Smoking brings on the menopause

Add comment July 23rd, 2007

Norwegian researchers have discovered that women who smoke are 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have an early menopause. The researchers say smokers are more likely to begin the menopause before the age of 45 putting themselves at an increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease. Dr. Thea F. Mikkelsen of the University of Oslo and her colleagues found that among 2,123 women 59 to 60 years old, those who currently smoked were 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have undergone early menopause and for the heaviest smokers, the risk of early menopause was almost double.

The researchers also found that women who were smokers, but quit at least 10 years before menopause, were substantially less likely than current smokers to have stopped menstruating before age 45.

Mikkelsen and her team say evidence already exists which shows that smoking later in life makes a woman more likely to have early menopause, while smokers who quit before middle age may not be affected.

However the researchers went one step further and investigated whether exposure to second-hand smoke might also influence the timing of menopause.

They found that almost 10 percent of the women went through menopause before age 45 and of that number around 25 percent were current smokers, 28.7 percent were ex-smokers and 35.2 percent reported current passive exposure to smoke.

The women who had quit smoking at least a decade before menopause were 87 percent less likely than their peers who currently smoked to have gone through menopause early.

When they were compared with married women, widows were also at increased risk of early menopause, as were women who were in poor health.

In general the better educated women were less likely to go into menopause early, but they were also less likely to be smokers.

A good social life also appeared to cut the early menopause risk and the researchers found no link between coffee or alcohol consumption or passive exposure to smoke and early menopause risk.

Mikkelsen and her team say the earlier a woman stops smoking the more protection she derives with respect to an early onset of menopause.”

The research is published in the online journal “BMC Public Health.”

Sex Life: Women’s Health Works It Out

Add comment July 6th, 2007

Any magazine that dares to print the line, “When your clitoris gets frostbite, the terrorists win” is A-okay with us.

Women’s Health, sister publication to six-pack showcase Men’s Health, visibly outpaces sleepy competitors Self and Shape in the field of female-oriented fitness magazines. A hybrid of Vogue, Bust, Outside and the science journals at your nutritionist’s office, Women’s Health launched in late 2005 and may still be flying under the radar because it puts anonymous hotties on the cover and saves the celebrities—such as Tina Fey (30 Rock) and Jenna Fischer (The Office)—for the inside pages. This is no doubt an effort to save us from our own neuroses about skinny women of stage and screen, but it also gives the mag a welcome approachability.

But let’s talk about the sex. In addition to coverage of familiar and safe topics like nutrition, medicine, exercise and weight loss, Women’s Health dares to discuss female sexuality with a certain bright boldness that is neither too clinical nor too skanky. The frostbitten clitoris was the result of a feature testing out some oft-prescribed erotic experiments; another recent story about the world “down there” was illustrated with an oyster, a live beaver and a taco. Not that any of those are, you know, anatomically correct, but we love the moxie anyway. Check it out.

Source: http://www.eonline.com/coolstuff/detail/index.jsp