Women's Health Archive

Here are some signs of an alcohol use disorder — and ways to find the help you need if you suspect you're drinking too much.

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The thought of hangovers and binge drinking may conjure an image of a college-age student or a 20-something out on the town. But increasingly, those terms apply to people who probably look a lot like you.

Alcohol use problems often start innocently enough in older women. A problem may begin with a drink at night to combat insomnia, says Dr. Olivera Bogunovic, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. But then one drink turns into two, and a 9 p.m. cocktail turns into all-day drinking, she says.

Ask the doctors

Q. Is there any way to tell if you are getting osteoporosis? Are there symptoms?

A. Osteoporosis is a disease that causes your bones to become weak and brittle and more likely to break. Unfortunately, you probably won't have any symptoms until the disease is advanced or you actually experience a fracture. However, there are two visible clues of osteoporosis: changes in your posture (such as a hunched-over appearance) and loss of height. Both of these changes may be caused when your spine becomes curved or compressed from weakness or tiny fractures (called compression fractures) in your vertebrae, the small bones that make up your spine.

It's called "weight bias," and even health care providers aren't immune.

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If you've ever delayed a doctor's appointment so you could lose a few pounds before your annual weigh-in, or hesitated to exercise in public because you felt self-conscious among a sea of hard-bodied gym goers, your weight may be affecting your health — but not in the way you might think.

Even if you're otherwise healthy, sometimes excess pounds bring increased health risks, especially if they keep you from following recommended health practices that offer protection over the long term.

Screening tests for lung and breast cancer—chest computed tomography (CT) scans and mammograms—may offer clues about a person’s risk of heart disease.

Doctors want their patients to have access to accurate and helpful health information, and today that means online. Researchers found that expectant mothers who used a website that provided information about vaccines were more likely to get their babies vaccinated.

As a group, men have nudged down their stroke numbers over the past decade. Why haven't women seen the same improvement?

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Men are less likely to have strokes than they were 10 years ago, but the risk for women has stayed about the same, according to a study of stroke data from Ohio and Kentucky, published online on August 21 by Neurology.

The question is, why?

"This study raises important concerns about the lack of decline in stroke rates in women," says Dr. Kathryn M. Rexrode, associate professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Women's Health at Harvard Medical School. Study authors suggested it's likely that better treatments for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, and a reduction in the number of people smoking helped to reduce the risk for men for having the most common type of stroke — ischemic stroke, which is typically caused by a clot that blocks blood flow to the brain. But women, who in theory should benefit from the same interventions, didn't see any improvement in their stroke rates over the study period.

All women, regardless of risk, should focus on preventing diabetes.

Can a blood test act as a crystal ball, alerting you to a health hazard that may await you down the road? Researchers say they've found one that may do just that for diabetes. It could help predict whether women — even ones with no other signs of the disease — may develop the condition in the future.

In a study published online June 21 by the Journal of Clinical Lipidology, researchers showed that in many cases, a test called lipoprotein insulin resistance (LPIR) did a better job, at predicting which women would go on to develop diabetes, says Dr. Samia Mora, one of the study authors and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. In many cases, it was more accurate than traditional measures — such as