We all continue to be somewhat baffled over how often to get mammograms and whom to trust as the last word on this critical issue for women. Hey, we all want to grow up to be old women, right?

Weeks after the release of the report on new recommendations for mammograms by the 16-member U.S. Preventative Task Force, the firestorm rages on, even splitting parties as Republicans argue that the recommendations could be used to ration healthcare under reform legislation before Congress, a charge Democrats denied.

According to Reuters, Republican Representative Joe Barton suggested in a congressional hearing that under Democratic healthcare reform legislation passed by the House of Representatives, the task force could decide which preventive services, including mammograms, would be covered for many Americans.

“To have a task force make the recommendation that has been made, and to have in this bill the authority that’s given to various unelected bureaucrats to make healthcare decisions, including coverage frequency, in my opinion, is wrong,” Barton told the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on health.

The Senate is debating its version of healthcare reform legislation, seen as President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority, especially among American cancer doctors, who are outraged about the challenge to the accepted guidelines. It has touched off a heated debate among those doctors, as well as various groups.

The American Cancer Society, perhaps the most prominent of these groups, says it is sticking to the current recommendation to start annual mammogram screening at age 40 because the breast X-rays have been proven to save lives by spotting tumors early on when they are most easily treated.

Current standards say women 40 and older should get mammograms every year, while the revised recommendations suggest only we gals over 50 get screened, and that they do so every other year. Women over 74 can dispense with the test altogether, says our government.

An analysis by ABC News suggests money is the motivation. Professor Theodore Marmor, a health care policy specialist at Yale University, said cost-benefit analysis is routine in the health insurance biz.

“Although screening every woman between the ages of 40 and 50 would turn up some breast cancer”¦the question is what is the cost per diagnosis per relevant harm,” says Marmor.

“The question is going to be, between the ages of 40 and 50, what is the frequency with which you are going to find a true positive cancer finding, how many cases would we miss, how many of those cases would develop into cancer and what is it going to cost to treat them,” says Ian Duncan, president of Solucia, a company that provides actuarial health care analysis for insurers.

Duncan explains further that mammograms are actually a value-based benefit because they are preventative and only run about $125 per exam.

It’s  believed the new research doesn’t take into consideration the savings of newer technologies in screenings. ABC reports that digital mammograms are 1.5 to 4 times more expensive than conventional film-based mammograms, according to the National Cancer Institute, which also reported in 2005 that only 8 percent of the country’s breast imaging units provide the technique.

Either way, should we be thinking about money when it comes to prevention and saving lives?

“I definitely think this is the beginning of rationed care and I am very upset that women are the first to get slammed with this,” said Dr. Elizabeth Vliet, a women’s health care specialist based in Tucson, Ariz., and an opponent of health care reform. “I think that this change is designed to cut costs, not improve women’s health.”

Meantime, we women must decide for ourselves. What else is new?

Personally, at 51, I’m usually a year late in getting my own exam so I’m not overwhelmed by this debate. I don’t beat up on myself when I’m late but I know I cannot let it go too long. I know because of the number of women lost to this horrible disease, and the pink ribbons that symbolize we must keep asking the important questions and donating to our own cause when we can. I trust the pink panel more than the government panel. How ’bout you?

Image: About.com

The post Mammogram Debate Rages On and Splits Along Party Lines appeared first on EcoSalon.

They chow down the same foods we healthy middle-aged women eat: Quinoa, lean proteins, fresh organic produce, water from chic reusable Sigg bottles. They drive hybrids and raise funds for good causes, shun the direct sun, and sometimes even wear secondhand fashion (couture, of course).

But tinsel town celebrities my age, like Demi Moore, who is featured on the cover of W Magazine this month, are not like me or any of my healthy, naturally beautiful women friends. No, unlike the mere mortal soccer moms I rub shoulders with at book club gatherings and parties, Demi shows no signs of age or wear and tear. Where is the emerging turkey neck Nora Ephron wrote about? Where are the sagging eyes? Where are the cottage cheese thighs?

“Her body of work has been notable in no small part because of her notable body,” writes Moore cover story author, Kevin West, adding that, “hers is an undeniably striking version of midlife.” He assures us the striking former brat packer has changed at 47, evidenced by tiny lines when she smiles, but she has not gone under the knife.

“It’s their job to look amazing,” observes my astute 13-year-old daughter, Sydney. She tells me if it were her full time job, she would be flawless, too. Methinks my teenager looks pretty flawless now, but she would be happier with perfect hair and no blemishes, stuff that completes you when you are 13.

It comes down to the perception of perfection, and in achieving it, stars are spoonfed support from trainers and personal chefs. Most turn to plastic surgery, even prematurely, like America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan and highly respected eco goddess Daryl Hannah. In both cases, the surgery changed the lovely features we knew, while their bodies maintain the taut physiques of teens. In all cases, the goal is achieved. Defy age. Look young.

One looming exception is Meryl, but even the consummate thespian had to shape up to play a mature hippie in Mama Mia and Alec Baldwin’s ex and Steve Martin’s lover in It’s Complicated.

Still, Streep, now in her 60’s, is probably aging more naturally than any other major star. She doesn’t succumb to surgery and I haven’t noticed her photographs being altered through Photoshop, the favorite weapon in the arsenal of Hollywood anti-aging defenses. Streep doesn’t maintain a public persona outside of her appearances, stays out of the sun and avoids alcohol. Those are pretty good defenses, too. Bon Apetit, Meryl!

While I’m certain Demi stays gaunt for her industry, the W cover shot is not the body of a 47-year-old mother unaltered. My 47-year-old friends look amazing, but none of them have bodies like that. It’s the body of her daughter Rumer, perhaps.

The cover was as surprising as the Self Magazine issue featuring American Idol Kelly Clarkson, who didn’t actually slim down the way the magazine suggests on the cover, but erased those pounds thorough digital post-production. And how ’bout that ad featuring Ralph Lauren model Filippa Hamilton, who was deemed too fat at 5’10” and 120 pounds and had to be drastically Shopped to cut the mustard?

While the option of doing digital makeovers is the choice of each publication, the star still pays a price in terms of credibility.

I feel compassion when I realize society demands its idols be, well, objects to idolize. Air brushing and retouching are just a few of the finishing tools employed in the land of make believe, the land the media fully endorse because we fully buy into it. But at the end of the day, it just makes us feel sad. We can’t possibly live up to these images of perfection, and frankly, neither can the stars.

The alternative: finding a way to accept ourselves as natural beauties who do the best we can to stay healthy and fit and happy and productive – and admire how we are able to thrive in a world with so much adversity, sickness, hunger and negativity.

The Demoiselles website did a recent feature profiling celebs moving in the direction of self-acceptance, even unlikely candidates such as Kim Karshashian, who posed for the cover of Life & Style Weekly completely unretouched.

When asked by the magazine why she is so open about her body (i.e. showing herself receiving a cellulite treatment on her reality show), Kardashian said she was tired of people pretending they’re perfect and covering up things when in reality we are who we are.

“You can try to improve that, but the reality is, nobody’s perfect.” she declared.

But maybe we are perfect, Kim. Maybe we are perfectly flawed.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Images: W Magazine, Plastic Sergeant, Sony pictures, ABC News, Life & Style Magazine, Luanne Bradley

The post Photoshopping, the New Alternative to Aging Naturally appeared first on EcoSalon.

My mother, the nice Jewish lady seen here at her box at the Hollywood Bowl,  is among the biggest paper and water consumers in the country. It hasn’t been easy getting her to turn over a new leaf. (Or rather, fewer of them.)

She has a varied and colorful history of helping herself to fistfuls of disposable napkins at restaurants, collecting hundreds of brown paper grocery bags from Gelson’s Market and requiring daily soaks or showers. She’s pretty darn clean, my mother.

“I never, ever get dressed before bathing,” she has always told me.

“What? So you’ve never heard of French cologne?”

Last summer, I played the dutiful daughter and learned Italian to help mom out on our trip to Italy in September. Turns out, the only phrase that came in handy from Rome to Como was piu l’asciugamani, por favore: More towels, please. Uttered even more frequently to the nice Italian chambermaids was piu faccia l’asciugamani: More face towels!

If there’s someone out there who uses more wash cloths than my 80-year-old mother, I’d like to meet her. No exaggeration, there were several 3-foot high stacks of  Italian terrycloth squares atop the marble vanity of each hotel we visited. How does one person use so many towels without wiping off their face?

The thing is, she would never use a towel more than once. Some people go through towels but they hang them to dry and use them again. Mom won’t even wear one of her 200 Façonnable print blouses more than once without dry cleaning it. Who knew daily treks to Gelson’s Market could work up such a sweat?

And as far as paper napkins and facial tissues are concerned, I think she associates having ample supplies on hand with being well-cared for.

Yep, that’s how Cherie rolls. I love her dearly and wouldn’t trade her in for anyone (except of course, Joan Rivers, and who wouldn’t?). But I have been frustrated trying to convert her to the ways of the unwashed revolutionaries fighting to conserve resources.

Funny, mom is a dichotomy in some ways; she stays out of the sun, shuns drugs (even aspirin) and sips herb tea instead of coffee. But she can’t seem to get on board that eco bus, apart from abiding by L.A. drought restrictions on water use.

Before he died two years ago, my dad, a real estate developer, considered himself to be an early conservationist.

The logo on his office stationary read, “The environment is our business.” He was  frugal and a stickler about turning off lights, shutting off air, cutting down on sprinkler and telephone use, buying used cars for his kids and only building as much housing as he felt the market required. He was one of the first advocates of a mass transit system in L.A. He swore by solar power and used it to warm his pool starting in the 70s.

After dad’s years of chronic scolding, mom did learn to turn off lights and only cranks the heat when she is “freezing to death.”

Yet visits to her McMansion in the Valley become guilt-ridden ones for me and my conscientious kids as we stand idly by watching Nana toss paper and plastic into the garbage. Her gated community even offers recycling and composting bins to be picked up by the waste removal company. The kids and I have explained the benefits of composting to her many times, to which she has replied:

“Why would you throw extra food into a container when you have a garbage disposal?”

In truth, I can’t see her stomaching such a crude process as composting. After all, her breakfast room place settings go into the dishwasher even if no one has touched the utensils. “They’ve been out and so they are dirty,” she informs me. She glares at me with one of those disapproving scowls as if to say that I’m the one who’s crazy.

I forgive her these limitations. Mom is what you call a neat freak. My therapist has urged me not to elaborate.

The good news is that I am making a few inroads with the recycling lectures.

“Now, listen carefully, Mom, when you use a glass jar, let’s say of spaghetti sauce, and you toss it into the trash, it goes into a landfill. Landfills are really full and bad for the planet. If you recycle it, someone can reuse the glass to make something consumers can use.”

For years, she has refused to buy these arguments from me, her youngest. But the other day, when I questioned her about trash disposal again on the phone, she checked in with my older sister who was sitting nearby.

“Do you recycle your trash?” she asked Deb, while I waited patiently for the survey results. “Yes, of course I do,” said my sister. She’s the oldest.

“Oh,” said mom, now seemingly convinced. “I’ll have to tell Mariano (her helper) to start separating the stuff.”

And to think, all it took was a family intervention.

Main image: Visual Panic

Other images: Luanne Bradley

The post Why Is It So Hard to Get My Mom to Go Green? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Can sharing a pot of tea bring you closer to your friends? Perhaps, if you order Friendship Organic Tea from the UK. It’s not so strange to import tea from the people who do it best.

A blend of marigold flowers and hawthorn berries, the tea is 100% organically grown and packed. Here is the friendship connection: for each pack of tea sold, 5 pence is given to the Friends Fund – an organization that donates to kind individuals or groups recognized for helping others and offering new friendship.

The first recipient was Contact the Elderly – which arranges tea parties across Britain for isolated and lonely elderly people.

Order the tea at Biomelifestyle, a great resource for eco-friendly decor and accessories. Price £5.00

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