A gaggle of Gotham’s most accomplished gals proved you can have a good time on Valentine’s Day with pals, when TV newswoman Judy Licht hosted her 43rd annual Valentine’s Day lunch.
The tradition was started as a way “to celebrate my girlfriends on this holiday, because the men in our lives may come and go — but girlfriends are mostly forever.”
Among the powerhouse women in attendance this year at Licht’s Upper East Side townhouse was Martha Stewart, 81 — who brought heart-shaped Valentine’s boxes for everyone filled with “feel good” CBD gummies, we hear.
Stewart launched her own CBD line in 2020.FilmMagic
The always-opportunistic domestic diva launched her line of “hemp-derived, cannabidiol-rich” treats in 2020, we reported.
Also at the ladies luncheon was 94-year-old Dr. Ruth Westheimer — who previewed her latest book of erotica, “The Art of Arousal,” for the gathering. One guest exclaimed, “This book would’ve been banned 30 years ago!”
At the entrance to a small bright-green house with a wooden door in the village of Kazhuthapali in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, sits the King of Love.
That is the literal translation of UA Anburaj’s name. And the 43-year-old lives up to it. The tall, quiet man watches his wife Revathi and their two children – five-year-old son, Agaram, and eight-year-old daughter, Yazhisai – prepare for the local temple festival, and smiles contentedly.
More than a decade ago, the couple were furiously writing to one another – nearly 400 letters in a handful of years – but neither dreamt they would one day be here: at home, together.
That is because the letters were exchanged between two high-security prisons in the neighbouring state of Karnataka – where Revathi and Anburaj were each serving a life sentence.
“We actually fell in love over letters,” says 32-year-old Revathi, smiling. “I remember how my roommates used to tease me every time a letter came in.”
Post release, Anburaj and Revathi rebuilt their lives with their children Agaram and Yazhisai [Courtesy of Anburaj]
Heroes and bandits
Decades before the first letter was sent, Anburaj was growing up in Kazhuthapali, a village whose name means “donkey creek”. “It was literally the place where the [forest-dwelling Soliga tribe] from the neighbouring hills used to offload their donkeys to let them drink water from the creek,” Anburaj explains.
His parents were both weavers – his mother Annakodi, 65, still works on her pedal loom, expertly weaving a colourful doormat outside the house while her son speaks. When Anburaj was young, his father wanted him to become a police officer. But the boy had other interests.
“When I was eight years old, I had heard stories of a forest bandit and his gang roaming those very hills. But … none of the villagers had ever seen him,” Anburaj recalls.
The forest bandit – Veerappan – was a notorious poacher and sandalwood smuggler. But many of the villagers and forest dwellers in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka supported him.
“In 1972, India brought in the Wildlife Protection Act to protect the forests and the very next day, the hunting tribes and forest-dependent villagers became criminals,” Anburaj explains.
The newly formed forest department put pressure on the tribes who were dependent on the forest for food, but provided them with no other alternative, he adds.
“There was a huge gap between the government and the forest dwellers – and it led to the rise of Veerappan as a leader who protected forest-dependent tribes from the authorities.”
An undated file photo of Indian bandit Koose Muniswamy Veerappan [File:Reuters/Stringer/India AH/TW]
But while the adolescent Anburaj was curious about Veerappan, he found his hero in someone else – an old village storyteller named Sevi. The wise elder spoke of the way of love, helped solve village disputes and shared moral tales that would capture the attention of the entire village.
But then one day, when Anburaj was 15, something happened that would change both his and Sevi’s lives forever.
Hearing a commotion outside, Anburaj stepped out of his house to see the usually quiet village filled with men dressed in camouflage – part of a special police task force formed to capture Veerappan and his men. The startled teenager slowly moved through the crowded street and there, in the middle of a throng of people, was a naked Sevi, huddled in a foetal position. A group of policemen thrashed the old man with batons as villagers looked on in shock.
Women begged the policemen to stop and, when they eventually did, the villagers quickly clothed the storyteller. The police officials declared that the same thing would happen to anyone who dared to support Veerappan. Anburaj watched as his hero limped back to his hut, not knowing that it was the last time he would see him.
“Sevi thatha [grandpa] never came out to share his stories again, and he died within months,” he says. Sevi’s death had a profound effect on Anburaj, who decided then that he wanted to join the rebels in the forest.
When he was 17, Anburaj got his chance.
He was grazing his sheep in the hills when he encountered Veerappan. The bandit took an instant liking to the inquisitive teenager, taking him under his wing and teaching him the ways of the forest. Anburaj would stand guard for Veerappan, carry his groceries, and do his bidding.
“At that point, I was just Veerappan’s soldier who blindly obeyed his orders. I would beat up anyone he asks me to,” he recalls, recounting his involvement in two offences where the gang kidnapped forest officials and two freelance photographers for ransom.
But, just three years after he joined them, Veerappan asked Anburaj and some other bandits to surrender to the police as a part of his reconciliation efforts with the state government, which he said had promised them amnesty in exchange for their surrender. Anburaj did as he was asked and remembers bidding a teary-eyed Veerappan farewell.
Anburaj was sentenced to life in prison at age 20 [Balasubramaniam N/Al Jazeera]
The state government backed out of its commitment, however, and put Anburaj and the other bandits on trial. Veerappan – who did not surrender because he wasn’t sure the government would honour its promise – went on the run until he was ambushed and killed by state police in 2004.
Anburaj was 20 years old when he was sentenced to life in prison for aiding the forest brigade and being an accessory to kidnapping.
“When the judge read the statement that said I had to serve my sentence ‘until my last breath’, it felt like a death knell,” he says.
When fate draws a path
“[In prison] the food, water, everything was abysmal. The worst part was we were given two bowls: one to eat on and another to collect our excreta; we had to dispose of it ourselves the next day,” he says.
The lack of basic human dignity shocked Anburaj, who responded by organising peaceful protests requesting better sanitation facilities. His legal petitions would later pave the way for improved toilet facilities across the state’s prisons.
When he was not protesting, Anburaj was reading. Papillon by Henri Charriere – a novel that explores the title character’s imprisonment and subsequent escape from a French penal colony – hit particularly close to home. Like its hero, Anburaj felt that the punishment for a crime he had committed as a juvenile was too harsh.
“Like Henri, I was not ready to spend the rest of my life in prison, so I hatched plans to escape its towering walls,” he says.
But while trying to find ways to surmount his physical obstacles, Anburaj met “a renowned theatre director who had come to organise plays for prisoners” – and his plan changed.
As plays were often held outside prison grounds, Anburaj volunteered to set up a team of actors and theatre technicians in his prison, hoping that this would be his ticket to escape.
It did free him, but not in the way he had anticipated.
Anburaj, in one of the many plays they showcased as part of the prison theatre programme [Courtesy of Anburaj]
Before they could begin work on the plays, inmates were asked to attend workshops where they did things like paint, craft clay models, and dance. “The idea was to bring out the mindset of a child in each one of us, which it did. I had never held a brush or canvas in my life yet I painted two huge canvases, immersing myself in the experience for three whole months. As a prisoner, we do not get to see the sunrise or sunset inside the prison so I created a painting of a warm sunrise,” Anburaj recalls.
Over the next six months, he was swept into the world of theatre. Each script and character spoke to his soul. “When I read the scene where Lady Macbeth cries in anguish about her inability to wash the scent of blood from her hands, I could connect to the guilt she felt.”
Anburaj felt a need to hug his victims and to ask for their forgiveness. He believed it was necessary for every prisoner to feel that sense of guilt in order to reform themselves. He was also heavily influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, reading close to 150 books on the revolutionary’s life as part of his preparations for a play about Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba.
In the men’s prison, female characters were usually played by male prisoners. But when his theatre team had to put on a play called Madhavi – a scathing commentary on patriarchal society – he felt that only a woman could do justice to the role.
So in 2008, he wrote to prison officials requesting that female prisoners be allowed to perform in the prison theatre. His petition was accepted and 12 female prisoners from a nearby facility joined their group of performers.
That is when he met Revathi.
A chance at a future
When Revathi was three years old, her mother died. Soon after, her father abandoned her. So she lived with her grandmother in Chennai. But when she passed away, 14-year-old Revathi chose to stay with the family she worked for as a house helper.
A year later, that family relocated to Bengaluru, the Karnataka capital, taking Revathi with them. But within six months of the move, they had sent her to work for an elderly lady in a posh apartment in the city.
“I was shocked when one day that lady nonchalantly declared that I was sold to a prostitution ring in Mumbai. My stomach churned, I knew that there was absolutely no one to save me,” Revathi recalls.
She claims that when she shouted for help, the woman stabbed her in the stomach and arms. She says she managed to grab the knife from her and “attacked her back”.
Revathi recalls how the woman “sunk in a pool of blood”.
“I passed out before I realised what had just happened.”
Three days later, the 16-year-old woke up in hospital. That is when she learned that she was to be tried for murder.
Revathi was convicted and sentenced to life in 2003.
Revathi was sentenced to life in prison at age 16 [Courtesy of Anburaj]
She played the scene out in her mind over and over again, wondering if she could have done anything differently. But there she was in a white sari – the uniform worn by female prisoners – that declared her a criminal to a world she barely knew.
During her first year in prison, she did not talk to anyone. She fell into depression. Then, a few years into her sentence, a prison official encouraged her to join a theatre group in the women’s prison.
After prison officials approved Anburaj’s request in 2008, the female inmates began practising along with their male theatre counterparts under a large tree in the garden of the men’s prison. After their workshops and rehearsals ended, the women’s and men’s groups would then return to their respective prisons.
When Revathi first arrived with the other female inmates, Anburaj hardly noticed the quiet young woman.
Revathi kept to herself as she could not speak the local language – Kannada. It took her days to figure out that Anburaj was in fact from her home state, Tamil Nadu, and spoke her mother tongue, Tamil, fluently. Slowly, she began opening up to him.
“One day, I was asked to craft something in clay as part of our theatre workshop at the men’s prison. I chose to mould a statue of a mother. Having lost my mother at a young age, it was the first image that came to my mind,” she says.
She became overwhelmed with emotion and Anburaj, who was the assistant director for the prison theatre initiative, helped her finish the statue.
A friendship blossomed between the two. “We only spoke a few words in person but he wrote to me extensively. His words were always kind and soothing,” Revathi smiles.
The workshops and practice sessions allowed them to meet for five days a week over a period of 11 months.
Anburaj on stage in a prison theatre production [Courtesy of Anburaj]
Their conversations evolved into long discussions about the characters in their plays and the challenges of their lives before they were imprisoned. “I had studied only till class four so I could hardly write. He, on the other hand, wrote mellifluously. In fact, I learned to write from him,” she laughs.
When prison officials considered releasing Revathi for good behaviour, and she worried about where she would go, Anburaj assured her that she could go to his family. His mother and siblings would treat her like their own, he insisted. That was the moment Revathi knew that Anburaj was her future.
For Anburaj, Revathi was someone who shared his vision. “I knew that I wouldn’t just step out of prison and take care of just my family. I needed someone who understood my ideology. Whatever was denied to us, I wanted to try and give back to those we can,” he explains.
“As a person who has been a victim herself, I had seen Revathi stand up for common good even inside the prison grounds. She had petitioned to bring sanitary napkins for women prisoners. She was empathetic and is my equal in every sense of the word.”
Abundant love
In 2011, three years after they met, while both were on parole – temporary release given to prisoners based on good behaviour – they got married. Four years later, while Anburaj was away performing at a Bengaluru theatre festival, Revathi bore their first child while in prison – a tiny, premature baby girl.
Anburaj and his prison supervisor rushed overnight to see the newborn in a private hospital in Mysuru. “The minute I held her I felt immense joy and hope. There was also this sense of huge responsibility on my shoulders. It was not about pampering her or giving her wealth or education. I just wanted to provide that little girl with the best environment to let her fly and let her be,” he said.
The next day, Revathi returned to prison with the baby.
Six months after giving birth, and after 14 years in prison, Revathi was released for good behaviour. Anburaj was released a year later, after spending two decades in prison.
The couple moved to live with Anburaj’s parents in Kazhuthapali.
Anburaj and Revathi live with his parents and the couple’s children in Kazhuthapali [Balasubramaniam N/Al Jazeera]
With some help from friends, Anburaj set up an oil processing unit and later expanded it to an organic shop that sells vegetables, groceries, honey, oil and handicrafts. He continues to go back to the prison where he was imprisoned, to organise plays for inmates. Revathi has plans to set up a separate theatre unit in a women’s prison, and the two are trying to create similar programmes in other states as well.
Revathi says they are hardly romantic in conventional ways. “In all these years, he has gifted me a sari and I have given him a peaceful Buddha statue, which he keeps on his table at our shop,” she smiles.
“Only love has transformed us into humans and we feel it is necessary to bring this peranbu [abundant love] to the world around us,” says Anburaj.
Having witnessed the challenges that underprivileged forest tribes experienced during his time with Veerappan, Anburaj has helped set up a tribal cooperative society that works towards marketing sustainable forest resources and is in the process of creating a school curriculum based on native ecological knowledge.
Revathi often accompanies her husband on his trips to meet the tribal communities in the neighbouring Thamaraikarai Hills and says she loves to see him transform into a little child as he animatedly shares his stories with people there.
“Our love story has never been just about us,” she declares. “All I wanted was love, and now, I feel it abundantly.”
Last month’s final of the inaugural Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cup featured an all-women panel of match officials.
For the ongoing Women’s T20 World Cup, only female officials have been named in what the International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s world governing body, described as “a significant first for world cricket”.
The appointment of a record number of female officials at a major women’s event comes at a time when female umpires are in the spotlight more than ever – the trend gathering force following an eventful last year.
The 50-over Women’s World Cup in New Zealand saw South Africa’s Lauren Agenbag, then 25, become the youngest umpire to stand in a world cup final.
At the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, an all-women panel of umpires – Agenbag included – took charge. The Women’s Asia Cup, for the first time in its eight-iteration history, had only women on its match officials’ panel.
Among women’s domestic leagues, Cricket Hong Kong’s inaugural FairBreak Invitational T20 tournament had female umpires, as did India’s Women’s T20 Challenge.
Rise of domestic leagues
At the heart of the growing visibility of female umpires lies the rapid growth of women’s cricket over the past decade. The proliferation of men’s leagues across the globe has also opened the door to more umpiring opportunities for women.
“The rise of women’s franchise leagues has also been a key driver,” 31-year-old Shubhda Bhosle, one of India’s youngest female umpires, told Al Jazeera.
“The short-format [nature] of the competitions allows scope for back-to-back power-packed tournaments [for an umpire to sign up],” added Bhosle, who was one of the four umpires on an all-women panel of match officials in the 2022 Legends League Cricket tournament in Oman, arguably the first such roster in high-profile men’s cricket.
In recent weeks, men’s domestic competitions, too, have appointed women in prominent umpiring roles, including Ranji Trophy – India’s first-class men’s tournament – the Big Bash League in Australia, and the Super Smash across the Tasman where Australia’s Eloise Sheridan scripted history alongside New Zealand’s Kim Cotton as the first female duo to umpire in a men’s domestic tournament in the country.
But when it comes to men’s international cricket – leaving out the odd instance in bilateral series or qualifying tournaments – women umpires are by and large absent.
The 2022 men’s T20 World Cup had none and no female umpire has stood in a men’s world cup across its 12 editions in the 50-over format or eight in T20 cricket.
In the only iteration of the men’s World Test Championship, only male umpires have officiated bar the Australia-India Test in 2021 where Claire Polosak discharged fourth-umpiring duties, marking the first instance of a female officiating in the 146 years of Test cricket’s history.
In contrast, several other sports have fared better. Rugby entered a new era last year when Australia’s Kasey Badger became the first woman to referee a men’s Rugby League World Cup match. Football turned a corner with Qatar 2022 as it became the first men’s FIFA World Cup to have female match referees.
According to Adrian Griffith, senior manager, Umpires and Referees at the ICC, a reason why female umpires are yet to reach the top of the cricketing food chain is down to how the system operates.
“We [the ICC] look at women umpires as just umpires,” Griffith told Al Jazeera. “They have to come through the same system [as the men]. The system is such that everything is done on merit. So for female umpires to be at any men’s World Cup, they will have to be in the top 16 umpires in the world.
“If there’s no woman umpire at the men’s World Cup it’s because … they haven’t been selected to be part of the four umpires from their home board who sit on the international panel.”
‘They are not there as tokens’
The ICC’s Elite and International panels, which have 11 and 47 umpires at present, respectively, consist only of men and are at the higher end of the hierarchy. Women – 18 in total – are present only on the Development Panel and constitute only 30 percent of the 60 umpires that make up the category.
“We pay close attention to them, particularly because it’s one of the major pillars in our strategy to grow and prioritise female involvement in cricket,” added Griffith. “They are not there as tokens, they are there because they are very good.”
For a female umpire to be deemed good enough for the ICC to appoint in men’s major events, the national board’s role is critical.
Each of the ICC’s 12 full members has its own umpiring-talent identification programmes through which they nominate four umpires each to the International Panel. The ICC then assesses their performance in international cricket and chooses a group for consideration for elevation to the Elite Panel.
The Development Panel is made up of women from full member nations and both men and women from associate members who fall within the top 20 of the rankings. It is the primary platform for women to get a foothold on the international umpiring stage.
“The ICC Development Panel allowed me to go to women’s World Cups, work in high-pressure situations, including doing televised games, which is a big skill one needs to develop,” said Agenbag, who, at 22, became the first South African woman to stand in a women’s T20 international in 2019.
The historic moment when Claire Polosak took to the field for the World Cricket League Division Two final between Oman and Namibia to become the first female umpire to stand in a men’s ODI.
In the final of the World Cricket League Division 2 in April 2019, Polosak officiated the final between Namibia and Oman, marking the first time a woman officiated in a men’s ODI.
In 2017, she became the first woman to stand in a men’s domestic fixture in the country. The previous year, she and Sheridan became the first female umpires to officiate on-field together in a professional match in Australia during the Women’s Big Bash League.
“If you’d have asked a 16-year-old version of me if these things would have been possible, she would have said ‘go away, that’s a dream too big’,” said 34-year-old Polosak.
A full-time umpire educator at Cricket New South Wales, Polosak is among the 3,711 umpires registered with Cricket Australia (CA), 246 of whom are female.
Contracted part-time with CA, she is one of the only two women – alongside Sheridan – on the board’s six-umpire “supplementary” umpiring panel, the rung below the all-male 12-umpire “national” panel, which is contracted on a full-time basis.
Whether in relation to contracts or appointments – at the regional, national or the ICC level – or how an umpire is “perceived” in the ecosystem, Polosak believes their gender is incidental.
“Players don’t care if the umpire is male or female,” she said. “But they do want that umpires are good decision-makers and people managers. Similarly, as an umpire, I’d want all appointments to be done on merit because that’s what the game deserves.
“You don’t, as male or female, want to be rushed through systems and then be found out too early. That may turn somebody off officiating altogether. Then, they don’t come back and that hurts a sport.”
ICC’s ‘lofty goals’
Griffith added that the ICC has “some very lofty goals” when it comes to s retaining talent and bringing more women into officiating.
“One of the objectives we’ve set for the 2022-25 cycle is to have 48 women involved in umpiring [at the international level, in men’s and women’s cricket combined] and 24 in refereeing,” he said.
“That will mirror the number of men we have at the moment [because] each full member at present nominates four male umpires each and two referees. By giving these opportunities for females to join our panels and giving them appointments, [we’re hoping] there’s more visibility. Hopefully, things like these help the members close the gaps, too, because the result is there for everyone to see.”
Beyond structural and sociocultural hurdles that may be unique to every cricket-playing nation, the ubiquitous impostor syndrome is often a roadblock in women’s umpiring.
“Though men in this space have never treated me differently because I’m a woman, coming into [the set-up], I was a little bit sceptical because it’s male-dominated with not a lot of female presence around,” said Agenbag, who is currently on a 12-month contract as part of Cricket South Africa’s 12-member reserve-list panel, secondary to the 16-member all-male elite panel.
“So, it helps to have trailblazers like Claire, Kim [Cotton], Sue Redfern, Kathy Cross as good mentors, and have more women’s cricket televised matches, because if that’s where most women umpires are at, you’ve got to give young girls the exposure to see that.”
How long until more women officiating in men’s international cricket is closer to becoming a norm?
“It’s not too far, given the pace at which women’s cricket and women’s umpiring is growing,” added Agenbag.
Bhosle and Griffith echo that view. Polosak, for her part, sounds a note of measured optimism.
“I just hope all women umpires are well-supported and not thrown in before they’re ready,” she said. “One day, there will be a female who stands in a men’s Test match or a World Cup. How far away that is? I honestly don’t know.”
Suffice to say, in true cricketing terms, the decision is pending.
Newswise — A virtual reality (VR) exercise session may be as effective as telehealth appointments at providing short-term pain relief for women diagnosed with endometriosis, according to the results of a new health study.
Endometriosis is a debilitating disease affecting approximately 10% of women of reproductive age worldwide.
Pain management usually involves both pharmacological and surgical interventions but there is increasing interest in the benefits of exercise to reduce symptoms for many women.
With Australians facing hurdles in accessing immediate face-to-face exercise sessions, Exercise Physiologist and Senior Lecturer Dr Joyce Ramos in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, colleagues at the Flinders University Caring Futures Institute, SHAPE Research Centre, College of Medicine and Public Health, and Western Colorado University have assessed the benefits of self-managed exercises delivered through VR technology.
Twenty-two Australian women experiencing pelvic pain due to endometriosis were included in three groups for the study which consisted of a VR exercise group, telehealth exercise group and a control group. The visual analogue scale (VAS) was used to assess the severity of their pelvic pain.
The results show that increases in pain experienced by the virtual reality and telehealth participants may not be as severe as those in the control group, suggesting that both digital health interventions may reduce pelvic pain experienced by women diagnosed with endometriosis.
Flinders University Exercise Physiologist, Senior Lecturer, and study author, Dr Joyce Ramos, says this is the first randomised controlled study to compare the potential benefits of a single telehealth appointment and VR-delivered exercise session on pelvic pain in women with mild-to-moderate endometriosis.
‘Our study suggests that a single bout of a ‘self-managed’ VR-delivered exercise may be as effective as a single session of supervised telehealth-delivered exercise in providing immediate relief from pelvic pain associated with endometriosis,’ says Dr Ramos
‘These findings are consistent with a previous study which demonstrated that a 10-to-20-minute VR session was able to alleviate pain in participants with chronic pain and endometriosis. The previous study results show the VR group had a 36.7% reduction in global pain scores during the intervention period when compared to the control group.’
‘However, it should be noted that there was no statistically significant difference in pain scores between all three groups in our study. Nevertheless, this pilot study provides important information on the potential benefits of these digital health interventions, and the feasibility of a larger and more expensive full-scale study on assessing future treatment options,’ says Dr Ramos.
‘A plausible mechanism to explain the pain-relieving effect of VR- and telehealth-delivered exercise interventions may be their capacity to alter how pain is processed in the central nervous system (CNS). So, performing a task that consumes a lot of attention and resource, such as exercise, reduces the capacity for the processing of pain.’
‘The availability of an efficacious self-managed digital health tool is particularly important among those with busy lifestyles or those who live in rural and remote areas with limited access to synchronous healthcare.
Newswise — Women with continence issues are reluctant to continue many sports and gym programs, but new research has found a way to help women undertake resistance training that will help reduce the risk of stress urinary incontinence.
It involves women engaging in a Kegel exercise program that will tighten pelvic floor muscles before they commence resistance training, with the combined exercises helping to prevent or control urinary incontinence.
This is a prevalent problem: Urinary incontinence affects up to 70% of women worldwide, with stress urinary incontinence reported as the most prevalent sub-type.
Some women suffering from stress urinary incontinence – which is the involuntary loss of urine on effort or physical exertion – say the condition reduces their quality of life, leads to social isolation, and results in them modifying or avoiding sport completely.
However, efforts to maintain resistance training – which includes exercises using free weights and/or machines – actually lead to improved urinary continence.
Donelle Cross, from the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University, says her research has identified that some incontinent women who continued to perform resistance training experienced an improvement in their daily continence.
“Physically active women tend to have stronger pelvic floors, and this is thought to contribute to a successful continence mechanism when there is an increase in their intra-abdominal pressure,” says Ms Cross.
A recent study found over 8% of the incontinent women no longer experienced urinary leakage during their daily life after performing resistance training, which suggest its positive impact on pelvic floor strength and women’s ability to timely and effectively activate their pelvic floor muscles.
And the new research showed that combination of Kegel exercises before resistance training provided the most effective results.
The new research – “Does a Kegel Exercise Program Prior to Resistance Training Reduce the Risk of Stress Urinary Incontinence?” by Donelle Cross, Marilynne N. Kirshbaum, Lolita Wikander, Jing-Yu Tan, Simon Moss and Daniel Gahreman – studied incontinent women before they commenced resistance training, comparing groups with and without prior Kegel exercises. They recorded their Incontinence Severity Index score, pelvic floor muscle strength, and body composition (such as body mass index, fat, and muscle mass) both before and after exercising.
Results that have been published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health demonstrated that resistance training reduced stress urinary incontinence to a significantly greater extent, but only if preceded by Kegel exercises and maintained over time.
A positive correlation was found between the average strength of pelvic floor muscles and stress urinary incontinence. Participants in the group doing Kegel exercises before their resistance training demonstrated a significant increase in muscle mass and concomitant reduction in fat mass.
“A dedicated program of Kegel exercises preceding a resistance training program improved average pelvic floor muscle strength and was effective in reducing stress urinary incontinence among incontinent women,” says Ms Cross.
The results of this study strongly supported the notion of pelvic floor assessments and supervised Kegel exercises before performing resistance training.
Participants in this study were reminded frequently to activate their pelvic floor muscles as part of engaging their core when attempting the resistance training exercises, which contributed to the successful results.
Feb. 10, 2023 — All women who have finished having children should consider having their fallopian tubes removed at the time of other scheduled pelvic surgery in order to lower their risk of developing ovarian cancer, even if they aren’t at increased risk for the deadly disease, a leading research organization has advised.
Doctors currently recommend that women with high genetic risk for ovarian cancer have their ovaries and fallopian tubes removed once they’ve finished having children.
In new messaging, the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance is now encouraging all women, even those without a genetic mutation, to have their fallopian tubes removed during a planned gynecologic surgery.
There is increasing evidence that many types of ovarian cancers start in the fallopian tube, and fallopian tube removal has been shown to dramatically reduce risk for a later diagnosis, the organization said.
The new advice replaces the decades old focus on symptom awareness and early detection of ovarian cancer through screening.
It follows a “sobering and deeply disappointing” study that showed that regular screening for ovarian cancer with blood tests and ultrasound does not save lives, the organization said. (This was the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening published in the journal The Lancet in June 2021).
The results of that study were “very hard to accept,” Audra Moran, OCRA president and CEO, says in an interview.
“We have an obligation to let people know that symptom awareness and early detection will not save lives,” but preemptive removal of the fallopian tubes “absolutely will,” Moran says.
This advice is “reasonable and makes sense,” says Stephanie V. Blank, MD, president of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology and director of gynecologic oncology for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.
And it’s actually not new, she says. Several years ago, the Society of Gynecologic Oncology said fallopian tube removal may be “an appropriate and feasible” strategy for ovarian cancer risk reduction.
“It’s getting new attention” now based on the disappointing screening study, Blank says.
Importantly, the recommendation is for women who are already scheduled for another pelvic surgery for a benign condition, such as hysterectomy for fibroids. There is no current recommendation to have fallopian tubes removed as a standalone procedure.
Deanna Gerber, MD, gynecologic oncologist at NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center-Long Island, says women should understand that there is still ongoing research on this topic, “but this low-risk procedure may reduce their risk of developing an ovarian or fallopian tube cancer.”
As part of their new messaging campaign, the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance is also encouraging women to know their personal risk for ovarian cancer. The group has launched a pilot program offering free at-home genetic testing kits to people with a personal or family history of breast, ovarian, uterine, or colorectal cancer.
In the United States, ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women and causes more deaths than any other gynecological cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
Often, the symptoms are subtle, making ovarian cancer difficult to detect in its early stages. Common symptoms include bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, trouble eating or feeling full quickly, and needing to urinate more frequently.
‘Everybody is trying to grasp something that gives them hope, and that hope is getting eliminated on a daily basis.’
When the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in August 2021, it sought to reassure Afghans and the international community that the rights of women and girls would be respected and that they would remain active members of Afghan society.
Nearly a year and a half later, however, the situation for women and girls in the country is dire.
The Taliban has effectively barred women and girls from secondary schools and universities. It has restricted their employment, and even altogether banned their presence in many public spaces.
But as former Afghan ambassador to the United States, Adela Raz, tells Marc Lamont Hill, Afghan families are still “trying”.
“Each single family inside the country are still trying, and knocking every single door to find a way for their daughters to go and study,” Raz says.
So, what does this mean for the future of Afghanistan? And is there any hope in sight for Afghan women?
On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks to Raz, the current director of Princeton University’s Afghanistan Policy Lab.
Feb. 9, 2023 — For years, women’s health advocates have argued that far more research is needed on women’s bodies and health. The world’s first-ever “vagina on a chip,” recently developed at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, could go a long way to making that happen.
“Women’s health has not received the attention it deserves,” says Don Ingber, MD, PhD, who led the team that created the vagina chip. The advance quickly drew media attention after it was reported in the journal Microbiome in late November. But researchers hope for more than headlines. They see the chip as a way to facilitate vaginal health research and open the door to vital new treatments.
By now, you may have heard of “organs on chips”: tiny devices about the size of a flash drive that are designed to mimic the biological activity of human organs. These glass chips contain living human cells within grooves that allow the passage of fluid, to either maintain or disrupt the cells’ function. So far, Ingber and his team at the Wyss Institute have developed more than 15 organ chip models, including chips that mimic the lung, intestine, kidney, and bone marrow.
The idea to develop a vagina chip grew out of research, funded by the Gates Foundation, on a childhood disease called environmental enteric dysfunction, an intestinal disease most commonly found in low-resource nations that is the second leading cause of death in children under 5. That’s when Ingber discovered just how much the child’s microbiome influences this disease.
Stemming from that work, the Gates Foundation turned its attention to newborn health — in particular, the impact of bacterial vaginosis, an imbalance in the vagina’s bacterial makeup. Bacterial vaginosis occurs in 1 out of 4 women worldwide and has been linked to premature birth as well as HIV, HPV persistence, and cervical cancer.
Upon establishing the Vaginal Microbiome Research Consortium, the foundation asked Ingber to engineer an organ chip that mimicked the vagina’s microbiome. The goal was to test “live biotherapeutic products,” or living microbes like probiotics, that might restore the vagina’s microbiome to health.
No other preclinical model exists to perform tests like that, says Ingber.
“The vagina chip is a way to help make some advances,” he says.
Pushing for More Women’s Health Research
The Gates Foundation recognized that women’s reproductive health is a major issue, not only in low-income nations, but everywhere around the world. As the project evolved, Ingber began to hear from female colleagues about how neglected women’s reproductive health is in medical science.
“It is something I became sensitive to and realized this is just the starting point,” Ingber says.
Take bacterial vaginosis, for example. Since 1982, treatment has revolved around the same two antibiotics. That’s partly because there is no animal model to study. No other species has the same vaginal bacterial community as humans do.
That makes developing any new therapy “incredibly challenging,” explains Caroline Mitchell, MD, MPH, an OB/GYN at Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the consortium.
It turns out, replicating the vagina in a lab dish is, to use the technical term, very hard.
“That’s where a vagina chip offers an opportunity,” Mitchell says. “It’s not super high-throughput, but it’s way more high-throughput than a [human] clinical trial.”
As such, the vagina chip could help scientists find new treatments much faster.
Like Ingber, Mitchell also sees the chip as a way to bring more attention to the largely unmet needs in female reproductive medicine.
“Women’s reproductive health has been under-resourced, under-prioritized, and largely disregarded for decades,” she says. And the time may be ripe for change: Mitchell says she was encouraged by the National Institutes of Health’s Advancing NIH Research on the Health of Women conference, held in 2021 in response to a congressional request to address women’s health research efforts.
Beyond bacterial vaginosis, Mitchell imagines the chip could help scientists find new treatments for vaginal yeast infection (candidiasis), chlamydia, and endometriosis. As with bacterial vaginosis, medicines for vaginal yeast infections have not advanced in decades, Mitchell says. Efforts to develop a vaccine for chlamydia — which can cause permanent damage to a woman’s reproductive system — have dragged on for many years. And endometriosis, an often painful condition in which the tissue that makes up the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, remains under-researched despite affecting 10% of childbearing-age women.
While some mouse models are used in chlamydia research, it’s hard to say if they’ll translate to humans, given the vaginal and cervical bacterial differences.
“Our understanding of the basic physiology of the environment of the vagina and cervix is another area where we’re woefully ignorant,” Mitchell says.
To that end, Ingber’s team is developing more complex chips mimicking the vagina and the cervix. One of his team members wants to use the chips to study infertility. The researchers have already used the chips to see how bacterial vaginosis and mucous changes impact the way sperm migrates up the reproductive tract.
The lab is now linking vagina and cervix chips together to study viral infections of the cervix, like HPV, and all types of bacterial diseases of the vaginal tract. By applying cervical mucus to the vagina chip, they hope to learn more about how female reproductive tissues respond to infection and inflammation.
“I always say that organ chips are like synthetic biology at the cell tissue and organ level,” says Ingber. “You start simple and see if you [can] mimic a clinical situation.”
As they make the chips more complex – perhaps by adding blood vessel cells and female hormones – Ingber foresees being able to study the response to hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle.
“We can begin to explore the effects of cycling over time as well as other types of hormonal effects,” he says.
Ingber also envisions linking the vagina chip to other organ chips – he’s already succeeded in linking eight different organ types together. But for now, the team hopes the vagina chip will enhance our understanding of basic female reproductive biology and speed up the process of developing new treatments for women’s health.
PORT SAINT LUCIE, Fla., February 9, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– The Heroines are one of the first professional women’s paintball teams in the world and in their new two-part documentary premiering Super Bowl Sunday on YouTube, they are taking viewers into a new paintball universe. The game of paintball has long been dominated by men. Now, women are on a mission to inspire and empower young female athletes to change that.
In paintball, players can be any age, any skill or any gender to compete. Traditionally women have competed on the same field on co-ed teams with men. It’s one of the things that makes this sport unique. The problem? No one ever really knew the women were there, until now.
In 2021, six paintball field and team owners decided it was time for paintball to have a league that offered women and girls a place to compete in a sport they loved while becoming visible mentors and role models to other female athletes. At the largest event of the season, NXL World Cup – an exhibition match between two all-star women line-ups, would solidify the birth of a new all-women’s professional league: The WNXL.
The league made its debut in 2022 and the Original 6 teams competed at three events held across the country. One of these original six teams are The Heroines. Based in Port St. Lucie Florida, the team is made up of girls and women ages 16-32 from all over the country who have competed all over the world, some representing the USA selected to Team USA Paintball. Their coach is a world championship 15-year professional player veteran.
“The Heroines: The Documentary” shines a light on some of the world’s top female paintball players while magnifying their hard work and dedication to a sport that is often overlooked by many. Take a journey into the world of Women’s Professional Paintball and follow The Heroines as they return one year later hoping to secure a win and a season championship in the place it all started, the biggest stage in the game: World Cup.
This action packed series will give fans an inside look at the intensity and passion of these female athletes as they battle for top honors and fight to make history. Witness firsthand the effort, dedication and passion that these incredible women put into their game. From grueling practices, tough losses and thrilling tournament wins, The Heroines will inspire more women to become involved in paintball and challenge traditional gender roles within sports. With determination and grit, this female team is leading a revolution for female athletes everywhere.
If you’re looking for the ultimate adrenaline rush this will check the box.
Follow The Heroines on YouTube, be inspired, find a field, get in the game!
Newswise — BOSTON – In an internationally conducted clinical trial lead by Dana-Farber involving patients with recurrent ovarian cancer that is resistant to platinum therapy, a novel conjugate therapy called mirvetuximab soravtansine resulted in substantially better responses than standard treatments. Mirvetuximab soravtansine was granted accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November 2022. The FDA approval was based on results of the SORAYA study which were published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and were previously reported at the Society for Gynecologic Oncology annual meeting in March 2022 and the Annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in June 2022.
“The results of the SORAYA study supported the accelerated FDA approval of mirvetuximab for patients with recurrent, platinum-resistant, folate receptor alpha-positive ovarian cancer,” Ursula A. Matulonis, MD, chief of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Dana-Farber, lead author and co-principal investigator of the study. “The recent approval of this agent by the FDA makes it the first approved therapy for platinum resistant ovarian cancer since 2014, and the findings we report today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology underscore the benefit of mirvetuximab soravtansine for this patient population.”
The study enrolled 106 patients with platinum-resistant high-grade serous ovarian cancer that highly expressed folate receptor alpha. The participants had been treated with up to three prior treatments for their ovarian cancer.
The study results show that after a median follow-up of 13.4 months, 32.4% of participants had an objective anti-cancer response, including five who had a complete response, or the disappearance of all signs of cancer. The median duration of response was 6.9 months. Importantly, drug activity was observed irrespective of the number of previous lines of therapy received or PARP inhibitor exposure in patients having received prior bevacizumab. Mirvetuximab was well-tolerated by study participants. The most common adverse side effects associated with the treatment were blurred vision, keratopathy (a non-inflammatory condition of the eye), and nausea.
The novel agent is one of a growing number of antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, which consist of a drug linked to an antibody that directly targets the cancer cell. Mirvetuximab connects an antibody targeting the folate receptor alpha molecule on high-grade serous ovarian cancers to a drug molecule called DM4 that disrupts microtubule formation. (Microtubules are major components of the cytoskeleton that give shape and structure to cells.) The folate receptor protein is far more abundant in some tumor cells than normal cells, making it an attractive target for cancer drugs.
Newswise — COVID vaccines and first boosters provided significant protection to pregnant women against severe complications and death, even after the arrival of the new Omicron variant, according to astudy published this week in The Lancet medical journal.
This study “demonstrates a vaccine effectiveness in preventing severe complications of severe COVID-19 of 76% following vaccination and at least one booster,” said Dr. Michael Gravett, an OB-GYN with the University of Washington School of Medicine who participated in the study, which was led by Oxford University. “Given the marked increased in maternal mortality and severe morbidity seen in our earlier studies prior to vaccination, the 76% efficacy is pretty impressive and really points to the need to get women vaccinated.”
The main point of the study, which was completed before other variants came on the scene, is for pregnant women to get vaccinated and receive all their boosters, including the bivalent booster, he said.The bivalent booster contains components targeting the original strain of the virus as well as a component of the Omicron strain, which emerged in late 2021.
As of the first week of January, 71% of pregnant women have received their primary COVID vaccines but only 19% have received the recommended bivalent booster, according the the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In Washington state, only 29% of pregnant women have received the bivalent booster, Gravett said.
Gravett noted that the study, one of the largest of its kind, compared outcomes of 1,545 pregnant women diagnosed with COVID-19 with those of 3,073 pregnant women without the infection. UW Medicine sites were one of three in the United States included in the study. Gravett and Dr. Alisa Kachikis guided the Seattle part of the study, which included around 75 women from UW Medical Center-Montlake, UW Medical Center-Northwest and Harborview Medical Center.
The study was conducted between Nov. 27, 2021, and June 30, 2022, during which time the highly transmissible Omicron strain began to rapidly spread around the world. The study did not include the impact of vaccines and the second booster or the bivalent booster on later mutations of COVID-19.
Vaccinated women were well-protected against severe COVID-19 symptoms and complications and had a very low risk of admission to an intensive care unit, the study found. Full vaccination with a booster conferred the greatest protection, the the researchers noted.
COVID-19 infection during pregnancy was associated with increased risks of maternal morbidity, severe pregnancy complications, and hospital admission, especially among symptomatic and unvaccinated women. In particular, among unvaccinated women who developed severe COVID-19 symptoms the risk of pre-eclampsia was more than threefold higher than that of women without infection. Obese or overweight women with severe symptoms were at the highest risk for maternal morbidity and severe complications.
Although much of the general population has become less concerned about new variants, pregnant women, especially unvaccinated pregnant women, should not take that attitude, Gravett said.
“If you look at unvaccinated women, you still have an increased death rate, and increased neonatal mortality,” he said. “If you are vaccinated and boosted, especially with a mRNA vaccine, those levels drop by 81%.”
In addition, researchers found no increase risk of vaccine side effects in mothers, fetuses or newborns and a decrease risk of preterm birth among vaccinated women.
“Bottom line is we need to do a better job for women who may become pregnant, and make sure they receive the vaccines and the bivalent boosters,” he said.
The next study will likely follow up with mothers and babies who received the vaccines and those who did not, Gravett said.
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University of Washington School of Medicine and UW Medicine
Newswise — Susan G. Komen®, the world’s leading breast cancer organization, applauds House lawmakers for their leadership on bipartisan legislation that would make financial benefits and health insurance immediately available to people living with metastatic breast cancer. In the 117th Congress, this bill was supported by more than 50 percent of members of the House of Representatives.
The Metastatic Breast Cancer Access to Care Act (H.R.549) waives a five-month waiting period for Social Security Disability Insurance and a subsequent 24-month waiting period for Medicare benefits. People diagnosed with MBC, on average, don’t live long enough to receive both benefits, yet most face thousands of dollars in medical expenses every month without the means to pay their bills.
“Many living with metastatic breast cancer do not have the luxury of waiting for the health care services and financial support they need. Those receiving this devastating diagnosis face enough challenges without the added burden of long and arduous waiting periods, which create barriers to the care patients so desperately need, and need now,” said Molly Guthrie, Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy at Susan G. Komen.
An estimated 168,000 Americans live with MBC, breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast to other parts of the body – often the brain, bones, lungs and liver. Treatments exist for MBC but there is no cure for it. The average life expectancy is three years after diagnosis and MBC is responsible for the majority of the breast cancer deaths each year.
“In New York, over 16,800 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year and about 2,500 women die from the disease annually. Long Island has among the highest occurrences of breast cancer in the country. These numbers and the real people they represent make this issue deeply personal for me and for my constituents. Roughly 90 percent of breast cancer deaths are a result of metastatic disease and the life expectancy of an individual with metastatic breast cancer is anywhere between 4 and 36 months. Given this timeframe, it is outrageous to double the suffering of those living with this horrible disease by making them wait to gain access to health benefits that they are immediately eligible for. This bill waives these onerous waiting periods, relieving the potential financial burden on those with the disease, and allowing them to focus on fighting the cancer,” saidRep. Andrew R. Garbarino (R-NY-02), bill sponsor.
Added Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL-14), original co-sponsor of the bill, “The statistics are startling. In 2022, it is estimated that 43,780 people died from breast cancer in the United States – 90 percent as a result of metastatic breast cancer (MBC). To save lives and improve breast cancer outcomes, we must invest in treatments and cures and increase access to affordable, quality care for individuals with MBC. Immediately connecting recently-diagnosed individuals with access to treatment can improve outcomes, and our bipartisan bill would eliminate barriers and reduce current health disparities in care. People diagnosed with MBC should not have to worry about long waiting periods for eligibility to care and I look forward to working with my colleague, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, to deliver financial security and critical care to families.”
Passage of the MBC Access to Care Act is a top legislative priority for Susan G. Komen this year. “Komen applauds Reps. Garbarino and Castor for their leadership in reintroducing the Metastatic Breast Cancer Access to Care Act on behalf of those living with MBC,” Guthrie added. “We look forward to building off of previous support for this legislation and passing the bill as soon as possible to provide much-needed help to those who are living with the disease now and will be diagnosed in the future.”
Regular pap tests and HPV testing can prevent and often catch cases of cervical cancer.
Each year, approximately 13,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and about 4,000 women die from cervical cancer in the US. Sixty percent of cervical cancers occur in resource- poor communities.
In Texas, Hispanic women have a higher incidence (15.1 per 100,000 women, compared to 8.1 per 100,000 among white women) and are 1.9 times more likely to die from the disease.
Hispanic women residing on the US-Mexico border have even higher cervical cancer incidence rates, a high late-diagnosis rate, and one of the highest mortality rates in the US.
Screening rates among Hispanic women along the border are suboptimal.
At Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, the De Casa En Casa program is reducing the burden of cervical cancer by facilitating early diagnosis and access to treatment. The program offers educational sessions, no-cost cancer screenings, and diagnostic testing. The program covers 105 West Texas counties, including El Paso and Hudspeth counties.
Our expert is available to speak on the topic of education and prevention of cervical cancer.
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Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso
In Parque das Tribos, an indigenous neighbourhood in Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state, violence against women is not uncommon.
“As a leader, I have experienced many things,” says Lutana Ribeiro, a member of the Kokama ethnic group, and the only female chief in Parque das Tribos, which is home to around 4,500 people. “Women knock on my door asking for help.”
Sparsely populated and relatively isolated in terms of air, road and sea access, the state of Amazonas faces particular challenges in access to public services, including for sexual and reproductive health support and gender-based violence response.
UNFPA Brazil/Isabela Martel
Indigenous Brazilian women discuss gender violence in a UNFPA workshop.
Huge increase in femicide
In 2021, at least one person called the national police emergency number in Brazil every minute to report domestic violence. From 2016 to 2021, the rate of femicide – defined as the intentional killing of a woman, motivated at least in part by her gender – was reported to have increased by over 44 per cent, with one woman dying as a result of femicide every seven hours.
In the state of Amazonas, of all women killed intentionally by another person, more than one in five were cases of femicide.
Ms. Ribeiro, who is well known among her community as a staunch defender of human rights, recently facilitated a series of workshops for survivors of gender-based violence, which were attended by 50 women from the area. “On the first day, few spoke. Today, most of them have spoken.”
The workshops, run by the UN reproductive and sexual health agency, UNFPA, explored different types of violence and explained how to access local social support networks and available legal protection mechanisms.
These include the Maria da Penha Law, which changed Brazil’s penal code in 2006 to not only allow for aggressors to be arrested for an act of violence against a woman or girl, but also for them to be detained, if the risk of them committing such an act was deemed a threat to a person’s life.
UNFPA Brazil/Isabela Martel
Drawings by children of indigenous Brazilian women participating in UNFPA workshops.
A safe space for women
Ms. Ribeiro described how, from the second day of the workshop, the women were eager to share their experiences with each other and with the UNFPA team. “After the first lecture, many women felt stronger. The next day, people said ‘enough’ to violence. These men will no longer do what they want with them, because now the women are more empowered.”
The workshops are aimed at training women from indigenous communities to help spread life-saving information among their friends, family, and peers.
Children also joined in recreational activities so their mothers could attend. “The initiative was very important for us to become increasingly stronger and have this support through dialogue and experience,” says Ms. Ribeiro.
“The workshops created a safe space for women to reflect together on the different forms of violence that affect their daily lives and on coping strategies,” says Débora Rodrigues, head of the UNFPA office in Manaus, “which include expanding the supply of and access to services that guarantee protection and rights for all the Parque das Tribos community”.
With financial support from the United States Agency for International Development, UNFPA is implementing projects across Brazil’s northern states of Amazonas and Roraima to strengthen the local capacities in preventing and confronting gender-based violence.
In 2022, more than 36,000 women and girls benefited from the initiative, with increased access to services such as shelters and safe spaces for survivors, as well as workshops that also engaged men and boys.
Ms. Ribeiro says the participants in the Parque das Tribos workshop felt collectively strengthened, asserting: “We, as indigenous people, are not afraid.”
مدينة سكوتسديل، ولاية أريزونا – يمكن أن يؤدي انقطاع الطمث، نهاية دَورة الحيض، إلى ظهور أعراض مثل هَبَّات الحرارة والتعرّق الليلي والأرق والتغيرات المزاجية. لا يُفترض أن تعاني النساء في صمت: إذ تتوفر العديد من خيارات العلاج. تصف جويل كلينج، دكتورة الطب، رئيسة قسم صحة المرأة في مايو كلينك في مدينة سكوتسدال، بولاية أريزونا، العلاجات الهرمونية وغير الهرمونية.
By Deltra Kroemer, Caryn Sullivan, and Ann Gootee, as told to Keri Wiginton
How have you adapted to your diagnosis over time?
Deltra: After my initial shock wore off, I knew I wanted to focus on living, not dying. I wanted to make meaningful connections, both with those around me and those in the cancer community.
Caryn: I’ve embraced it. I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer around the same time Disney’s Frozen was in theaters. When I heard the princess sing “Let It Go,” I started crying, feeling that was a mantra I should embrace.
Ann: This is not a linear journey. There are ups and downs, progress and setbacks. Patience is needed and often hard to come by. And most days require an afternoon nap.
What makes you feel better on your hard days?
Deltra: Journaling and connecting with others. Knowing I’m not alone helps me so much.
Caryn: Little things have always made me smile, whether it’s watching Days of Our Lives, cuddling on the couch with my son, or sitting at the beach watching the water. And my son and I created “The Grateful Game” so we can focus on what we’re grateful for each day.
Ann: Prayer and chats with one of my closest friends or family members. Walks in nice weather help as well.
Is there anything that’s easier to do after your diagnosis?
Deltra: I’m a queen of self-care now. I don’t guilt myself for resting, nor push myself to do more.
Caryn: I seldom wear a bra, and I love it.
Ann: I can be ready in no time flat when I get out the shower. I don’t have to dry and style my hair. And I don’t have to worry about my eyebrows anymore because I got microblading.
Has cancer changed how you think about your body in any positive ways?
Deltra: My diagnosis initially made me feel that my body had betrayed me. But now I speak love and life over my body daily. I am in awe of how strong and capable it is. I’m more aware that this is the only body I get. I embrace it, pamper it, and enjoy it.
Caryn: I started to find physical beauty in other parts of my body other than my hair or chest, which were what I once considered my finer features.
Ann: Not really. But I laugh when people ask me how long it takes to get ready. With chemotherapy and hair loss, I can get ready quickly.
Is there anything you used to worry about that you’ve since let go?
Deltra: I don’t worry so much about what my body looks like, as I’m too concerned with what’s going on inside of it. I certainly don’t worry about what other people think of how I choose to live my life.
Caryn: Cancer — both the first and second time — brought me clarity. When in the midst of cancer decisions, it was easy to let go of things I couldn’t control and focus on what I could.
Ann: Weight gain! Many medications and treatments can cause weight gain. And I used to be very active; I worked out 5 days a week. Over time, my workouts became long walks, and only on days when I have the energy. I continue to maintain a healthy diet, but I can’t fret over a few pounds.
Are there any changes you’ve made to your body or life that you wouldn’t have before your diagnosis?
Deltra: I’ve rejected negative body talk and thinking. I’ve stopped putting things off that I want to do. And I’ve reevaluated relationships and let go of those that weren’t only not serving me, but they were damaging me.
Caryn: I embrace wellness wholeheartedly. I eat plant-based, sleep longer nights, exercise regularly, and include small mindfulness practices in my day.
Ann: I try to continue with a healthy diet and do as much physically as I can.
How has your perspective on life changed?
Deltra: I’ve stopped living like I have all the time in the world. I think everyone does this too much.
Caryn: I take care of myself holistically, meaning not just one area of wellness but many. And I value a healthy lifestyle because that is something I can control when it comes to healing.
Ann: I’m more aware of the importance of relationships with my spouse, family, and friends. I’m quicker to say I love you at the end of conversations, and not just to my husband and stepchildren. I have best friends who we never hang up without saying I love you.
What advice do you have for someone who’s just learned they have metastatic breast cancer?
Deltra: Breathe, feel your feelings, cry it out. Then lift up your head and lift up your voice. Advocate for yourself and connect with the cancer community. They understand exactly what you’re going through, and their advice can be a lifesaver.
Caryn: The practical advice I’d give is to make sure you get a second or even third opinion, even if you like your doctor. I learned so much from having my cancer conversations many times.
Ann: Take a deep breath and learn all you can about this disease. Become your own advocate. If you want a second opinion, don’t hesitate to discuss it with your doctor. This is your body and your life.
What advice do you have for a friend or family member of someone with metastatic breast cancer?
Deltra: Respect and support the choices your loved one makes for themselves. And don’t burden them by saying to reach out if they need anything. Just jump in and be a help. Find and connect with support groups for you, too.
Caryn: Know your audience, aka think about what the patient would want. Be proactive and come up with ideas on ways you can help. At the same time, pleasantly offer but don’t push yourself on them.
Ann: Stay in touch and offer your support. But let the patient determine what and when they want to tell you about their diagnosis, treatment, and progress. I’m glad to share my journey with this disease. However, I’ve learned from some of my fellow support group friends that they hold this information much closer.
Is there anything else you want people living with metastatic breast cancer to know?
Deltra: I’ve learned to appreciate the little things and be incredibly present because I don’t know what the future holds. I’ve realized that experiences and connecting with other humans are the most important things in this life.
Caryn: I try to live with a loving stance. I want to be around people I love, do activities I love, and hopefully showcase how, if we focus on goodness and positivity, we can find happiness through any hardship.
Ann: If you can find a support group for MBC, I’d recommend you join. It really helps to talk with others who have been diagnosed with this disease. Finally, try to maintain a sense of humor. It helps you and those around you to lighten the situation at times.
About Deltra: Deltra Kroemer, 34, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2019. Kroemer is an ambassador with For the Breast of Us, a website and community for women of color affected by breast cancer. She lives in Waterbury, CT.
About Caryn: Caryn Sullivan, 47, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2013. Sullivan is the founder of the website Pretty Wellness, author of the book Happiness through Hardship, and host of a podcast with the same name. She lives in Fairfield, CT.
About Ann: Ann Gootee, 68, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2019. Gootee lives with her husband of 37 years in Glen Ellyn, IL.
Newswise — ROCHESTER, Minn. — A specific colonization of microbes in the reproductive tract is commonly found in women with ovarian cancer, according to a new study from Mayo Clinic’s Center for Individualized Medicine. The discovery, published in Scientific Reports, strengthens evidence that the bacterial component of the microbiome — a community of microorganisms that also consists of viruses, yeasts and fungi — is an important indicator for early detection, diagnosis and prognosis of ovarian cancer.
“In addition, we found a clear pattern that reveals women with early stage ovarian cancer have a significantly higher accumulation of the pathogenic microbes when compared to women with later-stage disease,” says Abigail Asangba, Ph.D., a microbiome researcher within the Center for Individualized Medicine. “In later stages, the number of microbes fades. This strong signal could potentially help us diagnose women earlier and save lives — similar to how a noninvasive Pap smear is used to detect cervical cancer.”
The study also suggests that a higher accumulation of pathogenic microbes plays a role in treatment outcomes and could be a potential indicator for predicting a patient’s prognosis and response to therapy.
“We analyzed whether patients with similar outcomes also had a similar microbial composition before they started treatment, irrespective of stage, grade or histology of cancer, as well as other factors,” Dr. Asangba says. “And we found that the patients with a higher accumulation of pathogenic microbes had poorer outcomes in comparison to those without.”
Ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women and is the second most common gynecological malignancy. An estimated 20,000 women in the U.S. are expected to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2023, and nearly 13,000 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. Most women who are affected are usually diagnosed at an advanced stage because early-stage disease is usually asymptomatic. Furthermore, only 20% of cases are caused by genetic mutations, including BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, while the remaining 80% of cases have no known cause.
Zeroing in on pathogenic microbes
For the study, the researchers investigated samples of 30 women undergoing a hysterectomy for ovarian cancer and compared them to samples of 34 women undergoing a hysterectomy for a benign condition. They used high-throughput sequencing to analyze the samples, which were recovered from the lower and upper reproductive tract, peritoneal fluid, urine, and anal microbiome.
In the women with ovarian cancer, the team observed a colonization of disease-causing bacteria, including Dialister, Corynebacterium, Prevotella and Peptoniphilus.
“These microbes are known to be associated with other diseases, including other cancers, but more study is needed to know if they are a contributing driver of ovarian cancer,” says Marina Walther-Antonio, Ph.D., a microbiome researcher within Mayo Clinic’s Center for Individualized Medicine and a study author. Dr. Walther-Antonio is a member of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. She focuses on women’s health, particularly gynecologic cancers.
“Our ultimate goal is to understand what role the microbiome plays in gynecologic cancers. We are exploring several potential avenues: the role in the causation of the disease, aggravation of the disease and treatment resistance,” Dr. Walther-Antonio says.
The study is an extension of several other previously published studies by Dr. Walther-Antonio and her team that link the microbiome to endometrial cancer. In one study, the team found that a microbe called Porphyromonas somerae has a pathogenic role in endometrial cancer via intracellular activity.
Dr. Walther-Antonio says identifying microbiome signatures to predict the development of malignancies could lead to intervention before cancers have a chance to materialize.
“Our latest study provides a significant leap toward understanding the prognostic potential of the microbiome and places us a step closer to being able to help our patients,” Dr. Walther-Antonio says.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a career development award from the Mayo Clinic Ovarian SPORE National Institutes of Health grant P50 CA136393), the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance and CTSA grant KL2TR002379 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
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Newswise — A new paper in Oxford Open Digital Health,published by Oxford University Press, indicates that it may be possible to use mobile game apps to induce young women to make active decision choices to improve their health and welfare.
A team of programmers and researchers based in India and the United States worked to create a direct-to-consumer digital platform for mobile games, called Game of Choice, Not Chance, with their first game for adolescent girls called Go Nisha Go. The game uses discovery and play to try to empower young girls to become active decision makers. The game involves a travel adventure story and presents players with challenges, conflicts, and negotiations analogous to what they might encounter in their own lives. Drawing on principles of game-based learning, a player experiences the outcome of her in-game decisions through her avatar, the game’s protagonist. Players also receive feedback on their decisions with the option to play again and experience a different outcome. Throughout the game players also received access to real-world resources that could provide relevant information, skill-building opportunities, and links to healthcare products to help them navigate issues such as menstrual hygiene management and building career skills.
The objective of this study was to develop psychographic profiles to help game developers create relatable characters. Researchers conducted the study in four Indian cities using a qualitative survey of 105 women ages 15 to 19. They used the survey to collect information on the role models, families, education, dreams, fears, and decision-making powers of the young women.
Primarily, the researchers note, participants wished to be seen as obedient, respectful toward parents, and a follower of prevalent social norms. Participants also expressed a desire to remain in school as long as possible and enjoy full careers as adults. While the desire to remain in education and pursue a career was widespread, the young women often lacked the necessary means to execute these goals. The participants seemed to have unclear priorities, limited guidance, and an obscure understanding of the impact of small or big choices on their future. The researchers note that developing skills involving being clear about goals, improving negotiation strategies, and understanding the connections between choices and outcomes will be used to improve the game.
The study’s authors identified four personas of adolescent girls. They will use the traits of these personas to align the game with the intended audience so that the narrative of the game and the scenarios players explore will be relatable and engaging.
“This study represents a novel approach to research for an equally innovative game for agency-building and health awareness among adolescents,” said the paper’s lead author, Aparna Raj.
Newswise — ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI – JANUARY 10,2023 – Susan G. Komen®, the world’s leading breast cancer organization, applauds Representative Brenda Shields (R-St. Joseph) for working with Komen to introduce legislation that would remove financial barriers to imaging that can rule out breast cancer or confirm the need for a biopsy. Last year alone, more than 5,560 individuals were diagnosed with breast cancer and more than 820 died of the disease in Missouri.
“This legislation can make an immediate impact for thousands of people who require diagnostic or supplemental breast imaging yet are unable to afford it and often forego the tests,” said Molly Guthrie, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at Susan G. Komen. “Everyone should be able to access the care they need and afford it, especially when it could mean the difference between a person’s life and death.”
HB 575, introduced by Rep. Shields, would eliminate out-of-pocket costs for diagnostic and supplemental breast imaging (such as an MRI, ultrasound, diagnostic mammogram) when medically necessary. These exams can be extremely expensive and require people to pay high out-of-pocket costs – all before more expensive treatment even begins.
A Komen-commissioned study found the costs to patients range from $234 for a diagnostic mammogram to more than $1,021 for a breast MRI. The cost of the test prevents individuals in Missouri from getting the imaging they require, making it difficult to detect their breast cancer as early as possible.
An estimated 16 percent of people who receive annual screening mammograms nationwide get called back for diagnostic imaging. Additionally, these tests are often recommended for those who have previously been diagnosed with breast cancer and for some individuals who are considered at high-risk for breast cancer, making their out-of-pocket costs particularly burdensome to those individuals.
“When the threat of breast cancer rears its head, women and their doctors need every tool available to for an accurate diagnosis,” said Rep. Shields. “Early detection is vital to protecting the women of Missouri – and insurance coverage of diagnostic mammograms should not stand in the way of Missourians’ access to this life-saving technology. This bill will save lives by ensuring treatment can begin as early as possible.”
The use of breast cancer screening and follow-up diagnostics have led to significant increases in the early detection of breast cancer in the past 30 years. However, this is not true across all demographics. Evidence shows that Black and Hispanic breast cancer patients tend to be diagnosed at a later stage, perhaps due to delays in follow-up imaging after abnormal findings on an annual mammogram.
More diagnostic and supplemental breast imaging is likely going to be needed due to “missed” breast cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts warn that missed mammograms could lead to more later-stage breast cancer diagnoses, once detected, so it is critically important that we increase access to affordable tests to those who medically require it.
About Susan G. Komen®
Susan G. Komen® is the world’s leading nonprofit breast cancer organization, working to save lives and end breast cancer forever. Komen has an unmatched, comprehensive 360-degree approach to fighting this disease across all fronts and supporting millions of people in the U.S. and in countries worldwide. We advocate for patients, drive research breakthroughs, improve access to high-quality care, offer direct patient support and empower people with trustworthy information. Founded by Nancy G. Brinker, who promised her sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would end the disease that claimed Suzy’s life, Komen remains committed to supporting those affected by breast cancer today, while tirelessly searching for tomorrow’s cures. Visit komen.org or call 1-877 GO KOMEN. Connect with us on social at www.komen.org/contact-us/follow-us/.
