The issues that women face these are becoming increasingly complex. Not, as many would like to believe that we women are getting more of a hand in running the world, but the price we pay for it, or rather the price we are made to pay for it is unnatural.

For someone reason, and I guess this will be going on for some months to come, the US presidential election certainly was a rollercoaster ride in the world’s history. For the first time ever in the country’s history, a woman ran for president and another ran for vice president. Neither won, but that’s part of the game. What shook many people though, was the fact how both were taken. Comments about Hillary Clinton’s cackle as well as Sarah Palin’s leaking amniotic fluid were disturbing. All across the country and the world, people were criticizing the women’s outward appearances, their laughs, the totally gender related issues they had, instead of focusing 100% on their policies.

This is not to say that no one took notice of the policies they were each batting but the fact is, there was more media hype about Palin being a former beauty queen at the beginning of the campaign (and for a prominent part throughout) to make an onlooker wonder what a woman had to do to get some serious criticism. For Palin it came, and this article isn’t really about the comic part of the election, but it’s worth noting that the male presidential candidates are rarely quoted for their looks or poked fun at for their laughter, at least not when they are being sized up for the job. For the guys, the criterion is still merit.

This is just one of those high profile examples that just about everyone has heard about at one point of the other. So when exactly will women, in the minds of other women as well as men, start being judged competent or incompetent based on relevant skills or qualification. Had the above two ladies been judged straight on their performance, there was plenty of material to go on, both in their favor as well as against them. But the strange thing is, a lot of highly educated people just decided to judge from a non-relevant point. Is this how women deserve to be appraised for any position of power they strive for? Will it be ‘she doesn’t like baking chocolate cookies so she really will hate our customers’ for a woman who wants to be a marketing executive? That would be sad.

These elections were a real eye opener, while we still have laws that will grill most people for gender discrimination, what will we do with our sub-conscious brains that have yet to let go of the very well etched in stereotypes of ‘the perfect women’? And no this is not a male bashing piece, we as a human race, tend to hold these stereotypes up, we don’t see all the talent we let go to waste, all the areas where our criticism could have made worlds of a difference, we stick to the archaic for dear life. Sooner or later, the consequences of that will catch up with us.

It happens to every woman at some point.

Let’s face it: We all age, and the passage of time is bound to show itself on your skin in the form of lines, wrinkles and discoloration. The good news is, today’s scientific advances give us options our mothers never had for reducing the signs of aging on our skin.

Despite the rising popularity of Botox, most women who get the procedure admit they know very little about what Botox is and how it works. To help you make an informed decision, here are some of the facts:

• Botox is a neurotoxin [neuro means nerve; toxin means poison] that temporarily paralyzes muscles in your face.
• Botox is derived from the same botulin toxin that is found in spoiled foods. Doctors use a sterile and purified form of this toxin when administering Botox injections.
• Botox injections cost up to $500 or more. The effects are not permanent. Over time, the body gradually absorbs the substance and the procedure must be repeated every 3-6 months.
• The FDA has approved Botox for use only on a limited area between the eyebrows. Botox is administered only for wrinkles and does not reduce other age-related symptoms such as age spots and facial discoloration.
• Improper injection has been linked to droopy eyelids. Other reported side effects include nausea fatigue, malaise, flu and rashes.
• Botox is not recommended for pregnant women, women who are breastfeeding, people with neuromuscular disorders or cardiovascular disease.
• There have been no conclusive studies about the long-term side effects of Botox.

If you speak to women about their physical goals the most common response you get is that they want to lose weight and tone up.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of women who want to lose weight and tone up won’t even consider incorporating weight training into their lifestyle.

Weight training is a principle shrouded in mystery and myths and is the most under-estimated way to dramatically change body composition (to one with less fat and more muscle) in a very short period of time. Furthermore, not using this principle when trying to lose weight almost guarantees that the weight you lose will be put straight back on!

Many women avoid incorporating weight training into their lifestyle under the mistaken belief that they will get big or look like a man!

Despite this, weight training for women is certainly growing in popularity even though the image of women lifting weights still summons fears of losing sex appeal and femininity in many.

Before we examine the benefits of weight training for women, we first need to understand a few basic physiological facts.

- Women produce less testosterone than men. It is especially difficult for women to increase their muscle mass because they do not naturally produce as much testosterone as men. The majority of overly muscular women take anabolic steroids to increase their muscle mass.

If you don’t take anabolic steroids, it is impossible to look like a man.

- Women have less muscle mass to begin with. Most women have significantly fewer muscle fibres in each muscle group than men, which means their ability to build muscle is reduced. Despite this fact, it doesn’t mean that weight training for women isn’t beneficial.

- Weight training ‘tones’ faster. Women who consistently train with weights achieve a ‘toned’ look to their body very quickly. ‘Toning up’ is a process whereby you lose body fat and gain muscle simultaneously to achieve a ‘harder-looking’ body.

- Muscles cannot harden up, get flabby or get soft. Muscles can only increase in size (hypertrophy) or decrease in size (atrophy). They cannot actually ‘harden up’ themselves. The part of the body that is exercised may feel harder simply because the muscles have experienced hypertrophy, and since muscle is a denser tissue than fat, the body part, not the muscle itself feels harder.

- Muscles can’t grow indefinitely. The body limits how much muscle it builds because muscle is a very metabolically-active tissue, which means it burns up a lot of energy. Therefore, if you ever experienced a famine, you would perish quickly because your energy stores (fat) would be burnt up. This is an ancient survival mechanism that the human body still carries.

Plus, more muscle means your body needs more food. People wanting to continually increase their muscle mass, must continually increase their food intake. This is why bodybuilders eat 3-4 times the average person’s food intake. Their bodies are like furnaces, constantly burning up energy.

Are you one of the many women who drink a pot of liquid gold, also known as coffee, daily? Coffee at one time was thought to possibly be detrimental to your health and potentially lead to strokes, but there is new evidence that women who drink coffee regularly may actually be arming themselves, to fight off the potential of a stroke. However, smokers’ benefits seem to be almost nullified by their smoking habits, even if they drink coffee regularly.

In the past, many people have expressed concerns as to whether regular coffee drinkers were causing problems to their health. A newly released study, evaluated the potential link between women’s stroke risk and coffee drinking, by evaluating data from the Nurses’ Health Study that was conducted from 1980 to 2004, and involved over 83,000 women, averaging around 55 years old. The women who participated in the study reported no history of stroke, heart disease, diabetes or cancer, prior to the study. The women completed food frequency questionnaires regarding their diets, every two to four years. Based on the food surveys, 84 percent of the women drank at least some caffeinated coffee and half of them said, they also drank decaffeinated coffee, with 78 percent drinking tea and 54 percent drinking soft drinks with caffeine. Over the 24-year span of the study, their were 2,280 strokes documented, with more than half of the strokes being the type that follow blood vessel blockage called ischemic strokes.

The new study released Monday for the March 3rd issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, shows women who regularly drank at least four cups of coffee a day, reduced their risk of stroke by 20 percent, compared to those women who drank less than a cup monthly. If women drank from five to seven cups of coffee weekly, they reduced their risk of stroke by 19 percent. Those women who drank from two to three cups of coffee daily reduced their risk of stroke by 10 percent. “Many people have been very concerned that coffee might actually be a risk factor for stroke, that it might, in fact, increase the risk of stroke,” according to Rob M. van Dam, the study’s co-author, and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston. “But here we saw that it might end up being beneficial rather than detrimental.”

Even though the researchers in the newly released study did show good results at preventing strokes in healthy women, with regular coffee consumption, the researchers caution that more research is needed. The study authors also noted certain conditions, such as insomnia, anxiety, high blood pressure and cardiac complications, which can be negatively affected by coffee consumption. According to Rob M. van Dam, the studies co-author the finding are early, “And previous studies have been quite small. But the data we do have is very convincing in the sense that we feel comfortable that we definitely found no association between high coffee consumption and a higher stroke risk. So women can continue to enjoy their coffee and focus on other things to reduce stroke risk, such as engaging in more physical activity, reducing salt intake and stopping smoking.”