Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Male Breast Reduction Richard D. Fisher, MD offers a full range of cosmeticsurgical procedures in his accredited office-based surgery conveniently locatedin the northwest valley of Phoenix, Arizona. All our surgeries fromliposuction, tummy tucks, and breast augmentation to facial rejuvenation witheyelid, forehead and facelifts, are performed under local anesthesia withconscious sedation comfortably and safely.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Lower Your Breast Cancer Risk
A tremendous amount of promising research is under way to determine the cause of breast cancer and to establish effective ways to prevent it. Still, doctors can't always explain why one woman develops breast cancer and another doesn't.
Everyone seems to know someone with breast cancer, and we wonder whether we, too, will be affected during our lifetime. All of us want to do everything we can to reduce the risk of ever getting the disease. Right now, though, we just don't know enough about what causes breast cancer and we haven't yet figured out how to keep it from happening—so we can't say that we can “prevent” it.
However, researchers are working to learn how our “external” and “internal” environments may work separately and together to affect our health and possibly the risk of developing breast cancer. “Internal environment” means the things inside our bodies that influence our health, such as genetics (the genes you got from your mother and father), hormones, illnesses, and feelings and thoughts. “External environment” refers to the things outside of our bodies that influence our health, such as air, water, food, danger, music, noise, people, and stress. Also, the external environment enters our internal environment every day—think of the food you eat, water you drink, air you breathe (including whether you smoke or not), and medicines you take. More subtlely, there's the way you “breathe in” or absorb your environment, such as your home or workplace, and the way you take in energy from the people you spend time with.
Some of these factors, such as your genetic makeup and the medicines that you take, have a very direct effect on your breast health. The impact of other, indirect factors, such as air quality, exercise, meditation, and spending time with friends, is less well understood.
Everyone seems to know someone with breast cancer, and we wonder whether we, too, will be affected during our lifetime. All of us want to do everything we can to reduce the risk of ever getting the disease. Right now, though, we just don't know enough about what causes breast cancer and we haven't yet figured out how to keep it from happening—so we can't say that we can “prevent” it.
However, researchers are working to learn how our “external” and “internal” environments may work separately and together to affect our health and possibly the risk of developing breast cancer. “Internal environment” means the things inside our bodies that influence our health, such as genetics (the genes you got from your mother and father), hormones, illnesses, and feelings and thoughts. “External environment” refers to the things outside of our bodies that influence our health, such as air, water, food, danger, music, noise, people, and stress. Also, the external environment enters our internal environment every day—think of the food you eat, water you drink, air you breathe (including whether you smoke or not), and medicines you take. More subtlely, there's the way you “breathe in” or absorb your environment, such as your home or workplace, and the way you take in energy from the people you spend time with.
Some of these factors, such as your genetic makeup and the medicines that you take, have a very direct effect on your breast health. The impact of other, indirect factors, such as air quality, exercise, meditation, and spending time with friends, is less well understood.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Nutritional Tips During Pregnancy
Being pregnant may bring a lot of changes to your daily life. One of the most common and major changes are dietary habit changes. Even if you had a healthy diet prior to becoming pregnant, you may begin to look at what you eat and how you eat different now that you're expecting. Here are some tips to ensuring your diet is what it needs to be during pregnancy.
* Remember the food pyramid? It's a great place to start, eat more foods from the bottom (grains), then add vegetables and protein, fruits, dairy and finally sparingly use fatty foods. Many places have free handouts. It's a great tool to have for reference on the refrigerator.
* Variety in your diet is very important. It helps ensure that you're gathering the daily doses of recommended vitamins and minerals every day from the foods you eat. It also helps prevent boredom with your diet which can lead to straying.
* Bring on the water! Staying hydrated has many benefits for the healthy pregnancy, including avoidance of early labor, healthier skin (meaning more elastic), and general decrease in pregnancy symptoms that are annoying (constipation, swelling, etc.). Juice has a time and a place but the majority of your fluids should be water. Other "drinks" like soda, coffee, etc. should not be included in your daily count of 6-8 eight ounce glasses a day.
* Eat foods that remember where they came from! The closer to the source of the original food the better. For examples: green beans that are fresh contain more of the good stuff than those in a can; bananas are better than fried banana chips or a banana split!
* Protein is the building block of every cell in your baby's body. Some studies have indicated that adequate protein intake (defined as 75 grams a day or more) can protect you against problems with ecclampsia, pregnancy induced hypertension and other disorders. It also ensures a great start for your baby.
* Eat smaller frequent meals if you are plagued with nausea and/or vomiting problems or heartburn or reduced stomach space later in pregnancy. This grazing, as I call it, can also help level out blood sugar levels making you feel a bit better during the day. Some women even find grabbing a handful of crackers or nuts on one of your midnight bathroom breaks to help with dizziness upon waking or nausea.
* Keep a food log if you're having problems with your diet. It's a lot easier than trying to remember what you ate and can give you a good idea of the variety you're taking in.
* Remember that pregnancy weight gain is a necessary part of pregnancy. Do not diet or restrict foods without discussing this with your practitioner first. Eating well during pregnancy will ensure that the pounds gained go towards the benefit of the pregnancy and are more easily shed when pregnancy and lactation are done.
* Prenatal vitamins are not meant to replace the foods you eat. Rather they are there to help ensure that you're intake is adequate. You can take too many vitamins and certain vitamins (like Vitamin A) can cause birth defects in large quantities. Be sure to show any vitamin supplement to your practitioner prior to taking it in pregnancy.
* Junk food. It's not very practical to believe that you won't touch and junk food during pregnancy. A more realistic approach is to watch portion sizes and to avoid going overboard. It's easy to think of being pregnant as the time to put on as much weight as you want, but that does go within reason. However, having desserts or splurging a few times a week is not going to make or break the health of most pregnancies. Develop a healthy attitude towards the sweets and fatty foods in your life and the habit will take you a long way even after baby is born!
* Special needs you may have might alter what you need as far as nutritional requirements go. This might be anemia (low iron), multiple pregnancy, teen pregnancy, diabetes, etc. Ask your practitioner if you have special needs for your dietary habits. Ask to see a nutritionist to help you with questions you may have.
* Remember the food pyramid? It's a great place to start, eat more foods from the bottom (grains), then add vegetables and protein, fruits, dairy and finally sparingly use fatty foods. Many places have free handouts. It's a great tool to have for reference on the refrigerator.
* Variety in your diet is very important. It helps ensure that you're gathering the daily doses of recommended vitamins and minerals every day from the foods you eat. It also helps prevent boredom with your diet which can lead to straying.
* Bring on the water! Staying hydrated has many benefits for the healthy pregnancy, including avoidance of early labor, healthier skin (meaning more elastic), and general decrease in pregnancy symptoms that are annoying (constipation, swelling, etc.). Juice has a time and a place but the majority of your fluids should be water. Other "drinks" like soda, coffee, etc. should not be included in your daily count of 6-8 eight ounce glasses a day.
* Eat foods that remember where they came from! The closer to the source of the original food the better. For examples: green beans that are fresh contain more of the good stuff than those in a can; bananas are better than fried banana chips or a banana split!
* Protein is the building block of every cell in your baby's body. Some studies have indicated that adequate protein intake (defined as 75 grams a day or more) can protect you against problems with ecclampsia, pregnancy induced hypertension and other disorders. It also ensures a great start for your baby.
* Eat smaller frequent meals if you are plagued with nausea and/or vomiting problems or heartburn or reduced stomach space later in pregnancy. This grazing, as I call it, can also help level out blood sugar levels making you feel a bit better during the day. Some women even find grabbing a handful of crackers or nuts on one of your midnight bathroom breaks to help with dizziness upon waking or nausea.
* Keep a food log if you're having problems with your diet. It's a lot easier than trying to remember what you ate and can give you a good idea of the variety you're taking in.
* Remember that pregnancy weight gain is a necessary part of pregnancy. Do not diet or restrict foods without discussing this with your practitioner first. Eating well during pregnancy will ensure that the pounds gained go towards the benefit of the pregnancy and are more easily shed when pregnancy and lactation are done.
* Prenatal vitamins are not meant to replace the foods you eat. Rather they are there to help ensure that you're intake is adequate. You can take too many vitamins and certain vitamins (like Vitamin A) can cause birth defects in large quantities. Be sure to show any vitamin supplement to your practitioner prior to taking it in pregnancy.
* Junk food. It's not very practical to believe that you won't touch and junk food during pregnancy. A more realistic approach is to watch portion sizes and to avoid going overboard. It's easy to think of being pregnant as the time to put on as much weight as you want, but that does go within reason. However, having desserts or splurging a few times a week is not going to make or break the health of most pregnancies. Develop a healthy attitude towards the sweets and fatty foods in your life and the habit will take you a long way even after baby is born!
* Special needs you may have might alter what you need as far as nutritional requirements go. This might be anemia (low iron), multiple pregnancy, teen pregnancy, diabetes, etc. Ask your practitioner if you have special needs for your dietary habits. Ask to see a nutritionist to help you with questions you may have.
The International Menopause Society Calls Upon Health Authorities For Re-Evaluation Of Official Guidelines
As opinion leaders in the field of menopause medicine from various areas in the world, we wish to emphasize the following points concerning post menopausal hormone therapy:
1. Hormone therapy (HT) remains the most effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms and estrogen-deficient urogenital symptoms.
2. The initial interpretation of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial failed to recognize the immense importance of age and years since menopause on outcomes of HT. The potential impact of specific hormonal regimens on safety of HT should be considered as well.
3. The results of the WHI trial were wrongly extrapolated to the whole post menopausal population, which led to a major change in recommendations and guidelines on HT.
4. Based on current knowledge, the balance between the benefits and risks of HT is clearly in favor of use in the early post menopausal years for symptomatic, healthy women.
5. All previous studies, including the WHI trial, have demonstrated significant positive effect on bone density and reduction in fracture risk among hormone users.
6. Estrogen has favorable metabolic and cardioprotective effects in healthy, young post menopausal women. The results for the age group 50-59 years in the WHI estrogen-alone arm support this claim. Estrogen slows the pace of development of atherosclerosis if started in the early post menopausal period.
7. HT may be associated with a small increase in risk for breast cancer, if taken long term. Combined estrogen-progestogen therapy probably carries a higher risk than that recorded for estrogen alone. Prevalence of stroke and thromboembolism strongly correlates with age; therefore, the impact of the HT-related increased risk in this respect becomes more important in the late menopause. Low-dose estrogen or the transdermal route of administration may lead to a more favorable risk profile.
8. Progestins, combined with estrogen, may decrease the magnitude of estrogen-related cardiac benefits, and increase the risk for breast cancer. There are insufficient data to evaluate the possible differences in the incidence of breast cancer using different types and routes of progestin administration.
Based on the above, we call upon the health authorities to review their policies and revise them in view of the new age-related data on HT. Also, the different outcomes of estrogen-alone and estrogen plus progestin therapy should be considered. Overall, the safety profile of HT until age 60 is favorable, and should not preclude women from using HT when appropriate. Issues of quality of life, including mental, emotional, cognitive and sexual function, should have a higher priority while discussing regulatory policies and official guidelines on post menopausal HT use.
1. Hormone therapy (HT) remains the most effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms and estrogen-deficient urogenital symptoms.
2. The initial interpretation of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial failed to recognize the immense importance of age and years since menopause on outcomes of HT. The potential impact of specific hormonal regimens on safety of HT should be considered as well.
3. The results of the WHI trial were wrongly extrapolated to the whole post menopausal population, which led to a major change in recommendations and guidelines on HT.
4. Based on current knowledge, the balance between the benefits and risks of HT is clearly in favor of use in the early post menopausal years for symptomatic, healthy women.
5. All previous studies, including the WHI trial, have demonstrated significant positive effect on bone density and reduction in fracture risk among hormone users.
6. Estrogen has favorable metabolic and cardioprotective effects in healthy, young post menopausal women. The results for the age group 50-59 years in the WHI estrogen-alone arm support this claim. Estrogen slows the pace of development of atherosclerosis if started in the early post menopausal period.
7. HT may be associated with a small increase in risk for breast cancer, if taken long term. Combined estrogen-progestogen therapy probably carries a higher risk than that recorded for estrogen alone. Prevalence of stroke and thromboembolism strongly correlates with age; therefore, the impact of the HT-related increased risk in this respect becomes more important in the late menopause. Low-dose estrogen or the transdermal route of administration may lead to a more favorable risk profile.
8. Progestins, combined with estrogen, may decrease the magnitude of estrogen-related cardiac benefits, and increase the risk for breast cancer. There are insufficient data to evaluate the possible differences in the incidence of breast cancer using different types and routes of progestin administration.
Based on the above, we call upon the health authorities to review their policies and revise them in view of the new age-related data on HT. Also, the different outcomes of estrogen-alone and estrogen plus progestin therapy should be considered. Overall, the safety profile of HT until age 60 is favorable, and should not preclude women from using HT when appropriate. Issues of quality of life, including mental, emotional, cognitive and sexual function, should have a higher priority while discussing regulatory policies and official guidelines on post menopausal HT use.
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