Women Online

Monday brought a pleasant surprise.  A young woman thanked me for my efforts in promoting women. She had read my long neglected blog, and reminded me I mentioned iwpr.org, the Internet address of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, in a 2013 post. I revisited the post, and will update it soon, and repost.

However, I never thought to promote women with my blog. Rather I intended to inform elders of both sexes, as well as caregivers and families who are involved with aging people and issues pertinent to our aging American population.

My unexpected fan suggested a new topic for women of all ages and backgrounds, online safety for women, and pointed the way to an online resource. As a result, I am providing a link below to a vpnmentor blog post of "The Empowering Guide to Internet Safety for Women." Why is it empowering? I suspect my female readers could do with a layer of preventive safety measures, to give us direct control over our online lives. In so doing we empower greater confidence, even, self-esteem.

This information is important for men, as well; however men are less likely to be sexually targeted, than women. As do women in the #metoo movement, most of us have intense stories to tell, ranging from the dishearteningly unpleasant, to the dangerous and, in some instances, the heartbreaking.

So, having reviewed the Guide, I sincerely recommend it to women of any age, Internet savvy or not. Men, especially as you are our fathers, brothers, friends and husbands, I invite you to utilize the Guide, too.

https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/To keep up-to-date with public policy issues and information of particular interest to women, have a look at the iwpr.org site (The Institute for Women's Policy Research) and a list of timely, interesting publications.

Stem Cell Wild West

Have you waited and watched, while stem cell clinics, marketers, and hucksters grew like cancers? I have, and confess to halting my knee surgeries, in part, because I was so hopeful there would be a better alternative.  Boy did the t.v. ads make it seem stem cell therapy would be the ultimate answer...simple, non-invasive and incredibly effective.
Incredible is the key word here. Insurance was the first issue for me. Undaunted, though, I thought insurers would catch up with the technology. Surely the savings to them vis a vis surgical treatment, would prove a huge incentive. Hmmm...don't know how long I would have waited for Hades to freeze, but I've endured at least a couple of years more pain and limitation, waiting to go forward with knee replacement surgeries.  

Of course I've continued addressing my degenerative joint disease with anti-inflammatory supplements and dietary changes. Surgeries may not have solved the problem, and the drawbacks are obvious. But you get the point.

False hope, however, did not cost me what it has cost people, who spend substantial amounts of money on 'stem cell' procedures. This is the 21st Century Golden Fleece, and seniors, in particular, are being fleeced at alarming rates. The science is simply not in place, and providers are NOT using stem cells. Some, though not all, are treating patients with amniotic fluid containing dead cells; some use platelet-enriched blood from the patients themselves.

in a heartbreak of dashed hopes. Worse still are people who have suffered terrible damage from stem cell treatments no physician or researcher would recommend. Here is a link to a news article that may change your mind about how benign the stem cell business has evolved to be. Good luck out there. I wish you well, but stem cell treatment is about as well regulated as the Wild West of the 1800s:

https://ipscell.com/2017/01/clinics-cant-retract-stem-cell-treatments-gone-bad/