Pool Pissing Prank

PIt Bull & Chicks!!

Estrogen May Offer Some Heart Benefits

Five years after a landmark study scared millions of women off hormones for menopause symptoms, new research suggests the pills may offer some heart benefits for certain younger women who start taking them in their 50s. Women who took estrogen suffered less hardening of the arteries than those who took dummy pills, researchers reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

It was the latest study in recent months to suggest that women who take hormones at the start of menopause seem to gain some health benefits beyond relief from hot flashes. That is in sharp contrast to women who raise their health risks when they take hormones in their 60s and 70s.

In general, experts' advice hasn't changed: Use hormones only as needed to treat hot flashes, sleeplessness and other symptoms at the start of menopause. And use the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time _ no longer than four or five years.

The new study is the latest attempt to sort out how menopause hormones affect the risk of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, stroke and heart problems, and whether those risks and benefits differ by age.

The research concludes that women who started taking estrogen pills in their 50s were 30 to 40 percent less likely to have measurable levels of blockage-causing calcium in the arteries that lead to the heart.

"It seems to be slowing the rate of plaque buildup," said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She is the study's lead author.

The research is based on the Women's Health Initiative, a huge federal study started in the 1990s that focused on the risks and benefits of menopause hormones for women.

One phase of the study was suspended in 2002 after researchers detected higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer and other problems in women who took an estrogen-progestin combination pill. Many women were startled by the findings; millions stopped taking hormones.

"The heart attack issue was really the thing that surprised us all," said Dr. Michelle Warren, a Columbia University expert who is a consultant for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which makes which makes top-selling hormone pills Prempro and Premarin.

Another phase of the big women's study was stopped in 2004 when researchers saw higher risks for strokes and blood clots in women who took estrogen alone. (Levels of heart disease and breast cancer were unaffected by the solo pill.)

Since then, some scientists have begun to slice the large study's data for more nuanced meaning. They note that most of the women in the study were in their 60s or 70s, several years post-menopausal when the research began. New analyses are focusing on women who were in their 50s when they joined the study.

The scientists are researching a "timing hypothesis" that proposes that estrogen can help against clogged arteries and heart disease, but only when given before problems develop and before natural estrogen levels have been low for an extended period of time. Estrogen can trigger heart attacks in women who have advanced atherosclerosis, experts said.

Warren likened it to exercise: When started earlier in life and done regularly, it can protect a heart. "But if I take a woman who's 63 years old, who's never exercised, and start her on it, I can kill her," she said.

In the new research, Manson and her colleagues focused on more than 1,000 women in their 50s who had hysterectomies. Roughly a quarter of U.S. women in that age bracket have had a hysterectomy, Manson said.

The women were either on estrogen or dummy pills for an average of about 7 1/2 years. They then had cardiac scans in 2005 to check for buildup of calcium in the arteries. The women were 64 years old, on average, at the time of the scans. There was no baseline scan of the women when the study started.

One expert who consults for Wyeth, Dr. Howard Hodis of the University of Southern California, celebrated the results as evidence that estrogen _ started at the right time _ could be taken for decades.

Source: Google, Foxnews

Firstborns Gain the Higher I.Q

The eldest children in families tend to develop higher I.Q.’s than their siblings, researchers are reporting today, in a large study that could settle more than a half-century of scientific debate about the relationship between I.Q. and birth order.

The average difference in I.Q. was slight — three points higher in the eldest child than in the closest sibling — but significant, the researchers said. And they said the results made it clear that it was due to family dynamics, not to biological factors like prenatal environment.

Researchers have long had evidence that firstborns tended to be more dutiful and cautious than their siblings, and some previous studies found significant I.Q. differences. But critics said those reports were not conclusive, because they did not take into account the vast differences in upbringing among families.

Three points on an I.Q. test may not sound like much. But experts say it can be a tipping point for some people — the difference between a high B average and a low A, for instance. That, in turn, can have a cumulative effect that could mean the difference between admission to an elite private liberal-arts college and a less exclusive public one.

Source: Google

High Blood Sugar Levels May Harm Fetus

A high level of blood sugar in pregnant women increases the health risks to their newborns, according to a new study.

The study found that it does not matter if the mother-to-be has diabetes.

The study, released at the American Diabetes Association's annual scientific meeting in Chicago reports that a mother with a high blood sugar levels is more likely to have give birth to a child who will be obese, have diabetes or suffer from high blood pressure later in life.

Researchers also found that women with high blood sugar levels often give birth to larger babies, which can often lead to complications during Caesarean sections.

"We found that the risk of having a large baby, a first-time Cesarean delivery, low blood glucose levels in the newborn requiring treatment, and high blood insulin levels in the baby that may signal problems ahead, all increased as the mother's blood glucose level during pregnancy increased," said Boyd E. Metzger, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, and Principal Investigator of the study, in a recent interview. "These relationships were continuous over the entire range of blood glucose levels found in over 23,000 pregnancies, even in ranges previously considered to be within the normal range for pregnant women."

The study included more than 23,000 women in nine different countries.

Source: Google