Contraception and birth control Archive

To get the full benefit of your workout, you need to know how hard you're exercising, and that can be different for everyone.

Hot flashes and other symptoms can take a decade or longer to recede, but there is no reason to suffer in silence. There are new options for relief and new tools to guide you.

What we know about menopause has changed a lot over the past few decades, thanks to volumes of research. For example, studies reported in recent months indicate that hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms last longer than previously thought, affecting substantial numbers of women in their 60s. And randomized clinical trials have taught us that hormone therapy can be a safe and effective way to control symptoms, although it's no longer recommended for reducing risk of cardiovascular disease. "There's now a critical mass of research showing that, for many women, the benefits of hormone therapy for treating hot flashes and improving quality of life outweigh the risks," says Dr. JoAnn Manson, Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women's Health at Harvard Medical School.

It's well known that women fall more often than men, but why is that so? A team of Canadian researchers tackled that question by looking for factors that tend to put women at higher risk than men for spills.

The researchers studied around 15,000 adults ages 65 and older who were enrolled in the Canadian Community Health Survey–Healthy Aging. All the participants were asked if they had suffered a fall serious enough to limit their normal activity. People who answered "yes" were then queried about their lifestyles and medical histories. When the researchers analyzed the answers, they determined that stroke, arthritis, and poor nutrition increased the risk of falls in both men and women. However, different risk factors were linked to falls for women, including being 85 or older, having at least one alcoholic drink a week, taking five or more medications, and having diabetes or osteoporosis. The findings were reported online Feb. 19, 2015, by the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Younger women with heart disease may be unaware of their condition and may not recognize the symptoms of a heart attack, according to a report in the March 2015 issue of Circulation. The finding came from a survey of women under 55 who had survived heart attacks.

Researchers from the Translational Research Investigating Underlying Disparities in Acute Myocardial Infarction Patients' Health Status (TRIUMPH) study interviewed 30 women ages 30 to 55 who were hospitalized for heart attacks. They asked the women about their risk factors, the preventive measures they took the symptoms they experienced, and the treatment they sought and received.

It's no secret that healthy living can reduce your risk for developing heart disease. But ever wonder how much it may help? Up to 92%, suggests a study published Jan. 6, 2015, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It evaluated health habits of 70,000 young and middle-aged women during a 20-year period. The habits included not smoking; exercising for at least 2.5 hours each week; watching TV for fewer than seven hours a week; consuming a diet rich in vegetables, legumes, and whole grains but low in red meat, refined grains, and sugar; consuming no more than one alcoholic drink daily; and having a body mass index in the normal range. Compared with women who had none of those habits, women with all six reduced their risk of developing heart disease by 92%. Why do those habits provide so much protection against heart disease? "Limiting TV watching frees up time for exercise, and the other activities are known to reduce blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and blood sugar, which reduce the three major risk factors for heart disease—hypertension, high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, and diabetes," says Dr. Randall Zusman, a cardiologist and Harvard Medical School associate professor. And even though the study involved young and middle-aged women, Dr. Zusman reminds us that it's never too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

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Discomfort with intercourse happens to men, too. But most obstacles can be overcome.

To most men, an active sex life is essential. If you go by what you see in the health press, the only thing standing in your way is erectile dysfunction (ED), the inability to get and keep an erection sufficient for intercourse. The drugs approved to treat ED all work to a greater or lesser extent for most men with erectile difficulties, and there are other options if they don't.

Is brain damage an inevitable consequence of American football, an avoidable risk of it, or neither? An editorial published yesterday in the medical journal BMJ poses those provocative questions. Chad Asplund, director of sports medicine at Georgia Regents University, and Thomas Best, professor and chair of sports medicine at Ohio State University, offer an overview of the unresolved connection between playing football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a type of gradually worsening brain damage caused by repeated mild brain injuries or concussions. The big question is whether playing football causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy or whether some people who play football already at higher risk for developing it. The Football Players Health Study at Harvard University hopes to provide a solid answer to that and other health issues that affect professional football players.

Here is a table that contains the many different radiation therapy options for prostate cancer. It includes who the ideal candidates are, recovery time, possible side effects, and the advantages/disadvantages for each.

Be skeptical and get the big picture from multiple sources.

When you need to find a hospital or medical center to have non-emergency surgery or a diagnostic procedure, you often have a choice—assuming you clear it with your insurance provider. How do you figure out the best place to go?