I live in California and come across all sorts of information about general wellness. Of course it's all linked.  Fertility/menopause, joint health, protection from colds and flus... especially when dealing with small children and as we age, I think, we pay attention to this stuff.

Here are some general bits of information that I'm picking up. I'm putting them here because I will use them when needed. And perhaps you will also.

General wellness stuff
My two favorite sources for general information are www.about.com, which has hosted sections on almost everything, and the UC Berkeley Parents group, whose online newsletters service 10,000 users, and whose archives house wonderful wisdom.

I'm also partial to Dr. Dean Edell, whose site is called HealthCentral.com.  He likes to touch on new health news.
Have you heard of Mama'sHealth.com?  They seem to have nice stuff.

There are many other places to surf for information.  Some of the places I have found are in other sections of this site, such as: 

Flu stuff
It's the worst flu season in a long time, and they ran out of the shot the day before my kid was to get it.  Also, everybody in my household is sick right now.  What am I taking? (and will it work?  Let's see!)

Yin Chiao
Great stuff.  A chinese medicine.  Take it the instant that
you think you might be getting sick.  Get the stuff in the
green box, not one of those strange substitutions.  It comes
in little glass vials with 8 pills per.  4 pills in the morning, 4
at night, for as many days as you wish.  I personally find
that it mitigates the severety of stuff when I do get sick, too.

Sambucol Immune System Formula
Made in Israel (those people don't kid around) by a renowned
virologist.  Sounded good enough for me.  I got the kind with
echinacea and zinc.  Also has vitamin C and propolis in it.
The link I have given had the best price.

Miscellaneous Hylands homeopathic remedies
I bought one called Flu.  Sounds good.  Also, one called
something like C-plus cold tablets for Simon. I loved their
teething stuff, both the pills and the cream, and I also like
their Calms pills for relaxing. 

Health and wellness newsletters
I used to get the UCB Health and Wellness newsletter.  It's good.

Health and the Environment
Okay, I give up.  I was raised in California in the seventies, surrounded by crowds of self-indulgent Boomers who were neurotically engaging in every single health fad known to mankind.  Except colon cleansing. Seriously, I think that the whole colon cleansing thing is *so* eighties.

My mother didn't use chocolate for years, sweetened with honey, used only whole grains, and haunted the local health food store like a ghost looking for the meaning of life.

And for almost my entire adult life, I despised "special eaters."  I never quite descended to the McDonald's level, but I got seriously burned out on the whole "I'm special and my diet proves it" stuff.

As a parent, however, I've had to get over it.  For one thing, things are very different now. We've literally screwed our environment up so much that there are toxic substances in everything surrounding us and our children are paying the price. 

And secondly, my child had terrible eczema, which the medical profession just tried to treat with increasingly strong creams, until one day the pharmacist came out from behind the counter and told me not to use the current cream below my 10 month old's belly button, because it "could harm developing testes."  On that day, I became a special diet convert.  We threw the cream away and I began removing items from my son's diet. On a wheat, dairy, egg, nut, chocolate, tomato, and pineapple-free diet he was totally eczema-free for three years.   (Amazing that our medical profession doesn't follow simple logic sometimes, isn't it?  But I digress.)

Why are there so many allergies now - so many more than when we were children?  I went to a seminar given by a doctor called Ann Wolfe from Redwood City recently. She had compelling, sourceable proof that the upsurge in autism is affected by toxins and by a sensitivity to elements and food.  Also, that children who end up with autism are more sensitive to their elements than other children.  For more on Allergies, see my allergy page.

That's not a cure-all observation.  But it's enough to really start all of us thinking - and acting defensively with regard to the environment and our children.

Oh.  One other thing. While I'm putting this together, I'm seeing an interesting article on Environmental Threats to the Aging, so this is something we should all start to be concerned with - no matter what our age.  And, as the article points out, it's no longer just about changing our lives - it's about changing our farm bills and reforming our chemical policies as well.

What's going on in the world.
I have no idea how to stay on top of all of the issues, but I strongly suspect that there are some wonderful parents groups out there who can help, and I will find and link to them.

News
The Environmental Health News is a good newsletter.  It's free and online.

Fact Sheets
Want to see something terrifying?  Check out the Mental Health and Environmental Exposures fact sheet for parents, teachers, and doctors, which discusses the connections between environmental exposures to phisical and chemecal agensts with mental health symptoms and conditions.

Programs
Here are programs sponsored by the Institute for Chidlren's Environmental health.

The Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI) is a working group of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (www.healthandenvironment.org). The primary mission of LDDI is to foster collaboration among learning and developmental disability organizations, researchers, health professionals and environmental health groups to address concerns about the impact environmental pollutants may have on healthy brain development. LDDI currently has over 150 organizational and individual members engaged in educational and policy efforts.

Organizations

To start with, I'd like to introduce you to the

The Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) is a diverse network of 2900 individual and organizational Partners in 45 countries and 48 states, working collectively to advance knowledge and effective action to address growing concerns about the links between human health and environmental factors. Institute for Children's Environmental Health, which is currently sponsoring two programs:

     The Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative



The Anachronistic Mom's notes on
General Wellness
Did you know that you can check your pH levels for an easy metric of how healthy your body is?