HEALTH FULL BOOMER

I recently bought a book entitled, StrengthsFinder 2.0 which includes the opportunity to go online and by answering about 20 minutes worth of questions, determine what our 5 key areas of strength are. Many of you may already know yours ( or think you do) and I must admit that after doing the tests and reading the comprehensive reports they sent me, I was able to look and say, "oh yeah, I guess that is true." One area of strength is my need, or drive to learn and assimilate knowledge and another strength is my ability to take information from a wide variety of sources and disciplines and put it together in some sort of cohesive package of researched facts and make sense out of it on a larger scale. Until I did the tests, I didn't necessarily see these things as strengths as I always assumed that it was better to specialize and focus our efforts on increasingly smaller areas of study. After all, in medicine, it's the specialists who make all the money and perhaps this is true in most other areas of business, marketing, writing, education, science, etc. This would account for my increasing frustration with people and organizations that just can't seem to see the big picture, i.e. governments, schools, religions and other bureaucracies.

Over the past few months I find myself totally immersed in several disparate areas of study and haven't thought too much about how it all comes together, until now. I realize that some of it has to do with approaching retirement age, not being sure of our ability to afford retirement, seeing so many people around me having serious (and worse) medical conditions, personally being irresponsible with weight, food and fitness choices and the general malaise that seems to come with economic meltdowns. It also occurs to me that I am not alone in these struggles as so many of us try to make sense out of a world that is moving increasingly faster with annual pandemic panics that are starting to happen twice a year, food that is unsafe to eat, wars, pestilence, diseases that have been raising billions of dollars with no cures in sight, government agencies rife with corruption (including ones responsible for our health and nutrition safety), multi-national pharmaceutical companies that have created junkies out of everyone, taxation that punishes the successful and independent and a laundry list of other depression inducing nonsense that would drive one to a good bottle of wine - if one could afford one.

Out of this field full of fertilizer a few flowers must eventually sprout and I have decided to create or at least plant, a flower of my own. I will continue to use this space for my excess Mind Gas and general ranting about whatever suits my fancy but I am initiating a new blog dedicated to providing positive options as a result of all of the seemingly unconnected reading, research and interests that I have been working on. It will be focused toward people who are considered to be "baby boomers" and looking for alternative ideas about everything from health to income opportunities, retirement planning to travel and fitness solutions to safe food choices. I will do my best to boil down some of the interesting research and new information into plain language with connections to my sources so that the reader can continue their own investigation.



Some of you may be aware of my like for contradiction and whenever I find information that flies in the face of conventional and accepted wisdom, I devour it. I use the excuse of keeping an open mind when I stumble into that kind of research - really, it is just plain glee at pricking a hole in all of those pompous gas bags that try to control our lives. You won't need to be a contrarian to enjoy the new blog but I really believe that there is an enormous amount of BS in most of the fields I study and that some professions (and you know who you are) shroud the truth in obfuscation and diatribe that is intentionally designed to make it more difficult for laymen - see, I can do it too.



OK, so the new blog is called Health Full Boomer and I plan to offer information on the complete "health" areas of our lives including medical, fitness, nutritional, financial and anything else that contributes to the whole person and our enjoyment of life. Life is for living, not waiting and it is a lot easier (as I have recently found out) when we are physically fit. I don't know about you but I come from the school of 'no pain - no gain' and during that pursuit I have discovered a program developed by a doctor (of all people!) from Florida who has turned the entire idea of long, boring, exhausting workouts on its head. He claims, and has the research to back it up, that we need 12 minutes per day of intense workout to reclaim the fitness that our bodies were created for. No expensive gym memberships, hour long jogs or $2,000.00 electronic clothes hangers in the basement. I currently have his program open on my desk as I put together a new 12 minute routine for next week. I have been using his ideas for about a month and a half and can happily report that it really works! So, if you are curious, my first posting at Health Full Boomer will be about the PACE program developed by Dr. Al Sears, MD.
In the new blog, I will try to keep the tone light and informative and save my whining for this space. I am also hoping to drive more traffic to Health Full Boomer and will be writing some magazine articles, etc. that will reference it. If you are so inclined, I would appreciate your help in spreading the word about it and will be offering some FREE reports and information exclusively available to followers of the blog.



To your continuing prosperity and good health...