Archive for August, 2007

It is found that women who have PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) often become obese and there is a need to follow PCOS diet.

Around 50- 60% of all women with PCOS are classified as obese.

PCOS stands for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, is a hormonal disorder affecting thousands of women today worldwide. It is sometimes asymptomatic and hard to detect.

One of the main reasons behind the obesity problem in PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) sufferers is the inability of your body to process insulin, a type of powerful hormone that is released by the body’s pancreas in response to eating food, especially carbohydrates.

This hormone helps transport sugar out of the blood and into muscle, fat and liver cells, where it is converted to energy that is required for the functioning of the body or into fat for the body to store.

Women with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) process too much insulin and feel difficulty in losing weight because of fat storage with high insulin levels. Therefore, a PCOS diet must be followed to prevent the weight gain.

It is found from studies that losing just five percent of your (healthy women) body weight can make an improvement in your skin clarity, regularity of menstrual periods, and some decline in your insulin levels.

Miscarriage is the natural occurrence of pregnancy loss before the first 20 weeks.

It is also known as spontaneous abortion. It is found that miscarriage affects one out of every four pregnant women.

The chances of having miscarriage increases as you grow older. You have 15% changes of having miscarriage at the age of 20-29.

It rises to twenty eight percent at the age of forty. It is found that the period of 6-8 weeks pregnancy is dangerous and prone to miscarriage.

Most of the miscarriage occurs with the separation of the fetus and placenta from the uterus wall. Generally, you exhibit no miscarriage symptoms if loss of pregnancy occurs in the first ten weeks.

However, there are miscarriage symptoms that you need to know about. Remember that the miscarriage symptoms differ from one female to another.

Vaginal bleeding is the first miscarriage symptom associated with spontaneous abortion. Vaginal bleeding refers to the bleeding in or from the vagina. The vaginal bleeding may be heavy or light, regular or irregular.

It is to be noted that vaginal bleeding within the first twelve weeks is a normal occurrence during pregnancy. However, if you experience a change or increase in the amount of your vaginal bleeding, then consider it as a miscarriage symptom.

Owing to the fact that it involves damages to the body’s own tissues, cells, and organs with the immune system’s disability in determining the foreign organisms (antigens) with the body’s own cells and tissue, lupus is defined as an autoimmune disease.

The immune system is responsible for producing proteins called antibodies to protect your body against viruses, bacteria, and other foreign organisms (antigens).

The lupus disease causes inflammation and damage to vital organs such as skin, joints, blood, heart, lungs, kidneys, and even the brain.

Lupus is a rare condition where majority of people affecting with are women. You as a woman can affect with this disease in many different ways depending on the type of lupus present.

The types of lupus are systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), discoid lupus erythematosus, drug-induced lupus and neonatal lupus.

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, (SLE) is the most common and serious type. Most often, the term “lupus” refers to the systemic form of the disease. The word “systemic” means the disease can affect many parts of the body.

The SLE causes a wide variety of unspecific symptoms, ranging from mild to severe. As no two people with SLE have identical lupus symptoms, it is very difficult to diagnose. Moreover, SLE often requires enduring combination treatments.

Do you know that about 13,000 women are diagnosing with cervical cancer in the United States every year!

Cervical cancer is the cancer that initiates in the cervix, the part of the womb (or uterus) that opens to the vagina.

Actually, a virus called Human papillomavirus, generally known as HPV, causes this cervical cancer.

HPV is very common type of virus that most women get infected at some time in their lives.

The likelihood of getting an HPV infection sometime in one’s life has been estimated to be seventy-five percent or more.

In fact, there are over 100 subtypes of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). Most of them do not cause major disease in an individual but some HPV subtypes infect only the genital area and can cause warts.

Remember, the types of HPV that are found in the genital areas are usually passed on during sexual contact (sexually transmitted) and subtypes that cause warts on the hands or feet do not cause genital warts or cervical cell changes.

Also, there are few subtypes that cause mild changes in cervical cells where it don’t develop into cancer. However, some subtypes particularly types 16 and 18, 31 and 33 (called high risk subtypes) are been confirmed as causable viruses for cervical cancer.

A Pap smear is also known as a pap test. It is a simple procedure to check for signs of cancer of cervix.

The cervix is the lower, narrow portion of the uterus (womb) where it joins with the top end of the vagina (birth canal).

Doctors and other specially trained health care professionals (physician assistants, nurse practitioners) perform Pap smears.

The individuals that perform Pap smear are called clinicians and generally done in a clinic or in a hospital.

With Pap smear, it is very easy to detect any infection, inflammation, abnormal cervical cells, or cervical cancer that is present in your body. The Pap smear also detects the changes in the cells of your cervix. These changes in the cervical cells are the signs of cervix cancer development.

For a Pap smear, you’ll be asked to lie down on an exam table where the clinician introduces a special instrument called a speculum into your vagina.

The insertion of speculum helps open your vagina to take a sample of cells in the region of the cervix with a wooden scraper or with a small cervical brush. The sample is then placed on a glass slide, preserved with a fixative and sent to a laboratory for a test.

PCOS stands for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

It is a common complex hormonal disorder, affecting up to ten percent of women (reproductive age) worldwide.

While there is no cure for PCOS, the symptoms are treatable with varying degrees of success.

The three treatable features of PCOS include the clinical symptoms, hormonal abnormalities and metabolic problems.

But, if PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome ) is left untreated it can lead to various life-threatening conditions including hypertension, kidney problems, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and heart disease. Endometrial cancer can occur due to anovulatory menstrual cycles.

Women with PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) may complain of abnormal bleeding, extreme weight gain, depression, tiredness, hair loss, thyroid problems, headaches, sleeping disorders, high cholesterol, poor memory, panic attacks, constant thirst, dizzy spells, insulin resistance, extreme cravings, cystic ovaries, cystic acne, anovulatory menstrual cycles (cycles without ovulation), irregular periods, mood swings, high levels of testosterone, infertility, extreme hair growth on face and body.

On the other hand, to treat any of these conditions, it is essential to diagnose reliably and diagnosing is one of the major problems of PCOS (currently) because it is a heterogeneous condition where many different manifestations occur, which aren’t constantly present in all women suffering with PCOS.

Osteoporosis is known as porous bones. “Osteo” refers to bone, and “porosis” refers to porous.

It is a condition where your bones become extremely porous that results in more fragile and weakened bones.

Osteoporosis treatment can help prevent or slow down the growth of bone loss or bone thinning [Preventive measures for osteoporosis].

Bone thinning is a natural process that occurs as you age. Mostly it occurs in women, as the estrogen levels decreases after menopause stage. However, sometimes, it occurs even at very young age.

The factors that lead to this condition may be a combination of hereditary, hormonal imbalance, age-related, food and lifestyle changes.

It gradually affects each and every bone in your body that may result in fractures. The most common places where these fractures occur are the back, spine, hips, and wrists. It is estimated that every year, in the U.S., about 1.5 million fractures takes place due to osteoporosis.

For osteoporosis treatment, your doctor will consider the factors such as your age, general health condition, and past medical history, bone density, forbearance for medications, therapies and procedures, and personal preference.

Sexual health refers to several factors that create a powerful effect on your sexual function and reproduction.

The factors include a wide-variety of physical, mental and emotional issues.

Any disorder to these factors can affect your physical, emotional and sexual health, along with your relationships and self-image.

Sex is a term that relates from birth to death. To have sex, it needs to be satisfying and all your sexual organs need to be healthy.

The internal sexual organs are ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and the cervix.

However, the external sexual organ is the vulva, which includes labia majora (long-lips of vagina), labia minora (small-lips of vagina), clitoris (knob of tissue at the top of labia minora), vestibule (opening below clitoris and labia minora) and urethra (external opening of urinary tract).

Enjoying sexuality is a normal, natural part of life but it should not lead to risks that include getting sexually transmitted diseases.

Sexual transmitted diseases (STDs) are infections that spread through sexual intercourse with an infected person. More than twenty different STDs have been identified.

Some of these STDs are chlamydia, bacterial vaginosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, genital warts, genital herpes, HIV/AIDS, HPV, trichomoniasis, hepatitis and so on.