Increased Risk of Heart Disease Linked to Early Menopause

While the average age for women entering menopause is currently 51, it is not uncommon for women to begin in their early forties. And while many may believe it a blessing to experience an early menopause, it can also be a detriment, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke.

A study out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, presented today at a meeting of the Endocrine Society in San Diego, found that those women who go through menopause prior to age 46 may have more than twice the risk of having a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular event later in life.

Following 2,500 women aged 45 to 84, researchers found that those who experienced an early menopause fared well until the age of 55, regardless of whether they were given hormone therapy or not. But after that age, almost 6 percent of the women experienced some sort of heart event, compared to 2.6 percent of women who had an average or later onset of menopause.

Dr. Melissa Wellons, who led the study, stated that “study is observational; therefore, we cannot conclude that early menopause somehow causes future cardiovascular disease. However, our findings do support the possible use of age at menopause as a marker of future heart and vascular disease risk."

Heart disease is currently the number one killer of women in America, affecting 1 in 4 women. Factors contributing include obesity, lack of exercise, and improper diet. For more information on what you can do to prevent heart disease, check out the information on Sister to Sister: The Women’s Heart Health Foundation, the nation’s only large-scale provider of free heart health screenings.

Beauty Is in the Gendered Eye of the Beholder

The brain of the beholder dictates the manner in which beauty will be appreciated. While men process beauty with only the right side of their brains, women employ their entire brain for the activity.

Researchers were surprised at the findings that are detailed in a report published in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. According to researcher Camilo J. Cela-Conde of the University of Baleares in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, “It is well known that there are differences between brain activity in women and men in cognitive tasks. However, why should this kind of difference appear in the case of appreciation of beauty?” His answer reveals an idea that women link an object to language when they ponder it, whereas men tend to focus on an object’s spatial aspects.

Men appear to focus on "coordinate" spatial awareness that is located in the right side of the brain and involves precision mental mapping with the use of co-ordinates to establish an object's position in space. The "categorical" spatial awareness is located in the left side of the brain and involves evaluating the position of objects in accordance with categories such as above, below, left, and right.

Cela-Conde acknowledged that the explanation of differences in the perception of beauty does not explain why or how the human capacity to appreciate beauty evolved. However, he noted, “The differences that we have found might relate to the different social roles that, hypothetically, men and women had during human evolution.”

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For the study, the researchers put 10 men and 10 women to the test by presenting paintings and photos of urban scenes and landscapes to them and then asking them to evaluate each scene and describe it as being either beautiful or not beautiful. During the evaluations by the participants, the researchers used imaging technology called magnetoencephalography to monitor images of magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in their brains. No differences were noted between male and female brains during the first 300 milliseconds, but increased activity was seen in all participants from 300 to 700 milliseconds for objects that were described as beautiful.

The most active brain region among participants was the parietal lobe, which manages visual perception, spatial orientation and information processing. The difference noted was that for the men, the activity was focused only on the right side of the brain, while both sides were active in the women.

Although there were differences between people as to what was described as beautiful and what not, the researchers found no identifiable differences related to gender. Regarding this aspect of the research, Cela-Conde said, “Any person can find beautiful a landscape, a building or a canvas that some others will find awful. But sex has little to do with those differences. Perhaps they relate with other variables, such as age or education.” He also noted, “It is curious that, using different neural networks, the final result is very similar in women and men. But this seems to be the case.”

Do Women Have a Hard-Wired Aversion to Obesity?

I think we have all long known what John Gray put down in words in his bestseller, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: There are differences between the sexes, not just physically, but psychologically. And a new study being published in the May issue of Personality Individual Differences reinforces that belief.

Researchers at Brigham Young University set out to gauge hidden feelings about body image. They conducted psychological screenings of both men and women using brain imaging technology. MRI scans were employed to monitor the brain activity of the participants while they were shown computer-generated images of different body types. While viewing each image, the participants were asked to imagine that someone else was saying the model looked like them.

Not surprisingly, the images of overweight women triggered the self-reflection and identity processing area in the brain in only the female participants. The medial prefrontal cortex lit up in not just a few, but all of the women. Mark Allen, a neuroscientist at BYU said, "This is kind of validating the suspicion that most women are teetering on the edge of an eating disorder. If the brain response is so strong in these apparently healthy women, maybe most of us could use a little dose of what it is that you go through in an eating disorder therapy."

It does illuminate the fact that women are very sensitive about their appearance when it comes to weight. The study shows them having an aversion to looking obese, even though all participants were carefully screened for any hint of an eating disorder. Men, on the other hand, had no response to images that were either fat or thin (but did have some cortex activity when shown bodybuilder images).

While women may not own up to the fact that they are conscious of body image issues, the brain scans tell a different story: We are from Venus.

Antidepressants Linked to Increased Stroke Risk in Postmenopausal Women

Depression—it’s more than an occasional down-in-the-dumps feeling. It’s a low mood, despair or hopelessness that lasts for weeks, months, or even longer. In fact, most health professionals today consider depression a chronic illness that requires long-term treatment, much like diabetes or high blood pressure. The most common treatments are psychotherapy and antidepressants, which work to correct the chemical imbalance in the brain thought to cause depression. There are several different classifications of antidepressants, depending on which brain chemical the drug affects. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) increase the production of serotonin in the brain; monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) block monoamine oxidase, an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters. All antidepressants have some side effects, the most common being headache, nausea, constipation, dry mouth, agitation and sexual problems. But most occur in the early weeks of therapy and lessen over time.

However, some side effects can be serious. In October 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directed manufacturers to add a boxed warning, the most serious type of warning used on prescription drugs, to the labeling of all antidepressant medications to alert the public about the increased risk of suicidal thinking or suicide attempts by children and adolescents taking antidepressants. In May 2007, after a more detailed analysis of antidepressant clinical trials, the FDA directed that the warning be extended to include young adults up through age 24.

Earlier this year, a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology concluded that women with no history of cardiac problems but who used antidepressants are at heightened risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD), though the exact reason for the link remains unclear. And most recently, a report published in the December 14 Archives of Internal Medicine shows that postmenopausal women who take antidepressants have an increased risk of stroke and death compared to women of the same age who don’t take the drugs.