Month: January 2024

If you are running through your entire stock of cozy winter socks every week, you might be wondering if there is something more you can do to keep your feet warm.

While chronically cold feet can indicate your footwear simply isn’t up to par, it can also reflect an underlying problem you may want to address, especially if you’ve entered your mature years.

Common Causes of Cold Feet

When it comes to feet that frequently feel frosty no matter what you do, there are a handful of potential causes that involve everything from circulation to nerves, genetics, and even stress.

Underactive Thyroid

Your thyroid plays an important role in regulating your metabolism, and when you don’t have enough essential thyroid hormones being produced, your metabolism can slow down leading to many issues, including cold hands and feet.

Smoking

Chances are you have heard the words “quit smoking” more than any other piece of health advice in your lifetime, and for good reason.

Smoking isn’t just bad for your lungs. It actually constricts blood vessels all over your body inhibiting good circulation and contributing to things vastly worse than just cold feet, like heart disease and cancer.

Peripheral Artery Disease

When fatty deposits cause arteries to narrow, they can obstruct proper blood flow to the limbs. Without normal circulation of warm blood down the legs and to the feet, you could experience chronically cold feet.

If you have existing risk factors like diabetes, atherosclerosis, or high blood pressure, talk to your doctor about this possibility.

Stress

Did you know that an important part of your body’s innate fight or flight response is to divert blood flow away from your limbs and to your core? If you are under a lot of stress or experiencing frequent anxiety, your fingers and toes may feel frostier than normal.

Sitting

An increasingly sedentary lifestyle could be affecting your body’s ability to properly circulate blood. Not only has excessive sitting been linked to early death but lack of movement when sitting for prolonged periods (i.e., watching a movie, working, etc.) can also make it hard for your blood vessels to properly supply your feet and nerves with the warmth and nourishment they need to adequately function.

Anemia

A shortage of red blood cells often associated with iron deficiency can compromise your body’s ability to deliver oxygen to cells. A cascade of problems can result, including reduced heat production, thus making your feet feel colder than normal.

Raynaud’s Syndrome

A rare condition known as Raynaud’s syndrome causes the body’s small blood vessels in extremities like the feet, fingers, nose, and ears to almost completely constrict when exposed to cold air.

This temporary halt in blood flow causes the extremities to become white and then return to normal, often painfully, once they are warm again.

Nerve Damage

Sometimes nerve damage from an injury or a condition like diabetes can cause you to feel sensations in your feet that aren’t actually real. For example, your feet might not feel cold to the touch, but if you have nerve damage, they could feel cold, numb, or prickly to you.

What to Do

Unfortunately, research shows that older women are much more likely to experience cold in their extremities than men. However, before you self-diagnose some rare and unforeseen medical condition to explain your cold feet, take these easy steps to warm them up:

Choose Good Socks

Ultra-thick socks can actually cut off your circulation in tighter shoes while cotton can quickly absorb moisture and stop retaining heat.

If you have cold feet, opt for comfortable wool socks that fit well with your shoes, especially if you use orthotic inserts, and that wick away moisture in the event your feet get wet outside in the winter weather.

Get Moving

Physical activity facilitates the best blood flow all over your body, especially in your feet. Keep up with your exercise routine during the winter and make sure to take frequent breaks when sitting for long periods to stretch your legs and move your feet.

De-Stress

Discover easy, effective ways to de-stress this winter and give your feet a boost of warmth. Try taking a warm bath, getting a foot massage with warm oils, or resting your feet by the fire with a cup of tea and a good book.

In the event you do suspect an underlying problem is contributing to your icy appendages, talk to your doctor. Symptoms like joint pain in your feet, unexpected weight changes, ongoing fatigue, fever, skin changes, and sores on your feet that won’t heal could indicate the need for stronger treatment.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do your feet often feel cold, especially at night when you go to bed? What are some tricks you have for keeping your feet warm? Please share your experience and tips in the comments below.

Originally posted at: Alexia Echevarria’s Polka Dot Skirt and Crop Top

I remember passing notes to my bestie in grade school and waiting with exhilaration for her return message. It was all great fun even though we were sitting just a few rows apart in the same classroom and would spend our entire recess engrossed in conversation about what fifth grade girls find most interesting – fifth grade boys.

But now, decades later, having traded that primary form of written correspondence for abbreviated, less intimate Facebook and Instagram posts and texts, I’ve discovered that personal notes can hold some of the same delightful anticipation and emotional satisfaction.

I’m a writer, so it seems rather obvious that writing would offer me a feeling of deeper personal expression, but I am pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoy and look forward to the return message.

It all started a few years ago, when a woman from Canada read one of my essays on Sixty and Me and sent me a message through my website. We began chatting via email and found we had much to talk about. So, periodically, when she crosses my mind, I drop her a line, and I’m always happy to hear from her.

Over the past years, it’s happened several more times, the exact same way, and again a few months ago, and now only a day ago. Women I don’t know, who I probably will never meet in person, since we live in different states, countries and continents, are now part of my life through an occasional, but strikingly candid series of messages.

The second and even more delightful surprise is the depth of our intimacy through these communiques. We’ve learned about our lifestyles, our loves and losses, our worries, and how much we have in common as women navigating this era of our lives. It’s truly wonderful and has added a new dimension to my life, for which I am immensely grateful.

I don’t think I am unique, nor special, but I do think this happened because I am open to it and welcome the opportunity. So, I believe anyone who wishes to can begin a pen pal relationship that suits their lifestyle, interest and needs.

How to Connect with a Potential Pen Pal

There are various Pen Pal Match Up sites online. Travel and Leisure published a list in 2022, some of which focus on special interests, like women travelers. I also found an online article on Martha Stewart’s site that offers links.

For those who enjoys taking a pen in hand, there is Snail Mail Pen Pals Ladies Only. 

If you’d like to brighten the day of an elder person, there are several Facebook pages, like Pen Pals for Seniors, where people post their requests.

A More Personal Approach

You might also consider being a pen pal to someone in your family. A friend of mine, who actually inspired this article, is pen pals with her 11-year-old granddaughter.

Even though they still talk on the phone, zoom and visit in person often, she says her granddaughter loves receiving actual written letters in the mail. My friend makes homemade cards, sends photos and writes special memories that will one day be this child’s tangible and lasting mementos of her grandmother’s love.

We are all eager, it seems, especially now, for a sense of purpose, connection and honest communication. Becoming a modern day pen pal has offered me all of that. I hope you will consider it as an opportunity to enrich your life as well.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Did you have a pen pal back when you were in school? What do you remember about them and the experience of corresponding? Have you considered looking for a pen pal? What would that correspondence look like?

*Her exact top is sold out

Originally posted at: Lisa Hochstein’s Black and White Printed Scarf Top and Pants

When a good friend sent me this picture:

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A post shared by HattieMae Bell (@hattiemae_bell)

I was reminded of something my late husband once said: “It’s only when I look in the mirror that I see how much I’ve aged. Inside I feel the same as I’ve always felt.”

Have you had a similar experience? I certainly have. But how do we interpret it or is an explanation even possible? This story may provide clues.

What’s It Like to Be Old?

In a cozy living room little Emma sat cross-legged on the soft carpet, her eyes wide with curiosity as she looked up at her Grandma Rose nestled in a favorite armchair by the fireplace. The fire cast a warm glow on her grandmother’s kind, wrinkled face.

“Grandma,” Emma began, her voice filled with innocence, “what’s it like to be old? Really old?”

Grandma Rose’s gaze reflected her sincere affection. “Well, sweetheart, I suppose I am really old now at eighty-seven, but even before this, someone asked me what it was like to know that most of my life was over. I thought about that for a long time.”

Emma’s face showed she was listening closely.

“I told them that, in my heart, I don’t count years. The voice inside me doesn’t grow old, Emma,” Grandma Rose explained. “The voice inside you won’t grow old either. You’ll always be the same girl just like I’ve always been the same girl – your great-grandma’s daughter.”

“Great Grandma Lily?” Emma asked.

“Yes, that’s right. Thinking about the future getting shorter and shorter as I look ahead …well, as I said, I don’t see things that way anymore.”

“But you did grow old, Grandma,” Emma pointed out with a puzzled expression.

“Indeed I did, my dear,” Grandma Rose nodded. “I watched my body age, my hearing and eyesight grow dull, but the person inside, the spirit, the voice that has always been there, has never changed. That led me to realize that we continue somehow, though I cannot explain it in words exactly. It’s a different way of knowing. You feel it in your heart.”

Emma pondered Grandma Rose’s words, her young mind reaching to comprehend.

“So,” Grandma Rose continued tenderly, “the next time you see an elderly person, try to look beyond their slow, uneven gait, and realize that their inside voice is ageless, like yours and mine, like everyone’s.”

Emma nodded pensively. “I’ll remember that, Grandma. Our spirit is forever.”

Grandma Rose smiled, the depth of her expression revealing fondness and wisdom. “Yes, and we must love and respect that spirit, that voice, Emma. And when we do, we’re peaceful and content. We’re at home. We belong.”

Asking the Existential Questions

As little Emma did, the young naturally ask existential questions. We did also as children. Then for most of us as adults our attention and focus were overwhelmingly occupied with maintaining a livelihood, raising a family, caring for our relatives and friends, and creating and accepting our own personal narrative, formed by cultural prescriptions, as the core representation of who we believe ourselves to essentially be.

We Sixty-and-Me-ers now have the good fortune to revisit the answers we were given (and maybe unquestioningly accepted in childhood) and the personal narrative.

Different from the inner critic that calculates, reasons, sorts, and compares based on facts and intellectual considerations – all necessary for practical application – the inner voice is heart-centered, as Grandma Rose tried to explain to her granddaughter, rather than brain-centered and therefore is not as easily defined.

Poetically, we could say that the inner voice, the spirit, is the very Energy of Life – that which connects us to everything else – and that reason is feedback, to borrow a turn of phrase from the great Alan Watts.                                                                

But again, all this is simply a linguistic attempt to express the ineffable, which can be felt and fully known when one attunes to the inner voice of one’s own heart.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How old is your inner voice? Has it always been that age? What big, existential questions do you think about these days?