Sunlight is the best medicine for osteomalacia, a bone-softening problem common in older women, according to Geriatric Nursing: the American Journal of Care for the Aging. Because of hormone loss after menopause, women are especially vulnerable to osteomalacia, which can cause back pain and an inability to walk. A lack of Vitamin D plays a major role in this condition, and decreased exposure to sunlight is considered one of the main causes of Vitamin D deficiency, the journal says.
Vitamin D helps the body absorb bone-building calcium from the small intestine. Few foods naturally contain Vitamin D, Geriatric Nursing says. Among the edible sources are yeast, fish-liver oils and milk.
But the sun may be the best source. The journal reports on studies showing that as little as 15 minutes to half an hour of sunshine each day substantially increased Vitamin D in the body. A bit of sunbathing could prevent bone-softening without risk or expense.
Unfortunately, the journal continues, the elderly often lack
opportunities to get out in the sun, because they are confined indoors in nursing homes or housebound in their own residences.
WET THREAT
Frustrated lovers have for ages relied on cold showers to stem their passion. But there may be a more medicinal purpose for bathing in cold water. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that sprayed in a shower, hot water releases the toxic chemicals trichloroethlene and chloroform, which are inhaled in high concentrations while you bathe.
Short of going around smelling funky, the safest alternatives are to ventilate your bathroom by opening windows or using fans, to take as quick and cold a shower as you can stand or to take a bath, which produces about half the concentrations of the chemicals.
DAY-CARE DILEMMA
Harvard professor David Bloom and Martin O`Connell of the Census Bureau offer an indirect solution to the welfare problem: affordable, quality day care.
Creating day-care facilities inexpensive enough for low-income people would significantly increase the number of poor women who work, the researchers insist. The day-care situation in this country keeps young, unmarried mothers from working, according to Bloom and O`Connell, and so these women collect public aid.
Presently, the researchers say, 48 percent of mothers with children less than a year old work, and affordable day care would increase that to 68 percent.
As proof of what good, affordable day care can do to a society, Bloom and O`Connell point to Sweden, which has one of the world`s best national child-care systems and one of the world`s highest percentages of females in the labor force.
