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Kids and soda!
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Do your kids drink soda? Do you? I stopped drinking it some time ago.
Ok, I’ll admit I’ll drink a Sprite now and then, usually if I am away from home and don’t have many other choices.
But its not good to drink it. Not good at all.
Its high in sugar and calories and low in nutrients.
Obesity and diabetes are two diseases that can result from too much sugar and excess calorie intake. Other possible health problems from drinking too much soda include caffeine dependence and bone weakening (from the phosphorus).
Even the sugar free and zero calorie stuff has its problems!
There is some real scary statistics concerning soda consumption – 56% of 8 year olds drink soda everyday and 60% of schools sell it!
Although there are now many schools are no longer selling it to kids.
If you have kids, do you let them drink it? Do you set a good example by not drinking it yourself? How do you keep kids from drinking it when you’re not around to stop them or they are too old to control what they drink?
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April 24, 2006
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Possible role of FSH in osteoporosis.
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Follicle-stimulating hormone, usually abbreviated as FSH, is a hormone produced by the anterior pituitary. FSH stimulates immature follicles in the ovary to mature and to release estrogen.
Normally the ovary also responds to FSH by releasing inhibin, another hormone, which then results in a decrease in FSH levels – creating a sort of feedback system to regulate the levels of each other and other hormones such as estrogen. At menopause when estrogen levels fall, the pituitary starts releasing even more FSH as if it is trying to get the estrogen levels back to where they once were. Consequently, post-menopausal women have high levels of FSH.
Osteoporosis is pretty common in post menopausal women, when the amount of bone mass being broken down (resorbed) is greater than the amount of new bone being formed. It has long been believed that estrogen has a major role in this process since estrogen levels decrease after menopause and many of the molecules involved in the resorption of bone are affected by estrogen.
However some recent research now shows that FSH also plays a role in this bone loss. A group led by Mone Zaidi – a researcher at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City – has recently published a paper demonstrating this.
Earlier experiments by other groups showed that mice without estrogen activity only show a mild or no bone loss.
Mone Zaidi’s group showed that ”FSH stimulates the formation and function” of cells that resorb bone in female mice, and that FSH is necessary for this bone loss. They also showed that in mice without FSH receptors (FSH will not function as usual with no FSH receptors present), bone loss decreased compared to ovariectomized (no ovaries, no estrogen) mice. In addition they showed that the decrease in bone loss was not due to the FSH causing an increase in bone formation
So what does this all mean? In a nutshell – most of the bone loss after menopause is likely not due to the decreased levels of estrogen, but rather due to the increased levels of FSH. In the future medications that inhibit the activity of FSH could be used to prevent osteoporosis. Much more research will be needed first of course before a drug like that would be ready for human use – but this is a very big step in osteoporosis research!
This work of Zaidi’s has been published in the April 21, 2006 issue of Cell (Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 247-260, titled: FSH Directly Regulates Bone Mass).
(Technorati Tags: osteoporosis, bone, health, FSH, women, research)
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April 20, 2006
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Improvement for Saudi women possible within the confines of Wahhabism?
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I had a difficult time finding any women’s health news worth blogging about today and I ended up spending a lot of time reading an interview called Saudi Women: Breaking the Chains. It was from back in February but was still very interesting and worth reading if you haven’t seen it yet.
The person being interviewed is Moudhy Al-Rashid, a woman from Saudi Arabia who is going to school at Columbia University. She obviously is concerned about women’s rights, but seems content to work within the framework of Saudi law’s to better the position of women. It seems to me that much bigger changes will be needed if women in that country will ever be treated even close to equal to men.
Moudhy Al-Rashid doesn’t seem to want to admit that women in Saudi Arabia are victims, even though all women there are prevented from exercising even the most basic of rights.
I have to wonder is she defending Saudi laws and sharia because she is afraid to do otherwise? It is even safe for a Saudi women, even while in the US, to be interviewed on a web site and speak out againstSaudi laws and sharia?
The interview is divided over two pages, so be sure to click the link at the bottom of the page to see the second part. The comments are interesting also.
I should point out that the site the interview is on seems, at a glance anyway, to express a very conservative viewpoint which in general does not reflect my own views. I tended to side with the interviewer in this case though.
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April 18, 2006
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Another alternative for high risk, post-menopausal women to prevent breast cancer.
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The big news in breast cancer research this week (so far anyway) is the results of a new study that shows a drug used to treat or prevent osteoporosis can also reduce the risk of breast cancer.
This study called ‘Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene’ or ‘STAR’ involved close to 20,000 post-menopausal women. These women were randomly assign to be in one of two groups. One group were given tamoxifen – used to treat women with estrogen-receptor-positive cancer and to prevent it in high risk women – the other raloxifene. Raloxifene is sold by Eli Lilly as Evista and is used to treat and prevent osteoporosis. The study lasted five years.
The results show that women taking raloxifene reduced their chances of getting invasive breast cancer by 50%, about the same amount of protection as taking tamoxifen.
Both drugs, tamoxifen and raloxifene, are ‘selective estrogen response modulators’ which behave like estrogen in some parts of the body, but not in others.
The women in the raloxifene group tended to have less side effects than the women in the other group.
Raloxifene has not be approved by the FDA to be used to prevent cancer, but Eli Lilly will most likely petition the FDA so that it can be used by high-risk, post-menopausal women to reduce their risk of developing breast cancer.
(Technorati Tags: breast cancer, raloxifene, tamoxifen, estrogen)
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Related Posts:
- Women’s Health Weekly Review: April 26 – May 3
- Women’s Health Weekly Review: June 8 – June 14
- Breast cancer – exercise, obesity and tamoxifen
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Blog to Raise Awareness About Sexual Violence
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I’m really not sure what to write about today for this, but I really want to participate because it is such an important issue.I haven’t personally been a victim of any sort of sexual violence, and have never talked to anyone has who has been about their experiences.
I only know that crimes like rape scare me to death. And I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why so many men are so violent, in general, and especially towards women.
I’m especially horrified by the type of violence many women, mostly in non-western countries, have to experience regularly.
These include: female genital mutilation – which is just so horrible to even think about on even a superficial level; dowry murder – 15,000 dowry deaths estimated to take place each year in India; honour killings – where members of a woman’s own family kills her because she was a victim of rape and much more.
In many cases the violence seems to reflect a general lack of men even considering women to be real people, but instead just a piece of property they can do what they want with. Or mutilating women’s bodies so that they either become somewhat helpless (as in foot binding) or unable to experience normal pleasurable feelings. Or they involve women’s virginity or the possible lack of it.
So what causes this horrible behavior in men and what can be done about it?
It seems to take place all over the world – or at least has in the past – so it is hard to blame it on any particular religion or culture.
One possible cause – which may not be a popular one – is that men (not all, but most) are just naturally violent and aggressive. Can they change? I think so – I certainly hope so. I have no idea how.
Or maybe we are just still too primitive a species. Violent and aggressive behaviors are maybe part of our evolutionary past that we still need to confront, learn about and move beyond.
Or maybe in general, we are just a violent species. Maybe if there is intelligent life in the universe somewhere they are avoiding us because we are so primitive and violent. I wouldn’t blame them if that is the case.
And still, women all over the world are sufferering due to violence perpetrated against them everyday.
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