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What Do a Bunch of Old Jews Know About Living Forever?

New York Magazine has a great story this week about what it takes for a long, long, long life. The GrammaSutra wants to know what it takes to live longer and more vibrant lives. After all, it has long been our contention that the number one biggest deterrent to great sex is death. We've excerpted some of the article below, for the full monty on living longer click here.

Photo by Christopher Lane 

Don’t be sad,” says Finklestein on his deathbed. “I’ve had 80 good years.” 
“But you’re 98!” says his wife.
“I know.”


Except for the occasional doctor’s appointment or bad cold, Irving Kahn hasn’t skipped a day of work in more years than he can remember. And he can remember plenty of them: He’s 105.

 That record is vexing to his youngest son, Thomas Graham Kahn, who though 69 and president of Kahn Brothers, their brokerage and money-management firm, is still called Tommy. (Irving is chairman.) How can he take a vacation if his father won’t?

Instead, Tommy threatens to dock his dad for his short workday, which begins around ten and ends by three and often includes a nice bowl of soup. “It’s not like we have so many employees we can afford to have him shluf off,” Tommy says.

 Tommy runs the business, which has about $700 million under management. But even though Irving, with his very short stature and very large glasses, looks a bit like a horned owl peering up from his desk—a desk that features both a computer and grip bars—he is no figurehead. His is still the corner office, 22 floors above Madison Avenue. (During the blackout of 2003, he walked down.) He gives or withholds the papal blessing on investment policy and reviews every transaction undertaken by the firm’s youngsters on behalf of clients.

Irving at age 1

The world’s oldest stockbroker, he first went to work on Wall Street in 1928. “This was before the Depression,” he says, then specifies which depression, as if I might confuse it with the one in the 1890s. Both are real to him; through a chain of memory leading back to his grandparents, Eastern European Jews who settled on the Lower East Side shortly before that earlier upheaval, he can almost touch the Civil War.

More directly, he can touch the technological revolutions that followed. He describes his father’s good fortune in getting into the lighting-fixture business in the years after “Mr. Edison opened his downtown office”—the one that brought electric power to Manhattan in 1882. He remembers with perfect clarity building a crystal radio in his bedroom around 1920 and amazing his mother, who thought music came only from Victrolas, with the music he “caught for free.”

 When you’re 53, as I am, and believe yourself to be on the wrong side of life’s unknowable midpoint, a conversation with someone who will soon be twice your age, and who furthermore has retained all his marbles, can be disorienting. For one thing, it has the effect of collapsing a century into a pancake. Czar Nicholas II and Barack Obama, gaslight and computer glow, grandmothers and grandchildren: All are contemporaries, all in sharp focus.

 The indiscriminate urgency of memory is disorienting for Irving as well. “I’d rather not know who I was and who I knew and what I did,” he says. “It uses up space I need for today.”

 By “today,” incredibly, he also means the future. All conversations with Irving eventually wobble back to his favorite ruts, such as how new technology might affect the viability of companies he follows. “I don’t worry about dying,” he says, assuming it will happen in his sleep. Instead he worries about staying mentally agile, which is why he reads three newspapers daily and watches all the C-Spans. “I know people collect postage stamps, but that’s just one thing. It’s about having multiple interests.”

He does not say multiple attachments; his own upbringing—his mother ran a shirtwaist business out of the home—suggested the value of independence and keeping an eye on the horizon. Newness served his family well: “A new country, a new language, a new public school, a new college.” At his home a mile up Madison—until he was 102 he took the bus—he has, he says proudly, “thousands of books, not one fiction. Mostly I’m interested in what’s on the edges: solar energy, sending vehicles beyond the moon.”

His belief in a personal future that will repay this curiosity—a future I can hardly imagine for myself without worries of illness and decrepitude—is what’s most disorienting about Irving Kahn.

You’d think that as he got older, then even older, and then bizarrely old, he’d have had ever more opportunities to despair. And, true, his eyesight and “earsight” aren’t what they were. He can’t walk much on his own anymore. He despises these limitations but ignores or finds ways to outwit them. Loss as well. His wife’s death, in 1996, was a huge blow, Tommy reports, but Irving “put his foot down a little more on the pedal, if that was possible.” When macular degeneration recently made reading difficult, he learned to enlarge the font on what he calls his Gimble.

It helps that he is wealthy enough to have full-time attendants. Also, perhaps, that he has always been a “low liver,” without flamboyant tastes, as his brown, pointy-collared shirt and brown patterned tie attest. He goes to bed at eight, gets up at seven, takes vitamins because his attendants tell him to. (He drew the line at Lipitor, though, when a doctor suggested it a few years back.) He wastes few gestures; as we speak, his hands remain elegantly folded on his desk.

 Still, a man who at 105—he’ll be 106 on December 19—has never had a life-threatening disease, who takes no cholesterol or blood-pressure medications and can give himself a clean shave each morning (not to mention a “serious sponge bath with vigorous rubbing all around”), invites certain questions. Is there something about his habits that predisposed a long and healthy life? (He smoked for years.) Is there something about his attitude? (He thinks maybe.) Is there something about his genes? (He thinks not.) And here he cuts me off. He’s not interested in his longevity.

But scientists are. A boom in centenarians is just around the demographic bend; the National Institute on Aging predicts that their number will grow from the 37,000 counted in 1990 to as many as 4.2 million by 2050. Pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health are throwing money into longevity research. Major medical centers have built programs to satisfy the demand for data and, eventually, drugs. Irving himself agreed to have his blood taken and answer questions for the granddaddy of these studies, the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, which seeks to determine whether people who live healthily into their tenth or eleventh decade have something in common—and if so, whether it can be made available to everyone else.

 


Posted on 11/07/2011 at 10:21 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Skinny Minnies Beware, Bigger Women have fewer Hot Flashes

We're jumping for joy today at The GrammaSutra! There's a new report out that says that heavier women over 60 had fewer hot flashes than leaner menopausal women under 60.  So if you're plump, over 60 and menopausal you're sweating less than your skinny, menopausal 55 year old sister.  Honestly if I weren't laughing my ass off in joy, I'd be laughing my ass off in joy! 

Just wait till the study comes out that women with some meat on their bones wrinkle less and age more gracefully.  Honestly, we'll have to have a holiday here at The GrammaSutra.  What do you think, do you believe the study? Are you off to replace your salad drawer with an extra ice cream compartment? Read the article from Health Day below and be happy, happy, happy!

 

 Older, heavier women tend to have fewer hot flashes than younger, leaner menopausal women, a small, new study suggests.

The study included 52 women who experienced hot flashes and were not taking medication for those symptoms.

The women's body fat percentage, waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) were also measured, and a special skin monitor and electronic diary were used to track their hot flashes.

The result: the researchers found that higher fat levels, BMI and waist circumference were associated with fewer hot flashes. These associations were strongest among white women.

However, the reduction in hot flashes associated with higher fat levels wasn't evident in women younger than 60.

One expert who was not involved in the study said the finding did make physiologic sense.

"Being heavier means more body fat that can convert androgens into estrogens," explained Dr. Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. That should mean that heavier, postmenopausal women will have more circulating estrogen than lean postmenopausal women, "which would explain the fewer hot flashes in the heavier postmenopausal women," he said.

The study also "provides a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between body size and hot flashes, emphasizing the important role of age," lead author Rebecca Thurston, of the University of Pittsburgh, added in a news release from the Endocrine Society.

Mezitis stressed, however, that the finding should not be seen as a "green light" for older women to pile on excess pounds.

"Being heavier means more body fat and higher insulin resistance and higher risk for metabolic syndrome," a constellation of unhealthy risk factors that can bring on heart disease, Mezitis said. "Higher estrogens may be to a certain extent cardioprotective, but I think studies will show more [arterial] risk than benefit in heavy postmenopausal women."

Another expert agreed. Dr. Stuart Weinerman, chief of the division of endocrinology at North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde Park, N.Y., said that "weight has multiple health effects, and this would not be evidence of finding an ideal body weight for anyone."

The findings were released online Aug. 31 in advance of publication in the October print issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

 

Posted on 08/31/2011 at 03:48 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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5 Great Things About Getting Old

Elderly couple walking on the beach

Dougal Waters/Getty Images

The Gramma Sutra wants to know any and all positive things about aging.  The people at Real Simple Magazine has compiled a list of a few great reasons to look forward to getting older.  We're wondering why having tons of sex isn't one of them?  Read on and be happy!

You’ll Be Happier

As it turns out, most grumpy old people used to be grumpy young people. Aging doesn’t turn a cheerful person into a grouch. To the contrary, research has shown that, as we age, we become more emotionally stable and content. In early adulthood, there are a lot of what-ifs: Am I going to find a soul mate? Have a child? Build a rewarding career? Then you spend the next few decades striving to achieve those goals. But when you’re older, the what-ifs have been resolved. So you are less stressed and can—finally—relax.

Laura Carstensen, 57, is a psychologist and the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, in Stanford, California.

To see the rest of the list click here

 

Posted on 07/28/2011 at 12:25 PM in Psychology of Sex, What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Clark Retirement Community LipDub

You've just got to love this video.  How do I sign up for Clark?


Posted on 07/21/2011 at 05:52 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Gay and Grey Today

Pittsford residents Marvin Ritzenthaler, left, and Steven Jarose. PHOTO BY MATT DETURCK

A story from yesterday's Rochester city paper talks about the greying of the gay population.  Senior centers that cater to a gay population are popping up all over the nation.  We want to hear from you GrammaSutrians, how are you finding the aging process if you're gay? More choice, less choice, are you happier, hornier, hipper? The Gramma Sutra wants to know.  Meanwhile read the fabulous article below by Tina Louise Macaluso on The Gay Golden Years and let us know what your experiences have been.

When Bud, an elderly gay man who lives in a Rochester-area residential community for seniors, posted news clippings outside his door regarding same-sex marriage, the reaction he got from other residents was not overwhelmingly positive.

"Some of the pictures were taken down," he says. "Once someone pinned note paper covering over a picture."

It was a little intimidating, Bud says. It's also an example of a culture that can be deeply entrenched in some traditional nursing and assisted-living homes: prejudice that can have a profound emotional impact on elderly members of the LGBT community.

Though Bud, who recently celebrated his 84th birthday, is out, he's still cautious. He lives alone and he asked that his last name not be printed.

"I've always been me," he says. "But I've been careful not to out myself to the wrong people."

Bud is certainly not the first gay man to move into a senior-living community. But he is part of a population of seniors that is gradually becoming more visible both nationally and locally.

Gay culture is sometimes criticized for its exaggerated emphasis on youth, but there is growing awareness about older members of the LGBT community - people who have reached their mid-60's, and are living into their 70's, 80's, and 90's. What do we know about them? What are their concerns? Are senior-living communities and nursing homes becoming more accepting of their gay clients? And how do they treat gay couples?

After New York passed same-sex marriage legislation last month, Bud found a message posted outside his door. Someone wrote a note saying, "Congratulations on gay marriage. I'm so proud to live in a state that's leaning toward equality."

"That really put a smile on my face," he says.

But Bud's experience of gradual acceptance, though a good sign, is not shared by all LGBT seniors. In some respects, LGBT seniors face the same issues and daily trials that many seniors face: less mobility, limited incomes, and managing illnesses.

But LGBT seniors often confront those issues along with the injustices and abuses that accompany discrimination. And elderly LGBT people frequently find themselves in a strange and unexpected predicament: while they have lived through the liberating gay-rights movement, they often discover that they stand to lose some of those freedoms in what are supposed to be their golden years.

"Many elderly LGBT people were not out through most of their lives, and they learned the importance of hiding," says Scott Fearing, program director for the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley. "Some [LGBT seniors] tend to go back into the closet," he says.

LGBT people have always been in nursing homes and senior living communities, but haven't always been visible, says Scott Fearing, program director for the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley. PHOTO BY MATT DETURCK

Unlike LGBT youth today, who are used to seeing gay characters positively portrayed on television and in film, LGBT seniors remember a time when it wasn't safe to be out.

In the early 20th century, homosexuality was viewed as something beyond scandalous, and could result in the loss of a job or housing. Given the history of discrimination toward LGBT people, it's understandable why many LGBT seniors are reluctant about being out.

Part of it, too, may be due to an increased sense of vulnerability that sometimes comes with aging, Fearing says.

Hiding may also help explain why it is sometimes difficult to find solid data concerning LGBT seniors. According to "Outing Age 2010," a publication by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, most of the research until recently has focused on elderly gay males. Much less research has been done on lesbians, and relatively little research has focused on bisexual and transgender seniors. This can present problems in health care, Fearing says. Little is known, for example, about the long-term use of hormones among transgender seniors, he says, or how the hormones will interact with other medications.

Researchers estimate that there are between two million and seven million elderly LGBT people living in the US today. And studies indicate that living in social and economic marginalization extracts a toll from LGBT seniors. Compared to their heterosexual peers, LGBT seniors are at greater risk of isolation, poverty, and homelessness.

The majority of LGBT seniors live alone, while their heterosexual peers are much more likely to live with their children or a caretaking family member. And research shows that seniors who live alone are at much greater risk of serious injuries, depression, and alcohol abuse.

And contrary to the stereotype that often portrays gays as financially secure with plenty of disposable income, research indicates that a significant percentage of LGBT seniors face financial difficulties in their later years.

Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders in New York City reported that about 35 percent of its clients in 2009 were Medicaid eligible with annual pretax incomes below $10,000. The situation is especially troubling for transgender seniors. Though they are typically more educated than the general population, transgender seniors are twice as likely to live below the poverty line, according to the California-based Transgender Law Center.

Education and cultural competency training for nurses, social workers, and senior care-givers will lead to greater acceptance, says Rainbow SAGE member and long-time LGBT activist Saundra Ehman. PHOTO BY MATT DETURCK

While many LGBT seniors slip back into the closet, others struggle to remain out: they dread transitioning into a nursing home or assisted living community, says Brian Hurlburt of Rainbow SAGE of the Genesee Valley. Many LGBT seniors have wrestled for years with being honest about their sexual orientation, Hurlburt says, and they don't want to go back in time.

"They really fear that they can't be who they are during these years," Hurlburt says.

For instance, they might be afraid to share close living quarters with heterosexual seniors who, for personal or religious reasons, still look at LGBT people through a 1950's lens.

"Fear of having to go back into the closet is overwhelming for them," Hurlburt says. "Some just can't do it."

Rainbow SAGE, the local chapter of the national SAGE organization, is one of several local groups working to alleviate these fears. The group holds social activities such as pot lucks, picnics, and holiday celebrations.

But SAGE is also active in advocacy and cultural competency training. Members speak to health-care workers, caregivers, and nursing and assisted-living workers who are in daily contact with LGBT seniors.

"The big word everyone wants to hear is ‘acceptance,'" says Saundra Ehman, SAGE member and a long-time Rochester advocate for LGBT seniors. "We're pigeon-holed. When you say the words ‘gay' and ‘lesbian,' many straight people immediately focus on the person's sexuality. That's just a small part of what we're talking about. We're talking about making the person comfortable being themselves. They deserve that."

Ehman says she remembers hearing a nurse in one home refer to an elderly gay man as "just an old queer." She says the incident was so disturbing that she couldn't forget it.

"That kind of abuse is why people are afraid," she says. "And this is what we're trying to change."

LGBT seniors who need to enter a nursing home want to be assured that they are going to be treated with respect, Hurlburt says. When LGBT couples aren't allowed to share a room, it only increases the sense of isolation for both people, he says.

But there are signs that cultural sensitivity training may be working.

"We're always trying to make sure that we're culturally aware and sensitive to all segments of the [senior] community," says Mary Kanerva, Catholic Family Center's director of aging adult services.

The organization's mission is to help people remain independent for as long as possible, she says.

"I think it's very important that we alleviate the fears," she says. "We really try to meet every person where they are."

And in some regions of the country - California, Arizona, and Florida, for example - there are a few "affinity" retirement communities, designed with the LGBT client in mind. The 10-acre Fountaingrove Lodge in Santa Rosa, California bills itself as the first gay continuing-care retirement community in the country.

Though progress is being made, society still has a long way to go before meeting the needs of LGBT seniors, says local attorney Jennifer Gravitz. And much of the problem, she says, is linked to institutionalized homophobia and discrimination.

As well-meaning as the medical, legal, and social-work communities are, she says, the problems are deeply entrenched.

Institutionalized homophobia creates its own unique form of suppression on LGBT seniors, Gravitz says, and it tends to impact them at the worst possible time - when they are living on limited incomes, coping with a chronic illness, or when a partner needs long-term care.

"First, we have to consider the mindset of people who are in their 60's, 70's, and 80's," she says. "They may not be aware of their choices, or they are fearful if they share who they are, they'll be further marginalized, punished, or denied services that they truly need."

The institutionalized challenges LGBT seniors face range from laws affecting inheritance to benefits. LGBT couples have no automatic right to inherit from a partner or spouse. They face higher taxation on an inheritance on deferred benefits, such as an IRA or pension. And surviving LGBT partners are not always eligible to receive deferred benefits.

"There are many benefits still today that domestic partners cannot receive, the military's being one of them," Gravitz says. "The preclusion of being able to receive Social Security from a deceased partner is another."

Gravitz is also troubled by an actuarial issue, particularly as it relates to financial and long-term planning. Most of the planning models are designed for heterosexual couples where it is well known statistically that women tend to outlive their husbands by about seven years.

"But what happens to those models when you have a family of two men?" she says.

Statistically, the two could become critically ill and pass away within a few years of each other. A family of two women, however, could each live, according to statistics, for years with disabling illnesses. What's the unique impact on each of those families, she says, when the planning models used are not typically designed with their needs in mind?

But the biggest discriminatory hurdle most LGBT seniors face has to do with Medicaid. While a short list of states have legalized same-sex marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act still prevails. The federal legislation signed into law in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton defines marriage as an act between one man and one woman, and it has direct influence over Medicaid rules.

Medicaid was designed to care for the truly poor, Gravitz says, who require the chronic care of a nursing home. A heterosexual couple can spend down or transfer assets to, for example, help the wife qualify to enter a nursing home. But the husband is allowed to keep the house and all of its equity, which can amount to thousands of dollars. The law does not impoverish the husband or the heterosexual "community spouse" in order to make sure the patient or wife receives the care she needs.

But domestic partners or legally married LGBT couples aren't recognized by Medicaid law.

"They are legal strangers to one another," Gravitz says. "It means that the house that they purchased decades ago and is paid off now has to be divided in half. And the community partner, the person not going into the nursing home, now has to buy back his or her own house."

Joint accounts are presumed to be the assets of the person requiring Medicaid, unless the community partner can prove ownership of half of the money, she says.

"That's just how the Medicaid rules are written," Gravitz says. "Unlike the community heterosexual spouse who is permitted to keep a certain amount of income, savings, and a car, all of that has to be liquidated. And the gay or lesbian community partner gets nothing. We've accomplished the opposite of what Congress intended for the heterosexual spouses."

This means the LGBT senior and community partner, who may be emotionally and physically frail, too, could now be made destitute so the ill partner will qualify for Medicaid and accepted into a nursing home.

"I can think of nothing more cruel or inhumane," Gravitz says.

http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/articles/2011/07/COVER-STORY-The-Gay-Golden-Years

Posted on 07/15/2011 at 12:00 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Older men love kissing and cuddling!

Funkdobby 

Picture by FunkDooby

GrammaSutrians it has now been scientifically proven that as men grow older they love kissing and cuddling.  It’s not just wham, bam, thank you Mrs. Robinson.  The GrammaSutra expects that there will be many women out there who are raising an eyebrow and a cocktail in consternation? Perhaps you haven’t realized that the silver fox sitting across from you at this very moment is dying for some cuddle time.  Take a look at your venerable valentine and try some tenderness.  Instead of assuming that your long-lived lothario has only one thing on his mind, try some foreplay.  Really ladies, men are not just sex objects, they have feelings and needs too.  

According to a study reported by Health Day News cuddling and caressing help boost long term satisfaction according to a new study of middle-aged and older couples.

The study also found that tenderness is more important to men than to women, that men are more likely to report being happy in their relationship, and that women are more likely to be satisfied with their sexual relationship, said the researchers from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.

The study included more than 1,000 couples from the United States, Brazil, Germany, Japan and Spain who had been together for an average of 25 years. The participants were 40- to 70-year-old men and their female partners.

Men were more likely to be happy in a relationship if they were in good health and if it was important to them that their partner experienced orgasm during sex. Frequent cuddling and kissing also predicted relationship happiness for men, but not for women

Both women and men were happier the longer they had been together and if they had higher levels of sexual functioning, the investigators found.

Japanese men and women were significantly happier with their relationships than Americans, who were happier than Brazilians and Spaniards, according to Kinsey Institute director Julia Heiman and colleagues.

Sexual satisfaction for both women and men was associated with frequent kissing and cuddling, sexual caressing by a partner, high sexual functioning, and frequent sex. For men, having had more sex partners in their lifetime was a predictor of less sexual satisfaction, the report indicated.

Sexual satisfaction for women increased over time. Those who had been with their partner for less than 15 years were less likely to be sexually satisfied, but satisfaction increased significantly after 15 years.

"Possibly, women become more satisfied over time because their expectations change, or life changes with the children grown," Heiman said in a university news release. "On the other hand, those who weren't so happy sexually might not be married so long."

Japanese men reported 2.61 times more sexual satisfaction than American men, while Japanese and Brazilian women were more satisfied sexually than American women.

"We recognize that relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction may not be the same thing for all couples, and in all cultures," Heiman said. "Our next step is to understand how one person's health, physical affection and sexual experiences relate to the relationship happiness or sexual satisfaction of his or her partner. So, we hope for more couple-centered than individual-centered understanding on relationship functioning and satisfaction."

The study is published in the August issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=654605

 

 

 

Posted on 07/08/2011 at 12:38 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Rolling in the Deep

The Gramma Sutra received this letter from a musical and merry GrammaSutrian.

Dear Gramma Sutra,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to tell you about how a new song brought up some old feelings.  Last month I'm spending time with my granddaughter when she puts this song on in the car, "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele.  I laughed and asked my gd how old the singer was and she said 21.  The voice, the melody, the backbeat took me back.  I might have been a 6o something year old woman in Chicago but all of a sudden it was the sixties and I was in San Francisco, hair wild, attitude buck wild, listening to Joni, Jimi and Joan.  I was standing in the pouring rain and mud at Woodstock.  I was driving in the Delta with this gorgeous long haired hippie drinking southern comfort, joining CORE and discovering the blues and John Lee Hooker.

That song made me remember all the other songs, the songs of my youth which have become the songs of my life.  I made my grand daughter play the song over and over and told her some of my wild stories, the more tame ones.  She looked at me with new eyes and I thought "Honey, if you only knew!"

Then I went home, downloaded the album and did a little Rolling in the Deep with that long haired hippie that I've been married to for over forty years.  Thank you Adele!

Love and Sex,

Mama Mimi, Chicago, IL

Whew! Mama Mimi, you've got us all hot and bothered over here at the Gramma Sutra.  Thank you for your letter and for those of you who don't know Adele, check her out below.

 

 

 

 

Posted on 05/25/2011 at 12:23 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Gramma Sutra meets Vibrant Nation

Hello GrammaSutrians!

We’ve been syndicated! The GrammaSutra can now be viewed at www.vibrantnation.com. VibrantNation.com is the leading online community for Baby Boomer women – the place where they connect and support each other on issues unique to life after 50, including fashion, beauty, family, relationships, work, money, and sex.

Vibrant Nation reaches 100,000 unique monthly visitors.  A trusted resource for women 50+, Vibrant Nation features a growing network of over 100 midlife bloggers, promotes offline gatherings, and publishes digital health and beauty content written by Vibrant women experts.

So check us out at www.vibrantnation.com where we’ll have our usual funny, twisted and informative information about sex, aging and women.

Posted on 05/21/2011 at 12:27 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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The Housekeeper isn't your Sex toy!

Given the recent current events we here at the Gramma Sutra thought that maybe there need to be some rules, well um not rules guidelines, sexual guidelines.  Look, if you can remember Dick West as Batman, if you remember having air raid drills in school, if you tuned in, turned on and dropped out then perhaps you may want to review our guidelines to having fun, safe, wonderful sex.   In fact these guidelines are great if you're 77 or 27!

These rules aren't written in stone but if you want to think of them as Sexmandments, we certainly can't stop you.

 We wouldn't you to be caught with your pants down, until you want to be caught with your pants down.

Let us know if you have any Sexmandments of your own to share.

THE GRAMMA SUTRA SEXMANDMENTS

1.  A person that says NO is not being coy.  They do not want to have sex with you. That look in their eyes is not a come on it's a "Get away from me" look.  Do not attempt to repeatedly persuade the naysayer with your charm, wit, drinks or offers of employment or  for the love of Pete brute force.  At best you will seem foolish and idiotic, at worst you will go to jail.

2.  Do not have sex with someone who is unconscious, semiconscious, drunk out of their mind, stoned out of their mind, having an allergic reaction or just found out that their terminal illness diagnosis was a mistake.  You will be taking advantage of them and an orgasm obtained under these circumstances will be short lived and possibly subject to criminal prosecution.

3.  The Housekeeper is not your Sex Toy.  Neither is the stewardess, the bartender, the masseuse at a real massage parlor, the waiter or waitress, the personal assistant, the lawyers in your divorce negotiations or the person preparing you for your colonoscopy.  These people and thousands like them are just doing their job, it is not a come on when the maid in the hotel asks if you need fresh towels, that is not code for "Take me now and ravish me."  Sometimes a towel is just a towel.

4. You can't have sex anywhere at anytime with anyone.  This is one of those life lessons that you should have learned before the first grade.  You can't get what you want all the time.  You may be madly in love with your beloved but please don't attempt to copulate with them while at your grandchilds bar mitzvah.  Impulse control is next to Godliness.  On the same note try not to expose your inner most feelings and by feelings I mean sex organs to people who didn't realize that sex was in the air.  Before you decide to have sex with someone, make sure they want to have sex with you too, see Rules 1-3.

5.  Good manner equals great sex.  The Gramma Sutra advocates good manners. When it comes to sex, good manners are necessity.  Treat your partner with respect.   Do not insult them.  You might think you're as funny as Chris Rock or Robin Williams but the fact that you are not Chris Rock or Robin Williams would belie this point.  Bring your own prophelatics, look the person in the eye, pay attention to whether they are getting off or having a good time. In other words act like you give a damn.  This could be the person of your dreams or a one night stand but have the good manners to treat them like, well like a human being.  You'd be surprised how a little good manners can lead to a lot of great sex!

Tune in next week for the next 5 SEXMANDMENTS!



 

 

 

Posted on 05/19/2011 at 03:11 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Debbie Does Depends: Kim Cattrall in movie about aging Sex stars

Kim CattrallKim Cattrall in Anchor Bay Films' 'Meet Monica Velour'

Kim Cattrall in Anchor Bay Films' 'Meet Monica Velour'


Kim Cattrall, the sexually adventurous Samantha from Sex and the City has a new role, aging star. Cattrall plays an over the hill porn star who's tired, jaded and broke in the indie film "Meet Monica Velour." Cattrall, who gained 20 pounds for the role says that the role was the closest she's come to playing a real woman.

A real woman really? Look, The Gramma Sutra loved, loved, loved Cattralls portrait of Samantha Jones fearless, fiftyish, femme fatale.  We loved how she loved her body, we adored her take no prisoners attitude toward sex.  We also knew that while we knew some women that were Samantha-ish, we didn't know anyone who was so completely at ease with their aging sexuality as she was.  Samantha wasn't real.  News flash Kim, the jaded porn star isn't any more real but at least she doesn't look like she spends half her day at the gym!

Snarkiness aside, we do salute Kim Cattrall for playing a woman of a certain age in the movies.  We don't care if it's an aging porn star, aging rock star or an aging supermarket star.   Contrary to what the movie execs believe women do NOT disappear into thin air once they hit menopause or perimenopause.  From the letters we get here at the Gramma Sutra  there's a whole lotta shaking going on personally, professionally and sexually from women over 50.  Hip, hip, hooray for a movie with a star whose age is not equivalent to the size of her waist. The Gramma Sutra can't wait to see this new film. 

For more information about Kim Cattrall's new movie click here.

 

 

Posted on 05/12/2011 at 01:23 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Older men think sex still important, older women ready and willing!

Old sex pix 

A new study in Australia has found that even men nearing the 100 year mark think sex is still important.  Twenty percent of men near one hundred say a healthy sex life is vital.  Hear that ladies, twenty percent of men way older than you think sex is important.  Judging from the letters The Gramma Sutra gets, older women have known sex was important for a while now.  The Gramma Sutra is glad the older men are catching up.

The Australian study looked at men from 75 to 95 and found that many men in their seventies were still having active sex lives.  Ladies, if your stud has turned into a dud pay attention!  The main reason that men gave for limiting their sex lives were health issues, this is also true for women.  The healthier you are the more sex you can have.  The more sex you can have the healthier you get (as long as it's safe sex).  The Gramma Sutra hates to say we told you so but.... We told you so.  Check out our physiology section ladies for issues that affect our sex lives by decade.

The Gramma Sutra tips our hat off to our mates down under who are still getting down.  For the rest of you horny but lazy louts, get off your couch and get moving.  Sex is great exercise and does wonders for your mood.  Nothing burns off a post menopausal bad day like a roll in the hay or a jump on the bed or a quickie in the kitchen!  To read more on the Australian sex study click here.

Posted on 05/11/2011 at 12:50 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Give Granny a Kiss or Else!

A 92 year old woman in Florida fired shots at the house of a man who refused to give her a kiss.  That'll learn you the next time you try to skimp on the loving to the nonagenarians in your life!

The Gramma Sutra wants to make it clear that we do not endorse violence or outright coercion to achieve sexual gratification.  Violence bad. Blackmail bad. Coercion bad. I mean really people, if you want a little loving, some mood music, your sparkling personality and a pushup bra should be all you need.  Read on for this story and please people, make love not headlines!

Pistolpackingranny 
http://www.ocala.com/article/20110321/ARTICLES/110329941

Dwight Bettner said he wished his 92-year-old neighbor would leave him alone long before she fired four shots at his Fort McCoy home on Monday.  Helen B. Staudinger said her relationship with the 53-year-old man soured because of his "lies" and that he was not "paying his way" when they dined out.

On Tuesday morning, in a room at the Marion County Jail where inmates appear before a judge via video, Judge Sarah Ritteroff Williams told Staudinger that even if she posts the $15,000 bail for charges of aggravated assault with a firearm and shooting into an occupied dwelling and gets out of jail, she still is forbidden to have any contact with Bettner.

The judge also warned Staudinger that if Bettner's residence is within 500 feet of her home, she is not allowed to return home. And, the judge added, she is not allowed to possess any firearms or ammunition.

"I feel pretty good," Bettner said upon hearing the news of the restrictions placed on his neighbor.

Before facing the judge during first appearance, a handcuffed Staudinger, dressed in a red and white jail outfit, told a Star-Banner reporter that Bettner is a smooth talker. She said she liked him and had told him many times about her fondness for him.

Staudinger said she is a widow and that her husband died in 1982, and that is the year she moved to Fort McCoy. She said they had five children, four girls and a boy, and that she was a housewife but also once worked as a supervisor for a chain of cleaners.

She said she used to cook for Bettner when he first moved into her Fort McCoy neighborhood. She said they used to go out and eat and sometimes he would kiss her on the cheek and other times would give her a peck on the lips when she cooked for him.

Staudinger said Bettner told lies and was not paying his way when they dined out.

She also said he had a number of girlfriends coming and going from his residence.

Bettner said he moved to the neighborhood about six months ago and that a couple of months after moving in, Staudinger needed a part for her stove so he drove her to Ocala to purchase the item. On their way back, he said, they stopped to grab a bite to eat and she offered to pay for the meal. He said that was the only time they ever went out to eat.

He said Staudinger once cooked dinner or breakfast for him and he gave her a kiss on the cheek just "trying to be nice to her."

"I've got a girlfriend of my own," said Bettner, adding that he has repeatedly ignored the woman's advances.

When sheriff's deputies arrived shortly before 1 p.m. Monday, Bettner told them he had been hit by flying glass when his neighbor fired shots into his residence.

"I was standing in the bedroom talking on the phone when one of the bullets came into the bedroom," he said. "The other three bullets hit the side of the house."

Bettner said Staudinger has cursed at him and once attempted to strangle a woman she thought was having an affair with him.

While standing in Staudinger's front yard, Deputy Kimberly Minton asked for the gun and Staudinger told her it was inside.

The deputy found the .380 semi-automatic handgun on an end table in the living room. She emptied the weapon and noted a round was in the chamber.

Staudinger told the deputy she had gone next door to talk with her friend, but he wanted her to leave. She said although Bettner had a girlfriend, she was not going to leave the house until he gave her a kiss. They argued, Staudinger said, and she left his home in anger, grabbed the gun and went back to the house and fired several shots.

Staudinger told the Star-Banner reporter, however, that the reason she went to Bettner's home was because he owed her money from the times they went out to eat.

"The more I thought about it, the madder I got," she said.

She denied asking for a kiss before leaving.

She did say the weapon belonged to her.

Staudinger's friend Penny Powell said she heard shots and went to her friend's home to check on her.

"I think she was upset at him," Powell said.

Staudinger was appointed a public defender. Her next court date is April 2.

 

 

Posted on 04/18/2011 at 10:16 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79

Elizabeth taylor 

Who could be more of a GrammaSutrian than Elizabeth Taylor? The violet eyed beauty made more than 60 films, received two Academy Awards, was one of the earliest and most vocal Aids activists and had a couple, two, three marriages to boot.

There are plenty of people eulogizing Liz right now and we'll leave them to it.  The Gramma Sutra hopes that you'll pick up one of our favorite movies about desire, lust and passion, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  Elizabeth Taylor in a slip is the personification of sexy.  Paul Newman slumped in a chair looking at her while she leans over him is hotter than any thing we've seen at the movies lately.  We hope wherever Liz is now, she's having a drink with Paul and her ex husbands and having a ball.  Liz, we miss you already.

Below is the original trailer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, watch and enjoy.

 

Posted on 03/23/2011 at 10:18 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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The Longevity Study

The GrammaSutra believes that the number one way to have a great sex life as you get older is to actually get older.  To that end we will be posting information on how to live longer, live stronger and stay alive so you can enjoy your life and your sex life for as long as possible.

Drs. Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin studied 1,500 people at Stanford University to find out who lives the longest and why. Their book, "The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study," documents the findings of this study. It discusses the character traits they found associated with long life, and addresses some of the common myths about longevity.

The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late. (Myth!) --Get married and you will live longer. (Myth!) --Take it easy and don't work so hard and you will stay healthier. (Myth!) --Thinking happy thoughts reduces stress and leads to long life. (Myth!) --Religious people live longer, so don't miss religious services. (Myth!) --If you have hobbies like gardening, walking, and cooking, you should take up more vigorous forms of exercise. (Myth!) --Worrying is very bad for your health. (Myth!) --If you believe that you are loved and cared for, then you are on the road to good health. (Myth!) --Retire as soon as you can and play more golf to stay healthy and live longer. (Myth!) --If your child is very serious, encourage him or her to be more spontaneous and have more fun. (Myth!) --Give your children a big head start in school and they will thrive for life. (Myth!) --You can live to be a hundred only if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred (as Woody Allen is said to have joked). (Myth!)

For more information check out http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/excerpt-longevity-project-drs-howard-friedman-leslie-martin/story?id=13076733&page=1

Posted on 03/08/2011 at 11:58 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Congratulations Melissa Leo!

Melissaleooscar 

The Gramma Sutra congratulates Oscar winner Melissa Leo for her win as best supporting actress.  Leo is fabulous and fifty and was the subject of some tongue wagging when she took out ads in a bit of self promotion for the Oscars. 

"I took matters into my own hands," she said. "I knew what I was doing and told my representation how earnest I was about this idea. I had never heard of any actor taking out an ad as themselves and I wanted to give it a shot...I did hear a lot of very positive comments, particularly from women of a certain age who happen to act for a living and happen to understand full well the great dilemma  and mystery of getting a cover of a magazine."

Amen to that! Melissa Leo is 50 and the scuttlebut in Hollywood is that while it's fine for a 50 year old woman to play the mother of a 39 year old man(Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter), it's not apparently alright to put that same 50 year old on the cover of a magazine. 

So here are Melissa's pictures along with the fervent hope and desire that as more and more of us become GrammaSutrians we will use our considerable power to see ourselves represented in all aspects of the media.

 

Melissa2leo-e1296882780720-577x1024 

MELISSA-LEO-OSCAR-AD1

 

 

Posted on 03/01/2011 at 12:35 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Love and Sex will Keep us Together

The_Gramma_Sutra_logo_v2 

The Gramma Sutra wants to wish each and every one of you out there a Happy Valentines Day.  We want to hear how you're celebrating this magical, mystical Monday.  Champagne and chocolates? Leather and lace? Dinner and a movie, bedroom and bonbons, kiss and tell Gramma Sutrians!

This is one of those holidays that turn some people into veritable Valentine vampires.  I've seen people hissing and scratching at the very sight of a  heart shaped box of chocolates.  Here at The Gramma Sutra we believe any holiday that encourages consensual smooching and loving should be encouraged, we think it might deserve to be a national holiday.  Think how much love we could all be getting if we knew we didn't have to go to work on Valentines Day.  I'm not saying you should petition your congressperson for this holiday but given the amount of time various politicians spend thinking about, texting, paying for and having sex this might not be as hard a sell as you think!

Anywhoo for those of you sexy beasts old enough to vote in your bell bottoms, we leave you with the sage words of the Capt and Tenille.

Young and beautiful some day your looks will be gone

When the others turn you off who'll be turning you on?

I will, I will, I will, I will

 Be there to share forever, Love will keep us together

I've said it before and I'll say it again

While others pretend I need you now and I'll need you then

Just stop cause I really love you

Stop I've been thinking of you

Look in my heart and let love keep us together

(Repeat and don't even pretend you don't know this song!)

 

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!!!

 

 

 

Posted on 02/14/2011 at 12:51 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Old is the hot new thing!

Old is the new thing 

Super-glam model Carmen Dell'Orefice walked the Alberta Ferretti fashion show this past January, and — in a world where 16 is considered mature — rocked the runway in Florence at the sprightly age of 79!

Known for her patrician look and luxurious silver mane, Dell-Orefice has often stood for the “shock and wow” when a brand needed a bit of buzz. She has been the poster girl this decade for brands as diverse as Target and Rolex, giving them the gravitas of beauty rather than just another pretty face, and offering a kind of sophisticated knowingness that seemed, well . . . sexy. The thing is, whereas once she was the one and only, now she is just one of the many who are showing their age and then some.

Shocking as the idea may seem, the notion has some high-powered followers. Tom Ford, the designer who remade fusty Gucci into a red-hot brand in the 1990s, is an unapologetic agent provocateur. The man who once had a model’s pubic area monogrammed with a Gucci G was guest editor of Paris Vogue’s December issue and showed a a spread — if you pardon the expression — with decidedly elderly yet beautiful, well-dressed if semi-clad models going at it. Seriously going at it. A pair of models devouring each other’s weathered flesh in a manner more commonly seen in youth-driven fantasies. No soft focus here, the lines and spots are part of the celebration; the photos are shocking, scandalous even, but utterly beautiful. Given Ford’s track record as tastemaker, this could well be the dawn of a hot new paradigm.

And then there are blogs that shake up the old ideas of age. Advanced Style, by Ari Seth Cohen, 29, demonstrates that fashion is having a senior moment. Daily street shots show stylish seniors in their finest, and chronicle the fashionable, cultural lives of a generation that actually has the time and money to indulge in such things.

“My grandmother is a great inspiration,” says Cohen. “But I also noticed that young people were dressing in vintage and mixing it with new stuff and talking about that as an inspiration and trying to find their own style and I realized this is already walking down the street in older people’s personal style. They already demonstrate that trend younger people are trying to adapt.”

Cohen, based in New York, chronicles stylish and often quirky get-ups of a crowd that’s largely ignored by the fashion system. “From a style point of view, I find them more interesting because they are of an age where they don’t dress to impress, they know who they are and they’re doing it for themselves.”

While beauty companies are starting to at least dip a toe in waters other than those from the fountain of youth — actresses of some maturity including Diane Keaton, Cate Blanchett and Julia Roberts stand for various skin care regimes and potions in the burgeoning and rich “anti-aging” category — fashion itself is still dewy-skinned, with youngsters modeling for posh fashion houses whose clothes are actually aimed at their mothers, and which their peers could never afford.

But Cohen’s idea that style gets better with age has caught on. Selfridges, the U.K. sister to Holt Renfrew, held an exhibition of his work last summer and what’s on magazine Time Out London had him contribute street shots and stories on what the elderly were wearing. Cohen has been covered by the New York Times T Magazine, and profiled in the U.K. Telegraph. Advanced Style is now part of a burgeoning number of similar offerings.

Moses Znaimer, the lifelong paradigm shifter who started the Citytv media empire with its signature undone and elegantly amateur format, busted new ground yet again he founded the ZoomerMedia empire three years ago and had the audacity to suggest that age can be sexy and stylish. Based in part on the definitely not-hot Canadian Association of Retired Persons, Znaimer’s big aha! was the notion that there was nothing tired or tawdry about growing older, and that these boomer years, or zoomer years as he’d prefer them to be known, are the best of your life.

“There’s an old stereotype that suggests people of a certain age are no longer attractive, and don’t find themselves attractive and that’s simply false,” says Suzanne Boyd, glamorous editor in chief of Zoomer magazine, a publication devoted to life after 40 and part of the ZoomerMedia empire. “The Zoomer philosophy is the opposite: With age you are coming into yourself, you are feeling good about yourself and sexual desire doesn’t go away.”

The magazine launched in October 2008 and has covered sex and sexuality with unblinking clarity.

“Sex is part of our health coverage, and our view is it’s part of well-being, physically and mentally,” says Boyd. “We decided to be frank about sex and sexuality — the good, the bad and the ugly.” The approach has generated stories that provoke: a profile of an 80-year-old Japanese porn star; a story on sex in nursing homes; another on sex positions to try if you’re knees are bad.

Boyd suggests this is a loosening of the stranglehold of youth on determining what’s sexy now. While a grey-haired man has always been considered virile regardless of age, now women are starting to be allowed the same consideration.

“Older women are more often being considered as sexy,” says Boyd. “Look at stars such as Helen Mirren. She’s a very sexual presence and really gives off that energy, and is stronger and more popular now than ever before.”

The cool girls are already on it.

Super-est of supermodels Kate Moss, the starter of many a trend, showed off “grey lights” in her hair in February 2010 at the launch of the bags she designed for Longchamp. Kristen McMenamy, a 1990s supermodel, is back in the game, too, and seems extra-cool for letting her long hair go naturally gorgeously grey. At age 47, McMenamy closed Chanel’s most recent couture runway show wearing the house’s traditional grand finale, a wedding gown.

“Sexuality was always attached to youth and fertility, part of the biological imperative,” says Boyd. “Sex as an older person is one of the last taboos. But with age comes a confidence. One of the grace notes of aging is that you become more accepting of yourself and others, and self -acceptance and confidence is sexy.”

And, sex, sans any biological imperative, is unabashedly about having a very good time, full stop.

Or, more likely, don’t stop.

Tracy Nesdoly

http://www.thestar.com/living/fashion/article/931456--silver-sirens-are-now-worth-gold

Posted on 02/05/2011 at 05:22 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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All you need is love, love, Love is all you need and Sex too!

Happy February Gramma Sutrians! Valentines Day is just around the corner and the GrammaSutra believes that every day should be a celebration of love and sex, especially sex, really really good sex.  In honor of that, this month will be dedicated to all the reasons why sex at our age is fabulous!

Reason # 342 No pregnancy worries

Negative-pregnancy-400x400 

Sex in your 40s can be great, but you may still be making school lunches, wiping noses, juggling a career, and trying to avoid pregnancy.

Crying baby1 


“Forty to fifty is still an anxiety point for many women because you can still get pregnant,” says Margaret E. Wierman, MD, a professor of medicine, physiology, and biophysics at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, in Denver. “Once you’re menopausal, that worry is gone.”

Think about it—no tampons, pads, pills, diaphragms, IUDs, or condoms (if you have a long-term monogamous partner). What could be better?

http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20348327_2,00.html

Posted on 02/01/2011 at 02:23 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Just For Laughs!

The Gramma Sutra loves to laugh we do it every day around here starting at dawn when our bladders turn us into Olympic sprinters and continuing on into the wee hours when we look at our sexy selves and wonder when we got a tattoo on the back of our knees...oh that used to be our tramp stamp!

Anywhoo, here is a wonderful video from a snappy, senior comedienne about growing older and wiser or wisenheimer!

 

 

Posted on 01/25/2011 at 10:23 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Good Night Jack.

Jack-lalanne 

Jack La Lanne died yesterday he was 96.  There is hardly a person who used a rotary dial phone that doesn't remember Jack and his positive exhortations toward physical fitness. 

At 60 he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat. At 70, handcuffed and shackled again, he towed 70 boats, carrying a total of 70 people, a mile and a half through Long Beach Harbor.

Jack and his wife Elaine were married for 51 years.  "I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for."
Source: Andrew Dalton. "Jack LaLanne Dead: Fitness Guru Dies at 96. HuffingtonPost.com

Rest in peace Jack, we miss you already!

Posted on 01/24/2011 at 03:25 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Top reasons why sex is better after menopause - Health.com

couple-menopause

Let’s get it on

By Amanda Gardner

Sex after menopause? Some experts will tell you it’s a downhill ride of waning sex drive and dried up hormones.

Sorry, we’re not buying it. We happen to think there are plenty of 50-plus babes who are rocking it just as much as in their younger days. (See Madonna.) And there’s no reason the rest of us shouldn’t too.

“You’re not bothered by menses. You’re not bothered by kids in the house. You can have sex in any room in the house,” says Irwin Goldstein, MD, the director of San Diego Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital. “You can have the greatest sex life on earth.”

Next: No pregnancy worries

Credit: Getty Images

Posted on 01/18/2011 at 12:09 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Sex after Sixty, yes Gramma is getting down!

The Gramma Sutra has a dream, that one day society won't be shocked at the thought of mature adults having sex.  By mature adults we mean people collecting Social Security, not people taking the SAT's.

The Wall Street Journal has a great piece on desire in our advanced years.  MarkMark Lachs,director of geriatrics for the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System writes about how well into our later decades, desire is still as potent as ever. Here's the thing, why is this such a shock? Look people, we're getting older every day and sex is something which gets better the longer you do it, so kids, Gramma's at the top of her game!

Desire in the Twilight of Life

Mark Lachs

A colleague of mine, a geriatric social worker, likes to tell a story about the time one of his clients, an 86-year-old woman, failed to answer the phone for their daily chat. Worried about her safety, he ran to her building and asked the superintendent to let him into the apartment. Opening the door, he found a trail of lit candles and burning incense that led to the master bathroom. His client, it turned out, had a visitor.

The intimate lives of older people make us squeamish and anxious, especially in a culture so focused on beautiful young bodies primed for physical pleasure. We prefer to think that older people are asexual, resigned to a certain loss of desire and vitality. Nor do our traditions provide much guidance. In the Bible, Sarah and Abraham were age 90 and 100, respectively, when God told them they would have a son—and Sarah, famously, laughed at the news. In the opening scene of Plato's "Republic," an old man approvingly cites the poet Sophocles, who declared his relief, late in life, at being free of the "frenzied and savage master" of sex.

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courtesy of James Hyman Photography, London

Elinor Carucci, Grandparents' Kiss, 1998. From the book Closer, Chronicle books, 2002.

At a time when almost every kind of physical intimacy is discussed with increasing candor, the erotic feelings of empty nesters, retirees and the residents of assisted-living centers remain a taboo subject, except in tiresome jokes about Viagra. But there is nothing unusual or deviant about romance among older people. If we have learned nothing else from the past half-century of personal freedom and experimentation, it is that we are profoundly sexual beings. How we understand ourselves over the course of a lifetime is closely tied to our bodies and how we share our bodies with others, even when we're done reproducing. The details may change with age, but our basic physical and psychological needs do not.

A growing body of research on aging suggests that many older Americans have satisfying sexual relationships well into their later years. The largest systematic study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, involved just over 3,000 subjects. It found that, although sexual activity does decline with age, about half of individuals between the ages of 65 and 74 remain active, as do 26% of those between 75 and 85. Among those in this second group, 54% said that they had sex at least two or three times a month, and 23% reported relations with a partner at least once a week.

Keep in mind, too, that this is no small population. According to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, there were some 34 million Americans in these two groups (age 65 to 84) in 2010. Twenty years from now, as the ranks of older Americans are swelled by aging baby boomers, that number is expected to grow to approximately 62 million. And as we know, this will be a generation that has grown up more preoccupied with sex than perhaps any generation before it.

The New England Journal of Medicine study found that poor health was not the main reason that older people abstain from physical intimacy. Loss of desire is also not nearly as common as our popular culture would have us believe. Ranking high among the impediments, especially for women, is the absence of a willing and/or able partner. In fact, most of the women who cited health problems as the reason for their sexual inactivity were referring not to their own problems but to those of their spouses.

Medical problems that interfere with sex, like mobility-limiting arthritis, do become more common over the years. But other problems, such as premature ejaculation in men and dyspareunia (pain during intercourse) in women, actually become less common with advancing age. Despite the picture painted by television commercials for drugs that deal with erectile dysfunction, the majority of men, even in the oldest age groups, reported having little difficulty in that department.

The deeper problem with the advertisements for Viagra, Cialis, and their competitors is the image that they create of healthy intimacy for older people. The marketing depicts a utopian version of sex, in which the best and only valid sort of activity involves a fit, extremely attractive couple who segue seamlessly from doing the dishes to their bedroom.

These idealized, and mostly unobtainable, scenarios ignore much of what we have learned about the reality of romantic activity among older partners. Many professionals who deal with these issues report high degrees of satisfaction among the people in their care, even when the relationships involve alternative approaches to intimacy.

Sometimes these more limited activities are dictated by medical conditions, like hip arthritis that makes traditional intercourse impractical. Other times, it is simply a matter of the couple's preferences.

And who's to say what's "normal" for older people if it brings satisfaction to them? Here it is useful to make a comparison to another area of health. As many of us have discovered for ourselves, nearsightedness is nearly universal after the age of 40. Yet no one would call those of us with glasses or contact lenses "abnormal." These are merely age-appropriate adjustments that make it possible for us to see.

Why should sexuality be viewed any differently as we get older? We simply need to adapt our attitudes and techniques. It is a disservice to older people, as well as to those of us approaching those years, to view any form of safe sexual expression that persists into later life as anything but healthy.

Unfortunately, the unwitting conspirators in creating the taboos that surround these issues are often doctors. In the New England Journal of Medicine study, only 38% of men and 22% of women reported having discussed sex with a physician since turning age 50. Fifty? In the geriatric facilities where I work, 50 is the equivalent of the newborn nursery.

These findings are jarring not only because of the quality-of-life issues that are going unaddressed, but also because they have real health consequences. A modest proportion of new HIV infections are now occurring in people over the age of 50. In one study of single, sexually active women over the age of 50, less than half reported that their partners used condoms.

Changing our approach to the romantic lives of older Americans will not be easy. It presents a variety of new challenges, especially for professionals in my field. My own introduction to the barriers we face came many years ago, when two of my older widowed patients decided to get married. They had met at a nursing home where they were both patients, and neither had any sort of dementia that would interfere with their capacity to consent. After the wedding, they simply became roommates. Their sexual relationship was their own business.

But what about residents of nursing homes or assisted-living centers who are not married, not roommates, or have a compromised ability to consent? This poses such thorny issues that most facilities have simply discouraged residents from pursuing intimate relationships.

Fortunately, a number of facilities have started to recognize that a nursing home is a home first and a health-care facility second. The Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, N.Y., for example, actually promotes healthy romantic relationships among residents. The home's policies specifically note that "residents have the right to seek out and engage in sexual expression, including words, gestures, movements or activities that appear motivated by the desire for sexual gratification.'' Staff members are also taught to recognize when cognitive impairment might preclude such relationships and how to intervene with couplings that are not consensual.

These issues have assumed special urgency over the past several decades. A mountain of recent research has shown that not only is life expectancy rising in the U.S., but more people are spending the last years of their lives without the burden of immobilizing disabilities. These encouraging trends will continue for the foreseeable future, but we have yet to think seriously about what our extended lives mean for our personal identities, our families and our society. We have not gotten past the idea that our final decades are a problem to endure, rather than an opportunity for new experiences and personal bonds.

I'm not a Pollyanna about aging, and I'm well acquainted with the details of our physiological twilight. But we need to recognize the profound benefits of growing older in 21st-century America. Spouses in marriages that endure into late life report some of the highest levels of marital satisfaction and the lowest rates of divorce. As we age, many of the constraints that made us anxious and unhappy when we were younger—juggling work and family responsibilities, dealing with difficult bosses and colleagues, fretting about career success—slip away, and we enjoy a newfound freedom. We are liberated to cultivate ourselves and the relationships that matter most to us. And if we find ourselves alone, we can form new bonds and find new loves.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703848204575608663772413510-lMyQjAxMTAxMDEwNjExNDYyWj.html

Posted on 01/17/2011 at 04:35 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Meet Ruth Flowers, aka DJ Mamy Rock, the 69-year-old grandmother taking the European club circuit by storm

The Gramma Sutra doesn't know about her sex life, but DJ Mamy Rock seems like a Gramma Sutrian to us!

Mamy Rock1 

For a 69-year-old woman, Ruth Flowers certainly knows how to party. In the past week, the British DJ, also known as Mamy Rock, has taken no less than six flights, and DJ’d almost every night. She hasn’t had a weekend off in nearly two months, and when she speaks to me from her hotel in Italy, has a slight croak in her voice.

“I’ve got a terrible cold, and I could do with being in my bed,” she tells me. “But I’m sure once I get on stage in a few hours, I'll be back in the mood. I’m just lacking a bit of my usual energy, that’s all.”

Mamyrock2 

Flowers, originally from Bristol, first developed an interest in becoming a disc jockey in 2005. It was her grandson's birthday, and rather than simply popping round to wish him happy returns over a cup of tea, Flowers decided to join him at a London nightclub. After fighting her way past a rather incredulous bouncer - “This fellow outside the door said ‘You don’t want to go in there, madam’ and I told him, ‘Yes I jolly well do, it’s my grandson’s birthday!’” - she fell in love with what she saw.

“It was frightfully noisy of course, and there were all these lights flashing,” Flowers remembers, “but what I realised was that these young people were just having so much fun. So I said to my grandson, ‘You know what darling, I could arrange things like this, for the local kids.' And he said he thought that would be very cool.”

Soon after, Flowers met Aurelien Simon, a French music producer, who suggested to her the idea of becoming an elderly DJ. “To be honest, I just thought that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. But what did I have to lose?”

Mamyrock3 

Fast forward five years, and Flowers is now a regular feature on the European club circuit. She still has a home in Bristol, but life is increasingly lived on the road, in planes, and in a variety of what she refers to proudly as “rather nice hotels”. In the past few weeks, she has zipped between Belgium, France, Italy and Austria and will add several more countries to that list before the month is out. Though she has never cracked her home market (“They don’t seem to want me in the UK, do they?”) she has been overwhelmed by how positive the reaction has been to her elsewhere.

“I don’t know why they make such a fuss of me, but it’s like adoration,” she tells me, with a touch of bemusement but considerably more delight in her voice. “It’s all photograph, photograph, kissy kiss kissy. They try to hug me, they tell me they want me to be their grandma, they even throw roses at me - which let me tell you, is quite amazing for a woman of my age!”

Does she find the travel tiring? “I do, but it’s wonderful to see all these different countries. I expect I’ve got friends who think I’m quite insane but they can do what they wish, and I’ll do what I wish. If you can’t do what you want to at my age, when can you?”

Flowers’ taste in music errs on the old-fashioned - “I love Queen and Freddie Mercury, Mick Jagger, the oldies” - but she intersperses her personal favourites with more contemporary electro-rock. She thinks this eclectic mix is probably part of her appeal. "You know, I have to be honest, I knew nothing about electro-rock when I started, but it’s what the young people want, and I give it to them,” she reflects. “I’ve learned the job like a parrot.”

Her appeal is undoubtedly strengthened by her rather extraordinary appearance. On any given day, the DJ will sport a combination of what she calls “glamorous sports gear”, statement jewellery and oversized sunglasses, topped off by her crest of spiky silver hair. When she's in the clubs, she likes to add diamante headphones. I ask if this look was a marketing decision rather than a reflection of her personal taste. “At the start, it was definitely more what more the stylists wanted,” she concedes, “but I get much more of my own choice now. I have my own ideas, and I like to wear what I want."

Flowers is quick to dismiss any suggestion that her career as a disc jockey has rescued her from a life of knitting and Women’s Institute cake sales, but admits that her new role perhaps suits her more than anything she has done before. As she recounts to me her colourful career history (village shop owner, fabric shop owner and trainee drama teacher, the last only until she realised she didn’t want to teach “little toads with no interest in what I was doing”), one gets the impression of a woman who can easily be bored.

She’s used to being based abroad, having spent a decade living the retired life with her late husband in Portugal; a place she at first found very tedious. She ended up running singing and theatre groups to keep her occupied, and proudly tells me she directed the first English pantomime in the Algarve. “I’ve done what I wanted with my life, but life does take its turns. Becoming a DJ is certainly one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

by Leah Hyslop

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/8066312/Mamy-Rock-Becoming-a-DJ-is-the-best-thing-Ive-ever-done.html

Posted on 01/08/2011 at 11:56 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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New Videos

Check out these new video clips from our recent presentation at the First International Conference on Aging and Architecture given at UPENN at the end of last year.

Click here to view them @ YouTube.

If you like what you see, please give us a "thumb's up", and pass them on to your friends.

Or click here to go to our new Video section.  For a sneak peek, check out the 5-minute highlights video below.

 

Posted on 01/05/2011 at 03:05 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Stanford study shows getting older leads to emotional stability, happiness`           

The undertaking was an effort to answer questions asked by social scientists: Are American seniors who say they're happy simply part of an era that predisposed them to good cheer? Or do most people – whether born and raised in boom times or busts – have it within themselves to reach their golden years with a smile?

Grammaolderbetter 
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/october/older-happy-study-102710.html

BY ADAM GORLICK

It's a prediction often met with worry: In 20 years, there will be more Americans over 60 than under 15. Some fear that will mean an aging society with an increasing number of decrepit, impaired people and fewer youngsters to care for them while also keeping the country's productivity going.

The concerns are valid, but a new Stanford study shows there's a silver lining to the graying of our nation. As we grow older, we tend to become more emotionally stable. And that translates into longer, more productive lives that offer more benefits than problems, said Laura Carstensen, the study's lead author.

"As people age, they're more emotionally balanced and better able to solve highly emotional problems," said Carstensen, a psychology professor and director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. "We may be seeing a larger group of people who can get along with a greater number of people. They care more and are more compassionate about problems, and that may lead to a more stable world."

Between 1993 and 2005, Carstensen and her colleagues tracked about 180 Americans between the ages of 18 and 94.  Over the years, some participants died and others aged out of the younger groups, so additional participants were included.

For one week every five years, the study participants carried pagers and were required to immediately respond to a series of questions whenever the devices buzzed. The periodic quizzes were intended to chart how happy, satisfied and comfortable they were at any given time.

"As people get older, they're more aware of mortality," researcher Laura Carstensen said. "So when they see or experience moments of wonderful things, that often comes with the realization that life is fragile and will come to an end. But that's a good thing. It's a signal of strong emotional health and balance."

Carstensen's study – which was published online Monday in the journal Psychology and Aging – was coauthored by postdoctoral fellows Bulent Turan and Susanne Scheibe as well as Stanford doctoral students and researchers at Pennsylvania State, Northwestern, the University of Virginia and the University of California's campuses in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

While previous research has established a correlation between aging and happiness, Carstensen's study is the first to track the same people over a long period of time to examine how they changed.

The undertaking was an effort to answer questions asked over and over again by social scientists: Are seniors today who say they're happy simply part of a socioeconomic era that predisposed them to good cheer? Or do most people – whether born and reared in boom times or busts – have it within themselves to reach their golden years with a smile? The answer has important implications for future aging societies.

"Our findings suggest that it doesn't matter when you were born," Carstensen said. "In general, people get happier as they get older."

Over the years, the older subjects reported having fewer negative emotions and more positive ones compared with their younger days. But even with the good outweighing the bad, older people were inclined to report a mix of positive and negative emotions more often than younger test subjects.

"As people get older, they're more aware of mortality," Carstensen said. "So when they see or experience moments of wonderful things, that often comes with the realization that life is fragile and will come to an end. But that's a good thing. It's a signal of strong emotional health and balance."

Carstensen (who is 56 and says she's happier now than she was a few decades ago) attributes the change in older people to her theory of "socio-emotional selectivity" – a scientific way of saying that people invest in what's most important to them when time is limited.

While teenagers and young adults experience more frustration, anxiety and disappointment over things like test scores, career goals and finding a soul mate, older people typically have made their peace with life's accomplishments and failures. In other words, they have less ambiguity to stress about.

"This all suggests that as our society is aging, we will have a greater resource," Carstensen said. "If people become more even-keeled as they age, older societies could be wiser and kinder societies."

So what, then, do we make of the "grumpy old man" stereotype?

"Most of the grumpy old men out there are grumpy young men who grew old," Carstensen said. "Aging isn't going to turn someone grumpy into someone who's happy-go-lucky. But most people will gradually feel better as they grow older."

 

Posted on 12/21/2010 at 10:59 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Swapping Sisters

The Gramma Sutra went to a swap this weekend.  A clothing swap is a party where you bring clothes from your closet and take home clothes from someone else’s closet.  This particular swap, Sisters who Swap, was in New Orleans and in between the sips of champagne, the stripping, and the trying on of clothes a grand time was had by all.

There were women of all ages, sizes and body types.  If you can remember the trauma of changing in the girls locker room in high school or changing at your gym, or taking your clothes off in the doctor’s office then you will understand how some women felt about changing in front of other women.  I’m too fill in the blank, fat, lumpy, old, hairy, short, tall, busty, flat chested, whatever you like.  Let’s face it; a disproportionate amount of our time as women is spent being ashamed of what we look like.  As we age we become the lovers of our past perfect bodies and the haters of our present aging bodies.

So you’d think, given this issue with our bodies that no one in their right mind would be taking their clothes off in front of other women, especially other women that are strangers.

You’d be wrong.

Last Saturday in the Garden District in New Orleans, women shucked their clothing with abandon to try on beautiful free garments.  They bared bottoms and breasts; they stood nearly naked with other women and had a great time.  Each time a woman put on something that fit, all the women nearby would clap and hoot and holler in encouragement.  If a swapper tried on something not so fabulous, she was discouraged with the words “Honey, that’s not gorgeous enough for you” or something to that effect. Everyone came to the Swap in a good mood, but they left in a great mood. 

I overheard a woman who was probably a size 2 tell a woman who was a size 14 that she would kill to have her curves.  Women complimented each other, helped each other, and supported each other.  You don’t need to be Harry Potter or Bella from Twilight to have some magic in your life; you just need a good group of women, a lot of laughter and some free clothes!

 

 

Posted on 12/10/2010 at 01:55 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Aging Gratefully

Have you heard the one about the millions and millions of women who aren’t afraid to get older?  Yeah, neither have we, here’s the thing though why haven’t we heard of these women?  Women are doing amazing things, we’re heads of households and heads of state, we’re firemen, astronauts, publishers and university presidents.  We can have kids at 24 or 44, we can love our husbands and our wives, and we can do almost anything.

Except age gratefully.

Yes, gratefully, because in this society aging is a crime that is punishable by toxic injection, years under the knife and a never ending sentence of anti-aging creams and unguents.  The GrammaSutra has decided that if we can’t age gracefully can we at least age gratefully?  How does one age gratefully, we’re so glad you asked.

Stop whining about the ass you used to have, the breasts you used to have and the hair you used to have.

Be happy that you no longer think foreplay is a British rock band and that you need to bend yourself into a Cirque de Soleil gymnast to mirror your mate.

Start bragging about your knowledge of rare books, perfect bakeries in Venice, how to make a man beg for mercy in the bedroom and the boardroom.

Tell your best friend that she’s beautiful, tell your worst enemy that she’s beautiful and tell yourself that you’re beautiful.

Lie about your age; don’t lie about your age, who cares?  Just enjoy yourself.

The GrammaSutra wants to hear millions and millions of women of a certain age enjoying themselves.  We want to change anti-aging to new aging, great aging, sexy aging or just plain happy aging.  Let’s stop wasting time on our past time paradise and enjoy our now NOW. 

When you look at the alternative, aging gratefully is the least we can do.

 

Posted on 11/22/2010 at 09:19 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Older Women and Long Hair, Grow or No?

Cool long hair2

What do you think when you see a sexy woman walking down the street with gorgeous swinging hair? Sexy, vibrant, cool, hot, devil may care? Now what if that woman is of a certain age and the hair is gray? A few weeks ago the NYTimes ran an article by Dominique Browning where she talks about the controversy she encounters over her long, gray mane.  What do you think? Can an older woman have long hair and be sexy.  Does getting older mean getting a haircut?  Would you grow your hair past your shoulder blades?

Check out the NYTimes article here , and let us know.

Posted on 11/08/2010 at 01:22 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Can you do a split? This Gramma can!

Cardigans and slippers? Not for these glamorous grannies

By Deirdre Reynolds
Thursday Oct 21 2010

 

Nanas of Ireland, cast off your cardies! Our government may want you to work for longer, but now sixty-something women are proving that they can work it for longer too.

With role models like Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Cybill Shepherd and Susan Sarandon, being in possession of a bus pass has never looked better.

And last Saturday, at the precise moment that Strictly Come Dancing contestant Felicity Kendal executed the splits on live television -- a new poster girl for Super Grans was born.

Giving new meaning to Age Action, the 64-year-old left audiences and the judges agog by performing a raunchy rhumba with dance partner Vincent Simone.

She may have entered the so-called 'age of invisibility', but bending over backwards before sinking spread-eagle to the floor in a dress slashed to the thigh, all eyes were on her.

With not a bingo wing in sight, 'Flexible Felicity' bore absolutely no resemblance to the saggy, whiskered stereotype of a woman past her prime.

And the most pliable pensioner on the planet -- famous for playing a wholesome wife in TV series The Good Life -- revealed her preternaturally preserved physique is all down to Pilates.

When quizzed about her jaw-dropping display of dexterity after the show, the glamorous granny imparted simply: "Pilates and yoga".

The sexagenarian sex symbol has been a fan of the strengthening and stretching exercise for more than three decades and even wrote the foreword for a book called Pilates: Creating the Body You Want.

With former MP Anne Widdecome (63) and sex therapist Pamela Stephenson (60) also cutting a rug on the popular BBC series, the weekly show of pensioner power is at odds with accusations of ageism that erupted after judge Arlene Phillips (67) was replaced by former winner Alesha Dixon (32) in a bid to boost ratings.

Still, when it comes to over-the-hill hotties, both fresh-faced Arlene and Felicity have a long way to go to knock Helen Mirren off her perch.

At 65, the devastating Dame is still capable of inciting thoughts fit for the confession box in men young enough to play her grandson.

Not that you'd catch the woman described by Cameron Diaz as "drop-dead sexy" slumming it as a Bovril-slugging fan of Winning Streak too often.

While most ageing actresses rely on a battery of hair, make-up and nip/tuck to hold back the years on film, it took a team of pros to actually make Mirren look older for her Oscar-winning role as dowdy Queen Elizabeth II.

Meanwhile, in her latest movie RED, out this week, the sizzling senior citizen -- memorably snapped rocking a red bikini on holidays in 2008 -- plays a gun-toting CIA agent back from retirement; and she next appears as an Israeli spy hunter in The Debt.

Celebrated as a natural beauty in collagen-pumped Tinseltown, Mirren is at the vanguard of a generation of women boasting a confidence, style and sex appeal earned only with age.

"She's glorious," declared co-star Russell Brand at the New York premiere of The Tempest recently. "She's living in defiance of time. There's something about her that drives me wild."

Here at home, model agency boss Celia Holman Lee celebrates her 60th birthday next month -- and isn't afraid to shout it from the rooftops.

"Some women don't like revealing their age," says the Limerick style queen, "but I don't give a damn! Too many people don't make it to 60, so I plan to celebrate. I'm going to have a big bash with all my friends.

"Thank God for women like Helen Mirren, who show you don't have to be Botoxed up to the high heavens to look good as you get older."

Like her icon Mirren -- who credits not smoking and her "fundamentally sunny nature" with her virtually wrinkle-free looks -- Celia says there's no big secret to her enviable figure.

"I'm not up at 6am getting facials or jogging for 10 hours a day," she tells. "It's down to the basics; I don't overeat, I try to exercise, get the odd facial and keep my mind active with work.

"My mother was a beautiful woman who died at 82, so hopefully I inherited her genes," she tells.

If you can't rely on good genes, there's always the gym -- increasingly, older women are swapping slippers for runners to press pause on their appearance.

"Older beauties like Judi Dench and Helen Mirren are a real inspiration for our clients," says Gill Brady of Curves, Ireland's top gym for women.

"They are strong, independent women who show that you don't need to slow down after a certain age -- that you can still be fit, healthy and beautiful in your sixties and beyond.

'Curves has always been a firm favourite with older ladies, as unlike traditional gym machines ours adjust automatically to your ability -- so the workout is as easy or hard as you make it."

And one such member, Dympna Carthy (68) from Clare, beat off a bevy of nubile lovelies to land the title of Curvette of the Year. Grandma-to-be Dympna dropped from size 20 to size 12 since joining the gym in 2006.

"I joined Curves after being diagnosed with osteoporosis," says Dympna. "I weighed 12 stone 7 pounds and was uncomfortable in my own skin. It has completely changed my life; it has helped me come off HRT tablets and I have never felt so good."

Indeed, the blue-rinse brigade could be on the brink of extinction, reckons KPMG demographer Bernard Salt.

"Baby boomers (those born between 1943-60) do not see themselves as old," says Salt.

And with a longer working life ahead, neither are they content to "sit at home with a cardigan and slippers and watching daytime telly.

"If you think about it," explains Salt, "those people have redefined every stage of the life cycle through which they have passed. As kids in the 50s, they were the first teenagers. In the 60s, they were hippies. Then they invented concepts like yuppies and dinks (double income, no kids) in the 1980s.

"It is illogical to assume that they are now just going to fade into the sunset and turn into old people like preceding generations."

From fashion to cosmetics, magazines and movies, in an industry skewed towards youth and perfection, older women are more visible than ever.

At an age when women are traditionally consigned to the cultural trash can, Meryl Streep (61) has struck rom-com box office pay dirt with movies like Mamma Mia!, Julie & Julia and It's Complicated -- in which she's energetically pursued by both Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. 'Past it' powerhouse stars Diane Keaton (64), Maggie Smith (75) and Judi Dench (75) all have upcoming movie releases.

Today's middle-aged stars -- Kylie Minogue (42), Sarah Jessica Parker (45) and Andie MacDowell (52) -- seem poised to take the torch as the ambassadors of agelessness.

"By the time you were 55 in 1930," muses demographer Bernard Salt, "you were eight years from death on average. Eight years out from the end of it . . . you put up with a relationship that's not terrific and you don't invest in your looks or wardrobe. You act, feel and think like an old person.

"Today, if you're 63, you can't act old because you've got another 20 years left of life," he explains. "So they're actually going to reinvent that space. They'll give it a good shake and role models will emerge showing how you can age with dignity, grace and style. And Helen Mirren and Olivia Newton-John are good examples of that."

- Deirdre Reynolds

Irish Independent



Read more: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/cardie-and-slippers-not-for-these-glamorous-grannies-2388782.html?print=true#ixzz13ab9ArIq

Posted on 10/27/2010 at 03:42 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Aging, Armed and Dangerous!

Red-movie-poster 

It's not often that a movie has people in it that remember rotary dial phones. Red is such a movie, with fun and action it proves that getting older isn't all prunes and hearing aids.  What kind of movie would you like to see with some older actors?  The GrammaSutra would like to see some sex scenes between people who remember what it was like to stage a sit in, watch Father Knows Best and send a telegram.  We'd like to see sex between people for whom Playboy was risque and the web used to mean a tangled weave of deceit.  For now, we'll go see Red and have a great time.

 

 

Posted on 10/19/2010 at 09:36 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Betty White Talks about SEX!

In this month's AARP magazine, Betty White, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kristen Bell discuss sex, aging and Hollywood.  Here's a bit of what Betty had to say.

Betty 
 

Sex Gets (blank) With Age

Curtis: Deeper over time.

White: I don't have a fella, but if Allen — or Robert Redford — were around, we'd have a very active sex life. Does desire melt away with age? I'm waiting for that day to come. Sexual desire is like aging — a lot of it is up here [points to her head].

Bell: It gets sweeter — and more fun. But whether you have an enormous libido — like my friend Betty — or none at all, there's no norm. There are different bodies, books, people.

Curtis: That's the greatest advice in this article, out of the mouth of the babe.

Read the full story here: http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/movies-tv/info-09-2010/what_women_want.1.html

Posted on 10/12/2010 at 10:31 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-04/experimental-sex-practiced-more-often-by-americans-study-finds.html

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Print Back to story

Experimental Sex Practiced More Often By Americans

By Elizabeth Lopatto - Oct 4, 2010

About 85 percent of men reported in a study that their partner had an orgasm during their most recent sexual event. The number dropped to 64 percent when women were asked whether they reached climax their last time.

The difference is probably due to poor communication between the genders, said Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle who wasn’t involved in the survey. Surveys like this one can help people talk to each other about sex, she said in a telephone interview.

The study, conducted by researchers from the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, surveyed 5,865 people aged 14 to 94 about their sexual activities, profiling what sex acts they engaged in and what precautions they took. A similar study was published in 1994 by University of Chicago researchers. Americans have become more experimental in the 16 years between the reports, the researchers wrote.

“The era of wham-bam, thank you ma’am is over,” Schwartz said.

The survey, reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, found that adult men and women usually engage in more than one act in each encounter. Men are more likely to orgasm when sex includes vaginal intercourse, according to the report. Women are more likely to climax when they engage in a variety of activities, including oral and vaginal intercourse.

Compared with the 1994 study, “more men and women have engaged in oral sex and a significantly greater proportion have engaged in anal sex,” the researchers wrote.

Women 20 to 49

About 40 percent of women ages 20 to 49 and of men ages 25 to 59 have had anal sex, the study found. More than 80 percent of women aged 20 through 49, and over 85 percent of men the same age had received oral sex, the study found.

About a third of national health-care costs is related to sexuality, wrote former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders in a related editorial. For doctors to provide information and adequate treatment to their patients, they need to know what the community’s sexual behavior is, Elders wrote.

“If men don’t have accurate communication it’s because women aren’t giving it to them,” said Schwartz, of the University of Washington. “We have a long way to go with how comfortable we are with sex, and how honest we are about it.”

New Acquaintance

Women over age 50 were more likely to reach orgasm if they had sex with a casual or new acquaintance rather than in a relationship; 81 percent reported orgasm with a non-relationship partner. This compares with 58 percent reporting an orgasm with a sex partner they are in a relationship with. This may be because a long-term partner is less likely to engage in romance, flattery and attention, Schwartz said.

About 22 percent of men said they used condoms during the last 10 times they had sex; 18.4 percent of women said their male partners used condoms. The researchers suggest this is because men have more partners than women.

The people least likely to use condoms were over the age of 50, and those most likely to use condoms were adolescents, where 82.8 percent reported using the prophylactic during their last act of vaginal sex.

“Younger kids have grown up with the AIDS threat,” Schwartz said. “It’s what they expect, and if someone doesn’t want to use a condom, they’re like, ‘What, are you kidding?’ Older people don’t have the same health attention, in part because no one wants to know about their sexuality at all.”

The study surveyed a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population, the researchers reported. It can’t be generalized to gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals because the sample may obscure data points involving minority groups, the authors wrote.

The study was funded by Church & Dwight Co. Inc., the makers of Trojan condoms.

To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at [email protected].

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at [email protected]. 20578Z US <Equity> CN

®2010 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

 

Posted on 10/04/2010 at 05:11 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Seniors Are Having Lots of Sex says Newsweek

The consensus suggests that the Viagra era is officially in full swing.

by John H. Tucker of Newsweek

September 22, 2010

In the summer movie Love Ranch, 65-year-old actress Helen Mirren portrays an aging madam who heats up the screen in a sex scene. To promote the film, Mirren posed topless for New York magazine, which elicited a gaggle of fawning comments online. "Foxy," praised readers. "She puts the sex in sexagenarian," crowed one. "Helen, I want to have your children," said another.      

Mirren represents a class of older adults newly embracing their sexuality. Now, more than ever, academic researchers are studying how much sex is being had by senior citizens. And the early consensus is that the Viagra era is officially in full swing.

"It looks like there is a tendency of older people to be more interested in sex, and there is probably a tendency of more engagement in sex," says Natalia Gavrilova, a researcher at the University of Chicago's Center on Aging. In a recent study, she and coauthor Stacy Tessler Lindau found that nearly 40 percent of men and 17 percent of women between ages 75 and 85 were sexually active. Among that cohort, 71 percent of men and 51 percent of women had quality sex lives.

According to a recent AARP report, 40 percent of people older than 45 have sex at least once a month, and in another recent study, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, suggest that any decline in sex among older women might be primarily due to health, not lack of desire.

Because researchers have only recently begun asking seniors about their sex lives, it's still too early to confirm with statistical certainty that they're spending more time rolling between the sheets than ever before. Alison Huang, of the University of California's Department of Medicine, says ageism likely played a role in overlooking seniors in previous sex studies. "Perhaps people just assumed that older adults weren't having sex, so nobody asked them," she says. She also notes that the discussion of sexual activity has broadened over time, making it more difficult to compare the numbers.

But some sex experts say they don't need to wait for published studies to know that seniors are getting friskier. "There is no question. We do know that older people do engage in more sex activity than before," says Ruth Westheimer. Westheimer says taboos have been lifted, and many seniors are finding different ways to have sex. Because testosterone levels are higher in the morning, for example, older couples might go at it right after breakfast. "Men realize they can't be hanging from the chandelier anymore," she says. (The 82-year old declined to talk about her own sex life.)

In certain aspects, sex after 60 might even be better, at least for women. "Let's pause—shall we?—and consider the possibility of spontaneous sex without the paralyzing fear of an unplanned pregnancy. Who wants that, right? I mean, besides every heterosexual woman I know," writes Connie Schultz in her latest Cleveland Plain Dealer column about menopause.

Retirement facilities will soon be opening their doors to an onslaught of baby boomers, with greater self-confidence, more money, and better health—all of which lead to more sex. Their values are also liberalized; now, only 22 percent of people older than 45 disapprove of sex outside of marriage, compared with 41 percent 10 years ago, according to AARP. Westheimer suggests that retirement residencies build special love shacks, outfitted with couches, fireplaces—and DO NOT DISTURB signs on the doors.  

Such a concept might seem farfetched, but the directors of senior residencies are beginning to understand her point. The Hebrew Home, a nursing facility in the Riverdale section of New York, now has a policy that upholds the sexual rights and intimacy needs of seniors—including those with dementia and Alzheimer's. Residents are permitted to have pornography on hand, for example, and staff members are trained to leave the room if they accidentally walk in on a couple getting busy.

"Up to this decade, the majority of providers never considered sexual rights, but in fairness, clinical care should be about quality of life," says Robin Dessel, a director at the facility. She doesn't rule out a day when condoms are distributed. "This is a home, not a hospital," she says. "It's about life's pleasures."

The entertainment establishment, too, is starting to reflect the growing numbers of sexed-up seniors. In the recently launched reality television series Sunset Daze,  featuring an Arizona retirement community, the cast makes references to vibrators and going commando. In the new film Lovely, Still, Martin Landau, who is now 82, romances Ellen Burstyn through a series of dates and, eventually, into a bed scene. (The film's director, Nicholas Fackler, says the scene wasn't meant to imply that the couple was sexually active.) The recent Oscar-nominated film Away From Her, starring Julie Christie, also tackled issues of love and Alzheimer's.   

"Hollywood has realized the new market," says Pepper Schwartz, a love and relationships columnist for AARP. "The film industry has been persuaded that you can have movies about older romantic couples that won't make anyone gag."

Posted on 09/23/2010 at 09:13 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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National Assisted Sex Week, oops, living Assisted Living

Yes folks it’s that time of year again, National Assisted Living Week! I know it seems that we just celebrated National Joint Pain Week last week, but here we are again.  The theme of this year’s Week is Living Life, which for us here at The Gramma Sutra means living a sexual life.  So, enjoy the week, explore some Assisted Living Centers, but please, mind if there’s a sock or a Celebrex prescription on the door.  Don’t come a knockin’ if Gramma’s a rockin’!

 

Spread the word. National Assisted Living Week is September 12 – 18, 2010!

Ellen

http://www.allassistedlivinghomes.com/assisted-living-news/1060-living-life-national-assisted-living-week-2010.html

 

Since 1995, the National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) has been providing an opportunity for communities to celebrate and care for their local assisted living residents. National Assisted Living Week is a week-long celebration that includes games, events, promotions and products all aimed at creating awareness in local populations while providing memorable experiences for assisted living residents.

This Year’s Theme: Living Life!

Each year, NCAL chooses a theme to catch the public’s attention and inspire assisted living residents toward positive thinking. This year’s theme is “Living Life!” NCAL’s promotional materials explain what this theme means in context for assisted living residents:

You don’t have to be a rock climber, sky diver, marathon runner, or scholar to live life to the fullest. Living life means participating in activities that you enjoy and pursuing your passions, whatever they may be. It means never stopping the process of discovery or mastering talents. It means sharing your history and teaching others what you have learned. It is a lifelong pursuit of happiness and growth.

Event Ideas for Assisted Living Residents

NCAL’s 2010 National Assisted Living Week planning guide is chock full of ideas that can make the week memorable for assisted living residents across the country! From a homecoming event with visiting high school football teams, cheerleaders and a backyard barbeque, to exquisite evenings with local artists and musicians, culinary tours, and even progressive parties hosted by assisted living residents, the week is sure to bring joy to residents, staff, families and the local community alike!

Get Involved in National Assisted Living Week, 2010

You don’t have to be an assisted living resident or family member to participate in the festivities. If you are a local artist, musician, photographer, performer, coach, politician or chef, contact a local assisted living facility to offer your services. Or simply offer to volunteer at an event in your area. One of the greatest benefits of National Assisted Living Week is the opportunity for people of all ages to celebrate the seniors in their area and participate in fun activities together. So people of all ages are needed to make National Assisted Living Week a celebration to remember!

If you or your loved one live in an assisted living facility, make sure it is participating by contacting the administration. Find out about the events occurring at your facility and play a part in proving that “Living Life” can happen at any age!

 

Posted on 09/14/2010 at 07:19 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Sex like fine wine improves with age

If you’re over 50 and think you’re sexiest days are behind you then you’re crazy.  XTRA, the Canadian Gay and Lesbian News, has a great article on how sex gets better with age.  The Gramma Sutra wants everyone of every sexual orientation to have the sex life they desire.  Everyone is welcome on the Sun Porch, dahlins.  Read on to find out how the Canadians are doing it!

 

Sex, like fine wine, improves with age, seniors say
COVER STORY / Practice makes perfect
Shauna Lewis / Vancouver / Thursday, August 26, 2010

“My sex is better than it has ever been,” says Jim Deva, standing comfortably among the multicoloured vibrators, dildos and butt plugs that line Little Sister’s back wall.

Deva, now 60, says he has witnessed many older couples walk through the bookstore’s doors over the years in search of sex toys to spice up their golden years.

He refuses to accept society’s suggestion that seniors are no longer sexual beings.

Western society thinks “we’re supposed to sit in the back of the room and be very polite,” he says.

“I don’t give a shit what they think.”

One of the greatest myths of our society is that when you get to a certain age you are no longer sexual, he continues. “I’m finding as I talk to other [seniors] that you, in fact, get more sexual as you get older.”

Deva says he still has a very satisfying sex life with his partner of 30 years.

“They [the young generation] really don’t think of us as sexual in any way,” he notes. “But older gay men and lesbians are extremely sexual.  Far more than they have ever been in their entire life.”

Having better sex in the autumn of one’s life is not surprising, says Dr Pega Ren, sex therapist and author of Xtra’s Ask the Expert column.

“We’re much better at sex when we’ve done it a lot,” she says.

Sexagewine 

"It's quality not quantity now," says 80-year-old Clyde Rowett (right, with partner Sid Jenner, 69).
(Shimon Karmel photo )
 

 "As we go through life, our behaviours change, and as our behaviours change our priorities change and our experience and knowledge base expands,” Ren explains.

“So here we are with this vast knowledge base and experience, and we’re ready to roll — and sometimes we have to make accommodations for a body that can’t perform as it used to,” she acknowledges.

A senior herself, Ren agrees Western society is hard on the aging when it comes to sex. “We become invisible sexually as we age,” she says. “You don’t see grannies selling lingerie.”

“It’s always about the young with the buff body, and the whole world isn’t like that,” says 80-year-old Clyde Rowett. “The whole gay community isn’t made up of buff bodies.”

Rowett and his partner, Sid Jenner, 69, are members of Vancouver’s Prime Timers, a gay men’s social club that caters to seniors.  Before meeting Jenner, Rowett says he had almost given up on romance.   

“I assumed that meeting another partner was not going to happen at my age, and I wasn’t looking for someone,” he confides.

Today Rowett and Jenner have a healthy, sexual relationship.

“We occasionally have a third person, which adds excitement,” Rowett says.

For Rowett, relationships these days are more about honesty and less about jealousy and confusion.

“Certainly, the young people have a wonderful energy, but when you get older there’s a bit more of a loving energy,” he says. “You want more chemistry, not just to get your rocks off . . . It’s quality not quantity now.”

Sexagewine2

"I would be willing to bet that most seniors have more satisfactory sex than these silly little 17-year-olds that think they invented it last week," says 71-year-old Anne Cameron.

(Harbour Publishing (Peter A Robson photo))

For well-known dyke writer Anne Cameron, it’s neither quality nor quantity.

“It’s a number between five and seven,” the 71-year-old jokes when asked about sex.

“I’m not sexual now,” she admits.

“I have chosen not to be sexual because I’m just not going to waste the energy on relationships,” she explains unapologetically.

For Cameron, a self-professed serial monogamist who claims to never have had a one-night stand, sex is a chapter she closed after ending a 20-year relationship a decade ago.

“It [the relationship] exhausted something in me,” she says quietly. “The exhaustion reached the point where it was affecting my work. I walked away from the relationship. I chose my writing and I decided that’s it.”

Although she isn’t having sex now, Cameron opposes the widespread belief that seniors aren’t sexual beings.

“I say bullshit!  I would be willing to bet that most seniors have more satisfactory sex than these silly little 17-year-olds that think they invented it last week.

“I think that they [seniors] are willing to spend the time that is required for a fully satisfactory orgasm,” she continues.

“Anybody can climax — they sell machines that can help you do that — but for deeply fulfilling [sex] it takes some time.”

Men and women look at sex differently as they age, says Ren, adding that older women place a greater emphasis on masturbation as a means to sexual intimacy and release.

“Raw sex is a driving force [in the young].  It just gnaws,” she says.  But for women, “after menopause it is far more gentle. It doesn’t take up as much room inside as it used to.”

“When we are young, masturbation is an adjunct to the other sex life we know we are going to have,” she says. “When we get old we don’t have that sense of entitlement.”

Solo sex in the senior years isn’t solely a woman’s domain, says George Fuller, 82.

Fuller was in a heterosexual marriage until he was nearly 70.  He identifies as bisexual and says his sex drive — which is still going strong — is now satiated through erotic literature and masturbation.

Unlike Cameron, Fuller says he would welcome a more active shared sex life.

“It is hard to come by,” he admits.  “I don’t have much sex because I don’t have anybody to have it with.  I find [meeting people] hard, and I don’t go to bars.  I miss the companionship that sex was a part of,” he adds.

Last year, Fuller’s partner was placed in a care facility after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Fuller says single seniors have far less sex than their coupled counterparts.

Not so, says Bill Monroe, a popular long-time drag entertainer. “I’m single and sexy and happy,” the 76-year-old asserts.

When asked if he is having sex, he replies, “Lots of it!”

Monroe says sex drives vary from person to person regardless of age.  Sex is greatly influenced by a person’s state of mind, he suggests.

“Some people are old at 20 and some people are ancient at 40. It depends on your mind, whether you’re open.

“If you’re boring, you’re boring,” he says. “If you think you’re old, you’re old.

“I see seniors walking down the street hunched over with a mean look on their face.  If you walk around looking like you’re sucking a pickle, you’re not gonna get any pickle,” he laughs.

“It is a state of mind,” Deva agrees.  “If you think that you’re a certain age and the proper thing to be is a sort of ‘virgin’ senior, then that’s what you become.

“I think seniors that have a glow to them are sexual, and I think if you don’t have that sexual energy you don’t have energy,” he adds.

For Brian Searle and Patrick Savoie, owners of the popular downtown breakfast café The Elbow Room, sex is integral to vitality.

A senior, Searle says he feels older when he can’t have sex.

As he’s aged, his sex drive hasn’t diminished as much as it has transformed.  “We consider sex cuddling up with one another and touching,” he explains.  “Maybe it’s a kiss or a cuddle or a handjob.”

While Searle and Savoie still enjoy the sexual connection they share, others are less than supportive.

Savoie remembers the night they were out dancing at a gay club when “some queen told us, ‘Isn’t it time you were in bed, you seniors?’”

To which he replied, “Excuse me, dear, but you don’t know anything. If it weren’t for us old queens, you wouldn’t be where you are today.”

“Older people are just like young people — we have something to give to life,” Savoie says.

“Maybe we don’t have the biggest hard-on in the world,” he adds, “but we still like to cuddle and be told we’re attractive.”

After all, he points out, “we’re all going to get old one day.”

Posted on 08/26/2010 at 01:44 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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HIV In Older Patients

HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are increasing in the over 50 population.  In fact 10% of all new HIV infections in 2006 were to people over the age of 50.  Protect yourself and your partners.  Read and learn how to stay sexy and safe.

 

Author: Jill Shuman, MS, ELS

 

Following the death of her husband, at the age of 60, Grace was dating again.  George, a close family friend she had known for a long time, was starting to stay overnight more and more often. Because she was past childbearing age, Grace didn’t think about using condoms.  And because she had known George for so long, she didn’t think to ask him about his sexual history.  So, Grace was shocked when she tested positive for HIV.

 

While Grace may have been shocked by her HIV-positive status, she squarely represents the epidemiologic shift in the incidence of HIV/AIDS over the past few years.  According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the annual estimated number of Americans older than age 50 and living with an HIV infection or AIDS increased more than 60% between 2003 and 2007.[1]

 

Since the early 1980s, about 10% of all cases of HIV/AIDS nationwide occurred in those older than 50 — now, the percentage is closer to 30%.  In 2006, new HIV infections in this population were responsible for 10% of all infections; what’s more, about half of the older people who test positive for HIV have been infected for less than 1 year (Box 1). In July 2010, the New York City Department of Health released a report confirming the CDC’s estimates: three-quarters of people with HIV/AIDS living in New York City are in their 40s or older, and more than one-third are older than 50. 

 

Box 1. According to the CDC, adults ages 50 and older account for approximately—

·     10% of new HIV infections in the United States in 2006

·     21% of AIDS diagnoses in 2006 and 2007

·     28% of persons living with HIV/AIDS in 2007

·     34% of those living with AIDS in 2007, up from 24% in 2003

 
Adapted from ref 1

 

Why the Shift?
HIV among adults older than 50 is not a new phenomenon, particularly as the population ages and people are generally living longer. What
has changed is the mode of transmission. In the early years of the HIV epidemic, blood transfusion was the major transmission mode among the senior population. Today, sexual contact is the most frequent cause of most new HIV cases in seniors — of all ages!  According to a study published in 2007, 60% of men and 37% of women between the ages of 65 and 74 reported engaging in sexual intercourse at least a few times per month.[2] 

 

Changes in social norms now have transformed the way seniors live and love.  Many older Americans have come out of lengthy marriages or relationships to re-enter the dating scene.  Some meet up over the Internet without benefit of a formal introduction from a trusted companion or family member.  Others are uneducated about HIV/AIDS or have old-fashioned views about the virus.  A huge group of the "over-50" crowd never received sex education in school.  Evidence suggests that women, who can expect to live an average of 5 years longer than men, are especially vulnerable to this information gap.  In an analysis of National Health Interview data, researchers found that almost half of women older than 50 were totally uninformed about HIV, compared with only 14% of younger adults.[3]

 

Safe Sex for All

While certainly enjoyable and healthy, certain aspects of sexual encounters in this population increase the potential of HIV infection.  Many women older than 50 are less concerned with using barrier protections (condoms) because they are unlikely to get pregnant.

 

Older seniors may have less robust immune systems, making them more susceptible to infection.  Older women are more likely to have thinning vaginal walls, which also increases their susceptibility to HIV.  Some researchers suspect that the physical risk factors for HIV infection are compounded by the surge in drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction among older men,[4] who often receive the drug without receiving any information about practicing "safe sex."  These drugs probably do not cause an increase in the transmission of HIV; instead, their use may reflect a different sexual risk profile among users versus nonusers.

 

Research indicates that the most effective way to prevent HIV infection is to consistently use condoms, as they are nearly 90% effective against HIV transmission.[5]  However, many folks have yet to get the message, as recent studies suggest that sexually active heterosexual adults older than 50 are not consistently using condoms.  Older adults are less likely than younger adults to use condoms because they are typically viewed as contraception.[6,7]

 

Condoms also may be difficult for some older folks to use. Arthritic hands or an incomplete erection may make it difficult to apply a condom, while poor lubrication may make condom use uncomfortable for some women.  

 

In a survey conducted by University of Chicago researchers, nearly 60% of unmarried women between the ages of 58 and 93 said they didn't use a condom the last time they had sex.[6] In an April 2009 survey conducted by AARP, 41% of seniors reported using a condom "rarely or not at all," while only 8% reported using a condom all the time.[8] Even more disturbing, a study of almost 1000 adults in New York City found that among people older than 50 who knew they were HIV positive, about 27% of the men and 35% of the women reported having sex "sometimes" without using condoms.[9] 

 

Overcoming Barriers to Diagnosis and Treatment

For seniors, the stigma of HIV is a significant barrier to seeking information about prevention or treatment.  Although support groups and teams are available in many communities, seniors may be unwilling to share their status with others.  Older patients may also face ageism in general.  They may be misdiagnosed by medical professionals and have limited access to HIV tests, information, and age-appropriate messages.

 

It can be extremely difficult to differentiate HIV-related illnesses from other age-related symptoms.  For example, you might mistakenly assume that night sweats and depression are symptoms of menopause rather than HIV/AIDS.  Other clinicians have diagnosed AIDS-related dementia or neuropathy incorrectly as early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

 

Many older Americans assume that they are immune to HIV/AIDS and are not told otherwise by their healthcare providers.  In fact, studies indicate that 40% of primary care physicians do not assess HIV risk in persons older than 50.[10] To combat the spread of HIV/AIDS among this population, the National Institute on Aging recommends that doctors and other healthcare professionals provide patients older than 50 with information on HIV transmission and at-risk behavior.  In addition, medical providers should review a patient’s sexual and substance use history.

 

Subsequently, you should encourage voluntary HIV testing and provide risk reduction counseling, particularly since older individuals may mistake HIV symptoms for symptoms associated with aging.  While the CDC has published guidelines for testing all patients for HIV, they only address the issue of testing until age 64.  The lack of HIV testing among older Americans often results in an HIV diagnosis much later, at a point when the illness may have significantly progressed and treatment may be less helpful.

 

Like all Americans, individuals older than age 50 who are sexually active must hear the message that HIV/AIDS can affect them (Box 2). This message can be uncomfortable to deliver, but an understanding, accepting attitude, and a sensitivity to verbal and other cues help promote a more comfortable discussion of sexuality.  Don’t assume that an older patient is heterosexual, no longer sexually active, or doesn’t care about sex.  Depending on indications earlier in the interview, you may decide to approach the subject directly (for example, "Are you satisfied with your sex life?") or more obliquely with allusions to changes that sometimes occur in marriage or a changed social circumstance.

 

You can try to open the conversation by noting that patients sometimes have concerns about their sex life — and then wait for a response.  Also effective is sharing anecdotes about a person in a similar situation or raising the issue in the context of physical findings (for example, "Some women find that sex with a condom is uncomfortable . . . have you experienced anything like that?"). 

 

Lack of communication about safe sex with all your patients perpetuates ignorance.  You probably already talk to your younger patients about the importance of safe sex practices and sexual behaviors.  While talking with older patients about sex may seem awkward or even disrespectful, it’s an important component of the medical visit (Box 3).

 

Box 2. Key Messages for Older Patients About Safe Sex

·     Consider getting tested. The best way to protect yourself and your partner is to get tested for HIV before you start having sex.

·     Know your partner’s sexual background before having sex. Talk about your sexual histories, acknowledge whether you’ve been tested for HIV and what the results were. 

·     Use a condom every time you have sex until you are in a monogamous relationship and know your partner’s sexual history and HIV status.

·     Use a lubricant, as it can decrease the risk of tiny cuts on the penis or inside the vagina. These sores and cuts can boost risks of contracting HIV. 

·     Talk to your healthcare provider, who can offer additional advice about protecting yourself from the virus and can also recommend treatments for common sexual problems such as vaginal dryness and erectile dysfunction.

 

Box 3:  Keep in Mind!

·     Older adults continue to be sexually active; they also are less likely to use protection because pregnancy is not an issue post menopause.

·     Older adults who are exposed to HIV are at greater risk than younger people because of weakened immune systems.

·     Health providers may not screen older adults for sexually transmitted diseases because of lack of training or ageist attitudes.

·     Older adults are not diagnosed properly as having HIV/AIDS because many of the symptoms resemble the symptoms of old age.

 

References
1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, 2007. Vol 19. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009.
2. Lindau ST, Schumm LP, Laumann EO, et al. A study of sexuality and health among older adults in the United States.
N Engl J Med. 2007;357(8):762-764.
3. Zablotsky D, Kennedy M. Risk factors and HIV transmission to midlife and older women: knowledge, options, and the initiation of safer sexual practices.
J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2003;33(Suppl 2):S122-S130.
4. Jena AB, Goldman DP, Kamdar A, et al. Sexually transmitted diseases among users of erectile dysfunction drugs: analysis of claims data.
Ann Intern Med. 2010;153(1):1-7.
5. Steiner MJ, Cates W Jr. Condoms and sexually-transmitted infections.
N Engl J Med. 2006;354(25):2642-2643.
6. Stall R, Catania J. AIDS risk behaviors among late middle-aged and elderly Americans. The National AIDS Behavioral Surveys.
Arch Intern Med. 1994;154(1):57-63.
7. Lindau ST, Leitsch SA, Lundberg KL, Jerome J. Older women’s attitudes, behavior, and communication about sex and HIV: a community-based study.
J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2006;15(6):747-753.
8. AARP. Sex, Romance, and Relationships. AARP Survey of Midlife and Older Adults. April 2010. http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/general/srr_09.pdf.
9. Karpiak SE, Shippy RA, Cantor MH. Research on Older Adults with HIV. New York: AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, 2006.
10. Skiest DJ, Keiser P. Human immunodeficiency virus infection in patients older than 50 years. A survey of primary care physicians' beliefs, practices, and knowledge.
Arch Fam Med. 1997;6:289-294.

Posted on 08/23/2010 at 12:22 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Sex after 50: The Oprah Effect

When is the last time we wondered about Oprah’s sex life? Seriously!  Remember a decade or so ago:  the rumors, innuendo, whispering about Oprah and Steadman?  Did they do it?  Didn’t they do it?  Was he gay?  Was she gay?  Enquiring minds wanted to know, and a good deal of time was spent over coffee and martinis trying to figure out what Oprah’s proclivities were.

Fast forward to just a few years ago:  Oprah and Gayle take a cross country road trip, and there’s barely enough gossip to interest the tabloids.  What happened?

Oprah turned 50 and we turned off.

Sure, we’d like to think that we became more mature as a nation; that we stopped caring about other people’s private lives; that we grew up.  In truth what really happened is that Oprah is now a 56 year old woman, and the media has shown time and again that women over 50 are not thought of as sexual beings.  Why should we worry if Oprah has a sex life?  I mean, really -- at 56, she’s probably going home after a hard day ruling the airwaves and sitting down to her knitting!

The funny thing is that Oprah looks better, happier and, yes, sexier now than she ever did before.  She’s not the only one.  Take a look at Diane Sawyer, Meryl Streep, Toni Morrison, Robin Roberts, Katie Couric, Susan Sarandon and, yes, even Hilary Clinton.  These women aren’t just aging; they’re thriving and it shows in the sparkle in their eyes, the swing in their step and the confidence they exude.  

It’s not just celebrities either.  Take a look at your friends, colleagues and neighbors.  In fact, take a long look at yourself, you simmering sex pot of salacious sensuality.  You have gotten older, wiser and sexier.  One GrammaSutrian described it this way:  “When I was in my twenties, my sexuality was determined by the number of men who looked at me.  Now, in my late fifties, my sexuality is determined by the way I look at myself.”

Oprah, we may not be wondering who you’re having sex with anymore, but something tells me that you and millions of other women over 50 frankly don’t give a damn.

Posted on 08/19/2010 at 10:47 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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81 Year Old High School Sweethearts Reunite After 62 Years!

Check out this cute couple (81), Jack and Betty, reunited via the Web after 62 years.

 

Isn't it time you looked up that old sweetheart?

 

Posted on 08/17/2010 at 09:28 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Older Women Find it Easier to Orgasm

http://www.aphroditewomenshealth.com/news/20100703061621_health_news.shtml

 

Orgrasm and Desire Issues Affect Almost Two in Three Women

 

A Hackensack University study into female sexual dysfunction, published in the British Journal of Urology International, identified problems achieving orgasm and lack of desire as the most common sexual dysfuncitons.

The good news is, orgasm is one problem that actually improves with age, with problems higher in the 18-30 year old age group (54%) than in the 46-54 year old age group (48%).

Posted on 08/15/2010 at 12:54 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Happiness at What Price?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html
 

But Will It Make You Happy?

by Stephanie Rosenbloom

 

SHE had so much.

A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.

Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy.

Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”

So one day she stepped off.

Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity.

As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too.

Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number.

Her mother called her crazy.

Today, three years after Ms. Strobel and Mr. Smith began downsizing, they live in Portland, Ore., in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-sized kitchen. Mr. Smith is completing a doctorate in physiology; Ms. Strobel happily works from home as a Web designer and freelance writer.

She owns four plates, three pairs of shoes and two pots. With Mr. Smith in his final weeks of school, Ms. Strobel’s income of about $24,000 a year covers their bills. They are still car-free but have bikes. One other thing they no longer have: $30,000 of debt.

Ms. Strobel’s mother is impressed. Now the couple have money to travel and to contribute to the education funds of nieces and nephews. And because their debt is paid off, Ms. Strobel works fewer hours, giving her time to be outdoors, and to volunteer, which she does about four hours a week for a nonprofit outreach program called Living Yoga.

“The idea that you need to go bigger to be happy is false,” she says. “I really believe that the acquisition of material goods doesn’t bring about happiness.”

While Ms. Strobel and her husband overhauled their spending habits before the recession, legions of other consumers have since had to reconsider their own lifestyles, bringing a major shift in the nation’s consumption patterns.

“We’re moving from a conspicuous consumption — which is ‘buy without regard’ — to a calculated consumption,” says Marshal Cohen, an analyst at the NPD Group, the retailing research and consulting firm.

Amid weak job and housing markets, consumers are saving more and spending less than they have in decades, and industry professionals expect that trend to continue.  Consumers saved 6.4 percent of their after-tax income in June, according to a new government report. Before the recession, the rate was 1 to 2 percent for many years. In June, consumer spending and personal incomes were essentially flat compared with May, suggesting that the American economy, as dependent as it is on shoppers opening their wallets and purses, isn’t likely to rebound anytime soon.

On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests — make them happier.

New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses.

If consumers end up sticking with their newfound spending habits, some tactics that retailers and marketers began deploying during the recession could become lasting business strategies. Among those strategies are proffering merchandise that makes being at home more entertaining and trying to make consumers feel special by giving them access to exclusive events and more personal customer service.

While the current round of stinginess may simply be a response to the economic downturn, some analysts say consumers may also be permanently adjusting their spending based on what they’ve discovered about what truly makes them happy or fulfilled.

“This actually is a topic that hasn’t been researched very much until recently,” says Elizabeth W. Dunn, an associate professor in the psychology department at the University of British Columbia, who is at the forefront of research on consumption and happiness. “There’s massive literature on income and happiness. It’s amazing how little there is on how to spend your money.”

CONSPICUOUS consumption has been an object of fascination going back at least as far as 1899, when the economist Thorstein Veblen published “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” a book that analyzed, in part, how people spent their money in order to demonstrate their social status.

And it’s been a truism for eons that extra cash always makes life a little easier. Studies over the last few decades have shown that money, up to a certain point, makes people happier because it lets them meet basic needs. The latest round of research is, for lack of a better term, all about emotional efficiency:  how to reap the most happiness for your dollar.

So just where does happiness reside for consumers? Scholars and researchers haven’t determined whether Armani will put a bigger smile on your face than Dolce & Gabbana. But they have found that our types of purchases, their size and frequency, and even the timing of the spending all affect long-term happiness.

One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.

“ ‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” (The Journal of Consumer Psychology plans to publish it in a coming issue.)

Thomas DeLeire, an associate professor of public affairs, population, health and economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, recently published research examining nine major categories of consumption. He discovered that the only category to be positively related to happiness was leisure: vacations, entertainment, sports and equipment like golf clubs and fishing poles.

Using data from a study by the National Institute on Aging, Professor DeLeire compared the happiness derived from different levels of spending to the happiness people get from being married. (Studies have shown that marriage increases happiness.)

“A $20,000 increase in spending on leisure was roughly equivalent to the happiness boost one gets from marriage,” he said, adding that spending on leisure activities appeared to make people less lonely and increased their interactions with others.

According to retailers and analysts, consumers have gravitated more toward experiences than possessions over the last couple of years, opting to use their extra cash for nights at home with family, watching movies and playing games — or for “staycations” in the backyard. Many retailing professionals think this is not a fad, but rather “the new normal.”

“I think many of these changes are permanent changes,” says Jennifer Black, president of the retailing research company Jennifer Black & Associates and a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors in Oregon. “I think people are realizing they don’t need what they had. They’re more interested in creating memories.”

She largely attributes this to baby boomers’ continuing concerns about the job market and their ability to send their children to college. While they will still spend, they will spend less, she said, having reset their priorities.

While it is unlikely that most consumers will downsize as much as Ms. Strobel did, many have been, well, happily surprised by the pleasures of living a little more simply. The Boston Consulting Group said in a June report that recession anxiety had prompted a “back-to-basics movement,” with things like home and family increasing in importance over the last two years, while things like luxury and status have declined.

“There’s been an emotional rebirth connected to acquiring things that’s really come out of this recession,” says Wendy Liebmann, chief executive of WSL Strategic Retail, a marketing consulting firm that works with manufacturers and retailers. “We hear people talking about the desire not to lose that — that connection, the moment, the family, the experience.”

Current research suggests that, unlike consumption of material goods, spending on leisure and services typically strengthens social bonds, which in turn helps amplify happiness. (Academics are already in broad agreement that there is a strong correlation between the quality of people’s relationships and their happiness; hence, anything that promotes stronger social bonds has a good chance of making us feel all warm and fuzzy.)

And the creation of complex, sophisticated relationships is a rare thing in the world. As Professor Dunn and her colleagues Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson point out in their forthcoming paper, only termites, naked mole rats and certain insects like ants and bees construct social networks as complex as those of human beings. In that elite little club, humans are the only ones who shop.

AT the height of the recession in 2008, Wal-Mart Stores realized that consumers were “cocooning” — vacationing in their yards, eating more dinners at home, organizing family game nights. So it responded by grouping items in its stores that would turn any den into an at-home movie theater or transform a backyard into a slice of the Catskills. Wal-Mart wasn’t just selling barbecues and board games. It was selling experiences.

“We spend a lot of time listening to our customers,” says Amy Lester, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, “and know that they have a set amount to spend and need to juggle to meet that amount.”

One reason that paying for experiences gives us longer-lasting happiness is that we can reminisce about them, researchers say. That’s true for even the most middling of experiences. That trip to Rome during which you waited in endless lines, broke your camera and argued with your spouse will typically be airbrushed with “rosy recollection,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Professor Lyubomirsky has a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. “Trips aren’t all perfect,” she notes, “but we remember them as perfect.”

Another reason that scholars contend that experiences provide a bigger pop than things is that they can’t be absorbed in one gulp — it takes more time to adapt to them and engage with them than it does to put on a new leather jacket or turn on that shiny flat-screen TV.

“We buy a new house, we get accustomed to it,” says Professor Lyubomirsky, who studies what psychologists call “hedonic adaptation,” a phenomenon in which people quickly become used to changes, great or terrible, in order to maintain a stable level of happiness.

Over time, that means the buzz from a new purchase is pushed toward the emotional norm.

“We stop getting pleasure from it,” she says.

And then, of course, we buy new things.

When Ed Diener, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois and a former president of the International Positive Psychology Association — which promotes the study of what lets people lead fulfilling lives — was house-hunting with his wife, they saw several homes with features they liked.

But unlike couples who choose a house because of its open floor plan, fancy kitchens, great light, or spacious bedrooms, Professor Diener arrived at his decision after considering hedonic-adaptation research.

“One home was close to hiking trails, making going hiking very easy,” he said in an e-mail. “Thinking about the research, I argued that the hiking trails could be a factor contributing to our happiness, and we should worry less about things like how pretty the kitchen floor is or whether the sinks are fancy. We bought the home near the hiking trail and it has been great, and we haven’t tired of this feature because we take a walk four or five days a week.”

Scholars have discovered that one way consumers combat hedonic adaptation is to buy many small pleasures instead of one big one. Instead of a new Jaguar, Professor Lyubomirsky advises, buy a massage once a week, have lots of fresh flowers delivered and make phone calls to friends in Europe. Instead of a two-week long vacation, take a few three-day weekends.

“We do adapt to the little things,” she says, “but because there’s so many, it will take longer.”

BEFORE credit cards and cellphones enabled consumers to have almost anything they wanted at any time, the experience of shopping was richer, says Ms. Liebmann of WSL Strategic Retail. “You saved for it, you anticipated it,” she says.

In other words, waiting for something and working hard to get it made it feel more valuable and more stimulating.

In fact, scholars have found that anticipation increases happiness. Considering buying an iPad? You might want to think about it as long as possible before taking one home. Likewise about a Caribbean escape: you’ll get more pleasure if you book a flight in advance than if you book it at the last minute.

Once upon a time, with roots that go back to medieval marketplaces featuring stalls that functioned as stores, shopping offered a way to connect socially, as Ms. Liebmann and others have pointed out. But over the last decade, retailing came to be about one thing: unbridled acquisition, epitomized by big-box stores where the mantra was “stack ’em high and let ’em fly” and online transactions that required no social interaction at all — you didn’t even have to leave your home.

The recession, however, may force retailers to become reacquainted with shopping’s historical roots.

“I think there’s a real opportunity in retail to be able to romance the experience again,” says Ms. Liebmann. “Retailers are going to have to work very hard to create that emotional feeling again. And it can’t just be ‘Here’s another thing to buy.’ It has to have a real sense of experience to it.”

Industry professionals say they have difficulty identifying any retailer that is managing to do this well today, with one notable exception: Apple, which offers an interactive retail experience, including classes.

Marie Driscoll, head of the retailing group at Standard & Poor’s, says chains have to adapt to new consumer preferences by offering better service, special events and access to designers. Analysts at the Boston Consulting Group advise that companies offer more affordable indulgences, like video games that provide an at-home workout for far less than the cost of a gym membership.

Mr. Cohen of the NPD Group says some companies are doing this. Best Buy is promoting its Geek Squad, promising shoppers before they buy that complicated electronic thingamajig that its employees will hold their hands through the installation process and beyond.

“Nowadays with the economic climate, customers definitely are going for a quality experience,” says Nick DeVita, a home entertainment adviser with the Geek Squad. “If they’re going to spend their money, they want to make sure it’s for the right thing, the right service.”

With competition for consumer dollars fiercer than it’s been in decades, retailers have had to make the shopping experience more compelling. Mr. Cohen says automakers are offering 30-day test drives, while some clothing stores are promising free personal shoppers. Malls are providing day care while parents shop. Even on the Web, retailers are connecting on customers on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, hoping to win their loyalty by offering discounts and invitations to special events.

FOR the last four years, Roko Belic, a Los Angeles filmmaker, has been traveling the world making a documentary called "Happy." Since beginning work on the film, he has moved to a beach in Malibu from his house in the San Francisco suburbs.

San Francisco was nice, but he couldn’t surf there.

“I moved to a trailer park,” says Mr. Belic, “which is the first real community that I’ve lived in in my life.” Now he surfs three or four times a week. “It definitely has made me happier,” he says. “The things we are trained to think make us happy, like having a new car every couple of years and buying the latest fashions, don’t make us happy.”

Mr. Belic says his documentary shows that “the one single trait that’s common among every single person who is happy is strong relationships.”

Buying luxury goods, conversely, tends to be an endless cycle of one-upmanship, in which the neighbors have a fancy new car and — bingo! — now you want one, too, scholars say. A study published in June in Psychological Science by Ms. Dunn and others found that wealth interfered with people’s ability to savor positive emotions and experiences, because having an embarrassment of riches reduced the ability to reap enjoyment from life’s smaller everyday pleasures, like eating a chocolate bar.

Alternatively, spending money on an event, like camping or a wine tasting with friends, leaves people less likely to compare their experiences with those of others — and, therefore, happier.

Of course, some fashion lovers beg to differ. For many people, clothes will never be more than utilitarian. But for a certain segment of the population, clothes are an art form, a means of self-expression, a way for families to pass down memories through generations. For them, studies concluding that people eventually stop deriving pleasure from material things don’t ring true.

“No way,” says Hayley Corwick, who writes the popular fashion blog Madison Avenue Spy. “I could pull out things from my closet that I bought when I was 17 that I still love.”

She rejects the idea that happiness has to be an either-or proposition. Some days, you want a trip, she says; other days, you want a Tom Ford handbag.

MS. STROBEL — our heroine who moved into the 400-square foot apartment — is now an advocate of simple living, writing in her spare time about her own life choices at Rowdykittens.com.

“My lifestyle now would not be possible if I still had a huge two-bedroom apartment filled to the gills with stuff, two cars, and 30 grand in debt,” she says.

“Give away some of your stuff,” she advises. “See how it feels.”

 

What do you think?  What makes you happy?  Click on Comments, below, and let us know how you feel.

Posted on 08/09/2010 at 07:49 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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How Old is Old?

www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/29/john-boehner-accuses-demo_n_629265.html

 

The recession has caused a lot of hand-wringing and talking in this country.  One of the topics up for debate is the age of retirement.  Congress might look to raise the retirement age to 70, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggested Monday.

 

Forget for a moment that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you might not retire until you’re dead.  Countries around the globe are looking to raise the age of retirement, the age of social benefits for senior citizens, the . . . hell, they’re trying to forestall the elder in elderly.

 

So, The Gramma Sutra wants to know, when are we elderly?  With modern medicine, exercise, Viagra, plastic surgery and more, at what age are we really in our senior years? More importantly, does it even matter anymore?

 

What do you think? Are you a senior by a specific age or only by how you feel?  In other words, if a 77 year old woman is having great sex, several times a week with several people, is she old?

 

If an 85 year old man is the lothario of his retirement community, is he old? When is old, old?

Posted on 08/06/2010 at 03:01 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Supergeezers

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/the-outlier/

In the New Old Age blog in The New York Times, Paula Span worries that venerating people like the late Daniel Schorr makes it harder to age for the rest of us. 

The GrammaSutra wonders if you think that's true?  Yes, Daniel Schorr lived and worked brilliantly until the very end, but does his incredible accomplishment make anyone else's old age meaningless by comparison?

More to our point:  If Mick Jagger is still shtupping like a rabbit at 67; and Shigeo Tokuda is the King of Mature porn at 76; does that mean the rest of us that aren't, um, as precocious should feel bad or worse feel mediocre?

Don't be ridiculous! Look, Daniel Schorr was incredible.  But so are you! You don't have to have a storied career, the sex drive of a rock star, or over 350 movies to your credit to be fantastic.  You just have to get up and do the best you can with what you've got. 

The GrammaSutra doesn't want anyone to feel out of the loop or left behind.  Sex is a personal decision, but we've found that it's often a decision that society thinks shouldn't worry anyone over the age of 50.  If you are a woman (or a man, GrampaSutra is right around the corner, gents) of a certain age and you want some fun information on sexuality and aging, we're here for you.  If you want this information to improve your sex life then wahoo!  If you want the info but you're happy with your sex life, wahoo to you too! And if you've found that you are happy taking a break from sex, but you think we're funny and you don't yet know any of Mr. Tokuda's work, then double wahoo for you too!

The Gramma Sutra will miss Daniel Schorr's take on all things newsworthy. We'd like to think that Mr. Schorr made a heck of a GrampaSutrian!

Posted on 08/03/2010 at 07:51 AM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Tell Us Your Secrets . . . and Listen to Ours!

Ever wanted to be published?  Think your sexploits should be immortalized in prose?  Do you have that overriding desire to rhapsodize about your most sensual life experiences, and to share your hard-earned sexual advice with the world . . . even if it's just anonymously?

Well, now you can!

Log on to The Definitive and Defiantly Funny Online Guide to Sex and discover your true sexuality @ TheGrammaSutra.com, a new social networking website designed expressly for women ages 50+.

Posted on 07/29/2010 at 04:56 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Sexpert, Shmexpert

So, I'm having a chat with a few friends the other day and round about the second pitcher of margaritas the concept of experts came up.  Sally had a termite expert, Cecilia was seeing a paint specialist, and Muir (yes, her parents were old school hippies) was engaged in an expert menage a trois -- seeing an orthopedist, an ayuverdic specialist, and a hair color expert . . . due to the unfortunate cinnamon highlights debacle.

Well, needless to say, these ladies all wanted to know about the perfect expert for their boudoir issues.  You know -- the Houdini of Hooha, the Know it all of Naughty, the Sultan of Sex.  They turned to me, eyes wide, glasses full, ready to hear what The Gramma Sutra had to say about the expert sexpert.

Nothing.  The Gramma Sutra's got nothing.

Here's the thing:  we at the Gramma Sutra go far and wide, and sometimes deep and dark, to bring you the most interesting, intriguing and informative information that's out there.  We consult doctors, therapists, counselors, lawyers, sex guides, websites, books and videos and more to bring you information that can help you have a longer, lustier, love life.

Honestly, somethings we would rather not have learned . . . but, over all, there is not a stone or vibrator that we would not have left unturned, or turned off, in our quest. Throughout our exhaustive search we've discovered the undisputed number one sex expert in the country.

YOU!

Yes, it's you. You are the sexpert you've been waiting for.  Let's face it, only you know what you like and don't like.  Only you know what your deepest fantasies are.  And, only you have the power to make your sex life whatever you want it to be.

So, while you're reading The Gramma Sutra or visiting our website, remember all of this info is to make you into your own personal Sex Guru . . . and, while you're at it, share some tips along the way.

The Gramma Sutra welcomes input all the time, but please, please keep the X-rated pictures at home.  Let's save something for the HBO special!

The girls were a little dissapointed but a third pitcher of margaritas, and I quickly realized I was in the company of some amazing Sex Guru's my ownself. Muir apparently is the Nadia Komenich of Glen Cove, Long Island.  Ladies, you live and live, and you learn!

Posted on 07/27/2010 at 12:21 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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A Woman's Guide to Reviving Sex Drive

As baby boomers age, more and more women report they've lost their sex drive. But experts say it may just be matter of knowing where to look.



Has the "free love" generation lost its mojo?

If you talk to baby boomer gals, it seems the answer is yes. Indeed, as millions of women enter perimenopause and then transgress to m...enopause and beyond, many say they check their sex drive at the door – and most are not happy about it."I don't think a day goes by when at least one patient – and usually more – complain that their sex drive is dropping off and want to know what they can do about it," says Laura Corio, MD, a gynecologist and clinical instructor at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City

Clinically known as HSDD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder), Corio says she doesn't think more women are affected now than in the past, but she does believe more are coming forward -- prompted, at least in part, by the success male potency drugs like Viagra."The man gets a prescription for Viagra and and he's ready to rock and roll while she's thinking 'Hey, where's my pill?' If she's not ready to jump in the old van and join him for a ride, there can be real problems," says Corio.

See http://www.webmd.com/menopause/guide/sex-drive-and-menopause

Posted on 07/25/2010 at 04:32 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Sex and Aging — New Insights from The AARP

Sex and Aging - New Insights from The AARP

 

OK, so you've been around the block more than once — heck, more than a hundred times. But do you know everything you ought to know about sex? Here are some essential truths that every grown-up person should embrace:

 

The people with the best all-around sex lives aren't swinging singles — they're the boring, married ones.

That people in monogamous marriages have the richest sex lives is not just theory but quantifiable fact. According to a National Bureau of Economic Research study, "The happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be one."

What makes married sex so good? Says Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus, director of the Medical Center for Female Sexuality in Purchase, N.Y: "There is a great deal to be said for really knowing what turns your partner on, for knowing you can say or do what you want, and also knowing there will be another time soon to try that new thing again, even if it didn't work the first time around."

 

The older women get, the sexier they feel.

One reason women feel hotter as they get older: With the fear of pregnancy behind them, and children growing up, women feel free to devote their bodies to their own physical pleasure. Another reason: "Women have to learn about their bodies, which are more complicated than male bodies, and that takes time and experience," says Dr. Helen Fisher, a research professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. What's more, there's a large emotional component in a woman's sexual response, and that may take time to develop too.

 

What you say can be as pivotal to passion as what you do.

Researchers have found that words can have as powerful an influence as actions on the quality of your sex life. Telling your lover a secret right before sex, for instance, creates a feeling of intimacy that can enhance the physical experience. Want your erotic messages to have maximum impact? Whisper them in your partner's left ear, where emotionally charged words connect better, according to research by Teow-Chong Sim of Sam Houston State University.

 

Good looks don't necessarily make for good sex.

"Maybe there's a woman in your office who guys think is 'hot, hot, hot' and she can say, 'I have no desire, none, nada. I couldn't care less if I never had sex again,'" Bat Sheva Marcus says. "Then you have one of my favorite patients, a 60-year-old, cute but average, chubby single woman who is currently carrying on an affair with a 30-year-old, a 42-year-old and her lover of 32 years, a 65-year-old pianist. You would never know!"

 

Sex is a need, not a luxury.

We're all so busy, there's a tendency to put sex way down on our ever-present lists of things to do, somewhere above cleaning out the garage . . . but below taking the poodle to the groomer and deciding what to have for dinner. And that's a mistake.

"Many long-married couples see sex as, 'Oh, it would be nice, but I don't have time for that anymore,'" says Christine Bertrand Hyde, a sex therapist in Chester, N.J. "But you make time for chatting with your friends, for getting manicures, for going out to the theater. Couples need to make the time for romance. It's the best thing they can do for their relationship."

Posted on 07/23/2010 at 04:10 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Humorous Online Sex Guide for Women 50+ Launched – TheGrammaSutra.com

For release:  IMMEDIATE

Contact:  Sylvana Joseph ~ (504)250-5024 or [email protected]

 

 

Humorous Online Sex Guide for Women 50+ Launched –

TheGrammaSutra.com

 

JULY 26, 2010, PHILADELPHIA:  Millions of women Baby Boomers can now log on to The Definitive and Defiantly Funny Online Guide to Sex to discover their true sexuality on The Gramma Sutra (www.TheGrammaSutra.com), a new social networking website designed expressly for women ages 50+.

Inspired by the ancient Hindu classic, The Kama Sutra, TheGrammaSutra.com delivers infotainment on the psychology and physiology of sex for women over 50, and offers tips and humorous insights on:  Dressing for Sexcess; Dating & Entertaining for the newly single; Props & Playthings (yes, those kinds of toys); Sexercise Routines; and, of course, Gramma Sutra Illustrations of sexual positions – mindful of the conditions that women are likely to experience as they age.  The site also serves as an online community for mature women (see the “Sun Porch”), enabling them to speak candidly and anonymously with one another on topics ranging from vaginal dryness during menopause to sex after a double mastectomy.

“Nothing is taboo or off-limits,” says website co-founder, Sylvana Joseph, a lawyer, journalist and public radio commentator.  “All those women who burned their bras in the ’60s (or wish they had) are still defying conventions, shattering expectations in their fifties, sixties and seventies.  TheGrammaSutra.com is the one place online where ladies of a certain age can go and get the facts they need about sex and ageing – definitive information, yes, medically grounded, and yet defiantly funny as well; where they can find out the secrets to living longer, healthier and randier lives; and where they can interact with women just like them in a safe and nurturing environment.”

“These are not the stereotypes of older women so often depicted in the popular media,” says site co-founder J.G. Sandom, Web entrepreneur and author.  “Boomer women control a net worth of $19 trillion, and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth.  Over the next decade, they’ll be the beneficiaries of the largest transference of wealth in history – with estimates ranging from $12 to $40 trillion.”

“Women not only account for 85% of all consumer purchases,” adds Sandom, “everything from autos to health care, but they also represent the majority of the online market, with 22% of them shopping online at least once a day.  They’re hungry for information on subjects that impact their lives in a meaningful way, including sex, and they’re increasingly going online to find it.  It’s no accident that the popularity of social networking sites is growing most quickly amongst women 55+, with more than 1.5 million female users on Facebook alone – a 550+ percent increase from six months ago.”  (By comparison, Facebook membership among people younger than 25 grew by less than 20 percent over the same period.)

“We are already in discussion with major advertisers about site sponsorship opportunities, and our agent is talking with publishers about a book deal.  Let’s face it.  Women of a certain age are an overlooked demographic powerhouse, difficult to reach using traditional media.  But they buy self-help books, and they’re going online in increasing numbers.  TheGrammaSutra.com represents a significant advertising opportunity to a broad array of advertisers -- from pharma to financial services.”

According to the U.S. Census, there are around 80 million Baby Boomers in the United States, with almost 8,000 people turning 60 every day.  When you combine Boomers with members of the Greatest and so-called Silent Generations (i.e. pre-Boomers), the size of the 50+ population jumps to more than 110 million, or around one third of the entire U.S. population . . . and more than half of these are women.  American women over fifty are the healthiest, wealthiest and most active generation of women in history – and that means sexually active as well.  In fact, researchers for AARP have found that 85% of those 60+ have some sort of intimate experience at least once a week.

For Women of a Certain Age.  The site is the brainchild of J.G. Sandom, considered the “father of interactive (i.e. Net) advertising,” who founded the nation’s first interactive ad agency (Einstein and Sandom Interactive – EASI) back in 1984, and Sylvana Joseph, a writer and public radio commentator.

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Posted on 07/23/2010 at 03:15 PM in What's New! | Permalink | Comments (0)

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