Hair Loss

Androgenic alopecia is the most common cause for hair loss for both men and women.

There are other causes of hair loss.

Alopecia Areata

The hair falls for unknown reason. It does not result to complete baldness--only a smooth patch about the size of a coin.

Childbirth

My mother used to explain the hair loss during pregnancy and childbirth to the baby getting most of the nutrition supposed to be for the mother.

The loss of hair may last up to six months after delivery.

High Fever and`severe infection


The loss of hair is temporary.

Lack of Protein

Diets that limit protein intake may cause hair loss. Not until, the person gets adequate protein will the problem be solved.

Medications

There are prescription and over-the-counter medications that may cause falling of hair. These medications include those four gouts, hypertension, depression, arhritis and heart.

Cancer treatments

The person may lose 90 per cent of scalp hair. It is going to grow back when the treatment is over.

Self-Confidence

Many women are not aware that they are suffering from lack of self-confidence.

It is a question of the women's regard of themselves. Is it confidence or cockiness?

Are you the kind of woman who is obsessed with your faults and mistakes that you hate yourself for them?

Are you the kind of woman who does not take risk?

Are you the kind of woman who define success as achievement only?

Are you kind of a woman who does not voice her opinion?

Are you the kind of a woman who rationalizes for everything that you do?

Are you the kind of woman who avoids challenges?

Then face the mirror and aks yourself if you have self-confidence. I am sure that the woman in the mirror will not able to answer the question.

Woman in SAudi Arabia accused of being a witch

The case has been decided by the court that Fauza Falih should die by execution.
She was accused of being a witch by the man who blamed her for his impotence.

It is only King Abdullah who can stop the execution.

The life of this illiterate woman depends on the kindness of the King.

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

'Undefined' crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih's conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

Stress Management 4-Speak Up

One of the stressors that can get the person down is the pent-up feeling.

The intention of keeping quiet may be noble , that is to avoid hurting one's feelings but the tension or the damage that it creates to oneself may lead one's self-destruction.

When I an faced with this predicament, I try to look for someone who can do the talking for me; a neutral party. if it still does not work, I will do something to keep distance or possible get away from the people in order to avoid further aggravation.

It is different when a person is the introvert type who can not even talk to the boss to ask for a raise.

If she deserves to get the raise, one should build the confidence by preparing for the planned talk with the boss.

It helps a lot to prepare mentally and physically for this particular moment when the future is uncertain as to the reaction and decision of the top management.

Handling Stress Part 3-Walk

People's sedentary lifestyle due to work and family demands causes the lack of exercise.

This add ups to the toxic substance in the body that contributes as stressors.

When I am faced with a workload which will require longer time to finish, I allow myself to be free for a few minutes. I walk outside.

I forget the task that awaits me. I take note of the people, places and things that I see outside which usually are invisible when I am in a hurry coming to the office.

Then I appreciate the flowers if I see one, the people who smile, the people who walk like they are enjoying life.

When I`go back to my desk, I feel refreshed. My mind is clear and my body is ready to work.

Try it.

Handling Stress Part 2-Control Your environment

There are people who are easily stressed out just the thought of finishing all her to do lists.

Stress can be minimized by analysing what are really doable and what are just reminders what to do in your to do list.

You should remind yourself that your available time may not be enough to do everything.

It will help if you convince yourself that you are no superman to finish everything.

Some people would not take a break because they believe that their momentum will be broken if they do so. Working non-stop however builds up the stress that at the end, the work is not finished since the person has already burned out.

When people get overwhelmed, they can not function very well.

It helps to breathe, pause and relax before continuing to the next activity.

Handling Stress PART 1-People in your neighborhood

The best thing to handle stress is to avoid it even though it can not be totally eliminated.

There are stresses that can be avoided.

Some people can contribute to your stress. There are these people who call you when they're depressed to unburden their woes.

There are also these people who do nothing but ask for favors all the time that when you hear the voice at the other end of line, your stress builds up.

There are people who are fond of argument. From a friendly conversation, they end up
arguing just so they can convince the other person to believe.

If you are dealing with these people everyday, try making excuses not to see or talk to them as much as possible.

Coffee Helps Older Women Ward off Mental Decline

This is a good news for senior women who are afraid to suffer dementia.

Coffee 'protects female memory'
Caffeine may help older women ward off mental decline, research suggests.

French researchers compared women aged 65 and older who drank more than three cups of coffee per day with those who drank one cup or less per day.

Those who drank more caffeine showed less decline in memory tests over a four year period.

The study, published in the journal Neurology, raises the possibility that caffeine may even protect against the development of dementia.


The results held up even after factors such as education, high blood pressure and disease were taken into account.

Caffeine is a known psychostimulant, but this study appears to suggest its effects may be more profound.

However, lead researcher Dr Karen Ritchie of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research warned against jumping to premature conclusions.

She said: "While we have some ideas as to how this works biologically, we need to have a better understanding of how caffeine affects the brain before we can start promoting caffeine intake as a way to reduce cognitive decline.

"But the results are interesting - caffeine use is already widespread and it has fewer side effects than other treatments for cognitive decline, and it requires a relatively small amount for a beneficial effect."

The study, which involved 7,000 women, did not find that caffeine consumers had lower rates of dementia.

Dr Ritchie said: "We really need a longer study to look at whether caffeine prevents dementia; it might be that caffeine could slow the dementia process rather than preventing it."

She said it was not clear why the protective effect did not seem to apply to men.

"Women may be more sensitive to the effects of caffeine. Their bodies may react differently to the stimulant, or they may metabolize caffeine differently."

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said that with no cure for Alzheimer's disease yet available, research into possible protective factors was important, particularly as the disease is expected to become more common.

She said: "This study does not suggest that caffeine actually lowers rates of dementia in women, but since memory seems improved, it may be that it is slowing it down.

"However, research over a much longer period is still needed to establish fully what the affects of caffeine are in both men and women and whether it could reduce a person's risk of dementia or slow down its progress."

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said drinking coffee and tea had both been tipped as possible ways of delaying the onset of dementia.

However, she said: "These types of studies are complex because coffee and tea drinking can be linked to so many other social and life style factors."

Story from BBC NEWS:

Study shows that Coffee protect women against age-related memory decline

A study conducted among 7,000 men and women in France showed that older women can prevent age-related memory decline by drinking more coffee.

This is the excerpt of the news from Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Drinking more than three cups of coffee a day helped protect older women against some age-related memory decline, French researchers said on Monday, giving women more reason to love the world's most popular stimulant.

Men did not enjoy the same benefit, they said.

"The more coffee one drank, the better the effects seemed to be on (women's) memory functioning in particular," said Karen Ritchie at the French National Institute of Medical Research, whose work appears in the journal Neurology.

The researchers followed more than 7,000 men and women in three French cities, checking their health and mental function and asking them about their current and past eating and drinking habits, their friends, and their daily activities.

They used this information to sort out the specific role caffeine played in these women's lives.

They found that women who drank more than three cups of coffee per day, or its caffeine equivalent in tea, retained more of their verbal and -- to a lesser extent -- visual memories over four years.

menstrual+cycle,women,menopause,hormones

Smoking may cause Early menopause

Smoking can cause early menopause or death. Take your pick.


NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who smoke are more likely to begin menopause before the age of 45 years, which puts them at increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease, Norwegian researchers report.

Among a group of 2,123 women 59 to 60 years old, those who currently smoked were 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have undergone early menopause, Dr. Thea F. Mikkelsen of the University of Oslo and her colleagues found. For the heaviest smokers, the risk of early menopause was nearly doubled.

However, women who were smokers, but quit at least 10 years before menopause, were substantially less likely than current smokers to have stopped menstruating before age 45.

There is evidence that smoking later in life makes a woman more likely to have early menopause, while smokers who quit before middle age may not be affected, Mikkelsen and her team note in the online journal BMC Public Health. They investigated the relationship further and determined if exposure to second-hand smoke might also influence the timing of menopause.

The researchers found that nearly 10 percent of the women went through menopause before age 45. About 25 percent were current smokers, 28.7 percent were ex-smokers and 35.2 percent reported current passive exposure to smoke.

As mentioned, the current smokers were 59 percent more likely to have reached menopause before age 45, while early menopause was nearly twice as common among the women who smoked the most.

But women who had quit smoking at least a decade before menopause were 87 percent less likely than their peers who currently smoked to have gone through menopause early.

Compared with married women, widows were also at increased risk of early menopause, as were women who said they were in poor health. More educated women were less likely to go into menopause early, but they were also less likely to be smokers.

High social participation also cut early menopause risk. The researchers found no link between coffee or alcohol consumption or passive exposure to smoke and early menopause risk.

"The earlier a woman stops smoking," Mikkelsen and her team conclude, "the more protection she derives with respect to an early onset of menopause."

SOURCE: BMC Public Health, July 7, 2007.


menstrual+cycle,women,menopause,hormones

WOMEN

This is an e-mail forwared to me by Bayi.

They smile when they want to scream.
They sing when they want to cry.
They cry when they are happy
and laugh when they are nervous.


They fight for what they believe in.
They stand up against injustice.
They don't take "no" for an answer
when they believe there is a better solution.



They go without new shoes
so their children can have them.
They go to the doctor
with a frightened friend.


They love unconditionally.
They cry when their children excel
and cheer when their friends get awards.
They are happy when they hear
about a birth or a new marriage.


Their hearts break when a friend dies.
They have sorrow at the loss of a family member,
yet they are strong when they think
there is no strength left.

They know that a hug
and a kiss
can heal a broken heart.


Women come in all sizes,
in all colors and shapes.
They'll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you
to show how much they care about you.

The heart of a woman is what makes the world spin!
Women do more than just give birth.
They bring joy and hope.
They give compassion and ideals.
They give moral support to their family and friends.


Women have a lot to say and a lot to give.
=====

women,men





.

Men Talk More than Women-Study said

This article from SF Gate debunked the myth that women talk more than men.

Forget Chatty Cathy -- let's talk about Chatty Charlie.

Men, it turns out, talk just as much as women.

Sure, maybe guys talk more about cars and sports and the new iPhone, and women talk about their feelings, but at the end of the day, each sex uses an average 16,000 words a day, say researchers who studied the conversational habits of 396 men and women for six years.

"I was a little surprised there wasn't any gender influence, because this stereotype of women talking more is such a powerful, popular idea," said Richard Slatcher, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Texas and one of the authors of the study. "But we were able to directly test the notion, and it's totally unfounded."

The study, results of which were published today in the journal Science, debunks an age-old assumption that women aren't just the fairer sex, they're the chattier one, too. Tony Bennett sang about it in "Girl Talk" in the 1960s: "The weaker sex, the 'speaker' sex we mortal males behold, but though we joke, we wouldn't trade you for a ton of gold."

The stereotype is so pervasive that even scientists have long assumed that women talk more, and they incorporated that assumption in psychological gender profiles.

When UCSF psychiatrist Louann Brizendine published "The Female Brain" last year, one statistic in particular jumped off the pages and became the main talking point among radio-show hosts and Internet bloggers -- women, Brizendine wrote, use an average of 20,000 words a day; men use only 7,000.

Brizendine ended up taking out that detail after the first printing -- she's on the 13th now -- when she couldn't back it up, but the number has stuck with popular culture. Brizendine said she's happy to see it officially disproved.

"My book is really more about hormones, and that one line has been taken out of context. It's fascinating," she said. "Anytime you talk about sex differences, it's controversial. But the bottom line is, there are more similarities than differences between men and women."

The important question now, she said, is how the stereotype started in the first place.

Psychologists don't know exactly where the myth came from, but Brizendine speculates it probably took hold in the 1950s or so, when men worked the 9-to-5 jobs and women stayed home with the kids. At the end of the day, men would come home to wives who wanted to talk about the children, the house and finances -- basically, what felt like a lot of nagging, said Brizendine.

The stereotype has been perpetuated in modern days by the idea that women tend to be more open to talking about their feelings, which just makes men clam up during emotional discussions, said Matthias Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and one of the authors of the study.

"The woman wanting to talk about a problem suddenly becomes 'women always want to talk, and men never want to talk,' " Mehl said.

Or, to put a slightly different spin on it, "maybe the lack of male desire to listen to women is why the myth has persisted," Brizendine said. It might not just be men who are frustrated, she said.

Because conversations about relationships are often emotionally charged and intense, they take on more importance, as far as presumed word counts go, than they deserve, Mehl said.

"Because they feel so important, people overgeneralize from these conversations" and assume women are the ones doing the talking, Mehl said.

Mehl's study is not the first to analyze how much men and women talk, and previous studies have also suggested that there isn't much difference between the sexes. But earlier studies almost always recorded people in unnatural settings -- sitting in a lab having a conversation, for example, when everyone knew scientists were listening.

The new study used audio clips from university students who agreed to be recorded for several days sometime between 1998 and 2004. The recording equipment amounted to mini-recorders and lapel microphones designed for studies that require listening to natural language use. The devices would turn on automatically for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, and the subjects could not control -- and did not know -- when the equipment was turned on or off.

Researchers then transcribed the snippets of conversation, counted the words used and extrapolated from that number to get an idea of how many words each person used in a day.

There are some potential drawbacks to the study, namely that because it used only university students, it might not apply perfectly to men and women of all age groups and education levels. But Mehl said if there were important biological differences between men and women's verbosity, they would have registered at least somewhat in the study.

As it was, women spoke on average about 546 more words each day than men, but that number was found to be not statistically significant.

Based on the study results, some stereotypes about conversational habits seemed to hold true, Mehl said. Researchers didn't actually count the types of words people used, but he said men tended to talk more about sports and technology and women about their feelings.

Previous studies have noted that women use more emotionally expressive language and describe things in relational terms -- they use more pronouns, for example, said Slatcher. Men talk about more concrete things, he said.

Montira Warran of San Francisco said she's sure Slatcher's study is very scientific, but in her family, the women definitely out-talked the men. But, she added, she comes from a family of mostly women -- and the men didn't stand a chance.

"We had mostly headstrong women in my family who needed to get their point across, and the men would just say, 'OK,' " Warran said. "I think it's that women want to make sure they're heard."

San Francisco resident Doug Wilkins said he's read books and studies on gender conversational patterns, and he's noticed trends in the way men and women talk. Men, he said, are more likely to lecture, and to practice one-upmanship when they talk to other men. Women are more cooperative when they talk, he said.

And it's definitely true, he said, that men talk just as much as women.

"For every guy you know who only goes 'yep,' 'fine,' 'nope,' there's a guy who will walk up to strangers on the street and just start lecturing at them," Wilkins said.

women,men

Menopause could start at age 35

Women believe that menopause start at mid 40's. But it is not so according to this news. It could start as early as 35.

Stressful job 'hastens' menopause
Stressful working conditions may hasten the onset of the menopause, a study from France suggests.

Researchers writing in the American Journal of Epidemiology looked at 1,500 post-menopausal women.

The average menopause age of the nearly 9% who reported "high strain" work was 51 - one year earlier than what was taken as the average age of onset.

But one British fertility expert cast doubt on any relation between stress and earlier menopause.

"High-strain" jobs were categorised as those which demanded at least one of the following: the need to rush, perform several tasks at once, or frequent interruptions when working.

However the impact of these conditions was minimised when the woman in question had a high degree of control over the work she did.

Hormone theory

Some women have difficulty managing their time, the stress of which may upset the hormone balance in their bodies and "affect the ageing of the ovaries", said Dr Bernard Cassou, who led the research.

Smoking, which has long been held to have an impact upon timing of the menopause, was seen to affect onset among those who smoked more than 10 cigarettes each day.

But the chairman of the British Menopause Society said the stress angle of the study went against all the research he was aware of.

"People who want to find links do, but there's a vast body of research which shows there is no evidence of a connection between stress and the menopause," said Professor John Studd.

The menopause generally takes place between the ages of 45 and 55, but for a few women it can start as early as 35 - or as late as 60.

It occurs when levels of the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone fall and the body stops releasing eggs.

menstrual+cycle,women,menopause,hormones

Vagina Monologues Not

And I thought, this vagina making business is only for sex-change or transgender operation. The latest news is about the reconstruction of vaginas for women.

Excerpt of the news:

An Italian doctor has reconstructed vaginas for two women born with a rare congenital deformation, using their own cells to build vaginal tissue in the lab for the first time.

Dr. Cinzia Marchese of Rome’s Policlinico Umberto I hospital, giving details of the operations on Wednesday, told Reuters a 28-year-old woman who underwent the first such operation a year ago now has a healthy vagina.

“She has got married and is living a normal life,” said Marchese, whose study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction.

The second operation was carried out on a 17-year-old girl on Tuesday and the first signs are that the cells taken by biopsy from the area where her vagina should grow and provide mucosal tissue.

Mucosal tissue is found inside the vagina, the mouth and elsewhere in the body and has important attributes distinct from ordinary skin.

The two women had a condition called Mayer-Von Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, or MRKHS for short, which affects an estimated one in 4,000 to 5,000 female infants.

Read the entire news here.

menstrual+cycle,women,natural vagina,women's health

Botox and Botox Alternatives

Botox is very popular not only to movie stars and celebrities but also to working women who like to look good. Aside from there is no need for surgical operation to remove wrinkles, it is affordable to those who feel the necessity of the injections without having to dip so much from their pockets.


This Forbes article discusses the popularity of Botox as wrinkle remover.


As of 2006, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, more than 4.1 million Botox procedures were performed last year,

According to Navin Geria, vice president of research and development for the Spa Dermaceutical Products Group, a New Jersey-based consumer product development company that specializes in custom development of anti-aging skincare and products for dermatologists and spa chains, a new range of anti-aging technology called cosmeceuticals (cosmetics that companies say possess drug-like affects) will go a step further. Over a period of time, he says, they will visibly reduce wrinkles and prevent future wear and tear.

The DNA nanotechnology of Juneva of Switzerland produced a product called DNA Skin Optimizer Fluid, which promises to help aging skin cells to renew and duplicate themselves by targeting the nuclei.

The stem-cell technology produced Amatokin, which retails for $173 for 1 ounce. It is said to target stem cells, and in doing so claims to renew old skin, reduce wrinkles and even out tone.

menstrual+cycle,women,botox,women's health