Women’s Health

Mood swings: 5 quick ways to brighten up your day

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There are many times when you just lose your temper, or feel depressed, or just feel a sudden burst of different emotions rushing through you simultaneously. Well, no need to feel embarrassed or awkward about your sudden mood swings. No matter what the reason is, there are ways to bring your mood swings under control. Take a look at some of them.

A balanced diet

Proper food intake is a great solution for mood swings. Take a healthy diet that will not only keep you fit, but also allow you to balance your mood. Choose green vegetables, salads, and fruits as part of your diet. It covers all the necessary minerals, vitamins (A, C, E) and nutrients which are essential for a body. Stay away from complex carbohydrates and processed foods, and also limit your caffeine intake. Have green tea or herbal tea to rejuvenate yourself, instead of consuming the regular tea and coffee.

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Work out
A great workout not only keeps you fit, but also helps in triggering the “happy hormones” in your body. If you are not able to do any heavy exercises, then join yoga camps or simply dance! Choose an exercise routine that is comfortable, and save at least 30 minutes daily, for fitness. A simple walk in the garden, accompanied with some deep breathing exercises, can work wonders too.

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Sound sleep
A woman has a lot of responsibilities to handle, and to fulfill them efficiently, it is important to get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep causes irritation and headaches. At least, 7 to 8 hours of sleep is essential, so plan your daily routine accordingly.

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Drink Water
Water cleanses your body, and gives you energy. At times, when you feel completely exhausted, two glasses of water with some glucose can be really refreshing. Caffeine and alcohol intake can cause mood swings, and so, should be avoided completely. These can be replaced with some juice or healthy soups. Also, water is your best friend if you wish to enjoy gorgeous skin and a healthy body.

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Help from sun gods!
The sun might be an enemy for your skin at times, but it is certainly a great doctor for your mood swings. Some amount of exposure to the sun is good to get rid of depression and other negative feelings. Enjoy 15 minutes of walk in sun light to lighten up your mood. Always wear your sunscreen before you go out. Enjoy your walk in the early morning hours when the sun is not too harsh.

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These simple ways can definitely help you get your mood swings under control, especially during the time of your menstrual cycle.

Source: yahoo lifestyle

New breakthrough to help in fight against ‘aggressive’ breast cancer

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Researchers have reported a discovery that they hope would lead to the development of a powerful new way of treating an aggressive form of breast cancer.

The breast cancer subtype in question is commonly called “HER2-positive”; it’s a subset of the disease affecting about one patient in four, in which tumor cells overexpress a signaling protein called HER2.

The blockbuster drug Herceptin is a treatment of choice for many women with HER2-positive breast cancer, but in most cases, resistance to the treatment develops within several years. The prognosis for HER2-positive breast cancer patients is worse than for those with other subtypes of the illness.

A multi-institution team led by CSHL Professor Nicholas Tonks reported that it has found a means of inhibiting another protein, called PTP1B, whose expression is also upregulated in HER2-positive breast cancer.
PTP1B has been shown to play a critical role in the development of tumors in which HER2 signaling is aberrant.

When they treated mice modeling HER2-positive breast cancer with a PTP1B inhibitor called MSI-1436 (also called trodusquemine), Tonks and colleagues inhibited signaling by HER2 proteins.

Dr. Tonks discovered PTP1B some 25 years ago. It is an enzyme – one in a “superfamily” of 105 called protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) — that perform the essential biochemical task of removing phosphate groups from amino acids called tyrosines in other proteins. Adding and removing phosphate groups is one of the means by which signals are sent among proteins.

The new paper by Tonks and collaborators importantly reveals an alternative binding site, called an allosteric site, that does not present the biochemical difficulties that the active, or “catalytic,” binding site does. This allosteric site is a target of the candidate drug trodusquemine.

The paper has been published online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology

Source: Yahoo news

Smoking during pregnancy may raise heart defects risk in babies

Pregnant Woman Smoking

Researchers have shown that risk for congenital anomalies is highest among babies born to older women who smoke.

The authors of this study used birth certificate data and hospital discharge records from Washington state to determine if maternal smoking during the first trimester of pregnancy is linked to heart defects and if so, what types of defects.

Lead author Patrick M. Sullivan, MD, FAAP, clinical fellow in pediatric cardiology at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a master’s student in epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said I care for kids with complex congenital heart disease on a daily basis, and I see these kids and their families enduring long hospitalizations and often sustaining serious long-term complications as a result of their disease.

Sullivan said usually, the cause of a heart defect is unknown. I saw this research as an opportunity to study what might be a preventable cause of congenital heart defects.

Using hospital discharge records, researchers identified 14,128 children born with a variety of heart defects from 1989-2011. They matched these cases to 62,274 children without heart defects born in the same year.

Then, they compared the proportion of children with heart defects whose mothers reported smoking during pregnancy to the proportion of children without heart defects whose mothers smoked. Mothers’ smoking status, as well as how much they smoked daily, was available from birth certificates.

Newborns whose mothers smoked were at about a 50 to 70 percent greater risk for anomalies of the valve and vessels that carry blood to the lungs (pulmonary valve and pulmonary arteries) and about a 20 percent greater risk for holes in the wall separating the two collecting chambers of the heart (atrial septal defects). All of these defects often require invasive procedures to correct.

Source: deccan chronicle

Breast Cancer Symptoms

Breast cancer is the most common cancer afflicting many women around the world. Generally a painless breast lump is the first indication of an impending breast malignancy, but not all lumps are cancerous.

Thus, understanding the early signs and symptoms of the disease can cut unwanted stress and anxiety associated with the disease.

Various Breast Cancer Symptoms
• A lump or hardening of an area of the breast – Development of the lump or thickening of the tissue of the breast.

• A bloody or clear discharge from the nipple – A bloody discharge or a clear discharge, especially in women who are not breastfeeding, should be investigated by a healthcare professional.

• A change in size or shape of either one or both breasts – Any kind of asymmetry of the breasts, like dimpling, swelling or shrinkage of the breast should be closely investigated.

• Any change in the feel or appearance of the nipple – Nipple that appears to have turned inward or sunken into the breast.

• Any change in the skin of the breast, areola, or nipple – Consult a doctor if the skin of the breast, areola, or nipple becomes scaly, red, or swollen.

• A rash on or around the nipple – In a rare form of breast cancer, a rash around the nipple mimicking the looks of small patch of eczema may appear.

• Formation of lump in the armpits or pain in the underarms – The area of the underarms also makes up the breast region. Any formation of lump in the armpits or pain in the underarms should not be taken lightly.

• Pain in the breast – Pain in either of the breasts or armpits which is not related to one’s period cycle should be investigated.

Source: the med guru

Amazing Foods That Ease Menstrual Cramps

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The menstrual cycle is manifestted differently in each member of the gentler sex. However, most of the women are complaining of various pains that occur in that period. Menstrual cramps usually last one or two days.

When we say dark chocolate we mean the one that contain at least 70% cacao. It will raise your level of mood and will compensate the lost iron. Also, will fight free radicals and keep your organism.

In one sentence, dark chocolate should always be on hand in the “red” days of the month.

Almonds

Instead high calorie and savory snacks, you should consume almonds. They are very healthy and effective for those women who have sensitive and painful breasts during menstruation or before period. If you are one of those woman you must consume almonds.

The ingredients found in almonds have the opportunity to reduce sensitivity and to reduce the symptoms of PMS.

almonds

Cucumber

Frequent cramps are often caused by the accumulation of water in the organism, which is caused by hormones that varying during that time of the month.

Cucumber is easily available and is a natural diuretic, it stimulates urination and relieves symptoms.

Carrot

Make carrot juice or carrot soup, it will relieve menstrual pain.

D3

Recent research has shown that this vitamin can relieve menstrual cramps

Yogurt

Yogurt is golden grocery when it comes to PMS. It is rich in calcium and relieve pains and cramps. If you don’t like yogurt, use other foods rich in calcium such as milk, cheese, etc.

Pregnant women with high BP risk preterm delivery and low birth weight

Researchers have said that pregnant women with chronic hypertension (high blood pressure) are highly likely to suffer from adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm delivery, low birth weight and neonatal death.

Chronic hypertension complicates between 1-5 per cent of pregnancies, and the problem may be increasing because of changes in the antenatal population.

Researchers from King’s College London carried out a study to assess the strength of evidence linking chronic hypertension with poor pregnancy outcomes. They combined data from studies from 55 studies done in 25 countries.

The researchers looked at the following outcomes: preterm delivery (delivery before 37 weeks’ gestation); low birth weight (below 2500g); perinatal death (fetal death after 20 weeks’ gestation including stillbirth and neonatal death up to one month) and admission to neonatal intensive care or special care baby units.

The relative risk of pre-eclampsia (a condition in pregnancy characterised by high blood pressure) in women with chronic hypertension was on average nearly eight times higher than pre-eclampsia in non-hypertensive women. All adverse neonatal outcomes were at least twice as likely to occur, compared with the general population.

The researchers conclude that “chronic hypertension is associated with a high incidence of adverse pregnancy outcomes compared with a general population”.

The study has been published in the British Medical journal

Source: The siasat daily

Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy Increases Autism Risk

Women who take antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy may be at an increased risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder, according to a recent studyResearchers found that children who were exposed to SSRIs the most had the highest incidence of autism.

“We found prenatal SSRI exposure was almost three times as likely in boys with autism spectrum disorders relative to typical development, with the greatest risk when exposure is during the first trimester,” study co-author Li-Ching Lee, an associate scientist in the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland, told Counsel and Heal.

For the study, researchers collected data from 966 mother and child pairs to better understand how SSRIs affect pregnancy outcomes. Of the children studied, 800 were boys. Nearly 500 children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, 154 had some form of developmental delay and 320 had developed typically.

The SSRIs examined in the study were Celexa, Lezapro, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft.

Researchers found that in the autism group, 5.9 percent of the pregnancies were exposed to SSRIs. In the delayed developmental group, 5.2 percent of the pregnancies were exposed to SSRIs. They also found that exposure rate in the typically developing children group was 3.4 percent.

Investigators said that in terms of gender, boys were three times more likely to have autism if they were exposed to the antidepressants during the first trimester.

Given their findings, researchers said they hope expecting mothers consult with their doctors before taking antidepressants during pregnancy.

“It’s a complex decision whether to treat or not treat depression with medications during pregnancy,” Lee said. “There are so many factors to consider. We didn’t intend for our study to be used as a basis for clinical treatment decisions. Women should talk with their doctors about SSRI treatments.”

Source: University herald

Irregular Periods: Risk Factor for Ovarian Cancer?

Women with irregular menstrual cycles may have more than double the risk of ovarian cancer compared to women who have regular monthly periods, new research suggests.

This finding suggests that women with irregular periods — including those with a condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome — might be a group that could benefit from early screening for ovarian cancer, said the study’s lead author, Barbara Cohn. She is director of child health and development studies at the Public Health Institute in Berkeley, Calif.

“Ninety percent of women who get ovarian cancer don’t have risk factors for it. Our study findings help to narrow the search,” said Cohn.

“If we can confirm what we have here and can learn more about the mechanism behind ovarian cancer, then we might be able to do something as simple as recommend birth control pills for women with irregular periods, provided they have no other risk factors against birth control pill use,” said Cohn.

However, the study design wasn’t able to show that irregular periods caused ovarian cancer or an increased risk, only that there was an association between the two.

The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 22,000 American women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014, and more than 14,000 will die from the disease. One reason ovarian cancer remains so deadly is there are no reliable early detection tools for it. When found, it’s often in the later stages when treatment is less effective.

Some research has suggested that women who ovulate less frequently may have some protection against ovarian cancer. For example, women who take birth control pills, which prevent ovulation, have a lower risk of ovarian cancer. The new study sought to see if women who naturally have irregular periods, and perhaps ovulate less frequently, had a lower rate of ovarian cancer.

The study included more than 14,000 women who were part of the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan in Alameda, Calif., between 1959 and 1967. The researchers followed the women’s health over the next 50 years or until death. All had at least one child, and none used fertility drugs to conceive, according to the study.

An irregular menstrual cycle was defined as longer than 35 days even if it was regular, a cycle that was unpredictable from month to month (and the woman wasn’t in perimenopause when unpredictable cycles are normal), or if a woman didn’t ovulate, Cohn said. The women were around age 26 when they reported having irregular periods.

Although none of the women was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome when the study began because the disease wasn’t really recognized at the time, it’s likely that at least some of them had the hormonal disorder, Cohn said.

Polycystic ovarian syndrome is a common cause of irregular periods, but it’s possible that other abnormalities associated with the disorder might also explain the study findings, she said.

During the study, 103 women developed ovarian cancer, 20 of whom had irregular periods, said Cohn. And 65 died of ovarian cancer, 17 with irregular menstrual cycles. The average age of ovarian cancer death was about 69.

Women with irregular periods had a 2.4 times higher risk of ovarian cancer death than women who had normal cycles, the researchers concluded. In addition, women who had a first-degree relative (mother, sister or daughter) with ovarian cancer, a known risk factor for the disease, had almost three times the risk of death from ovarian cancer, said Cohn.

A lot of biological factors increase a person’s risk of ovarian cancer, said Dr. David Fishman, director of the Mount Sinai Ovarian Cancer Risk Assessment Program in New York City.

“This study’s findings are an interesting observation, but it’s not cause and effect, and I don’t want women to be afraid,” Fishman said. “Menstrual irregularities are very common, and most women with menstrual irregularities won’t have ovarian cancer.”

For women who have menstrual irregularities, this study reinforces the benefit of birth control pills to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, Fishman added.

Any woman who is concerned should talk to her doctor, he said. Her physician can let her know if she’s at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer. The study findings were scheduled for presentation Wednesday at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in San Diego.

Research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Source; webmd

selfie pictures makes women insecure

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Spending lots of time on Facebook looking at pictures of friends could make women insecure about their body image, research suggests. The more women are exposed to “selfies” and other photos on social media, the more they compare themselves negatively, according to a study.

Friends’ photos may be more influential than celebrity shots as they are of known contacts, say UK and US experts. The study is the first to link time on social media to poor body image. The mass media are known to influence how people feel about their appearance. But little is known about how social media impact on self-image.

Young women are particularly high users of social networking sites and post more photographs of themselves on the internet than do men. To look at the impact on body image, researchers at the University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and University of Iowa surveyed 881 female college students in the US.

The women answered questions about their Facebook use, eating and exercise regimes, and body image.

‘Unrealistic images’
The research, presented at a conference in Seattle, found no link with eating disorders. But it did find a link between time spent on social networks and negative comparisons about body image.

The more time women spent on Facebook, the more they compared their bodies with those of their friends, and the more they felt negative about their appearance.

“Spending more time on Facebook is not connected to developing a bad relationship with food, but there is a connection to poor body image,” Petya Eckler, of the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, told

She added: “The attention to physical attributes may be even more dangerous on social media than on traditional media because participants in social media are people we know.

“These comparisons are much more relevant and hit closer to home. Yet they may be just as unrealistic as the images we see on traditional media.”

‘Sense of identity’
A spokesperson for the Beat eating disorders charity said body image was a key part of our sense of identity and not a trivial matter or personal vanity.

A preoccupation with weight and shape was one of the key features of current popular culture, and was a global phenomenon, she said.

“The fascination with celebrities, their bodies, clothes and appearance has all increased the pressure that people typically feel at a time when they seek to establish their own identities and when their bodies are growing and changing,” she said.

“Young people compare themselves to the images that bombard them and feel it is their fault that their bodies compare so unfavourably.”

Source: BBC news

Fertility drugs not tied to long term breast cancer risk

According to long-term study data published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, women who took fertility treatments were no more likely to develop breast cancer during 30 years of follow-up than those who never used the drugs, as reported in the Chicago Tribune.

Investigators analyzed records for 9892 women in the US who were followed for some 30 years after having been evaluated for infertility between 1965 and 1988.

Approximately 38 percent of the study participants were exposed to the fertility drug clomiphene, while roughly 10 percent were exposed to gonadotropins. In the 30 years of follow-up, 749 breast cancers were diagnosed among the study participants.

Results suggested that women who were exposed to either type of fertility drug were no more likely to develop breast cancer overall, than those who did not take the medicines to stimulate ovulation.

However, a higher risk of breast cancer was noticed among a small subset of women who had been prescribed the highest doses of clomiphene, although researchers said the reasons for this are unclear.

The authors cautioned that further study of women who receive fertility treatments is needed, because many women included in the current study had not yet reached the age range when breast cancer diagnoses are most common.

Source: First Word