Adriana Kraft

When it's time to heat things up...

Stay Sexy ~ Stay Healthy

Stay Sexy ~ We’re Not Making This Stuff Up!

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…well, of course, in our erotic romance fiction, we make up lots of stuff. 🙂

But today I’m talking about those phrases you may have seen out there like sixty is the new forty, reverse the effects of aging, stay forever young, and the like. Pie in the sky? Nope, it’s true!

Of course we’re not going to actually stay young forever – but increasingly, there’s compelling evidence that certain healthy lifestyle habits do, in fact, reverse some of the effects of aging.

Earlier this week, NPR covered the most recent entry into this database. In a five year study authored by Dean Ornish, of heart-health fame, participants who engaged in a select group of healthy practices lengthened the telomeres on the ends of their chromosomes significantly, while the telomeres of the control group actually shortened.

It would take a lot of brain science to delve into a thorough understanding of telomeres and how they function, but here’s a short version: telomeres protect the dna within the chromosomes, and shorter telomeres are associated with shorter life span and an increase in many chronic diseases.

Prior to the present study, it’s not been known whether healthy living creates longer telomeres (and decreased susceptibility to disease), or whether people with longer telomeres simply have a healthier lifestyle, perhaps because they enjoy greater health. This exploratory study demonstrates in a small sample that the lifestyle differences can be causal.

So yes, sixty can be the new forty – or at least, in our sixties, we can still reverse some of the effects of aging through our habits. What habits? Ornish elaborated as follows:

A whole foods, low-fat, plant-based diet that’s also low in refined carbohydrate.

Walking for a half an hour a day.

Doing various stress management techniques, including yoga and meditation, for an hour a day.

Spending more time with their loved ones, including friends and family.

Apropos of all of the above, my husband and I went dancing last night. It’s part of what we love about being so close to Las Vegas, where great dance bands are easy to come by. We were fascinated by a highly energetic and broadly smiling elderly couple who hardly sat out a dance – fast or slow, western, rock and roll or hip-hop. I would have guessed their age to be early seventies, at most. A friend set us straight: both member of this couple are ninety years old. Not only that – where did they meet, after they’d each lost their spouse? They met at the gym, where they both still work out regularly.

That’s what I want to be when the time comes – ninety, vigorous, and happily dancing my feet off!

Stay Sexy ~ Exercise Your Brain!

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We all know that the brain is the most important sex organ.

Losing my mind is one of my greatest fears when I think about aging. Both my parents were blessed – or cursed – with bodies that long outlasted their minds. My mother spent the last eight years of her life in a horrific haze, unaware of who she was or who we were, due to Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s in my gene pool.

So I’m all about finding and doing anything I can that’s been shown to postpone or reduce Alzheimer’s progression. I’ve written before about the tremendous positive impact of aerobic exercise on the brain – but there’s another half to the equation. All those new embryonic neurons that are bathed in growth hormones when we exercise won’t develop into full-fledged brain cells or get picked up in new brain circuits unless we’re also exercising our minds – learning new things, challenging the brain with something it hasn’t encountered before.

As with physical exercise, if it’s not something we enjoy, we’re less likely to keep at it. So hubs and I have turned to astronomy, chiefly for fun, but also as a challenge. Our night sky is a vast puzzle, filled with the familiar and the unfamiliar (to me). We’ve purchased a spotting scope, and in the limited library we can carry with us in our motorhome, we have three print books on the stars. I’ll say more about my favorite of these, An Intimate Look at the Night Sky, in a brief review below.

We’ve had fabulous clear nights in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New Mexico as we’ve slowly trekked our way towards Las Vegas this summer. My childhood experience of the stars never went much beyond the Big Dipper, but we’re gradually coming to know the major constellations currently visible, where to find which planets, and how to locate some of the fascinating deep space phenomena. Several nights we’ve seen shooting stars – and known which meteor shower they were part of.

Do you know what zodiacal light is? I didn’t either (and you can look it up HERE), but I got up in time to see it on a clear morning last week, and was also rewarded with another shooting star, a stray from the Aurigids.

The challenges to my brain? Memorization, for starters – names in strange languages, classification, which bright star goes belongs to which constellation and where is it. Truly it’s like learning a new language – which is another highly recommended brain exercise. Then there’s translating the fractions of inches on our charts to the vastness of the sky dome, and moving back and forth from what I think I’ve seen to what the diagram looks like.

The rewards, of course, are far more than just new neuron circuits for my brain. Each time we go outside and look up, there is the gift of the overwhelming beauty and vastness of the night sky.  It’s a great couple’s activity, it can be incredibly relaxing and meditative, and it sure beats out watching TV.

Here’s my brief review – definitely a Recommended Read!

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REVIEW:

An Intimate Look at the Night Sky
Author: Chet Raymo
© 2001
Available in hardcover, paperback and Kindle at Amazon

In this lyrical book, physicist and professor Chet Raymo takes us on a profound journey through the visible night sky and the stories it reveals about the creation and history of the universe, our earth, and our very selves. With the voice of a Renaissance man, he pulls from our culture’s music, poetry, myth, and prose across the centuries to connect us with the constellations – stars from our own Milky Way galaxy – and the “deep space” phenomena from the farthest reaches of space and time. Organized by the seasonal changes in the sky, the book weaves simple instructions for locating stars and constellations with hard research and theoretical physics to explain what we are seeing when we look up at night. It may seem counterintuitive to talk about becoming intimate with something as vast as the stars in the sky, but this little book succeeds in creating an emotional connection as palpable as the dust of stars that makes up our physical bodies. I highly recommend this exquisite read.

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Have fun, and Stay Sexy!

Stay Sexy ~ It Should be Fun

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Having just danced the night away instead of staying home and writing this blog last night, I thought I’d follow up on last week’s Stay Sexy post, It’s Hard Work.

It is hard work. And some of that hard work isn’t any fun. I know, the hard work pays off in rewards we will get later on, but sometimes it’s just hard to stay motivated for long term benefits.

So whenever possible, find something you like to do for your aerobic workouts. That’ll be different for each of us. I love bicycle riding outdoors – I have a friend who’d much rather work out on her dependable elliptical, where she doesn’t have to deal with other riders or traffic, and she can stay buried in her favorite novel while she’s working out. No judgment implied. You have to identify what works for you.

That said, here are a few ideas that might just be enough fun to draw us off that couch and into aerobic activity.

Walk

Take a walk or a hike. Walk for several blocks in your neighborhood. Walk with a buddy or best friend, and enjoy the conversation. Walk a nature trail. Here is something I would have missed if I’d stayed indoors – just off the trail, and we had our new binoculars with us, with a built in camera.

Get in the water

Swimming is excellent aerobic exercise. Just going for a swim isn’t going to pull me off the couch, but it might work for you, if you love it. What does get me in the water is group water aerobics. The class is fun, the workout is smooth and gentle but no less effective, and in the water I can start to feel as graceful as I once felt taking ballet as a little girl. Not gonna do those arabesques on land any more, probably, but in the water? Perfect!

Dance

Hubs and I were out on the dance floor off and on for four hours last night, to music that ranged from the sixties to yesterday, rock, country, disco, pop, hip hop… I don’t think they left anything out.

Listen to the music

This option has been around for decades – whatever aerobic activity you’re engaged in, pop your favorite music in your ears and rock on. Time can fly by if you’re on that elliptical or treadmill. If you’re out-of-doors, just be careful if you’re out of doors and need to be able to hear traffic to stay safe.

Jog or Run

I almost didn’t add this because my days of high-impact aerobics are over, but if that’s not something that compromises your joint health, absolutely. Go for it! Explore the walking/running trails in your community, hit the track at a local school, and let the wind fly by your ears.

Take it Outside

Almost any aerobic exercise can be done outside, where you can listen to the birds, watch a sunrise or sunset, watch the waves crash on the beach, hear the wind in the trees, or whatever other aspect of our incredible natural world suits your fancy.

Those are just a few – I’d love to hear some of your favorites.

Have fun, and Stay Sexy!

 

Stay Sexy ~ It’s Hard Work

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I have a vivid memory of our now-grown son running up to me after his first day of kindergarten, beaming as he shared his important news: “Guess what, Mom? Hard work pays off!”

Here’s a fact baby boomers need to know if you want to stay sexy through these next decades: It takes a lot of work. Couch potatoes aren’t sexy, pretty much, and the time-worn phrase use it or lose it applies, too.

So here we go – what does the hard work consist of, and how do we keep it going?

1)    Move your body

The direct payoff of aerobic exercise and strength training for our sex lives is well documented. We’ll look better, feel better, have more muscle tone, develop more stamina, have better orgasms…the list goes on. If you’re not used to moving, you can start small – and it never pays to set expectations too high, in the beginning. That’s a set-up for failure and disappointment. Find something that works for you (we like Xbox 360 Kinect Dance Central and Extreme Makeover, as well as dance classes), something you like, something you can see yourself maintaining over the long haul, and above all, just start. Any day you do something is a day you’re not a couch potato. At our house? Forty minutes a day, almost every day. Hard work.

2)    Eat well

Yes, to stay sexy, we have to be careful about what we eat. Pay attention to what foods – and how much – you need for a healthy, balanced lifestyle, as opposed to a quick-fix diet. Because my husband is a cardiac patient, we’ve developed a repertoire of delicious, satisfying heart-healthy main meals from which we rarely stray. Whole grains instead of refined flours. Fruits for dessert instead rich baked goods. A baked apple, with cinnamon, four or five pecans, and just the tiniest touch of butter, instead of apple pie, and pour a little 1%, almond, or soy milk over it instead of ice cream or whipped cream. There are lots of resources out on the web (see item #4 below) to help with staying both delicious and healthy in our eating habits. Yes, this takes discipline.

3)    Be sexual every day

With your partner, if you have one, but fly solo if you’re alone. Guys may adapt to this more easily than women, since guys typically have an average of eleven daily erections during waking hours. But many sources recommend an orgasm a day for overall health, and even short of orgasm, keeping that cock or pussy active and well-rehearsed will pay off in greater sexual stamina, increased ability to achieve and maintain arousal, increased comfort with penetration and overall ability to enjoy sex.

Kegels are a good place to start, for both men and women. Exercises that help sustain blood flow for the penis, and toys or play that keeps a vagina stretched and ready to receive are additional options.

And if you have a partner, sharing a little TLC, cock-training, cuddle time, adult film watching or reading out loud from your favorite erotic romance can keep those endorphins flowing and improve your overall connectedness and well being, even if it doesn’t always lead to intercourse or orgasm.

4)    Exercise your Brain

We all know that the brain is the most important sex organ – to establish and maintain arousal as our bodies change, we’ll want to keep our brains as primed as possible! I’m not just talking crossword puzzles and Sudoku here (though I do lots of both). Keep learning things, keep finding new and stimulating topics that spark your interest. One of our favorite coffee hangouts has the motto “life is short – stay awake for it.” Works for us!

5)    Learn how to talk to yourself

It’s all about motivation – we all have those days when we just don’t feel like putting in the hard work. It’s okay to skip a day once in a while, but it’s crucial to pick it back up once we’ve taken that break and keep it going. Learn what your prime motivating factors are and practice using them: what threat or reward is most likely to get you up off that couch and following your regimen again? I have several – here are a couple of them. It took me years to get rid of those love handles that used to hang over the waistband of my jeans, and I don’t want them back. Yes, that’s vanity – whatever works! I also have the specter of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease hanging over me on both sides of my gene pool, and there are certainly mornings where that fear alone drives me to get back at it. When the going gets tough, know what kind of pep talk to give yourself.

6)    Build a support network and use it

Keeping up with all these practices is very hard work. Sometimes self-talk alone still isn’t enough to keep us going or to re-start the engines. We need buddies – cheerleaders, even, who can encourage us, teach us, and light the way. People in your support network don’t have to be privy to your deepest sexual secrets – they might not even know staying sexy is an important goal for you. But maintaining sexual health is so integrally connected to all other aspects of a healthy lifestyle that anything your friends can contribute to keeping you on track will spill over into the rest of it. Cheerleaders, workout buddies, mentors, fellow travelers – we all feel better and live better when we’re connected to others in these ways.

Share what you’re learning

For my husband and me, writing this column and writing our erotic romance novels have both contributed beyond measure to keeping us vibrant, healthy, excited and sexy. For one thing, hardly a day goes by that we’re not talking or learning about something sexual. What works for you? What have we left out that you would never do without? How do you re-boot yourself when it starts to feel too hard? We’d love to include reader comments and ideas in future columns, so drop us a comment or an email.

Have fun – and Stay Sexy!

Stay Sexy ~ Just Dance!

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Hate to “exercise?” Don’t want the drudgery of treadmills at a gym? Can’t stand the thought of joining early morning walkers at the local mall when weather is bad?

Just dance!

Don’t know how to dance? No problem – and there are no excuses. Neither did my husband and I, until we were in our fifties. He’d never learned. I’d danced a little – ballet in childhood, some pop culture dancing in my teens, but after that I moved in circles that didn’t go out dancing, and when we’d go out with friends to events with live bands, for sure neither of us had a clue what to do to the music.

That didn’t stop our friends from hauling us out onto the dance floor – even knowing nothing, we had a great time, and that motivated us to invest in learning how. We knew it would burn calories and hoped it would continue to be fun.

Enter Xbox 360 Connect, just released in time for Christmas that year. At the game store we fielded funny comments about how much our grandkids were going to love their present – we just smiled and said “it’s for us.” Dance Central was exactly what we needed. I can’t tell you how many hours – together and separately – we spent in front of that sensor, learning to make limbs move exactly like the avatar’s to precisely the correct rhythm.

Those weren’t dances you could take out on the dance floor, but they gave us confidence, delivered moves we could use, and inspired us to keep learning. We downloaded some great free instructional videos for rock and roll routines, ordered dvd’s for tango and salsa, took some country line dancing and western swing classes, and never looked back.

Maybe it’s obvious, but dancing contributes so much to staying sexy. There’s the exercise and calories burned, of course, and sometimes if it’s raining and we can’t ride our bikes or take a walk, we dance in our tiny motorhome living room for our workout. But there’s so much more – the laughter, the touching, the excitement of getting dressed up and going out dancing, the high that comes from feeling good about what we’re doing.

So I hope you dance – and here’s a link to Lee Ann Womack’s wonderful song by that name: I Hope You Dance.

Have fun, and Stay Sexy!

Stay Sexy ~ From the Heart

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Stay Sexy ~ From the Heart

A couple weeks back I wrote about my success with bone density loss prevention, which will definitely help with staying sexy. Today I’m reporting for my other half, who is a cardiac patient.

If he didn’t have heart problems, we probably wouldn’t be writing erotic romance together. The fact that his life has felt at risk gave rise to our motto if not now, when? and has led us to take risks and explore new dimensions we might never have attempted otherwise.

We just spent the past three months in our former Iowa home, putting it on the market and (thankfully) selling it, in order to morph into full time RVers, living in our motorhome to write, edit, market, and travel. Part of our Iowa sojourn included full medical checkups for both of us. The exciting news is that six years after his triple bypass, my husband’s risk of death from heart problems has dropped to equal that of the general population.

Does this mean he doesn’t have heart disease anymore? Not by a long shot: the same genetics that got him in trouble will reach right out and grab him if he doesn’t keep doing, every day, all the things that have led to this miraculous change. So we thought we’d share what those things are:

CARDIO: At least six days out of seven, 30 to 40 minutes (often more) of cardio workout. Sometimes we bike. Sometimes we hit a gym with treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, stair steppers. Sometimes we dance. Most days we also take a 15-30 minute walk.

STRENGTH TRAINING: Two to three days a week, strength training/resistance workouts.

DIET:  We eat very little that comes in a can or box (well, apart from morning whole-grain cereal). Fresh fruit, at least three a day. Fresh veggies – two to three a day, sometimes more. Nuts, yogurt, popcorn (high in fiber, low in fat), nothing deep-fat fried, smaller meat portions. If we have dessert at all, it’s usually fruit, perhaps with yogurt or low-fat milk.

MEDICATION: He faithfully takes his small daily dose of a statin and a beta blocker. To that he adds a few carefully selected supplements.

STRESS REDUCTION: This is a biggie, and also a genetic vulnerability in his family. Taking a mid-day break, finding an occupation he enjoys (writing erotic romance comes to mind), accessing some yoga stretches and poses, spending more time relaxing on purpose and not just by chance.

SEX: Having sex three days a week or more (yes, we practice what we preach, hooray for that!), at least a little sexual contact daily, lots of cuddling, holding hands, physical contact.

He and I have often joked over the last several years that his first and most important job is simply staying alive, making sure he does all the things on this list so we can be together a long time and enjoy each other. I’m thrilled with his job performance – lovin’ the life I live.

Have fun, and Stay Sexy!