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Natural family planning is gaining support with some women because of health concerns about hormonal birth control. (FOTOLIA) "Women start to realize if I’m eating organic and I’m drinking out of glass, and I’m making all these efforts in every other aspect of my life, why would I manage my fertility with a carcinogen?" — Karen Murphy Corr, Serena BC Natural family planning is gaining popularity with those who have no religious reasons for abstaining from hormonal birth control. “I would say that there is a shift of people using NFP for reasons other than faith,” said Kristen Gilbert,...

NEW DELHI: Women who take oral contraceptives regularly are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer compared to others, shows a study by AIIMS doctors. Breast cancer risk was found to be 9.5 times more in women with a history of consuming such pills. Early menstruation cycle, late marriage and lower duration of breastfeeding were the other major factors responsible for the disease among Indians, according to the study published in the latest issue of the Indian Journal of Cancer. The study was conducted on 640 women, of which 320 were breast cancer patients. "We found long-term use of...

Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider reinstating a Wisconsin law that banned hormone treatments or sex-change surgeries for transgender prison inmates. The justices Monday rejected the state's appeal of a ruling that the 2006 Wisconsin law, by withholding treatments that prison doctors deem medically necessary, violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Three Wisconsin inmates who are male-to-female transsexuals filed suit after prison doctors, who had diagnosed them as having gender identity disorder, stopped providing hormone treatments because of the law. "Refusing to provide effective treatment for a serious medical condition serves no...

A mother is suing the obstetrician who she claims misdiagnosed her pregnancy as ectopic and injected her foetus with an abortant, resulting in birth defects. Thirty-five-year-old Rachel Schoger of Caldwell, Idaho, says she was four weeks five days pregnant with her daughter, Seraphine, when her doctor injected her foetus with chemotherapy drug methotrexate in 2006. Two weeks later, the baby was found inside the uterus. And against all odds, Seraphine made it through term. But the little girl will never lead a normal life, her mother says, after she was born without reproductive organs or a rectum as a result...

( Summary) Magnesium balances calcium and its functions within the human body. It is believed that the adult human body contains approximately 1200 grams of calcium, with approximately 99% of it in the skeleton, and approximately 1% (about 12 grams) in extracellular fluids, intracellular structures, and cell membranes. This approximately 1% plays an essential role, in conjunction with magnesium, in the functions of nerve conduction, muscle contraction, blood clotting, and membrane permeability. It is believed that serum calcium concentration is maintained by several hormones, including estrogen and testosterone. It is known that dietary protein enhances calcium absorption, and dietary phosphorus...

BEIJING: China's health ministry said on Tuesday it had ordered food safety authorities in central Hubei province to investigate claims that milk powder has caused infant girls to grow breasts. Officials had already begun tests on the baby formula after parents and doctors expressed fears that hormones in the milk powder made by NASDAQ-listed Synutra had caused babies to develop breasts prematurely. "The Ministry of Health had attached great importance to this issue," spokesman Deng Haihua told a news conference, according to a transcript. Local food safety authorities had earlier refused a parent's request to investigate the formula made by...

(IsraelNN.com) A researcher at the University of Haifa has discovered that the hormone oxytocin, also known as the "love hormone," can trigger negative emotions such as jealousy as well. Oxytocin is released naturally in the body during childbirth, lactation and when engaging in intimate relations. Participants in a previous experiment who inhaled a synthetic form of the hormone displayed higher levels of altruistic feelings. However, it was also discovered in earlier studies on rodents that the hormone may be linked to higher levels of aggression as well.

Research at the universities of Liverpool and Oxford into the finger length of primate species has revealed that cooperative behavior is linked to exposure to hormone levels in the womb. The hormones, called androgens, are important in the development of masculine characteristics such as aggression and strength. It is also thought that prenatal androgens affect finger length during development in the womb. High levels of androgens, such as testosterone, increase the length of the fourth finger in comparison to the second finger. Scientists used finger ratios as an indicator of the levels of exposure to the hormone and compared this...

The American Medical Association is taking on a segment of the $50 billion "anti-aging" industry that promotes the use of hormones as a treatment for consumers to slow or reverse the aging process. In a report presented Sunday in Chicago to a committee of the AMA's 543-member policymaking House of Delegates, the AMA Council on Science and Public Health calls into question claims made by for-profit Web sites, anti-aging clinics and other businesses promoting hormones as anti-aging treatments. "Despite the widespread promotion of hormones as anti-aging agents by for-profit Web sites, anti-aging clinics and compounding pharmacies, the scientific evidence to...

ORLANDO, Fla. – There's more troubling news about hormone therapy for menopause symptoms: Lung cancer seems more likely to prove fatal in women who are taking estrogen-progestin pills, a study suggests. Hormone users who developed lung cancer were 60 percent more likely to die from the disease as women who weren't taking hormones, according to results reported Saturday. The new findings mean that smokers should stop taking hormones, and those who have not yet started hormones should give it careful thought, said Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He led the analysis and presented results at...

My wife is about to start Hormone replacement therapy and I have a lot of questions... Any opinions/experiences? Does it help? Or a scam? How much does it cost in the long run? Harmful?

As Americans hunger for healthier food, new efforts to define the term turn messy Federal meat regulators this month are soliciting public comments on a label they believe will better define "natural" meat. The label, dubbed "naturally raised," would attest that a cut of meat came from an animal free of antibiotics and growth hormones. Here's a comment from Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist at Consumers Union: "It's not quite as bad" as regulators' definition of "natural" itself. Ouch. Welcome to the complicated battleground over a seemingly simple word. "Natural" is an increasingly important claim to American consumers searching for...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists intrigued by the fact that multiple sclerosis can slip into remission when women are pregnant said on Tuesday a pregnancy-related hormone may offer great promise for treating the neurological disease. Researchers at the University of Calgary said a study involving mice showed that a hormone called prolactin triggers production of myelin, a fatty substance that insulates nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. In multiple sclerosis, the immune system, which normally protects the body, is believed to attack the myelin that coats nerve cells, causing a worsening loss of sensation and movement that can range...

Scientists have linked exposure to small levels of a chemical found in public drinking water supplies in 26 states to suppressed thyroid function in more than a third of women and girls 12 and older.     The exposure to perchlorate, a study showed, was most acute in women with low levels of iodine in their systems, said Dr. James L. Pirkle, director of sciences in the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention's Environmental Health laboratory and the study's author.     "It's already been known that high levels of exposure to perchlorate [reduce] thyroid function, but this large study of more...

COMBINATION hormone replacement therapy can cause cancer, the UN's agency on the disease has concluded. The International Agency for Research on Cancer said yesterday, based on evidence from recent studies, it has reclassified hormonal menopause therapy from "possibly carcinogenic to humans" to "carcinogenic to humans". The declaration from the World Health Organisation's cancer agency, widely regarded as the international authority on which substances cause cancer, comes after recent research linked HRT to breast cancer. The analysis found oestrogen and progestogen menopause therapy also increases the risk of endometrial cancer when progestogens are taken fewer than 10 days a month. The...

Trust in a bottle? It sounds like a marketer's fantasy, like the fabled fountain of youth or the wild claims of fad diets. Yet that's what Swiss and American scientists demonstrate in new experiments with a nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin. After a few squirts, human subjects were significantly more trusting and willing to invest money with no ironclad promise of a profit. The researchers acknowledged their findings could be abused by con artists or even sleazy politicians who might sway an election, provided they could squirt enough voters on their way to the polls. "Of course, this finding...

May 22, 2005 Fancy a son? Then get a man’s job John Elliott and Holly Watt THE gender of your children may depend on your choice of job, say researchers. While those who opt for caring careers such as nursing or teaching are more likely to have girls, people who go into a profession such as accountancy or engineering stand a far greater chance of having boys. The theory, outlined in a report by the London School of Economics, may help couples predict whether they are fated to have only girls — or boys. The study may also reinforce some...

SHARPSBURG, Md. - Male fish that are growing eggs have been found in the Potomac River near Sharpsburg, a sign that a little-understood type of pollution is spreading downstream from West Virginia, a federal scientist says. The so-called intersex abnormality may be caused by pollutants from sewage plants, feedlots and factories that can interfere with animals' hormone systems, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Nine male smallmouth bass taken from the Potomac near Sharpsburg, about 60 miles upstream from Washington, were found to have developed eggs inside their sex organs, said Vicki S. Blazer, a scientist overseeing the research for the...

Have women have been the unwitting victims of the medical establishment's experiment with hormones? Hyperion Books recently published The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth, by Barbara Seaman. Generally speaking, a new volume on estrogen would hardly merit a mention. After all, such books area dime a dozen. On Amazon.com, for example, there are 448 books listed under "Women's Health, Menopause," and 95 under "Contraceptives, Oral." But a book by Barbara Seaman on the topic is something special. Published in 1969, her first book, The Doctors' Case Against the Pill, caused an anti-estrogen sensation. At that...

<p>Scientists have isolated a hormone that makes us feel full when we eat, and they demonstrated its potential as a new weight-loss drug by injecting volunteers with the substance before a big buffet lunch.</p> <p>The participants injected with the so-called "third helping hormone" ate one-third less than usual and resisted snacking for up to 12 hours, scientists reported.</p>