Senior Women Web

Blog

  • CultureWatch: Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste

    Books 

    Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste

    By Luke Barr

    Published by Clarkson Potter, 2013; 322 pp.,Julia and friends
    hardcover, paper, ebook, audio CD and download

    Reviewed by Jill Norgren

    In Provence, 1970 Luke Barr gives readers a thoughtful contemplation of post-World War II cooking history along with a delicious slice of foodie gossip. As the sub-title of the book suggests, he is primarily interested in cookbook and food writers M.F K. Fisher, Julia Child, and James Beard. The lesser known, but important American expat Richard Olney also makes an appearance.

    Simone Beck, Julia Child and Louisette Bertholle cooking fish at L’École Des Trois Gourmandes © The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts

    Barr argues that the 1970 meeting of these gastronomes, in their beloved Provence, stimulated a change in their culinary philosophies or, in the case of Beard, an opening to argue on behalf of the importance of American cuisine. Before their meeting Child, Fisher, and Olney had quietly deliberated the appropriate place of classic French cooking.

    Formerly advocates of the rich, heavily sauced French haute cuisine, in 1970 these iconic American culinary gods met, cooked, and ate in the kitchens of their south of France homes and helped to usher in a new culinary era by articulating the problems and limits of formal French cooking. By considering whether haute French cooking was too complicated, “rarified,” and snobby, and ultimately agreeing that it had these qualities, these luminaries pushed along a revolution in the middle class American food experience. Mastering Mastering the Art of French Cooking slowly yielded to a less snooty, healthier, and more democratic approach to good eating by Americans. As Barr writes, the moment and the meetings were about “American food and cooking finding its way from beneath the shadow of France.”

    Barr opens his story with Fisher who had begun visiting, and then living, in France well before World War II.  She studied French literature and was photographed by Man Ray. By the 1940s the smart, beautiful American from California had  “alchemized life, love, and food in a literary genre of her own invention.”  In the United States her readers experienced the pleasures of La Belle France, as understood by Fisher, in well-received books such as The Art of Eating and With Bold Knife and Fork. Her witty books along with a column in The New Yorker made her a founding member of the American “Food Establishment,” a doyenne of food and love. And yet, by the late 1960s Fisher, who was in sympathy with the Vietnam antiwar movement and West Coast student movements began questioning how French culture fit in the changing, less formal world of the United States.

    Later to the food scene than Fisher, Julia Child — co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (I and II), Time magazine cover subject in 1966, and host of The French Chef on PBS — was the face of sophisticated cooking in the United States. Barr brings her into the circle of his story along with Richard Olney, a less well known but nevertheless important mind in the world of cookbook writing. At six foot three and three hundred pounds James Beard completed the group which met in Provence. Barr describes Beard as “the original modern American food icon … a public figure since the 1940s — a relentless popularizer, author, and columnist.”

  • The Most Unique Job in Each State, in One Map

    Michael Kors Model

     Fashion Designer Michael Kors model on the runway, 2010; Wikimedia Commons

    By Jake Grovum, Stateline

    The state of Hawaii has almost 13 times as many professional dancers than would be expected based on the national average. In New York, there are more than six times as many fashion designers. Florida has five times more professional athletes.

    Indiana, home to the Purdue University Boilermakers, has more than six times as many actual, working boilermakers.

    Those are just some of the results of a Pew Charitable Trusts analysis of data released last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Pew also funds Stateline). The numbers show that in many cases state reputations for certain industries are well-earned and supported by employment data.

    To see the result of the unique jobs data analysis in every state, see Stateline’s data visualization. 

    The numbers for North Dakota and Texas, for example, show the states’ heavy reliance on the energy industry: North Dakota has almost 36 times more extraction workers than would be expected based on national averages; Texas has almost seven times as many petroleum engineers. Louisiana, too, shows its reliance on energy: There are 20 times more riggers in the state than would be expected.

    Other states show similar reliance on certain industries: West Virginia has 77 times more mine shuttle car operators than would be expected. Nevada, meanwhile, is home to 32 times more gaming supervisors. Oregon has more than 40 times as many loggers.

    The results in some other states are more curious, although perhaps not for those who live there. Mississippi has almost 17 times more upholsterers within its borders than would be expected based on the profession’s prevalence elsewhere. Missouri has almost four times as many psychiatric technicians. In South Carolina, there are almost 12 times more tire builders.

    It’s worth noting the numbers don’t show that one state or the other necessarily has more people working in a given profession than others. The analysis takes the overall prevalence of certain professions nationwide and compares the expected concentration — relative to a state’s population — with how many people are actually working in those jobs in a given state.

    In practice, that means high concentrations in certain industries don’t necessarily equal huge raw numbers of workers in those jobs. North Dakota’s extraordinary concentration of extraction workers (almost 36 times the national average), for example, translates into just 910 workers. Texas’ petroleum engineers — about seven times the national average — equal almost 20,000 workers.

    In other cases, the prevalence of a certain profession and  the sheer number of people pursuing it are impressive. In the District of Columbia, for example, almost 3,400 people are employed in one particular industry, almost 121 times the national average.  

    So which “industry” is so popular in the nation’s capital?  Political scientists, of course.

    Stateline, Copyright © 1996-2015 The Pew Charitable Trusts. All rights reserved. 
     

  • Indigo: A Technology Has the Potential to Transform the Jeans Dyeing industry From a Polluting Industry Into a Green One

    Editor’s Note: We love indigo dye, whether it’s on a pillow, a shirt, hangings or a one piece jumpsuit we saw in a current Anthropologie catalog. And this is good news, hopefully encouraging more items to sport that fabulous dye. 

    By Wallace RavvenStack of blue jeans in england

    Who doesn’t like blue jeans? They’re practically wrinkle-proof.  The indigo dye that provides their distinctive color holds up to detergents, but ages into that soft, worn look. No wonder the average American wears jeans four days a week. No wonder it’s a $66 billion a year industry, with three billion pairs of jeans manufactured each year. 

    Stack of blue jeans in window; Tony Hisgett, Birmingham, UK. Wikimedia Commons

    Indigo is one of the oldest dyes used for coloring textiles. For thousands of years it was extracted from tropical plants in Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. An indigo-dyed garment discovered in a Thebes excavation dates back to 2500 B.C. 

    Commercial synthesis of indigo dye replaced the plant source around 1900. Today, the jean industry uses about 40,000 tons of indigo a year. But there is a dark side.  Industrial synthesis of indigo from petroleum is a “dirty” chemical process. Chemical production of indigo into an effective dye requires a chemical that becomes toxic to fish and some other aquatic life. And when sent to waste water treatment plants, it severely corrodes the piping.

    Jeans manufacturers are interested in finding a cleaner route to produce the iconic dye. UC Berkeley bioengineering professor John Dueber has studied the chemical steps plants use to naturally make indigo, and he thinks he has found an environmentally green way for the industry to churn out the dye without the use of the toxic compound.

    When plant leaves are healthy, a chemical precursor to indigo, called indican, is caged within a sugar molecule and isolated from the rest of the cell in an organelle.  Only when leaves are damaged is indican released from this compartment. The sugar protective cage is removed, allowing a chemical change that makes indigo.  Green leaves turn blue.

    Dueber’s lab very recently identified the plant enzyme that is essential for adding the protective sugar cage. They plan to insert its gene into bacteria. Addition of a second gene as well as tweaks to a few of the bacteria’s genes should enable the bacteria to produce indican. 

    Hundreds of gallons of the harmless bacteria growing in fermentation tanks would churn out indican, held within the sugar’s molecular embrace. Later, outside the cell, a second enzyme could remove the protective glucose cage, triggering the final chemical transition to indigo. The result: environmentally cleaner jeans.

    “To find green solutions, our lab looks toward nature,” Dueber says. “We thought going back to the plants would be smart. If we can identify the enzyme the plants  use to produce the sugar cage and clone  its gene, we think the microbes can make large quantities of indican for dyeing jeans without the use of highly ‘dirty chemicals.’” 

  • Have You Been to Kykuit? Nelson Rockefeller’s Picasso Tapestries Commissioned for the Family Estate On View in San Antonio

    Editor’s Note: We went to Kykuit — sounds like a song, if not a novel, but means ‘lookout’ in Dutch — some years ago, having made reservations some months before, and recommend it as a destination. 

    The San Antonio Museum of Art  is exhibiting  Nelson Rockefeller’s Picassos: Tapestries Commissioned for Kykuit until March 8, 2015. This is the only time that so many of the commissioned Picasso tapestries (fourteen of eighteen) have been exhibited together outside of Kykuit, the Rockefeller family estate in Westchester County, NY, and property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

    Commissioned by Nelson A. Rockefeller (1908 – 1979) between 1958 and 1975, the tapestries were woven entirely by hand by Madame J. de la Baume Dürrbach at her studio in southern France. Enormous in scale — some as large as 9 ft. x 12 ft. — these woven works of art took between three and six months to complete. Picasso collaborated with the weaver on the color choices of many of them and approved the final weaving. The artist verified his involvement by signing the backs of photographs of the tapestries.

    One of Rockefeller’s missions was to share the enjoyment and appreciation of the arts. Much more durable and easier to transport than paintings, these tapestries ─ vibrant translations ─ of great works by Picasso can be viewed by a much larger audience. This past December, the majority of these works ─ feats of imagination, craftsmanship, negotiation, and collaboration ─ traveled from Kykuit, to San Antonio.

    Three of the tapestries were based on paintings from Rockefeller’s own collection:  Interior with a Girl Drawing, Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit, and Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier). Four of the tapestries were based on paintings from the Museum of Modern Art’s collection ─ Harlequin, Three Musicians, The Studio, and Night Fishing at Antibes.

    Nelson A. Rockefeller believed in the transformative power of art and his love of modern art was encouraged by his mother, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art. Rockefeller said, “I was always most strongly drawn to the work of the great European pioneers of modern art … Of all of them, Picasso was always my favorite. His restless vitality and constant search for powerful new forms of expression, combined with his superb craftsmanship and sense of color and composition, have remained an unending source of joy and satisfaction to me.”

    A catalogue with color plates of the tapestries and essays treating the history of the commissions, the original paintings, and the correspondence between Rockefeller, Picasso, and the weavers, has been published to accompany the exhibition.

    Nelson A. Rockefeller’s daughter Ann donated much of her father’s Mexican folk art collection to the San Antonio Museum of Art in 1985. It is housed in the Museum’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art Center.

  • New Mexico’s Nurse Hotline Lauded as a Model For Other States

    Nurse© NurseAdvice New Mexico

    By Christine Vestal, Stateline

    A registered nurse takes a call at New Mexico’s 24/7 NurseAdvice call center in Albuquerque. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants other states to adopt similar call centers to assist residents during pandemics and other emergencies. (NurseAdvice New Mexico)

    If your infant has a high fever or you’re experiencing an unusual pain in your abdomen and you live in New Mexico, you may want to call the NurseAdvice line before you do anything else.

    New Mexico is the only state with a 24/7 registered nurse call center that is free to all residents, whether insured or not. In operation since 2006, it has kept tens of thousands of New Mexicans out of emergency rooms and saved the state more than $68 million in health care expenses.

    It has provided a basic form of health care to thousands of uninsured people who have no other access to care. It also has relieved demand on doctors and hospitals in a sparsely populated state where all but a few counties have a severe shortage of health care providers.

    On top of that, the statewide call center has generated real-time public health data that has served as an early warning system during epidemics and natural disasters. In April, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will recommend New Mexico’s advice line as a national model that other states adopt during an emergency preparedness summit in Atlanta.

    “We did a thorough search to find out whether anyone had an ongoing telephone triage system that could be used as a model,” said Lisa Koonin, a senior adviser in the CDC’s influenza coordination unit. “New Mexico’s NurseAdvice line is the only one we found. It really is one-of-a-kind,” she said.

    Nurse advice hotlines have been around since the 1960s, when health maintenance organizations (HMOs) tried to cut costs by inviting members to call a toll-free number to report their symptoms and get a nurse’s advice before racing to the emergency room or making an appointment with a doctor.

    Similar call centers proliferated in the mid-1980s when computerized guidelines and so-called tele-triage software became widely available. Medicaid programs also began including nurse hotlines as part of their benefits. But the vast majority of these advice lines have been for members and patients only.

    New Mexico’s advice line is free and has been used by nearly everyone in the state old enough to make a phone call — 1.5 million residents are registered in NurseAdvice line’s database, 75 percent of the state’s roughly 2 million residents.

  • When You’ve Seen One, You’ve Seen the Mall

    Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II

    By Doris O’Brien         

    I never dreamed I’d be spending my retirement in a mall. Don’t get me wrong.  I haven’t become a shopaholic willing to squander my 401K distribution in the pursuit of materialism. *

    Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, ca. 1880. Edizioni Brogi Firenze, Wikimedia Commons

    To be more precise, I live above a mall, in a sixth floor, two-bedroom aerie with a panoramic view of Southern California’s San Gabriel mountains, which my son — now relocated to the rugged Pacific Northwest — likes to remind me are more accurately ‘foothills.’ Whatever they are, I find sustenance in watching them as they change  their aspect at the bidding of clouds and sun, at long last glowing purple and gold  in the sunset.

    Like some 400 or so other apartment dwellers in my mall complex, I am just an elevator ride above all the action in our trendy open mall of stores, theaters, bandstands, restaurants, fountains, kiosks, and bowers of  bougainvilleas — all  situated smack in the center of a small city. It is even possible to get married in a lovely outdoor atrium on the second level.  Not that I ever expect to be needing that  particular service.

    When I moved here three and a half years ago, I was instantly impressed by its sheer convenience.   But since then, much to my disappointment, both mall anchor stores have closed.  One was an up-scale locally-owned super-market, where I could load a cart with groceries, roll it to an elevator and up to my apartment,  then leave it  in the corridor to be rounded up later.  

    The other anchor store, at the opposite end of the mall, was a three-story Macy’s.  Apparently neither emporium made enough of a profit to justify  remaining in the  high rent district.  As it is, Macy’s has another larger and more imposing store just a few miles away.  As for the grocers, despite its excellent service and merchandise, shoppers living elsewhere didn’t appreciate the  time and hassle required to find and validate parking space in the mall’s cavernous underground garages.  

    Both large spaces have remained empty for over two years.  One has been used annually for a mega-holiday flea market run by a local charity.  And after lengthy and contentious negotiations, the separate building once occupied by Macy’s is about to be bulldozed and replaced by a 170-room boutique hotel. It’s directly across the street from the City Hall on one side, and the municipal auditorium on the other, a prized location for visitors to the city.  Perhaps the guests will even do some shopping at what is left of the mall.  

    The smaller shops here have likewise  felt  the  brunt of decreased business. There are frequent turnovers of tenants when leases expire.  The next long-time store slated to close will be  the World Bazaar.  Many of the surviving mall attractions offer food and entertainment.  A 12-theater Cineplex allows customers to choose their own seats. Sports bars, ethnic restaurants, and wine bodegas continue to attract crowds.  And a popular gym franchise is going strong.

  • Karli Cerankowski is Shedding Light On An Under-studied and Misunderstood Facet of Human Sexuality: Asexuality

    World Pride Parade Toronto

     Asexual marchers at World Pride Parade Toronto 2014. (Photo: Naomi Lir)

    By Leah Stark

    When confronted with the notion of asexuality, most people are baffled by the idea of a life devoid of sexual attraction.

    But that’s rapidly changing, in society and in academia, thanks in part to Stanford scholar Karli Cerankowski. A lecturer in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Cerankowski’s research and activism has made strides toward designating asexuality as an academic discipline.

    Cerankowski, who received her PhD from Stanford’s Program in Modern Thought and Literature last year, emphasizes social discourse and de-pathologization of sexual orientation.

    In her dissertation about the ways asexuality is misunderstood in American culture, Cerankowski traced “the history of the creation of sexual categories” through an extensive study of text and media from pop culture as well as historical works, including collections of sexology texts in the Stanford University Libraries.

    Cerankowski says that “society has normalized certain levels of sexual desire while pathologizing others. In a sense, it’s the social model that’s broken, not asexuals.”

    Although sex and sexuality are centralized, prized aspects of our culture, Cerankowski says that “if we recognize the diversity of human sexuality, then we can understand that there are some people who just don’t experience sexual attraction or have a lower sex drive or have less sex, and that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with them.”

    Cerankowski and her co-editor, Megan Milks, recently published  Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, the first collection of essays on asexuality — and the second book ever to be written on the topic.

    Asexualities is academic in its approach, and contributors from a variety of disciplines pursue the subject through scientific, sexological, psychoanalytical and political models.

    Science takes a back seat to the human experience in the introduction of the book, where Cerankowski and Milks each share personal anecdotes. Cerankowski details her own perplexing identity journey, spanning her identification as celibate to her establishment in the queer community. She recounts later finding some resonance upon exploring the small world of asexuality, but realizing that current definitions needed to be complicated and the parameters loosened.

    Cerankowski’s own research reveals that people are capable of obtaining just as much contentment from other areas of life, and complete gratification in life doesn’t necessarily include sexual gratification.

    “We sort of prioritize sexual pleasure and sexual fulfillment in our lives, but we can think about the other ways that people experience intense pleasure, like when listening to music,” Cerankowski says.

    Cerankowski’s studies of asexuality found their home under the expansive umbrella of queer and sexuality studies, which she says assists in the acceptance of asexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation.

    In 2010, Cerankowski and literary scholar Megan Milks speculated on the creation of “asexuality studies” as an academic field in an article they co-authored for Feminist Studies. And now, just five years later, Cerankowski says asexuality studies is becoming more recognizable as an academic field of study.

    “We argued in our article, and I still argue, that approaching the study of asexuality from a queer and feminist perspective can be an enriching endeavor,” Cerankowski says. “Not only can we use those theoretical and methodological tools to understand and theorize asexuality, but asexuality can also shift those frameworks and get us to think about queerness and sexuality in new and exciting ways.”

  • Could Your Political Beliefs and Party Affiliation Influence How Long You Live?

    The next time you vote for an elected official, you might be deciding more than the election: you could be making a statement about your health. If you’re conservative or moderate, you may actually die sooner than someone with a liberal outlook.

    This is the conclusion reached by Peter Muennig, associate professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School at Columbia University, in new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.  But it begs the question: why?

    The results, based on the results of a large survey of American adults matched with their death records, were not explained by income, education, geography, happiness, or how religious they feel. The researchers controlled for these factors, all known to affect health. Instead they offer two possibilities. First, liberals may have stronger community ties; and social cohesion is known to be a factor in health. Second, the two groups may have different parenting styles. Evidence suggests that conservatives are more likely to have strict parents who limited kids’ experiences and control their choice of friends. The result could stunt social capital, another mark against good health.

    Muennig and his study co-authors aren’t the first to look at this question. Prior studies exploring the connection between health and political affiliation found that conservatives had better health than liberals. But those results were based on self-reported health; what people believe about their health may not match their actual health status. Muennig used a more reliable measure: each survey respondent’s answers were linked to how soon they died. If liberals overestimated their health, it might be because they are dissatisfied with their lives and health, and perhaps even a touch hypochondriac. On the other hand, conservatives may be more likely to think behaviors like smoking are benign.

    But even when Muennig and colleagues substituted self-reported health for time-to-death, their findings held true: liberals were more likely to report good health. What then could account for the discrepancy?  The researchers say the causative arrow might point in the other direction. To wit: it’s possible that being in poor health may lead someone to become more liberal. “It is definitely possible that sickness could change someone’s ideology or party affiliation,” says Muennig. One example: someone might have hospital bed conversion to the idea of universal healthcare.

    The researchers didn’t stop at political beliefs. They took a separate look at political party affiliation. It’s important to look at affiliation separately from ideology because the former is shaped by where someone lives, religion, and family traditions, sometimes even more than where they stand on the issues, explain Muennig and co-authors Roman Pabayo at the University of Nevada and Ichiro Kawachi at the Harvard School of Public Health. The result: there was no significant difference in survival between Republicans and Democrats, but Independents were more likely to outlive Democrats.

    “Independents tend to live in healthier, wealthier places,” says Muennig. “They are a unique brand, and probably draw some of the beneficial characteristics from either end of the political spectrum.” Conservatives tend to be wealthy, which is good for health; and liberals have attitudes like racial tolerance, which Muennig found to be protective of health in a previous study of the same survey data. 

    At the end of the day, what do the findings mean for public health? Should the country reorient itself leftward? Not exactly, says Muennig. “It might not be ideology that is important, but rather the personal characteristics that tend to go along with the ideology. From a policy perspective, knowing that ideology is important also helps us pinpoint these underlying health risks.”

  • A WPA 10-Panel Mural: Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Portrays A Sweeping Panorama of American Life

    Thomas Hart Benton America Today

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975); City Activities with Dancehall from America Today, 1930–31. Mural cycle consisting of ten panels; Egg tempera with oil glazing over Permalba on a gesso ground on linen mounted to wood panels with a honeycomb interior

    The exhibition,  Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered, celebrates the gift of Benton’s epic mural America Today from AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2012. The Missouri native painted the 10-panel mural cycle in 1930 – 31 for New York’s New School for Social Research to adorn the boardroom of its modernist building on West 12th Street. It was commissioned by the New School’s director, Alvin Johnson, who had fashioned the school as a center for progressive thought and education in Greenwich Village.

    Depicting a sweeping panorama of American life during the 1920s, America Today ranks among Benton’s most renowned works and as one of the most significant accomplishments in American art of the period. Exhibition Location: The Erving and Joyce Wolf Gallery, The American Wing, Gallery 746.  The exhibit runs until April 19, 2015.

    “The Metropolitan’s presentation of Benton’s great mural sheds new light on this visually and intellectually stimulating landmark in American art of the early 1930s, especially as the Museum is displaying the mural as the artist originally intended it to be seen”, stated Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Met. 

    Sheena Wagstaff, the Museum’s Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, commented:  “The exhibition reminds visitors that the key themes of Benton’s mural — the heroic proletariat and modern industry — were greatly significant for artists in a contemporary international context, not only in the United States, but also in Mexico, and in France between the world wars.”

  • Flashpots by Julia Sneden; A JAMA Study About Just How Long Menopause Symptoms Actually Last

     by Julia SnedenBrookstone personal fan

    One of my friends who quit her Hormone Replacement Therapy because of its possible links to cancer decided to go back onto her medication a couple of months ago. Her reason? In addition to feeling creaky, she was having hot flashes, six or seven a day and two or three a night.

    Anyone who has ever experienced a lively hot flash may understand her willingness to play the lottery with her mortality. If you could be sure that the flashes would go away in a few months or even in a year, it might be easier to stand firm and get through them without HRT. But when I complained to my doctor about still having hot flashes 3 years after menopause, he just smiled and said: “I guess you’re one of the lucky ones who continue to have them for a long time. Some women have them for the rest of their lives.”

    Some comfort, that, and I was annoyed enough to snap that I’d like to see him try to deal with them. (Actually, now that more and more women are going into medicine, perhaps someday there will be a researcher who really understands the problem, and by virtue of her femaleness is highly motivated to figure out a remedy safer than HRT).

    But I can’t be too hard on my doctor. Even though the link between HRT and cancer was then undocumented, he urged me to resist taking hormones because there had been a rise in the incidence of breast cancer all across the nation, and he suspected there might be a connection to HRT.**

    Not taking the hormones suited me fine, since I’m one of those cautious women who resists taking drugs, and am inclined to let nature have her way unless I’m at death’s door. This doesn’t mean I have learned to enjoy the hot flashes.

    Eleven years after menopause, I still have occasional flashes. They’re no fun. They’re called “flashes” for a good reason, because they strike as fast as lightning, a sudden feeling of intense heat all over my body. Sweat begins to pour, especially on my face which turns, I have been told, beet red. I can recall teaching school on a cold winter’s day, with the sweat running along my hairline and wetting my bangs so thoroughly that I looked as if I might have come straight from the swimming pool.

    And then there’s the horrid sensation of waking from a sound sleep, drenched in sweat, even in the dead of winter with your bedroom window wide open. You toss off the covers, waiting for the flash to subside so that you can go back to sleep, which you finally do, only to wake up in a few minutes because you’re now sensibly cold. Or, and this is worse, you get up, wash off the sweat, change to a clean nightgown, and climb back to bed only to wake up an hour later in the same fix.

    Fortunately, the frequency of my hot flashes has diminished considerably, and my coping methods have grown. Here are a couple of things that have helped me. If any readers have found other effective strategies, I’d be happy to hear about them.

     

    • Buy yourself a couple of battery-powered personal fans. Brookstone makes a great one that stands about 6″ tall and is safe to use around kids and pets, as the soft plastic blades can be easily stopped by your hand. (But be careful not to get it near hair, which can become wound on the shaft). I carry my little fan with me all over the house. I put it on my ironing board, on a shelf above the sink, on the bathroom counter, etc. It’s well worth the investment and the jokes it engenders.
    • Try a diet rich in soy products. Recent studies say there’s doubt that soy is effective in treating hot flashes, but I perceive a difference in the frequency and strength of mine when I eat lots of soy. I buy frozen edamame (soy beans in the pod), and shell and pop them like peanuts. They’re great fiber, and a tasty treat, too.
    • I haven’t yet found a good answer to sleep problems. When I wake up hot, my mind starts spinning with all the worries of life, and then I really am awake. But if I get up and do something physical like unloading the dishwasher or even doing some simple stretching, it seems to help in getting back to sleep. Reading or watching television or working at my computer, however, are guaranteed to keep my brain wide awake. 
    • Dress in layers, so that you can peel off something. Don’t wear polyester, which traps the heat and doesn’t absorb the sweat. Cotton is your best friend. 
    • Oddly enough, I find that some of the old Lamaze breathing and relaxing techniques work for me now as well as when I was in labor. They’ve gotten me through all sorts of minor medical and dental procedures, and I believe they shorten the duration of hot flashes as well. This may be a purely psychological effect, but I say if it helps, do it. 
    • And a splash of cold water doesn’t hurt, either.

     © Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com

    *Editor’s Note: When Julia related her tips about dealing with the effects of hot flashes some years ago, we asked if she’d put them together for our readers.  We’ve updated her tips with the current press release dated  Feb. 16, 2015 by JAMA Internal Medicine:

    JAMA Internal Medicine

    Frequent menopausal vasomotor symptoms (VMS), including hot flashes and night sweats, lasted for more than seven years during the transition to menopause for more than half of the women in a large study and African American women reported the longest total VMS duration, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.