Category Archives: blog

Male Health Update: Soft Drinks May Give You Soft Penis

July 13, 2016blog, Sexual HealthSRH Matters

Male Health Update: Soft Drinks May Give You Soft Penis

2016-07-13

Male health update! Men who love drinking soda or soft drinks may be at risk of having “soft penises” and lower sperm count. Researchers found that excessive soda consumption can cause erectile dysfunction and reduce sperm count by as much as thirty percent.

This important male health update came from studies showing how drinking too much soda may promote poor sexual health in men. Researchers said there is a high chance some men suffering erectile dysfunction consumed too much soda in their past.

A new study suggests reasons why some men have soft penises potentially due to drinking too much soda. Researchers said erectile dysfunction occurs when high sugar intake causes fat to fill some blood vessels in the penis.

The condition would then block blood flow, making it harder to get an erection.

More Soda, Lower Sperm Count

Another study conducted by researchers at Copenhagen University Hospital shows soda addicts had lower sperm count than those with poor consumption of soda. Excessive soda drinking reduced the sperm count of some men into an average of 35 million per liter.

Researchers found non-soda addicts had an average of 56 million sperm per liter. The findings come from the analysis of the conditions of nearly 2,500 men.

However, researchers noted further studies are needed to see how soft drinks directly affect sperm numbers. They added caffeine has been found not causing any effect on men’s sexual function.

10 facts you need to know about your sexual health

July 13, 2016blog, Sexual HealthSRH Matters

10 facts you need to know about your sexual health

Dr Aisling Loy, consultant in genito-urinary medicine at the GUIDE Clinic in St James’s Hospital, tells us all we need to know about keeping downstairs in tip-top shape

STIs do not discriminate

In general, people are not great at looking after their sexual health. Many believe only “promiscuous people” get STIs. If you’re sexually active, you’re at risk, even if you do not have multiple partners. STIs can be transmitted even when condoms are used, though they are the most effective barrier to prevent transmission. Herpes, genital warts, hepatitis B, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhoea can be transmitted through unprotected oral sex. The only 100pc protection against STIs is total abstinence, which isn’t realistic for most. The next best thing is to wear a condom and get tested regularly.

Most STIs have no symptoms

Many people believe that if they had an STI they would know about it. They expect to see or feel something different if they are infected. However, most STIs have no symptoms at all. The only way you will know if you are carrying one is to get tested. There are over 30 different types of bacteria, viruses and parasites that cause STIs. Many of the more common ones, such as chlamydia, are usually detected in patients who have no symptoms.

STIs are on the increase

STIs — including HIV — are increasing. More people are getting tested, but a lot of it is down to more people actually having STIs due to factors such as the availability of casual sex through apps, more disinhibition through alcohol and drugs and lower condom usage.

Syphilis is still around

Syphilis is a bacterium that can cause damage to the heart, brain, nerves, eyes and ears and can be passed from mother to child in utero. If left untreated, it can have very significant consequences. Most people diagnosed with syphilis have no symptoms and it is picked up in a blood test. Sometimes the only symptom, if any, is a fleeting rash on the body that then disappears. Syphilis is easily treated with penicillin injections.

Herpes is more common than you think

Herpes is extremely common but there is still a lot of misinformation about it. Very often people diagnosed with herpes suffer in silence and feel they can never have a normal relationship again. However, that is often not the case.

It is important to know if it is herpes type 1 or 2 that you have been diagnosed with, as there are different implications for your sexual partners depending on the type. Herpes type 1 is a cold sore virus and can also cause genital herpes. However, most people will pick up herpes type 1 at some stage in their lives so it is usually of less consequence to other partners.

Most people pick up the genital warts virus at some stage

There is an awful lot of misinformation about genital warts online. Most people don’t realise that most sexually active adults will pick up the genital wart virus at some stage and as the virus only stays in your system for approximately two years, it is often of no consequence to most. Although there is no known medicine to get rid of the virus (your immune system will do that), we have many treatment options to get rid of genital warts.

The ‘Morning after Pill’ for HIV

Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) is essentially the morning after pill for HIV. If you have had a significant HIV risk and are within 72 hours of that exposure, you can attend your local STI clinic or Emergency Department to avail of PEP. This involves taking HIV treatment tablets for 28 days to reduce your risk of acquiring HIV. The best prevention though is to always use condoms.

Free Hepatitis vaccination to prevent incurable illness

Many people are at risk of hepatitis B through sex. This virus is 100 times more infectious than HIV, more common than HIV, and in 10pc of people, becomes a life-long infection that can lead to liver cancer or death.

How often should I be screened?

If you are sexually active, get screened at least once a year. For men who have sex with men, those who have multiple partners and those who have changed partners recently, it is a good idea to get screened twice yearly.

What does an STI screen entail?

At the GUIDE clinic we now offer express screenings. If you have no symptoms, haven’t been in contact with a known STI, and don’t need to talk to a healthcare provider, then you may be suitable. Some STIs can be diagnosed on the day and others take 1-2 weeks for results to come back. The clinic, and medication, is completely free of charge. However, donations, no matter how small, are gratefully received.

Dr Aisling Loy is a consultant in Genito-Urinary Medicine at the GUIDE Clinic, St James’s Hospital

‘Virtual doctors’ helping patients in Zambia

July 4, 2016blog, HealthSRH Matters

‘Virtual doctors’ helping patients in Zambia

2016-07-04

The idea of a “virtual doctor” project might sound rather futuristic.

But the inspiration for this scheme to improve health services in Zambia began in very low-tech and unhappy circumstances.

Huw Jones, working in Zambia as a safari guide, was driving a Land Rover along a road in a remote part of the country.

He saw a trail of blood in the road, and his first reaction was that it might have come from an animal killed by a lion.

But he came across a couple on a bike – the man riding and the woman carried on the handlebars.

She was pregnant and bleeding heavily and they had been cycling for hours with the aim of reaching the nearest hospital, almost 60 miles away.

The woman was in a great deal of pain and her husband seemed to be in a state of shock, says Mr Jones.

“In the heat and that terrain, they were desperate,” he says.

Mr Jones stopped to pick them up and drive them.

But the woman was already weak and died in the back of the Land Rover before they could reach anyone who could give them medical help.

“It affected me quite deeply. I wondered if I could do anything,” says Mr Jones.

It was an awful example of the lack of medical provision for rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa – and, he says, he has come across too many deaths that could have been avoided with better care.

Zambia has about 1,600 doctors for a population of 14 million, and two-thirds of these are working in towns and cities, while most of the country’s population is in the countryside.

It means access to good quality health care is often difficult if not impossible.

When Mr Jones returned to the UK, he began to develop a project to fill some of these gaps.

He set up the Virtual Doctors charity, based in Brighton, which uses the expertise of volunteer doctors in the UK to provide direct and individual support for health workers in Zambia.

For many communities, it is not practical to expect sick and frail people to walk or cycle for hours to hospital.

So families depend on rural health centres, which have health workers but no qualified doctors.

The virtual doctors project means that these isolated health centres can be supported by doctors thousands of miles away.

Health workers and clinical officers on the ground use an app on a smartphone or tablet computer to take notes on a patient’s symptoms and photographs.

This information is sent to a volunteer doctor in the UK who helps with a diagnosis and recommends treatment.

Cases are directed towards doctors with a relevant specialism, whether it is skin diseases or HIV and Aids-related problems.

The doctor in the UK will have a list of the drugs and equipment kept in the health centre in Zambia and can suggest treatment or further tests based on what is practical and available.

“For instance, there’s no point calling for an MRI scan,” says Mr Jones.

Virtual Doctors is now supporting 19 rural health centres, which typically deal with problems such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/Aids and pregnancy-related conditions.

There are also two district hospitals taking part in the project.

Mr Jones says that even where there are facilities such as X-ray machines, there can be a shortage of radiologists to look at the evidence.

The virtual doctors in the UK have been able to help with chest X-rays of patients in Zambia, he says.

These local health centres have catchment areas of tens of thousands of people, and hospitals provide services for hundreds of thousands. And Mr Jones says the virtual doctors are now supporting health services for almost a million people.

The charity wants to expand further, with discussions in progress about working with other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Tanzania and Uganda.

Mobile-phone networks are improving, and that could mean moving to more direct, real-time ways of communicating, such as video conferencing.

But Mr Jones says the emphasis must be on a system that is robust, simple, reliable and can be depended upon to work.

Former Education Secretary Charles Clarke, who is supporting the project, describes it as a “brilliant initiative that brings together voluntary expertise and desperate need”.

The Virtual Doctor system has been backed by the Zambian government.

Muyeba Chikonde, Zambia’s high commissioner in the UK, said he was very pleased at the assistance being provided.

He said it was in the spirit of “ubuntu” – a word used in southern Africa to suggest a philosophy of sharing and showing “humanity towards others”.

Why men might underestimate women’s sex drive

July 4, 2016blog, Psycological HealthSRH Matters

Why men might underestimate women’s sex drive

Most men may be missing the mark when it comes to gauging women’s interest in sex.

Psychologists have long known that when they first meet, men tend to overestimate how sexually interested a woman may be.

Once two adults are in an established relationship, however, men tend to underestimate their partner’s sexual interest, according to new research published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

And there’s a reason for this drastic shift in perception, said Amy Muise, a post-doctoral relationship researcher at the University of Toronto and lead author of the research.

“Our findings suggest that under-perception might keep men motivated to entice their partner’s interest, and it may also minimize sexual rejection,” which would help maintain the quality of the relationship, Muise said.

“[The findings] are surprising in the sense that it’s the opposite bias that men tend to show in initial encounters, but we did expect that these biases would differ in established relationships,” she added. “It makes sense, since the goal in initial encounters might be to attract a partner, so over-perceiving their interest can help men feel more comfortable initiating a conversation or date. But the goal in relationships is to maintain the relationship.”

The research, which was conducted on mostly heterosexual couples, included three separate studies. In the first study, 44 couples completed surveys each night for three weeks. The surveys measured the participants’ sex drive as well as their daily feelings about their relationship.

In the second study, members of 84 couples were interviewed separately in a lab about their sex drive, how satisfied they were in their relationship and what they thought of their partner’s sex drive.

The third study involved 101 couples who completed a five- to 10-minute survey each day for three weeks in which they answered questions about their own sex drive and why they either felt motivated to pursue sex with their partner or not.

It turned out that men’s under-perception of their partner’s interest in sex was associated with their partner feeling more satisfied and committed to the relationship. Additionally, the researchers saw no consistent over- or under-perception bias in women.

“But, when women were higher in desire or on days when they were more motivated to avoid rejection, they demonstrated an under-perception bias as well,” Muise said. “This suggested to me that it is not just about gender but about who is higher in desire. Men tend to be higher in desire than women, on average, in relationships.”

The samples of same-sex couples in the study were too small to make a difference in the results, the researchers noted. “We conducted the analyses with and without the same-sex couples and the pattern of results remained the same,” they wrote in the study.

Andrea Meltzer, an assistant professor of psychology at Florida State University who was not involved in the research, said the findings were surprising and interesting.

“People’s behaviors are a function of their judgments and perception. That is, they tend to react to their partners based on their perception of their relationships,” she said. “For example, if they perceive their partners as satisfied, they tend to behave more positively. Thus, to have the most complete understanding of relationships, it is important to understand the source and function of intimate perceptions.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/01/health/men-women-sex-drive/index.html

Sexual and Reproductive Health in Young Women with CF: Is It Being Discussed?

July 1, 2016Behaviour, blogSRH Matters

Sexual and Reproductive Health in Young Women with CF: Is It Being Discussed?

2016-07-01

Dr Lewis First, MD, MS, Editor-in-Chief, Pediatrics

Care of cystic fibrosis has come a long way over the past several decades with patients with this genetic disorder now living way into adulthood—prompting the need for seamless transitions of care from pediatrician to adult clinician and from pediatric multidisciplinary CF program to an adult one. In the midst of these transitions, there is a role for discussion of sexual and reproductive health counseling with teenagers and young adults—and yet while this is an essential conversation to have with these patients, just how often does it occur and if it does, is it done in a way that is comfortable for the patient?

Kazmerski et al. (peds.2015-4452) decided to look into questions like these by performing qualitative interviews with CF patients ages 18 to 30 and their corresponding CF program directors. Key themes from these discussions emerged including the importance of having such conversations but also the relative discomfort of both patient and CF specialist to talk about sexual health as well as be familiar with resources to improve sexual and reproductive health care in these patients. It was also noted that earlier discussions were preferred by patients especially if they were initiated by the CF provider.

Yet while one might want to assign this important conversation to CF providers, there is also the CF patient’s general pediatrician who can and should be bringing up issues of sexual and reproductive health during health maintenance visits. The authors of this study did not focus on the role of the primary care pediatrician to work in collaboration with the CF specialist, but that is why we chose to publish this article—so that all pediatricians can be made aware of the need to sexually counsel a teen or young adult patient with CF just as we would patients at the same age without CF.

This article calls for better sexual and reproductive health education and services for CF patients as well as other chronic disease patients, and there is no reason that education and services cannot be offered by the primary care medical home in conjunction with the CF program in your area. Are you doing that? If so, let us know by sharing your practice tips with our readers by responding to this blog, leaving a comment on our online website where the article is posted, or by sharing a post on our Facebook or Twitter links.

Opportunities to help safeguard sexual and reproductive health and rights in emergencies

July 1, 2016blog, HealthSRH Matters

Opportunities to help safeguard sexual and reproductive health and rights in emergencies

Women and girls face diverse sexual and reproductive health challenges in emergency situations

2 May 2016 – There are now over 125 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, a fivefold increase from only a decade ago. Of some 100 million people who were targeted in 2015 with humanitarian aid, an estimated 26 million are women and girls of reproductive age. A new commentary highlights the urgent need to answer to the specific sexual and reproductive health needs of girls and women living in emergency situations.

Published in the May 2016 issue of the WHO Bulletin, which focuses on the implementation of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ health, the commentary also underlines the opportunities for political commitment at the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit. The article was written by experts from WHO and the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Population Fund, the Women’s Refugee Commission, and the humanitarian settings workstream of the new Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2020).

The authors state, ‘Women and girls are affected disproportionately in both sudden and slow-onset emergencies and face multiple sexual and reproductive health challenges in emergency contexts.’

More than half of maternal deaths occur in fragile and humanitarian settings. A woman’s lifetime risk of maternal death – the probability that a woman dying from a maternal cause – is 1 in 4900 in developed countries, versus 1 in 54 in countries designated as fragile states; showing the consequences of breakdowns in health systems.

Crises often exacerbate existing violence against women and girls, and present additional forms of violence against girls and women.

The challenges faced by girls and women in relation to sexual and reproductive health and well-being are diverse. The authors note how emergencies often reveal pre-existing weaknesses and a lack of resilience in health systems, as well as an absence of quality data on women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health – which in turn impedes the effective design and implementation of sustainable health interventions.

The authors of the commentary state that, ‘To achieve the vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – to leave no one behind – it is imperative to protect and improve women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being and emergencies.’

The authors highlight how emphasis on addressing humanitarian settings in the new Global Strategy can help countries and fragile states deliver for populations living in emergency and protracted crisis settings, through a series of defined actions. They also raise awareness of the global imperative to raise sufficient and continued funds to support implementation of the new Global Strategy.

In May 2016, humanitarian leaders, advocates, civil society and activists will come together at the first World Humanitarian Summit held in Istanbul, Turkey. The commentary’s authors stress how this event will present a crucial opportunity for participants to commit to the United Nations’ Secretary-General’s proposed agenda for humanity within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development:

‘By endorsing the Secretary-General’s call to action, summit participants can commit to the actions proposed by the global strategy for women, children and adolescents living in emergency settings.’

Sexual and reproductive health and rights in emergencies
Bull World Health Organ 2016;94:311 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.16.173567
WHO Bulletin – Volume 94, Number 5, May 2016
Read more about the May 2016 issue
Violence against women
WHO fact sheet
Maternal mortality
WHO fact sheet

Restrictive laws do not necessarily lower abortion rates

July 1, 2016blog, Reproductive HealthSRH Matters

Restrictive laws do not necessarily lower abortion rates

TRACKING abortion rates is a hard task. Some countries under-report them, and many do not report them at all. A new paper published in the Lancet, led by Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute, and the World Health Organisation, is only the fourth such study, and supersedes previous estimates that are considered too conservative. The authors (who also produced the last study four years ago) estimate that the global rate fell slightly from 40 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1990, to 35 in 2014. But this masks a wide variation by income and by region. In the developed world, rates declined dramatically from 46 to 27 as better family planning and education became available to women to prevent unintended pregnancies. The steepest drop was seen in eastern Europe following the break-up of the Soviet Union, as women gained access to family planning and modern contraception. By contrast, the abortion rate has stayed relatively unchanged in developing regions and the share of pregnancies ending in abortion has nudged up from 21% to 24%. This matters: 50m of the 56m abortions every year are in developing countries. In Latin America, which has restrictive abortion laws and the highest abortion rates, one in three pregnancies ended in abortion in 2014, higher than any other region. Restrictive laws do not appear to lower the number of procedures, but do increase the likelihood of health risks to women who must seek unsafe procedures. Around $300m a year is spent treating an estimated 7m women who suffer complications after unsafe abortions.

Research focuses on health needs of gays, lesbians

June 28, 2016blog, Sexual HealthSRH Matters

Research focuses on health needs of gays, lesbians

2016-06-28

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN

Researchers now have a broader understanding of the health disparities suffered by gay, lesbian and bisexual people. A recent study found that these groups are more likely to suffer psychological distress, heavy drinking and heavy cigarette smoking.

The study, published in the American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine journal on Monday, sheds new light on such disparities in a population-based sample of adults in the United States.

“This study was one of the largest, most comprehensive studies of its kind to find differences in health and health behaviors by sexual orientation,” said Carrie Henning-Smith, health policy researcher at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the study. “Our findings should raise concern that lesbian, gay and bisexual adults experience health disparities.”

The researchers analyzed data collected from more than 68,000 adults nationwide as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2013 and 2014National Health Interview Surveys. The surveys included questions about sexual orientation, chronic conditions, mental health, alcohol consumption, cigarette use and overall health.

The researchers discovered that gay and bisexual men were more likely than heterosexual men to suffer severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and heavy cigarette smoking. Lesbians were more likely than heterosexual women to experience psychological distress, poor or fair health, and heavy drinking and smoking. Bisexual women were more likely to suffer multiple chronic conditions.

“The data did not allow us to identify specific causes of health disparities in this study,” Henning-Smith said. “However, we know from other research that the experience of being part of a stigmatized minority population can lead to chronic stress, which, in turn, can have negative impacts on health and health behaviors.”

The researchers hope that the data could help to inform and encourage clinicians to be more sensitive to and aware of the specific psychological and physical needs of gay, lesbian and bisexual patients.

Additionally, health care providers should be prepared to provide clinically recommended guidelines that address the unique health needs of their patients, said Gilbert Gonzales, assistant professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University and lead author of the study.

“We need to make sure all of our health surveys and electronic health records collect information on sexual orientation and transgender identity in order to track our progress towards eliminating LGBT health disparities,” he said.

Researchers across the country are further investigating these disparities, including at the University of California, Davis Health System’s Center for Reducing Health Disparities, said the center’s founding director, Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, who was not involved in the new study.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine‘s health and medicine division “has recommended the collection of sexual orientation and gender identity as a critically important way to measure quality and progress at reducing, and ultimately eliminating, disparities based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” Aguilar-Gaxiola said.

The UC Davis Health System was one of the first health care providers in the nation to ask sexual orientation and gender identity questions as part of a patient’s electronic medical records.

Now, the Center for Reducing Health Disparities is implementing a five-year intervention in Northern California’s Solano County to gather more data about the health needs of the LGBT community, as well as train community leaders and health service providers about how to appropriately address those needs.

Overall, the goal is to eliminate health disparities among the Latino, Filipino and LGBT communities by collaborating with community leaders and county staff to improve access to, and the utilization of, mental health services, Aguilar-Gaxiola said.

“First, we need to have the data,” he said. “Second, there needs to be services, and those services need to be in settings that are welcoming, such as use a rainbow flag as a welcoming sign for the LGBT community. Next, pay attention to the youth who are in the process of self-identifying and know how their families respond. The youth tend to report the lowest satisfaction with mental health services.”

Aguilar-Gaxiola said he hopes this approach not only will eliminate racial and sexual orientation-related health disparities in Solano County, it could help inform how to eliminate disparities in the United States and around the world.

“Each population has its own needs and its own issues,” he said. “With the new research and data we are seeing, there is some awareness but not nearly enough of what is needed.”

Abortion ruling reactions are strong, divided on the front lines in Texas

June 28, 2016blog, Reproductive HealthSRH Matters

Abortion ruling reactions are strong, divided on the front lines in Texas

For some, there were tears of joy, shock and sighs of relief. For others, there was disappointment and a vow to continue battling.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to supporters of abortion rights Monday morning. In Texas, where the Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt case began, reactions were strong and divided, as they were nationwide.

“I am beyond elated,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, said in a written statement. “After years of fighting heartless, anti-abortion Texas politicians who would seemingly stop at nothing to push abortion out of reach, I want everyone to understand: you don’t mess with Texas, you don’t mess with Whole Woman’s Health, and you don’t mess with this beautiful, powerful movement of people dedicated to reproductive health, rights, and justice.”

Less enthusiastic was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said the original law “was an effort to improve minimum safety standards and ensure capable care for Texas women. It’s exceedingly unfortunate that the court has taken the ability to protect women’s health out of the hands of Texas citizens and their duly-elected representatives.”

The Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether two key provisions in Texas’ House Bill 2, enacted in 2013, constituted an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions in the Lone Star State. The state argued that the law protected women’s health, while opponents pointed to the closure of more than half of Texas’ abortion clinics and claimed that the law only hurt women.

The court’s decision may deter other states from pushing for “clinic shutdown” laws.

Since the passage of HB2, women in certain areas of the state have found themselves living in abortion deserts, where they’ve struggled to find services. So this ruling was a particular relief to women such as Charlotte Dunham, who lives in Lubbock, where she is the director of women’s studies at Texas Tech University.

“This is especially good news for the women in West Texas,” she said, “where so many clinics have closed and women have had to travel, in many cases, impossible distances to get an abortion, even when the pregnancy was a result of rape or the pregnancy was a danger to a woman’s health.”

But anti-abortion activists such Dorothy Boyett are poised to get back to work. Every week for two decades, she stationed herself outside a now-closed abortion clinic in Lubbock. She was overjoyed when it finally shut down and believes HB2 helped reduce abortions in her state.

“I am not expecting an abortion facility to open in Lubbock in the immediate future,” she said. “But if and when it does, I will resume my efforts to reach out to women and save babies.”

Aimee Arrambide wrote her response while crying “tears of joy” in her Austin kitchen Monday morning. Her late father was an abortion provider in Texas, and she said she could not be more proud.

“It isn’t, or shouldn’t be, surprising when the Supreme Court upholds an obvious constitutional right. What’s surprising is that taxpayers in Texas, and in dozens of other states, allow extremists to waste millions of tax dollars enacting, enforcing and defending laws like HB2,” said Arrambide, a reproductive rights program manager and policy specialist at the Public Leadership Institute.

“After being pushed back 10 steps, Texas women can now take one step forward,” she continued. “Our job is to turn this tiny stream of constitutional protection into a river of justice.”

The cross-currents, though, will undoubtedly continue to flow. After all, abortion has long been a hot-button issue in the United States.

“We are very disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life. “The State of Texas will be unable to fully implement HB 2’s common sense regulations to protect the health and safety of women at substandard abortion facilities. Our work to protect mothers and unborn babies from abortion will continue.”

Many on either side of the debate were quick to respond Monday. But for one physician, who performs abortions in Dallas and for her own protection refuses to be named, the ruling left her stunned. She’d trained herself to expect the worst.

“I had lost faith that our system could do right by women, by women’s health, their families, their potential,” she wrote in an e-mail Monday morning. “I thought that we had gone down the tragically oppressive path so far that we had abandoned common sense, logic, compassion, evidence-based healthcare.”

But as the news sank in, she couldn’t contain her excitement.

“Overjoyed, weeping, in a state of ecstatic shock,” she continued. “Long live women’s agency to control their bodies and their lives!”

Jessica Ravitz, CNN

Eating Breakfast Isn’t as Important as You Think

June 28, 2016blog, HealthSRH Matters

Eating Breakfast Isn’t as Important as You Think

You’ve heard it all before: Breakfast is “the most important meal of the day” and skipping it can lead to weight gain, a sluggish metabolism, or stress. According to a new piece in The New York Times however, our beliefs about breakfast are all based on “misinterpreted research and biased studies”–propaganda, basically.

Author Aaron E. Carroll notes that almost all breakfast studies suffer from a “publication bias.” There are flaws in reporting of studies that skew findings to link skipping breakfast with causing obesity. Carroll writes:

The [reports] improperly used causal language to describe their results. They misleadingly cited others’ results. And they also improperly used causal language in citing others’ results. People believe, and want you to believe, that skipping breakfast is bad.

Additionally, there are usually conflicts of interest behind the studies, considering most of them are funded by the food industry. The Quaker Oats Center of Excellence, for instance,paid for a trial that concluded eating oatmeal or frosted cornflakes reduces weight and cholesterol. Go figure.

We’re conditioned from a young age to believe that breakfast is essential to performance. It turns out that’s because most of the research geared toward kids is meant to evaluate the impact of school breakfast programs. They don’t take into consideration that 15 million children in the U.S. go hungry at home–of course they would do better in school if they eat. “That isn’t the same, though, as testing whether children who are already well nourished and don’t want breakfast should be forced to eat it,” Carroll writes.

Overall, you should just go with your gut. If you’re hungry in the morning, eat. If you’re not, don’t think you’re sinning by skipping it. Finally, approach all studies skeptically–Carroll put it best: “Breakfast has no mystical powers.”