way I could carry all my tunes round with me.

“ I don’t have any tunes”, I said.

I think he actually took a step back. But his recovery was awesome.

“ Ah – but you could get some tunes and then carry them round with you wherever you went this way you’d never have to listen to anything you didn’t want to. See? “

Continue Reading »

The Association of Travel Marketing Executives recently surveyed traveling Boomers and found that we consider travel to be a necessity rather than a luxury. We differ from younger travelers in other ways. We like to have fun but fun that is too difficult to obtain isn’t our idea of fun. We like immediate gratification. We also don’t like to rough it. We like comfort and we’re willing to pay for it.

We like immediate gratification. We’re less likely than our parents to go away with Alumni groups and other organizations. We’re not joiners. We also like to design our own activities and choose what we do on vacation. We’re not too big on following a tour leader around with a flag and hanging on her every word. We like our travel a la carte.

We like to be pampered at spas. We love vacations where we can just lie around and do nothing. We will happily shell out for luxury, expertise and convenience. But we need to get our money’s worth.

Despite our spirit of adventure, we prefer associating with people who are just like us. We particularly don’t like associating with Seniors. We’re not comfortable hanging with the salt n’ pepper crowd in case we get lumped in with them.

For the complete article click here.

Tags: boomer travel, Retirement, travel