The study followed 703 Caucasian, African American and Hispanic women using oral contraceptive pills (OCPs), the birth control shot Depo-Provera (depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, or DMPA) or nonhormonal contraceptives. They were divided into age groups—one between 16 and 24, and another between the ages of 25 and 33.

Although women who used nonhormonal contraceptives showed little if any loss, women who took OCPs and DMPA lost 0.4–6.8 percent of bone mineral density. BMD loss appeared to differ most by age.

“DMPA users 16–24 years old lost significantly more bone at the spine (4.2% compared with 3.2%) and femoral neck (6.0% compared with 4.2%) than those 25–33 years old,” authors of the study wrote. “However, OCP users 16–24 years old lost significantly less bone density at the spine (0.4% compared with 0.8%) than women 25–33 years of age.”

Many of the study’s participants chose to discontinue DMPA use. Some switched to nonhormonal contraceptives, and were actually able to regain some bone mineral density—up to 4.9 percent at the spine and 3.2 percent at the neck for nonhormonal contraceptive users. Those who switched to OCPs also regained BMD, but their rates were much lower.

Authors wrote, “Use of very-low-dose OCPs after DMPA discontinuation may slow bone recovery.” Women who switched to OCPs were only able to regain up to 2.3 percent at the spine and 0.7 percent at the neck. According to the study, African American participants recovered bone mineral density in the neck better than Hispanic or white women regardless of which method they chose.

Authors wrote, “Recent prospective studies have demonstrated that once DMPA is discontinued, BMD increases more among prior DMPA users than nonusers, suggesting that DMPA-related bone loss is reversible.”

Although this is very encouraging, authors say more information is needed to fully understand bone mineral density recovery.

A study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. investigates the effects different herbal supplements on blood lead levels. Supplements with high heavy metals levels included Ayurvedic herbs, echinacea, ginseng, St. John’s wort, bee pollen, ginko, and nettle.

Lead exposure can result in medical complications, including high blood pressure, kidney disease, cancer, heart disease and peripheral artery disease. High blood lead levels also pose a risk for women planning to become pregnant. Lead can lead to pregnancy complications for both the mother and the developing child.

“Among adults, the potential implications of low-level lead exposure are most relevant to women of child-bearing age,” study authors write. “As lead is especially harmful to developing nervous systems of fetuses and children and passes through the placenta and breast milk.”

Researchers recruited 6,712 Unites States women in good health who were of reproductive age—20 or more years old. Participants self-reported their vitamin regimen for 30 days, and were divided into groups based on the type of supplements they used.

Women who took these supplements had significantly higher lead levels than women who took other herbal medicines. Blood lead levels of women who took Ayurvedic supplements were 24 percent higher than non-users. St. John’s wort wasn’t far behind with 23 percent higher levels.

Greater lead levels were not seen in individuals who used other supplements, such as garlic. Researchers acknowledge that these supplements can have some beneficial effects on personal health, but recommend firmer regulations.

“Our data suggest testing guidelines for herbal supplements,” they write, “and regulations limiting lead in supplements are needed.”

Gestational diabetes had been connected to cardiovascular disease prior to this study, but little was known of the links between minor glucose intolerance and heart disease. Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease share several characteristics including obesity, insulin resistance and cholesterol problems. Oftentimes, individuals with one condition will develop the other. Women with gestational diabetes may experience similar metabolic complications as soon as 3 months after giving birth.

Researchers analyzed the medical records of all Ontario women between the ages of 20 and 49 who had given birth between April 1994 and March 1998.  Participants were divided into three groups: those who were diagnosed with gestational diabetes, those who received an oral glucose tolerance test, and those who were not screened using oral glucose testing. One birth was selected at random for women with multiple deliveries; the median ages were between 29.2 and 31.1.

Women are tested for gestational diabetes (a type of diabetes that develops when women experience unusually high glucose levels during pregnancy) during the second trimester of pregnancy (13-27 weeks). The first step is a glucose challenge test, taken by measuring glucose levels one hour after ingesting a sugary substance such as glucola. If results are abnormal (≥7.8 mmol/L), a second oral glucose tolerance test (OGGT) is taken.

Participants in the study were followed up until March 31, 2008, providing information reflecting cardiovascular disease development for a median of 12.3 years after childbirth. “If you followed 10,000 people for one year, 4.2 of them would have an event,” Dr. Shah explains. “If you followed those 10,000 people for 10 years, 42 of them would have an event…In other words, these are extremely rare events.”

Although the differences were minor—absolute risk was 0.16% and 0.05% for women with gestational diabetes and women who received an OGGT, respectively—the results indicate a need for further research. "We shouldn't be ignoring these mild abnormalities during pregnancy,” Dr. Shah says. “(They) may benefit from extra surveillance and/or cardiovascular disease screening.”

More information is needed to establish the exact relationship between glucose intolerance and cardiovascular disease. In the meantime, proper nutrition and exercise may reduce your risk for both gestational diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Read more about gestational diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

A mammogram uses x-rays to detect masses in the breast tissue, allowing doctors to detect breast cancer in its early stages when it’s most likely to be cured. Women over the age of forty are encouraged to get a mammogram every 1-2 years. Although a mammogram is beneficial when lethal cancers are detected, it may be harmful when perceiving those that are not.

It is estimated that one in three breast cancer mammography screenings are overdiagnosed. Overdiagnosis occurs when the patient dies before cancer complications occur, whether it's because the cancer grows too slowly or simply remains dormant.

Because it is impossible to discriminate between types of cancers that will not cause death or symptoms and those that will, all types of cancer are treated. In fact, 37% of women age 40-54 who died from causes other than breast cancer had invasive or non-invasive cancer legions at autopsy, half of which were visible on radiography.

Researcher Karl Julh Jørgensen, co-author and researcher of the study, wrote “The increase in incidence of breast cancer was closely related to the introduction of screening and little of this was compensated for by a drop in incidence of breast cancer in previously screened women.”

Jørgensen, along with director Peter C Gøtzsche, both of The Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, gathered information for the review by compiling several studies from Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, using data seven years prior to screening and seven years after.

Researchers obtained information from women too young to be screened to use as a control. This information was compared with pre-screening trends of the screened group to establish a background incidence.

The rate of diagnosis for women younger than 50 and greater than 74 remained constant, but when the post-screening trend in women age 50-69 was examined, breast cancer diagnosis was almost 42% higher than expected.  This was followed by a 15% decline in diagnosis for women over the age of 70. Over-diagnosis for breast cancer alone was 35%, which jumped to 52% when carcinoma in situ (at its original site) was included.

Although factors such as the use of hormone replacement therapy (associated with an increased risk of breast cancer) and incidence of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) may play a factor in the statistics, researchers still attribute much of this change in diagnosis to organized and more frequent screening.

Other deviations due to the nature of different types of cancer must still be accounted for, but the study’s findings do stress taking precautions in breast cancer screening.

Digital mammography readings, for example, in lieu of traditional mammograms (that tend to detect a higher rate of false positives due to poorer image quality) may be the best procedure, but knowing the facts about breast cancer’s risks can help prevent complications as a result of overdiagnosis.

UK researchers report this week in the journal Lancet Oncology that two screening tests may help detect ovarian cancer at an early stage when it is still treatable. The finding could help save thousands of women each year because currently, most cases of ovarian cancer are not detected until the cancer has already spread. The survival rate for ovarian cancer detected in the early stage is nearly 90 percent; if detected only after it spreads, it is 30 percent or less.

Scientists have long sought an adequate screening test for ovarian cancer to catch early cases of this disease that kills 100,000 women each year worldwide. In the present study, the researchers evaluated the use of a blood test called CA 125 and ultrasound imaging to screen for ovarian cancer in a group of 200,000 postmenopausal women. Half of the women received no screening, while 50,000 were screened using both the blood test and ultrasound, and 50,000 got ultrasound alone.

The results showed that blood test and ultrasound together detected 89 percent of ovarian cancers, while with ultrasound alone the rate was about 75 percent. Nearly half of these cancers were detected in stage I or II – the earliest stages – in which treatment can be effective up to 90 percent of the time. Without screening, only 15 percent of ovarian cancers are caught early. The study is ongoing to determine if this difference in detection rates translates to a difference in survival among women in the study.

While the initial results are promising, the researchers caution people to wait for the final results regarding survival before passing judgment. If the screening methods dramatically improve survival from this deadly cancer, then medical organizations and policymakers can consider instituting ovarian cancer screening as part of routine health care for older women. However, if the difference is only minor, it may not be cost effective to screen millions of people for such modest gains.

Want to learn more about ovarian cancer or share your personal experience? Join the Healia Community for Ovarian Cancer.

_{Photo: sectionz, Flickr, Creative Commons}

While some college women drink to excess to impress guys, a new study shows that college men actually find excessive alcohol intake in women unappealing. The study uncovers a dangerous disconnect between the attitudes of college men and women about women’s drinking that could be responsible for health problems ranging from hangovers to alcohol poisoning.

Researchers at Loyola Marymount University and the University of Washington recruited 3,616 students ages 18 to 25 to complete an online survey during the 2007 fall semester. The women participants answered questions about how many drinks they thought a typical college man would like his female friends to drink at a typical event, as well as the maximum number of drinks they thought the men would like their female friends to drink. The women were also asked how many drinks they thought a woman would have to consume for a guy to consider being friends with her, for him to consider dating her, or for him consider her sexually attractive. The men were asked their actual preferences.

The results, published in the March issue of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, showed that 71 percent of the women surveyed overestimated the amount of alcohol they thought men would want them to drink. On average, the women overestimated by one-and-a-half drinks. Additionally, while 26 percent of women said that men would most likely want to be friends with a woman who drinks five or more drinks and 16 percent said that men would be most sexually attracted to a woman who drank that much alcohol, both estimates were nearly double what the men actually preferred. Perhaps most importantly, the researchers found that the women who overestimated the men's preferences were also the ones more likely to engage in excessive drinking.

The results may help explain why binge drinking among college women has recently increased twice as much as it has in men. While these women may be drinking to excess in order to "keep up with" the guys, women as a group are actually more vulnerable to alcohol intoxication than men because of their metabolism and physical makeup.

The researchers believe that universities and other public health organizations could use the insights gained from the study to help curb binge drinking among young women. They are currently working on a follow-up study on how much alcohol men think women want them to drink to see if their perceptions have a similar effect on increased risky drinking.

Want to learn more about alcohol issues? Join the Healia Health Community for Alcohol and see what others are saying, or you can read the Healia Health Guide to Alcoholism.

_{Photo: David Boyle in DC, Flickr, Creative Commons}

A new study provides evidence that warm weather conditions are associated with an increase in migraines and other severe headaches, something that many migraine sufferers have been saying for years. Appearing in the March 10 issue of the journal Neurology, the study also reports a connection between severe headaches and lower atmospheric pressure.

While many people who suffer from severe headaches, especially those with migraines, believe there is a connection between environmental conditions such as weather and their headache symptoms, very little research has examined the relationship. In the present study, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston examined the records of 7,054 patients who visited the emergency room at the Medical Center between May 2000 and December 2007 and who were discharged with a primary diagnosis of headache (about one-third of which were confirmed migraines). They used weather and pollution data to see if there was a relationship between the number of emergency room visits for headaches and several environmental factors that included air temperature, air pressure, humidity, fine particulate matter, black carbon, and nitrogen and sulfur dioxides pollutants.

The results showed that the air temperature in the 24 hours prior to a patient's hospital visit was most closely associated with headache symptoms, with a 7.5 percent higher risk of severe headache reported for each 5 degree Celsius increase in temperature (about 9 degrees Fahrenheit). To a lesser degree, lower barometric pressure 48 to 72 hours prior to a patient's emergency room visit also appeared to trigger headache. There was no evidence of an association between headache onset and environmental pollutants.

The researchers say their data clearly demonstrate a relationship between environmental conditions and the onset of severe headache, providing evidence that external factors can trigger the condition and may be responsible for many headaches each year. They add that while there is not much an individual headache sufferer can do about the weather, knowing that air temperature is a potential trigger might allow people to take special precautions to avoid exposure to other known headache triggers when the temperature rises, or provide an opportunity for them to take medications in advance to avoid a migraine. Talk to your doctor if you want to learn more about your potential migraine triggers or about the medications available for migraines.

Learn more about preventing migraine headaches by visiting "How Can I Prevent Migraines" in the Healia Health Guide to Migraines or share your own headache story in the Healia Health Community for Migraine Headache.

_{Photo: miss_rogue, Flickr, Creative Commons}

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh reported yesterday that optimists, people who tend to look at the bright side of things, live longer healthier lives than their pessimistic counterparts. While this is good news for those with sunny dispositions, on the flip side, pessimists have just found another reason to be negative.

The study examined data from the more than 100,000 participants aged 50 and older enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative that began in 1994. As part of this large initiative, women were asked to fill out a questionnaire measuring their tendency toward optimism or pessimism, which included questions such as: "In uncertain times, I expect the worst." Eight years into the study, optimistic women were 14% more likely to be alive than pessimistic women and they were 30 percent less likely to die from heart disease, the leading cause of death for women (and men) in America. The optimists were also less likely to suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, or to smoke cigarettes.

A subset of women rated as being highly mistrustful of other people (called the "cynically hostile" group by the researchers) were 16 percent more likely to die from any cause and 23 percent more likely to die from cancer, than women who were more trusting.

While previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between optimism and longevity, most of them have been small studies involving only men. The present study not only examined data from thousands of female participants, it also went to great lengths to control for other factors that might explain the results such as physical activity levels, smoking, and blood pressure. Thus, the relationship between optimism and living longer found in the study is independent of these factors.

So how could optimism be responsible for extending life? That is unclear but the researchers propose that it may have to do with stress management capabilities. Optimistic people tend to have more friends and a larger social network to help them deal with crises, and they may also be better able to cope with stress on their own. Difficulty dealing with stress is a risk factor that has been associated with high blood pressure, heart disease, and early death in previous studies. Optimists may actually have a different physiological response to stress that reduces its toll on the body.

However, the researchers also point out that while the present study demonstrates a relationship between optimism and longevity, it does not prove that optimism actually causes extended life. More research needs to be done to better understand the relationship between the two factors. For the optimists among us, the cup appears half full already.

For more information about managing stress in uncertain times, see the Healia Health Guide to Stress Management or share your thoughts in the Healia Health Community for Stress Management.

_{Photo: viZZZual.com, Flickr, Creative Commons}

According to a new study, women in strained or bad marriages are more likely than their husbands to suffer from conditions that increase the risk of heart disease. The study also found that both women and men trapped in bad marriages are more likely to feel depressed than their happily-married counterparts.

Researchers at the University of Utah studied nearly 300 couples who had been married an average of 20 years and whose ages ranged from 40 to 70. Each couple filled out a questionnaire that assessed their feelings about their marriage and their mental state, then underwent a battery of medical tests to assess their risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

The results showed that women in bad marriages were more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, obesity around the waistline, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, and low HDL (the good cholesterol) levels – a collection of signs sometime called "metabolic syndrome," – than women in happy marriages. Metabolic syndrome is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, including heart disease and stroke. The researchers found that for women, a bad marriage is roughly the equivalent of living a sedentary lifestyle in terms of raising the risk of metabolic syndrome. Both women and men in tense marriages tended to feel more depressed, though not necessarily to the point of clinical depression.

The researchers believe that depression symptoms caused by the stress of a strained marriage may lead to hormonal changes that create the metabolic syndrome. This may also explain the difference seen between wives and husbands in the study, since men and women have different hormonal profiles. The researchers also note that previous research has found that women are more sensitive to relationship problems than men, and this study suggests that it may be affecting their health.

The study authors point out that while relationship stress may play a role in heart health, lifestyle choices such as diet, activity level, and smoking are an even bigger part. The researchers suggest that dealing with those risk factors should take precedent over relationship changes.

So if a woman is in an unhappy marriage, will leaving her husband improve her health? Not necessarily, say the researchers. Going through a divorce is known to be associated with heart disease, so that might not solve the problem. The scientists are currently studying whether improving the state of a marriage may improve women’s health.

Want to learn more about the risk factors for heart diseases? Read "What are the Risk Factors for Heart Disease?" in the Healia Health Guide to Heart Disease. Find out more about metabolic syndrome in the Healia Health Community on Metabolic Syndrome.

_{Photo: Ed Yourdon, Flickr, Creative Commons}

The National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention combined efforts to compile cancer incidence and mortality statistics for 1999-2004. These statistics show information on cancer incidence and mortality based on race gender, and geographic categories. This continues our series of cancer incidence and demographics, and lists the most common types of cancer in women. The numbers listed in parentheses below are new cases per 100,000 women.

The top 10 most common types of cancer diagnosed in U.S. women are:

1. Breast Cancer (117.7)
2. Lung (and Bronchus) Cancer (54.2)
3. Colon and Rectal Cancer (42.7)
4. Corpus and Uterus, NOS (23.1)
5. Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (16.1)
6. Skin Melanomas (14.0)
7. Thyroid Cancer (13.8)
8. Ovarian Cancer (12.5)
9. Kidney and Renal Pelvis Cancer (10.0)
10. Pancreatic Cancer (9.7)

Use the to find out more information about the above diseases. Join Healia Health Communities or read our cancer information summaries from the NCI for more information about cancer incidence, treatment, and prevention.

Related blog post: Top 10 Most Common Types of Cancer Diagnosed in U.S. Men

_{Source: U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group. United States Cancer Statistics: 1999–2004 Incidence and Mortality Web-based Report. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Cancer Institute; 2007. Available at: www.cdc.gov/uscs}

_{Photo: Davvyk, Flickr, Creative Commons}