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New research has found that young women who drink caffeinated beverages on the daily experience changes in hormone levels. How much will your Starbucks and Diet Coke addictions affect your chemical ladyhood? Like being arrested in Arizona, the way caffeine treats your lady hormones depends on your race. More »
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If you're tying to figure out how cute a baby is, you had better ask a premenopausal woman: they're scientifically proven to have the highest cuteness sensitivity. Yes, this experiment involved coming up with an objective scale of baby cuteness. More »
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A new study found estrogen may help cancer spread in the head and throat by triggering an enzyme that increases the movement of precancerous cells. Scientists hope to find a way to deplete the enzyme and prevent oral cancer. More »
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Okay, smart-er. That's the good part. More »
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A new study says taking combined estrogen and progestin to combat menopausal symptoms ups not just women's risk of breast cancer, but their risk of dying from it. But some doctors think new, lower-dose therapies may be safer. More »
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So it's very rare (affecting only 2% of middle-aged men), but there are some symptoms which, when concurrent with lowered testosterone levels, indicate men can have menopausal issues. And that's all the information you need to turn the joke-cracking tables. More »
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Although much substance abuse research has been done on men, women can be addicts too. And studies show that female hormones may influence dependency. More »
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In middle-aged men, belly fat, low libido, high cholesterol, and osteporosis may all be caused by an excess of estrogen, which the Daily Fail calls "insidious." Guess they didn't hear about how hip guts are now. [Daily Mail] More »
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Earlier this year, the financial community snickered at court filings by SAC Capital trader Andrew Tong alleging that his bosses at the hedge fund forced him to take estrogen pills to become "feminine" and dress in "certain kinds of clothing." Until that point, everyone thought the whole point of being a stock trader or a hedge fund manager was to let one's most testosterone-addled instincts run amok and do things that "normal" people consider stupid like, say, buying or selling securities backed by subprime loans that aren't properly vetted by mortgage brokers encouraging people to file fraudulent applications in order to qualify for more money than they can afford to pay back with interest rates set to adjust up after a year! (Deep breath.) More »
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Several new studies have researchers more confident that hormone replacement therapy is a beneficial treatment for symptoms of menopause. Estrogen was once widely prescribed to menopausal women, but the treatment fell out of favor after a 2002 federal study suggested it may increase the risk of breast cancer and stroke. Now new research has prompted the North American Menopause Society to recommend that if women start hormone therapy around the time their periods end it may minimize the risks presented in the 2002 study and increase the benefits. Their position is supported by a new study published in the British Medical Journal, which found that women given hormone replacement therapy experienced fewer menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, aching joints and muscles, insomnia and vaginal dryness. [Newsweek] More »
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File this under the charmed physiological lives of men: Dudes may be able to protect themselves from contracting HIV by rubbing some cream on their dick heads. Dr. Andrew Pask, an Australian zoologist at the University of Melbourne, has discovered that rubbing topical estrogen on the tip of the penis "could induce a thickening of the keratin layer of the foreskin epidermis." Keratin acts as a barrier for viral infections, thus preventing the spread of the disease. [Science Daily via Boing Boing] More »
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Though Scarlett Johansson is known for her deep and torrid voice, a new study shows that women are most attractive to the opposite sex when they are ovulating — because their voices go up in pitch. Researchers Nathan Pipitone and Gordon Gallup recorded women counting from 1 to 10 at different points in their menstrual cycle, according to the New Scientist. Then they replayed the recordings to a group of men and women; across the board and regardless of gender, everyone found the women's voices most "attractive" when they were at their "peak fertility." According to the New Scientist, "The results are in line with evidence that the female voice box, or larynx, is under the influence of sex hormones." Other animals show physical evidence that they are in "heat" (experiencing estrus)— their genitals swell, they urinate more frequently — but the results of this study are giving more weight to the idea that humans experience estrus as well; the evidence is just more subtle. More »
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Birth control options for women over 40 are expanding thanks to new low-estrogen birth control pills and increased research into methods that don't involve tube-tying. Birth control pills with high estrogen levels are not recommended for women over 35 since they pose cancer and blood clot threats, but low-estrogen pills may not pose as much of a health risk for healthy women over 40. This is good news to all those women that want a birth control option and are still open to the option of having children. This is also good news to pharmaceutical companies that are opening up to the possible profits, er—options! for the age group. [AP via Reformer] More »
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Lots of anti-birth control pill news on the wires today. The first story comes from the Economist by way of Canada: A Canuck scientist has found that extra estrogen, which can get into rivers and lakes through the toilet-flushed urine of birth control takers, kills fish. Karen Kidd, an ecotoxicologist at the University of New Brunswick, "poisoned" a small lake in northwest Ontario with estrogen, and she found that the smallest fish in that lake, "fathead minnows," were feminized because of the excess hormone. According to the Economist, "[The fathead's] sperm production was delayed and they started producing eggs. After two years of treatment, the fathead minnow population collapsed." The bigger fish eventually started having fertility problems as well, but it took much longer for the estrogen to permeate their populations. More »
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