The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.

It is more important than the past, than education, money or circumstances.

It is more important than giftedness or skill.

And the remarkable thing is that we have a choice each and every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. We are in charge of our attitudes!

What keeps my attitude healthy?

I find there are two “basics” that aid me in keeping my attitude healthy: getting enough good quality sleep, and embracing some basic healthy nutrition.

Today let’s talk about SLEEP.

Often times, because of all the things we make commitments to, we get less and less sleep. Studies that I read consistently show that adults are getting less and less sleep (and more and more obese).

There are hormonal relationships between the amount of sleep you get and getting fat.

Have you ever noticed when you don’t get enough sleep you get hungry for the “worst” kinds of foods?

Your body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates is impaired by a lack of sleep, so your blood sugar levels elevate. This affects insulin, which ultimately will lead your body to store fat rather than use it for energy.

Even the best nutritional plan will be for naught if sabotaged by a lack of sleep.

Sleep is an often overlooked element in a healthy lifestyle.

Proper training and nutrition are still the building blocks of good health and
fitness, but sleep provides the foundation.

And don’t forget to consider the quality of your sleep.

Are your bed, pillow and sleep environment conducive to getting a good night’s sleep?

If you have an interest in Feng Shui, apply these principles in your bedroom. Feng Shui is a great tool for creating a restful environment.

A true story………

I had a housemate years ago when I was in college who allowed her 3 cats to sleep not only on her bed, but on her chest. She always had clogged sinuses and complained constantly of feeling like she never got a good night’s sleep……DUH???

What are your pre-sleep rituals?

Television, reading, a hot bath, computer time?

Notice how the time you spend prior to your sleep time affects you.

Take a sleep inventory.

Ask yourself questions that will help you decide if you’re getting enough sleep and examine your sleep habits and rituals. I’ll bet you’ll uncover some of the reasons you’re feeling sleep deprived.

Also, I devote a whole section in my free report, 7 Simple Strategies You Can Use Today to Optimize Your Health During Menopause.

If you don’t have your copy yet, make sure to get it SOON!

shelli

Are you able to say YES when asked to do something outside your comfort zone?

Are you able to muster your courage when life calls upon you to do so?

I’ve been thinking about courage these past few days, and thinking about my own courage.

I think that people who know me would describe me as courageous.

Not in the “she has courage because she skydives” kind of courage.

I think it would be more along the lines of “she lives her life with courage because she steps out and takes action to make things happen” kind of courage.

In other words, I’m willing to go out of my comfort zone!

When I look at my successes in life, they’ve all required me to leave the “zone.”

Makes sense when you think about it logically, yet it can be daunting when the time comes to leave the zone.

I’m generally a “go for it” girl, up for new challenges in both my professional and personal lives. And though at times it may look to us like people are born courageous, I believe we BECOME courageous.

It’s like a muscle that needs a workout so that it grows stronger and stronger over time.

A courage muscle!

Every challenge, especially menopause, presents an opportunity to grow this courage muscle.

If your first instinct when I asked if you were willing to go out of your comfort zone was to answer, “Well, not usually” and you are hesitant to try new things, keep in mind that you are capable of a lot more than you know.

Think about what holds you back.

Is it fear of failure, fear of injury, fear of looking funny, fear of what others will think or something else?

I think it’s generally some sort of fear-based reason.

Identifying what holds you back is the first step.

It enables you to look at that fear and start a dialogue with it.

The next step, of course, is taking some kind of action.

Your courage muscle can’t grow unless it gets a workout!

Once you start moving outside your comfort zone and seeing how you grow from those experiences, you’ll become a “go for it” type yourself!

Welcome aboard………

shelli

One of the ideas I’ve been thinking about lately might be called “health management principles.”

I thought I’d share some with you!

1. Do you live within your means?

Now you might think of this as a money management principle, but I think it works the same way for our day-to-day health.

We only have so much energy we can spend each day.

We wake up each morning with a certain amount of energy and then each and every thing we do makes a withdrawal.

We can add some energy as we go along (think coffee, sugar, or a bowl of fresh fruit), however the point is to recognize that this equation exists and how it affects us.

I think it would help all of us to become better aware of this equation and work towards creating a day that leaves us living within our means and not overdoing it.

There are many ways to create a larger energy account. The first step, however, is noticing whether you are in deficit spending mode!

2. Are you building a health nest egg for yourself through consistent practices and proper energy management?

I covered energy management in principle number one, so let’s look at building a health nest egg.

Consistent practices like exercise, proper nutrition, yoga, and meditation, to name but a few, are the ACTION steps.

You must invest each day, as these practices have a cumulative effect.

Do we know how long we’ll live?

Of course not.

I do think it’s wise to choose your practices, invest wisely and watch as the benefits accumulate and your nest egg grows.

3. Are you willing to stay open to learning new practices and enhancing those you already enjoy?

There are so many options all with great health-building potential.

What choices we make at 20 might not serve us at 45.

If you have long-time practices that still suit you, then deepening your experience of a practice you already connect with is an enhancement.

Yet in the enhancement so many new things are learned.

If what you used to enjoy no longer suits you, then do something different. Don’t allow yourself to go stale—-”same old same old” is not going to build that energy account and will probably drain you even more.

Pondering health management ideas like these can be helpful.

Embrace becoming proactive and self aware. Start thinking affirmatively about how you are going to create the kind of health and wellness you want for
yourself.

No one else can do it for you!

One example of someone who is proactive in this regard is Maria M. Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College.

At 55 she describes herself as a video-game enthusiast, marathon runner, juggler and painter.

She credits her talents to intense practice and her motto is “to fail often and openly–you become a much better learner by learning something that is hard for you.”

She can regularly be seen commuting from her residence to her office on her SKATEBOARD.

Now that’s my kind of college president!

I leave you with a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh:

 ”The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”        

So explore these health management principles and let me know what other ones are important to you, and keep your nest egg growing.

shelli

There’s a reason that stress management strategies were included in my book, The Truth About Menopause: Unlocking the Three Keys to a Healthy and Symptom Free Menopause.

Heck, there’s a reason I’d include Stress Management Strategies in ANY book I’d write, and it’s not just because SMS also happens to be my initials, although I do happen to think that’s pretty cool!

The reason?

Stress is a menace that knows no boundaries.

We all feel it and its effects on our lives. It must be acknowledged and handled.

And while we can all point to different “stressful” aspects of life, whether they be family related, work related, health related or any other of the many possible options from the menu, we must also understand that stress can also be identified as a self-imposed mental state.

Yes, I know, it’s not easy to think of our stress as being self-imposed.

It’s much easier to think it’s hoisted upon us.

While life certainly does include stressful circumstances, the mental state with which we greet stress plays a LARGE role.

So, in reducing stress and its effects we are striving for peace of mind.

You cannot simultaneously experience tranquility and stress, in the same way that you cannot simultaneously experience joy and anger.

How do you capture peace of mind?

Good question, and one that’s been asked throughout time.

And it’s an important question to ask because it acknowledges that we have the power within us to be at peace, or at least more peaceful.

We have the ability to make stress less menacing so that the symptoms of stress, whether they are related to menopausal symptoms or not, do not get the best of us.

Where to begin?

First, recognize that peace of mind does not shift with changing circumstances. If you have peace of mind, you can handle both adversity and good fortune with calm confidence.

With peace of mind, your thought process stays the course and does not swing back and forth depending on the events of your life.

With peace of mind your moods don’t meander all over the place. It’s how you think about events that sets the tone for peace.

We will all have to handle fear, loneliness, rejection, illness, death, financial misfortunes, and loss of love during the course of our lives.

Where we differ from one another is in how each of us handles these feelings and events as they come into our lives.

This, to a large extent, will determine whether our lives will be stressful or tranquil.

Want 3 tips for developing a powerful and less stressful mind-set?

Accept the inevitable.

There are some things you simply can’t do anything about.

Discernment is KEY.

What is difficult, but something you CAN DO something about, is very different from the inevitable.

Accepting the inevitable is not being negative, it’s actually positive.

What’s negative is not being able to ignore the inevitable and move on with your life.

We’ve all heard the saying, “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.”

Accepting the inevitable and focusing on the things you CAN do something about is virtually guaranteed to lower your stress level!

Understand that life isn’t perfect or necessarily fair.

In the book The Road Less Traveled, Dr. M. Scott Peck pointed out that one of the most traumatic moments of a child’s life is when he discovers that his parents aren’t perfect. That, of course, works both ways.

You can reduce your stress by accepting the reality that there is no perfect child, parent, spouse, home, city, or job.

Think about some of the things you perceive must be perfect in order for you to be at peace. See if you can change your mind-set and lower your stress level.

Let go of worrying and stewing about problems that don’t exist.

Do you live in a “what if” world?

Do you project that everything that can go wrong will go wrong?

Do you fret about menopausal symptoms you don’t have, but could?

Do you worry about other health conditions?

When the results of your routine physical, pap smear, or mammogram come back negative, you feel relieved. Until you get the results it’s easy for you to stress out.

But that’s a good example of being stressed over a problem that doesn’t exist. The problem becomes real only if, and when, the results come back positive.

Reflect on a time when you “supposed” and got all stressed out, only to find it didn’t turn out like you anticipated it would.

Stress starts in our minds with our imaginations.

If you dwell on what might happen in your life, then you can’t focus on what actually IS happening!

Remember these three tips as ways to trade your stress for some peace of mind.

And let me know what Stress Management Strategies are helping you?

 Let’s go back for a minute in our discussion to the topic of toilets.

And I can’t discuss toilets without talking about one of my favorite topics of the past few years: SQUATTING.

In case you didn’t know this, squatting is the natural posture of elimination.

In a squatting position, the bowel is supported and aligned by the thighs contact with the abdominal wall. It also supports the proper functioning of the ileocecal valve.

Squatting was the position used for elimination throughout the ages until 1850 when in England both the toilet and plumbing came on the scene. We have Joseph Bramah and Thomas Crapper to thank for the toilet’s creation.

They were not medical men and had no idea of the mechanical advantages that squatting offers our bodies during elimination.

It was in the early 1900’s that doctors started seeing increases in certain diseases and the toilet convention came into question.

A few more things about squatting:

*When you squat, there are reflexes in your hamstrings that are “turned on” so to speak, that help elimination.  

Squatting is also super effective for strengthening your abdominal muscles because it realigns your pelvic geometry.

*Start squatting and you’ll likely see a difference in your pot-belly or what’s called a slack-gut.

When we stop squatting and sit in chairs, toilets and the like, certain muscle groups like hamstrings, calves and adductors begin to shorten, hips start to flare outward, and a whole host of pains (particularly in your low back) begin.

Your buttocks then gets sucked under and you create a flat rear end. Notice how people with pot bellies usually have no rear end!

*In certain cultures an individual who can’t squat flat footed is considered sick!

*The major acupuncture bowel points are activated and stretched by the squatting posture!

*In Yoga squatting is considered a supreme posture for increasing energy in the body.

Not sure how to squat?

If you have taken a class, workshop, retreat or hung out with me for any length of
time, you know plenty about squatting.

If, however, you are not sure what the proper way to squat is, I’d suggest talking with your Yoga teacher or a strength and conditioning coach to learn proper form.

Squatting is such an essential movement pattern that I also included a whole section on it in my book The Truth About Menopause, so you can use that as a squatting reference as well.

To recap, when the digestive tract and bowel are dysfunctional and backed up, it puts a burden on your bloodstream and can clog the liver, which then allows toxins from the bowel to circulate in the bloodstream.

Your bloodstream is your engine oil and you don’t want to be running on dirty oil!

I’m suggesting that you try SQUATTING when you move your bowels.

There are a few ways you can do this.

1. There are products you can buy to use while sitting on your toilet that will raise your feet up into a squatting position.
2. While sitting on your toilet, you can also put your feet up on the edges of your bathroom trash pail.
3. You can put your feet on top of the toilet seat itself and squat over the toilet.

Get creative and let me know how it goes!

Practice your squatting as an exercise (outside of your bathroom) whenever and wherever you can. It will help balance your pelvis, decrease low back pain, flatten the abdomen, tone the buttocks and increase your energy.

Squatting is quite a journey and I welcome you aboard the squat train anytime!

I hope the information I’ve passed along has been of value to you.

I know this blog post ran rather long this time around, but hey, your digestive tract is about 30 feet in length so I figured it deserved at least a few more paragraphs than usual!!

May all your movements–bowel and otherwise be healthy!

shelli

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”—Aristotle

I spend much of my time thinking, teaching, and writing about health, wellness, fitness, and of course guiding people to find solutions to their health challenges.

My days are often hectic.

No matter how hectic they get though, I like to take time to contemplate nature.

I love the beach and being in the water. Being in the water or even just along the beach on a sunny day connects me with nature.

So the next time you find your life spiraling into high-anxiety mode, remember that you owe it to yourself to take a break.

Remember what Aristotle said about nature and its marvels.

Appreciate your hectic life, but practice looking for the marvelous in nature as well!

shelli

One of the things that will prevent this backup is to make sure that you have healthy elimination habits. Bowel health is critical.

At the far end of your bowel is the sigmoid rectal junction which has a right angle bend. If this section gets too kinked your bowel passage will get blocked.

If we add to this blockage problem our cultural habit of restraining our bowels until it is convenient to eliminate, plus the use of the Western style toilet (which I’ll discuss) we can create quite an unhealthy situation, again overburdening the liver.

We can say that a faulty digestive tract in the human body is like backed up plumbing in a drain! Call it your intestinal plumbing.

Ideally, the amount and timing of elimination should vary directly with the amount and timing of our food intake.

About 2300 years ago Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, said,

“If you drink enough water, eat just the necessary food in sufficient quantity, and develop the abdominal muscles by suitable exercises, it is surprising how soon you will regain that regular normal habit of evacuation by which alone health, happiness and freedom from disease can be insured.”

The name Kellogg, as in Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, might be a familiar name to most of us. Did you know, though, that he was a bowel surgeon?

In his day he wrote a book called Colon Hygiene.

After operating on thousands of bowels, he came to the conclusion that toxins from blocked and distorted bowels were responsible for many diseases.

He was a big proponent of teaching people proper sitting and standing posture so as not to induce weakened abdominal muscles, thereby alleviating the pressure put on the liver and other abdominal organs.

Kellogg wrote, “An erect posture secures proper exercise of the muscles of the trunk, correct breathing, normal circulation of blood and normal bowel movements.”

OK OK…..I know after reading all this you’re looking for some recommendations to keep that plumbing system of yours in tip top shape. Those will be coming in part 3.

shelli

As you know, I am a student of life and of all the many facets of health and wellness that create a better balance in us, thereby allowing for a fuller expression of who we are.

A crucial area to understand when thinking about optimal health is our digestion and elimination.

Without throwing too much technical information your way I’d like to briefly explain how digestion works.

Your digestive tract consists of a tube that runs throughout the body starting at your mouth and ending at your rectum.

The portion in the stomach and small intestine is devoted to digestion and assimilation, and the portion in the colon handles elimination.

The small intestine is a sterile environment and the colon portion is filled with microorganisms that are often toxic.

Your digestive system was designed to flow downwards to insure that no backup takes place from the polluted environment of the colon into the small intestine portion. Your ileocecal valve handles the job of preventing this backup.

Is there a problem?

From the many sources that I have studied, it seems that the ileocecal valve is not working efficiently in many people, so that the contents of the large bowel back up into the no longer sterile environment of the small intestine.

This means that toxins will enter your bloodstream, overburdening your liver and creating a whole host of health problems.

Not to worry, though.

In part 2 of this three part series you’ll learn about the most important habit to prevent overburdening your liver!

shelli

Let’s spend some cellular time together!

Why? Because I feel quite strongly that an informed woman makes healthier and wiser choices.

One of the key reasons I started this blog was to bring an educational component that I felt was missing to the menopausal community discussion, so let’s begin.

The health of your body depends on the health of your cells.

We have over 75 trillion cells in our body!

Cells process the nourishment we need and get rid of our waste, keeping us energized and alive.

Cells have different functions and need oxygen in order to perform them. They also use oxygen to convert glucose into ATP (adenosine triphosphate), our body’s fuel.

If we want to maximize our overall health we need to ensure that we receive the optimum ingredients our cells require.

Much research has been done to decipher what cells need to live.

Correlations have been found, for instance, between the level of oxygen in a person’s bloodstream and their level of health. A lack of oxygen will destroy cells, and if cells are given their basic needs and not poisoned by their own environment, they live on and on.

Dr. Stanley Robbins of Harvard Medical School suggests that there are 6 basic causes of cellular atrophy:

1. Decreased work load
2.  Enervation
3.  Diminished blood supply
4.  Inadequate nutrition
5.  Loss of endocrine stimulation
6. Aging

In leading a life full of health and vitality we must remember certain guiding principles:

* the key to a healthy body is healthy CELLS.

* the most important element of cellular health is OXYGEN.

* anything that disturbs the biochemical or electrical functioning of the cells or deprives them of oxygen is potentially disease producing.

* the build-up of toxins in our system is a result of unhealthy conditions. Think about the air we breathe, water we drink, foods we eat and the movement choices we make.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, the key to health is energy and all our energy starts with our cells.

Cells only have energy when they have enough OXYGEN, NUTRIENTS and ways to eliminate waste.

Optimal oxygenation of your cells comes about through proper nutrition, fluid intake, exercise and stress management.

I don’t want to get overly technical or go deeper into each area of optimal oxygenation that I mentioned.

I am, however, in a “back to basics” mode, and when we menopause-age women think about achieving our optimum balance between health and fitness, we must start with the basic building blocks—

our cells!

If your health is in a less than optimal state and you feel one or more of your systems be it nervous, muscular, skeletal, circulatory, digestive, lymphatic, hormonal or other isn’t up to snuff, then I’m suggesting you need to look at your cellular health.

When you create a life that serves your cells, your cells will serve you!

Yours in cellular health,

Shelli