Oct. 20, 2022 – Clarissa Ghazi will get lye relaxers, which comprise the chemical sodium hydroxide, utilized to her hair two to a few occasions a yr.

A current examine that made headlines over a possible hyperlink between hair straighteners and uterine most cancers will not be going to make her cease. 

“This study is not enough to cause me to say I’ll stay away from this because [the researchers] don’t prove that using relaxers causes cancer,” Ghazi says.

Indeed, major care medical doctors are unlikely to handle the elevated threat of uterine most cancers in girls who incessantly use hair straighteners that the examine reported. 

Among frequent customers of hair straighteners — which means those that used them greater than 4 occasions a yr — the researchers discovered that ladies had been 2.55 occasions extra prone to be recognized with uterine most cancers than those that by no means used these merchandise.

In the lately revealed paper on this analysis, the authors say that they discovered an 80% larger adjusted threat of uterine most cancers amongst girls who had ever “straightened,” “relaxed,” or used “hair pressing products” within the 12 months earlier than enrolling of their examine.

This discovering is “real, but small,” says internist Douglas S. Paauw, MD, professor of medication on the University of Washington in Seattle. 

Paauwis amongst a number of major care medical doctors interviewed for this story who expressed little concern in regards to the implications of this analysis for his or her sufferers. 

“Since we have hundreds of things we are supposed to discuss at our 20-minute clinic visits, this would not make the cut,” Paauw says. 

While it’s good to have the ability to reply questions a affected person may ask about this new analysis, the examine doesn’t show something, he says.

Internist Alan Nelson, MD, an internist-endocrinologist and former particular advisor to the CEO of the American College of Physicians, says whereas the examine is effectively achieved, the variety of precise instances of uterine most cancers discovered had been small.

One of the explanations he wouldn’t advocate discussing the examine with sufferers is that the manufacturers of hair merchandise used to straighten hair within the examine weren’t recognized. 

Alexandra White, PhD, lead writer of the examine, stated contributors had been merely requested, “In the past 12 months, how frequently have you or someone else straightened or relaxed your hair, or used hair pressing products?” 

The phrases “straightened,” “relaxed,” and “hair pressing products” weren’t outlined, and “some women may have interpreted the term ‘pressing products’ to mean non-chemical products” reminiscent of flat irons, says White, who can also be head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Environment and Cancer Epidemiology group, in an e-mail.

Dermatologist Crystal Aguh, MD, affiliate professor of dermatology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, tweeted the next recommendation in mild of the brand new findings: “The overall risk of uterine cancer is quite low so it’s important to remember that. For now, if you want to change your routine, there’s no downside to decreasing your frequency of hair straightening to every 12 weeks or more, as that may lessen your risk.”

She additionally famous that “styles like relaxer, silk pressing and keratin treatments should only be done by a professional, as this will decrease the likelihood of hair damage and scalp irritation.”

“I also encourage women to look for hair products free of parabens and phthalates (which are generically listed as “fragrance”) on products to minimize exposure to hormone disrupting chemicals.”

Not Ready to Go Curly

Ghazi says she determined to cease utilizing keratin straighteners years in the past after she realized they’re made with a number of added components. That consists of the chemical formaldehyde, a recognized carcinogen, in keeping with the American Cancer Society.

“People have been relaxing their hair for a very long time, and I feel more comfortable using [a relaxer] to straighten my hair than any of the others out there,” Ghazi says.

Janaki Ram, who has had her hair chemically straightened a number of occasions, says the findings haven’t made her anxious that straightening will trigger her to get uterine most cancers particularly, however that they’re a reminder that the chemical substances in these merchandise may hurt her in another approach.

She says the brand new examine findings, her information of the harm straightening causes to hair, and the prolonged period of time receiving a keratin remedy takes will lead her to cut back the frequency with which she will get her straightened.

“Going forward, I will have this done once a year instead of twice a year,” she says.  

White, the writer of the examine, says in an interview that the takeaway for customers is that ladies who reported frequent use of hair straighteners/relaxers and urgent merchandise had been over twice as prone to go on to develop uterine most cancers in comparison with girls who reported no use of those merchandise within the earlier yr. 

“However, uterine cancer is relatively rare, so these increases in risks are small,” she says. “Less frequent use of these products was not as strongly associated with risk, suggesting that decreasing use may be an option to reduce harmful exposure. Black women were the most frequent users of these products and therefore these findings are more relevant for Black women.”

“We estimated that 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners would go on to develop uterine cancer by the age of 70; but for frequent users, that risk goes up to 4.05%,” White says in an announcement.

 “One of the original aims of the study was to better understand the environmental and genetic causes of breast cancer, but we are also interested in studying ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, and many other cancers and chronic diseases,” White says in an interview. 

The post Hair Straighteners’ Risk Too Small to Stop, Docs and Women Say appeared first on Healthy and Slim Life.

May 16, 2022 — When Lindsay S. realized she had inflammatory bowel illness at 24 years previous, her first concern was the way it would possibly have an effect on her plans to have a household and the potential affect on a baby.

“Even when I was first being put on medication, I wanted to know what effect it would have on future children,” she says. “I was coming up on childbearing years, so I wanted to know if I got pregnant what could those meds do to a baby. I was pretty picky about what meds I wanted to start with.”

For solutions to her questions, she didn’t flip to her obstetrician and even her main care physician. Instead, she relied on her gastroenterologist – Sunanda Kane, MD, an IBD specialist on the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN – to assist her navigate dwelling with ulcerative colitis, a type of IBD.

Fast-forward 10 years, and Lindsay and her husband now have two wholesome boys, ages 2 and three, and he or she has been in a position to handle her IBD.

“Dr. Kane was very helpful,” says Lindsay, who lives in Greater Rochester and requested to be recognized by her first title solely to guard her privateness. “Most of the OBs that I ran across freaked out about my taking these meds for my IBD. But Dr. Kane reassured me. That made all the difference for me.”

Women with IBD face a number of considerations associated to their reproductive well being selections, from contraception to being pregnant to supply. Research reveals that IBD and sure medication can affect fertility and being pregnant and pose dangers for preterm start and small gestational age.

Lindsay’s expertise has grow to be quite common for ladies with IBD who’ve questions on being pregnant, household planning, and reproductive well being. In a examine, printed within the journal Crohn’s & Colitis 360, lead writer Traci Kazmerski, MD, and her colleagues on the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center discovered that ladies with IBD usually fear about their reproductive well being and usually flip to gastroenterologists for questions and considerations.

What’s extra, many sufferers count on their gastroenterologist to start out this dialog and that these specialists can play a important position in serving to girls have wholesome pregnancies, they mentioned.

Kazmerski and her colleagues interviewed 21 girls with IBD about their medical historical past and requested them questions on being pregnant, contraception, and household planning. The members ranged from 12 to 16 years previous once they had been identified with IBD.

At the time of the examine, the ladies had been 25 years previous, on common. Five had been pregnant prior to now, and 16 mentioned they deliberate to have kids sooner or later. Fifteen had been being handled for Crohn’s illness, and 6 had ulcerative colitis (the commonest types of IBD). Thirteen had been utilizing contraception, and 6 girls had been taking a number of IBD drugs.

During the interviews, Kazmerski and colleagues discovered:

• Women with IBD who had by no means been pregnant lacked reproductive well being information.
• Six had been unaware of IBD’s potential affect on fertility, being pregnant, and associated points.
• Many lacked readability on the position IBD would possibly play of their alternative of contraceptives and mentioned they’d not been correctly suggested on contraception choices.
• Several mentioned they had been involved in regards to the heredity of their IBD, the dangers of illness earlier than giving start, and the affect of their drugs on a future being pregnant.

“I think these results highlight the importance of pediatric gastroenterologists and primary care providers comprehensively addressing reproductive health with every person with IBD,” says Kazmerski.

Such discussions “may be a major determinant in not only the decision, but also the ability, of these women to become pregnant,” the authors mentioned.

Kane says the findings, that are consistent with different analysis, affirm what she’s seen in her personal apply and spotlight the important position a GI specialist can play in serving to girls with IBD take care of being pregnant and reproductive well being.

“I’m not really surprised by these findings,” says Kane, who can be a professor of medication on the Mayo Clinic with an curiosity in girls’s well being.

“I think it is absolutely in the appropriate wheelhouse of a gastroenterologist to talk about conception, fertility, and pregnancy. But they should do it in the context of the patient’s life in general and about their medications,” she says.

“A lot of women assume if we don’t talk about this that we don’t think it [pregnancy] is a good idea and/or that we think it’s unsafe. So, they’re going to get their advice from ‘Dr. Google’ or well-intentioned friends and family who may not understand the nuances.”

Kane says gastroenterologists could also be extra knowledgeable than different practitioners about reproductive well being for ladies with IBD. This contains contraception, which is a priority for individuals who need to have kids and are nervous in regards to the affect of IBD medication on being pregnant.

For instance, Kane says girls taking the drug methotrexate “have to absolutely be on reliable birth control” as a result of changing into pregnant whereas taking the drug is dangerous and may trigger start defects.

Kane additionally believes her sufferers with IBD could also be extra comfy talking along with her about these points than with an obstetrician or main care physician.

“There are data that oral contraceptives may actually cause IBD or exacerbate IBD, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you that Brand X is better than Brand Y,” she says. “That’s where I will tell a woman to talk to your gynecologist [to assess] the nuance of what is in the pill.”

IBD and Pregnancy: Myths and Facts

Kane says that many myths and falsehoods have raised undue considerations – and sufferers’ nervousness ranges.

“Unfortunately, whatever gets posted on the internet stays there,” she says. “There are very old data that say if you have Crohn’s disease, you shouldn’t get pregnant, and that’s just not true.”

She additionally says that “IBD is not a genetic-inheritable disease. … Just because you carry those genes, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to get the disease. That’s not how it works.”

Also, IBD shouldn’t be believed to trigger congenital issues and start defects, nor do pregnant girls with IBD have to at all times cease taking their medicine, she says.

“What will drive a complicated pregnancy is active disease,” Kane notes. “Women will stop their medicine because they’re afraid of the effect on the baby. But it’s actually their active disease that’s worse on a baby than medications.”

Vivian Huang, MD, director of the Preconception and Pregnancy in IBD medical analysis program at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, agrees that managing IBD with medicine in being pregnant is important to the well being of the mom and the infant.

“Many patients are worried about taking medications preconception and in pregnancy,” she says. “They may not realize that active IBD is more harmful to pregnancy (increased risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, small for gestational age infants) than taking maintenance IBD medications,” excluding sure drugs reminiscent of methotrexate or tofacitinib.

IBD in being pregnant will increase the danger of miscarriage and preterm start, Huang says.

Jessica Barry, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist and girls’s well being specialist on the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, says this “gap in education” for younger girls with IBD is probably essentially the most important difficulty for GI medical doctors to deal with with their sufferers.

“Unfortunately, there is a large gap in education of our patients, per reproductive health and sexual health and body image overall, especially starting for young women and progressing into adulthood,” says Barry.

“We can educate our patients, so they know that we are their resource, and we are there to help answer those questions.”

IBD: At a Glance

IBD shouldn’t be a single illness, however a bunch of problems that trigger continual irritation, ache, and swelling within the intestines. The major forms of IBD embrace:

• Crohn’s illness, which causes ache and swelling within the digestive tract. It can have an effect on any half, from the mouth to the anus. It mostly impacts the small gut and higher a part of the big gut.
• Ulcerative colitis, which causes swelling and sores within the giant gut (colon and rectum)
• Microscopic colitis, which causes intestinal irritation detectable with a microscope

Up to three million Americans have some type of IBD. Although it impacts all ages and genders, IBD mostly happens between the ages of 15 and 30.

IBD shouldn’t be the identical as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a sort of digestive dysfunction whose signs are prompted and handled in a different way than these of IBD. Irritable bowel syndrome doesn’t inflame or injury the intestines the best way IBD does.

Research suggests three issues play a task within the IBD: Genetics (1 in 4 folks have a household historical past of the illness), an irregular immune system response, and environmental triggers (reminiscent of smoking, stress, drug use, and melancholy).

IBD signs vary from delicate to extreme and may flare abruptly. Patients who should not have signs are thought-about to be in remission.

IBD signs embrace:

• Belly ache, upset abdomen, and lack of urge for food
• Nausea and vomiting
• Diarrhea, constipation, and bowel urgency
• Gas and bloating
• Unexplained weight reduction
• Mucus or blood within the stool
• Fatigue
• Fever
• Joint ache
• Vision issues and purple, itchy, or painful eyes
• Rashes and sores

People with IBD have a better threat of colon most cancers in addition to issues from anemia, narrowing or an infection of the anal canal, kidney stones, liver illness, malnutrition, osteoporosis, and perforated bowel.

Medications can assist management irritation and signs.

In folks with Crohn’s illness whose drugs not work, surgical procedure could also be wanted to take away the diseased bowel phase.

The post Pregnant and Have IBD? A GI Doc’s Help Can Be Crucial appeared first on Healthy and Slim Life.

April 19, 2022 – It’s turn into all too acquainted in recent times: People collect for holidays, COVID-19 instances rise, and hospitalizations observe.

Now, simply past our first batch of holidays since Christmas and New Year’s Eve – which led to an enormous Omicron spike – the medical neighborhood is watching carefully for a possible rise in instances.

The expectation? There could also be a small enhance in instances tied to final weekend’s Easter and Passover celebrations, however nothing like what we’ve seen prior to now, docs predict. It will possible be one other week, not less than, earlier than we all know for certain, as instances have a tendency to come back within the days after a vacation.

“Even before the holidays, we were starting to see a little bit of an uptick in cases, and I suspect that may continue because of the holidays and people getting together and spending time with individuals they usually aren’t around,” says Timothy Brewer, MD, a professor of medication and epidemiology on the UCLA School of Medicine. “But we’re not expecting the big increases like we saw during the winter.”

The winter Omicron surge led to skyrocketing numbers, and by mid-January, the 7-day day by day common variety of instances topped 800,000. That slowly dropped and, by mid-March, bottomed out round 26,000 instances a day. Now, the 7-day day by day common exceeds 35,000, in response to the CDC.

Although the numbers stay low by comparability, folks ought to keep in mind there’s nonetheless a threat, Brewer says.

“SARS-CoV-2 has never gone away,” he says. “I realize that a lot of us have gotten tired of the pandemic and want it to go away, but that doesn’t mean it is.”

The bump in instances comes as mask-wearing might turn into extra of an exception than a rule. A federal decide in Florida on Monday struck down the Biden administration’s masks mandate for public transportation, most notably airplanes, and airways together with Delta, American, and United have already made mask-wearing non-compulsory.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki known as the choice “disappointing.”

But on the identical day, Philadelphia’s indoor masks mandate went again into impact after metropolis Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole, MD, mentioned there had been a 50% rise in confirmed COVID-19 instances in 10 days.

And although a second booster has not been licensed for most of the people, the FDA recommends one other dose of both the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine for folks over 50 and for sure folks with compromised immune programs.

Meanwhile, instances of the extremely infectious Omicron subvariants proceed to crop up, although it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not individuals who have contracted Omicron are immune, says Daniel Kuritzkes, MD, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“We’re all watching with some level of anxiety about just where the case numbers are heading,” he says. “They are going up slowly, but not nearly as dramatically as December.”

He continues, “It’s a bit of a unique year, this year. Two holidays coincided, but by themselves, they don’t have the kind of impact as, say, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We will be watching more closely to see what happens after Memorial Day.”

Despite decrease numbers, Kuritzkes and Brewer advocate that individuals, significantly those that are high-risk, proceed to take precautions, together with:

• Thorough and frequent hand-washing
• Getting updated on COVID-19 vaccines
• Testing when signs come up and staying house in case you’re beneath the climate
• Continuing to put on masks for individuals who are immunocompromised
• Opting for outside gatherings over massive indoor gatherings

Though the world has gotten nearer to regular, we aren’t out of the woods but, Brewer says.

“It’s not like the flu yet – when cases drop, they don’t drop to those low levels,” he says. “Most communities in the United States are reported as having low transmission levels, but it’s not zero. We still need to be vigilant.”

The post Docs Watch With ‘Some Anxiety’ For Post-Holiday COVID Spike appeared first on Healthy and Slim Life.