Over the weekend my friends and I were discussing the pros and cons of artificial sweeteners  - and no, my friends aren’t nearly as nerdy as I am with this stuff, but they are becoming increasingly interested in losing a few pounds and treating their bodies right. So it dawned on me that I have never told all of my *f.a.t. readers about Stevia, the herb that is a natural sweetener!! How could I have forgotten, as this is truly a way to go from “fat” to *f.a.t. (Fit After Thirty)!

I discovered it at my health food store when I was just a hot young co-ed. Actually, I’m not sure I ever was one of those, but I should have been for as healthfully as I ate. (I know you regular readers are thinking, geez, she read the fiber diet book in high school and she hung out at the health food store in college, what a geek!) I’m not denying it, but the good thing is it allowed me to have years of experience with the natural sweetener, so I could pass along that information to all of you! 

Stevia is a South American herb that has been used as a sweetener by the Guarani Indians of Paraguay for hundreds of years. The leaves of this small, green Stevia rebaudiana plant have a delicious and refreshing taste that can be 30 times sweeter than sugar. It has been available in liquid and powder form for many years, and is a God send for diabetics. The reason is, because stevia does not spike blood sugar levels. This is why it is a good diet aid for all of you!

I know it sounds too good to be true, so for all of you naysayers, put your positive cap on while you read the next few sentences. It has zero calories, zero carbs, and is even believed to lower blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and even improve digestion. You can bake with it, mix it in drinks and sprinkle it on cereal, just as you would sugar.

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When I was on the birth control pill during part of my twenties, I told the gynecologist that I thought it had decreased my libido, made me less orgasmic, and turned me into a moody, emotional basket case. Just based on my common sense belief that anything that affects hormone levels could likely affect libido, I asked her innocently, “Can the pill cause those symptoms?”

As if she had stock in the very company that made them (and she probably did), she insisted that there was no evidence that the pill could cause any of the symptoms that I described.

I never researched it; I just chalked it up to her being stupid, went along my merry way and stopped taking the damn things. Thanks to incessant media coverage of the AIDS epidemic when I was a teen, I was already a diligent condom user, regardless of how much I trusted my boyfriend, so stopping the pill didn’t cause a disruption to my normal routine.

As it turns out, she was uneducated about the issue, because I now know that studies existed from years prior to that conversation, which reported the negative effects of oral contraceptives on sexual function, including diminished sexual interest and arousal, suppression of female initiated sexual activity, decreased frequency of sexual intercourse and sexual enjoyment. 

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Since fat loss, sexy abs, and tight buns aren’t the only things required to stay healthy and fit in your thirties, I like to give you reminders on how to protect yourself on a cellular level - from the inside out. So, for anyone who had any doubts about whether to drink bottled water over tap water, here’s an article about tap water contamination that you should read.

Pharmaceutical contaminants seem to be finding there way into the American tap water supply with more frequency. Although drinking water from plastic bottles seems to have its dangers too, I am starting to think the chemicals from plastic may pale in comparison to the cocktail of drugs we may be absorbing in small quantities every time we take a shower, or to those that we ingest every time we make coffee out of the kitchen tap water.

This is yet one more reason we all need to try to be healthy in all the other areas that we can control! In other words, eat right, exercise, and manage stress so you can ward off the damage done by living in an industrialized society! And it may just be worth investing in some water filtration systems for your home!

Here we go again with my favorite topic: pelvic floor muscles. A study out last year seems to confirm that wearing high heels can strengthen your favorite girl muscles! This may well be the coolest study I’ve ever reported on!

Just when you were ready to bitch and moan about your growing corns, bunions, and overall feet discomfort from wearing high heels, you can now take comfort in knowing they are good for your Gynecological Goddesses -the muscles in your body that help urinary and sexual function!  

Leave it to a female doctor from Italy to invent a study that proves that the beautiful Italian shoes we all love so much, have more redeeming value than just making our legs and butt look sexier!! 

Italian urologist, Maria Cerruto, seems to have proven her theory, and here is a bit from the full article:

She said her study of 66 women under 50 found that those who held their foot at a 15 degree angle to the ground - the equivalent of a two inch heel - had as good posture as those who wore flat shoes, and crucially showed less electrical activity in their pelvic muscles.

This suggested the muscles were at an optimum position, which could well improve their strength and ability to contract. 

However, this doesn’t excuse you from doing your Kegel’s so bone up on my advice for turning your vagina into a vice grip here.

A few months back, I told you in my article, Get Your Zzzzzs, about how important it is to get enough sleep if you want to maintain a healthy weight. Well, now there is more evidence that getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night, can help you lose weight. 

Glamour magazine did a study following several women who did nothing differently with their diet and fitness regimens, but added more sleep to their busy schedules. Read about the impressive results here.

Sometimes when I read health studies I wonder if they are worth passing on to the rest of you, because they often seem to fall into the category of: common sense should have made this study unnecessary.

But, since some good folks in the UK, with a lot fancier degrees than the one I have, did a study to prove that walking is a good distraction from eating, who am I to be a study snob? So, I’m going to tell you about it. Especially since it relates to one of my favorite subjects: chocolate.

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A new study has shown a link between resting heart rate and coronary events in women. Over 100,000 post-menopausal women were studied at 40 U.S. clinics to evaluate resting heart rate as an independent predictor of cardiovascular risk in women.

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When I was in college, I met an old soul of a guy, who, despite his chronological age of 20, was like talking to a man many years older. His name was Thomas and he had a crush on me. Although I too, was a bit introspective and probably too serious for my age, Thomas’ maturity seemed over the top to me.

I just couldn’t reciprocate with the type of feelings he had for me. Maybe I was intimidated by his knowledge of Bach and Beethoven, or just plain bored by it, or maybe too embarrassed to walk around with a guy who was comfortable enough in his own skin to sport boots that looked like something straight off of Danielle Boone’s body.

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Ladies, if you are one of those women who loves her glass of wine per day with dinner, a new study clearly indicates that you are raising your risk for various kinds of cancer by indulging.

Unfortunately, all of the health benefits with wine relative to the cardiovascular system, do not apply, when it comes to the risk for developing cancer. A new British study which followed 1.28 million women between the ages of 50-64, to determine if there is a link between their alcohol consumption and development of cancer. The study showed that even one glass ofany type of alcohol per day - including wine- increases a woman’s risk of developing breast, liver, and rectum cancer.

From A Washington Post Article about the study, here is the scary part of the calculations:

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Awhile back I asked the question about where our minds had gone, relative to a story about moms turning babies into living Barbies, but I think I now have the answer! Our minds have joined our periods in the world of non-existent. Yup. Our brains apparently joined the normal menstrual cycle on the oversized jetliner called the feminine pad (with the sticky wings) never to return.

So, everybody, it’s time to break out your journals. No, not your food diaries or exercise log; I’m talking about your Pure Insanity Journals in which you track all things that make you say, “has everyone gone certifiably mad?”

Okay, fine; you can start your journal today if you don’t already have one. And in it, you can add today’s post for your first entry. Write this down: Many women comply willingly to scientific community urging them to give up periods. 

No, not the punctuation marks. You can still use a dot at the end of your sentences. I’m talking about periods as in those biologically natural monthly occurrences that make a woman a woman. Calm down, Monopausal Molly, I’m not spitting in the face of your femininity, I am merely making the point that the menstruation factor is a key component of being chromosomally XX rather than XY. And apparently, there are enough menstruating women who are tired of being XX and fed up with wearing period panties, that they’re ready to kiss their “monthly visitor” goodbye.

It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing. Did the loss of our brains cause us to be okay with letting science turn us into human lab rats, or is it the lack of our normal hormonal functions what caused our brains to go haywire enough to want to dress our babies like Carrie Bradshaw? 

I don’t know which it is, but apparently, society hates women being women so much, that it wasn’t enough to give us options of two pills that can reduce periods to three days, and a third that can limit them to four times per year. They had to introduce a fourth that can delete them as easily as if they were just typos on your computer screen of life. One day it’s wings and torpedoes with strings, and the next it’s the ability to go commando 24/7, 30 days per month.

My God, didn’t we learn anything from the 2008 study that showed pill use in women undermines our ability to sniff out the right male pheromone match for ourselves? (Based on some of the men I chose to date while I was on it, I can vouch for the study’s accuracy!) So, if we tinker with nature anymore, are we all just going to turn into lesbians?

Have we become so tired of anything we label as an inconvenience that we demand it be erased from our lives, even if it is nature’s way of letting us know we’re the healthy, fertile beings we were meant to be? I’m not trying to go Ezekiel on you gals, but what are we going to let them do, turn us all into space aliens by the time it’s all said and done? Yes, I know, some of you  bleed like stuck pigs every 28 days, and want out of your confining pens, called menstruation, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. (High Heels and all!) 

Ladies, I implore you not to do this. In addition to this flying in the face of good sense and not passing my “caveman test”, think of all you’ll be giving up:

Unacceptable Effects Of Eliminating Periods:

 1. You will remove your free pass to be a bitch once a month due to PMS, which pretty much takes away your right to go ballistic on all the people you can’t stand.

2. You will no longer be able to blame having a puffy face in photos on “being bloated” because it’s  “that time of the month”, which means you really WILL have to start doing my list of 10 Diet Resolutions.

3. You will forfeit the opportunity to truly know the depth of your boyfriend’s love for you, when he sees you in your period panties for the first time and still stays with you.

4. You will miss out on the creative fun of making up cool code phrases that substitute for “I’m on the rag”, like The Crimson Tide floweth, and Aunt Flo is visiting this week.

5. Tampax and Kotex will lose a ton of business, which will cause them to seek a Feminine Product Industry Government Bailout along with the car industry, which will fall to you, the taxpayer.

6. Advil and Motrin will lose a ton of business from fewer cramp-suffering women, which will cause them to seek an Anti-inflammatory Industry Government Bailout along with the Feminine Product Industry, which will fall to…….you get it.

7. You will lose the opportunity to call in sick to your male boss with no questions asked, when you say the phrase, “I can’t come in because I’m having “female issues.”

8. You will miss out on the chance to tell the annoying girl from work that you can’t go to her Pampered Chef party because your period just has you exhausted.

9. You will no longer get the sympathetic back and foot rub from your significant other who hates to see you in such discomfort.

10. You will completely abolish your right to dump the kid in your husband’s arms at a moment’s notice, and prance off to the bathtub for “me time”, with no rebuttal.

Bonus Reason Not To Wear The Pure Insanity Badge:

11.  You’ll lose the “toiletries rule” as a gauge for whether your boyfriend is serious about you. (This is the rule that says if he lets you keep a  box of tampons under his sink, he’s into you.)