Hot flashes not only greatly annoy women during the day, but they can prove a big disruption to sleep. For women suffering hot flashes after cancer treatment, rest is important, but difficult. And breast cancer patients can’t take advantage of hormone replacement therapy because they need to avoid estrogen.

One answer to the problem may be the drug gabapentin, a nonhormonal therapy. It was approved by the FDA to fight seizures, but other uses are becoming common. Gabapentin is widely prescribed to reduce pain.
In a study reported on at the National Cancer Institute website, patients taking gabapentin experienced either a 49% …read more

Earlier this week, I posted about ovarian cancer and preserving fertility among women who are still in their childbearing years (Ovarian Cancer, Young Women & Fertility).
But other than knowing that ovarian cancer is difficult to diagnose and it’s survival rate is not good because of the difficulty diagnosing it in the early stages, how much do you know about it?
Ovarian cancer, one of the gynecological cancers, along with uterine, endometrial, cervical and vaginal cancers, affects mostly women over the age of 50, or post menopause. Younger women do develop ovarian cancer but it’s not as common. While doctors don’t know …read more

My birthday is looming. I’ve never been concerned about my age, but I’ve never been this old before. I still picture myself as a 27-year-old woman and yet, I am so far removed from that age group it is depressing.
I was driving home from my friend Linda’s house (by the way, she is older than me) in this 90-degree heat with my air on 70 (because I don’t like to freeze, especially in summer), when I felt my seat warmer come on. What was so strange about it is that my seat only warms from the seat area, not the …read more

Previous findings have linked the menopause treatment of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to breast cancer.
Now, a new British study associates HRT to increased risk of ovarian cancer: women on HRT for more than five years are more than 20 per cent more likely to develop ovarian cancer.
But some experts think that the finding is an overstatement:
“If women take hormone therapy for more than five years there’s a risk of one per 2,500 women that they’ll get ovarian cancer so what that means is the risk is in fact very low,” said obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Rod Baber.
While women are not …read more