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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."
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Vaginal Birth After C-Section: Giving Women the Option
Tweet Share on Facebook March 11, 2010 Comment (7)The discussion over delivering babies in this country has the feel of a pendulum swinging back and forth. Cesarean sections? With nearly 1 in 3 pregnant women having them—up from 1 in 5 in 1996—experts say it's time to cut back. And according to a new assessment from a National Institutes of Health panel, pregnant women should once again be given the option of having a vaginal birth after a cesarean. VBACs are currently chosen less than 10 percent of the time, down from a rate of 28 percent in 1996. Obstetricians began to change their practices after a handful of studies found that women who had a VBAC had slightly higher risks of uterine rupture, which in 6 percent of cases results in the baby's death.
In announcing the new consensus statement yesterday, the NIH expert panel said that pregnant women who have had C-sections should be given the option of a vaginal birth provided they had a low horizontal incision that runs at the bikini line and have no issues—such as diabetes, multiple fetuses, or a baby in breech position—that put them at increased risk of delivery complications. "It's certainly a safe alternative for the vast majority," Gary Cunningham, the chair of the panel and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said Wednesday during a news conference. "But the number of hospitals offering this has diminished because of perceived bad outcomes."
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Women: 4 Ways to Boost Your Sexual Life Expectancy
Tweet Share on Facebook March 10, 2010 Comment (38)While women live an average of five years longer than men, our lesser halves have a "sexual life expectancy" that's nearly five years longer than ours, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal. Perhaps it's Mother Nature's way of evening the score—or perhaps it's the pharmaceutical industry's. "Over the decade since Viagra was introduced, we've seen the levels of sexual interest increase noticeably in 55-year-old men, whereas it's stayed the same for women, widening the gender gap," says study author Stacy Lindau, an associate professor of medicine-geriatrics at the University of Chicago. (We could, though, catch up if a Viagra for women eventually hits the marketplace.)
Lindau has published numerous studies on the sex lives of adults up to age 85, finding that health is the biggest factor that determines how long we can expect to have sex and how much we can expect to enjoy it. (More details on the sex revolution in seniors.) Her latest study, she tells me, shows that men who report being in "very good" or "excellent" health can expect to add five to seven years to their sexual life expectancy, while women can add three to six years. That means that while a typical 55-year-old woman can expect to have sex for an additional 11 years, that same 55-year-old who's in excellent health can expect to remain sexually active for up to 17 more years—or through age 72. (That 55-year-old man in excellent health can expect to stay active until 77.)
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Bullets Flying Over Abortion Coverage in Health Reform Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook March 4, 2010 Comment (9)It's high noon for abortion coverage in the health reform bill, and the pistols are drawn. Who will win the duel over abortions if and when a final bill is passed remains to be seen. Simply put, abortion-rights activists want the language in any final healthcare bill to allow insurance plans in the federal exchange system to provide abortion coverage as part of their comprehensive plans. Those opposed to abortion don't want any plans in the exchange to offer abortion coverage. The Senate bill and the White House tweaks to it that will be the basis of the final reconciliation bill contain language that's something of a compromise—allowing abortion coverage but with restrictions.
While writing this blog, I was hit with an E-mail from House Republican Leader John Boehner warning that "President Obama and Democrats in Congress intend to defy the will of the American people and overturn a long-standing prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion." He warned that House Democrats will have to pass the Senate bill during reconciliation, including "a loophole that would permit government funding of abortion."
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6 Weight-Loss Tricks That Don’t Involve Dieting or (Much) Exercise
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2010 Comment (52)The advice for losing those stubborn extra pounds seems so simple: Eat less, and exercise more. But as anyone who's ever tried to lose a few pounds knows, putting that advice into practice is very tough. Cut back on calories too much, and you're overwhelmed by hunger and your metabolism may slow. Exercise like crazy, and the hunger pangs you feel a few hours later may trigger you to eat back all you've burned off—and then some.
And let's be honest, no one really wants to keep track of every bite of food. My teenage daughter, while reading this U.S. News article on restricting calories to live longer, asked me how many calories I ate each day. I told her I had no idea—though probably more than my body needs. Truth is, despite having ghostwritten a slew of bestselling weight-loss books in my previous life as a freelance writer, I've never actually been on a diet; I know my lack of discipline at sticking to a prescribed eating plan would make me fail miserably. Still, I'd like to shed the 10 pounds that I've gained over the past decade, and I'm wondering if there are a few tricks that can help me along. I asked Adriane Fugh-Berman, a physician and associate professor of complementary and alternative medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, to give me some tips that have been backed up by solid research. (She previously helped me decipher the ingredients in QuickTrim, a weight-loss product being endorsed by the Kardashians.) Here's what she recommends:
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