Free Republic

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Hillary Rodham Clinton's eyes welled up and her voice broke repeatedly Monday as she talked with voters in a restaurant about her campaign for the presidency. The former first lady was making a last-minute pitch for support as she spoke on the eve of the state's primary, with polls showing her trailing Democratic rival Barack Obama. Asked by a sympathetic voter how she keeps going in the grueling campaign, she replied, "It's not easy. It's not easy." "And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do,"...

Helen Mirren has described the traumatic moment that influenced her decision not to have children. The Oscar winning actress revealed in a new interview that a sex education film she watched as a convent school girl was so "disgusting" it put her off motherhood for life. She said: "I went to a single sex convent school, and even in Biology classes we weren't taught about sexual reproduction. I was about 13, 14, just at that age where you begin to be self conscious about your physicality and about boys and all of that. "They sat us all down, girls and...

Rather than the "liberal bias" rubric, file this one under "coarsening of the culture." We had a dubious first this morning: a network news host informing the world that one of her guests had just experienced a hot flash. Dr. Nancy Snyderman was Meredith Vieira's guest for purposes of discussing the good news that scientists have discovered a way to extract stem cells from amniotic fluid and placentas, a breakthrough that could render moot the embryonic stem cell controversy. But at the end of the interview, in promoting an upcoming segment devoted to menopause, Vieira "outed" Snyderman in these...

Rates of the most common form of breast cancer dropped a startling 15 percent from August 2002 to December 2003, researchers reported yesterday. The reason, they believe, may be because during that time, millions of women abandoned hormone treatment for the symptoms of menopause after a large national study concluded that the hormones slightly increased breast cancer risk. The new analysis of breast cancer rates, by researchers from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and presented at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio, was based on a recent report by the National Cancer Institute on the cancer’s...

Fifty-two-year old Glennis runs her house with brisk efficiency, but there was a time when her days were spent in a mind-numbing fog."I found myself very irritable, very tearful, everything would make me cry," Glennis explains. Yes, it was menopause, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric reports."I was deteriorating into this old, nasty lady," she says, laughing. "I'd feel like I was outside my body looking at myself and my behavior and saying, 'Eww, do you have to be that way?'" Glennis started taking synthetic hormones, but stopped when the study four years ago warned of the risks. Some experts...

Rice is in way over her head Friday, August 11, 2006 By HELEN THOMAS HEARST NEWSPAPERS WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has flunked her first foreign policy crisis in the Middle East. She went to the turbulent region last month in the early days of the war that began when Hezbollah forces in Lebanon crossed into Israel and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Rice had orders from President Bush to oppose any immediate cease-fire, which was hardly the proper policy by the United States if it wanted to end the suffering among Israelis and Lebanese. Rice apparently was dispatched...

CHICAGO -- Two separate studies show a woman's risk for a first bout with depression rises sharply as she approaches menopause. One of the studies measured hormone levels in 231 Philadelphia-area women over eight years and found that a woman's chances of tumbling into depression grew as her hormones changed. The message for women at mid-life? "It's not all in your head," said Ellen Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and a co-author of the Philadelphia study. Most women reach menopause without suffering depression, but both new studies suggest that some may be more sensitive to the...

A widely used drug that has been mired in controversy for most of its decade-long life may now bring relief to postmenopausal women whose lives have been disrupted by unrelenting hot flashes. The relief may be especially welcome to women who have had breast cancer and cannot take estrogen. The drug, best known by its trade name, Neurontin, but now prescribed generically as gabapentin, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994 to treat epileptic seizures. In 2002, it was approved to treat postherpetic neuralgia, horrific pain that sometimes follows shingles. Aided by the Internet and, the government...

The biggest study ever of calcium and vitamin D supplements for older women showed they offered only limited protection against broken bones, raising questions over what has been an article of faith among doctors and nutritionists. The supplements seemed to reduce the risk of broken hips in women over 60 and also helped those who took the supplements most regularly. But as to preventing bone fractures overall, vitamin D and calcium flunked in these healthy women. One of the researchers, Dr. Norman Lasser at New Jersey Medical School, said the study is "not as ringing an endorsement of calcium as...

Candace Talmadge was determined to get through menopause without using hormones, and she tried just about every alternative treatment she could find, like soy tablets, herbs and acupuncture, a chiropractor and even an anti-anxiety medication. Two months ago, Ms. Talmadge's doctor suggested that she consider hormone therapy, and she relented. "There are always risks to any medication you take, whether it's traditional or nontraditional," said Ms. Talmadge, 51, an author from Lancaster, Tex. "But I've been going through hell. I think my doctor's attitude was, 'Do the benefits for you, right now, outweigh the risks?' " Three and a half...

NEW IN TOWN SAILOR? (Click here to see current captions).

When I entered college in 1969, women were bursting out of theirs 50's chrysalis, shedding girdles, padded bras and conventions. The Jazz Age spirit flared in the Age of Aquarius. Women were once again imitating men and acting all independent: smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money and thinking they had the right to be sexual, this time protected by the pill. I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a fun-loving (if chaste) type who would decades later come to life in Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. I hated the grubby, unisex...

Hot Flashes, Insomnia Especially Hard On Female Execs < By LINDA A. JOHNSON The Associated PressPublished: Sep 24, 2005 When hot flashes caused sweat to run down Donna Cook's face during business meetings, she joked to concerned colleagues, "I'm having my personal summer." But for executives like Cook, menopause symptoms such as profuse sweating, mood swings and memory lapses aren't funny.Cook, 54, felt self-conscious when she had to blot sweat while giving presentations at System Planning Corp., an Arlington, Va., company that does scientific research and government contract work. She said she would awake several times a night drenched in...

COMBINATION hormone replacement therapy can cause cancer, the UN's agency on the disease has concluded. The International Agency for Research on Cancer said yesterday, based on evidence from recent studies, it has reclassified hormonal menopause therapy from "possibly carcinogenic to humans" to "carcinogenic to humans". The declaration from the World Health Organisation's cancer agency, widely regarded as the international authority on which substances cause cancer, comes after recent research linked HRT to breast cancer. The analysis found oestrogen and progestogen menopause therapy also increases the risk of endometrial cancer when progestogens are taken fewer than 10 days a month. The...

Menopause Doc Fudged Data BURLINGTON, Vt., June 21, 2005 Millions of women have taken hormone therapy, only to learn in recent years that its health benefits were never proved and there were risks involved instead. Now it turns out a key researcher who touted the benefits of hormone replacement is facing a five year jail term, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Dr. Eric Poehlman was renowned for his groundbreaking research on women and menopause. He theorized that menopause makes women lose muscle and gain fat, and causes health problems hormones could help fix. His work was considered so significant...

CHICAGO, July 6 (Reuters) - Soy protein, a supplement many doctors recommend as a substitute for hormone therapy for postmenopausal women, did not decrease bone loss or affect other symptoms in a study of Dutch women, researchers reported Tuesday. Naturally occurring compounds called isoflavones, which are found in soybeans, are thought to mimic estrogen compounds in hormone therapy. Some women want to avoid hormone therapy because recent studies have indicated that long-term use could raise the risk of stroke, dementia and some forms of cancer. In the new study, which followed 175 Dutch women for a year, half the participants...

<p>LONDON -- The American study that triggered a worldwide scare over the risks of hormone-replacement therapy was fundamentally flawed and not applicable to most women going through menopause, according to a group of leading researchers.</p> <p>The Women's Health Initiative appeared to show that hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) increased the risk of heart disease and breast cancer.</p>

MADONNA today compared US President George Bush to deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The 45-year-old pop star said the two men were "alike" because they both behaved "in an irresponsible manner". Madonna made the comments during an interview in which she tried to draw a line under her wild days, vowing to be "part of the order, not the chaos, of the world". Madonna's current Re-Invention tour carries a strong anti-war message and her recent video for the song American Life was clear in its opposition to the Iraq conflict. In the final scene of the video, a President Bush...

Scientists find a way to beat the menopause By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 11/03/2004) Scientists have discovered a new way to defy the menopause which could change women's lives, they announce today. Charlotte Woodhouse Their research raises the prospect of extending childbearing years and offers a more natural alternative to HRT to offset ageing and maintain youthful vigour. The discovery that women may make eggs after birth, rather than be born with all the eggs they would ever have, could provide profound insights into the timing of the menopause. It is also likely to help to improve the success...

Scientists have discovered a new way to defy the menopause which could change women's lives, they announce today. Their research raises the prospect of extending childbearing years and offers a more natural alternative to HRT to offset ageing and maintain youthful vigour. The discovery that women may make eggs after birth, rather than be born with all the eggs they would ever have, could provide profound insights into the timing of the menopause. It is also likely to help to improve the success of grafts of ovary tissue to restore fertility in women after chemotherapy for cancer. The study overturns...