Archive for October, 2008

A new study shows that respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is a significant predictor of insomnia in women with breast cancer and confirmed that longer nocturnal wake episodes were associated with a flatter diurnal cortisol slope.

Results of this study confirmed a relationship between frequent awakenings and abnormal cortisol (a steroid hormone that regulates blood pressure), rhythms in metastatic breast cancer, thus concluding that a disrupted cortisol rhythm may have serious medical implications in women with breast cancer.

With the addition of demographics, disease severity and psychological variables, findings suggest that Vagal regulation, assessed via RSA, an important marker of parasympathetic tone, is the most consistent and significant predictor of sleep continuity disturbance.

Diminished RSA has been associated with both worse medical and psychiatric health. Previous studies suggest that RSA is associated and may even be predictive for insomnia in healthy subjects.

“It was surprising to see that the strongest association was between a parasympathetic nervous system dysregulation and sleep problems even after we considered patients’ age, their disease severity, type of treatment and psychological variables such as pain and stress,” said the study’s lead author, Oxana Palesh, PhD, Research Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester Cancer Center.

Today people are integrating yoga into their fitness exercise routine and gaining more and more benefits. This regimen promotes a sense of well-being, particularly for women with breast cancer.

For women, the cancer that most commonly affects and leads to death is breast cancer, which forms in the ducts and lobules of the breast.

According to the statistics, breast cancer in women is on the increase and one in eight women is diagnosed with it.

Treatment for each type and stage of breast cancer is available today. Treatment for breast cancer involves surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and biological therapy. Effective as these treatments are, there is no harm in getting extra therapy from yoga.

Yoga is good and effective for breast cancer survivors

Yoga refers to the union of body, mind and spirit. Breast cancer survivors who practice yoga regularly can improve their quality of life and health, particularly if they don’t undergo chemotherapy.

According to recent studies, attending specially designed yoga classes (hatha yoga based exercises) can provide major health benefits and enhance your quality of life. It can also relieve your levels of psychological discomfort (anxiety, trauma, stress, depression and anger) and physical symptoms (fatigue, nausea, sleeping problems, and pain) associated with breast cancer.

Caffeine consumption does not appear to be associated with overall breast cancer risk, according to a report.

However, there is a possibility of increased risk for women with benign breast disease or for tumors that are hormone-receptor negative or larger than 2 centimeters.

Caffeine is probably the most commonly consumed drug worldwide, present in coffee, tea, chocolate and some medications, according to background information in the article.

It was hypothesized that caffeine may increase the risk of breast cancer after a study showed that women with non-cancerous breast disease experienced relief from their symptoms after removing caffeine from their diet.

Ken Ishitani, M.D., Ph.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Japan, and colleagues studied 38,432 women 45 years or older who provided dietary information in 1992-1995.

Over an average of 10 years of follow-up, 1,188 of the women developed invasive breast cancer.

“Consumption of caffeine and caffeinated beverages and foods was not statistically significantly associated with overall risk of breast cancer,” the authors write.

One of the most common health problems faced by women today, eating disorders are chronic and life-threatening illnesses which affect women of all ages.

Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating are the most common eating disorders on the rise worldwide.

In order to understand and treat them, you need to gain a deeper knowledge about them.

Anorexia Nervosa: An eating disorder where people intentionally starve because of a strong fear of gaining weight, anorexia nervosa results when a person is unable to maintain body weight at or above a normal expected weight for their age and height.

Bulimia Nervosa: An eating disorder with repeated episodes of binge eating, frequent purging, fasting or unnecessary exercise to avoid weight gain; over-concern towards body weight and shape.

Binge-eating disorder: An eating disorder where people develop uncontrollable binge eating without compensatory actions.

The most commonly accepted fact about eating disorder is that women – especially teenage girls are its major victims. According to a recent survey, more than 90 percent of people affected with eating disorders are women.

Many women don’t know that obesity increases their risk of several types of cancer, according to a new survey.

Women’s lack of knowledge about excess weight and the most common gynecologic malignancy, endometrial cancer, is particularly worrying, Dr. Pamela T. Soliman of M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and her colleagues say.

“We need to be doing a better job of educating our patients,” Soliman said.

Women who were overweight were four times more likely to develop cancer of the uterine lining, Soliman and her team note in their report, while obesity boosts the risk by six-fold.

Obese women also are at greater risk of breast and colon cancer. Excess weight also increases mortality from many cancers, with the strongest association seen for endometrial cancer; heavy women are 6.25 times more likely to die from the disease.

To investigate awareness of the obesity-cancer link, Soliman and her colleagues surveyed 1,545 women, 28 percent of whom were normal weight.

Another 24 percent were overweight, while 45 percent were obese. Ninety-one percent of the study participants had health insurance.

Read more at MSNBC

One of the major changes in a woman’s life, menopause refers to a permanent end of menstruation and fertilization ability.

The changes that menopause brings in a woman’s life range from physical and emotional to psychological symptoms.

The process of menstruation begins with the stoppage or slowing down of production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone by the ovaries.

As your hormone level declines, the tissues that line the vagina and the urethra (the opening of the urinary bladder) become thin, dry and lose their suppleness.

Thus, lubrication decreases and leads to itching as well as a burning sensation. Moreover, it increases the risk of infections such as urinary tract or vaginal infection. Frequent urination, urinary incontinence also occasionally develops.

On the other hand, if you are in menopause stage, you can experience hot flashes, sleep disturbances, insomnia, decreased sexual desire, irregular periods, headache, joint aches, irritability, fatigue, night sweats, trouble concentrating, bloating, and heavy bleeding during periods due to the effects of physical, emotional and psychological changes in women during menopause.

As every woman experiences menopause differently, the occurrence of these effects also differ from individual to individual.

It’s common knowledge that keeping fit and maintaining an optimal weight are great ways to achieve overall health. But for breast-cancer survivors, the stakes are much higher.

Research indicates that excess weight can lead to increased levels of the hormone estrogen — and estrogen has been tied to the development of breast cancer in women.

Dr. Duc Vuong, a weight-loss surgeon in Houston, spells out the issue plainly.

“Overweight women have larger breasts,” he says. “These women have more exposure to estrogen, which we think increases their risk of several different cancers, including breast and uterine cancer.”

Vuong says more women are beginning to recognize the connection between excess weight and cancer, and that’s prompting them to take action.

Women on the move
After her second breast-cancer diagnosis two years ago, Ilya Sloan, who was then in her mid-60s, realized that the 200 pounds she carried on her short frame could have played a role in her getting the disease.

Her oncologist told her about a clinical research weight-loss study at the Arizona Cancer Center, where Sloan works as a community events coordinator.

Read more at MSNBC

While stress is a universal and individual factor, certain factors pertaining to the way you handle responsibility, affect women physically and emotionally across the board.

The stresses of taking care of a family and holding down a career are likely to influence your health as well.

It is therefore important to be aware of how stress can strike at any time in your life.

As stress causes great physical and emotional problems, it is very important for you to understand its adverse effects and find ways to stay away from it as much as possible.

How stress affects your health?

When you become a victim of severe stress, you can experience a variety of health concerns ranging from back ache, digestive distress, shoulder and neck pain, to migraine and insomnia.

Apart from these, stress can also have a very bad impact on your reproductive health and lead to abnormal bleeding during menstruation, absence of menstruation, fertility problems and pregnancy concerns.

Too much stress can result in a range of serious health conditions such as high blood pressure, strokes, heart problems and also stomach upsets. As a result, you are at increased risk to experience other complications associated with these serious health complications.