Blaine561's Social and Health Commentary

Women (and men) have been trying to get rid of unwanted hair for centuries. Shaving, plucking, waxing and chemical dilapitory agents have been used by literally billions of people for thousands of years. Yet in Manhattan, the latest trend in hair removal promises long lasting, less painful results than any of these methods.

Both the trendy and not so trendy flock to the new laser hair removal treatment centers in Manhattan to receive the latest technology in smooth, hairless skin. The procedure is described as safe, using a very low level laser beam. The laser’s energy enters the pigment inside the hair follicle. As the energy heats the pigment, the hair’s root is destroyed but the surrounding skin remains unharmed. The follicle is also “deactivated,” reducing regrowth.

For most, the procedure takes from 15 minutes to just over an hour, depending on the size of the area to be treated. The process is virtually painless, with most patients experiencing a slight stinging sensation. Of course, the more sensitive the area, the more likely that some unpleasant sensations will occur. For the more sensitive areas, a topical numbing cream may be used.

Since hair grows in cycles, it may take several sessions to remove all of the hair in an area, but once the treatments are completed the results are extremely long lasting. Not only are the treatments quick and painless, but they are surprisingly affordable as well.

There are many laser hair removal clinics in Manhattan. Choose one that uses an FDA approved laser specifically designed for hair removal. Different lasers are used for different skin types, so check to see if the laser used by the clinic is right for your coloration. Make sure that your technician is certified and fully trained on the equipment being used.

Interested to join the “in crowd” in Manhattan and try laser hair removal? Not only will you be surprised at the great, long lasting results, but you’ll be in on the newest grooming craze to hit New York in decades!

The word ‘Mother’ is synonymous with care, love and all good things on the earth. However, smoking mothers can be inadvertently killing and maiming their children – born and unborn. Shocked? It’s true. Smoking mothers are potentially gifting their children with lung cancer and many other similarly devastating diseases through second hand smoke. Pregnant women harm their unborn babies directly in the womb.

Besides the above horrifying facts, here are more unsettling reasons to bear in mind when smoking. It will not only interfere with your health, it will also interfere with the health of your unborn child:

1. First of all, smoking makes it hard to conceive. Reports show that fertility in both men and women are heavily affected by smoking. In women, smoking interferes with the egg movement toward the fallopian tubes as well as the hormones that are produced during pregnancy; while in men, it lowers the semen count, and the motility of the sperm. In many cases smoking also affects the shape of the sperm making it incapable of penetrating the egg.

2. Children born of smoking parents potentially inherit a low fertility syndrome and suffer from a great number of infertility problems.

3. Smoking in many cases is the main cause for impotency in men as it interferes with the blood supply to the penis.

4. The baby in the womb of a pregnant smoking woman gets its nicotine addiction right from pre-birth as its blood imbibes the nicotine that the mother’s blood shares with it; hence it is more likely that when born they would become a smoker – and also contract all smoking related diseases.

5. In rare cases the placenta is directly affected by smoking causing a miscarriage of the foetus, or death in the womb.

6. Babies of smoking mothers will be most likely to be born premature and under weight.

7. Babies are also likely to have less developed vital organs than their counterparts (babies of non-smoking mothers) – there is a great likelihood that these babies have an undeveloped liver which will affect them throughout their lives.

8. The babies of pregnant smoking women have poor lung functions right from birth.

9. These babies are twice as prone to die from sudden-infant-death (SID) syndrome than the babies of non-smoking women.

10. The babies of those women who smoked 15-20 cigarettes a day are more likely to be sickly.

Any one of the above causes should be sufficient enough to make you quit smoking – if not for yourself, for your little miracle that is being formed in your womb. Read the above lines again, and then once more – is that what you want to give to your most precious creation? Would you really be comfortable thinking that you are voluntarily and consistently harming your child even before their born? These are some questions that you should to ponder seriously.

Get in touch with your doctor today and enlist his/her help to quitting smoking. You owe it to your child to be healthy and give them a healthy beginning to the start of their life. As a mother, you are the nurturing contact of the child – do not become the poison in your own child’s life.

You’ve taken the first step and purchased a sedu hair straightener, the next step however, is learning to achieve the best results from your sedu hair iron. Before we look at how to use the sedu hair straightener to achieve the best results, let us first look at exactly what sedu ceramic hair straighteners are.

Sedu ceramic hair straighteners are the latest in hair straightening technology and come complete with ultra smooth ceramic plates that have been designed to prevent stretching and breaking of the hair. The sedu hair straightener also comes with a faster heat up time and also takes less time to achieve your desired hairstyle. Sounds great, so how do you actually use the sedu hair iron?

The first thing you will need to do with your sedu ceramic hair straighteners is of course to plug them in. The sedu hair iron comes with its own temperature control gauge so you can select the perfect setting for your hair type. For bleached or damaged hair the lower setting on the sedu hair straightener should be used. For coarse and stubborn hair use the high setting on the sedu hair straightener.

The next step will be to use your sedu hair iron to straighten your hair. It is important to remember that sedu ceramic hair straighteners should never be used on wet hair. Even on slightly damp hair you can cause un-repairable damage or scorching to your hair. You should always shampoo and condition your hair, add styling products and then blow dry fully before using the sedu hair straightener.

By separating your hair into sections the sedu hair straightener will be easier to use. Take a section of hair and pass the sedu hair iron over it. Do not overuse the sedu hair iron on any section of your hair. It is important to note that the sedu hair iron has been designed to cut half the straightening time of other models and therefore 2 to three passes on each section of the hair is plenty. Repeat this for every section of hair. Once finished just brush through and your new sedu hairstyle is complete.

So you see, sedu ceramic hair straighteners are simple and easy to use, and with patience and practice you will be on your way to celebrity sedu hairstyles such as the Jennifer Aniston sedu hair style everyday.

Tanning oil has long been used by sun worshippers and beach bunnies looking for a way to get a dark, even tan. However, there are quite a few myths about tanning oil, and it can be difficult for consumers to sort out the facts from the fiction. There are many people who erroneously believe that tanning oil offers them protection from a sunburn, or that tanning oil makes a tan healthy for your skin. Still other people believe that tanning oil will help them gain a sophisticated bronze glow more quickly than simply lying in the sun. The biggest question about tanning oil is what exactly this product does, and there are few tanning oil users who fully understand the answer.

One thing that tanning oil does not do is protect your skin against a damaging sunburn. The only thing that can stop you from absorbing potentially harmful UV rays is a sun block that will stop UVA and UVB rays from penetrating your skin cells. Unfortunately, this kind of sun block will also stop you from tanning. Tanning oil cannot make it safe for you to get a tan, since there is technically no such thing as a safe tan. Because tanning is your body’s attempt to protect your skin against the sun, your body will only begin to tan after your skin has suffered some damage.

Science tells us that tanning oil doesn’t attract the sun to your skin; allow you to achieve a dark bronze with greater speed than your neighbors; or in any way improve your tanning prowess. However, using tanning oil can enhance the appearance of your tan. The oil softens your skin, creating a supple, attractive physique, and the oil changes the way that your skin reflects light; and can thereby give the illusion of making your tan darker. Many people who yearn for a deep, rich tan do so because they believe that it will make them appear more attractive, and a gentle application of tanning oil can help anyone to achieve this goal.

However, before you use tanning oil or try to get a sun kissed look, consider whether the risks of this beauty option may outweigh the benefits. If you are worried about showing early signs of aging, increasing your vulnerability to skin cancers like melanoma, or causing other kinds of damage to your skin, it may be time to ditch the tanning oil in favor of sun block. Although sun block won’t leave you looking glamorously burnished, it will leave you looking healthy and wrinkle free for years to come.

Menopause isn’t typically a life threatening condition – but in extreme cases, it can bring upon symptoms like rapid heart beat that feel like it is. The occasional feeling that your heart “skips a beat” does not necessarily indicate a serious medical problem. For those with menopause, rapid heart beat should be monitored by your doctor to check for a mitral valve prolapse which is a mild deformity of a heart valve.

Palpitation is when the heart races repeatedly without any sign of stopping. It’s not only extremely uncomfortable, it’s downright frightening. Premature contractions cause the heart to beat twice really quickly, causing more blood to enter the heart on the third beat. This increased amount of blood makes the heart contract even more. In essence, it is a forceful pulsation that can sometimes be caused by stress.

Stress can come from menopausal symptoms like irregular periods, annoying ringing of the ears (tinnitus), insomnia, panic attacks, depression, and everyday occurrences like the simple yelling and shouting of a child at the playground.

When you perceive a stressor, hormones form your brain pass into the bloodstream alerting the adrenal glands. In response they secrete corticosteroid hormone including cortisol.

When cortisol raises sometimes twenty fold, the body speeds up its blood sugar burning capacity providing an instant surge of energy. Cortisol causes your heart to beat faster in order to pump oxygen-bearing blood more quickly into your tissues. Too much of cortisol can lead to diabetes or high blood pressure, so this is a process of you can to be conscious of and learn to cope with by practicing such relaxing techniques as yoga, meditation and Pilates.

The addition of caffeine loaded drinks can worsen this condition as can smoking.  In order to avoid rapid heart beat and palpitations, it is best to refrain from stress and maintain a healthy diet. Alcohol and coffee are known to excite the heart’s processes, causing it to work much harder than it has to.

Hair loss presents problems not only in terms of looks but the effect on an individual’s self-esteem. Hair loss is not a new problem, but where baldness in the past was considered a natural part of the aging process, today men and women associate baldness with “growing old.”

Despite being a fact of life for many, hair loss still makes people self-conscious about their appearance. For centuries, men and women suffering from baldness have opted to wear toupees and wigs. Hair plays a vital part of a person’s overall appearance and self confidence.

The problem with hairpieces and wigs is that they rarely look natural, and those who wear wigs and toupees have long been the subject of jokes. Over time, replacement hairpieces have developed to wear they look more like the real thing – but there are also other hair replacement systems that have been developed, providing bald individuals with the chance of living a normal life free from ridicule.

Facts on hair replacement systems

As mentioned above, the earliest forms of hair replacement were wigs, toupees and hairpieces, used to cover bald areas of the head. They are still used today, but many people suffering from hair loss aspire to something more – permanent, non-detachable hair. One problem with wigs and other hairpieces is they can slide or fall off, causing more embarrassment than relief.

Some medications and topical ointments can slow down hair loss and encourage the growth of new hair. However, different people react differently to various medications. If a topical ointment is enough to encourage the growth of new hair, great! But, sadly, that;s not the case for everyone.

For baldness that just cannot be remedied otherwise, surgical procedures such as hair transplantation and scalp reduction are considered as a last resort. The results of these two surgical procedures are permanent, resulting in natural looking hair, permanently attached to the scalp. Today, more and more bald people are considering surgical procedures to restore their hair. But just how safe is hair transplantation and scalp reduction?

Hair transplantation is a surgical procedure that involves removing small pieces of scalp where hair still grows (as grafts or plugs) from a thick hair area of the head and relocating them to the balding area

Hair transplantation dates back to experiments performed in Japan in the 1930′s, in which skin and hair were taken from one area of the body and transplanted to areas that had been disfigured as a result of accidents or war injuries.

In contrast, scalp-reductions are administered to patients who desire a more dramatic change. This type of procedure uses local anesthesia, which is injected into the scalp prior to the surgical procedure. The scalp-reduction is also known as “advancement flap surgery,” since sections of hairy scalp are pulled forward – or “advanced” – to fill in the bald area of the head. The only drawback of scalp reduction is the fact that it cannot cover frontal hairline.

The most deadly cancers to which most women are prey is the ovarian cancer. This type of cancer is however very rare but its overall chances of development are 1 out of every 100 as compared to the breast cancer that holds a ratio of 1 out of 9. The group that is most prone to this cancer is the age group of 50 and 60’s.

Symptoms of ovarian cancer

Since ovarian cancer shows any symptoms in the initial stage it is the most deadly cancer found. The problem is enhanced because of the fact that ovaries are located deep within the abdomen and there is no way out to self examine on a regular basis as it much possible in the case of breasts. The disease also produce symptoms that are often confusing and could also signal to other conditions.

Frequent symptoms of ovarian cancer are vague stomach discomfort, an expanded abdomen or even abnormal bleeding. Many women face these types of symptoms either throughout their lives and they make the mistake of not informing to their physicians. And by the time they feel it necessary to inform their physician, the tumor grows to an extent that it has spread too far to stop.

Even when your physician finds an ovarian mass, it does not always mean that there is a risk of cancer. The higher majority of ovarian masses detected in pre menopausal patients are benign and disappear as time passes by.

Greater risk

With most of the cancers, doctors don’t know exactly what causes the growth of cancerous ovarian cells. Current theory states that a number of factors of which some are controllable and some are not influence the development of ovarian cancer. One proposal also suggests that there is a link in between the number of times a women ovulates during her life and her risk of developing ovarian cancer.

The factors that contribute to the risk of ovarian cancer includes ovulation for more than 40 years, women who have never being pregnant or have the first pregnancy after the age of 30 or late menopause.

Other factor that is unrelated to ovulation but ought to increase the risk of ovarian cancer includes:

1. A family history of ovarian or uterine cancer

2. Having breast cancer or benign breast cancer

3. Having colon or rectal cancer or polyps

Stages of ovarian cancer

If your physician makes a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, he or she will make categorize it as one of the 4 stages of the disease whereby stage 1 is the earliest stage in which only the ovaries are involved. Stage 2 involves spread of the cancer from the ovary to other parts of the pelvis. The cases that are diagnosed after stage 3 are the least. The most advanced stage of ovarian cancer is the stage 4 that has least chances of survival.

Wild Yam Cream has be advertised as a treatment for menopause, hot flashes, night sweats, PMS, migraine headaches, mood swings, fertility, larger breasts, heart disease, and osteoporosis. The people who sell these products claim they contain “natural hormones” and “hormone like compounds.” To many people, suffering from these conditions, this seems like the perfect “medicine” to help them. In most cases these creams are not effective because the product advertised does not contain the hormone claimed. The fact is, there is no progesterone in the wild yams, nor can your body make progesterone from the hormone like compound, diosgenin, in the wild yam. So, why is there such confusion about this?

The reason this misinformation exists is because a few decades ago, wild yams were harvested and purified to produce the intermediate chemical, diosgenin, for progesterone and other hormone production in the lab. An intermediate means that this component of wild yams was reacted with other chemicals, in a laboratory, to make progesterone. People not familiar with this process thought that these wild yams actually contained progesterone. This belief is still persistent today and many unscrupulous business people sell products made from “wild yams” and claim that they can cure or relieve the symptoms of many diseases and medical conditions.

As for natural sources of progesterone, that is a misnomer. Today 99.9% of progesterone is made in a laboratory. However, the synthesised version of natural progesterone is identical to naturally occurring progesterone and is referred to as bio-identical progesterone. The term “synthetic progesterone” is often used to refer to products such as Provera®, Cycrin® which are not identical to progesterone. These synthetic versions have additional chemical groups added to the progesterone molecule, for a number of reasons. These reasons include improved absorption (oral dosage forms) and making the molecule patentable. Today, most bio-identical progesterone is made from soya intermediates.

There is plenty of literature discussing the benefits of hormone replacement therapy, however, many people often confuse “natural and synthetic” as “good and bad.” The fact is that bio-identical hormones are available from your doctor, if you specify and state you would prefer to use natural hormones. Just because the progesterone is synthesised in a laboratory does not mean it is synthetic or “bad.” The fact is, the natural form of progesterone, unlike the component diosgenin, which is not found in the human body, is better for you, even though it is made in a lab. It could be more dangerous to use a hormone like substance, like diosgenin, that could be harmful to your health.

It is often claimed that natural progesterone has no side effects, however, it is a hormone, and does have a number of side effects that you should be aware of, these include:

a feeling of euphoria (based on the amounts used)

breast tenderness

possible acne upon initial use as body adjusts

possible acne upon initial use as body adjusts

possible suspension of ovulation if used prior to ovulation

possible spotting in women just starting menopause

alteration of cycle time

may prevent sperm maturation in men when used in excess

hives, skin rash, itching

increased sensitivity to sunlight

nausea and headaches

It is always a persons choice as to whether they want hormone replacement therapy or not, but to make that decision on unfounded product information is dangerous and could adversely affect your health. Your doctor can prescribe natural (bio-identical) progesterone if you are not comfortable with the synthetic versions like Provera® and Cycrin®. There are many options for hormone replacement therapy, but make sure you know the facts and avoid wasting your money on products that don’t work, or could be harmful.

Non-dyed hair never has perfectly even color. Bleach is not a hair dye its more of a color strip. If you only want a 100% all natural hair dye then use the plant based henna hair color. Meanwhile, temporary dyes and highlight treatments should be able to color hair without the need for harsh chemicals.

More specifically, the question is which color of hair will hair dye affect the most. Never mix different hair dye products, because you can induce potentially harmful reactions (if not an unappealing hair color). White girls can dye their hair any color they want.

The same hair color dyes are used as are used in other permanent hair color products. Because permanent dyes contain hydrogen peroxide, they cover gray hair more effectively and can be used to lighten hair color, unlike other dyes. Underground Color is a semi-permanent hair dye, which means it won’t wash out the next day. The law does not require that coal tar hair dyes be approved by FDA, as is required for other uses of color additives.

The solution of hair dyes does not allow for any, “gradual,” color change when, and if, you feel it’s time to do so. However frequent applications would be required to sustain the color as the dye fades with time, exposure to environment and regular washing of hair.

I use to dye my hair blue black and wanted to change it to red. When you color your hair the first time, you have to dye out your normal hair melanin color and replaced it with red dye. Therefore, some bats are marked with black hair dye and the other are marked with red hair dye.

You see that luscious red head on the hair dye box and you think, “Wow! I’m getting ready to do that to my black hair and dye it red on top of that. But the red color is not going to come out exactly as seen in the model of the Hair Dye box. As a rule of thumb, the color you will get depends on your natural hair color.

If you have dark hair, your red will come out a dark red, and if you have very light, or blonde colored hair, your red well come out flaming red! So, don’t always believe that you will be getting exactly the same color as portrayed in the box.

Almost everyone has heard of “the change”. It is otherwise know as menopause, but the change fits it better. Men and women both go through the change, but in different ways.

If you are young woman, you have something to look forward to, a bad attitude and hot flashes. If you are an older woman you are probably almost there, in the middle of, or been through it. Men and women both go a little crazy between 40 and 55.

Men usually want to see if they still have “it” with the young girls. They buy a hot sports car, usually red, and start roaming around and looking for “trouble”. They dress 10 or 15 years younger than they are, just loving the way they look and feel but wondering why their friends are staring at them.

Women on the other hand get real irritable and upset over the smallest thing. They may holler at something or someone for no good reason. Then within a matter of five or ten minutes be calm and pleasant to be around again. These spells come and go all the time, sometimes for years.

And of course there are the hot flashes that women have from time to time. Time to time could mean every half hour or maybe just once a week. But let me tell you, they are very uncomfortable whenever they arrive. Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again. Also in the middle of the night women get night sweats, which interrupts sleep and makes them even more cranky.

While going though the change you think you won’t live through it, but you do. For women, life is better on the other side of the change, at least I feel that way. I can’t speak for the men, but I think they feel that way too. So, if we all have patience and try real hard to understand what the other person is going through, we will all make it through those years in one piece, hopefully.