Real Simple
It’s not that I’m nosy (not so much anyway). But somehow, when the subject is the care and feeding of my still-tickin’ heart, I’d rather take my prescriptions from a top women’s heart doc who’s willing to let me peek over her shoulder. And that’s what I found, as I flipped through February’s Real Simple. There, cardiologist Nieca Goldberg, who’s 50 and who — like me — has a family history of heart disease, opens the book on the smart things she does from breakfast till bedtime. She jump-starts her day with a bowl of high-fiber Kashi GoLean, doused with antioxidant-rich blueberries. And tells us to aim for 25 grams of fiber a day. She begs us to consider our doctors as our “nonjudgmental confidants,” and don’t be ashamed to spill the whole truth. Try to eat fresh — not packaged — foods; at a salad bar, “avoid anything glistening.” Snack on a handful of walnuts or almonds, which keep your arteries strong. Take stress seriously, she warns, and look for ways to cut it; she’s recently instituted “no e-mail weekends.” Because studies show that less than seven hours of sleep can lead to high blood pressure, she turns out the lights at 10:30 most nights. Her heart-healthy day starts all over at 6:20 a.m.
— Barbara Mahany
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Chicago
Men have Viagra. So now women are asking, “Where is the blissfully happy pill for us?” wrote Karin Horgan Sullivan in February’s Chicago magazine. It’s coming, though women are far more complicated than men when it comes to sex. A new topical testosterone gel that would increase the sex drive of post-menopausal women has been developed by Lincolnwood-based BioSante. If all goes well, the product, called LibiGel, might be available in 2011, Sullivan wrote. Still, testosterone products for women must lead to more “satisfying” sex, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which isn’t an easy standard to meet. There’s no long-term safety data. And some say that testosterone products for women are a solution in search of a problem. Factors such as “poor communication with her partner [and] too much stress can all negatively affect a woman’s desire for sex,” Sullivan wrote.
— Julie Deardorff