Better Living in Scrubs

There was a time when I got out of bed looking very much like I did when I went to sleep. As I grow older, gravity seems less kind, or perhaps I no longer have the ability to withstand its pull, because these days, my morning face looks like someone distinctly older than the woman I remember seeing in that same mirror the night before.

To my rescue comes an article with some tips for waking up younger. Well, looking younger anyway. Did you know that sleeping on one side too often can actually increase wrinkles? I had no idea that my sleeping position could affect such things. There’s a good information here to help you wake up to a face you’ll recognize.

The article is from an online magazine called Scrubs. It’s a great resource for nurses that addresses professional concerns without forgetting that they have personal lives too. Helpful articles on looking and feeling great in every circumstance including a medical environment make this an interesting read even for non-nurses.

While it’s true that nurses generally can’t go to a nail spa and get those long, artificial nails, they still want nails that are well cared for and feminine. I found a great article on nail care that explains how to keep nails healthy and beautiful for anyone in a profession where neat and short nails are required. They even mention my favorite secret for younger-looking hands - an exfoliating scrub to remove all that dead skin. It will make your hands oh-so-soft in combination with a good moisturizer.

I really liked the variety of topics covered and the whole presentation of a nurse as a whole person, who may be interested in both the latest summer fashion trends in scrubs and those for the beach. You know what? You can look fashionable in scrubs!

Menopause Temporarily Puts Brains on Hold

There was a time when I didn’t believe that your brain got slower as you got older.  After all, isn’t it said that with age comes wisdom?  But lately I have been wondering if my brain wasn’t just at the top of a steep, downhill, intellectual slope.  Descending slowly now, but picking up speed as time goes on.

I have days when I feel empowered to be prolific.  All the gears in the brain are spinning and ideas and words just flow right down my fingers and onto the keyboard.  These days seem pretty scarce lately, though.  There are more days when I can’t seem to find a simple word to start the beginning of a sentence - words like “the” and ummm… what’s that other one?

Researchers say that many women entering those menopausal years report that their brains don’t work as well as they used to.  Being researchers, they decided to research that contention and guess what?  Studies indicate that our brains do suffer memory lapses in all stages of menopause, even perimenopause.  The cause for all this?  You guessed it - hormonal changes.

Great.  So this means that eating better, getting more sleep, taking more exercise and lots of fresh air is all completely useless.  Oh well, I wasn’t going to do any of those anyway.

But wait, don’t panic.  Those moments of cognitive failure are completely normal. The good news is that all of this loss of brain power is only temporary.  Once menopause is over, women’s brains return to normal and start to work again.

It’s hardly a surprise, women know all too well that their hormones mess with them and yet we all manage to overcome, achieve and succeed.

So when you forget where you parked the car, don’t remember your children’s names and put the milk in the oven instead of the refrigerator, take heart.  You will overcome.

Mother Nature just picks on us because she knows we can take it.

The study is published in the journal Neurology .

Beautiful and Functional Home Office Furniture

I spend a good portion of my day sitting here in front of this screen. The other portion of the day is spent changing position due to the inadequacies of my seating arrangements. I think that if I am going to sit here, I should at least be comfortable. Pictured below is my secret plan to achieve this goal.

Doesn’t that look like the most comfortable chair you have ever seen? It’s from Spacify.com. This chair is not just functional, it’s also a very attractive piece of furniture. The high back with it’s contoured cushions just beckons to me.If you spend the day in your home office, you know that the Home Office Furniture you choose should be both beautiful and functional. With a chair like this, you can have both.

Mirror, Mirror

  I read an article today that said that both women and men who feel pressure to meet certain standards of appearance are also more likely to fear rejection because of their appearance.  Not surprisingly, women are more often to suffer from fear of rejection due to appearance as men.   I could have told you that without conducting any research.

The women in the study were all aged 18 - 33 years old.  I will agree that this is a prime time of life to worry about appearance.  However, I feel that by leaving out the next age demographic of women, that is middle-aged women, they cheated themselves of a whole lot of appearance issues.

The bodies of middle-aged mothers, for instance, have not only suffered through pregnancy but the subsequent years of stress involved in raising children.  Fatigue, sagging skin, wrinkles, little wires of grey that suddenly go sproing in the middle of your smoothly coiffed hair - all of which greatly diminish a woman’s ability to feel she is still attractive.

The study also found that women who accept media-based standards of attractiveness were more likely to feel inadequate.  Again, this is a surprise?

I think the key to all of this is simple.  Stop watching television.  Don’t read the tabloids where different celebrities are being touted for having such great bikini bodies one week and humiliated the next for having cellulite on their thighs.  Get rid of any mirror that you might accidentally catch a glimpse of yourself in before you’ve had a chance to wake up, drink your coffee and apply your makeup.

Most importantly, when you do put on that makeup, fix your hair and don that nice new outfit, compare yourself to women who were middle-aged when you were young.  I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I look as old as those middle-aged womenI knew when I was young.

Electric Cigarette Gives Smokers a New Choice

Now, here’s a nifty idea whose time may have come, the electric cigarette. The electric cigarette is really just a nicotine delivery system, but unlike a patch or a gum, it gives smokers the experiences they are used to with regular cigarettes because it’s shaped like a real cigarette. The great advantage? There’s no smoke.

Smoking is one habit that many want to give up and can’t, but worse, smokers find that increasingly they are becoming outcasts, legislated against and over-taxed. There are fewer and fewer places where you can light up because of the fear of second-hand smoke. That’s no problem here, all you get is a transparent and odorless vapor.

One cartridge equals 20 cigarettes, so after the initial investment it’s likely to save the smoker some money as well as not having to worry about the toxins that are in real smoke. These could become very popular with people who find it too hard to quit.

Take the Money and Run?

A couple in New Zealand were made accidental millionaires by a bank error that transferred $6.1 million into their bank account. Their new wealth apparently appealed to them, because they took the money and ran.

The couple managed to transfer about $4 million of the mistakenly deposited funds, but the bank was able to recover $1.7 million.

But what of the emotional upheaval for the bank customer who instead of having an overdraft, suddenly has millions of dollars in the bank?  What of all the dreams, schemes and plans that automatically come to mind?  Shouldn’t the bank have to give them some kind of compensation to make up for the emotional distress of being dragged from rags to riches and back to rags?

I don’t have what it takes to brazenly grab the money and go on the lam, but I can imagine it’s tempting.  Unfortunately for them, the bank and the law are bound to catch up to them, and well, it’s better to be the slightly poor owners of a gas station than even the most popular inmate of your local prison.

Finding Bridal and Bridesmaid Dresses

If you are helping a daughter, niece or granddaughter plan her wedding, it’s probably brought back a lot of memories and along with the beautiful reminiscences of your own special day, you may also be remembering the stress and frenzy of getting it all done in time.

One way you can help out that bride in distress is helping her find the right place to go for that perfect bridal dress, the bridesmaid dresses, and even a sweet dress for that adorable little flower girl. At bestbridalprices.com, she won’t have to choose between quality and price. They have top designers and gowns in every style and color. Whether the bride is planning a traditional wedding or something on a modern theme, she can coordinate it all. And she will be forever grateful for the great tip.

Gastric Mind Banding

I was reading an article today on weight loss through hypnotherapy, more specifically, the “gastric mind band”.  Basically, this hypnotherapist convinces people through hypnotic suggestion that they have had gastric bypass surgery and that they can’t possibly eat large amounts of food, because the band has made their stomachs so much smaller.

What I found interesting was that these people sign up for (and pay for, I imagine) several sessions in which they are hypnotized into having memories of the hospital admission, the operating room and recovery.  But since the patient knows that they paid for these memories, isn’t it possible that they could ignore them, since they know they aren’t real?

I am not one for hypnosis, and don’t want to try it myself.  So, I was wondering.  What if people just thought they were getting the surgery?  For instance, what if they went into the hospital, were examined by the surgeon, taken to an operating room, given a sedative so they would think they were anesthetized and then told when they woke up that they had a gastric band.  They still save on anesthesia and surgery and the patient never questions their memories, they don’t know they didn’t have the surgery.

It may not work.  Someone would have to sign them up for this faux-surgery.  They may eat more than the doctor tells them they can anyway, and when nothing bad happens (except the numbers on the scale creeping ever higher) they may just go on eating large amounts of food.

It would work for me.  If I thought that eating something was going to blow up my insides, I would probably find the willpower to avoid it.

Truthfully, I could never have hypnosis due to fear that the hypnotist would give me some other suggestion as a joke and that when the telephone rings I would cluck like a chicken or something.

Dieting has so many pitfalls.

Radio Disney Concert Series Heats Up this Summer in New Jersey

School will be out soon for summer and it’s time to plan that perfect family vacation. What could get the kids more excited than to be at the Radio Disney Concert Series at one of the most beloved New Jersey amusement parks. Featuring Radio Disney’s up and coming stars, the weekly concerts will thrill the kids while you enjoy a relaxing Jersey Shore beach vacation.

Now’s the time to start making reservations at one of the fine Wildwood New Jersey hotels and plan your trip. The excitement of an amusement park with rides and a waterpark and entertainment from the stars of Radio Disney will round out your summer vacation along the beautiful New Jersey shore.

Women With Chest Pain May Not Get Proper Care

Aspirin and nitroglycerin - treatments that are important as early intervention in heart attacks - are given less often to women suffering chest pain than to men with chest pain.

Research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that women may not receive optimal care and gender disparities in diagnosis and treatment of chest pain and cardiac conditions in both inpatient and outpatient settings.

The results are sobering in light of the fact that women are more likely to when suffering a heart attack than are men.

According to Zachary Mesiel, MD, this may be due in part to the fact that women often present with atypical symptoms when having a heart attack.

“I suspect some of the treatment differences between men and women may be related to differences is the way the chest pain symptoms are interpreted, both by the providers and by the patients themselves. So if you are a patient, it’s important to be direct and clear about your symptoms to all your medical providers — even if it feels like you are telling the same story over and over again.”

Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine