Elizabeth A. Havey's Blog, page 18

Autumn: Enjoy the Weather; Get Your Flu Shot

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Autumn: Enjoy the Weather; Get Your Flu Shot

When parents refuse to vaccinate their children, they not only put their children in jeopardy–they put you in jeopardy also. That’s because our society depends and runs on herd immunity. When most of us are vaccinated against diseases, we provide herd immunity; we provide protection from transmitting many diseases to others–especially babies who are too young to be vaccinated, older people who are too sick to be vaccinated and people of all ages whose immune systems are weakened by a chronic condition.

When young families refuse to vaccinate their children, claiming their kids: “Are just fine. They never get sick,”–they are ACTUALLY RELYING ON THE IMMUNITY OF THE OLDER GENERATIONS WHO ARE IMMUNIZED. Because those of us who either got chicken pox, measles, mumps and rubella, and/or vaccinated our children against those diseases are now providing HERD IMMUNITY to those claiming they don’t need the shots. But when we get sick or die off, that herd will be depleted. We might be looking at future pregnant women with rubella who are giving birth to children who are deaf and blind. Or a flu season like none other, because of depleted immune systems that cannot fight off the virus.

MORE STATISTICS 

Consider this: 30% of adults who were surveyed did not know whether they needed a pneumonia shot. Did you know that one in five adults who are hospitalized for pneumonia end up in an intensive care unit?

TETANUS

If you did get your childhood vaccinations, you probably received shots that protected you from whooping cough, tetanus and diphtheria, though they often had to be repeated. The Tdap (Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis or whooping cough) which was introduced in 2005, is now given to all children. But there’s a chance you have not received it.

Are you a serious gardener who could be prone to cuts from a rusty fence or gardening tool? The CDC now recommends that you get a Tdap or Td every 10 years to boost your immunity. Whooping cough is not a thing of the past and if you work with unvaccinated children, you could be at risk.

SHINGLES 

If you are over fifty and have not been vaccinated in the past five years, you need the shingles vaccine.  This blistery rash is the result of the chicken pox virus which remains in your body. Though the rash may clear up in a few weeks, it can leave lingering nerve pain that lasts much longer. And check out a new vaccine called Shingrix that is given after age 50. 

MMR 

If you were born in 1957 or later you may need the MMR. It protects against measles, mumps and rubella. And if you plan to travel internationally you should be covered by two doses before you go. There was  also a version between 1963 and 1967 that was ineffective. You can get a blood test to check your immunity.

PNEUMONIA 

If you are over 65 and or suffering from certain chronic medical conditions, you need a pneumonia shot. Currently, the CDC recommends the version PPSV23 for all adults who are 65 or older. People with weakened immune systems might also need PCV13. Your doctor will advise you. 

FLU

Everyone should get a flu shot every year. The strains change and thus the immunity you gained from past years will not protect you. The numbers of people who die every year from the flu (an estimated 36,400 to 61,200) indicates how serious flu is in older adults. 

PLEASE KNOW: you cannot catch the flu from the shot, though some people experience symptoms after the injection like muscle aches, headache and fever–that is normal. It means your immune system is working. 

EDUCATE YOURSELF

In a world where information is often right at your fingertips, there is no excuse not to at least have an opinion about flu shots and other vaccinations. Educate yourself. Read. Ask your doctor.
And yes, enjoy the weather. Autumn is a beautiful time to get outside and breathe fresh air, take a walk, open your arms to sunlight. You might even walk over to your neighborhood pharmacy and talk to them about getting this year’s flu shot–and any other vaccines you might need to protect yourself and to invest in herd immunity.

Thanks to Sara Vigneri  PHOTO: Thanks to Picfair

My Writing Life: AIDS and Words on the Page

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My Writing Life: AIDS and Words on the Page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been writing forever. A poetry contest winner in high school. (My God, I would never share that poem with you!) Assignments in creative writing classes in high school & college. A fair attempt at a sonnet. Lots of stumbling around in short stories. Attempts done while I was teaching high school English.

But though I began to pile up short stories to try to get published in women’s magazines, the writing wasn’t what they wanted—though small journals like Greens Magazine and The Nebraska Review did publish my stuff.

MEDICINE AND WRITING 

I’ve written a lot about my heart and mind being captured and enthralled with medicine. It started because I wanted to know definitively how and why my father died so young. I found myself drawn to any article about medicine. But then it tugged harder, because suddenly every publication I read was talking about a mysterious illness that finally got a name AIDS—Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Definition: a disease that is the final stage of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which attacks the immune system similar to other autoimmune diseases and leaves the body susceptible to other diseases and infections.

THE BEGINNING OF OUR UNDERSTANDING OF AIDS 

When these articles began to appear, you could easily go on and live your life and not be aware of what was happening—unless you cared. Unless you were on the lookout for information. Unless you were connected with the gay community. Gay men were dying, in great numbers. But that allowed many to turn away. A dear childhood friend, a boy I had a crush on in high school, died in the early eighties. I knew he was gay. But it took me awhile to realize that he had died of AIDS. His family claimed hepatitis.

But the drip, drip of news continued. If you read, you began to put things together.

RYAN WHITE, BARBARA FASSBINDER 

Ryan White. A boy and not a gay man, died on April 8, 1990 just before his high school graduation. Ryan was a hemophiliac and doctors realized that he became infected with HIV from contaminated factor VIII blood treatment. This diagnosis was made in December of 1984. Ryan was given only six months to live. When he tried to continue his education, parents of the children who attended his school rallied against him. This was concurrent with the medical community beginning to understand that AIDS was not an airborne disease. That it spread solely through body fluids. It would take years for people to understand this.

In 1990, Congress did pass a major piece of AIDS legislation, the Ryan White CARE Act, after White’s death. The Act has been reauthorized twice; Ryan White Programs became the largest provider of services for people living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S.

Another major development was the death of Barbara Fassbinder, one of the first health care professionals to be infected with the Aids virus. I was an L&D RN when she died. Her story?

Fassbinder liked to garden. She had small cuts on her hands when she provided care to a patient in the ER at a hospital in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. She was pressing a bandage onto a patient’s wound when the patient’s blood mingled with hers through her small cuts. She did not know she had contacted AIDS until she tried to give blood in 1990. Once she was diagnosed, she began to travel to warn other healthcare workers about the dangers of infection. When Fassbinder died in 1994, Universal Precautions had altered the care in all hospitals in the United States.

AIDS and UNIVERSAL PRECAUTIONS

When the CDC adopted Universal Precautions, the public became aware that the medical community was doing all that it could to protect patients and healthcare workers from AIDS, a blood borne infection, as well as other blood borne infections and air-borne infections. Whether you are seeing an RN for an injection, having major surgery at a hospital or surgery center or delivering a baby—universal precautions are in place. Below I have listed the Standard Precautions that apply to all patient care, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status of a patient, in any setting where health care is delivered.

Use of personal protective equipment (e.g., gloves, masks, eyewear).
Respiratory hygiene / cough etiquette.
Sharps safety (engineering and work practice controls).
Safe injection practices (i.e., aseptic technique for parenteral medications).
Sterile instruments and devices.
Clean and disinfected environmental surfaces.

Specially marked red bags remove all used materials from the hospital room or surgical suite. All personal are gloved, gowned, their noses and mouths covered with a mask when in the surgical suite. Doctors and nurses at the operating table have prewashed their hands under strict guidelines, like sinks that are operated without touching faucets. They are then gloved and gowned with the help of the circulating nurse so that they don’t touch anything in the process.

Once, working at the surgical table, my glove was punctured by a needle driver. I had to step away from the surgery, be replaced by another RN and immediately see a doctor whose basic job is to draw my blood, prescribe medication, and track my care to make sure my blood has not become contaminated.

MY WRITING LIFE

Even before my work as an RN, I had read pages and pages about AIDS and written and rewritten a story entitled TIES—a rather long story that attempted to deal with the throes of anger and hurt, depression and misunderstanding that a family might deal with when they discover a family member has AIDS. 

It’s not a very good story. Probably the only paragraph where I might have caught the angst of this time period when families were trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING, is when I wrote about the main character remembering a family photo.

Amy is the sister to Rick, who has died from AIDS. Rancher is her other brother. Because of AIDS, the father had left the family. Marilyn is their mother.

And it’s there, at the bottom of the box, in a heavy gray cardboard folder with the name of the studio written on a slant. Amy eight, in a party dress, hands folded in her lap; Rick five, his hair so light, it vanishes into the walls of the background. Rancher next to Amy, and then their mother Marilyn, in a rumpled skirt, her hair, smooth, shiny, pulled clear off her forehead. Just the four of them there, looking out.  

TO GET AN UPDATE ON AIDS, read the following article that appeared in the LATIMES

HIV Prevention Progresses, But Vaccine Is Still The Goal

Photo credit:  ME

SOME RESEARCH BEHIND: TALKING TO STRANGERS

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SOME RESEARCH BEHIND: TALKING TO STRANGERS

“In real life, we often wear masks to protect ourselves. And masks hide our feelings or misrepresent them to those who don’t know us well,” writes Malcom Gladwell in his latest book: Talking With Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We don’t Know. He cites the research of Timothy Levine who concludes: that evolution has conditioned us to assume that everyone is telling the truth unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Calling this penchant “default to truth,” that’s why Bernie Madoff fooled so many people for so long, and why Larry Nasser, the doctor convicted of sexually abusing young female gymnasts, was able to do so for so many years. It also supports why when a woman asks her spouse if he has been unfaithful and he offers a reasonable denial, she immediately wants to believe he’s telling the truth. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Gladwell states: “That’s just how we’re built…and one reason our society functions is that that’s our baseline—we take for granted that the person we’re talking to is being honest.”

Maybe that baseline is currently being eroded.

YOUR FACIAL EXPRESSION AND TRUTH

In his book, Gladwell writes about the “Friendsfallacy,” that we grew up watching sitcoms that show characters reflecting exactly their feelings through facial expressions. “If you turn off the sound in an episode of Friends, you can still know precisely what’s going on. When Monica’s angry, she looks angry. When Ross is perplexed, that’s how he appears…I had a psychologist who studies facial expressions analyze an episode and break it down for me. …She concluded that the entire cast is able to signal a complex set of feelings on their faces alone…but in real life, we often wear masks, hide our feelings to mispresent them to those who don’t know us well.”

THE SEED FOR GLADWELL’S BOOK: SANDRA BLAND

In her interview with Gladwell, Oprah states that she concluded after reading his book that: “If we were willing to engage in some soul-searching about how we approach and make sense of strangers—Sandra Bland would not have ended up dead in a Texas jail cell.”

Gladwell states that yes, Bland is the frame for the book, that something about her case haunted him (as it does me). Gladwell states:

It was 2015. Bland is a politically aware person who had some difficulties in Chicago, but is about to start her life over after getting a new job in a lovely college town in a different state. She’s leaving the campus to buy groceries when a police officer sees her and makes a judgment—that there’s something funny about her. So, he trumps up an excuse to pull her over, saying that she failed to use her blinker when she pulled to the right. When he tells her that, she says she was hurrying to get out of his way and then lights a cigarette (probably because she’s nervous, a black woman pulled over by a white Texas cop). Then everything falls apart. He tells her to put it out. She asks, “Why do I have to put out my cigarette?” He then tries to drag her out of the car, handcuffs her. It’s all on camera. He has her put in jail where she hangs herself three days later.

HIS BOOK ASKS US TO STOP!! CONSIDER WHAT HAPPENED

When we interact with strangers, Gladwell states that we are making assumptions on both sides that can lead to interactions that run amok. Whenever we meet a stranger and are starting a conversation, we are making assumptions about that person based on our own unconscious biases.

Gladwell states: When I see you, I observe your demeanor. Your face. Your expressions. Your body language. And I draw conclusions. My assumption is that the way you represent your emotions on your face and your body language is consistent with the way you are feeling.

But in the real world, those things don’t always match. In Sandra Bland’s case, she was justifiably annoyed at being stopped for no reason. And she got nervous, but that came across to the officer as something suspicious. He wasn’t reading her behavior as nervousness.

From my own research online, I learned that the traffic stop escalated, the cop threatened her with a taser and she ended up on the ground where she shouted that she hit her head. The cop, Encinia, claimed that she kicked him and booked her on suspicion of assaulting a police officer.  

When I first heard about Sandra Bland’s arrest and saw the video, I was outraged. Later, when I heard that after three days in jail, she gave up and killed herself, I was even more outraged. Where was the legal help that she needed? Did this situation escalate so quickly because Sandra Bland was black? Did someone threaten her? Was it a suicide? Maybe Gladwell has some of these answers.

MY OWN ENCOUNTERS WITH POLICE

The first encounter occurred in a shopping mall south of Chicago. I was driving too fast on the roadway within the mall that circled the stores. A cop pulled me over, asked for my license and as usual walked back to his car. I picked up my cell phone and called my husband. When the cop returned to the car momentarily, he screamed at me to get off the phone. Once again, yes there are rules, but rules can be explained without screaming. Is it necessary to uphold the law by using what I consider “fear” tactics? Was I truly a threat to this man with a gun?

The second encounter occurred in my south suburban Chicago neighborhood, when I bounded out of my car because I witnessed a kindergarten child fall from the top of the swing set. Yes, he should not have been climbing up it—but children do those things. My mistake: I left my car running. The officer just happened to be turning into that street, pulled up behind me and started to write the ticket. When I was able to leave the child and return to my car and found him, I explained first that I wasn’t aware I was breaking the law and second that I had a good reason to leave my car running, though it was in PARK. He would hear none of it.

Once in Des Moines, when a cop motioned me to pull into a parking lot, I got out of my car and walked back to discover what the problem was. I was friendly, just confused. He yelled at me to get back in my car. He had pulled me over because the sticker on my license was not up to date.

I don’t do well with any of this. Maybe it’s just me.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Gladwell’s books have always covered intriguing topics: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers. For me, this one is the most intriguing of all.

WHY I READ BOOKS

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My library in Thousand Oaks, CA. did a remodel last year. And as they rearranged their shelves and made better use of their space, they set aside many many books, paper and hard cover, for sale. I’m talking $1.00 for a paperback published in 2003. Fifty cents for older hard-bounds.

My recent purchase was a novel by Alice McDermott entitled CHILD OF MY HEART. I have read much of her work, but this one was totally new to me and as I read, I underlined passages and made notes in the margins—so that now when doing my own work, I can go back and look at the thoughts HER WORK stimulated in me.

Because I’m a writer, and when I have THE book IN MY HAND, I can easily write in it, flip back through pages, make it my very own. On a device like Kindle, you can do some of the same, but my method seems more “at the ready” and when I’m finished reading, I can put THE BOOK on my reading shelf.  

GETTING CARRIED AWAY…In a book.

Of course, there are many other reasons why I read books: to get lost, to cry or laugh with human beings that come alive on the page. My book choices come from many places: a friend who has recently published. A review in Time, the newspaper. The words of a friend. Or the simple need to get away from what is going on in my own world, to get lost in the loves, needs and triumphs of someone else.

WHAT TO READ

I often read non-fiction too, especially if it’s of a medical nature where I can continue to understand advances in science and research and review the very language used to discuss these topics. As an RN, no longer practicing, but who relished learning this new and amazing vocabulary, I have lost a lot of it. Reading helps me remember, step back into that world, reclaim it on some level.

READING: A NECESSITY IN OUR AGE

There are many newer ways to stay informed and to enjoy literature. Yes, I always have a book to listen to—in my car. There were years when I drove back and forth from Des Moines to Chicago to visit my wonderful and aging mother. Listening to books sustained me. I remember coming back to Des Moines and listening for a second read to Marilynne Robinson’s HOME. One passage became so intense that I had to grip the wheel, fight back tears. It wasn’t just Robinson’s words, the lives of her characters. It was catharsis for my own family, for the impending death of my mother.

Reading and connecting with the deep thoughts and experiences of other human beings can help us deal with our own challenges and sorrows.

It can also open our eyes to truth. But that’s a topic for another time. Each one of us must be responsible for truth—reading to find it and then reporting it. In a time when lies are held out as truth, being a careful reader is more important than ever. THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.

But you must know where to find it and how to embrace it.

Thanks for, well, READING!!

Photo Credit: thanks to illustrator Guada, for the perfect illustration for this post.

MORE THOUGHTS ON HEALTH, VACCINATION

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You are in a doctor’s office. Some of your clothing is removed. Your armor, your protection. We all are vulnerable as human beings, but more so when we are ill. And especially, when we are ill and are not sure what is wrong. It’s almost as if we have thrown off some of our armor by mistake and now what??

FEAR AND OUR HEALTH 

Being ill or thinking about being ill is always accompanied by fear. It might be low-lying, like way in the back of the mind. But it’s there. Because fear is always part of life. And as we grow and learn, we realize that there are no guarantees. Some of us learn sooner than others. Those of us who have lost a parent early on. Those of us who have had to face surgery or broken legs or arms, went through a series of medical appointments for some condition—it comes home to us that it’s so much better to get out and ride a bike, read a book, sit around with a friend than going to see a doctor.

FEAR AND VACCINATION: ANDREW WAKEFIELD  

Fear can be contagious, which is something I have written about before, related to the anti-vaxxer movement, the people who have decided that after reading a report from Dr. Andrew Wakefield.* That report proved to be false. Wakefield was paid to create the false research, write the report by a lawyer preparing a lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer. The journalist that discovered the deceit was Brian Deer. The lawyer was Richard Barr who paid Wakefield $800,000 for his phony research. This same law firm gave ten million to doctors and scientists asking them to find a link between vaccination and autism. One million dollars went to Unigenetics Limited, the company that tested Wakefield’s samples. A pathologist, Kenneth Aitken, was paid $400,000 to argue that Great Britain should change its vaccination policy based on Wakefield’s research. And Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne, a neurologist, was paid $800,000 to support Wakefield’s hypothesis. (this information from researched footnotes in the text ON VACCINATION by Eula  Biss)

AND WAKEFIELD’S IDEAS SPREAD...

This is all scary stuff that in the end has harmed many children. For anti-vaxxers believe Wakefield’s research: that there is a conspiracy behind vaccination, that the government is too powerful, that their children will get autism. They are having none of what many in my generation and beyond took as a matter of fact. Something that was part of childhood, and later part of having a child.

Anti-vaxxers have ripped off the medical protective shield of vaccination early on. They believe that some super-power can keep them and their children safe from serious childhood diseases like chicken pox, measles, mumps, rubella, HPV etc etc. And when they are up against the power of the government, they sometimes reveal that radical ideas and unsupported fears can go haywire.  

TAKING THEIR BELIEFS TOO FAR…AND TO VIOLENCE 

An anti-vaxxer physically confronted and shoved California State Senator Dr. Richard Pan who has authored bills tightening laws and school immunization requirements. In a video the attacker stated the Pan would be: “…hanged for treason, for assaulting children, for misrepresenting the truth” if he got what he deserved.

How does the initiation of violence ever protect anyone? It’s such an odd development in our modern world of medicine, that these parents have decided to avoid research and science, at the risk of harming their children and others, and in this case, possibly going to jail for assault. The word “crazy” comes to mind.

THE TWO-SIDED FEAR of HEALTH and HARM  

In her well-researched book, On Immunity, Eula Biss traces our human fears concerning the care of the human body back to midwives. After reading Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English’s book, Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Biss quotes from their introduction by historian John Demos. He observed that a quarter to a third of the women tried for witchcraft in colonial New England were known for their abilities as healers or midwives. Demos writes: “The underlying linkage here is obvious enough. The ability to heal and the ability to harm seemed intimately related.” AND AS BISS WRITES, they still do.

The irony of a doctor creating fear in medicine is not new. We all know that doctors are as good as how they practice, how they honor their oath to do no harm. There are those among their group that are not saints.

AN INTERVIEW WITH EULA BISS 

In a recent NPR interview, Biss talked about research and reflected on it. When asked about splitting the difference between information and misinformation, Biss answered: On this great blog, Science-Based Medicine, one of the writers…pointed out that when you split the difference between information and misinformation, you still end up with misinformation. So I think there are situations where a middle ground is not desirable. Though I’m the kind of thinker who’s very drawn to compromises and to nuances, …the position that is sometimes seen as extreme — which is vaccinating a child fully and on time — I’ve come to believe is not an extreme position. I think that protecting children at the age where they’re most vulnerable against diseases that are highly contagious is prudent.

When asked if the medical community has done enough to counter misinformation, Biss answered: I think they’re working very hard and I think there are some great minds going at it. But I think that sometimes what the medical community is doing is too limited. And I don’t think that’s necessarily their fault. They’re often addressing medical questions. And I don’t think that this debate is always a medical debate — I think it’s actually often not a medical debate. I think it’s often a social debate. And I think that people’s resistance to vaccination isn’t going to disappear until we address some of the nonmedical reasons for that resistance and people’s discomfort and distrust of the government. That’s bigger than what most medical professionals can handle.

When asked about how distrust of government affects the way parents view vaccination, Biss replied: This isn’t the only country where you see that causing a problem. There are countries where it’s a much bigger problem, and those tend to be countries where the political situation is much worse than it is here. Nigeria and Pakistan are two countries that have had a lot of trouble with polio. And part of the reason is that there’s a lot of political unrest and people really distrust what the government is doing. That has an effect on people’s health and it has an effect on the health of children. And so, this is one more reason for us to be invested in good political systems, because it’s a public health concern.

When asked how to understand our current anti-vaccination movement, Biss replied: There are so many different reasons people don’t vaccinate that I’m not even sure it can be looked at as a cohesive movement. Some people have concerns that are really health-based, and some people are resisting capitalism when they resist vaccination. Some people are resisting what they feel is the corrupt pharmaceutical system and corrupt medical system. So there are all kinds of different angles here, and I do think I came to understand all of them better through this research. And I also came to understand my own reservations better.

FINALLY, when asked about making her own choices for her son, Biss said: I would prefer for my son to have as little medical care as possible, as little contact with the medical system as possible. I think vaccination is actually one way to try to help ensure that — making sure that he doesn’t get something like pneumonia that might mean a hospital stay, where things will be done to him that will make me uncomfortable or that he will be treated in a way that might feel excessive to me. I think the best way for me to keep him out of that system is to engage in this highly effective preventative medicine, vaccination.

*Dr. Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a discredited former British doctor who became an anti-vaccine activist. He was a gastroenterologist until he was struck off the UK medical register for unethical behavior, misconduct, and dishonesty for authoring a fraudulent research paper that claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism and bowel disease

Thanks to NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-s...

 

Skin Care Tips for Busy Women

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Busy women, working women, working moms — you know your situation. You often don’t have time for a 10-step skincare routine. But there are options that you should not ignore as it’s important to protect your skin: apply sunscreen before you leave the house!

Wearing sunscreen is necessary to achieve a younger-looking skin and KEEP a younger-looking skin. Most sunscreens can also keep your skin hydrated. Options? A tinted moisturizer that contains an SPF that will protect your skin from the harmful rays as well as provide coverage for blemishes and hydration.

Is A Serum Advisable for Busy Women?

Ever wonder what’s all the craze about anti-aging face serum? Apparently, face serum is one of the holy grails of many famous actresses, especially in Asian countries. But what is a serum?

A serum is an oil or water-based product rich in nutrients, ceramides, glycerin and natural ingredients such as cucumber, aloe, and vitamins (especially C, K, and E). All of these in combination have the ability to penetrate deep within the layers of skin and give it the glow it deserves.

The Benefits of Serum in a Skincare Routine 

Generally, adding a serum to your skincare routine can help in restoring moisture and elasticity to your skin while regulating the production of oil. Thus, serums have the ability to hydrate, nourish and brighten skin while preventing it from getting acne. Here are some more benefits to your skin if you use a serum day and night:

Lightens dull skin – It’s a fact that as you get older, your skin will start to lose its radiance. But adding a serum before putting on makeup as well as getting a good night’s sleep can help stimulate cell renewal and give you young-looking skin.

Lightens dark spots – It’s smart to be a fan of sunscreen, as exposure to sunlight can dull skin and create dark spots and patches. Make it your daily habit to apply sunscreen and serum as it helps fade the appearance of dark spots and makes your skin look luminous.

Fights signs of aging – A serum that contains a high concentration of hydrating hyaluronic acid can instantly make your skin look plumped. Also, look for serums with Vitamin C, a great agent to help in fighting off signs of aging.

Boosts volume – Aside from skin looking dull as you age, it also has the tendency to lose moisture and volume, especially on cheekbones and under the eyes. With regular use, many serums can help retain volume in those critical areas.

The difference between serum and moisturizer

Both are beneficial but possess distinct characteristics and provide different benefits:

A serum has smaller molecules than a moisturizer and thus can penetrate more deeply into your skin. Moisturizers can only go on the first layer of your skin.
Moisturizers hydrate, while serums penetrate your skin with highly concentrated nutrients, vitamins and minerals to help fight skin conditions and lessen the appearance of wrinkles.
Serums are considered to be more efficient since results can happen with regular use and are more effective.

What is the right serum for your skin?

Serums come in various types depending on your skin’s needs. Some deal with breakouts while others focus on making dull skin luminous. To guarantee you are choosing the perfect serum, read labels, do your research, consult with the salesperson at the venue where you are shopping. The serum you choose must work with your skin type: dry, oily, sensitive or a combination. It also must be compatible with the other skincare products you’re using. You don’t want your serum to irritate your skin or worsen a skin condition. Do your research, either online, with a salesperson, a beauty consultant, and even your dermatologist if you are being treated for a particular skin condition.

If you don’t have time to add serum to your morning skincare routine, applying it at night will help your skin regenerate and absorb needed nutrients. You can also apply it together with your night cream. Unlike face masks, you won’t have to peel it off or wash it off after a few minutes. You can leave it overnight and expect a glowing and fresh skin when you wake up the next morning.

No matter how busy you are in your career and your personal life, you’ll get a lift when you look in the mirror and see healthy skin. A little pampering insures you’ll be smiling back.

 Thanks to REA RAGAY for this post. She is a Business Administration graduate, who loves to read and give tips about skincare and beauty products; fond of music and a loving mom to her one and only daughter.

Health Confessions

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THIS IS TRULY A CONFESSION.
When I was twelve, I told my mother I didn’t want the full figure that she had. I pictured myself slim, like a ballerina, moving gracefully, even slowly into adulthood. My youth would make me capable, limber–and so I determined that nothing would exhaust me.

COLLEGE

At nineteen I was glad of a fuller figure. Then I got by on less than six hours of sleep and skipped breakfast. Though we had to take 9 hours of physical education, I cut my swimming classes, got a passing grade by doing the back stroke down the length of the pool; then signed up for golf and bowling, which didn’t require a great expenditure of energy—at least the way I performed. I ignored the nutrition section, eating two desserts at dinner because the “mystery meat” just wasn’t for me. Even so, I pictured myself brilliant, though sometimes lonely, reading, studying for A’s and planning my future oh so carefully. I thought.

AH, THAT THIRD and FOURTH DECADE

At twenty-two, I was teaching high school English. I had an hour drive to my school and taught three preparations (I had five classes, with a varied curriculum.) And because I was all-powerful, I often stayed late for workshops or signed up for a class at the local park district.

I was the total teacher, and soon after, the young exciting wife. But I would crash for days at a time, I was so tired. I was also so deficient in my knowledge of nutrition that my friend Jane had to explain to me the difference between proteins, carbohydrates and fats. She reprimanded me for eating chocolate Ho Hos for breakfast. How did all that happen when I got A’s in my required science courses in college?

When I was 26 and pregnant for the first time, I bragged about how little weight I had gained. I only skimmed the nutrition pamphlets and never, ever exercised. I pictured myself in a long white gown rocking my baby. But when she arrived, I was totally exhausted, and though I attempted to nurse her, it was more than I could handle and she developed colic.

Four year later, when I was pregnant with my second daughter, I drove to see Jane, why? To borrow a cake recipe. She wasn’t home. She was out running. During that pregnancy I was active–cleaning my house and gardening. But I’d eat sweets to push away my fatigue.

Then after the birth of my second child, I crashed, sometimes could hardly get out of bed in the morning. The back ache I had ignored became more persistent and my seasonal colds became constant. I pictured myself young and vibrant, but at 35 I was not.

Being fit and working out was not new news. In college, outside of having to run a mile around some track as freshmen, we drank coke for breakfast, smoked, few exercised and some did drugs. I remember as a senior, some freshmen girls having lots of health food in their rooms and the rest of us thinking that was a little strange. We were blind!

THE CULTURE

Bodies have always been used to sell us stuff, to get a man, a job, a friend, anything. Skin, the outer layer, is considered so important that we must have creams and salves for every inch of it.

But the basic point is that each of us has only one skin, one body of organs and muscles and we should spend some time contributing to its upkeep. This should be a normal, natural part of our lives. Taking a walk does not require a health club or a closet full of sport clothes. Over time, I learned there really is no excuse. There is no trade-in.

LESSONS

When I was young, I squandered my good health. Now most mornings I am up and out walking 3 miles. In the past I have done Dancersize, Yoga, worked with a trainer and spent hours at a gym.  (This is necessary when you don’t live in California.) But now I do.

I have also needed physical therapy—often. I have needed to see a dietitian to help me achieve a better diet and deal with low blood sugar. Diet for me no longer means LOSE WEIGHT. It means eating fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, proteins and drinking lots of water. My go-to sweet is a small square of dark chocolate. And that’s it. I regularly read: Roxanne Sukol’s Your Health Is On Your Plate. 

Each person’s vision of good health and a long life has to contain a holistic approach. The mind is a powerful factor in all of this and a frantic mental outlook can blur and harm the physical image we may be trying to create.

It all goes back to something we rarely think about until we are sick, until something hurts or something is broken. OUR BODIES ARE OURSELVES. We must not just walk about inside of them, ignoring them like a pesky neighbor, we must cultivate and care for them—and yes, I learned this the hard way—take care of your body from the VERY BEGINNING.

P.S. I have been writing about health since I started Boomer Highway. This piece comes directly from an article I wrote in my journal–many years ago!!

 

Toni Morrison and the Freedom of Words

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Toni Morrison Author and Nobel Prize Winner

In 2017, a few of us who feel passionate about the future, formed a group and called ourselves the Progressive Women of Conejo Valley. At first there were 20 women, but gradually many peeled away, and then there were only six of us. We smiled and forged on, supporting The Florence Project, which provides toys and art supplies to children at the border; worked with Senior Concerns to provide food baskets at Thanksgiving, gift bags for the holidays; and helped teens register to vote with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters.

But then we came up with a bigger project.

A famous member of Congress, U.S. Representative Tip O’Neill, once said POLITICS IS LOCAL—that the way to move people to a grander design is to show how your proposal follows them into their backyards.

SCHOOL BOARD POLITICS, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The letters to the editor in our local newspaper were growing. The reason: some parents didn’t want their children to read Toni Morrison’s Sula; David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedarsand The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

What did we do? We listened, met with some of the parents whose children attended the local high school and discovered that the fall election would determine whether these young adults would be reading and discussing Morrison and others. Some candidates for the school board would make that impossible. We did our homework, interviewed three other candidates and discovered they were running to support these works of literature. Again politics is local and so we did what was possible with our small numbers—we held a garage sale and made over five hundred dollars which we presented to the three candidates. We also canvassed for each of them and—they all won!

WHY OUR YOUNG ADULTS SHOULD READ MORRISON & THE OTHERS

In 1993, Toni Morrison became the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was lauded for being a writer “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

As a woman of color, Morrison speaks and writes about language and how it can affect and deepen our American reality. If we do not have the freedom to express ourselves in language and to reveal the truths of our history, we are lost.

In her Nobel Acceptance speech, she told this story:

Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise. …the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away…
One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them…her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”
She does not answer, and the question is repeated. Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.
Finally the old woman speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”
Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.
What the blind woman has done is shift the power that these seeing people might have over her, and instead are reprimanding them for mocking her, but also for the life they might have sacrificed to do so.
TONI MORRISON’S MESSAGE


I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer.


She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes.


Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency — as an act with consequences.


So the question the children put to her: “Is it living or dead?” is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will.


She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse.


 FINAL THOUGHTS on THE FREEDOM LANGUAGE PROVIDES
Morrison writes: Word-work is sublime … because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.
The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn (paint) the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.
Thanks to Pocket and the amazing article: Toni Morrison on the Power of Language and to Leeann Petras for sending it to me.

DO WE NEED A NEW FRONTIER?

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What surrounded you when you were growing up? Were you raised in an apartment in the city, high up, your window looking out on TV antennas or another building? Or a farm, where your view was a field, vegetable patch, fences and the barn beyond. From my window I saw the houses across the street, the sidewalk and a row of elm trees. But whatever our view, wherever we were raised and in what decade, there is always the search for something different.

THE URGE FOR THE NEW 

Living in Chicago, I had Lake Michigan, but wanted to see the ocean. I had what were once called skyscrapers, but wanted mountains. On a train coming back from a trip to California, I lied to a girl my age when she asked where I lived. Damn, I had just been swimming in the ocean, standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Now I pictured the severe blocks of my neighborhood and said: “Where I live there’s the hills and the flats. I live on the hills.” Liar.

We all know why American toy makers, writers of fiction for children can do very well—imagination. And when I was young it was still about THE WEST. You opened the back door, grabbed a bike or a scooter and roamed in your imagination.

THE FRONTIERS WE SAW ON TV

Every kid had a book or watched a TV show about cowboys, horses, guns and the enemies they pursued, Native Americans. (Sad but true). Later it was GI Joe and army green.  Even I with my childhood fears created a game of death. (From my Memoir) We climb the gnarled cherry tree that oozes sap. We stumble over stones and rocks in the weedy rock garden that her mother will never have time to weed. We pretend it’s a pit of burning oil and we push the imaginary “bad girls” into the pit.

GO WEST… When people got tired of tornadoes, snowstorms, were eager to work in the airplane industry, become songwriters, playwrights or movie “stars”—they went west. For decades, the settled green lands of the east gave way to the rocky openness of the west. In my lifetime, I’ve been able to visit many of our national parks: Glacier, Grand Canyon, Four Corners, Zion, Brice Canyon, Everglades, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Mount Rainier, Mesa Verde, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore! And though people still love mountains, canyons and glaciers, still seek out places where the river runs through it—now they hunger for earth’s highest peaks, photograph the North and South poles, fly to Africa for safaris, and desire to create a permanent village on Mars. It’s in our DNA.

A CRY FOR THE AMERICAN WEST 

But here’s the thing, if we still yearn for something new why not work to preserve what we already have! In his recently published nonfiction work, THIS LAND, Christopher Ketcham reveals how our eagerness to tramp through forests, seek out wildlife, do whatever we damn please with our resources is destroying them.

(In California this spring, the thousands of people who drove to see the California poppy fields, disregarded posted signs, went off pathways, not eager to really SEE the poppies, but to take with their phones, photos of friends. Whole fields were destroyed because of their egos. (THEY AREN’T INTERESTED IN THE FLORA & FAUNA, they want the Likes on Facebook.)

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO SAVE OUR FRONTIERS?

Though the environmental laws of the ‘60s and ‘70s protected public lands and endangered species, now both political parties have allowed loggers, drillers, ranchers to degrade millions of acres of forest, grassland and mountains at the expense of future generations.

A NEW FRONTIER IS NEEDED

Reading Ketchum’s book might be a good way to start, to think about what each of us can do to protect our lands, prevent global warming, move away from coal and advance solar etc. Another thought: in each stage of life, we often find ourselves standing on some hill or in our backyard and staring at the sky, or the ocean, or an open field. Our minds and souls go to what is clean and untouched. And in today’s society, each and everyone of us needs to pledge that in some small way we will be keepers of our frontiers.
Another idea: make the new FRONTIER, one of HELPING ONE ANOTHER.

For Family Photos of our National Parks go here.

PHOTO: The Photographers Guide to the Grand Canyon

 

Be Transported: Read a Book

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Does “summer” make you think of reading, of lazy days, of afternoons on some porch?
We’re surely at summer’s midpoint, all varieties of flowers nodding to the heat even earlier in the day; tree frogs and crickets sounding as the sun slips down the sky and cars cruising streets in an endless buzz. At the grocery, the choice of fruits is endless, while a trip to the mall might find it deserted. Along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu or any parking area near a pool or a lake, there’s no space available. And in the evening, the cool of the grass welcomes hot, tired feet.
READING AND SUMMER

Susan Straight, author of IN THE COUNTRY OF WOMEN, recently wrote about summer…wrote about her childhood and summer reading, about hurrying to finish her chores so that she could read in the branches of a fruitless mulberry tree.

Straight is writing her MEMOIR, so she mentions some of the books she read in that tree: LITTLE WOMEN, SULA, JULIE OF THE WOLVES, books that were not about the beach—as her life in California provided plenty of beach experience. These books OPENED HER EYES TO OTHER LIVES.

She writes: My summer novels gave me places far from the sea, where girls and women were fighting to stay alive, stay free and stay themselves. For people like so many of us …novels are escapes of a different kind, whatever our age.

Books take us to different waters — rivers unlike the Santa Ana and Los Angeles, (rivers that have frozen; snowfields.) For all the kids like me, and the adults we turned into, summer reading meant transport to places we could never go.

READING OFTEN TEACHES WHAT PARENTS FAIL TO TEACH

Reading opened Straight’s eyes to things she did not know, like in Julie of the Wolves, when Straight learned that Julie, married to a teenage boy who is mentally challenged, has to deal one fateful day with his attempt to force her to consummate their marriage–rape.

I was stunned…Julie (her Inuit name Miyax) was a girl, like us. My friends and I had already endured casual attacks by older boys, but to read about it meant I felt less alone. This had happened to another girl — a smart, fierce girl like Julie who fled, with needles and knives, with her father’s lessons in her heart. Her odyssey in late summer, sleeping in frost heaves, learning to approach the wolves on four legs, eating meat they bring her, changed my thinking about what a girl could be.

We all have those moments, when the earth trembles and in a nano-second life changes:

a friend argues and walks out of your life;
another reveals her parents’ are divorcing;
another weeps because she has just learned she is adopted;
another’s brother has run away.

Some of those moments are quieter: my friend Jeanie falls out of my mulberry tree and doesn’t break anything. Then another time she awakens with pain during a sleep-over—appendicitis. AT MY HOUSE! She didn’t die, though like Susan Straight and I both knew through reading–young girls could die (Beth in LITTLE WOMEN) or could be physically and emotionally harmed—SULA.

ASSIGNED READING

In addition to wandering the creaking wooden floors of libraries, Straight and all of us have been assigned books—in high school, in college.

In her early twenties, Straight’s professor handed her: THE COMPLETE STORIES OF FLANNERY O’CONNOR—saying that Straight would respond to O’Connor whose “dark vision were perfect for a writer working on stories of place.” 

Straight recalls: In O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back,” Obadiah Elihue Parker falls in love with a hard girl, with “ice-pick eyes.” Sarah Ruth carries his baby but won’t love him back because of his sin. His body already covered with tattoos, he spends two days and all his money to have Christ inked large on his back. Sarah Ruth calls the tattoo “more trash on yourself.” “Don’t you know who it is?” he cried in anguish. She responds, “It ain’t anybody I know.” “It’s him,” Parker said. “Him who?” “God!” Parker cried. “God? God don’t look like that!”

Thus O’Connor’s amazing dialogue flowed through Straight’s brain when she was in Virginia, listening to the stories of her relatives, stories about Mississippi and Oklahoma. She heard and saw how the melody of the language, the vocabulary of place colored their stories. This was fuel for Straight’s writing fire! Now she is  about to complete her memoir: 

I spent five years writing about the women in my family who saved their own children and the children of others, who moved across the nation to make our community in Southern California as singular and specific as Medallion, Sula’s home in that novel of the same name.

LOOKING BACK, REMEMBERING, MY MEMOIR  

Written some years ago and undergoing rewriting, my memoir is also about place. Like Straight, who remembers the laughter of women who have known each other since childhood: “in that mercury mood in July,” the physical surroundings of HOME are always front and center for me.

The swing on the cherry tree is mine and now I spend most of my time on the swing. It is a place of solace, one I refuse to share with anyone, yelling, screaming when a little friend, Tigh, sits on it. My swing. Mine. From my father’s death in June to the cold autumn weather, I swing, back and forth, back and forth, my little body taut with an energy I cannot expend normally, my mind full of ideas I cannot articulate except to sing a song my father taught me over and over “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily merrily, life is but a dream.”

I’m the swing and the swing is me—and we work our way up the dimensions of the yard day by day. The first few seconds my feet, my toes inside my shoes, can stretch to the patchy grass by the apple tree, then to the gravel car turnaround under that tree, and finally, when I’m really going, my toes touch the high branches of the apple tree and the roof of our house. I fly and ride and then I’m singing: songs that I know, songs that I’ve learned rocking myself to sleep in my bed at night or listening to the heavy old black record player that for years sits on the floor between the living and dining rooms, or songs from the musical comedies that our family loves—“Oh what a beautiful morning” and “I’m just a girl who can’t say no” (though I have no idea what the words mean) and popular songs like, “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s amore.” Most often I’m alone, clouds moving along the border of my sky, as if I’m seeing the very earth spinning on its axis.

PHOTO CREDIT, LA TIMES