Entries for February 2009

There is no joy in Mudville. Our house values have plummeted, and our portfolios and pensions were worth more a decade ago than they are today. A whopping 7.6 percent (and growing) of us are unemployed, while the rest of us are worried about losing our jobs. The hemorrhaging job market leaves an additional 14,000 Americans every day without health insurance, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a left-leaning think tank.

No surprise, many of us are now praying that our birth control doesn't fail us, and some women have consciously decided to postpone having a baby in this recession. Many of those left without insurance have been swarming into Planned Parenthood clinics to get free or subsidized contraception. In fact, a spokesperson from the Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania tells me it has seen a 10 percent increase in the number of women coming into its local centers in the past three months, many of whom are recently unemployed. The Yuma Planned Parenthood in Arizona saw 260 new patients from November 2008 to January 2009, up from 171 new patients during the same period a year earlier. And the affiliate in east-central Iowa now adds about five or six women each day to its patient roster where it used to add about that many a week. "We also get about 10 to 20 calls a day from women who recently lost their health coverage or are worried about the what-ifs," says Jennifer Vick, the affiliate's director of development and communication.

I admit it, I looked at the photo that everyone's talking about. Like a rubber-necker at a car accident, I had to see the photo of a bruised and battered woman on the TMZ website. (For those who aren't up on the latest celebrity news, pop star Chris Brown allegedly beat his girlfriend, B illboard-chart-topping singer, Rihanna.)

A photo was leaked to TMZ that purportedly shows Rihanna, and news reports claim that the tattoos visible in it match those the singer is known to have. The Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying that the "photo has the appearance of one taken during a domestic violence investigation" and calling it an "unauthorized release of a photograph."

Ever wonder why you feel that special connection with a certain someone? Well, Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University anthropologist and author of Why We Love, suspects that it's those inherited traits of temperament that, she says, make up 50 percent of our personalities. (The other half comes from our life experiences—the stuff we can blame our parents for in therapy.) She believes our DNA dictates the chemical makeup of our brains and thus whether we're creative, tradition-minded, good with puzzles and carburetors, or organized to a fault. This then determines to whom we're most attracted.

Fisher developed a questionnaire that has been used by the online dating site Chemistry.com to match about 5 million Americans. She explains her system in a new book called Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love By Understanding Your Personality Type. She's identified four personalities, one of which she feels predominates in each of us. (The others factor in to lesser degrees.) There's the Explorer, who's driven by the "excitement" brain chemical dopamine and seeks out novelty, adventure, and spontaneity; the Builder, who runs on the "soothing" brain chemical serotonin and tends to be calm, social, and orderly; the Director, who is fueled by the "male" hormone testosterone and is analytical, logical, focused, and tough-minded; and the Negotiator, who is guided by the "female" hormone estrogen to be verbal, imaginative, and compassionate.

When it comes to breast cancer, we all know to check for breast lumps and get mammograms after age 40. When it comes to protecting ourselves against strokes, however, most of us don't have a clue. A new study published in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke finds that fewer than 20 percent of women with atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat) and little more than 15 percent of women with heart disease recognize that they're at increased risk for having a debilitating or even deadly stroke. In fact, strokes are the third leading killer of women, behind heart disease and all cancers combined.

Attention must be paid. That's the message being sent out by the American Heart Association in devoting the entire April issue of Stroke to women and gender disparities in stroke care. The issue contains a slew of studies explaining some reasons that death rates for stroke in women haven't declined, even though they have for men. It turns out doctors still aren't treating female stroke patients as aggressively as males: Michigan State University researchers found that women were 14 percent less likely than men to receive all the appropriate workup and treatments that they needed in the hospital, such as clot-busting drugs and aspirin. Other research found that doctors treating women are less likely to use stroke prevention strategies like cholesterol-lowering drugs.

As earth-shattering as a diagnosis of breast cancer can be, it's even worse for women who are pregnant at the time. A new study from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, though, provides some reassuring news for those with what's commonly called pregnancy-associated breast cancer: It doesn't appear to be any more deadly—contrary to what was once thought—than breast cancer that occurs in women who aren't pregnant.

There are, however, many complicating factors that women still need to consider if they detect a breast lump while pregnant. (And young breast cancer patients who are not expecting a baby are advised to avoid pregnancy at least until after treatment.) Here are five important questions that women need to ask their doctors:

By now, women know to be wary, very wary, of taking hormones after menopause. The risks of taking the combination of estrogen and progestin—breast cancer, stroke, serious blood clots, dementia, even, as reported last month, brain shrinkage—have been well established, and women no longer take these hormones for a lifetime to prevent heart disease and bone loss. A new study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, though, puts an even scarier spin on the breast cancer risks women incur from taking hormone therapy to combat troublesome menopause symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings. Turns out, taking hormones for a full five years doubles your annual risk of getting breast cancer; previous studies by the same researchers found a much smaller 27 percent increased risk for those who took hormones over an average of 5½ years.

"This new finding certainly provides some much-needed guidance for those grappling with whether or how long to take the hormones," study leader and medical oncologist Rowan Chlebowski tells me. He says the motto "smallest dose for the shortest amount of time" should be modified to read: Make it a point not to take hormones for more than two or three years, and take them only if you have severe menopausal symptoms that are interfering with the quality of your life.

Am I the only one out there concerned about a new blood test on the horizon for predicting postpartum depression? This experimental test, which is being trumpeted in news headlines and could theoretically spot the "baby blues" before they set in, sounds great at first blush. That is, until you read the study that was published yesterday in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The study, which linked increased levels of a stress hormone made by the placenta to postpartum depression, involved a measly 100 women, just 16 of whom developed depressive symptoms following pregnancy. What's more, it is the first study of its kind to actually find a link between the hormone and depression. Only one previous study examined the possible connection—and it found no link.