Archive for the 'Women's Health' Category

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

‘Cigarette smoking is injurious to health’ a cautionary note we come across everywhere all the time.

In spite of this, the younger generation continues to become addicted to it and suffer it’s deadly consequences.

Whereas cigarette smoking used to be rare among women, today the rate of smoking among women seems to be on the rise.

The sad fact about cigarette smoking in women is that 23 percent of the female population still smoke, increasing their risk of health hazards.

According to a recent survey, many women continue to smoke cigarette without considering its negative effects.

About 21 percent of women who smoke are between the ages of 18 and 44. As these young women age and continue smoking, they develop more smoking-related complications and disabilities like the following:

Smoking and Infertility

Infertility is a major problem of women. Delaying childbirth is the primary cause of infertility for both smoking and non-smoking women. However, delaying of childbirth among smoking women puts them at a significantly greater risk of infertility in future than non-smoking women.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer and second leading cause of cancer-related death in women, in the United States.

However, little is known about breast cancer in women in their early 40s and younger.

Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, who founded and directs the Program for Young Women with Breast Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, says that evidence shows that young age is a risk factor for disease recurrence and death.

It is controversial whether the poorer prognosis is a reflection of delays in diagnosis, differences in tumor biology, or the effectiveness of treatment, but accumulating evidence indicates that biologic differences may play an important role.

“In addition to being at higher risk of dying from breast cancer than older women, young women with breast cancer are at increased risk of psychosocial distress at diagnosis and in follow-up when compared with older women,” explains Partridge.

“Young women with breast cancer face a variety of unique medical and psychosocial concerns as a result of their diagnosis and subsequent treatment. In particular, fertility and family planning, menopausal symptoms, and sexual functioning are of great concern to this patient population.”

Read more at Medical News Today

Substances called heterocyclic amines (HAs) found in cooked meat and fish don’t appear to boost a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer after menopause, Swedish researchers report.

However, low intake of these substances combined with high consumption of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), which are found in most types of vegetable oil, may indeed increase the likelihood that post menopausal women will develop breast cancer, Dr. Emily Sonestedt, of Lund University, Malmo, and her colleagues found.

“The interaction in the present study between omega-6 PUFAs and HAs is not easily explained, and points toward the importance of examining the impact of food patterns rather than the influence of single dietary factors,” Sonestedt and her team stated.

HAs form in meat or fish cooked at high temperatures, and have been tied to breast cancer in rats. Rats fed a fatty diet having a high omega-6 content developed even more tumors in response to dietary HAs than rats given a low fat diet.

Sonestedt’s team examined whether HA consumption was related to breast cancer, and whether omega-6 PUFA intake played a role in this relationship, in women enrolled in the Malmo Diet and Cancer study.

Read more at Reuters

Are you feeling pain during sex? Have you reached your menopause? Vaginal dryness is the most common concern for women during and also after menopause.

Even, it is considered as the most common cause for experiencing pain during sex.

A thin layer of moisture always coats your vaginal walls. Whenever certain hormonal changes take place in your body, particularly during your menstrual cycle, it will mainly affect the consistency of the moisture that coats your vaginal walls.

However, inadequate lubrication to your vaginal regions can occur at any age in your life.

So, it is important for you to prepare for it by gaining enough knowledge regarding vaginal dryness.

Identify the problem to resolve it easily!

First of all, to resolve any health condition easily, you have to identify it properly. Once if you succeed in identifying the problem, you can easily get better solution for it. So, here are few clues for you to identify vaginal dryness.

• Frequent urination or urgency
• Itching or burning sensation.
• Dryness at vaginal areas and also pain during sexual intercourse. At times you can also experience bleeding during sex.

Nearly 24 percent of U.S. women are affected with one or more pelvic floor disorders, report researchers.

Their analysis is the first to document in a nationally representative sample the extent of pelvic floor disorders, a cluster of health problems that causes physical discomfort and limits activity.

Pelvic floor disorders result when the muscles and connective tissue within the pelvic cavity weaken or are injured.

These muscles and ligaments form a sling across the opening of a woman’s pelvis, holding the bladder, uterus, bowel, and rectum in place.

The three main pelvic floor disorders are urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse.

Pelvic organ prolapse results when pelvic organs such as the uterus, bladder and bowel, collapse onto the vagina.

The resulting pressure may cause a bulge or protrusion through the vaginal canal. This protrusion may be uncomfortable, may make physical activity difficult, and may interfere with sexual functioning.

The study also revealed that the frequency of pelvic floor disorders increases with age, affecting more than 40 percent of women from 60 to 79 years of age, and about 50 percent of women 80 and older.

Read more at News-Medical

Combining the new drug trabectedin with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin provides clinical benefit to women with relapsed ovarian cancer, according to new results.

The combination, which importantly does not include a platinum drug, challenges the current standard of treatment for women whose cancer recurs at least 6 months after first-line treatment, said Associate Prof. Bradley J. Monk from the University of California Irvine Medical Center.

“This trial, which included almost two-thirds such women, challenges this traditional paradigm and suggests that a non-platinum doublet is also effective in this setting,” he said.

“Trabectedin represents a ‘new chemical entity’ in North America and if approved by the FDA, would be an important new option for women with recurrent ovarian cancer.”

Trabectedin, a synthetic version of a compound first isolated from sea-squirts, has been granted marketing approval in Europe for the treatment of patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma.

In the latest trial, an international group of researchers studied the combination in 672 women whose ovarian cancer had progressed after first-line therapy.

Half the women received pegylated liposomal doxorubicin 30 mg/m2 over 60 min plus trabectedin 1.1mg/m2 over 3 hours every 3 weeks, the remainder received pegylated liposomal doxorubicin 50 mg/m2 alone every 4 weeks.

We all know, for almost a decade, the effects of alcohol. In moderation, alcohol is good for heart.

But, now, new researches are showing a strong relation between alcohol and breast cancer, an important health concern among women.

It reports that alcohol consumption is directly related to the occurrence of breast cancer.

So, women who drink alcohol are at greater risk of developing breast cancer. Moreover, the risk is directly proportional to the alcohol consumption quantity.

In other words, an increase in the alcohol consumption quantity increases the risk of breast cancer development.

Scientists have recently estimated that the woman’s risk of developing breast cancer rises by six percent for every additional amount of alcohol consumption on a standard daily basis.

The recent evidence recommends that all types of alcohol–wine, beer and whisky—increases the risk of breast cancer.

So, remember that the type of alcohol–wine, beer or whisky—you take makes no difference, it differs only with the alcohol consumption quantity.

The incidence of breast cancer is more among post-menopausal women, who consume alcohol excessively. It is because alcohol is a major risk factor for the development of most common form of breast cancer.