Archive for the 'Women's Health' Category

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.

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.