Hot MedFax

OK.  I admit it.  I dye my hair.  I exercise like a fiend.  I watch my weight and I tell everyone I have a 12-year-old son.  Most people think I'm in my early 50s.  No one would know I'm closing in on 60.  (I can barely believe it myself.) But a new study has found that denying our age -- yes, you, Baby Boomers -- can have psychological repercussions. "The myth exists that individuals can delay aging as they get older, or even evade it all together, by using measures such as diet, exercise, plastic surgery and Botox," newswise.com reports. As we age, we're bombarded with messages that we can feel, look, and live like we did ten, twenty, even thirty years earlier. (I still see a 25-year-old when I look in the mirror.  It's when someone takes a picture of me that I realize, hey, I'm, gulp, old.  Well, older. And it's been quite some time since I haven't been asked if I'm Phillip's grandma. "“Mortality is a given, but there’s an a...

It's pretty interesting.  Why do people who normally eat fruits and vegetables, and chicken and fish, when they do eat meat, devour french fries and hot fudge sundaes when they go out to fast food restaurants? Stephanie Clifford at The New York Times reports that " American consumers, even otherwise healthy ones, keep choosing caloric indulgences rather than healthy foods at fast-food restaurants." Restaurants have added salads and fruit and other healthier foods for some time.  But, as Clifford notes, "i t’s the sugary, fatty items that are flying — or waddling — out the door." Would you believe, as Clifford points out, that you can now have a bacon and egg sandwich between two glazed doughnuts?  You can, at where else, Dunkin Donuts. McDonald's CEO Donald Thompson recently told Cifford that although the chain had dedicated "one-sixth of its advertising time to salads, they make up 2 to 3 percent of sales, and don’t drive growth. "  Then...

I just don't get it.  How can she stare into the camera and say so unequivocally that he didn't do it?  When they have pictures of his face on TV, and blogs and tweets about his going radical? "I know my son," she cried. But I'm a mother, too, and I tried to think what I would do, how I would feel, if my son (nearing 12) ever did something like this.  As much as I hate this woman, yes, hate, I sort of understand.  She bore, birthed and raised this man, and much as what he did was despicable, he's still her son. But what does it tell our children if we shield them for their mistakes?  Or deny they made them?  Fortunately I've got a pretty good kid (most of the time) but I know there will come a day when he's going to do something big, wrong.  Will I be tempted to explain it away, or rationalize it ("he was framed"), to act like he didn't do it, or it's no big deal, when really, it's huge? Of course I've denied things in...