It is true that menstrual cramps are something that most women dread in their lives. When it is the "time of the month," women experience not only the physical symptoms of the cramps but also other conditions such as bloating, fatigue, swelling, headache, irritability, mood swings, and breast tenderness, all of which are associated with a woman's menstrual period.
These conditions may happen one at a time or all at the same time. Depending on the severity of the cramps and the other symptoms, this can hinder some women from going to school or work. Menstrual cramps happen because every month, the inner lining of the uterus would prepare for a pregnancy.
When there is no fertilized egg, the lining sheds and breaks down prostaglandin, which when released causes the uterine muscles to contract, and to cut off blood supply and oxygen to the endometrial tissue.
Cramping happens because the contractions are what push out the lining out of the body.
Menstrual cramps can be so painful that women are always looking for ways to alleviate the pain and suffering they experience during this time. Medicines that can help relive menstrual cramps include over the counter drugs such as aspirin or medicines that contain acetaminophen (Midol, Pamprin, Tylenol), which are effective for mild cramps.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that contain ibuprofen such as Motrin and Advil, ketoprofen like Actron, and naproxen sodium such as Aleve and Anaprox can help relieve menstrual cramps by lowering the production of prostaglandin. Some women make use of oral contraceptives that can relieve pain over time.
Some herbal remedies such as Viburnum prunifolium, Scutellaria spp., and Cimicifuga raemosa have been found to have an anti-spasmodic effect that can decrease the pain the comes with menstrual cramps.
In addition to this, many kinds of food can also help relieve menstrual cramps. For example, fresh pineapple juice has bromelaine, which is an enzyme that can relax the muscles. Ginger, meanwhile, can block the painful effect of prostaglandin and help prevent inflammation.
It is also recommended to have a diet that is rich in calcium, B vitamins, and zinc, as these are known for reducing cramps. Limit intake of salt, sugar and caffeine at least a week before your menstrual period as these substances are believed to add to menstrual pains.
Having a full stomach may also help because the body will focus more on digestion instead of on cramping.
This is especially important if you are going to take a painkiller. Taking painkillers with food can help you avoid stomach discomfort.
Aside from medicines and foods, there are many other ways that can help a woman alleviate menstrual pain. A warm bath, for instance, can help the body unwind and relax. It is a known fact that stress can only aggravate the pain.
Lying down in a fetal position can also help and so is a heating pad on the back or on the abdomen. Regular low impact exercise such as walking or swimming can minimize the severity of menstrual cramps for some women.
If none of these tips works and if the cramping is severe or accompanied by vomiting or fever, it may be a sign of a medical emergency. Contact your doctor right away.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Relief to Menstrual Cramps
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Steal Beyonce's Lemon Cayenne Pepper Diet Recipe - Master Cleanse Hollywood-Style
One of the things that continues to amaze me about celebrities is their ability to quickly lose weight depending on the demands of the movie they happen to be working on. Have you ever wondered how they manage lose weight so fast? Given, they have all the resources needed to shed any amount of excess pounds with personal trainers and specialized diets, but the speed at which such noticeable weight loss is achieved is truly remarkable.
One celebrity diet that has been getting a lot of press lately is the Lemon Cayenne Pepper Diet which Beyonce used to quickly drop 20 pounds for her role in the movie Dream Girls. Before we get into how she did it and how you can do the same, what is the Lemon Cayenne Pepper Diet and where did it come from? Later, I will reveal a simple method that you can use to achieve better results than Beyonce. Read on...
This may come as a surprise to some but thousands of people around the globe have been been using this diet for years. The Lemon Cayenne Pepper Diet, also known as Master Cleanse, is a short-term dieting program created by Stanley Burroughs in 1941. It lasts anywhere from 10 to 40 days where the dieter starts the day off with a salt-water flush and a mild laxative tea. Pure water and peppermint tea are the only other beverages/food allowed. That's it!
Here are the ingredients of the Lemon Cayenne Pepper Diet:
-Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
-Purified, Non-Fluoridated Water
-Grade-B Organic Maple Syrup
-Powdered Cayenne Pepper
How to Prepare it For Maximum Effect
Always use fresh ingredients when using this and other recipes. If your intention is to detox and purify your body, than it makes sense to start out with organic, pure, ingredients. Go out and buy Purified, Non-Fluoridated Water as regular tap water contains too many chemicals to name here. Also, Grade-B organic maple syrup is used for this recipe, not the "Aunt Jemima" kind. Once you have everything together start the cleanse and be sure to drink 6-12 servings a day for you to se any results.
Although people like Beyonce have had success with this colon cleanse diet, it is not as easy and simple as it sounds. It takes serious discipline and dedication to pull this off. For a faster and easier way to fully detox and boost your energy levels while dropping inches off your waist, consider using a natural colon cleanse supplement.
Monday, 25 May 2009
Top 10 Causes of Vaginal Bleeding After Sex
You've just finished making love, and you're in that pleasant dream-like state when you go to the bathroom and discover that you are bleeding. Nothing can bring you back to reality faster than vaginal bleeding after sex. Post-coital bleeding can occur for a number of reasons, and is nothing to take lightly. Here's a look at the top 10 causes of vaginal bleeding after sex:
1. Cervical dysplasia: Cervical dysplasia is precancerous changes of the epithelial cells that line the cervix. Risk increases with multiple sexual partners, sex before age 18, childbirth before age 16, or a past history of STDs. Treatment is usually cryosurgery or conisation.
2. Chlamydia: A bacterial infection that is usually transmitted through sexual activity or contact with semen, vaginal fluid, or blood.
3. Gonorrhea: A usually sexually transmitted disease caused by a bacteria. Several pharmaceutical treatments are available.
4. Vaginitis or Cervicitis: Inflammation or swelling and infection of the vagina or cervix. Treatment depends on the cause.
5. Cervical polyps: Cervical polyps are smooth, red or purple, finger-like growths that grow out of the mucus layer of the cervix or the cervical canal. Cervical polyps are extremely fragile, extending out of the cervix, and easily and painlessly removed.
6. Trichomoniasis: A usually sexually transmitted disease caused by protozoan. Can also be passed to newborns during vaginal birth by infected mothers. Although rare, transmission is also possible in tap water, hot tubs, urine, on toilet seats, and in swimming pools. May cause vaginitis.
7. Vaginal Yeast Infection: An overgrowth of the normal fungi that inhabits the vaginal area. Common symptoms include itching, burning, and an odorless, white, cheese-like discharge.
8. Endometritis or adenomyosis: Endometritis is defined by Dorland's Medical Dictionary, 27th Edition as an inflammation of the endometrium (the innermost layer of the uterus). Both conditions are associated with endometriosis. Adenomysis is when endometrial tissue attaches itself to the uterus, or another organ such as the ovaries, and grows outside of the uterus.
9. Uterine polyps: Uterine polyps occur when the endometrium overgrows causing these protrusions into the uterus. It is extremely rare for these growths to grow in a way that is either benign or malignant. Women with uterine polyps frequently experience bleeding between periods (metrorrhagia), other symptoms includes vaginal bleeding after sex, spotting, menorrhagia, bleeding after menopause, and breakthrough bleeding during hormone therapy. Hysteroscopic-guided curettage is the preferred treatment, since the normal D&C is basically an unguided procedure that may miss many of the uterine polyps.
10. Fibroid tumors: Uterine fibroid tumors are usually benign tumors. They are solid masses made of fibrous tissue. Fibroid tumors are rarely malignant. Symptoms of fibroid tumors vary among women, with some women never experiencing any symptoms at all. Women who can wait until menopause will see their fibroids shrink and disappear once their bodies stop producing estrogen. It's important that women with fibroids make sure they never take estrogen, in any form including birth control pills, since estrogen increases fibroid growth. Several treatments are currently available for uterine fibroid tumors from myomectomy and uterine artery embolization to the traditional hysterectomy.
Diagnosing vaginal bleeding after sex is usually a matter of exclusion. Anytime you experience post-coital bleeding or vaginal bleeding after sex see your physician.
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
The Perfect At-home Yoga Workout for the Stay-at-home Mom
To be able to stay physically and mentally fit, one of the advisable steps in doing so is to do some yoga exercises. Yoga exercises target both the physical and mental well-being of an individual. As you do the exercise, you are relaxing your inner being as well.
It is best and highly advisable to do these exercises first thing in the morning. At the end of the session, you would surely be able to feel rejuvenated and ready to face any challenges that would come your way.
Stay-at-home moms would usually be stuck in a daily routine of taking care of the kids, doing the laundry, cooking, groceries, cleaning the house, and many more. It is usually the back and the shoulder part that would be aching at the end of the day. However, with the yoga exercises, you would surely be able to feel the relief of tension as you start the yoga exercises.
What you need to het started
Here are the things you would need to perform yoga exercises.
1) A yoga mat, or any mat that you can lie on your back comfortably
2) A bottle of water
3) A ball (if you have one)
4) A chair
5) Pile of books
6) Face towel
Tips You'll Need in a Yoga Session
Before you do the exercise, you must have the warm up stretches so as to avoid straining your muscles. Do the basic head to toe exercises as a warm up exercise just to get things going.
Always remember as well that in doing yoga exercises, you are supposed to be in tune with your body. You have to feel the breathing in and out of your body. You must be relaxed at all times.
To Begin the Exercise
Yoga exercises would then start with the breathing in and out technique. Holding your breath for a few seconds and then releasing it in the process. As you begin the exercise, you can just lie down on your back and just relax. Stretching your arms and legs would surely do wonders for you. Stretching your arms would relax your forearms and shoulder blades. Curling into a ball will release the strain in your back muscles. Your legs would feel relaxed and rejuvenated as you bring them close to your chin one by one. As you do these exercises, don't forget the breathing technique that you have to follow in the process.
Be Creative
If your child has a large ball around, you can lie on it and arch your back using the ball as your balance. Feel every muscle of your body as you do these exercises. You can also use a chair as well in doing these exercises. Using it as a balance, you can stretch your back muscles. Make sure you have no back problems before you do these. Yoga exercises are not meant to be strenuous exercises. Always remember to relax from time to time.
Yoga exercises should be relaxing and at the same time a fun experience for you. That way, you will always enjoy them and look forward to making time to do these exercises.
Friday, 8 May 2009
Stem Cells May Restore Female Fertility
In a study that has been deemed “quite dramatic,” researchers led by Kang Zou and Ji Wu from the School of Life Science and Biotechnology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University harvested cells they call female germline stem cells (FGSC) from the ovaries of five-day-old and adult mice. The cells were cultured for more than six months and modified to produce a green fluorescent protein so they could be easily tracked. Then the scientists used the FGSC’s to reseed the ovaries of mice whose eggs had been killed off. The sterilized mice produced new eggs, and after natural mating, 80 percent went on to produce healthy offspring that were themselves fertile. The green protein was present in many of the babies, which suggests they came from eggs grown from the stem cells. “These results suggest that oocytes can be regenerated in sterile recipient females by transplantation of FGSCs,” the study authors wrote.
This is the first time scientists have obtained cells from an adult mammal that appear capable of producing new eggs and healthy offspring. “If you are looking to disprove that females cannot make new eggs, this paper proves it. It’s a really significant paper,” said Jonathan L. Tilly, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School. “This is the smoking gun.”
If the findings are confirmed, they could offer a host of new options for infertile women. For example, those who wish to delay childbearing or who are facing sterilization as a result of cancer treatment might be able to stockpile their egg stem cells for use later in life. Or if women who are infertile because of their age still harbor the cells, scientists may be able to find a way to stimulate them into producing new eggs, some experts say. “We have lot of patients who cannot get pregnant because they have run out of eggs or their eggs are of poor quality because of their age. The only option they have is adoption, which is not so easy, or egg donation, which means the child would not be their genetic child,” said Roger G. Gosden, director of reproductive medicine at Cornell Weill Medical Center in New York, who was not involved in the research. “The research means egg donation from a fertile woman might not be necessary because she could have her own genetic child engineered from her stem cells.”
The findings could also benefit stem cell research by providing a new source of eggs, which are crucial for producing stem cell lines tailored to individual patients and diseases but are difficult to obtain and controversial.
However, some experts remain cautious, saying the work needs to be replicated more carefully in mice and in other species. “The aging process of the human egg differs fundamentally from that of the mouse egg,” said David L. Keefe, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Florida. “Except at Disney World, humans are not large mice.”
“This is another chapter in what has been a very controversial story, where some scientists have gone against the dogma which states that in mammals, such as mice and humans, all the progenitor germ cells that could give rise to eggs have already done so by birth,” said Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, a researcher into stem cells at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London. “This paper will stimulate lots of activity in the scientific community, as happens when any dogma is challenged. This is a good thing. But what would be unfortunate is if this paper is hyped as a cure for female infertility. A lot more work is needed to understand what these new cells really are, and to verify the findings and the claims.”
The study was published online by the journal Nature Cell Biology Read more...
New Testosterone Injections Work as Male Contraceptive
Pregnancy is a big step in life for any couple. Until now, there have only been a few ways to prevent pregnancy and most of them are centered around the female. Now, there is a new monthly injection of testosterone that works as a contraceptive in men, allowing the responsibility of birth control to be shared among the sexes.
For years, scientists have been looking for a contraceptive to be the male equivalent to the Pill. The trials that were conducted in the 1990s found that weekly injections of testosterone reduced the sperm counts for 98 percent of the men, and the effects disappeared when the injections were stopped. However, the researchers thought that the weekly injections would be considered too unpopular and troublesome with men to be a very useful method of contraception.
Since then, researchers have been experimenting with injections that are oil-based. They combined the testosterone with tea seed oil which means that once it was injected, it was absorbed very slowly by the body. This also means that the effect of a single injection could last for much longer.
A new, large-scale study has looked at how well the monthly injections of testosterone has worked as a contraceptive and how safe they really are. The recent study looked at approximately 1,045 Chinese men that were between the ages of 20 and 45, had fathered at least one child in the two years prior to the study, and were in a stable relationship.
For six months, the men that participated in the study took monthly injections of testosterone in their buttocks. After that time, most of the men had very low sperm counts. However, the testosterone injections failed to lower the sperm count in about 5 percent of the men.
If the injections were successful, the men continued to take them for two years. However, many of the participants dropped out over time, so only 733 actually completed the trial. Also during the trial, the sperm count rose again for just over 1 percent of the men, and there were nine pregnancies during the two years. Overall, after the first year of the study, there was 1 pregnancy for every 100 men that participated. At the end of the second year, the pregnancy rate was fractionally higher at 1.1 per 100 men.
Condoms, when they are used perfectly, have about a 2 in 100 pregnancy rate a year. With the female contraceptive pill, the pregnancy rate is approximately 0.3 in 100. It is very important to remember that most of the contraceptives are a lot less effective in the real world than these ‘"perfect use" figures suggest, because people can forget to take a pill or the condom can fail to work properly.
An important question is whether the men’s sperm count rose again after the testosterone injections were stopped. For most of the men it took approximately 200 days for their sperm count to return to normal, however, 17 of the men still had not recovered their fertility after one year. Most of the men who participated had a normal sperm count after an extra three months, but two of the men were still not producing sperm after this time period.
The side of effects of the injections included tenderness at the injection site, a rash or acne, and some men experienced changes in their sex drive. These changes varied from man to man, but the most common side effect was a sex drive that was higher.
The next question is, what does this mean for me? The injection is currently being tested in Phase III trials, which are considered the largest scale human trials that are carried out before a new drug is released to the market. If a new medication is safe and effective in Phase III trials, its manufacturer can then apply to the appropriate regulatory agency for a license to manufacture and sell the product. There is no definite timescale, but it is usually a few years from the successful completion Phase III trials to the launch of the new product.
