Pfizer has set aside $840 million to pay claims against Prempro, which was linked to breast cancer in a 2002 study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. So far the company has resolved about 46% of the litigation resulting from claims against the drug, which is still available. Prempro was developed and sold by Wyeth prior to the 2009 merger takeover by Pfizer.

Pfizer has said that it will appeal the ruling to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Read more: Pfizer Loses Court Case on Menopause Drug (PFE) – 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2012/01/04/pfizer-loses-court-case-on-menopause-drug-pfe/#ixzz1iWS9WoPT

Do we really need studies like this Dutch one looking at “the impact of menopausal symptoms on work ability”  that claims “Menopausal symptoms are negatively associated with work ability and may increase the risk of sickness absence”?

I mean what were they thinking?  That this is going to help women in the 40-60 age bracket obtain employment more easily?  Or did they think this would encourage employers to offer increased sick leave to women? Over 40?  Here have 5 more days sick leave.

How about a study on the influence of major sporting events on the sick leave taken by men?

We all know that excess exercise can stop a women’s periods.  Maybe this is nature telling us we are not supposed to have bodies like boys.

Researchers used data from the Iowa Women’s Health Study which followed a group of women with a mean age of 61.6 for a period of 20 years starting 1986.  They concluded:

In older women, several commonly used dietary vitamin and mineral supplements may be associated with increased total mortality risk; this association is strongest with supplemental iron. In contrast to the findings of many studies, calcium is associated with decreased risk.

The supplements they referred to included multivitamins , vitamin B_{6 ,} folic acid , iron, magnesium, zinc  and copper. 

It goes without saying that it is better to get your vitamins and minerals from food.  Supplements are just that – supplements to your food intake. 

However there are clear cases for the use of supplemental Vitamin D, Omega 3 and so on for menopausal women, therefore alarmists headlines like these need to be tempered by specific details.

The study involved 68 women who had reached menopause and were taking hormone replacement for at least one year.

They found that compounds containing conjugated equine estrogen have negative effects on cognition whereas bio-identical estrogen (17β-estradiol/17β-E) has a positive or at least no effect.

The bottom line? Keep away from anything that comes out of a horse’s bottom.

Do women really want to have babies late in life or would we prefer a society that did not punish our careers for having them early?

According to Dr. Jonathon Tilly’s keynote address to North American Menopause Society (NAMS) 22nd Annual Meeting entitled”Ovarian Aging: Can Science Turn Back the Clock?”, the concept of the biological clock in which a woman’s egg supply becomes depleted over time might be reversible.

Based on experiments with mice, he suggests that a woman’s ovarian pool could possibly be replenished by implanting human oogonial stem cells that generate new germ cells and new oocytes in adult ovary tissue.

Researchers have used co-enzyme Q10 to make “older” mice produce not only more eggs but also healthier eggs.

They believe that if CoQ10 can have the same effect on humans then women seeking fertility treatment will not only produce embyros with less chance of chromosomal abnormalities but also there will be less need to transfer multiple embryos thus reducing the instance of multiple births due to IVF.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Fertility+benefit+from+vitamin/5441089/story.html#ixzz1ZAnnwJBM

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Fertility+benefit+from+vitamin/5441089/story.html#ixzz1ZAmLC1AS

Our mothers called it “change of life” which is pretty much what it is.  And change is good, right?

Now they label it “menopause” and tell us that we can only use that word when we have not had a period for 12 months. Mind you, once that happens, we will always have to use that word.  Even at 90.  There’s no “post-menopause” –  just forever menopause.  It is no longer a change of life. It is a life sentence.   Not so good.

And if  that is not quite bad enough, they then invented “peri-menopause” to cover anyone remotely close to menopause.  How do they figure that out when it changes from woman to woman? Well we’re talking about science here so let’s just use a formula.  The average age of menopause is the USA is 51 so anyone within 7 years of 51 will cover it. So even if you go through menopause at 56, according to doctors you are peri-menopausal from 44 onwards even if you are pregnant to the eyeballs with baby #3.  But wait, there’s more.  They then invented ”pre-menopause” to cover the 7 years before that.  All up the menopause market is now any women over 37. 

And unfortunately, advertisers consistently project negative images of menopause in order to hawk their products since fear of the lack of sex also sells. And in doing so they perpetuate the crone myth.  The overwhelming message is that unless you actually do something about this dreadful impending thing called menopause, you will not be “slim, sane and sexy”.  No, no. You will be a fat mad old cow that no man would touch even with a ten foot pole. And it’s not just advertisers.  The media play into that message with articles such as “The Bitch is Back”.

The underlying message is that women must project an image that equates to reproductive viability in order to be of any true value to society. If we cannot attract a mate in order to reproduce we are of no true use except possibly as grandmothers. Menopause by definition means we cannot reproduce.  The horror, the horror.  We dye our hair, spend a fortune on our skin, yearn for slim bodies. But is that enough?   Will women soon be driven to faking their period in order to deny having reached menopause at all?  You think that impossible?  I urge you to watch a wonderful Lebanese movie called Caramel. It’s a great movie about love marriage and friendship amongst six women.  But when you watch it, take notice.  One of the women, Jamale, a divorced mother of teens and a part-time model,  does exactly that.

What is already known on this topic

• Although heart disease mortality increases with age, it is lower in women than in men

• It has been suggested that this protective effect is due to female sex hormones, and the protection is therefore lost at menopause

What this study adds

• Heart disease mortality in women increased exponentially with age, with no acceleration at menopause. In men, there was a rapid increase during young adulthood followed by reduced rates of increase

• The early rapid acceleration in male heart disease mortality could explain these sex differences rather than menopausal changes in women

• Efforts to improve cardiac health in women should focus on their lifetime risk rather than only after menopause

Symptoms of heart attack vary significantly between men to women.  For men it is the traditional pain the chest and left arm.  However for women it is not so. While the most common heart attack symptom is still some type of pain, pressure or discomfort in the chest, women are more likely than are men to also have heart attack symptoms without chest pain, such as:

• Neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or abdominal discomfort
• Shortness of breath
• Nausea or vomiting
• Abdominal pain or “heartburn”
• Sweating
• Light headedness or dizziness
• Unusual or unexplained fatigue.

Unfortunately many doctors are still uneducated in this regard and therefore women need to factor this in when experiencing the above symptoms.