To the world we may seem quietly engaged in some activity, shopping, housework, even watching television. But our minds are always active and the stream of thoughts and “self-talk” that run through our minds every day may mean the difference between having a postive outlook on life or suffering under a load of stress.

According to doctors at the Mayo Clinic, whether the thoughts you have are mostly optimistic or pessimistic can affect even your health and your life span.

The power of positive thinking isn’t just a popular catch-phrase, it’s a way of living that reaps benefits such as decreased stress levels and greater resistance to illness. Optimism is linked to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease and longevity.

But many times a negative perspective can be the result of what we consider our logic and sense. So how do we overcome negative thoughts and change them to positive ones? One suggestion from the Mayo Clinic: Don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to anyone else.

For examples of how to put a postive spin on your negative thinking, check out Positive thinking: A skill for stress relief.

I have read this story a couple of times and the headline always boldly states “Housework Cuts Risk of Breast Cancer” or something similar. A study of 218,169 European women shows that doing housework is more effective in reducing your risk of breast cancer than either job or leisure-related exercise.

The study showed women doing an average of 17 hours a week doing housework activity, such as washing, cleaning, vacuuming, etc. The conclusions were that housework activity reduced breast cancer risk in both pre- and postmenopausal women.

Now the study at least gives value to something women do everyday, which is more than previous studies have done. And while women increasingly have careers outside the home, they still shoulder the largest share of housework - on average 61% of the housework in a two-income family is still being done by the wife.

Now the news articles all emphasize that mopping and vacuuming were found to be more protective against breast cancer than sports or job-related activity, but the true bottom line is that housework is a regular, moderate and daily form of exercise. This type of regular execise was deemed more protective than less frequent bouts of intense physical activity. Additionally, the study had low numbers of women who were classified as “active” in daily job-related exercise, which may account for no link being found for that area.

Cutting through the hype, the conclusions of the study show:

*There is a strong link between physical activity and breast cancer risk.

*Regular, moderate exercise is more beneficial than less frequent, intense recreational physical activity

*Total physical activity reduces the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women

You can read an abstract of the study or download a PDF version of the full text here.

The subject of the Holiday Blues and the Winter Blahs comes up so often that we can find ourselves believing that it is natural and normal to feel depressed during the Christmas season. To some extent, we will all have some holiday stress and our expectations can be set a bit high leading to minor disappointments. But don’t overlook symptoms that could signal real depression.

I was talking to a casual acquaintance the other day and she began to tell me how this year she suddenly has no interest in Christmas. This wouldn’t be unusual except that this has always been her favorite time of year. This year, however, she hasn’t sent Christmas cards, she hasn’t put up a tree, she hasn’t done any decorating or shopping. Further, she began to tell me that she doesn’t want to get out of bed and go to work, she didn’t participate in the holiday events at her office. She doesn’t even want to be home with her husband. The key to all this may be her confession that she is also in the throes of menopause.

Midlife is a time of increased risk of depression for women. Studies show that it is most likely to occur during the onset of menopause and may be associated with the decline in estrogen levels.

Symptoms of depression include:

* depressed mood
* changes in appetite
* decreased interest or pleasure in activities
* change in sleep patterns
* fatigue, or loss of energy
* difficulty concentrating
* restlestness and irritability
* thoughts of suicide

Although some symptoms of menopause may overlap symptoms of depression, if you experience any of these symptoms, consult your doctor. Recognizing that these symptoms require intervention is the most important step. I managed to extract a promise from my acquaintance that she would, indeed, call her doctor that very day and seek some professional advice.

Here’s a link to a source on depression in midlife, symptoms, treatments and ways to get help.

University of Michigan Depression Center

I was trawling through Baby Boomer sites the other day (yes, having a look at the competition) and I noticed that most of them concentrated heavily upon music. This brought two thoughts to mind almost simultaneously:

1. The Baby Boomer generation spends a lot of time listening to music and is almost defined by the music of the sixties and seventies.

2. Is that really all we are - just an explosion of music?

After some weighty pondering (it’s what I do), I decided that there is some truth in the charge but it is not the whole truth. Yes, music was and remains very important to us. If any generation is going to insist that we had the best music, it’s the Boomers (and we’re right, of course). Music was our battle cry, our rallying point and our standard. It makes perfect sense that Boomer sites will look back to those songs and tunes, stirring our nostalgia and memories.

Yet that is not the full story. If music was our outward expression, what were we expressing? The answer has to be that we were reaching for something beyond the world our parents had built, that we wanted more than the material goods and chattels that seemed to be their driving motivation. Perhaps more than any generation before or since, we tried all sorts of ways to live differently, nothing was sacrosant and everything subject to scrutiny.

Of course, the energy and desire for change faded eventually and we wandered back into the great machine called society, retaining only our dreams of what might have been. But in those few years we had changed the world and made it possible for it to be as it is now.

Many of us look at what we have wrought and wonder where it all went wrong. Somewhere along the line things became less than we had hoped and much has changed for the worse, not the better. So we look back to our youth as a golden age and the music is the most direct expression of what we were striving for.

But that music is only the product of our generation. The real explosion happened in our thinking, as we threw everything out and started again from scratch. And that willingness to see things from another angle still pervades the attitude of the Boomers; we have not forgotten and are still striving for a better world, even if our efforts are less noticeable now.

At least, that’s the way I see it…