The Association of American Medical Colleges projects that the nation will face a shortage of 12,000 to 31,000 primary-care physicians by 2025. So it's no wonder you may be finding it harder to find a doctor or to schedule an appointment with the one you have. What's fueling this problem? The baby boom generation pouring into older age, an aging physician workforce preparing to retire and an estimated 30 million Americans joining the ranks of the insured since enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. What that means is that you may not be seeing a doctor at all the next time you go for health { Read More }
Why We All Need to Strength Train (and a giveaway, too!)
Having celebrated a big birthday recently has made me more sentimental about aging than normal. But with sentimentality comes complaints. Granted, they're not in a a "woe-is-me" kind of way- but with a bit more humor and irony attached to them. Humor? My feeling is that if we don't laugh about creaky joints, gray hair, diminishing eyesight, hearing and skin tone, then all that bitching becomes whiny. And who wants to listen to a whiner, anyway, especially an aging whiner? Irony? To be deliberately contrary sure helps make things funny, don't you think? Anyhow, what I'm getting at is this so-called { Read More }
Shouldn’t We Be HEALTHIER Than Our Parents Were??
I like to think that every generation learns from the prior generation and steps things up when it's their turn. This one thing is for sure: I always thought that we knew more about being healthy than our parents did. C'mon, look at us! We're the gym-goers, healthy eaters, obsessed with our input as well as our output. We're the healthy generation, the enlightened ones who know a thing or two about whole grains, too much salt, too little sleep. Aren't we? Now, take our parents. Did they know the difference between a crunch and a lunge? I'll bet they never knew that regular exercise can keep your { Read More }
On Not Being Somebody’s Child
I've managed to live this long - 58 years - still being someone else's child. I may be an adult child...but nonetheless, there's something strangely comforting about being in your 50s and still having a mother and a father. And although I may be fooling myself, being someone else's child makes me feel less like an adult in this so-called midlife, and more like a (somewhat) young thing. For that, I count myself among the lucky ones. So many people I know have suffered the loss of a parent when they were in dire need of parenting themselves - as young children, as teenagers, as young adults. It { Read More }
Midlife Minute: Being Fit Matters NOW
Do you have aging parents? I do, and to watch them suffer with various ailments is so heartbreaking. Living to an old age, while a blessing, is in many ways so very difficult - especially if you're plagued with ongoing health problems. That's one thing to keep in mind if you need some motivation to exercise. A new study finds that people with higher fitness levels: Live a little longer Have a later onset of chronic disease Can reduce their risk of several chronic conditions like Alzheimer's disease, kidney disease, COPD, angina, circulatory problems, stroke and lung and colon cancer. It's not { Read More }