September 27, 2011

A Luxurious Wow Night

Another Thursday night, another wonderful Wow meeting.  Yummy food, good conversation, giggles, and lots of hugs were shared by the ladies.  


And we were blessed by the company and wisdom of yet another great speaker.  Dr. Shira Miller is a "Concierge Holistic Menopause Physician" in Los Angeles who specializes in "luxurious menopause." She presented a fascinating slide show with the help of her handsome and very nice husband Sean, whose company we also enjoyed during dinner.  According to Dr. Miller, although we are taught that menopause is "normal" and usually occurs around the age of 51,  it is a phenomena of the recent 50 years, since women before then didn't usually live past that age. Menopause is known for hot flashes, fatigue, sweats, dryness, depression, weight gain, osteopenia and osteoporosis, decreased libido, anxiety, palpitations, and feeling invisible. I could see all the ladies nodding as each symptom was mentioned. Taint easy being a woman.

Many of us were taking hormonal replacement therapy (HRT), using lab-created hormones or ones made from pregnant horses' urine, until a study a few years ago linked HRT to a variety of nasty illnesses, like cancer and heart disease.  So, abruptly and without examining the study carefully, many or maybe even most doctors took their female menopausal and post-menopausal patients off of HRT.  Turns out that the study was flawed in many ways and really quite inaccurate.  I remember a doctor at that time telling me that the study was done on women in nursing homes who were sedentary, women who were quite different than me and my active friends.  Dr. Miller purports that keeping women's female hormones at levels similar to those in their thirties promotes wellness and optimizes health in women our age.  

Having worked in medicine for my whole career, I appreciated that Dr. Miller, early in her conventional medicine career, became jaded about how ailments were treated.  In my work, I see that the lack of female hormones can cause osteoporosis and very painful spinal compression fractures, for which my physician employer surgically injects a type of cement to build up the vertebra.  Primary care physicians treat osteoporotic patients with drugs that can cause nasty side effects and, per Dr. Miller, the patient isn't deficient in the those drugs but deficient in hormones that would have prevented the onset and progression of bone loss.  Love her thinking, I do. 

After a consultation of 3-4 hours, extensive blood testing, taking a comprehensive medical history (including diet and habits), and a variety of other examinations, Dr. Miller will consider placing her female menopausal patients on bio-identical hormones. She will talk to the patient on the phone as a courtesy before the first appointment, making sure that she is the proper provider and often will refer the patient to a fellow practitioner if the patient has unusual medical issues.  Compared to what my docs charge for their services, Dr. Miller's rates are surprisingly low.  Her all-inclusive first in-person consultation is about the price one of my patients recently paid for just his pre-operative tests at a local laboratory, so don't hesitate to consider her obviously careful and wise services because of costs.  Here's her picture - she's just as lovely in person.

So I had a yummy meal, saw some lovely friends, and was fascinated by Dr. Miller, all in one evening.  You can call Dr. Miller at 310-734-8864, visit her website at www.shiramillermd.com, or sign up for medical updates at her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/menopausedoctor.  Sounds to me like you've got nothing to lose....and lots of good health to gain.  My sincere thanks to Dr. Miller for providing my ladies with such important information that could so obviously change our lives.  

September 1, 2011

Who and how do you love?

                                                 Meet JJ Flizanes!                                                        


Lucky me, another evening with my fellow Wowettes!   Yummy potluck, fun company, and a passionate and inspiring speaker.  I read about our speaker, JJ Flizanes, and was impressed with her philosophy about finding our mate when I read her quote, "When we create our own happiness through our body and mind, we are able to naturally manifest a partner who recognizes and respects us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.I liked reading that finding a partner was not about how we act or how we dress or our age or weight, but who we are....inside....and how we feel out ourselves.  


JJ is the author of "Fit 2 Love - How to get physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit to attract the love of your life," (a best seller on Amazon.com!) Much to my surprise and pleasure, she started her presentation with the statement that the love of our life is...ourself.   She said that we must be the person we want to be to attract love, that the blueprint of how we treat ourselves is how others treat us, and that everything we do shows how we respect and love ourselves.


So why don't we have the mate of our dreams?  Again, it's all about how we treat ourselves, the results, and our self-perceptions.  JJ gave us a written exercise called " Our Body Blueprint" to allow us to find the story we tell ourselves.  Apparently, we only hear 18% of our thoughts and the rest are put in our subconscious before we are nine-years-old. The blueprint asks about our attitudes and actions related to exercise,  diet, rest, play, and self-talk and we followed that exercise with one titled, "What Does Your Body Blueprint Say?" I was startled to see my results showed such great conflict.  I want to do the right thing and take good care of myself in all those areas, but my answers were mostly "sometimes."   It's like I still have those two creatures on my shoulders, the devil on one and the angel on the other, each telling me to do the opposite of the other.  


So I vow to follow JJ's wisdom, to listen to the angel, to love myself by taking care of myself as best as I know how, and, while waiting for the Prince to come, I will learn to love and respect .....my own rules.    Thanks, JJ, for a evening that brought each of us closer to knowing ourselves, to knowing our truth, to living a more loving life.  (If you want to be a better person, to make your own life better, you can reach the lovely JJ at www.fit2love.info.)