Female Care

One woman a minute dies from cardiovascular disease. Within the first year after suffering a heart attack more women than men will die. Sixty-four percent of women that die from a heart attack had no previous symptoms. If you ask women today what the leading cause of death in women over 25 is, most will give breast cancer as their answer. Due to the high publicity of this disease and the lack of attention towards a healthy heart many women are unaware that according to the American Heart Association, heart attack is the number one killer of women over 25 in the United States. It kills almost twice as many women as all types of cancer, including breast cancer. Continue reading »

Already linked to a reduced risk for a variety of heart-related ailments, an ingredient in red wine has now been found to have possible life extension benefits in a series of studies that have been hailed as groundbreaking.

Resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine and other foods, has been shown in mice to reverse the effects of obesity, help the animals live longer, and increase their exercise endurance as well. Articles published in November 2006 in the journals Cell and Nature have cited several research studies in which ordinary lab mice given resveratrol can run twice as far as mice without the components, have greater energy in their muscles, and also have a reduced heart rate: some of the same characteristics seen in trained athletes. Though the studies involved only mice, the researchers said they had no reason to believe that similar health and life extension effects couldn’t be achieved in humans as well.
Continue reading »

One of the most impressive natural agents that has been shown to combat aging, reduce risk of degenerative disease and help optimize health and well-being is the daily ingestion of ground flaxseed.

Flaxseeds are the richest source of a wondrous bioactive substance known as SLD (secoisolariciresinol diglycoside) that provides the body with a multitude of benefits. In fact, flaxseeds contain 800 times more SLD and related compounds (mammalian lignan precursors) than any other food on earth. Ingesting the equivalent of two heaping tablespoons of ground flaxseed (flaxseed powder) or approximately 40-50 gm of flaxseed is of great value in protecting female reproductive organs, and the male prostate gland from disease processes, keeping cholesterol within a safe range, supporting liver and gallbladder function, improving large bowel health, reversing fibrocystic breast disease, possibly supporting bone density and improving the texture and smoothness of the skin (an effect that almost everyone notices within the first few weeks of use). Here’s how and why flaxseed should be part of your daily wellness plan whether you are a woman or man.

Continue reading »

Menopause is a time of change and new opportunity. It can also be a time of challenge as the sweats and hot flashes so commonly experienced by women during this phase in their life must be dealt with. As more women choose to forgo hormonal therapy and face menopause naturally, nonprescription remedies are needed to help women get through this time comfortably. A natural hot flash remedy that has recently been studied is the use of acupuncture for treatment of sweating and hot flashes. Is acupuncture good for menopausal symptoms?

A study recently published in the medical journal Menopause looked at the role acupuncture may play in relieving the sweating and hot flashes associated with menopause. Postmenopausal women with symptoms of sweating and hot flashes were randomized to three treatment groups. One group received standard care, but no acupuncture. The second group received sham acupuncture in which they thought they were receiving acupuncture but only shallow needling was used. A third group received traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture. After two months of twice weekly therapy, the frequency of sweating and hot flashes experienced by the women were quantified. The results? The group receiving the sham acupuncture as well as the group receiving actual acupuncture both had a reduction in the frequency of sweating and hot flashes. In contrast, the usual care group did not.

Continue reading »

If you are overweight, you are at risk for diabetes. And if you are a woman, you should know that diabetes can affect you differently than a man, particularly your heart.

Diabetes is on the rise, both in men and women, young and old. Some 16 million Americans have diabetes, about one-third of whom do not know it. More people than ever before are developing type 2 diabetes, mainly because of obesity and inactivity, the two major risk factors for this type of diabetes. Most women with diabetes have type 2 diabetes, which is more common in older people. Women who develop diabetes during pregnancy, known as gestational diabetes, are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.

Diabetes can lead to blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage that can result in foot or leg amputation, heart disease, and stroke . Special attention must be paid to this public health problem, particularly in women.

Did You Know That…

# About 90 percent of diabetes in the U.S. is the type 2 form, which occurs in most people after the age of 40.
# Type 2 diabetes is increasing in young people, especially among those who are overweight, physically inactive, or have a family history of diabetes.
# Obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes. Upper-body obesity is a stronger risk factor for type 2 diabetes than excess weight below the waist.
# Regular physical activity can protect against type 2 diabetes, while a lack of exercise is a risk factor for developing diabetes.

Continue reading »

Are you post-menopausal? Do you have high blood pressure? Well, help may be at hand. A recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that blood pressure was reduced by eating soy. 60 healthy post-menopausal women who took part in the study were divided into 2 groups. Both groups had identical healthy diets, the only difference being that one group had part of its protein intake replaced by half a cup of unsalted soy nuts. After 8 weeks, in the soy group, blood pressure was significantly reduced in the 12 women who had hypertension and also in those that had normal blood pressure. Soy for high blood pressure.

As an added bonus, levels of “bad” cholesterol were also lower in women that had hypertension.
This particularly important for post-menopausal women who are hypertensive because they have 4 times the risk of developing heart disease as those with normal blood pressure. Just goes to show what an impact small changes to your diet can have on your health – yet another good reason to start eating soy!

According to researchers, a study tracking heart disease in women doubts the value of genetic testing in identifying the genes responsible for heart disease and predicting a person’s risk of developing illness.

Diagnosing woman with chromosome 9 abnormalities did not help much in predicting heart disease when compared with other risk factors associated with heart disease like smoking, diabetes, C-reactive protein, bad cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and family history.

It has been shown that this common genetic trait can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular conditions. According to Nina Paynter of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, once if you are aware of risk factors of heart disease, the extra information on genetic variation in your body is helpless. It will not improve your ability to predict heart disease.

For helping people to measure their risk of various health problems, genetic tests are being developed increasingly. However, the effectiveness of these genetic testing (not all, but few) and how far they are helpful in predicting health ailments is still unclear.

Most women are ignorant of small lifestyle changes that would “dramatically reduce” the risk of strokes, the Stroke Association says.

The charity has survey evidence that shows 60% of women do not remember their last blood pressure reading.

Two-thirds do not know what an optimal blood pressure reading should be. Two surveys were conducted by GFK NOP among 1,000 people aged over 16.

Stroke is the most common cause of long-term disability, it says. Women are twice as likely to die from it as men, it added. And it points out that a third of stroke survivors have some sort of communication difficulty.

It predicts that 110 women under the age of 65 will have a stroke this week, 37 of whom will die. Had they controlled their blood pressure, 15 of them could have avoided a stroke altogether.

The survey showed that while more than 20% of women had been prescribed medication to control their blood pressure, 12% were not taking it regularly and thereby putting themselves at greater risk.
Continue reading »