Entries for December 2008

Full confession: I rarely wear mascara. It makes my eyelashes stick together and leaves black smudges under my eyes. And false eyelashes hold no appeal—way too much work to put on and way too 1950s. So perhaps I'm not the best person to render judgment on the new drug Latisse, approved last week by the Food and Drug Administration for those with dull or thinning eyelashes. (The drug, made by the manufacturer of Botox, contains the active ingredient of the glaucoma drug Lumigan, which was found to cause thicker eyelashes during treatment.)

This drug is meant for those with a real (and often genetic) health problem called hypotrichosis, in which no hair grows on the eyelid. It may also be useful for those who've suffered permanent eyelash loss because of chemotherapy or other medical treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration has been busy this week, and I think what it is saying warrants a wake-up call—especially for women. Yesterday, the agency said it issued a warning letter to Coca-Cola noting that its Diet Coke Plus soft drink had nutritional claims that shouldn't be placed on an utterly nonnutritious soft drink. Those added vitamins and minerals don't make the beverage any more healthful than, say, Diet Pepsi, the FDA says.

I'm guessing that the Diet Coke Plus marketing campaign was aimed at women because Coca-Cola has stated previously that men go for zero-calorie products like Coke Zero, whereas "diet" sodas appeal more to women. Of course, Coke Zero Plus would be a complete oxymoron.

Women's groups, state governments, and a host of others have reacted harshly to the new conscience rights regulation put forth by the Department of Health and Human Services last week. I received a slew of press releases in my in box from such organizations as the National Family and Reproductive Health Association, which stated that the "new regulations will limit access to contraception to low-income and uninsured women and men and will create new hurdles for family-planning service providers," and from the National Partnership for Women and Families, which said, "These regulations leave the term 'abortion' undefined, so individuals and institutions are free to classify birth control as abortion." The ACLU also expressed its "grave concern."

Newspaper editorial writers have gotten in on the act, too. The Albany Times Union called for Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York to fight the rule before she leaves office to become secretary of state. Of course, bloggers have been sounding off about this regulation since it was first proposed last summer, as I previously reported.

Here's a little insight into how I come up with blog ideas. I was reading a New York Times article about Obama's new press secretary, Robert Gibbs, and was stopped short by this sentence: "Gibbs is about to start a job that, like the presidency, seems to age its occupants disproportionately to the years they spend in the job," writes reporter Mark Leibovich.

Is that the case with Bush's current press secretary, Dana Perino, who's been in the office just 16 months? I wondered. I looked at some before and after photos of the strikingly attractive Perino—"Dana Perino hot" is a popular Google search term, yielding 159,000 hits—and had to admit that Leibovich was right. Check out this photo of her from 2006 (left), a year before she took the helm as press secretary, and now (right): 

Well it's final. The Department of Health and Human Services went ahead and published its "conscience rights" rule designed to protect healthcare providers from being denied employment or being fired if they, say, refuse to administer abortions, emergency contraception, or certain forms of birth control because of their religious or moral beliefs.

Dozens of health organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, voiced their fierce opposition, saying that such a rule would deny women access to full reproductive care. And more than 200,000 Planned Parenthood members filed comments against the rule, organization Vice President Laurie Rubiner tells me. One of the concerns raised—including by me—was whether patients would even be informed of their doctor's refusal to administer certain procedures or if they would simply be kept in the dark about their options.

It's the holiday season, and the American Psychological Association tells me that I, as a woman, am more likely than my husband to be stressed about buying holiday gifts for our three kids. According to their survey released this week, about 46 percent of women are worried about having enough money to buy gifts compared with 35 percent of men. That goes along with the fact that women are more stressed than men over the economy in general, as I previously blogged about.

Another new finding suggests that I, as a woman, am more prone to heart disease if I'm raising kids or caring for an elderly parent who lives in my home. The study, published today in the journal Heart, was pretty shocking: Married women ages 40 to 59 who lived with children had twice the risk of developing heart disease as single women or those living only with their spouses. Adding an elderly parent to the mix tripled a woman's heart attack risk. Men, on the other hand, had no such increase in heart disease risk if they lived with kids, parents, or, heck, even their in-laws. (Caveat: The folks in the study were Japanese, and it's possible that American men are more stressed than their Japanese counterparts over family responsibilities.)

First the bad news: If you, as a woman, suffer a particularly serious kind of heart attack, you're twice as likely as a man to die from it. But—and here's the good news—your overall risk of dying from a heart attack in a hospital is about the same as a man's, according to a study of 78,000 people treated for heart attacks published yesterday in the journal Circulation.

Doctors, it seems, have improved their recognition and treatment of heart disease in women. A decade ago, women had a higher overall death rate than men after heart attacks. Trouble is, some disparities still exist, which could explain the higher death rates for the small group of women who have a type of heart attack called ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), usually caused by a complete blockage of a coronary artery. (The researchers factored in differences such as age—women heart attack patients are on average a decade older than men—and other existing illnesses.)

I'd like to think that Barack Obama will be a "great uniter," but when it comes to his abortion policies, I'm not so sure. Stephanie Cutter, chief spokesperson of Obama's transition team, confirmed that our next president will, as promised on the campaign trail, support the controversial Freedom of Choice Act. This legislation declares that a woman "has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child, to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, or to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to protect the life or health of the woman." It also says that federal and local governments can't "discriminate" against a woman's right to choose by, say, funding pregnancy or contraception coverage but not abortion. It was first introduced in Congress in 2007 but stands a much better chance of passing with a president who's willing to sign it into law.

Activists both for and against FOCA are already staking out their battle positions. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the law, if passed, is likely to invalidate a range of state laws including: parental notification requirements, abortion clinic regulations (even those designed to make abortions safer for women), laws protecting the "conscience rights" of doctors and nurses who don't wish to participate in abortions—perhaps even abortion bans in Catholic hospitals. The organization says it could even nullify laws requiring that abortions be performed only by a licensed physician. "We're very concerned if this goes through," says Anthony Picarello, the conference's general counsel. "It should not be passed, period."

Every time you get a cold or stomach flu, you probably look around to see which friend, coworker, or family member you can blame. Well, now take a look around and see whom you should thank for your happiness. Turns out, happiness may be infectious, a contagion (if you will) that you can spread or receive just by being in close proximity to other people, according to a study published in this week's British Medical Journal.

Of course, that invites the question: How can you get yourself infected? The researchers say surrounding yourself with happy friends, relatives, and neighbors is a start. The study even found that having friends of friends who were happy increases your chances of being similarly cheerful.

Too much salt is known to cause bloating, the swollen ankles known as cankles, and fingers so swollen you can't get your rings off—to say nothing of the increased risk of high blood pressure. But how many of us really check the sodium labels before we buy our favorite brands of cereal, cottage cheese, or maple syrup? A new finding from Consumer Reports reveals that superhigh amounts of sodium are packed into so-called health foods such as "fat free" salad dressings and "heart smart" tomato sauces.

Seems salt is a tasty and cheap substitute for high-fat oils.

But by raising blood pressure, too much salt can make you more susceptible to heart attack, kidney disease, and stroke. It may also boost your chances of asthma, kidney stones, osteoporosis, and stomach cancer. While some salt is good for us, we should step up efforts to avoid overdosing, which means looking beyond the health claims on the label and actually reading the sodium content.

I have to say I'm proud of Britney Spears. (OK, I admit, I've always been a fan of hers and thought many of us took too much pleasure in observing her train wreck of a life.) But here she is, looking radiant and toned on the cover of this month's Glamour magazine, professing to have more body confidence now than before she had kids. And I'm pleased to see her admit how hard it was to slim down—how she literally had to drag herself to the gym three days a week—after having two babies in 12 months.

I've been thinking about the numbers on the scale a lot as the holiday season revs up to full throttle. I'm facing three holiday parties next week and would like to get through them without gaining any weight.

In fact, Wall Street Journal blogger Jacob Goldstein cites studies showing that people gain about a pound, on average, during the holiday season, far less than you'd think. But it's a pound that's really, really hard to lose come January. And over time, those pounds can really add up. This probably explains why my size 4s no longer fit.