Dr Lily Stojanovska’s advice to women is simple – exercise, eat the right foods and socialise.
“Exercise doesn’t necessarily mean a gym membership,” she said.
Investing in a decent pair of runners or walking shoes and brisk walking for 30-40 minute every day was a great way for women to take control of their health.
Dr Stojanovska has lectured on a variety of women’s health issues all over the world.
She will speak at the free health seminar for women in the west at Victoria University this Thursday about what women can do to prevent the onset of debilitating disease.
An indication of her status in the field is that she recently wrote ‘Menopause for Dummies’.
“We really need to manage quality of life,” said Dr Stojanovska.
Women in countries like Australia are living longer but longevity needed to be balanced by life quality.
She emphasised that women needed to network and socialise. The more links a woman had in her social network, the more support she had, and the strength gained from that support enabled a woman to handle life changes like menopause.
While menopause has a biological basis, women with strong social support better handled its challenges, she said.
As Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Science at Victoria University, Dr Stojanovska is spearheading the Women’s Health Network in the West initiative.
The free seminar this Thursday is the first of its kind for the western suburbs.
She said her task was to “inform women on how to take control of their lives.”
Inactivity leading to obesity is a major problem all over the Western world and Dr Stojanovska said that Melbourne’s West faced its own obesity problems, a topic that would also be addressed at the seminar.
She said she hoped the seminar would bring area health professionals together to make a difference for women in the West.
While GPs play an important role as the first port-of-call for women’s health problems, Dr Stojanovska said the sheer amount of information and variety of topics local GPs dealt with made it impossible for them to be an authority on every subject.
This was why it was so important for women to empower themselves with information, she said.
She said the Women’s Health Network seminars would enable both health professionals and ordinary people to be better informed about issues like menopause, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease.
Breast cancer expert Professor Vasso Apostolopoulos from the Burnet Institute and Dr Susan Davis from the Women’s Health Program at Monash University will also speak at the seminar.
Dr Stojanovska was included in the inaugural edition of ‘Who’s Who of Australian Women’ and was inducted to the State Government’s Victorian Women’s Honour Roll in 2004.
The free seminar is on Thursday, 5 October from 9am to 1pm at the Victoria University Convention Centre, 460 Ballarat Road Sunshine.
All-day parking for $2 will be available at the rear of the campus.
