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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.
