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Birth control and high blood pressure: Which methods are safe for you?

Doctors typically recommend that women who have high blood pressure avoid using birth control that contains estrogen to avoid raising risks for a stroke or heart attack. According to a clinical update, this recommendation may be changing for some women with high blood pressure.

Pregnant and worried about the new coronavirus?

If you are pregnant, naturally you have concerns about COVID-19 and its potential effects on you and your fetus or newborn. Although there is limited data on the new coronavirus and pregnancy, some questions can be answered.

What your skin should expect when you're expecting

During pregnancy many women experience changes in their skin, some of which can linger for some time after giving birth. Most of these changes are not cause for concern and will improve, and in some cases there are treatments available for them.

Study finds weak link between birth control and breast cancer

Overall risk is very small, and older women who used hormonal contraceptives many years ago aren't likely to have a higher risk.


 Image: © designer491/Getty Images

Hormonal birth control — whether it comes as pills, injections, a ring, an intrauterine device (IUD), or an implant — may raise your risk of breast cancer, according to a study published Dec. 7, 2017, in The New England Journal of Medicine.

If you're like many women who currently use one of these contraceptive methods, or if you used one for years in the past, should you be worried?

Breastfeeding may protect high-risk women from diabetes later in life

Research we're watching

If a woman has gestational diabetes during her pregnancy, she has a higher risk of developing diabetes later. But a study published February 10 in Diabetes Care found that breastfeeding may help reduce that risk.

The study, which used data from the Nurses' Health Study II, found that the longer a woman nursed her infant, the lower her risk of developing diabetes later in life. The study included more than 4,000 women who had gestational diabetes. Of those women, more than 800 developed diabetes within the next 25 years. Those who breastfed for six to 12 months were 9% less likely to develop diabetes, compared with women who didn't breastfeed at all. Women who breastfed for one to two years had a 15% lower risk of developing diabetes, compared with women who didn't breastfeed. And diabetes risk was 27% lower in women who breastfed for more than two years. This provides another reason that doctors may want to encourage women with gestational diabetes to breastfeed whenever possible.

Surrogacy: Who decides to become a gestational carrier?

What prompts a woman to become a surrogate or gestational carrier, carrying a child for people she may not know? The answers seem straightforward in some instances and more complex in others.

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