Archive for September, 2007

Women’s reproductive health refers to the health conditions and diseases that can have an effect on the female reproductive system. This system plays an essential role in a woman’s life.

It includes the following organs: Uterus is hallow, pear-shaped organ where fertilized egg can develop into a baby.

The narrow end of the uterus is the Cervix. The cervix is connected outside the body through a tube called Vagina.

Ovaries are located on either sides of the uterus and responsible for the production of hormones and eggs.

Fallopian tubes are located on the upper part of the uterus and as tunnel for the ova to pass from the ovaries to the uterus.

Although breasts are not the part of female reproductive system, they are treated as reproductive organ because they play an essential role in pregnancy and motherhood.

Women’s reproductive health mainly focuses on activities such as contraception, menstrual cycle, fertility, infertility and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Contraception is nothing but birth control. This can be done using hormonal birth control methods (pills, injections, skin patches, vaginal rings), barrier methods (female condoms, diaphragm, and cervical cap), birth control devices (intrauterine device), and surgical procedure (vasectomy). All these methods help prevent pregnancy and other hormonal diseases.

Breastfeeding is the feeding of an infant or young child with milk from a woman’s breasts. The milk from women’s breast is known as breast milk.

Generally, if you have given birth to a child for the first time, then breastfeeding will be uncomfortable for you in the beginning.

Start breastfeeding as soon as your baby shows eagerness to suckle.

It is also been proved that the earlier the baby is breastfed, the easier the breastfeeding becomes for the mother to start regularly.

The first few days after delivery, a thick yellowish fluid (colostrum) although in very little quantity is highly defensive against infections and is also nutritious for the baby. Hence there will be no need for other feeds during this period to your baby.

Breastfeeding for your baby is best because breast milk contains the accurate amount of water, sugar, fat, and proteins particularly needed for your baby’s growth and development.

As breast milk is germ-free and also contains antibodies, it helps protect your infants from bacteria and viruses and allows them to be free from infections and diseases.

Urinary incontinence is also known as overactive bladder.

It refers to the inability to control urine in the bladder.

In other words, it is a condition with uncontrollable loss of urine.

Urinary incontinence is of four types: stress incontinence, urge incontinence, overflow incontinence, and functional incontinence.

The stress incontinence is the most common urinary incontinence type in women. It is found that stress incontinence is affecting approximately fifty percent of all women globally.

Stress incontinence generally occurs when there is an increased pressure on the bladder. The pressure on the bladder increases with the involuntary activities such as sneezing, coughing, laughing, lifting or exercise.

Urge incontinence occurs with an unexpected need to urination along with bladder contraction and uncontrollable loss of urine. It is most common in elder women.

This can occur due to infection in the kidney or bladder. With this condition, you find no time between the need to urinate and the passage of urine.

Overflow incontinence is a rare type of urinary incontinence that generally occurs when an overfilled bladder leaks urine. This may be due to a blockage or weak bladder muscles.

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is one of the most common causes of sexually transmitted infection (STI) in these days.

The examples of sexual transmitted diseases are gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia and so on.

It has been found that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 6.2 million new cases of sexually transmitted HPV infections are raising each year.

HPV virus causes sexual transmitted infections such as genital warts, cervical cancer. You can acquire this HPV virus through direct skin-to-skin contact during oral, genital, or anal sex with an infected person.

However, when this infection doesn’t vanish on its own then abnormal cells can grow in the lining of the cervix, which when left untreated can become cervical pre-cancers and then cervical cancers.

It is fact that there are over 100 different types of HPV virus, which are categorized into high risk and low risk types. Out of all these, 30 HPV virus types spread through sexual contact.

Some types of HPV virus cause genital warts where a single or multiple bumps are visible in the genital areas of women such as the vagina, cervix and vulva (area outside of the vagina). These are classified as low risk types.

Post traumatic stress disorder, in short PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after a traumatic event that you come across.

The traumatic event can be horrible and scary situation where you feel extreme fear, or helplessness.

The reasons for post traumatic stress disorder can include natural disaster (fire, flood or earthquake), fighting in a war, serious car crashes or sexual assault or rape.

These events can cause strong emotions and produce changes in the brain, thus leading to the development of PTSD.

Remember that not all people who come across traumatic event develop post traumatic stress disorder. Developing this disorder depends on several factors: severity and intensity of the traumatic event and how long the event lasted.

It is found that, in the United States, yearly, it affects approximately forty million people of age eighteen and older.

With post traumatic stress disorder, you experience severe physical, mental, and emotional agony when you remind the traumatic event. This agony can be terrifying and disturb your routine activities.

You may experience sleeplessness, depression, numbness, feeling detached and nervous, lack of interest in things, difficulty in being affectionate, irritation, and more violent.

Menorrhagia is a medical condition that refers to heavy menstrual bleeding.

It is a common condition that women will undergo at some point throughout their lives. This condition is also known as hypermenorrhea.

Heavy menstrual bleeding in this condition refers to excessive flow and duration of the bleeding at regular intervals of your menstrual cycle.

In other words, it is the menstrual bleeding more than 80ml for every period.

According to World Health Organization recent researches, it is found that eighteen million women between the ages of 30 to 55 are with menorrhagia.

The menstrual cycle and menstrual bleeding of a woman varies from another woman.

Menstrual cycle refers to the period of time from the first day of your menstrual bleeding to the last day before your next menstrual bleeding. The average length of a normal menstrual cycle will be 28 days. However, it can last between 22-35 days.

Periods that come every 21 days or fewer are called polymenorrhea and the menses that takes place more than every 35 days are called oligomenorrhea.

On the other hand, menstrual flow refers to the number of days bleeding occurs in a menstrual period. A normal menstrual flow can last three to seven days, with an average of three days.

Usually, the majority of the cysts exhibit no symptoms because the ovarian cyst is small and benign. The majority of ovarian cyst symptoms are undamaging.

However, if the cyst grows and becomes larger then you may notice several symptoms depending upon where the cyst is sited.

It has been found that about 10% of women of childbearing age develop dangerous or severe ovarian cyst symptoms.

Prior to gaining knowledge about the actual symptoms of an ovarian cyst, it is very essential for you to know exactly what an ovarian cyst is.

Actually, ovarian cyst is a fluid-filled sac usually situated on the surface of an ovary.

As the ovarian cyst develops no symptoms, it is not possible for you to determine the ovarian cysts as soon as it forms. In some cases, there can be some more common ovarian cyst symptoms. These ovarian cyst symptoms includes:

• Severe pain in your pelvic region while or after sexual intercourse
• Unusual pain in pelvis before or just after your menstrual period;
• Normal menstrual periods may change (lighter or heavier than usual)
• Menstrual irregularities;
• Pain in your lower thighs;
• A discomfortable feeling (fullness or heaviness) in abdominal region

Trichomoniasis, also called “trick,” is a sexually transmitted disease caused by a parasite.

The sexual transmitted diseases (STDs) are infections that can be spread through sexual contact.

More than twenty different STDs have been identified.

Some of these STDs are chlamydia, syphilis [Syphilis treatment], gonorrhea, genital warts, genital herpes [Genital herpes symptoms], HIV/AIDS and so on.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) research, in the United States, about 7.4 million new cases of trichomoniasis occur in women every year.

Trichomoniasis is mainly an infection of the urogenital tract where the vagina is the most common area that gets infected, which can be treated and cured with antibiotics (medicines used to treat infections caused by bacteria).

Trichomoniasis treatment typically involves a single large dose of oral prescription drug metronidazole or split doses over the course of a week. This type of trichomoniasis treatment cures the disease efficiently.

Trichomoniasis treatment is important for pregnant woman because studies shows that trichomoniasis may increase a pregnant woman’s risk of premature delivery and also the risk of HIV transmission from mother to baby.

So, a pregnant woman can use metronidazole only after the completion of the first-trimester of pregnancy.