Health and Beauty Articles for Women

By:Robert Preidt
(HealthDay News) Environmental toxins that harm a child’s brain development and other aspects of health are much more likely to affect poor or minority kids than youngsters from white or more affluent families, a U.S. study shows.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, also believe that local, state and federal policies aren’t doing enough to correct these inequities.
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By: Deborah DiSesa Hirsch
(HealthDay News) –Salmonella is a microscopic bacterium that lives in the intestinal tracts of animals and people. An infection, usually transmitted by contaminated food, can make you quite sick.

Many raw foods contain salmonella, including uncooked chicken and other forms of poultry. But the good news is that proper cooking usually kills it, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
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But excess weight and sedentary lifestyle are, studies find

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
(HealthDay News) — Just in case the message wasn’t clear already, exercise helps — and rarely hurts — your heart.

A new study has found that sudden cardiac death during exertion is extremely uncommon in women, and perhaps even more uncommon in women who exercise regularly.

And in the same vein, a second study showed that women who are heavier and who exercise less are more likely to have warning signs implicated in the development of cardiovascular disease.
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U.S. study finds a lack of recommended care may be to blame
(HealthDay News) — Black American women are 19 percent more likely than white women to die of breast cancer, a new study finds.

And a second study in the March 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that minority women in the United States are half as likely as white women to receive recommended post-surgical drug treatment for breast cancer.

This may partially explain why black women are more likely to die from breast cancer, the researchers said.
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Washington.–
Low carbohydrate, high protein diets may help to shed weight quickly but researchers warned on Friday that they can be unhealthy.

The diets can cause constipation, diarrhea, headache, bad breath and ketosis, which causes raised levels of ketones, or acids, in the body.

“Low-carbohydrate diets for weight management are far from healthy,” said Lyn Steffen and Jennifer Nettleton, of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis, writing in the British Medical Journal.

They cited the unpleasant effects and a lack of trials to test the long-term effects of low-carbohydrate diets.
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Londo.–
Women with one breast larger than the other may run a higher risk of developing breast cancer.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool, UK, published a paper in Breast Cancer Research showing that breast asymmetry can be used as a “significant independent predictor” of breast cancer. 

They examined the breast X-rays, or mammograms, of 252 women who developed the disease and 252 who did not. They found that the women who suffered cancer had less-symmetrical breasts than those who were disease-free.

The chances of developing breast cancer increased by 50 percent for every 100 million increase in the difference between their breasts, the team found.  
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By: Karen Barrow

For women trying to determine how long they can postpone starting a family, a new fertility predictor, called Plan Ahead, may provide some insight into the length of their fertile lifespan, but does this test offer only false promises?

“My hope is that Plan Ahead will help many women avoid the anguish caused by the early or unexpected arrival of declining fertility and menopause,” stated Dr. Bill Ledger, the creator of Plan Ahead and professor of obstetrics & gynecology at the University of Sheffield in England in a press release.

Plan Ahead consists of a simple blood test—done by a doctor—on the third day of a woman’s period. The blood sample is then sent to a lab where particular hormone levels are measured and compared to levels in the average woman of the same age.
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By: Eric Sabo

The effort to prevent colon cancer has suffered its share of recent setbacks. A diet high in fiber, while still key to a healthy digestive tract, appears to offer little protection against colon cancer, studies have now found. Meanwhile, calcium and vitamin D supplements are also in doubt, according to a major trial that tracked more than 36,000 women.

Low-fat diets are still considered healthy, but they lost some of their luster in the same major study, known as the Women’s Health Initiative. Even exercise is being called into question.

Is there anything that can be done to prevent the second-leading cause of cancer death in the United States? Dr. Karen Emmons, a prevention expert at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, says that the main risk factors for colon cancer have not changed because of the latest studies.
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Published on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
by Healthy News Service

Back to Healthy News

​​​​When mothers experience symptoms of depression after the birth of their children they are less likely to breastfeed, play with, read to or perform other interactive parenting tasks with their newborns, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Columbia University.

The nationwide study is the largest to examine whether a mother’s depressive symptoms impact her parenting practices post partum. The results appear in the March 2006 edition of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

“Maternal depressive symptoms are very common in early infancy. We found nearly 18 percent of the mothers in our study reported experiencing some symptoms of depression two to four months after the birth of their children,” said Cynthia S. Minkovitz, MD, MPP, corresponding author of the study and a professor in the Department of Population and Family Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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THURSDAY, March 16 (HealthDay News) — Cereals and breads fortified with folic acid, mandatory in the United States and Canada to help reduce birth defects, may also help cut your risk of dying from a stroke, a new study suggests.

Folic acid has long been known for its effect on reducing certain birth defects when taken in sufficient quantities by pregnant women. That was the rationale behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 1998 order for folic-acid fortification of enriched grain products such as cereals and breads. Canada made fortification mandatory that same year.
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