Fitness Education

By Gary Pepper, M.D. Editor, Metabolism.com In the first article in this series, The HCG-Cancer Connection, I explained how HCG is made by some types of cancer and can serve as a marker for cancer activity. Now I want to explore another effect of HCG, the stimulation of male hormone (testosterone) production. Just to review, there is no evidence that HCG will cause cancer although conceivably certain cancer responsive tumors may grow faster due to its effect to increase estrogen and testosterone. Every woman who has had a normal pregnancy has been exposed to high HCG levels for many months so if it did cause cancer that effect would be very obvious.

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WEDNESDAY, Dec. 14 (HealthDay News) — Headache affects 50 percent of HIV/AIDS patients in the United States, and many of those headaches are severe, a new study says.

About 27.5 percent of the 200 HIV/AIDS patients in the study suffered “chronic migraine,” a rare condition in which a person has migraine symptoms (with or without other headaches) for 15 or more days a month.

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• 59% of patients had insomnia symptoms at the outset of the study• 28% were classified as having insomnia syndrome, a condition where insomnia is more severe and almost unshakable.• Over the course of the 18-month study period, the patients’ disordered sleep did improve somewhat. At the 18-month mark, 36% of patients still had insomnia symptoms. While an improvement, this is still higher than the general population.

Women seemed to fare worse than men when it came to sleep. The highest rates of insomnia symptoms were found in people with breast and gynecologic cancers, while the lowest rates were linked to prostate cancer. Among

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Menopause is a single day in a woman’s life (one year to the day her period stops), and some experts believe the term isn’t specific enough to describe the confusing process this experience entails. In this article, a health writer suggests women and health care professionals stop using the term and replace it with something that better details this long biological process women go through during this time in their lives.