Friday, December 21, 2018

It Is A Wonderful Life!

"It Is A Wonderful Life" A classic movie about how all of our lives hold meaning and we are all here for a reason- and can makes a difference in the world. That sentiment is exactly what US-REP elect Dan Crenshaw said to comedian Pete Davidson this week after his suicidal thoughts were shared over Instagram. 
I know that my life has meaning and I am here for a reason and I make a big difference in many people lives. Fortunately, especially with my chosen profession of geriatric social work, I touch people lives for the better on an almost daily basis. I would even venture to say that my presence on this earth has helped hundreds of people and possibly thousands. I am here with a purpose tenfold. 
I recognize all the really small things that I do that influence the well being of others. I teach someone how to breathe in the Lord's love for them as a reminder that their breath is a way to create calm in the body when they feel off balance and need to restore themselves to sanity. Or I supply some simple language that someone uses to take care of themselves so no one does them any harm including his or herself. Maybe I connected someone with a great surgeon for a 2nd opinion and they will correct a painful problem when others failed to give them hope. Maybe I got someone to a care community by supporting their family to do the right thing even when it felt too hard to do. Maybe I urged someone to complete a required document like a durable power of attorney so their loved ones could help take care of them during a health care crisis. Since my recovery, I know that I insisted that someone suffering from depression get treatment and supported them through their process,  I know one of my presentations touched many people in getting them to open their minds and hearts and look after themselves better. Something as simple as a hug could have made a difference to another person I knew. I change people's lives for the better all the time. Some people even view me as an inspirational person. 
When I was sick over 10 years ago, my problem was not my attitude or not feeling appreciated in my life. My problem was that I worried myself sick. And no one warned me that it was dangerous to worry. But I broke my body. My body could no longer function normally. I had trouble sleeping. I could not concentrate and focus. I was not able to make simple decisions such as what to put in my shopping cart at the grocery store. My body became immobile and I did not know I could get well again. I even could not eat or bare to be touched. Moving was like pushing myself around in a concrete dress. 
So we know that there are many kinds of depression. Some are triggered by life events associated with failure, shame and hopelessness. Others are more of a low grade feeling of melancholy and there are a dozen more types that we know about. The point to all of this is that people become interested in ending their life for many different reasons and No One Should ASSUME that it is a lack of purpose that is always the driving force to push someone over the edge. Maybe that is often the case in the movies, but life is not the movies. Life is much more complex and full of subtleties that come together to create a storm of hopelessness and panic.
I got well and I am happy to be here because I came back to myself 100 %. When I was sick, I slowly disappeared. Eventually I was in agony and no one could give me hope. For that matter, doctors hardly knew how to help me. Our entire medical community is still at a loss when it comes to diseases of the brain. That goes for all of them. Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, Autism, Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, Stroke, Addiction, Dementia, Cerebral Palsy, Bi-Polar, Migraine, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These are diseases that live in the BRAIN.  It is not a character flaw, a poor attitude or lack of purpose.  
Neuroscience must become as valuable to be studied as is Cancer. Let's stop judging people who get diseases of the brain. There is no mind. All these diseases live in our brain.  Would we judge someone for having arthritis, diabetes, kidney failure, or hypertension.? Of course not! 


Sunday, November 18, 2018

Take A Drunk Girl Home

Hello everyone out there- It has been a very long time since I wrote but I am finding myself in the need of deep expression if I am going to make progress in becoming the healthiest version of myself.

I am working my way back into a good mindset to continue my lifetime battle with food and eating. Last year I started Optavia program right after Thanksgiving and managed to loose 35 lbs  and held it off until mid summer- It is a low carb program and I went off to eat peaches and blueberries ( ot that is at least what I told myself) and soon everything was back in my daily eating

I have not weighed myself but I can tell from my clothes that I likely put back on 20 if the 35 lbs.

I am so sad to have to constantly monitor what i am eating, why i am eating etc... - It is all tied up with my attractiveness and feeling valued as a person not just a sexual being that often gets in my way. I want to live along healthy life and feel safe around men at the same time. and right now many men are on my sh-t list. The events of the last few years (including electing a man who says       “Grab ’em by the pussy.”) has tapped into early wounds of being lied to and pressured to be sexual when I was not willing or wanting the same thing that the guy did. And it has been a fairly continuos revealing of how common that attitude is among many people including women who excuse it as "boys being boys". I believe those women don't even know that they have been manipulated to believe that women are asking for "it" if they behave a certain way, after-all, it is only what every man wants.
The sad part is that sexual expression, when both parties are willing, is a magnificent gift from our creator. I heard a fairly new country song on the radio today called "Drunk girl" by Chris Janson.  It made me cry.  It is about being safe from sexual assault when a girl has had too much to drink,ot even too broken hearted, too high - too anything to choose freely....... And how a boy is really a true man by taking a drunk girl home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9-u0TdS9AY







Sunday, March 11, 2018

I am PROUD to live in CAMDEN County New Jersey !

I am having a very unproductive Sunday so far and I am glad. I arrived home yesterday just exhausted after attending a wonderful inspiring "Hotspotting event" at Jefferson University Medical College for education of healthcare students-(physicians, pharmacy, advance nursing, physician assistants, occupational/physical therapist etc..) Hotspotting allows a inter-professional healthcare team to focus on patients with complex medical concerns that are high utilizers of care. This type of approach to patient care was developed locally, in Camden New Jersey by Dr. Jeffery Brenner.  (read more below) 

At Rowan School of Osteopathic Medicine, we are offering this learning opportunity to our advanced students and I am one of the faculty members that volunteered to participate as an advisor. This meant that I identified an appropriate patient(s) for the students to work with, facilitated their first meeting, provided ongoing coordination including a home visit and follow up with them. We are now preparing for termination.  This has been a very rewarding experience for me and yesterday I learned that we were more successful then some of the other teams from the area.  Some of the schools involved were Jefferson, Geisinger, University of Penn, and John Hopkins. 

I am recognizing that I want to be a life long learner. Although I am closing in on retiring ( 4 more years) I want to stay involved with healthcare education somehow.  There were so many other educational programs advertised around the building that I was thinking of "crashing"some of them. I could become that old lady, sitting up front, in a corner, listening to lectures at a medical school. I love researching and learning medical developments. It was so refreshing to see that they are no longer training providers to only see disease but to see the whole person.
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Have you heard of ‘hot spotting’? It’s a really promising strategy that can help people with the most complex healthcare needs get the help they need, while dramatically lowering healthcare costs.
Developed organically out of Camden, NJ — one of the nation’s poorest cities — by physician Jeremy Brenner, hot spotting uses data to identify small groups of people who account for the most healthcare dollars.
Brenner and his team used hospital data to map ‘hot spots’ of healthcare high-utilizers. He found, for example, that one patient went to the hospital 113 times in a single year, and residents in just two Camden apartment buildings represented some of the city’s highest utilizers, accounting for $30 million in medical spending. Hotspotting
Hotspotting uses data to discover the outliers, understand the problem, dedicate resources, and design effective interventions. It is a movement for a new system of multi-disciplinary, coordinated care that treats the whole patient and attends to the non-medical needs that affect health: housing, mental health, substance abuse, emotional support.
Dr. Jeffrey Brenner is a local physician who some believe might have the model to solve one of America’s most intractable problems: lowering the cost of health care. While analyzing medical billing data in Camden, N.J., he mapped out “hot spots” of the impoverished city’s high-cost patients. By targeting unique care — including home visits and social workers — at the city’s most costly patients, he developed a program that he argues has both lowered health care costs and provided better care in Camden. His organization, the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, and other similar models were the subject of a January 2011 feature in The New Yorker by journalist and physician Dr. Atul Gawande. Since then, Dr. Brenner’s medical strategy has garnered considerable attention — praised by some as a promising model worthy of more intense study and charged by others as a dangerous expansion of the health care system.But as Brenner tells FRONTLINE correspondent Gawande, “Better care for people is disruptive change.” 
Healthcare hotspotting is the strategic use of data to reallocate resources to a small subset of high-needs, high-cost patients.
A small number of individuals drives much of the cost in the American health care system. The system is designed to work for the average patient, and like many large systems, it struggles to help extreme patients, or outliers – the small number of patients with complex, hard-to-manage needs and chronic conditions. These outliers are known as super-utilizers. Over time, their chronic conditions worsen, leading to ever more expensive, invasive and risky treatment. Super-utilizers are the patients our standard systems have failed.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

I Am My Own Champion

It has been an exciting, busy and tiring week.  Without the 20 pound weight loss I have done since Thanskgiving, I do not know if I would have ventured out into the crowd and challenged the steps on the speedline to attend the Eagles Super Bowl Victory parade.

As most of you know- I have turned a corner with a weight loss program. The readings I have been doing, the programs I have tired, and the consistent attendance at hot yoga, all lead me to where I am today- I had to  face the truth that was so hard to face. Food had become my crutch and comfort and I was too afraid to let it go completely. I had depended on it for such a long time for my needs to be met, I was not sure if I could manage without it. My current program has allowed me to find my way out of the bind. An unhealthy part of me is dying and the healthier part of me is growing-  The unhealthy part of me has with been with me since childhood. Kind of like my own version of "old faithful".   Although it no longer serves me, I was terrified of living without it. Without parents I could depend on for comfort and soothing, food became my substitute. Particularly sugary foods but mostly high carbohydrate foods, like hoagies, chips, pretzels, breads, waffles, biscuits.... you get the idea I am sure.

This has been a very long process. I have been wanting to be normal body size again for several years now. I even went to outpatient therapy at Renfrew for eating disorders but they were not helpful because they only focused on behavior modification, not emotional reasons for destructive connections with food. I could not be mean to myself like I had in the past and starve by counting calories, keeping between 1100 and 1200. I tried a shake program like Isagenix but it did not fit into my lifestyle with so much drinking rather than eating food. I needed to be able to eat in the car as I go from one job in Stratford to another in Cherry Hill about 3 times a week.  OPTAVIA never allows me to get hungry as I eat 5 - 6 times a day (every 2-3 hours) and one lean and green large meal a day. There is an incredible amount of variety in food selections and many are great tasting bars that I can easily carry with me. During the day at the parade, I ate 3 times which they call fuelings.

The one consistent piece of my experience over the last 4 or 5 years has been Voorhees Hot Yoga. It took me to a place I never expected nor could have imagined. I had spent much of my early life totally disconnected so I barely had feelings or self awareness. As I started to heal from my early trauma, I came back into myself but still felt challenged by my body. I often resented it because it had desires that took me to dangerous places one way or another.  In hot yoga I discovered what my body could and could not do. I learned how to accept it where it was and not compare or compete with others. I saw it's willingness to improve slowly over time if I was willing to be kind and patient with it. I came to believe that we could  be friends, my body and I; and I began to listen and honor what I heard.  For the first time, I was in a meaningful and loving relationship with my body and I started to feel at home like I had not ever felt before. I had discovered that the Lord loved me back before I was married to Phil, Through his addiction, I found my way to 12 step programs that provided me with a way to turn my life around after believing in a higher power. I knew that I had abused the Lord's gift of good health and was indifferent at best at caring for my body.

You see, in the type of yoga I practice (Bikram), it is the same 26 poses each and every time I attend class no matter who the teacher is. With that kind of repetition, I was watching and experiencing my body change right before my eyes. If for some chance I would miss an improvement, one of the teachers would usually point it out to me. I interpreted that to mean that my body wanted to be healthier, stronger, and more flexible and I could chose to cooperate with it now- we could become best buds! I decided to let myself fall in love with my body. Through that experience, I developed the courage to keep trying to lose weight rather than to give up.  I was determined to get out of my own way one way or another.  I knew my body and I were finally on the same team.  Bikram Hot Yoga gave me the one thing I was lacking for the last several years, and that was HOPE. Not all was lost.  All around me at class are others, healing from sport injures, accidents, surgeries etc....

I learned that it is not too late to have my health. And I am a much harder worker than I once believed myself to be. I will do whatever I need to to give myself the life I am worthy of having. I will read, pray, learn, attend, call, travel, reach out, sign up, spend money, get up early, go when tired, slip away and push forward again........ Hey, maybe that is why I like the EAGLES so much. I am just like them. 2018 is going to be MY year too. I am winning my own Super Bowl. I am my own Champion.

Sunday, January 28, 2018

I Really Want To Live A Long Time

As I approach the end of January 2018, I am experiencing a flood of so many emotions- A professional acquaintance, younger than myself, recently passed away in her sleep after being seen by the medical profession for flu like symptoms. Her memorial service is tomorrow. My contemporaries surround me with physical aliments and threats to their livelihood and well-being. Often, I am confronted with the vulnerability we all live with and how random the success-failure outcome is. 

Lately, I realize how much I want to live. It is hard for me even to imagine myself ever wanting to die and yet I know for certain that was once my strongest intention. How sick I must have been to even consider such an action. It has been over 10 years now since my serious bout with depression.     I found a way to embrace new dreams and discover wonderful adventures to excite me as I approach retirement. Very few things that I once thought mattered is really that important anymore.  Although I want a condo in Ventnor City, and a Lincoln Navigator to pull a small travel trailer, I also know without any of that, I am fortunate because my relationships are a priority for me. I tell my loved ones how much they mean to me until I make them nausea. I say "Thank You" and "You Are Welcomed" routinely. I offer to help other every chance I can. I am accountable and will easily apologize if I have been inconsiderate or disappointed someone. And I forgive. I forgive myself, which makes it easy to forgive others because being a human being is hard work and hurts from time to time. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. If I could use one word that I want to be said about me it would be KIND. 

Below you can read about the studies about predictors of longevity and see the difference between kind and nice. And trust me- I ain't so nice much of the time anymore. 

The Difference Between Being Nice and Being Kind
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You've heard the phrase, "So-and-so is a really nice person," and probably thought nothing of it. In my work, though, I think a lot about what it means to be "really nice" as I see a major distinction between being nice and being genuinely kind.   The way I understand it, kindness emerges from someone who's confident, compassionate and comfortable with themselves. A kind person is loving and giving out of the goodness of their heart.   At the root of extreme niceness, however, are feelings of inadequacy and the need to get approval and validation from others. Overly-nice people try to please so that they can feel good about themselves. Genuinely kind people are giving because it's in their nature to care, and since they have no ulterior motives, they aren't concerned with whether or not other people like them. Genuinely kind people are giving because it's in their nature to care, and since they have no ulterior motives, they aren't concerned with whether or not other people like t Kind people can be assertive and set good limits. Nice people, on the other hand, bend over backward to be obliging. They deal with potential conflicts by placating the other person because they can't bear to have anyone upset with them. Kind people have good self-esteem and because they love themselves as much as they care about others, they expect to be treated with respect. Nice people are desperate for approval, so they're often mistreated or taken advantage of. Nice people tend to do too much for those who don't deserve it and are easy prey for users. They get into co-dependent relationships in which they care-take others in the hopes of eventually being cared for themselves. This co-dependent interaction, however, is a lose-lose for everyone involved. The nice person fails to get the love and approval they seek, and the person on the receiving end never feels like they're getting enough care. Instead of being grateful, they become resentful toward the pleaser. Kind people take responsibility for their own self-care. They're generous, even altruistic, but don't get caught up in a user-pleaser type of relationship.  The nice person is careful not to offend anyone and wouldn't dream of expressing a "negative" emotion. They focus on being good to others, to the detriment of their own needs. In fact, they're afraid to ask for what they want for fear of creating conflict.  Nice people stuff down their feelings, not wanting to be a bother to anyone, but the problem with this is that emotions can't be kept down indefinitely. Feelings and needs are meant to be expressed and when they're repressed, they find another outlet.
Being nice, then, has unforeseen consequences: it's painful to seek affirmation but receive contempt. Always holding back needs, feelings and opinions adds to their frustration.  Ultimately, the frustration grows into anger, but showing this anger is unacceptable to someone so invested in always being pleasant. They're compelled to suppress any "bad" feelings.
As the nice person continues to please everyone and the anger simmers underneath the surface, the pressure builds up. At some point emotions begin to leak, in the form of snarky comments, whining, needling, sarcasm, passive-aggressive behavior or even outbursts of rage.  When a nice person leaks resentment it's usually met with surprise or with more anger, which reinforces their belief that anger should never be expressed.
A vicious circle is created in which the nice person pleases others, becomes resentful, represses and then leaks their anger and then represses their feelings some more. As a result, I believe they'll often get caught up in addictive behaviors which are meant to compensate for their mounting frustration.  I have found that nice people will often turn to starchy, fatty or sugary "comfort foods" to help them to stuff down their anger and soothe their hurt feelings. They'll sometimes abuse alcohol or turn to tranquillizers to anaesthetize their pain. Some will go on spending sprees, trying to buy themselves happiness.  The nice person is overly-invested in the emotional pay-off they're hoping to achieve by pleasing and taking care of others. They're also unwilling to face how much hurt or anger they're carrying. They're resistant to changing their behavior, despite the consequences of their compensatory addictions.
Kind people are happy people to begin with, and add to their happiness through acts of generosity and altruism. Nice people are needy people who inadvertently create more and more unhappiness for themselves.  The nice person has to understand that their self-worth can never be improved by being a pleaser. They must learn how to validate themselves independently of others, and let go of the co-dependent relationships which foster mutual animosity.  When the overly-nice person can let go of the urge to please, they'll be able to identify their real needs and feelings and begin to take proper care of themselves. They can find happiness in pursuing meaningful activities and relationships instead of giving too much, becoming resentful and developing nasty addictions along the way.

What if there was a study dedicated to unearthing the secrets to a happy and purpose.
We may not be able to live forever, but we can live well.
What if there was a study dedicated to unearthing the secrets to a happy and purposeful life?  
It would have to be conducted over the course of many decades, following the lives of real people from childhood until old age, in order to see how they changed and what they learned. And it would probably be too ambitious for anyone to actually undertake.  Only, a group of Harvard researchers did undertake it, producing a comprehensive, flesh-and-blood picture of some of life’s fundamental questions: how we grow and change, what we value as time goes on, and what is likely to make us happy and fulfilled.
The study, known as the Harvard Grant Study, has some limitations — it didn’t include women, for starters. Still, it provides an unrivaled glimpse into a subset of humanity, following 268 male Harvard undergraduates from the classes of 1938-1940 (now well into their 90s) for 75 years, collecting data on various aspects of their lives at regular intervals. And the conclusions are universal.  We spoke to George Vaillant, the Harvard psychiatrist who directed the study from 1972 to 2004 and wrote a book about it, in order to revisit the study’s findings. Below, five lessons from the Grant Study to apply to your own pursuit of a happier and more meaningful life.
Love Is Really All That Matters       
  It may seem obvious, but that doesn’t make it any less true: Love is key to a happy and fulfilling life. As Vaillant puts it, there are two pillars of happiness. “One is love,” he writes. “The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”
Vaillant has said that the study’s most important finding is that the only thing that matters in life is relationships. A man could have a successful career, money and good physical health, but without supportive, loving relationships, he wouldn’t be happy (“Happiness is only the cart; love is the horse.”).
It’s About More than Money and Power
The Grant Study’s findings echoed those of other studies — that acquiring more money and power doesn’t correlate to greater happiness. That’s not to say money or traditional career successes don’t matter. But they’re small parts of a much larger picture — and while they may loom large for us in the moment; they diminish in importance when viewed in the context of a full life.
“We found that contentment in the late 70s was not even suggestively associated with parental social class or even the man’s own income,” says Vaillant. “In terms of achievement, the only thing that matters is that you be content at your work.”
Regardless of How We Begin Life, We Can All Become Happier
A man named Godfrey Minot Camille went into the Grant study with fairly bleak prospects for life satisfaction: He had the lowest rating for future stability of all the subjects and he had previously attempted suicide. But at the end of his life, he was one of the happiest. Why? As Vaillant explains, “He spent his life searching for love.”
Connection Is Crucial
“Joy is connection,” Vaillant says. “The more areas in your life you can make connection, the better.”
The study found strong relationships to be far and away the strongest predictor of life satisfaction. And in terms of career satisfaction, too, feeling connected to one’s work was far more important than making money or achieving traditional success.
“The conclusion of the study, not in a medical but in a psychological sense, is that connection is the whole shooting match,” says Vaillant.
As life goes on, connections become even more important. The Grant Study provides strong support for the growing body of research that has linked social ties with longevitylower stress levels and improved overall well-being.
Challenges –- and the Perspective They Give You — Can Make You Happier
The journey from immaturity to maturity, says Vaillant, is a sort of movement from narcissism to connection, and a big part of this shift has to do with the way we deal with challenges.
Coping mechanisms — “the capacity to make gold out of shit,” as Vaillant puts it — have a significant effect on social support and overall well-being. The secret is replacing narcissism, a single-minded focus on one’s own emotional oscillations and perceived problems, with mature coping defenses, Vaillant explains, citing Mother Teresa and Beethoven as examples.
“Mother Teresa had a perfectly terrible childhood, and her inner spiritual life was very painful,” says Vaillant. “But she had a highly successful life by caring about other people.
Creative expression is another way to productively deal with challenges and achieve meaning and well-being.
“The secret of Beethoven being able to cope with misery through his art was when he wrote ‘Ode to Joy,’” says Vaillant. “Beethoven was able to make connection with his music.”
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Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.
The long-term research has received funding from private foundations, but has been financed largely by grants from the National Institutes of Health, first through the National Institute of Mental Health, and more recently through the National Institute on Aging.    Researchers who have pored through data, including vast medical records and hundreds of in-person interviews and questionnaires, found a strong correlation between men’s flourishing lives and their relationships with family, friends, and community. Several studies found that people’s level of satisfaction with their relationships at age 50 was a better predictor of physical health than their cholesterol levels were.  
“When we gathered together everything we knew about them about at age 50, it wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old,” said Waldinger in a popular TED Talk. “It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”
He recorded his TED talk, titled “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness,” in 2015, and it has been viewed 13,000,000 times.
The researchers also found that marital satisfaction has a protective effect on people’s mental health. Part of a study found that people who had happy marriages in their 80s reported that their moods didn’t suffer even on the days when they had more physical pain. Those who had unhappy marriages felt both more emotional and physical pain.
Those who kept warm relationships got to live longer and happier, said Waldinger, and the loners often died earlier. “Loneliness kills,” he said. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”
According to the study, those who lived longer and enjoyed sound health avoided smoking and alcohol in excess. Researchers also found that those with strong social support experienced less mental deterioration as they aged.
In part of a recent study, researchers found that women who felt securely attached to their partners were less depressed and more happy in their relationships two-and-a-half years later, and also had better memory functions than those with frequent marital conflicts.                                                                                 “Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”   — Robert Waldinger
“Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains,” said Waldinger in his TED talk. “And those good relationships, they don’t have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn’t take a toll on their memories.”
Since aging starts at birth, people should start taking care of themselves at every stage of life, the researchers say.
“Aging is a continuous process,” Waldinger said. “You can see how people can start to differ in their health trajectory in their 30s, so that by taking good care of yourself early in life you can set yourself on a better course for aging. The best advice I can give is ‘Take care of your body as though you were going to need it for 100 years,’ because you might.”
The study, like its remaining original subjects, has had a long life, spanning four directors, whose tenures reflected their medical interests and views of the time.
Under the first director, Clark Heath, who stayed from 1938 until 1954, the study mirrored the era’s dominant view of genetics and biological determinism. Early researchers believed that physical constitution, intellectual ability, and personality traits determined adult development. They made detailed anthropometric measurements of skulls, brow bridges, and moles, wrote in-depth notes on the functioning of major organs, examined brain activity through electroencephalograms, and even analyzed the men’s handwriting.
Now, researchers draw men’s blood for DNA testing and put them into MRI scanners to examine organs and tissues in their bodies, procedures that would have sounded like science fiction back in 1938. In that sense, the study itself represents a history of the changes that life brings.
Psychiatrist George Vaillant, who joined the team as a researcher in 1966, led the study from 1972 until 2004. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Vaillant emphasized the role of relationships, and came to recognize the crucial role they played in people living long and pleasant lives.
“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”   — George Vaillant
In a book called “Aging Well,” Vaillant wrote that six factors predicted healthy aging for the Harvard men: physical activity, absence of alcohol abuse and smoking, having mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs, and enjoying both a healthy weight and a stable marriage. For the inner-city men, education was an additional factor. “The more education the inner city men obtained,” wrote Vaillant, “the more likely they were to stop smoking, eat sensibly, and use alcohol in moderation.”
Vaillant’s research highlighted the role of these protective factors in healthy aging. The more factors the subjects had in place, the better the odds they had for longer, happier lives.
“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment,” said Vaillant. “But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”
The study showed that the role of genetics and long-lived ancestors proved less important to longevity than the level of satisfaction with relationships in midlife, now recognized as a good predictor of healthy aging. The research also debunked the idea that people’s personalities “set like plaster” by age 30 and cannot be changed.
“Those who were clearly train wrecks when they were in their 20s or 25s turned out to be wonderful octogenarians,” he said. “On the other hand, alcoholism and major depression could take people who started life as stars and leave them at the end of their lives as train wrecks.”
“We’re trying to see how people manage stress, whether their bodies are in a sort of chronic ‘fight or flight’ mode,” Waldinger said. “We want to find out how it is that a difficult childhood reaches across decades to break down the body in middle age and later.”The study’s fourth director, Waldinger has expanded research to the wives and children of the original men. That is the second-generation study, and Waldinger hopes to expand it into the third and fourth generations. “It will probably never be replicated,” he said of the lengthy research, adding that there is yet more to learn.
Lara Tang ’18, a human and evolutionary biology concentrator who recently joined the team as a research assistant, relishes the opportunity to help find some of those answers. She joined the effort after coming across Waldinger’s TED talk in one of her classes.
“That motivated me to do more research on adult development,” said Tang. “I want to see how childhood experiences affect developments of physical health, mental health, and happiness later in life.”
Asked what lessons he has learned from the study, Waldinger, who is a Zen priest, said he practices meditation daily and invests time and energy in his relationships, more than before.
“It’s easy to get isolated, to get caught up in work and not remembering, ‘Oh, I haven’t seen these friends in a long time,’ ” Waldinger said. “So I try to pay more attention to my relationships than I used to.”
The Grant Study found that "the capacity to love and be loved was the single strength most clearly associated with subjective well-being at age eighty."                                     In a study led by Derek Isaacowitz, we found that the capacity to love and be loved was the single strength most clearly associated with subjective well-being at age eighty.  The leader of the study said the main thing he learned from the research was:                    "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."
1) Relationships are the most important thing
There is a single question that best predicts whether you'll be alive at age 80:
"Is there someone in your life whom you would feel comfortable phoning at four in the morning to tell your troubles to?"
2) Be a good person
It wasn't getting help from others that conferred a long life. It was giving help.
3) Get your act together
Was there a personality trait that was tied to a long, healthy life? Yes. Conscientiousness.
4) Stress isn't always a bad thing
Don't avoid all stress. You need some stress. Research shows those who work the hardest live the longest:
5) Want to live a long time? Make yourself happy.
We associate health with having to do things that make us unhappy: don't eat that, go jogging, etc.
The research shows a fascinating link between what it takes to live a long life and what it takes to have a happy life.
Via The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study: "…many (but not all) of the recommendations for happiness are nearly identical to recommendations for maintaining health."
For example, those trying to improve their happiness are advised to do the following things:
1. Watch less TV
2. Improve social relations — spend time with friends
3. Increase levels of physical activity — go for a long walk
4. Help others and express gratitude to those who have helped you
5. Take on new challenges to remain fresh and in-the-moment
Laugh a lot. Be happy. Be optimistic. Have lots of good sex. Get enough sleep. Stay out of debtForgive.


Sunday, December 31, 2017

I Am Strong, Flexible and Centered

I have been doing OPTAVIA now for just over 4 weeks and I am happy doing it. I am also reading a helpful book called "Hunger Fix" by Dr. Pam Peeke- I have given my self-pity a very good and lengthy run. It is over now. It is heart ache that brings me back to my old unhealthy fixes that I learned in childhood and now lie to me and tell me it is okay to eat whatever I want, whenever I want.  I continued the lies and told myself that I deserved it, when what I really deserved was to be healthy and happy.  And what makes me happy is freedom of movement without pain. 

I do remember the days when I could hike and lift my legs high without moaning and groaning. I remember getting off the couch with ease too. And the body that wears my anger is still able to function pretty well even with all the insults I have thrown at it. My blood pressure is normal and my cholesterol levels are manageable with medication just 3 times a week. I fall asleep and stay asleep easily and my skin is still soft and smooth. My lungs and heart are strong. My kidneys and bladder function as they should. My hair is shinny and strong with only a small amount of gray. My hearing and vision work very well too. My energy level is excellent - enough to keep up the demands of 2 jobs. And my brain is still sharp and demonstrates its neuro-plasticity almost daily. A BIG Thank you goes to Dr. Marian Diamond. (What a brain, what a life: Marian Diamond, neuroplasticity pioneer, dies at 90, August 3, 2017)

I was watching myself suffer at my own hands for a very long time. I experienced the anguish of eating for comfort and found misery each and every time - just like every other addiction.
Emotionally I have fortified myself with a mantra- "I am all I need to be" and for my body I will have another mantra- "I am strong, flexible and centered. My creator has given me a gift of a healthy body and I will honor that gift as I honor myself. I will let myself feel loved today by the Lord and of myself. My love is visible by the way I care for myself, inside and out. "

You know, body care is a pretty big job as an American woman. We all brush our teeth and floss in between and take routine showers. But then there is the moisturizers for my face, morning and evening, and the lotion for my body and the scrub for my skin and the body butter for my feet. Shampoo and conditioner for my hair. I pluck my eyebrows and shave as need here and there. I trim my nose hair. I remove  blackheads and pimples, keep my nails clean and polish them too. I keep up with regular visits to doctors, eyes, ears, throat, dentist, primary care, gynecologist, now breast surgeon, medical oncologist, radiation oncologist, Bi-annual mammography, colonoscopy every 5 years.  Get 8 hours of sleep. Drink 80 to 100 ounces of water daily. Eat every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Eat lean protein and plenty of healthy greens. Avoid all fried foods, starchy vegetables and fruits high in sugar.  No sugar at all and only ingest healthy fats.  Take all medication and vitamins in a timely manner as prescribed.  I practice mindfulness and get monthly massages for relaxation. Wash hands every time I touch my nose or something else dirty like a doorknob, trash can or the newspaper. And I need to move so I found that I like yoga and dance so I do that as often as I can. There! I have it now!

I now will respect my biggest trigger of all which is abandonment.  When someone closes me out of a conversation, when I need to continue it to accomplish a mutual understanding, I feel tortured endlessly. Many bad experiences I had in a relationships was when I could not talk to the other person about what I felt until there was recognition of my experience. When I feel shut out, I go nuts. It is a feeling like I don't matter that drives me to eat like there is no tomorrow. I end up believing that I am unloved for I am certain that anyone who loves me would be motivated to listen until they get me right ?!?!  I need understanding and if I don't get it, I will punish and destroy myself over and over, again and again, until I surrender. I basically dig a very big hole for myself, fall in and then hide. That is the behavior I am giving up now.... as I dig myself back out for the last time.

I am worthy 
I will give myself the life I deserve 
I am strong, flexible and centered
I am kind, loving and beautiful
I will let myself feel loved today

I honor my creator my accepting these gifts
My wisdom is the heart of all my experiences and it serves me well
I am all I need to be 













Saturday, December 2, 2017

NOT Giving Up Is Hard To Do



I am learning that not giving up is such a hard thing to do. However, I have never been comfortable on the sidelines of life. I much prefer to jump in and get really wet from head to toe.

As most of your know, I am fighting with eating, food and being obese. I arrived at a place where I could no longer stand that I have been slowly taking years from my life as well as diminishing the quality and everything I had tried seemed to fail me and I would gain more weight in the process. So on FB there was a guy named Larry from Cherry Hill that was friends with other people that I am friends with on FB and he kept posting weight loss photos and comments about his "program".  So finally, I got curious enough that I messaged him to learn what his program was all about. 

I very slowly learned that what he is doing and what I have started doing is the re-branding of Medifast under

"OPTAVIA, we help you realize Lifelong Transformation, One Healthy Habit at a TimeTM. Our approach to health is radically different. We believe Optimal HealthTM and wellbeing is about what's added to your life, not what's subtracted from the scale. These habits add to your quality of life by getting your mind and body working together to work for you.  For most, it starts with achieving a healthy weight. This is the catalyst for bigger changes. When you achieve your healthy weight, you increase your health, confidence, and vitality. You create space for a bigger life. "

So I am eating prepackaged food every 2 1/2 to 3 hours- drinking water out the wazoo. I eat one regular food meal a day, which is called “lean and green, and this is my very first week.  And Larry from Cherry Hill is my coach although he is now from Maryland near Columbia.  I am very excited to get back to myself and have the life I deserve. The only thing in my way was myself- (as usual) and I am fighting for what I believe.

To support this process, I have signed up for a Trauma recovery treatment workshop given in North Jersey in January 2018. It will cost a lot of money for 3 - 9 hour days.  There will be only 5 participants in the group. But I decided that I can pay for it in several different ways like a credit card or something like that as it competes with my car insurance being due and of course, the holidays. Nonetheless, I am worth it and I am sick and tired of postponing feeling good. One of the bonuses to motivate me is my trip to Canada in May of 2018 with Diane Levad. We have booked a great lodge near Baniff and Lake Louise. I want to be able to kayak, river raft, and hike while I am up there. That is not manageable at my current weight of 255. So I am doing this one-day at a time and one week at a time and I have not weighed myself this week as I made a commitment to only weigh in once a week which will be Monday December 11.  I did have some challenges as I went out to dinner with friends and went to a baby shower at work. I am confident that my choices were ok enough. 

Moberly Lodge is located just North of Golden, British Columbia, between the Canadian Rocky Mountains and Columbia Mountain ranges and is within close proximity to five of the most stunning National Parks in Canada; Banff, Glacier, Kootenay, Mount Revelstoke and Yoho. The valley floor is home to the confluence of Kicking Horse River, famous for whitewater rafting ad the Columbia River, home to the longest protected wetlands in North America.