Articles

There was a little blurb in Family Circle this month (you know - the magazine that teases me with pictures of yummy desserts on the cover and appealing recipes throughout) about a study that was done recently about positive attitudes towards weight loss. Aparently, women who spend time talking to other women about how fat they are in negative terms are less likely to lose weight. Women who are positive and encouraging are MORE likely to succeed at weight loss.

Suzanne just emailed this to me (at my request - not because she thought it applied to me...)


Et cetera: Women’s breast cancer risk possibly tied to mother’s hip size

10/15/2007

Daughters of women with wide, round hips may be at increased risk of developing breast cancer because their mothers’ hip size reflects a higher level of certain sex hormones that can trigger an adverse change in the fetus’s breast tissue, according to an article in the American Journal of Human Biology. For the study, researchers from Oregon Health and Science University partnered with colleagues in Finland and the United Kingdom to analyze breast cancer rates among 6,370 women born in Helsinki between 1934 and 1944 whose mothers’ pelvic bones were measured during prenatal care visits. They discovered that daughters of mothers who had an intercristal diameter—defined as “the widest distance between the wing-like structures at the top of the hip bone”—of more than 11.8 inches were significantly more likely than other women to develop breast cancer; women with mothers whose wing-like hip structures were round were also at increased risk for the condition. While noting that these kinds of studies are “not designed to define precise biological or molecular mechanisms,” the researchers say the findings could help identify predisposing factors for the disease and yield targeted prevention strategies (ScienceDaily, 10/9).