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Women Could Get Free Birth Control With Health Reform Law
Tweet Share on Facebook November 1, 2010 Comment (20)Women could soon be entitled to free contraception, thanks to the health reform law. That's right, free birth control pills, free intrauterine devices, free patches, and free vaginal rings. As part of the law, a panel of experts will decide over the next few months which services will be offered free to women including maternity care, pelvic exams, and—more controversial—contraception. Many women spend as much as $50 a month for hormonal contraception or $200 to $400 to have an IUD inserted, yet some, squeezed by the recession, have found themselves skipping pills or going without birth control altogether. "We need to do everything we can to ensure that women have access to birth control," said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards at a press breakfast in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago. Women, she added, shouldn't have to choose between birth control and basics like rent, tuition, and childcare.
[Lost Your Health Insurance? Consider Planned Parenthood Clinics]
To Richards, free contraception should be a no-brainer. Publicly-funded contraception saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent by preventing nearly 2 million pregnancies and 810,000 abortions every year, according to a 2009 report from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive research organization based in New York City. And a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office found that providing contraception to Medicaid patients would save $700 million over the next decade in medical costs.
[How to Choose a Safer Birth Control: 11 Factors to Consider]
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Why Taylor Swift Is Right to Write Songs About Ex-Boyfriends
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2010 Comment (4)Country music star Taylor Swift sure knows what she's doing by writing about her ex-boyfriends in her Speak Now album released this week. Yes, the album is projected to hit the biggest one-week sales of any release this year, heading for the million mark. But I'm talking about Swift's keen ability to tap into her brain's emotional reservoir, to take all that heartache and create, well, really good music.
[5 Steps to Mend a Broken Heart]
Criticized by some for taking inspiration from guys that put her through the wringer—yes, you, Taylor Lautner and you, John Mayer—the 20-year-old Swift told David Letterman on his CBS Late Show Tuesday, "This is the third album that I've been doing this, so they had fair warning at this point." She wrote the songs, she said, "when I'm feeling what it is I'm discussing in the song. It's all kind of done when it's happening."
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Staying Fit as You Age: Advice From Olympic Gymnast Dominique Dawes
Tweet Share on Facebook September 20, 2010 Comment (1)Wearing high heels and a rhinestone-spangled "President's Challenge" T-shirt, Olympic gold medalist Dominique Dawes dashed across the blacktop at Maury Elementary School in Washington D.C. last Wednesday in a relay race with students. Not exactly the kind of workout that keeps the 33-year-old former gymnast in shape. She was there as co-chair of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition, a group that's trying to implement Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative to prevent childhood obesity. While the grade schoolers sprinted past her in sensible sneakers, she told me what she does to maintain her svelte physique now that she's no longer doing double backflips.
[How to Avoid Losing Muscle as You Age]
"I went through a tough stage at the end of my gymnastics career," she admits, "where I put on that freshman 15." Now she does yoga and pilates several times a week because she says they're "good for my mind as well as my body." She also enjoys taking a "boot camp" class at her gym that uses military-style training techniques—think pushups and a lot of yelling. And she's got a secret for her neighbors who hire lawn service companies: To burn calories, she mows hers herself. Her next step is to incorporate planting and weeding into her workout routine, but she first has to learn some gardening skills. "I'm going to get some tips from Michelle Obama the next time I visit the White House garden," she says.
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CoolSculpting and Zerona: Body Sculpting Without Surgery
Tweet Share on Facebook September 17, 2010 Comment (6)I've lost 7 pounds since June, probably from exercising more and eating a little less. Yet despite the fact that I'm at a healthy body weight, I've got a little stomach pouch right under my belly button that runs the length of my lower abdomen—a permanent remnant of my three pregnancies. While I'd love to have a tummy tuck like other moms I know, I don't want to undergo the risks and pain of surgery for something cosmetic. So I was excited to hear about two new body-contouring options that don't involve incisions and got approved by the Food and Drug Administration this week. The first, called CoolSculpting, freezes away fat cells, and the second, called Zerona, uses a laser to zap fat; both work above the skin.
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Too Much Sun? How to Minimize Wrinkles and Cancer Risks
Tweet Share on Facebook August 6, 2010 Comment (5)I consider myself pretty careful when it comes to using sunscreen; I apply it religiously whenever I head outdoors for activities, even in the early evening. Yet on a cruise last week—despite my best efforts—I developed a dark tan, the kind I'm worried will lead to wrinkles and raise my risk of skin cancer. In hindsight, perhaps lounging around every day in the mid-afternoon sun wasn't such a great idea. But now that I've got my tan, is there anything I can do to minimize the damage to my skin?
Yes and no, says Jennifer Stein, an assistant professor of dermatology at New York University Langone Medical Center. "The body can repair some of the DNA damage caused by excess sun exposure on its own," she says. That means I shouldn't be too concerned about elevated skin cancer risks from one bout of tanning. On the other hand, she adds, studies have linked habitual tanning to a greater risk of skin cancer, so I should take care to avoid prolonged sunbathing in the future. Ditto for tanning beds, which the World Health Organization has added to its list of carcinogens.
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Weight Gain Ups Breast Cancer Risk: 7 Ways to Avoid the Bulge
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2010 Comment (1)When it comes to our health fears, breast cancer tops the list. Many women have sworn off menopausal hormone therapy, since it was found to increase breast cancer risks in a large clinical trial. Others have decided to forgo their daily glass of wine, willing to trade its heart-protective benefits for a little extra shielding from the disease that scares us most. Some of us no longer drink from plastic bottles to avoid bisphenol A, an estrogen-like chemical that some environmentalists blame for rising rates of breast cancer. Yet, one of the single biggest risk factors for breast cancer—steady weight gain over the decades—is something many women make little effort to avoid.
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FDA Warns Spas Against Fat-Melting Claims
Tweet Share on Facebook April 8, 2010 Comment (20)Want to get rid of your stubborn fat bulges without endless spinning classes or going under the knife? Lipodissolve, a fat-fighting procedure billed as liposuction without the risks, has been popular at "rejuvenation clinics" and "medi-spas" throughout the country, but the Food and Drug Administration yesterday decided to take action to warn consumers about lipodissolve's unknown hazards and dubious benefits. The agency issued warning letters to six medical spas for making false or misleading statements that their injections are safe and effective, despite the fact that they've never been studied in research trials or approved by the FDA.
Lipodissolve involves injecting small amounts of soy lecithin and bile salt directly into problem areas on the hips, waist, thighs, and buttocks, which supposedly melts away fat. The injections became wildly popular three years ago with spas opening up around the country and with doctors in every specialty—from pediatricians to dermatologists—taking weekend seminars to learn the procedure before opening fat-dissolving clinics.
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Navratilova and Breast Cancer: Why Do Women Blame Themselves for Diagnosis?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 7, 2010 Comment (1)Tennis great Martina Navratilova announced Tuesday that she was being treated for breast cancer and—as happens all too often with breast cancer patients—she's placing some of the blame on herself. Diagnosed with a tiny self-contained growth, called ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), she says she could have caught the cancer earlier if she hadn't let four years pass between mammograms. "I let it slip by," the nine-time Wimbledon singles champion told USA Today. "I was a bad girl."
Okay, maybe the 53-year-old should have had annual mammograms, but her cancer was caught so early that it's considered a pre-cancer, meaning that once it's removed it has little chance of spreading or posing a threat to her life. The mammogram that did detect Navratilova's breast cancer back in January served its purpose: It caught the malignancy in its earliest possible stage, a DCIS, which means abnormal cells are lodged in one or more of the breast ducts but they haven't yet invaded into surrounding tissues. [More details on what to do about DCIS.] And it's hard to believe that her having a mammogram a year or two earlier would have made any difference in her prognosis. In fact, the tiny growth may not have even formed during that time.
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Tougher Restrictions Possible for Indoor Tanning
Tweet Share on Facebook March 26, 2010 Comment (11)Tanning has become the new smoking—or at least that's what skin cancer experts hope will happen as the Food and Drug Administration considers whether to put stricter limits on tanning beds. An FDA advisory committee recommended yesterday that people under 18 be barred from using tanning beds or at least required to have a signed consent form from their parents. In many cities, the number of indoor tanning salons exceeds the number of Starbucks, according to a 2009 study from San Diego State University, and many major health organizations would like that to change. The Skin Cancer Foundation says excessive tanning is probably behind the rise in deadly melanomas in young women ages 15 to 39, the most avid users of these salons. "The only purpose of a tanning salon is to give you a blast of a carcinogen," says Allan Halpern, Skin Cancer Foundation vice president, who treats a lot of skin cancers as chief of dermatology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. "Given our druthers, we'd like to see no tanning beds out there."
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Health Reform: Where Women Stand to Gain
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2010 Comment (11)I was surprised to see women's reproductive rights groups use words like "betrayal," "onerous," and "unacceptable" in reaction to Sunday night's passage of the health care reform bill. (Then again, I was shocked to hear a Republican congressman shout "Baby killer" across the House floor at Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, an avid opponent of abortion.) Coverage of abortion services took center stage in the days leading up to the bill's passage, with President Obama promising to sign an executive order that no federal funds will be used to cover abortions. In the end, no one is particularly happy with the compromise.
[Read Bullets Flying Over Abortion Coverage.]
The National Right to Life Committee, an antiabortion group, referred to the legislation as "a pro-abortion bill" and said Obama's executive order "changes nothing" and doesn't fix any of the "pro-abortion provisions in the bill." House Republican Leader John Boehner agreed, telling his colleagues in this blog post that a yes vote on the legislation was a "vote for taxpayer-funded abortions." On the opposing side, the Center for Reproductive Rights issued a statement saying, "It is unacceptable that a pro-choice president has put his imprimatur on a highly restrictive and unjust anti-choice measure." Catholics for Choice called it a "step backward for women's rights."
