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Plastic Water Bottles: Should You Avoid the Disposable Kind, Too?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 12, 2009 Comment (36)"Awwk!" That was my first reaction when I read a recent E-mail about new dangers lurking in my disposable water bottle, the one with a No. 1 recycling code stamped on the bottom that sits on my desk waiting to be refilled. There's a new study from Germany out today that tested the water in those bottles and found estrogenlike compounds, most likely leaching out from the plastic. These water bottles don't contain the notorious chemical bisphenol A, which is found in hard water bottles, baby bottles, and the plastic coatings of metal cans. (Studies of BPA indicate that high exposures could increase the risk of reproductive health problems and possibly breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers, which is why six leading baby bottle makers last week decided to ban it from their products.) The soft bottles do, though, contain other estrogenlike compounds, still unidentified, that could have the same harmful effects as BPA.
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Cheap Birth Control (Once Again) for College Women
Tweet Share on Facebook March 11, 2009 Comment (8)In covering the rapidly changing political landscape surrounding women's health issues, I keep thinking of shoelaces. Everything that was tied up in the previous presidential administration is quickly coming undone. Last week, President Obama took steps to overturn the conscience rights regulation—issued in the Bush administration's final days—that many pro-abortion rights advocates worried would restrict women's access to abortions and various forms of contraception. In January, he rescinded the global gag rule implemented by Bush, which restricted U.S. funding for foreign health clinics that provided referrals for abortions. And last night, Congress passed a provision in its massive omnibus spending bill that allows pharmaceutical companies to reinstate discounts on birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptives that they had previously offered to family planning clinics and college campus health clinics.
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Positive Vibe at Obama Health Summit
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (11)President Obama gathered about 120 healthcare movers and shakers at the White House yesterday to discuss an issue that, after the economy, is foremost on everyone's mind: how to fix the broken healthcare system. I asked National Women's Law Center Copresident Marcia Greenberger, who attended the Obama healthcare reform summit, to give me the gist of what I couldn't see on C-SPAN or read in the transcripts.
First off, she told me the day was "terrific," with an "incredibly positive tone" and a "broad consensus about the need to do something and that the status quo was simply not acceptable." Of course, my eyebrows shot up when she spoke of all the smiles and head-nodding in the room. Surely there was dissension, I pressed her. What did the Republican folks think about comprehensive coverage of contraception? After all, many Republican members of Congress vehemently oppose a provision in the omnibus bill that would restore access to affordable birth control pills on college campuses.
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7 Ways to Boost Your Sex Life When the Dow Plunges
Tweet Share on Facebook March 5, 2009 Comment (24)I was surprised to read that in this doomsday economy, we're having more sex than ever. USA Today says condom sales are booming. Ditto for sex toys, massage oils, and lubricants. (Even Walgreens now sells them on its website.) A Consumer Reports survey last month of 1,000 adults said their financial situation isn't affecting their sex lives, and 40 percent of readers of Cosmopolitan magazine say they use sex to take their minds off the financial crisis. Perhaps some of them are checking out the "casual encounters" section of Craigslist, which has seen a recent spike in those looking for hookups.
Still, I wondered, does this apply only to singles on the prowl? Are married folks also using sex to blow off their recession worries?
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Is Your Depo-Provera Causing Weight Gain?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 4, 2009 Comment (514)Depo-Provera, the progesterone-only birth control shot, has a lot of advantages: It's given once every three months in your doctor's office, so you don't have to remember to take a pill every night. It affords you the privacy of not having to keep contraceptives lying around for an inquisitive child or parent to find. It's more than 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, provided you get your shots on time—all of which could explain why it's used by about 5 percent of women ages 15 to 44. There is, though, one big drawback: weight gain, enough to make you go up one or two dress sizes, according to a new study published today in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology .
[How to Choose a Safe Birth Control Method: 11 Factors to Consider]
In the study, more than 700 women were allowed to choose among various contraceptive methods and then were followed for three years to measure their gain in weight and body fat. Those who chose the Depo shot gained an average of 11 pounds over three years and experienced a 3 percent increase in body fat compared with an average of 3 to 4 pounds and less than half the increase in body fat for those who used other forms of contraception. I asked study author Abbey Berenson, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, to explain what this finding means for women. Here are the edited excerpts of our conversation.
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Learning to Relax by Paying Attention
Tweet Share on Facebook March 2, 2009 Comment (3)Last week, while trying to get downtown to a conference on integrating stress-reduction techniques into mainstream medicine, I felt my blood pressure rising. I was stuck in traffic, made several wrong turns that took me to the opposite side of the city, and entered a parking garage that turned out to be full—all causing me to miss a much-anticipated keynote speaker. When I finally got to the conference, I couldn't get beyond my disappointment over missing the opening speaker and sat in the large lecture hall, halfheartedly taking notes and checking my BlackBerry every few minutes. Let's just say I wasn't fully present in the moment.
At lunch, I decided to head to a roundtable discussion given by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a psychologist famous for developing a stress-reduction technique called mindfulness, which he's described in several bestselling books. Can't hurt, I figured, hoping that he'd begin the session with a little meditation. (You can meditate with him on this YouTube video.) While he did not, in fact, lull me into meditative relaxation, he did very much get me to a mindful state of awareness. "I know you all have questions you'd like to ask or statements you'd like to make," he said before opening the room up for discussion, "but while you're waiting your turn, really listen to the other people speaking instead of framing the perfect sentence in your head."
