Countdown Reason # 33: Take The Women’s “Life Orientation” Test!

In 1994 the Women’s Health Initiative set out to do the largest study of the relationship between our state of mind  — an optimistic state, or a pessimistic world view — and cardiovascular disease to date – on ninety-seven thousand women. These women, who were healthy at the start of the study, were followed for eight years, up until 2002.  The way they viewed the world was measured through what’s known as the validated Life Orientation Test (LOT), which asks respondents ten statements such as: “In unclear times, I usually expect the best,” and “If something can go wrong for me, it will.” You can take the test here, and find out how you score. Each subject’s education, religious attendance, health, depressive symptoms, body mass, alcohol and cigarette use, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels — anything that might also influence their health — were also recorded at the start. They were looking for patterns of health in this large population of women.   Women who scored in the top twenty-five percent for optimism experienced 30 percent fewer coronary deaths than the pessimists  — those women who scored in the bottom twenty-five percent for optimism. In fact, the more optimistic a woman was, the less likely she was to die from all causes. Let me know how you do on the Women’s “Life Orientation” Test. I know in my own life, I can do so much better. Wanting to heal my world view — my brain, and my body — is what led me to take on the quest for The Last Best Cure.

Countdown Reason # 34 “A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ,” John Steinbeck once wrote. Steinbeck’s words are more true than we might ever have imagined. The neuroscience I unveil in The Last Best Cure shows how our state of mind dictates the state and health of our cells. When we are psychologically stressed, worried or in pain, our brain’s ability to regulate our production of stress hormones is thrown off and our body loses its ability to regulate its inflammatory response. A  complex network of stress hormones and biological messengers — what scientists sometimes refer to as “the floating brain” — increase the cascade of chemical messengers that break down our cells and corrupt our immune responses. We suffer from more chronic inflammation — which leads to disease, including depression, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and cancer. When we move to a state of joy and contentment, we create quite the opposite effect: a seemingly invisible shield of positive “floating brain” activity that protects our cells, our immune function, and our health. Depending on our state of mind, we trigger a positive floating brain or a negative one.  Joy and feelings of well-being can protect our immune systems, and lack of joy and well-being can tax our bodies and deprive our cells. The good news is that we can trigger a positive “floating brain.” I am a great believer in all that Western Medicine has to offer. My doctors have saved my life several times over. But after a year of test-driving simple, accessible novel brain-body healing approaches that are available to us all, I also know that our own brains are a vast, untapped healing source. In The Last Best Cure, I would like to start a new saying, “A joyful soul can heal you quicker, far quicker, than a pill.”

Countdown Reason # 35: My Friend Says…

… that I need to make sure to tell you what she had to say when she read an early copy of The Last Best Cure. When I finished writing The Last Best Cure I asked my friend P., who is a well-known neuroscientist, to read the manuscript and make certain I had every scientific fact spot on. P. gave me several important scientific insights. And then she said, “But there’s one really important point I think you’re forgetting.” “What’s that?” I asked. “I don’t think you’ve made it clear that this book is not just for those with chronic health worries,” P. said. P. is in mid-life, perfectly healthy, and doesn’t have any chronic health complaints. Just the normal wear and tear stress that comes with being a busy, accomplished professional raising two young children. Though she does have a scientific interest in the topic — as a neuroscientist P. studies mental health issues and how they develop in the brain and why. “I think you’re thinking too narrowly,” she told me. “Because your book is absolutely for people like me, too. It’s for every one of us. Those who’ve faced illness, and those of us who hope not to. You don’t have to have been ill to realize that you aren’t really living with the sense of joy and well-being you long for. And you don’t have to have been ill to understand that that brain-body connection is critical to your physical and emotional health.” P. couldn’t be more right. One doesn’t have to have faced great physical pain or be ill to benefit from the science in The Last Best Cure.  The discoveries of psychoneuroimmunology and the science of joy and how they benefit our biological well-being is for us all. (For more on the new neuroscience about how our mindset can activate the healing responses of our brain, see my earlier post Countdown Reason #43: An Exciting New Area of Scientific Research Has Been Taking Off – Yet Most of us Know Nothing About It!). Certainly many women are not in the throes of dealing with an illness or injury – but still face moments of emotional or physical suffering that block out the sense of well-being we all hunger for.  Almost all of us live with our share of physical or emotional disquiet – fatigue, frustration we wish we didn’t feel, intermittent days of sadness and low mood or anger and loss, or maybe headaches, hot flashes, rashes, that churning gut. And all of these can keep us from living the life we imagined. These day-to-day stressors are more than enough to make it imperative that we each take the time to understand how we can better our lives through the new science of joy, and find a greater sense of contentment. P. is right. This book is for everyone. I hope you agree with her on that. And that is Countdown Reason # 35 on why I wrote The Last Best Cure. For every person who wants to claim a greater sense of physical and emotional well-being. 34 days!

Countdown Reason # 36: The Last Best Cure — it’s in my Hands!

There is a big moment in every author’s life, and it happens only once, with each book we publish. Today my friendly UPS guy knocked on the front door and smiled as he handed me a package. I peered at the return label and saw my publisher’s address: 375 Hudson Street, Hudson Street Press. I ripped open the package. It was here! The very thing I’d been imagining holding in my hands for the past two years — ever since I first started researching the up-to-the-minute neuroscience on how we can activate the healing responses of the brain and enhance our path to joy and well-being! And here it is, right now, right here in my kitchen, in my hands: the very first first copy of The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of my Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy and My Life. And this is Countdown Reason # 36 why I wrote The Last Best Cure. So that the cutting edge research on how our brains are our last best cure could make its way right into your hands. Pretty soon, in 36 days, The Last Best Cure will hit stores everywhere. How do you like the cover? I hope you love it. Don’t forget to LIKE it on Facebook!

Countdown Reason # 37: “Let’s Make a Memory”

Today’s post is something of a P.S. to yesterday’s. When I was growing up, my Dad had a saying: “Let’s make a memory.” He’d say it right before he’d take us off on some impromptu adventure, like sailing out from our creek into the Chesapeake Bay on a Friday evening, so we could spend the night (the six of us packed a bit like sardines) anchored under the stars. I still remember rocking under the Big Dipper, the gentle lap of the waves a particular type of lullaby. My Dad wrote a daily column for the newspaper he edited and managed, and in it he’d often chat about our family exploits. Once, when we were very young and building a new house, the fireplace had to be ripped out and the masonry re-done to meet code, delaying our move-in. We were all disappointed. My Dad took my three older brothers and me over to the new house and we had a picnic in front of the deconstructed fireplace and walls, amidst the piles of white bricks. He wrote about it in his column the next morning, how he hoped he’d “made a memory” for his young children: a picnic in our house-to-be instead of lots of fussing over the fact that we couldn’t move our furniture in yet. Here’s a long ago photo of me with my dad, in front of that fireplace. This past weekend my husband and I made some memories in our new house, which we just finished building (and like my own parents, we met many delays in the process). We had our first party. And it was very special: a surprise 18th birthday party for our son. His friends all worked so hard for months to conspire to keep it a secret from him, and the surprise went off like a dream. The smile on his face (after the shock faded away) as he turned the corner into our living room, accompanied by two friends who’d kept him out of the house while guests arrived, to a loud chorus of 17 and 18-year-olds yelling “Surprise!” was all about Making a Memory. For hours the house rang with the laughter of lovely teens, as my husband and I hustled about cooking up pasta with pancetta, vegan chili and grilled pepper tartes. My daughter helped all day, baking a four-layer gluten free chocolate ganache cake, and that evening she was our official party photographer. A lot of things went through my mind that night. How lovely my son’s friends are. How much I love my family. How my son’s smiles and his friends’ that night were so welcome after months of college applications and other high school senior year stressors. How I would never forget the joy lighting up his face. But I thought, too, of how much I miss my Dad. How he taught me to go the extra distance to make the big memories — by having given me so many of my best ones. And most of all, how much I wish he could have met his grandson and grandaughter, really known them. I thought of how much my son’s smile reminds me of my father’s, especially whenever we’re in the midst of great memories in the making. Those of you who have read a lot of my work know that my dad died when I was 12-years-old, from a compilation of chronic conditions. If he were alive today we could certainly have saved him. But forty years ago the doctors could not. In The Last Best Cure I write a bit about how his loss has impacted me and my own well-being long into adulthood (more on that to come in later posts). And how his early death, which didn’t have to happen, has influenced my life’s work — dedicating myself to helping others to heal, to help them to take the journey to well-being that he never got to take. And why I set out on that journey myself — so I might be here with my kids, watch them grow up as my father could not watch his own children grow up. So I can, I hope one day (many years from now) meet my own grandchildren. And something else went through my mind, too, this past Saturday night as I looked around at our kids and their friends caught up in their own particular brand of hilarious teenage humor. It hit me suddenly as I raced around serving food and collecting plates and setting out drinks: I would not have have had the stamina to throw an event like this before taking my journey to find The Last Best Cure. I just couldn’t have done it. It really hit me then: I’m making a memory, and I have the energy to do it. That may seem a small thing, but you have to have been where I’ve been. Then again if you are one of my readers, you probably have been where I’ve been and know the glee that comes when your feel your life energy and your stamina surge. When you feel joy. After our busy weekend, I am happy tired, rather than lying on the floor tired. That’s what the process of activating the healing responses of the brain can do. I mean it. It doesn’t mean I’m suddenly superwoman. I’ll never be that mom with heels on at 2:00 in the afternoon (having had GBS twice heels are out for me anyway!). But it does mean I can create more really great memories to revel in with my family, because I have the energy to make them happen in the first place. And somehow, in some way, that makes me feel like my dad is here. With me, and with his grandchildren. Because the lesson he taught me is getting passed along, one memory at a time, in a chain of memories to which we, generation by generation, all belong. The link to my Dad, and

Countdown Reason # 38: Magical Journey

A few days ago, Katrina Kenison’s new book, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment, hit stores. (She’s also the author of another magical book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day.) I just picked up my copy and can’t wait to delve in, especially after reading the excerpt she’s posted on her website. Kenison speaks from an honest and open heart on a topic that so many women in mid-life are facing or will face. The moment we transition from a life of mothering at full speed to something too quiet indeed: when our kids leave home. Kenison beautifully captures the small moments when the realization hits that this is it: “The sight of Jack’s old school bus laboring up the hill gives me a pang of missing him; he won’t be getting off by the mailbox as he used to do…. Attending a concert at Henry’s old high school, I realize that this is the last year I’ll know a single student there… Turning on lamps in the living room as dusk falls, I find myself pausing, staring out the window, wondering if I will ever again experience the passionate aliveness I felt as the center of the universe for two little boys. Wiping the kitchen counter, putting the last dish away, I’m overcome with melancholy, wishing the phone would ring or, better, that the back door would fly open and the sound of teenage voices erase the quiet. …Instead, the emptiness surrounds me. I am a mother without a child. An aging woman whose arms still feel the weight of small bodies held close, whose hands recall the outlived tasks of motherhood: brushing tears from a cheek, bandaging a pinkie finger, buttering toast, testing a bath, smoothing a cowlick into place.” Perhaps this quote sums it up best for me. Kenison writes, “I bestowed countless hasty good- bye kisses, my attention already elsewhere as I brushed lips to cheeks— only to wake up one morning and realize that all those little good- byes had led, inevitably, to big ones.” My own children have not yet grown and left home, though my son will leave for college in only seven more blink-and-he’s-gone months. I feel his big good-bye already; the heavy knowledge that our years as a family of four, of laughter over bad jokes at dinner, of our family’s elbows and legs tucking into a loose, interlocking puzzle of limbs as we pile on the couch to watch a quirky show on Netflix, and so many moments more, are coming to an end. Which is perhaps why Kenison’s words got me thinking so deeply about one of the most important reasons — if not the most important — I set out to research and write The Last Best Cure. I may still be in the frenzy of busy-mother-love, but I am keenly aware in every single minute that time is ticking by. (I’ll be watching my son’s face, following his micro expressions as he puzzles through a big realization about life. As I am thinking how much I will miss his sharing the thoughtstream of his mind in real time, I’ll say the shorthand expression I now say whenever I feel the weight of his leaving: “TDF.” That’s my acronym for “Too D__ Fast.” The years have gone by too darn fast.) And that is Countdown Reason #38 why I wrote The Last Best Cure. Since my son was six-years-old and my daughter two, they’ve had to accustom themselves to the reality that I might have to leave to be in the hospital for a week or two, or head off to see a specialist, or be on bed rest for a few days, doctor’s orders. When they were small life was a little different for them. I well recall their pushing my wheel chair at the theater when they were six and ten and we went to see the musical The Lion King. They were so proud to be “helping Mommy.” But what went through my mind was this: this is not the childhood I want for them. On the surface, I made light of long afternoons spent with them in my bedroom, their homework and board games spread across my covers. I’d joke, “Hey, we’re lucky! How many moms get to spend this much time playing board games with their kids?” Uno and The Game of Life sat on a footstool at the end of my bed, and my son still recalls reading and rereading The Lord of the Rings to me — and me to him. I would tell myself, when they were younger, I’ll be better soon, and they’ll have a “normal” childhood. But year after year I seemed to rack up more diagnoses, as people with autoimmune conditions so often do. “Normal” never came. In The Game of REAL Life, I was losing something profoundly precious: the chance to spend those all too fleeting years as a family being the mom I had always imagined I would be. It wasn’t that I was always in health crisis mode. I wasn’t. I learned how to walk and drive again (and again) and life seemed normal from the outside. And I was grateful. But even so, at best I was tired, so tired I’d often have to lie down on the carpet and let my legs rest. My kids were accustomed to addressing Mom on the floor. I tried to cover it up as I cooked dinner or braided hair or helped with homework, but I was always in symptom-self-management mode. And some part of me, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, was always secretly afraid of when the next medical shoe would drop. As Kenison puts it, my attention was so often “already elsewhere.” Like so many women battling chronic conditions — like Gail whom I wrote about yesterday — I had lost my interior sense of joy. And if there is one gift you should be able to give your

Countdown Reason # 39: A Cup of Tea

It happened again yesterday. I had a cup of tea with a friend of mine. I’ll call her Gail — a fifty-ish-year-old woman with soft blue eyes, cropped auburn hair and black-rimmed glasses.  I hadn’t seen Gail in a while; she’s been struggling with Crohn’s for some time. She told me of how she’d begun to accept and adapt to life as a Crohn’s patient.  She’s been doing everything right, she said; she eats a whole foods diet, avoids dairy and gluten, takes her medications, goes in for her regular check ups and had just been through a small, mostly successful surgery.  Gail – who like so many women managing a chronic condition looked “fine” — had also recently been diagnosed with thyroiditis.  And she’s been suffering from migraines since we were both in college (trust me, that was a long time ago).  She is careful about managing these, too, with both medication and diet. I’d say that Gail is in the top ten percent of people in terms of being “on top of” her chronic conditions. And, I repeat, she handles all this so well that her medical conditions really are “invisible” to the eyes of passersby. But I have known Gail a very long time. So it was no surprise when she confessed to me that she was tired out.  It wasn’t just the side effects of her medications or the physical symptoms or pain from surgeries or demoralizing lack of energy that were dragging her down, it was the fear, too, of what the next day, week or year might bring. “For the past couple of years it’s been enough just to cope,” she said as she held her cup of peppermint tea between her hands, a small wisp of steam rising, temporarily fogging the lower half of her glasses. “But it’s hard to be with the girls they way I want to and give them the memories I want to give them — and focus the way I need to on my work — when I’m worrying over when my next mini or major flare up is going to be.”  She gives a minuscule grimace and shrugs.  “It’s hard to mean it when I smile.” I understand Gail so well. We’re friends in the trenches.  I find myself touching her forearm lightly.  I share a few images with her that have often come to mind when I’ve been deep in the trenches with my own chronic health challenges: ““It’s like living a half-life? A maybe life? Maybe I can today, but maybe I can’t?”  Gail nods, swallowing several times.  Her eyes are suddenly wet, as, unexpectedly, are mine. “When you hurt so much that it’s hard to walk the dog not much else gets in.”  Gail puts down her teacup, pushes a strand of hair away from her forehead and adjusts her glasses.  “I don’t want to live that way for the rest of my days.  I want to look ahead and see that, hey, it’s okay, I’m still going to have some joy.” “People assume I should just be thankful to be doing as well as I am –” She pauses before finishing her thought.  “– but they forget that I’m living this half-life.” I have heard similar sentiments from so many other women and men with chronic conditions — whether they are dealing with depression, migraines, arthritis, or autoimmune conditions. They feel that people don’t get it.  You may be getting better from your latest flare or scare, you might even have found your way back to day-to-day pretty-okay mode. You’ve recuperated, but you’re far from recovered.  You’re far from feeling good.  And you start to wonder – can you ever feel that sense of true well-being again? Gail and so many women like her are searching for something more than this “half-life.”   They want to find a way back from pain and fatigue – to at very least feel contented with their lives — even in the face of their physical symptoms, and the worries and stresses that come with them. And here’s what’s most impressive: women like Gail don’t want to commiserate about their illness or symptoms or tell war stories about what treatments or surgeries they’ve had. They’re more interested in the next leg of the journey.  They’re more interested in finding hope and change.  They want to know: medical science may have saved my life, but what will make a life with pain feel joyful again? When pain narrows our focus and we lose sight of joy, how can we find our way back again? The Last Best Cure is my answer to that question. Gail is Countdown Reason # 39.  

Countdown Reason # 40: As Americans We Live Shorter Lives and We’re Sicker

In an earlier post I talked about how the numbers of Americans with chronic conditions has been escalating so fast it’s frightening. We may tend to brush these sorts of statistics aside, telling ourselves we’re sicker simply because we’re living so much longer. But a new study tells us that’s not the case. Americans of all ages up to the age of 75 live shorter lives and experience more chronic illness during their lives than in other countries. In fact, a recent study — a 378-page report convened by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences — shows that not only do Americans have a lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than most high-income countries, we are less healthy throughout our lives than citizens of 16 other wealthy nations. And every year Americans are becoming less healthy than our counterparts in peer nations around the globe. The U.S. is experiencing a large and widening “mortality gap” among adults over 50 compared with other high-income nations. “What struck us — and it was quite sobering — was the recurring trend in which the U.S. seems to be slipping behind other high-income countries,” says lead author of the report, Dr. Steven Woolf. We might think that this is due to gun violence, or poverty. But that’s not the case. Even Americans who possess good health insurance, are college-educated and are in upper-income brackets are in worse health than their counterparts around the world — a finding that no one quite comprehends. Woolf puts it this way, “People with seemingly everything going for them still live shorter lives and have higher disease rates than people in other countries.” So you might say that’s Countdown Reason #40  — one more reason why I wrote The Last Best Cure. We’re chronically ill and we’re getting more chronically ill as a country every year. I wrote a great deal about why I think that’s the case in my last book, The Autoimmune Epidemic. As I’ve said before, The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Activate the Healing Areas of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy and My Life is the natural progression after The Autoimmune Epidemic. It’s about participating in a reversal trend, to reclaim good and healthy lives. As a country, as people, as individuals. Isn’t it time?  

Countdown Reason # 41: In Sickness As in Health

Here’s another reason why I set out on my journey to find The Last Best Cure. When you are dealing with a chronic condition, as are one out of two American adults, it can’t help but impact family life. When we are distracted by pain or fatigue or worry it’s hard to let joy in. And our capacity for joy affects how we experience our most important relationships. As a mother and wife, our interior sense of well-being often sets the stage for the tone of our family life. A few years ago I did a series of features for MORE magazine on coping with chronic health challenges. One of the articles was titled, How a Marriage Survives When One Partner Gets Sick. I interviewed two remarkable women, psychotherapist Barbara Kivowitz, MSW, and award-winning science writer Roanne Weisman. On January 15th Kivowitz and Weisman are coming out with an important new book called In Sickness As in Health: Helping Couples Cope With the Complexities of Illness. They’ve talked to many couples and brilliantly unveil how the emotional, medical, financial and logistical concerns that come with coping with a chronic illness can impact a relationship — much like an unwanted third party moving in. Their stories of couples who found transformation and growth while traversing the maze of illness are eye-opening, profoundly moving and inspiring. This book is a much needed life-raft for couples who find themselves suddenly afloat in new and uncertain waters. One thing I have learned in my own life as a mother and a wife, is that it’s so important for me to find a day-to-day family rhythm and routine that doesn’t revolve around how I feel physically. But I have also found that in order to achieve that goal, I have to be able to claim a state of mind that doesn’t revolve around how my body feels. And in order to do that… I have had to learn how to achieve and maintain a sense of well-being in my own brain. And that is Countdown Reason # 40 — as we lead up to the February 21st pubdate for The Last Best Cure — why I began my quest to get back my brain, my body and my life. I wanted to have a life with my husband and with my children that didn’t revolve around the unwelcome “third party who had moved in with us.” I wanted my mind to be here, now, with my beautiful kids who will all too soon be gone, my husband, my work, my friends, the sunlight playing on the leaves outside. Even when I didn’t feel well, I wanted to feel I was right here, right now, ready and available for the joys of Family Prime Time. And here’s the amazing thing: the deeper I got into the newest brain-body neuroscience, the more I learned that finding an interior state of well-being and joy, even in the face of chronic physical limitations and aggravations, is a key ingredient to activating the innate healing response hidden within our brains. By searching out a way to feel a sense of joy and well-being even while co-exisiting with long-standing illness, I began to uncover a new healing path for not only my family, but for my brain, my body, my cells.

Countdown Reason # 42: The Tiger in the Lifeboat

Illness is a catalyst in the search for wholeness and wellness.  It is similar to Pi’s experience in Yann Martel’s novel, and the movie, The Life of Pi.  After struggling to stay alive in a lifeboat with a ravenous tiger for months, Pi realizes that living with the tiger has forced him to fight more vigorously for life than if he had been drifting in the lifeboat alone. For many, many Americans illness is the tiger in the lifeboat. It forces us to find new and creative ways to fight for life — not a half-life, but a whole life.  A pain-free life.  A joyful life. And that is why I’ve set out to offer myself and all women who suffer from chronic conditions the promise of new hope. I’m excited to share with you the discoveries I’ve made about the untapped potential of our brains as a healing tool, and how we can activate the brain’s healing responses to give us the best chance of health. I’d like to hear from you. What is the Tiger in your Lifeboat? How does it make you more determined to find answers? Why?