Womens Health, Fitness, Weight Loss, Beauty and More

5 Questions Women Don’t Ask Their Doctors

Women everywhere dread going to the OBGYN. It’s not just the cold metal stirrups. Sometimes invasive medical procedures can make us anxious to get out of the office ASAP. Meanwhile, some of the questions we were dying to ask the doctor are forgotten. If you’ve ever worried about your low sex drive or wondered what you can do for mild PMS, now’s the time to get your questions answered.

Q. I don’t enjoy sex very much because I often experience discomfort. Is there anything a doctor can do for this?

A. Physical and emotional factors alike can contribute to painful intercourse, or dyspareunia. Certainly there are gynecological conditions that manifest as sexual discomfort, and most of them can be resolved with a physician’s guidance. It’s important to be evaluated.

Common conditions represented by superficial pain include yeast infections, dryness and vulvodynia (pain in the vulva). Vaginismus, a spasmodic tightening of the vaginal muscles, can have roots in a medical malady or be a psychological reaction to sex.

If your pain is physically deeper, it could signal anything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis to a pelvic inflammatory disease. But don’t get spooked by the possibilities. Talk to a physician about your symptoms.

Q. I’m having trouble conceiving. What can my husband and I do before resorting to expensive treatments?

A. “Healthy bodies allow you to have a baby, and healthy bodies produce healthy babies,” says Jill Blakeway, a licensed acupuncturist and fertility specialist based in New York City. “It’s really not rocket science.”

Moms-to-be should exercise in moderation to reduce stress and achieve a comfortable body weight. Eat a lot of organic fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods. “We can be pretty sure that the collective burden of all the toxins and chemicals we take in on a regular basis stresses our reproductive cycle,” Blakeway explains.

Holistic solutions can be an excellent, affordable option. And remember, getting pregnant is a team effort. Women and men alike can give fertility a strong head start by minding the following:

Avoid alcohol
Avoid coffee
Eat healthy, unprocessed foods
Reduce stress
Don’t smoke
Don’t use marijuana or other drugs
Take multivitamins
Have sex!
Many factors will come into play—age, body weight, medical history—but there are several avenues of treatment to pursue. Not all are expensive, and you might even get some assistance from your insurance carrier.

Q. Is there anything I can do about my terrible PMS? I only have it a few days each month, but those days are wretched.

A. There are over 150 symptoms associated with premenstrual syndrome, from acne to swollen feet to wishing your spouse would get hit by a bus. But if you’re having extreme symptoms such as incapacitating pain, significant depression or cramps outside your normal cycle, consult a doctor to rule out more serious conditions.

Although there’s no cure-all, the right diet and exercise can bring physical and emotional relief.

Dial back the caffeine, which can bring on mood swings as well as breast soreness, and avoid alcohol. Reduce your intake of salt, sugar, fatty foods and red meat. Instead, seek sources of calcium, magnesium and vitamins B6 and E. The evidence on herbal remedies like primrose oil and chaste tree berry is anecdotal; some women swear by them, some swear at them.

Moderate aerobics (running, walking, swimming) and relaxation techniques (yoga, massage) tend to reduce fatigue, anxiety and depression.

While over-the-counter ibuprofen and diuretics can be helpful, there is better medical evidence that low doses of SSRIs—the same drugs used to counter depression—will relieve PMS symptoms effectively and rapidly.

Drinking Water

Between half and two thirds of the average person’s weight is made up of water. In a 150-pound person, that’s about 10 gallons of water. How much more pure, clean water do we need from our taps and supermarket shelves?

Pure water is odorless, colorless and tasteless.

Fashionable “flavored water” and clear beverages that taste like kiwi or smell like blueberries are not water, they are soft drinks. While most are relatively harmless and can help get you hydrated—since they taste good, you’re apt to drink more—no manufactured drink rivals the natural benefits of pure water.

Not all water is created equal.

Artesian water, ground water, mineral water, purified water, spring water … Selecting a bottle of H2O can be tougher than finding a regular coffee at Starbucks. These waters differ by their point of origin and the manner in which they are collected from the source. (Details are available at the Food and Drug Administration’s page.) But to comply with FDA regulations, bottling companies cannot add any ingredients other than fluoride or antimicrobial agents, which kill microscopic organisms, and still call it “bottled water.”

To know if you’re clean, check downstream.

The often-quoted quantity recommended for adults to consume is eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day. Even a healthy body needs water replenished regularly since so much is lost in urine, and we lose about 1.5 pints every day as water evaporates from the skin and from simply exhaling. One easy way to judge if you are getting enough water is by the color of your urine, which should be pale yellow or nearly clear. Dark urine indicates your kidneys are working too hard to filter impurities without the help of enough cleansing water.

Determine how much water you should consume when exercising by using this hydration calculator.

In case you haven’t heard it before, water is good for you.

Drinking water can help you burn fat, beat a fever, improve your complexion, relieve constipation, build muscle, drain a stuffy nose, fight a stomachache, and improve your mood. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a condition that isn’t eased by imbibing more cleansing, curative water. In Your Body’s Many Cries for Water, Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj argues that the body can “misinterpret thirst signals as pain,” and that drinking more water can be helpful in curing everything from headaches and depression to asthma and arthritis.

You’re lucky there’s clean water in your tap.

Water couldn’t be better for our health, but paying for it is starting to hurt. Preliminary statistics for 2005 show that Americans spent $9.8 billion on 7.35 billion gallons of bottled water in 2005. To use the FDA’s analogy, it would take about three hours for that much water to flow over Niagara Falls.

We are a fortunate nation. According to the international organization WaterAid, roughly one-sixth of the world’s population—1.1 billion people—do not have access to safe water.

To learn more about water and water consumption, check out these resources:

WaterAid
Bottled water consumption statistics are available through the Beverage Marketing Corp.
American Council on Exercise
Federal Drug Administration
Environmental Protection Agency
Your Body’s Many Cries for Water (Global Health Solutions)

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Birth Control

Imagine that you’re standing all alone on a football field. You can choose to stand anywhere you want to, but once you pick your spot, you can’t move again.

Now imagine that, somewhere over by the entrance, about a million people are massed and waiting, about to be released onto the field. They’re participating in a contest and the first one to touch you wins a brand new HDTV, a trip to Tahiti, and their very own pony. Granted, they’re all blindfolded. But once they’re free to run around the stadium’s enclosed space, how long do you really think it will take for one of them—or 20 of them—to slam right into you?

That, in a nutshell, is sex—from the perspective of an egg. When you think about it that way, it’s almost tempting to reverse the old adage about conception. Having a baby isn’t a miracle: Preventing one is.

Without any means of contraception, the average sexually active woman of childbearing age would have an 80 percent chance of getting pregnant within a year. In most cases, those odds are going to catch up to you eventually. Luckily, we live in a time where women who don’t want to have a baby have access to reliable means of contraception, many of which can be more than 90 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.

On the other hand, we also live in a time where there are so many options that it’s easy to end up overwhelmed. And that can lead to women making decisions that maybe aren’t the best ones for them, simply because they don’t have time to weed through all the information. If you’ve ever picked your contraceptive method because it was the only one you knew about or because that was what all your friends used, you may not be using the one that’s best for you. We’re breaking down almost every form of birth control available, to help you understand what it does, how well it works, and who can benefit the most.

The Pill

What it does: The pill you’re probably most familiar with is also called a “combination pill,” because it releases two different synthetic hormones into your body. Together, the artificial hormones work by preventing you from ovulating—releasing a mature egg cell from your ovaries. They have some other effects, as well, including thickening the mucus around your cervix, which makes it more difficult for sperm to actually get inside your uterus.

What it doesn’t do: Protect you from sexually transmitted diseases. The pill also doesn’t work 100 percent of the time. It’s rare—the failure rate is lower than 2 percent if used correctly—but some women can and will get pregnant, even if they’re following instructions to the letter. On the plus side, getting pregnant while on the pill isn’t harmful to you or the fetus.

How to get it: You need a prescription. However, you don’t need a parent’s permission. Although most medical professionals encourage underage patients to talk to their parents about health choices, there are no state or federal laws requiring it. According to a 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 60 percent of teenagers who visited a family planning clinic say their parents knew about the visit.

Is it reversible? Yes. Your body begins to return to normal hormone levels (and with that, normal ovulation) after a couple of days off the pill. Once you stop taking it, your chances of getting pregnant become about the same as a woman who’s never used hormonal contraception.

Side effects: The most common are breast tenderness, nausea, weight gain, mild headaches, and changes to mood or sex drive. For most women, these disappear after the first three months. If they don’t, you and your doctor may be able to manage them by switching to a pill with a different types or amounts of hormones.

Who can benefit the most: Women who tend to be detail-oriented. In order to use the pill correctly and keep your risk of pregnancy at a minimum, you need to know and follow its use instructions pretty closely. That usually means taking the pill at the same time every day, knowing exactly what you’re supposed to do if you miss a pill or two, and following lifestyle recommendations like not smoking (mixing cigarettes and the pill greatly increases your risk of heart attack).

Who should consider a different method: Smokers, definitely. Also: women who struggle with certain mental illnesses like depression or alcoholism, and women who have to use specific antibiotics or other prescriptions.

If you’re over the age of 35, you should also check with your doctor to make sure that you don’t have any of the health complications that can make the pill less effective and more dangerous. Most older women can continue using the pill without problems, but if you are diabetic or obese, for instance, the pill might not be for you.

You might not know: Combination pills can differ a lot from one brand to another. For instance, Yasmin—one of the newer pills on the market—is the only one that uses a specific type of progestin called Drospirenone. This new progestin has been shown to work better for some women who have unacceptable side effects while using other pills. On the downside, though, Drospirenone can also cause potassium to build up in your bloodstream, leading to possible complications in women with a history of jaundice and kidney or liver diseases.