The dangers that lurk in the use of hormone replacement therapy have once again been pushed to the forefront of conscious awareness. Women currently taking HRT, as well as those who have taken it in the recent past, are at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer.

HRT is a treatment used for women who experience severe hormone withdrawal symptoms during the post-menopausal phase. The therapy helps to alleviate or prevent symptoms such as mood swings, hot flashes, and the emotional repercussions of the loss of fertility when the ovaries stop producing.

HRT administers an artificial boost of the diminished hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and in some cases, even testosterone.

Over the eight-year analysis performed by study lead Lina Steinrud Morch and colleagues at Copenhagen University, 9 percent of the women who developed cancer were taking HRT, while 22 percent were previous HRT users, and 63 percent had never taken the therapy.

During the eight years of follow-up, the researcher team found 3,068 cases of ovarian cancer, with 2,681 being epithelial ovarian cancers. A decrease in the risk of ovarian cancer was noted immediately after women stopped taking hormones.

those women who had just halted HRT still had a 22 percent increased risk of ovarian cancer compared to those who were off for less than two years. The cancer risked diminished to normal with two to four years after stopping HRT.

Almost everyone gets headaches at one time or another, but for millions of Americans who have migraines, they are more than just an occasional annoyance

they are often disruptive and debilitating.

The pain is a severe throbbing on one or both sides of the head that can last for hours, or even days, and is often accompanied by nausea, dizziness, and sensitivity to light, sound or smells. But scientists say there is a bright spot for women who suffer these disabling headaches, and it’s not an aura.

While the researchers aren’t sure exactly why women who get migraines appear to have a reduced breast cancer risk, they suspect that hormones, estrogen in particular, are a likely explanation.

“It’s pretty clear that migraine, like breast cancer, is a hormonally related disease,” . “Many triggers for migraine are also things that reduce estrogen levels.” On the other hand, increased levels of estrogen are known to boost the risk for breast cancer, therefore it’s “biologically plausible” that migraine sufferers would be less prone to breast cancer.

This research suggests that women with migraine may have a lower risk of breast cancer

If we can better understand what the biological mechanisms are, that could open new avenues for research into breast cancer prevention.

• the attainment of womanhood come the emotional roller coaster, the bearing and rearing of children, and all the wonderful chaos that these aspects of life entail.
• Science has finally acknowledged that menopausal women experience both memory loss and learning difficulties, but also assures us that the phase suffered will pass.
• Menopause marks the permanent cessation of reproductive fertility. The term menopause describes the reproductive change in human females, where the end of fertility is indicated by the permanent stopping of menstruation or “menses.”
• “menopause” literally means the “end of monthly cycles” from the Greek words pausis and the word root men. Ah, an explanation for women feeling that everyone is speaking Greek during the menopausal transition.
• the researchers noted that the menopausal changes were subtle, and were more a phase of less improvement rather than actual decline.
• The good news is that when women are finished with the menopause transition and in steady postmenopause, cognitive performance, memory, learning, all that comes back to premenopause levels.
• The researchers found that nearly two-thirds of women experience memory problems during this transitional time in their lives.
• There is some suggestion that early use of hormone therapy might be helpful, but it’s just a hint.
• The researchers are continuing studies regarding the possible impact of menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes on memory and learning during the menopausal transition period.

• Although the onset of menopause brings with it a variety of unsettling symptoms ranging from hot flashes and night sweats to increased anxiety, irritability and more, women may be far better off to suffer these rather than seek the relief brought by hormone replacement therapy.
• A new study suggests that women who take estrogen-progestin pills and also develop lung cancer are at a 60 percent greater risk of dying from the disease than women who do not take hormones and develop lung cancer.
• the findings of the analysis indicate that smokers who receive hormone replacement therapy  should stop taking the hormones and for those smokers who are contemplating , careful consideration should be given prior to commencing it.
• Women almost certainly shouldn’t be using combined hormone therapy and tobacco at the same time
• This latest analysis used data from the Women’s Health Initiative study, a federal study in which 16,608 women were given either Prempro a drug combining estrogen and progestin or a placebo.
• Chlebowski noted that previous research suggests that hormones play a role in non-small cell lung cancer since women tend to have higher survival rates than men and are known to have a more positive response to certain therapies.
• Lung cancer is world’s leading cause of cancer death. In 2008, there were more than 215,000 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed and almost 162,000 deaths in the United States alone.