Aging Women

Why would any woman buck the tide, turn her back on modern cosmetology and choose, a la Barbara Bush, to flaunt her white hair? The answer, in a bit more than three words: confidence, compliments and more pressing commitments.

Sometimes you just want someone to tell it to you straight. You may look and feel better than your grandmother or even your mother did at 50 but the idea that 50 is anything like 30, Tracey Jackson practically screams, is either a marketing scam or a line made up by a 50-year-old guy in a bar trying to pick up a 30-year-old woman. We are fixated on youth. This is not news and, by her own account, no one has tried harder than Tracey Jackson to stay young. Although her grandmother swore by Crisco to defeat wrinkles, Jackson, 52 and a screenwriter in Southern California, has access to the latest anti-aging promises; Bikram yoga and Core Fusion (her preferred, one hour a day, six days a week regimen)

From hair-color treatments to Botox to surgical "mommy makeovers," it seems there is no limit to the ways women can try to hold on to their fading youth. But are these healthy self-improvements or simply vain attempts to look younger? It depends on whether women can accept that aging is a natural part of life, says Vivian Diller, a New York City psychologist and coauthor of the 2010 book "Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change. " In a recent interview, the 58-year-old former model and ballet dancer discussed ways that women can achieve a healthy self-image as they get older.

By Amanda Leigh Mascarelli As we age, our bones become thinner and more porous. No one disputes that. For the first four decades of life, men and women's bones undergo a continual renewal, shedding collagen and then rebuilding through mineralization — a process that plateaus in midlife for both men and women. But whereas men's bone density typically declines gradually over their lifetimes, bone loss accelerates rapidly for women during menopause because of the lack of estrogen.

Women: Want to postpone those fine facial lines, stave off unsightly crow's feet? The advice from two dermatologists is to stop smoking. They cite studies indicating smoking causes certain skin conditions and, perhaps worst of all, premature aging of the face. It all translates into wrinkles, and it happens more often with women than men. For many smokers, "it doesn't seem to impress them that they may die of lung disease or heart disease.

Health concerns of middle-age women will be the focus of a free seminar tonight at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Woodland Hills. "Life Choices" will feature four speakers discussing issues ranging from medical and natural alternatives for managing menopause to sexuality and relationships. The speakers will also answer questions from the audience, Kaiser officials said.

The title of her keynote talk before the Western Gerontological Society's 31st annual meeting here was "Power and Justice for Older Women: The Feminization of Poverty," but Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) addressed what she views as an alarming new mind-set in America: selfishness. "America has always stood up for what was right, for helping people in need as we would help members of our family," Schroeder said. "We see now a new mind-set. We are not a family anymore but a team.

Even Bronze Age women had osteoporosis despite their presumably active lives, according to researchers from the Vienna University Hospital. The team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that they used X-rays to determine the density of bones from 14 women buried at Unterhautzental, Austria, and found that they were about 11% less dense than bones from five men, indicating that the women were at greater risk for fractures.

I had an idea the other day that I would be taken to task for writing that "the most beautiful women I have seen are the women of Paris." "I think it is in their genes," I said; "or perhaps it is diet. Most of them look lean and hard, with good legs and small breasts, high cheekbones, flat cheeks, and eyes large and wide apart. And of course they are chic." A man who belongs to a club I belong to pulled me aside at a meeting the other night and said, "Have you ever been in Stockholm?"

The end is still not in sight for Martina Navratilova--and no, she didn't start wearing glasses because otherwise she wouldn't be able to see retirement before it hits her smack in the face. Why quit now? Sure, she will be 33 in three months. But what would the women's tennis scene look like if Navratilova weren't around? Steffi Graf would be all by her lonesome. So, whether she knows it or not, tennis probably needs Navratilova as much as she needs tennis.

So here we are, at an age we thought happened only to our mothers. We thought we'd be wearing heavy gold bracelets by now and learning about wine. In Italian. While we traveled the world. Doing Yoga. The children — if we had children — should have launched themselves into successful adulthoods, so we could go trekking in Patagonia and dabble in watercolors, gently dispensing wisdom and sassy quips. We expect any minute we'll be full of infinite beauty and graceful maturity.

Middle-aged men still have higher rates of heart attacks and heart disease than middle-aged women, but those gender differences appear to be narrowing, according to a study published Monday. The findings follow earlier research, published in a 2007 issue of the journal Neurology, establishing that stroke prevalence among women ages 45 to 54 was double that of men of the same age. Together, the findings suggest "an ominous trend in cardiovascular health among midlife women," said the lead author of both studies, Dr. Amytis Towfighi, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Southern California.

SOMEWHERE, in most women's conscious or unconscious minds, is the unspoken expectation that, if their marriages or relationships last, they will most likely outlive their partners. They know that their children, for whom they're primarily in charge, will grow up and leave. And they face a barrage of advertising and other societal cues that subtly but ever so steadily suggest that they're not getting older, they're getting invisible.

Five years ago Japanese women's rights advocates won their battle to legalize the birth control pill. Now they are waging an even tougher fight -- getting women to use it. "I don't know anyone who is on the pill among my friends, and we don't really talk about it," said Junko Okihiro, 24, a software company engineer. Okihiro and her friends are the vast majority in Japan. About 370,000 Japanese women use the pill, according to estimates, only 1.

One of the most popular British imports in recent years is what might be called the tea-cozy movie. Brimming with the most twinkly eccentrics this side of the Shire, with stories of tidy emotional uplift and unsullied locales straight from the national tourist board, the tea-cozy movie means to wrap you in warmth from your nose to your toes. English directors such as Mike Leigh may traffic in hot reality, but over here we often prefer our Brits tepid.

Heavy menstrual periods are more than an inconvenience. They exact a significant economic toll. American women who suffer severe bleeding and cramping miss nearly a month of work and lose work time valued at nearly $1,700, on average, each year, researchers report in the first attempt to quantify the financial impact. Dr. David Cumming, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alberta in Canada, analyzed data from nearly 2,800 U.S.

One of the most popular British imports in recent years is what might be called the tea-cozy movie. Brimming with the most twinkly eccentrics this side of the Shire, with stories of tidy emotional uplift and unsullied locales straight from the national tourist board, the tea-cozy movie means to wrap you in warmth from your nose to your toes. English directors such as Mike Leigh may traffic in hot reality, but over here we often prefer our Brits tepid.

Today's consumers have a seemingly insatiable appetite for health information. They find it via the Internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines and, in one of the most convenient forms, newsletters. Dozens of paid subscription newsletters, generally running eight to 12 pages, are mailed directly to homes from hospitals, universities and prominent doctors. Hundreds more are sent free by organizations such as health plans as a promotional tool. Competition has been fierce.

Caring for an elderly, ailing parent can be heartbreaking duty for anyone. A new study suggests that is literally the case as well, and that daughters may be most at risk. Stanford University research presented recently measured the cardiovascular distress of women caring at home for their parents and spouses, all suffering from dementia. The findings showed that heart rates and blood pressure of daughters rose more than did wives' during social interactions with the ailing loved one.