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Welcome to the e-HealthFlash newsletter, brought to you by Goshen Health System. e-HealthFlash delivers to your mailbox timely medical news and health and wellness information that matter to you and your family. To visit Goshen Health System’s Women's Health Center, click here.
More children = fewer teeth for mom
Women with a lot of children often joke about lost brain cells, but research shows they’re actually missing something women with smaller broods retain—their teeth. An examination of data on more than 2,600 women ages 18–64 from all socioeconomic levels revealed that the more children women had, the more teeth they lost. Why the chomper challenge? Author of the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, says pregnancy can make women more prone to gingivitis, or gum inflammation, and repeated pregnancies can mean repeated bouts of gingivitis, which may lead to tooth loss. It’s also possible that financial and time constraints mean mothers simply aren’t prioritizing their own oral healthcare.
Ovarian cancer: Double checking may be the key to cure
Ovarian cancer was once considered to be difficult to detect until it reached an advanced stage. But researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have discovered that giving women a short symptom checklist in conjunction with a simple ovarian-cancer blood test can detect the disease in its early stages more than 80 percent of the time. On its own, the symptom-screening questionnaire detected early ovarian cancer in about 60 percent of cases, as did the ovarian-cancer blood test. Early detection is crucial: The survival rate when the cancer is confined to the ovary is 70 percent to 90 percent. Unfortunately, 70 percent of all women with the disease are diagnosed at the advanced stage, when the cancer has spread and survival rates drop sharply. If you have abdominal or pelvic pain, difficulty eating or immediate feelings of fullness when eating or abdominal bloating, speak to your healthcare provider.
Early drinking can lead to lifelong alcoholism
As if we needed more compelling reasons to keep teens away from alcohol, it appears that the younger women are when they begin to drink, the more likely they are to become alcohol dependent. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis compared data from two national studies on alcohol use and concluded that women who start drinking at age 17 or younger have a one-in-three chance of becoming addicted to alcohol; women who start drinking at age 21 or older have a one-in-10 risk of becoming an alcoholic. Overall, investigators determined, women born before 1944 began drinking alcohol at age 20, while women born after 1944 started drinking earlier, at age 17—and faced a 50 percent to 80 percent greater risk of becoming alcohol dependent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that women limit alcohol to no more than one drink a day.
Pregnancy weight gain affects kids’ obesity risk
You can blame the childhood obesity epidemic on many factors—too many video games, too little activity, poor food choices and not enough sleep. Now, scientists are adding another possibility: Mom gaining too much weight during pregnancy. A new study from The Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine reveals that the amount of weight a woman gains while she’s pregnant influences the chances her child will be overweight at age 7. Women who gain more than the recommended weight run the greatest risk of having an overweight child, especially if the women are obese at the start of their pregnancies. Scientists say that moms-to-be who follow weight-gain recommendations, eat healthily and get sufficient physical activity may help prevent obesity in their children.
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