Menstrual cramps and pain are just a couple of the things a woman may experience while on her period. Unfortunately many women aren’t aware of anything that could help to reduce the discomfort, and so they indulge in harmful pain medications such as Advil, Tylenol, or Aleve. But recent research shows that a single large dose of vitamin D may be enough to dampen the pain and discomfort brought on by a woman’s period.

Vitamin D an Effective Solution for Menstrual Cramps and Pain

Lead author Antonino Lasco, MD, of the University of Messina, and his team conducted a study with 40 women aged 18 to 40. At the beginning of the study, some of the women were randomly assigned a mega-dose of vitamin D at 300,000 IUs while other participants took an inactive liquid placebo. During the two month study period, the women tracked their menstrual pain and made it known whether they also took prescription or nonprescription pain medication.

Women taking the vitamin D not only reported experiencing less pain, none of them resorted to pain medication. 40 percent of the women who took the placebo admitted to taking a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug at least once.

“We observed a significant reduction of pain in the vitamin D group compared with the placebo group over the two-month duration of our study,” writes Lasco. The study is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

An over-production of hormone-like substances called prostaglandins can result in painful periods. Vitamin D is known to reduce their production, which in turn lessens the severity of menstrual cramps or pain. Vitamin D is also known to decrease the production of inflammation-causing molecules known as cytokines, leading to further aid in pain.

Since pain medication comes with unwanted adverse side-effects, supplementing with vitamin D serves as a much better solution for women with menstrual cramps. While the study exemplified how beneficial vitamin D can be at a single dose, daily intake of the vitamin may also be beneficial. To know for sure of how much vitamin D ingestion is optimal, a blood test can be taken called 25-hydroxyvitamin D. An optimal range of 50-70ng/ml would more than likely have dampened the pain and cramps even more.

Recently conducted research shows that not every kind of alcoholic beverage leads to an increased risk for breast cancer, which is what most people believe. While it is still being documented that regular alcohol consumption raises breast cancer risk, one type of alcohol, red wine, has actually been shown to have the opposite effect when consumed in moderation.

Red Wine Shown to Reduce Breast Cancer Risk

The study, published in the Journal of Women’s Health, was conducted by researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The authors of the study concluded that chemicals found in the skin and seeds of red grapes reduce estrogen levels while also raising testosterone levels in premenopausal women, and therefore reduce their breast cancer risk. Of course you don’t have to consume red wine to experience the breast cancer-reducing benefits, but rather the red grapes which possess the beneficial compounds.

It is important to note that the reduced risk was only noticed in premenopausal females. The study involved 36 premenopausal women which were divided into 2 groups. For one month, each group drank 8 ounces of wine each evening, but one group drank red wine (Cabernet Sauvignon) while the other drank a white wine (Chardonnay). After 1 month, the two groups switched wines being consumed and blood was collected from the participants 2 times each month to check hormone levels.

What the study found is quite contradicting, seeing as all types of alcohol are thought to raise breast cancer risk in women. Since alcohol usually raises estrogen levels, the growth of cancer cells is normally encouraged through alcohol consumption. But this research sheds light on some new possibilities for females – at least for premenopausal women.

Although this new information is positive for those regularly consuming red wine, there needs to be more research to support what these authors found so that people can confidently say it works. Luckily consuming wine is certainly not the only method to reducing breast cancer risk. There are over 130 studies confirming the link between bisphenol A and breast cancer, so avoiding or ridding your body of this endocrine-disrupting chemical is key.

In addition to avoiding BPA, fructose consumption should be reduced significantly. High-fructose corn syrup is the primary source of calories in the United States. In addition to containing carcinogenic mercury, it also happens to feed cancers and promote the spread and development of cancer cells like no other food ingredient. A study published in the Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets found that fructose leads to cancer through invoking health conditions such as:

• DNA damage
• Inflammation
• Altered cellular metabolism
• Increased production of free radicals

One other method to reducing your breast cancer risk is to raise your levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D plays an essential role in reducing your risk of not only breast cancer, but also all other cancer types. Influencing virtually every cell in your body, vitamin D is an essential nutrient that can be freely produced as a result of sunlight. If you are unable to attain vitamin D from sunlight, supplementing with vitamin D3 is also very effective. When researchers from the State University of New York at Albany injected a potent form of vitamin D into human breast cancer cells, half of them died within days.

The Food and Drug Administration, a very pro-vaccine government organization, has stopped Merck’s attempts to increase the approved age range for death-linked HPV vaccine Gardasil to 45. It appears that even the FDA is concerned about the effects of the Gardasil immunization, which has been tied to over 49 deaths along with countless negative reactions that have led to hospitalizations and crippled health.

The FDA stated that clinical data presented by Merck, the creator of the vaccine, failed to show that Gardasil effectively prevented infections in women 27 to 45 years old. This is particularly shocking due to the fact that pharmaceutical companies oftentimes illegally alter the numeric turnouts of studies regarding the effectiveness and safety of their drugs and immunizations. What this means is that in the event Merck smeared the results, they were still unconvincing enough to pass by the FDA, an agency that allows for genetically modified foods to be consumed by United States despite the warnings of health experts and major studies worldwide.

The rejection will also lead to changes on the Gardasil label. The label will now state that the product ”has not been demonstrated to prevent HPV-related cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3 or worse in women older than 26 years of age,” says Merck.

Gardasil is dangerous and ineffective at all ages

Gardasil, of course, is highly ineffective and unsafe at any age. One recently compelling piece of evidence against the Gardasil vaccine is the finding of rDNA inside the vaccine vials. SANE Vax, a vaccine research organization, tested vials of Gardasil to get a better understanding as to why the vaccine has resulted in so many deaths and adverse health reactions. What they found was that more than a dozen of the Gardasil vaccine vials studied were contaminated with the rDNA of the human Papillomavirus  Virus (HPV).

This rDNA is not naturally occurring, and has serious implications. It is the result of genetically modified HPV virus, meaning a heavily altered form of HPV is actually added to the vaccine during its manufacturing process.

In addition, the vials were not only found within the United States. Vials were also collected from Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Poland and France.

Dr. Lee, the pathologist who ran the tests, explained:

Natural HPV DNA does not remain in the bloodstream for very long. However, the HPV DNA in Gardasil is not ‘natural’ DNA. It is a recombinant HPV DNA (rDNA) — genetically engineered — to be inserted into yeast cells for VLP (virus-like-particle) protein production. rDNA is known to behave differently from natural DNA. It may enter a human cell, especially in an inflammatory lesion caused by the effects of the aluminum adjuvant, via poorly understood mechanisms. Once a segment of recombinant DNA is inserted into a human cell, the consequences are hard to predict.

Children are being injected with genetically modified forms of the very virus that Gardasil seeks to “treat” with unknown consequence. With possible mutation of affected cells, the HPV rDNA may cause irrevocable damage to young bodies worldwide, in addition to the deaths and other side effects it has already been linked to. Stay away from this vaccine.

Researchers have found that regardless of genetic predisposition, the hardship of divorce and the devastating health effects of smoking can lead to hair loss in women. In addition to smoking and divorce, excessive drinking also ups the risk. The study, conducted by the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, examined 84 female identical twins. The subjects completed lifestyle questionnaires, had their hormone blood levels tested, and an extensive photo analysis of their hair.

The reason twins were chosen is due to the fact that twins carry the same genetic coding, removing genetic differences from the equation. What the team found was quite revealing as to the link between an unhealthy lifestyle and hair loss. Across the temporal area of the head, near the temples, the team found that the longer a woman smoked the greater the hair loss.

Divorce also had a noticeable effect on hairline, though it may be from the stress of the breakup.

“Most likely, stress is the aspect of a troubling divorce that appears to lead to hair loss among women,” noted study author Dr. Bahman Guyuron.

Luckily, there are many natural yet effective ways to improve the quality of your hair and skin without the usage of harsh chemicals. Check out the 5 foods that can actually make you more attractive, and eat your way to healthy hair.

African American women are at a higher risk for breast cancer that isn’t dependent for growth on the hormones estrogen or progesterone than other women. The good news is that breastfeeding has been found to lower the risk back down to a normal level consistent with other females, according to a new study.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, followed a group of 47,000 African American women from 1996 through 2009. Researchers had participants fill out, every two years, a detailed questionnaire assessing a wide range of factors that affect a woman’s risk for breast cancer — including weight, age at which they began menstruating, pregnancies and age of first childbearing, birth control or hormone-replacement use, physical activity and alcohol consumption.

What they found was that African American women who had given birth to more children were more likely to develop estrogen or progesterone-negative cancer than their peers who had not given birth or who had given birth to only one child. But when a woman with two or more childbirths breastfed her babies, that risk declined considerably.

The authors — epidemiologists from Boston University,Georgetown University and Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Rochester, N.Y. — surmised that given the prevalence of infectious diseases in Africa, women of African origins may respond to pregnancy with a particularly strong immune response, which in turn can allow cancers to gain a foothold in the body. Lactation, they noted, appears to blunt that effect.

Pregnant California women have been found to have high levels of a toxic flame retardant in their blood. The chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), was banned in in California in 2004. The study is set to be published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The UC San Francisco research team tested 25 second-trimester pregnant women from Northern and Central California seeking care in San Francisco in 2008 and 2009 and found they had high levels of the chemicals in their blood, putting their babies at risk, according to the study published in Wednesday’s Environmental Science and Technology journal.

Researchers believe the women’s high PBDE levels were due to California’s strict flammability regulations enacted in the 1970s, which led manufacturers to add flame retardants to a wide variety of products, from electronics to furniture.

PBDEs may be toxic to the liver, thyroid and nerve development, according to the EPA.

We spoke with Ami Zota, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and lead author of the study, about what the findings mean and what can be done.

Depressed women may have a higher risk of stroke, according to new research published online Aug. 11 in the journal Stroke.

“We know that stroke can increase risk of depression, but depression itself may increase risk of future stroke,” said study author An Pan, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

HealthDay reports:

Women with a history of depression were 29 percent more likely to have a stroke during six years of follow-up, and this finding held even when researchers controlled for other factors known to increase stroke risk. What’s more, women who took antidepressants had a 39 percent increased risk of stroke.

The study was published online Aug. 11 in the journal Stroke.

The jury is out in terms of the role that antidepressants have in upping stroke risk, Pan said. “We don’t know whether medications increase risk of stroke or if medicine is a marker for severity of depression.”

Depressed women were more likely to be single, smoke and be less physically active than their non-depressed counterparts, the study showed. They were also slightly younger, had a higher body mass index and more coexisting conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

Pan and colleagues followed 80,574 women aged 54 to 79 who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study from 2000 to 2006 and had no prior history of stroke. Depression was assessed via a standardized tool measuring symptoms, antidepressant prescriptions, and/or a diagnosis of depression from a doctor. Overall, 22 percent of women were depressed or had a history of depression when the study began, and there were 1,033 strokes during six years of follow-up. Specifically, 538 women had ischemic stroke, the most common form of stroke, which is caused by a blockage such as a blood clot, and 124 women had hemorrhagic or bleeding stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel in the brain bursts.

“If you have depression, see a doctor and get diagnosed,” he said. “Treating your depression is very important to lower your future risk of cardiovascular disease, and if you have depression, you probably have some other lifestyle factors that you need to change.”

Dr. Alan Manevitz, a psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed. “Depression is associated with poor health behaviors including poor diet, lack of medication compliance and lack of exercise, all of which can increase stroke risk.”

Women are significantly more affected by cigarettes than men when it comes to the risk of heart disease, with women 25% more likely to develop coronary heart disease as a result of smoking than male smokers. The research comes from a large meta-analysis published in the Lancet.

Forbes reports:

Rachel Huxley and Mark Woodward analyzed data from 2.4 million participants in studies that adjusted for cardiovascular risk factors and found that the female-to-male relative risk ratio (RRR) of smoking compared to not smoking was 1.25 (CI 1.12-1.39, p<0.0001).For every additional year of followup the researchers found an additional 2% increase in the RRR for women (p=0.03).

The authors speculate that their analysis might have underestimated the true difference in relative risk between the sexes, since in many regions women have only started to smoke in large numbers in recent years. “It will be some years before the full effect of smoking on coronary heart disease risk is known in women,” they write. In addition, women smokers tend to consume fewer cigarettes than men and may be more likely to underreport their smoking habit.

In an accompanying comment, Matthew Steliga and Carolyn Drewsler observe that although in most places more men than women are smokers, more men than women quit smoking and “in some societies the number of female smokers is rising.” Further, they note, “the tobacco industry views women as its growth market.” They conclude that “targeting of both sexes is imperative for smoking prevention and cessation on a global, national, and individual basis.”

Here is the press release from the Lancet:

The increased risk of developing coronary heart disease conferred by smoking is 25% higher for women compared with men

An Article published Online First by The Lancet shows that the increased risk of developing coronary heart disease conferred by smoking is 25% higher for women compared with men. This increased risk for women could, suggest the authors, be due to physiological differences between the sexes, with cigarette smoke toxins possibly having a more potent effect on women. The Article is by Dr Rachel R Huxley, Division of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, and Dr Mark Woodward, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

The authors’ meta-analysis included around 4 million individuals and 67000 coronary heart disease events from 86 studies. They found that in 75 cohorts (total 2·4 million participants) that adjusted for cardiovascular risk factors other than coronary heart disease, the pooled adjusted female-to-male relative risk ratio (RRR) of smoking compared with not smoking for coronary heart disease was 1·25 (ie, 25% higher for women). This RRR increased by 2% for every additional year of follow-up, meaning that the longer a woman smokes, the higher her risk of developing CHD becomes compared with a man who has smoked the same length of time.

According to a number of doctors, the number of women having strokes during pregnancy is on the rise. The numbers increased from 4,085 in 1994-5 to 6,293 in 2006-7, the journal Stroke suggests. Obesity and poor heart health have been pinned as a factor in the increase. It has also been found that poisonous substances in the water can lead to stroke.

BBC News reports:

The Stroke Association said it was concerned by the sharp increase. Pregnancy is a known – if small – risk factor for stroke.

This study compared data from more than 1,000 hospitals in 1994-5 with 2006-7.

More common

During pregnancy itself, the proportion of women having a stroke increased by 47%, going from 0.15 to 0.22 strokes per 1000 deliveries.

In the 12 weeks after birth there was an increase from 0.12 to 0.22 strokes per 1000 deliveries, an 83% increase.

Dr Elena Kuklina, lead researcher from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said: “I am surprised at the magnitude of the increase, which is substantial. Our results indicate an urgent need to take a closer look.”

The researchers suggest that two conditions – high blood pressure and heart disease – “explained almost all of the increase” in stroke after birth.

Dr Kuklina said: “Now more and more women entering pregnancy already have some type of risk factor for stroke, such as obesity, chronic hypertension, diabetes or congenital heart disease.

“Since pregnancy by itself is a risk factor, if you have one of these other stroke risk factors, it doubles the risk.”

Many of these conditions are also increasing in the UK.

Dr Sharlin Ahmed, research liaison officer for The Stroke Association, said: “We’re concerned that this study has found such a sharp increase in pregnancy-related stroke over the past few years.

“It is so important for woman wanting to start a family to understand the risks associated with pregnancy and to take steps to make sure they are as healthy as possible before they become pregnant.”

An independent panel of doctors and health experts recommended Tuesday that health plans cover a broad range of contraceptives for women without co-pays, setting the stage for another debate over the impact of the new health overhaul.

The law that President Obama signed last year requires new health plans to cover many preventive health services without co-pays or deductibles for patients, a key provision of the new law that experts believe will encourage more Americans to get recommended immunizations, cancer screenings and other services.

But the law directed the Department of Health and Human Services to seek input from clinicians and other authorities about which additional services should be covered for women.

That prompted the report Tuesday from the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences.

Among eight recommendations, the panel urged coverage for “the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling.”

With close to half of all pregnancies unplanned in the U.S., many experts see easy access to contraception as critical to women’s and babies’ health. Mothers with unwanted pregnancies are less likely to receive prenatal care and engage in unsafe behaviors such as drinking and smoking, according to research cited by the institute.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebeliuscalled the recommendations “historic” and said her department would review them before it finalizes regulations “very soon” specifying which preventive services will have to be covered.

Dr. Linda Rosenstock, who chaired the panel, said the Obama administration would likely have to consider other issues beyond the panel’s recommendations.

“Our decision was based on the evidence of what works and not what the cost of them is,” she said. “These are issues that will need to be considered.”

The recommendations, endorsed by all but one of the 16 panel members, drew praise Tuesday from numerous women’s health advocates, as well as leading Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“Making family-planning services available at no cost will help millions of women prevent unintended pregnancy and thereby reduce the need for abortion,” said NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Nancy Keenan.

The report noted that contraceptive coverage is now “standard practice” for most private insurance plans and federally funded insurance programs. And since 2007, the National Business Group on Health, an organization of large employers, has recommended coverage of family planning services without cost sharing.

But some anti-abortion groups have objected to expanding coverage for contraception, singling out several emergency contraceptives that can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. “A federal mandate to all insurance plans to include drugs such as Ella essentially would mandate coverage for abortion,” said Jeanne Monahan of the Center for Human Dignity.