Live Well Be Gorgeous

By Suzy Cohen, Lifescript Pharmacist
Between the shaky stock market, plunging home values and unemployment, there’s plenty to keep you awake these days. Don’t let the constant toss-and-turn ruin your health. Here are 12 remedies that’ll help bring on the zzz’s. Plus, test your sleep smarts with our quiz…

It’s 2 a.m. and you’re still awake. You’ve tried reading, watching TV, maybe even downed a cocktail or two – nothing works.

Sound familiar? It’s not just a matter of not feeling rested. Without enough sleep, you’re likely to gain weight, eat unhealthy food, smoke and skip exercise.

Whether you’re sleepless in Seattle, St. Louis or Salem, you have lots of company: According to a poll by the National Sleep Foundation, more than a quarter of Americans are losing sleep over financial worries.

Read on for a list of the most common (and strange) remedies that can help you wake up refreshed. (As always, check with your doctor before using any of these.)

Over-the-Counter (OTC) Sleep Aids

1. Nytol or Sominex (Diphenhydramine)
These two popular over-the-counter remedies contain antihistamine, an ingredient usually for allergies.

They relieve sneezing, itchy eyes and other allergy symptoms, but the active ingredient – diphenhydramine – also makes you sleepy. So the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved these drugs as sleep aids.

Who’s it for? People who worry about becoming addicted to prescription drugs. They don’t require a doctor’s visit, and they’re often cheaper than prescription drugs.

Watch out: Too much of these drugs will cause side effects such as dry mouth, constipation, urinary retention and blurred vision.

They can also cause headaches and daytime dizziness, so don’t drive if you feel “fuzzy.” Men with enlarged prostates should avoid them because the drugs may inhibit their ability to urinate.

By Jen Laskey, Special to Lifescript
If you have fibromyalgia, you know that life is 10 times harder. The complex chronic pain disorder affects every facet of your day. So how can you cope? Here are 7 symptom tamers. Plus, how much do you know about fibromyalgia? Take our quiz to find out…

It’s bad enough that you have fibromyalgia, a painful, puzzling disorder. What’s worse is that every symptom – from brain fog, to pain, fatigue and depression – hurts not only yourself but also your relationships, work life and physical, emotional and mental health.

There is no cure, which means you just have to learn to live with fibromyalgia and take steps to ease its symptoms.

“Effectively treating fibromyalgia requires a combination of medication and lifestyle skills,” says Daniel Clauw, M.D., fibromyalgia expert and professor of anesthesiology and medicine at the University of Michigan. He’s also director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center there.

He and other experts offer 7 ways to manage your symptoms:

1. Start exercising.
No question that working out is good for everyone, but it can especially help fibromyalgia sufferers, who often feel stiffness (especially after waking in the morning) and restless leg syndrome.

By Linda Childers, Special to Lifescript

Padma Lakshmi is best known as the host of Bravo’s hit reality show “Top Chef,” but for years she suffered silently with endometriosis, a painful gynecological condition that affects more than 10 million American women and girls. In this Lifescript exclusive, the star discusses her experience with the disorder, plus the scoop on “Top Chef” and more…

While she’s graced dozens of magazine covers, Padma Lakshmi harbored a painful secret: She suffered from endometriosis, a female reproductive disorder in which the endometrium, which normally lines a woman’s uterus, grows in other places as well, typically on the fallopian tubes, ovaries or the tissue lining a woman’s pelvis.

Left untreated, endometriosis can cause pelvic pain, excessive bleeding, fertility problems, back pain and painful monthly periods.

Lakshmi’s menstrual cramps left her bedridden for days. While friends tamed period pain with heating pads and over-the-counter medicines, the “Top Chef” host relied on the prescription narcotic Vicodin for relief.

Yes that is actor  Minnie Driver’s unmistakable chin to help make a point that healthy skin is home to a much wider variety of bacteria than scientists ever knew, says the first big census of our co-inhabitants.

WASHINGTON – Eeeww. There’s a zoo full of critters living on your skin — a bacterial zoo, that is. Consider your underarm a rain forest. Healthy skin is home to a much wider variety of bacteria than scientists ever knew, says the first big census of our co-inhabitants. And that’s not a bad thing, said genetics specialist Julia Segre of the National Institutes of Health, who led the research.

Sure they make your sneakers stinky, “but they also keep your skin moist and make sure if you get a wound that (dangerous) bacteria don’t enter your bloodstream,” she said. “We take a lot for granted in terms of how much they contribute to our health.”

People’s bodies are ecosystems, believed home to trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that naturally coexist in the skin, the digestive tract and other spots. But scientists don’t have a good grasp of which microbes live where, much less which are helpful, even indispensable, in maintaining health. The NIH’s “Human Microbiome Project” aims to change that, recruiting healthy volunteers to learn what microbes they harbor so scientists can compare the healthy with diseases of microbes gone awry — from acute infections to mysterious conditions like psoriasis

Click on picture for full story

By The LifeScript Editorial Staff

Have walked under a ladder or opened an umbrella indoors lately? Wendy Travis sports a story that explains the good and the bad about theses superstitions and where they came from

Our Friends from Lifescript  published this wonderful daily reflexion:  What makes you happy?

By John H. Sklare, Ed.D, LifeScript Personal Coach

Today’s reflection revolves around one of my favorite questions I like to ask people: What makes you happy? On the surface, it seems like a simple question that should be fairly easy to answer. However, I’m willing to bet that if you give this question some serious thought, it might not be so easy to answer. Which bodes the question, if you don’t know what it takes to make you happy, how can you realistically pursue happiness? With that as our foundation today, I ask you again to consider: What makes you happy?

As I see it, one of the most important intangibles you can usher into your life is happiness. The late English writer Storm Jameson once wrote, “Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” The truth is that happiness looks very different to each one of us. What makes one person deliriously happy will often do absolutely nothing for another. However, one of the keys to finding happiness in life involves knowing what it is that makes you happy. If you don’t know what makes you happy, I suggest you give this some serious thought today. Happiness is one of life’s precious treasures that will lift your spirit, enhance your well-being and enrich your life.

Wishing You Great Health,
Dr. John H. Sklare

As the economic downturn made work scarce, one San Francisco photographer realized she had to be “truly innovative” to stay in her field. So she started taking tasteful, sexy boudoir photos for women to give to the very lucky men in their lives. Think Marilyn Monroe … only you .

According to Laura  Coffey,  San Francisco out of work photographer Corina Marie Howell spent several months last year shopping her extensive portfolio of celebrity and fashion photography around to magazines, studios, galleries — anyplace that might want to hire her. Time and again, businesses turned her away because they were in penny-pinching mode.

“I love photography, and I really want to be a photographer,” said Howell, 26. “I realized that if I wanted to avoid waiting tables, I’d have to do something truly innovative to stay in my field.”

Is  a boudoir photo right for you?  They could be more trouble that anything based on the following questions:

1. Are you and your partner in a stable relationship?
2. Are you comfortable being photographed scantly dressed?
3. Are you a public servant, or in  profession in which, should these photos fall into wrong hands, can be taken out of context and jeopardize your character, credibility and reputation.

If you answered   Yes to 1 and 2 “no”  to number 3 , then go for it! If such photographs may come back to haunt you in the future… then chose another gift!