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Healthedia Health News and Commentary Group Blog

Healthedia Health News and Commentary Group Blog
The healthedia news and commentary blog is a unique group blog brought to you by Healthedia.com- providing unique and informative health content from qualified experts. In this blog, doctors and other top health bloggers have been brought together to

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This Just In....Teens Are Moody and Tweens Swear!46199740
2008-02-26 21:31:00
From the files of tell me something I don't already know , comes this study. The headline is sure to catch the attention of every parent of a teen, or tween for that matter: Teen Brain May Be Wired for Moodiness . I could have told them that! In fact, they could have videotaped my morning today for a wonderful example. One minute we are happily eating breakfast and the next my 13 year old is grabbing her backpack and huffing out the door as her friend arrived to walk to school. The instigating event: her sister had asked her to move her backpack from the breakfast bar so she could have room to eat, and my 13 year old felt that request was inconvenient . It was a lovely family moment. Softpedia has a great summary of other brain changes in teenagers that explain just about every behavior we've all seen in teens from poor judgment to impulsiveness. The part you'll love the most is this: It is not known exactly what marks the transition from adolescence to adulthood. The end of ...
More About: Teens , Tweens , Moody

Fertility Questions: SCSA
2008-02-19 16:31:00
I am going to continue with the response to questions for a bit more. This time I will start with the most recent and work backwards. Here I will address the SCSA question. I will continue to get to the other questions as the blogs roll out. The SCSA: I do not order this test. Maybe someday I will, but I need more science. When a new test comes out (I know it s been out for years, but it s relatively new and not universally performed), there are a few reasons that it becomes popular. One is that it is a great test and can really distinguish between who is fertile and who is not. Another reason is that some company is making tons of dough and can afford to spend a lot of money convincing your doctor this is a must do test. Another is that some doctors do some quick and dirty research, making a case for the test thus boosting their careers. Another is that some famous doctors are on the boards of these companies, and they use their international reputations to convince other doc...
More About: Questions

More Fertility Questions Answered
2008-02-08 19:47:00
I have not answered questions since October, so here we go. Because it s been a while, sorry if my answers are a little late for those asking, but I hope other readers will have the same questions and learn from the dialogue. A woman wrote in frantically about her new experiences using Clomid. In fact she was do distraught, she was really concerned about getting pregnant with her second child even though she was not yet pregnant with her first. Yes Clomid can make you extremely emotional, but no one should really be over the edge. If you feel like this woman, get counseling (which more people really should do) or get off Clomid, or both. Antral follicle counts are only a guide. If you have a total of 11, you don t really know how the cycle will work out. 11 is a very adequate number; you will probably have a nice enough response for pregnancy. Cost efficiency of IUI vs. IVF. If you have PCOS, your injection iui cycles may be more expensive than other women s cycles because...
More About: Questions

Minimal Stimulation
2008-01-21 16:00:00
Does taking a lower dose of fertility drugs improve your chances of becoming pregnant with IVF? I think not, but I can tell you of some exceptions. Mostly I have had some very good experiences with patients confirming that lower is not better. How do I know? Well, as it turns out over the past few years I have been seeing more patients from Europe. There are a few things that have contributed to this. One is the blog. It s been fun getting e-mails and seeing patients from around the world. The second is the exchange rate: for some, New York is now a reproductive tourism destination. The third has to do with laws in Italy, Germany and other countries that restrict IVF and donor egg. Anyway, the European doctors give their patients a much lower dose of drug that we do in the US. Part of this is due to the fact that they may not be allowed to fertilize more than a few eggs, so they don t bother trying to get more. Another reason may just be due to a general philosophy that...
More About: Minimal

Fertility and Diet
2007-12-06 15:22:00
As I walked from the elevator at my usual 7:00 am, I glanced through the waiting room and something caught my eye: a pregnant woman on the cover of Newsweek captioned by Fertility and Diet . Oh no, I said to myself. Here come about at million questions! So I figured I would read the article and take the time here to go through some things; beat you to the punch. According to the article, diet the recommendations are aimed at preventing and reversing ovulatory infertility. This goes back to my blogs on PCOS. Therefore if you already ovulate regularly, the diet issue does not apply to you. It appears that women with better diets had more regular ovulation. Brilliant. Lets start with carbs. The article shows that carbs are fine, but women who ate more healthy carbs , such as brown rice, pasta and dark bread, whole grains, beans and vegetables, and whole fruit, ovulated more than those who loaded up on white rice and potatoes. Sounds familiar. For any medi...

What s a Fibroid?
2007-11-20 13:55:00
A fibroid is an abnormal growth in the uterus. We also call them myomas. I say abnormal because a fibroid shouldn't be there, however so many women have fibroids we consider them common. How common are they? At least 30% of women have fibroids. I have recently heard that some say that up to 60-70% of women have fibroids, although that sounds a little high to me. How do they get there? We don t know how they start. We do know that they grow in response to estrogen. They are not seen prior to puberty and get smaller after menopause. It seems that each fibroid starts as one fibroid cell, and this cell keeps dividing resulting in a large fibroid. Even though they come from the cells of the uterus, they do look different than the normal uterine muscle. They are whitter because they have few blood vessels, and they are firmer, about the consistency of a potato. We don t know why some women have only one; some have 40. Fibroid size and a word about centimeters. Most medical things a...

Some More Fertility Quick Answers
2007-10-31 00:48:00
The questions was: is it necessary to take progesterone if you are doing clomid or FSH injections with iui? The answer is that you may not need progesterone for these cycles because the ovary can do a great job of producing high levels of progesterone. The corpus luteum is not disturbed by an IVF needle. Also, we usually do not give lupron or antagon or cetritide for an IUI cycle. Personally, I usually do not give progesterone for IUI, but I will in some select cases. Some doctors give progesterone because of the high estrogen levels produced by the fertility drugs. They feel that if the estrogen is high, the progesterone needs to be high too. This is a theoretical concept and has not been shown to be valid for women on fertility drugs. Certainly if the period is coming early after the iui, progesterone should be considered. HA stands for Hypothalamic Amenorrhea, which is when there are no periods due to extreme exercise, stress, etc, despite a good number of resting f...
More About: Answers , Quick

Why is Progesterone Used for IVF?
2007-10-19 15:50:00
Thank you Kami for the question. In a natural cycle, progesterone is made by the corpus luteum(CL)(see blog from August 17, 2007). In most cases it s just one, and for many millions of women around the world, this one little CL puts out enough progesterone get the job done. During IVF, there are usually many more than one CL, and therefore one might expect that there should be plenty of extra progesterone produced and available for the pregnancy. So why give more? There are 2 reasons. The first is that the natural CL and the extra CLs that are produced during ovulation induction with insemination are different than the CL of IVF. The CLs of IVF were all disturbed by the IVF needle. The CLs from IVF all started as follicles containing eggs. At the retrieval, the needle is placed into the follicle, the egg is removed, and other cells can also be removed. The follicle is mostly fluid, but it also contains tons of cells that make up the follicle and surround the egg. These are calle...

Elmo Helps Kids Touched By War9082
2007-10-09 21:49:00
There was a poignant line in Brothers and Sisters last night. Senator McCallister's campaign director felt he needed to be more positive and asked suggested he stopped attending funerals of soldiers. At the end of the show, McCallister turned to his campaign director and said: To answer your questions about when I'll stop going to funerals. I'll stop when the last soldier is home. It is easy to forget that the Iraqi conflict is about real people and real families but that is what we have to keep our focus on. The show last night aired some serious issues about the battles soldiers face when they return home - the medical and emotional issues and the toll on the family including the lost feeling they feel. Sesame Street last week announced that they are developing a DVD to help children whose parents have been injured during war. In the DVD, Rosita's daddy loses a leg and comes home an amputee and is seen in the DVD in a wheelchair. The children of soldiers are soldiers them...
More About: Kids

More About Pregnancy Rates
2007-10-07 03:59:00
The pregnancy rates issue raised a few important questions. I agree, there are some programs who try to stack their numbers by rejecting patients who are very difficult. I do think this happens less often than you might think. Can you figure out who these clinics are? The rumor mill helps but it s not the best system. The program's numbers may give you hints. Look at the pregnancy rates for the women under 35. Yes, there are some women in this age group who have high FSH and/or are poor responders but the vast majority of women in the age group are ok. So if a program takes hard patients in this age group, there should be enough easier patients to still give the group as a whole a high pregnancy rate. If a center has high rates in the younger patients but lower for the older patients, they are probably not selecting. Even better, go to the donor egg stats. There is no selection when it comes to donors. If the program has low pregnancy rates in the donor egg patients, they proba...
More About: Pregnancy , Rates

Four Simple Clicks Will Help You Have a Baby
2007-09-17 21:24:00
This article was written by one of my patients, Debbie Denenberg, a Choice Mom of 4 year old twins. It will appear in Choice Mom Guide to Fertility by Mikki Morrissette, available for purchase in November 2007 on www.ChoiceMoms.org. My patient is right on about using the SART statistics to help chose a doctor and she shows you how. Here it is: I was a lucky one. Because I found Dr. Frederick Licciardi at NYU Fertility Center, I gave birth at age 42 to boy/girl twins. My experience taught me one of the most important first steps in seeking infertility treatment: all doctors are NOT created equal, and with a few easy clicks you can find the best doctor in your area. Infertility is one of the ONLY fields of medicine where the lay person can actually compare medical results, because success rates of infertility clinics nationwide are reported and accessible. This fact is exquisitely, crucially helpful to the woman seeking to become pregnant. Here s how easy it is. Go to www.s...
More About: Baby , Simple , Clicks

Luteal Phase Defect 3
2007-09-06 02:10:00
So we thought we had it all figured out. There were many studies establishing what the ideal biopsy should look like for each day. But then science started changing for the better and some important issues were raised. First, the original studies of luteal phase defect were done using the day of temperature rise as the day of ovulation (LH kits and fancy automated blood test machines were not yet invented). It is true that in many women the temp rise signifies ovulation and there are plenty of web sites dedicated to the temperature rise. However, the temperature rise is not completely accurate and could be off by a day or 2. So if luteal phase defect is all about timing (the day in the cycle after ovulation) the original studies were flawed because they used a less reliable method for timing the day of ovulation. Second, even highly trained reproductive endocrinologists differ on their opinion on what the biopsies for each day should look like (even using the book) . If you ...
More About: Phase , Defect , Hase

Luteal Phase Defect47843731
2007-08-26 02:52:00
As the cycle progresses there are changes that we can see in the endometrium. To see these changes, an office biopsy must be performed and the tissue needs to be examined under the microscope. This is the endometrial biopsy . Through the follicular phase, the only change is that the tissue gets a bit thicker, so we don t biopsy here, we wait till after ovulation (the luteal phase). In the luteal phase the changes are very real. From day to day (or every couple of days) we can see changes in the cells. On day 16 the cells of the endometrium look different than they will on day 19, 22, 24 etc. In references books there are pictures of what the cells should look like on certain days, and your infertility doctor may have been trained (I was) to look at the cells and figure out what day in the cycle the cells were taken. How are we counting the days? Day 14 is the day of ovulation. It does not matter if ovulation occurred 9, 11, 14, 18 days from your last period, ovulation day we ...
More About: Phase , Hase

Too Young To Treat4035
2007-08-17 16:26:00
With cold and flu season upon us (yes, I know, you are still wearing shorts but before long that will change!), there is no time like the present to remind ourselves that small children should not use cold and cough medications. I talked about this a few months ago after the FDA warned us of the dangers of popular over the counter cold and cough medications in infants and toddlers. In October, the FDA is convening an advisory panel to look into the safety of these drugs much more closely. The FDA is particularly concerned with drug dosing and helping parents give the proper medication doses to their children. To this end, this week, the FDA released a Public Health Advisory on Nonprescription Cough and Cold Medicine Use in Children emphasizing the need for parents to follow the labels closely, especially the Drug Facts box. The goal is to give the proper dose of medication and to avoid giving too much of a dose to a child. Additional FDA recommendations from the ad...
More About: Young

The Follicular Phase and the Luteal Phase1456
2007-08-17 14:06:00
So you ve been to the doctor and you were told you have some sort of defect, and you feel so happy that despite all you have been through some joker is now saying you re defective: super. Are you defective? Possibly, but probably not. Luteal Phase Defect, what does it mean? It has to do with the functioning of the menstrual cycle, so let s go over that first. The typical menstrual cycle, from the first day of bleeding to the next first day of bleeding, is divided into 2 parts. The first is from day 1 till ovulation. It s called the follicular phase, because the most important thing is the growing follicle (the fluid filled cyst that holds the egg). If you are taking fertility drugs it s the same, except that there may be more than one follicle developing at the same time. Here the main and most important hormone is estrogen, which comes from ovarian cells that surround the egg in the follicle (these are called granulosa cells). So estrogen does not come from the egg itse...
More About: Hase

What's In Your Toy Box
2007-08-15 21:11:00
This is getting really scary. First Fisher-Price. Now Mattel, the parent company itself. The Mattel scare announced today is even more alarming because the risk to kids more immediate and potentially fatal. Thankfully, no child has been injured by any of these toys but the toys being recalled have elements that have caused fatalities in the past so this is not a false alarm. According to the official press release from Mattel's website, there are two groups of toys being recalled that are actually expansions of past recalls: Mattel, Inc. announced today that the company has voluntarily recalled one toy from the CARS die-cast vehicle line ( Sarge character), manufactured between May 2007 and July 2007, containing impermissible levels of lead. The recalled vehicles include 436,000 total toys, including 253,000 in the U.S. and 183,000 outside of the U.S. ...Additionally, Mattel announced the voluntary recall of magnetic toys manufactured between January 2002 and January 31, 200...

Let s Go Over Some Questions3970
2007-08-08 21:43:00
Some of you have asked about DHEA, Sperm Fragmentation, and Varicocele. Eventually I will get to these, but don t hold your breath waiting. The problem is I will not give high marks to any of these. If I write about each one in succession, I am afraid that all of you will say, That Dr. Licciardi, he doesn t believe in anything! I do believe in time tested things that have been shown to work, of which there are many, although I realize you are reading this because nothing has worked well so far. Cathi had a killer response to my 7/22/07 blog. I am sorry that you had to hear all of those remarks. Luteal Phase Defects, I ll get to this. If you had 11 miscarriages, why not take progesterone? Side effects of ICSI: We are not sure. We know that there are many children alive today that would not be here if it were not for ICSI. So clearly there is an indication for ICSI. Is it more risky? WE don t know (which is likely to mean no). We do kno...

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