Online health and medical information » Women’s Health

ADULT SEXUALITY: THE MENOPAUSE

admin — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:56:36 +0000

With aging, all women reach an end to their fertility. First, there is a gradual decline in female reproductive capacity from age thirty on, reflecting both a drop in fertility and a higher rate of miscarriages. In addition, abnormalities of the menstrual cycle become more frequent over thirty-five as the aging ovaries respond less efficiently to LH and FSH from the pituitary gland. After age forty, the frequency of ovulation generally begins to decrease, and around age forty-eight to fifty-two, menstrual flow stops entirely in a process called the menopause.* However, since deciding when the menopause has occurred can only be done retrospectively — by convention, after one year without further menstrual flow — women who are sexually active at this stage of their lives should continue to practice birth control until it is certain they cannot become pregnant.

The timing of the menopause and the symptoms that accompany it vary greatly from one woman to another. Although the ovaries stop producing all but a minute amount of estrogen, and ovarian progesterone production ceases entirely, small amounts of these hormones are still present because of continued activity of the adrenal glands. LH and FSH levels typically become elevated after menopause.

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PMS: BRAIN CHEMICAL DISORDER – ENDORPHINS

admin — Mon, 09 May 2011 11:41:39 +0000

In the 1970s it was discovered that the body had its own natural painkillers which were similar in structure to morphine – a drug used to relieve severe pain in cancer patients. These natural painkillers were called ‘endogenous morphines’, or endorphins for short.

Since their discovery it has been found that endorphins also:

• help control the body’s response to stress

• regulate contractions of the intestine

• lift our mood

• regulate the release of hormones from the pituitary gland

In the mid-1980s it was found that women with PMS have low levels of beta-endorphins in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. This led to the suggestion that PMS could be a kind of opiate withdrawal syndrome.

According to this concept, women are dependent on their own endorphins and at times of the menstrual cycle, when endorphin levels are low, they experience irritability and depression – a form of ‘cold turkey’.

Oestrogen is known to increase levels of beta-endorphins so this may be one reason why women feel all right before ovulation when oestrogen levels are high and experience PMS afterwards when oestrogen is on the decline.

There is also some evidence that endorphin levels are affected by prostaglandins. So if there is a shortage of the necessary prostaglandins there may in turn be a shortage of endorphins.

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INVOLUNTARY STERILIZATION: EUGENIC STERILIZATION LAWS

admin — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:35:00 +0000

Most involuntary sterilizations in the United States have occurred under eugenic sterilization laws. The early advocates of eugenics (from the Greek, meaning “well-born”) were so zealous that there were hundreds of eugenic sterilizations even before there was any legislative authority for the procedure. During the 1880s and 1890s, a strong movement built up in favor of eliminating the “unfit” by means of discouraging the reproduction of inferior stock. A combination of social Darwinism and the belief that idiocy and mental illness were strictly hereditary resulted in the involuntary sterilization of hundreds of allegedly feebleminded persons in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, the first state to pass a Eugenic Sterilization Law (1907).
Although eugenic sterilization met with the Indiana State Legislature’s approval, it did not secure the state supreme court’s stamp of approval. In 1921, Indiana’s Eugenic Sterilization Law was declared unconstitutional, a precedent that caused several similar state laws to topple.However, this domino effect was slowed in 1927 when Buck v. Bell reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1924, Virginia had passed a law that included among its provisions the following:
… that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives … that the sterilization may be effected … without serious pain or substantial danger of life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many defective persons who if now discharged would be a menace but if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility:
Invoking the provisions of this law, Virginia wished to sterilize an 18-year-old, supposedly feebleminded welfare recipient named Carrie Buck on the grounds that every Virginian’s best interests, including those of Carrie Buck herself, would be served by her sterilization. Though Carrie Buck and her attorneys did not believe her sterilization was in her best interests, they were not able to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that Virginia’s involuntary sterilization statute was unconstitutional. Speaking for the Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes held that it was within the police power of the state to force certain persons to be sterilized. Referring to the arguable fact that, like Carrie, Carrie’s mother and daughter were also “feebleminded,” Holmes proclaimed that “three generations of imbeciles are enough” and that society had the right to protect itself against “defective” progeny.
Since 1927, the scientific community has become increasingly dubious of the empirical claim on which the Buck decision was based—namely, that mental illness, mental retardation, and criminality are hereditary conditions. Contemporary geneticists point out that even if Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter had been as feebleminded as the Court said they were—a questionable finding given that a health professional had classified Buck’s 1-month-old daughter as an “imbecile” merely by looking at her—feeblemindedness is not hereditary in any straightforward sense. Although specific types of retardation may have a genetic component, how that component is expressed depends on both genes and environment, with the environment sometimes playing a more influential role than the genes themselves. In the case of Carrie Buck, a disadvantaged member of society, there is reason to believe that better nourishment and a better education could have strengthened her “feeble” mind as well as her mother’s and daughter’s.
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ENDOMETRIOSIS AND PREGNANCY

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:09:53 +0000

Does pregnancy cure endometriosis?

Many women are told by their doctors that the cure for endometriosis is pregnancy. Unfortunately, this is a myth which continues to be perpetuated in medical as well as popular literature.

The mistaken belief that pregnancy cures endometriosis appears to have arisen from the impressions and speculations of some of the early gynaecologists who had a special interest in endometriosis. In general, even those gynaecologists did not claim that pregnancy was a permanent cure. Rather, they said that their impression was that pregnancy usually led to an improvement in the condition and generally delayed its recurrence.

Such early speculations and subsequent assertions have never been proven in any scientific studies.

The reality is that pregnancy seldom ‘cures’ endometriosis and the effect of pregnancy on endometriosis varies widely.

Effect of pregnancy on endometriosis

In the majority of women with endometriosis, pregnancy leads to an improvement in the condition or a temporary disappearance of the disease, particularly during the latter months of the pregnancy.

It is generally believed that the beneficial effects of pregnancy on endometriosis are due to the high levels of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone that are present in the body during pregnancy. It is thought that these hormones suppress the growth and development of the endometrial implants causing them to gradually degenerate and waste away. The effects may also be due to the lack of regular menstruation during pregnancy.

During the first few months of pregnancy some women experience a worsening of their symptoms and an enlargement of their implants and cysts. In these cases it is thought that the high levels of oestrogen and progesterone cause an initial stimulation of the growth of the endometrial implants during the early months of pregnancy.

For most women the beneficial effects are only temporary.

The majority of women – at least 50% or 60% – will experience a recurrence of their disease and its symptoms within five years.

Some women are able to lengthen the time of their remission by breastfeeding as endometriosis will usually stay in remission if ovulation is suppressed by regular breastfeeding.

Unfortunately, if you have had trouble conceiving, having a successful pregnancy does not necessarily mean that you will be able to conceive again. Many women with fertility problems due to endometriosis are not able to become pregnant a second time regardless of whether their endometriosis recurs or not. To-date, the medical profession has no theories as to why this is so.

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