Do Women Feel More Pain Than Men? Study Says, 'Yes'

Do Women Feel More Pain Than Men? Study Says, 'Yes' - Tiiu Leek's pain began suddenly nearly a decade ago, upending her successful career as a television newscaster for KCLA in Los Angeles.

"I got this intense burning pain in the right groin and it did not go away," said the now 61-year-old. "It was as if someone had taken a hot iron and simply put it in my body on a nerve."

"It was a two-and-a-half year nightmare," she said. "I had to stop working – I couldn't even sit at the news desk because of the hot, searing pain and pins and needles going in my vagina and upper thighs."

Pain affects more than 116 million Americans annually and is a major cause of work disability and one of the most common reasons for taking medication, according to a 2011 Institute of Medicine report.

Of those Americans, about 50 million are women, according Campaign to End Chronic Pain in Women.

Do Women Feel More Pain Than Men? Study Says, 'Yes' (ABC News)

Today, a new study in the Journal of Pain reports that women seeking medical care for a wide range of medical problems in the hospital or clinics at Stanford University School of Medicine reported higher pain intensity, on average, compared with men with these same diagnoses.

Women reported more intense pain than men in 14 of 47 disease categories. Men did not report more intense pain in any category. Women with musculoskeletal disorders such as back, neck and joint pain, sinusitis and even high blood pressure reported more intense pain then men with these conditions.

Authors cautioned that this study cannot determine whether pain is actually experienced more intensely by women or whether women simply communicate better with their health care providers about pain.

But many other medical experts are skeptical about the Stanford study. They say the authors didn't account for the possibility that if many women had additional diseases that caused pain, it could actually be the other diseases, and not their gender, which is responsible for the women having more pain than men.

"It's a flawed study," said Dr. Lloyd Saberski, medical director of the Advanced Diagnostic Pain Treatment Centers at Yale University. "Just how accurate is the data collected? Probably not too accurate."

He said the study was "dangerous" and potentially misleading and adds "nothing" to doctors' understanding of pain. Researchers did not control for factors such as coexisting depression and disease severity, he said.

Dr. Timothy Collins, assistant clinical professor of neurology at Duke University Medical Center, said researchers should have added this caveat: "Men consistently report lower levels of pain compared to women."

"At least in the US, there is a culture expecting men to complain less, not admit to as much pain, where women are generally allowed to express pain and emotions connected with pain," he said.

Dr. Carol Warfield, chairman of the department of anesthesia, critical care and pain medicine at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center agreed the study was interesting, but a "big point" was missed.

"There have been a number of reports indicating that in our society stoicism is often considered virtuous, especially in men," she said. "Therefore, men may be less likely to report high levels of pain even if they perceive them. In other words, men and women may experience the same levels of pain but women are more likely to actually admit that they have pain."
Women Communicate More Emotion

As for Leek, she eventually learned the cause of her pain -- scar tissue around one of the main genital nerves as a result of a tubal pregnancy.

She, too, questions the study, but said it raises some important questions about how women are treated in the medical world.

"I don't know if women feel pain more," she said. "My husband is a bigger baby than I am. I think I have an extraordinary threshold for pain. I don't know how many animals can live with what I went through for so many years now."

But she said doctors do tend to treat women in pain differently than they do men.

"Doctors will ask, 'Are you feeling emotional?' or 'How are things at home?'" she said. "'Here, take two aspirin and call me in the morning.' It happens a lot. I can't imagine any woman wanting to be in severe chronic pain -- it's not a choice."

Mindy Meyer, a professional facilitator who has lived with complex regional pain syndrome and fibromyalgia for years, agrees.

"I don't know if women actually feel pain more," said the 45-year-old from Venice Beach, Calif. "If they test by putting you hand in an ice bucket and see how long you can keep it there, maybe women are smart enough to take it out sooner."

"But how women and men communicate their pain is very different," she said. "Women feel very connected to their pain and have and their emotions come out when describing it."

Meyer saw 13 doctors before she got a proper diagnosis and the majority were men. "It's very uncomfortable for them to see real emotion: 'Tell me the facts, m'am, just the facts.' I see them tune out."

Now, she consciously spares the doctor the emotional talk. "I can literally be in so much pain I am crying when the staff is in there, but I pull it together when the doctor is in the room and have no tears at all. And it's not easy to have to do that."

She said doctors need to listen more to their female patients -- "feelings are a part of the equation … Patients shouldn't have to shut things down."

Both Meyer and Leek sit on the leadership circle at For Grace, an advocacy organization that educates, supports and empowers women in pain through annual conferences and legislative outreach.

For Grace's "Fail First" bill recently got through the California State Assembly's appropriations committee on a 12-5 vote. If signed by the governor, it will allow women in pain much better access to pain medications, bypassing insurance companies.

As for Leek, she has seen marked improvement in her pelvic pain thought exercise and homeopathic approaches. She also tries to surround herself with positive people.

"My career was lost, but not my optimism," she said. "I continue to live well. I once read that if you can get through your 60s unscathed, you can have a pretty good life." ( Good Morning America )

READ MORE - Do Women Feel More Pain Than Men? Study Says, 'Yes'

Fish oil pills don't improve kids' braininess

Fish oil pills don't improve kids' braininess - Despite some evidence that taking fish oil pills during pregnancy can help children's brain development, a new study suggests that the supplements make no difference in measures of intellect when the kids are six years old.

The findings support the results of an earlier Norwegian study that also found no differences in IQ among seven-year-olds whose mothers did or did not take fish oil supplements while pregnant and breastfeeding.

Fatty acids, such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), that are found in fish and other foods are considered to be important for the developing fetus.

The question, however, has been whether adding more of these fats to mothers' diets through supplements will further benefit the baby.

In the current experiment, researchers asked expectant mothers during the second half of their pregnancies to take fish oil, fish oil plus a folate supplement, folate alone or a pill that did not contain any supplements.

Nearly seven years later, the team, led by Dr. Cristina Campoy at the University of Granada in Spain, gave intelligence tests to 154 children from this group.

The kids performed similarly on the tests, regardless of what type of pill their mothers had taken during pregnancy.

The results, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not mean that fatty acids like DHA are not important.

In fact, the researchers found that the children of women who had high levels of DHA in their red blood cells around the time they gave birth scored above average on the intelligence tests at age six.

These mothers, however, were not necessarily given fish oil supplements. Rather, the result could reflect mothers' intake of DHA from various sources over a longer period of time, and might mean that long term fatty acid intake "is more beneficial than receiving supplementation alone during pregnancy," the authors wrote in their study.

A recent study in Australia also found that DHA supplements did not help the visual development of babies (see Reuters Health story of May 26, 2011).

The current study did not measure the diets of the children, something that could have influenced the results, said Dr. Ingrid Helland at Oslo University Hospital, who led the earlier Norwegian research.

"It might be that subtle beneficial effects of (prenatal fish oil) supplementation are being overshadowed by other factors (genetics, social stimulation, nutrition etc)," Helland wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

She is not totally giving up on the idea that taking fish oil might be beneficial.

"If a friend would ask me if she should take supplements or not, I would recommend supplementation, but emphasize that we still do not have any scientific proof that it benefits the child," said Helland. ( Reuters Health )

READ MORE - Fish oil pills don't improve kids' braininess

What Happens to a Woman's Fertility After 40?

What Happens to a Woman's Fertility After 40? - Infertility is one of those common yet deeply personal issues that many women still don't feel comfortable talking about -- which may explain why some of us seem a bit confused about how getting older affects our ability to achieve a healthy pregnancy.

A recent article in The New York Times discusses the phenomenon of 40-something women who think they're fertile, simply because they look youthful and healthy.

The takeaway, according to Dr. Jamie Grifo, Program Director at NYU Fertility Center, is that women need to learn the facts about fertility and aging.

"Just because you've done all the right things your whole life doesn't mean you're going to be fertile," he says. "Some women are very fertile at 40, some are infertile and the majority are in between."

When you're a fetus, you have 7 million eggs, Grifo explains. When you're born, you have 1-2 million. At puberty, you have 400,000; by age 30, 87 percent of those are gone; at age 40, 97 percent of those are gone. That leaves 12,000 eggs -- a lot -- but most of them aren't good, meaning the eggs are less viable and you're more likely to miscarry.

When you're 40, your chance of getting pregnant is about 2-4 percent per cycle -- that's not a high number, Grifo admits. But if it's any consolation, when you're 25, you only have about a 10 percent chance per cycle.

"You'll read in the media that it's 20 percent -- that might be the pregnancy rate, but it's not the baby rate," Grifo explains.

In one round of IVF (in vitro fertilization, the process by which egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the body) at age 30, 60 percent make a baby. At 40, it's 28 percent. By 44, it's down to 6 percent, according to NYU data.

These figures may sound alarming, but there's no need to panic. If you're having trouble conceiving at any age, treatment options are available, from intrauterine insemination (IUI) to IVF to egg donors. Grifo suggests getting evaluated right away if you're over 40, rather than wasting six months not knowing if you have an issue.

Even better? Plan ahead. Obviously, you can't control when you find a partner (if you're looking for one), and you may not be ready to start a family right now. Plus, fertility isn't a one-sided equation -- men can have problems, too. But if possible, it's smart to start thinking about your fertility sooner rather than later.

"Make your plan rather than letting life happen to you," Grifo says, adding that women who are not ready to have a baby should consider egg freezing if they have the means, especially when they are under 35.

The Times article suggests that Hollywood stars who give birth after age 40 are misleading women to think that it's easier than it really is. It's true that celebrities -- like the rest of us -- rarely open up about fertility struggles. But Barbara Collura, Executive Director of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, says celebs are not to blame for women's confusion about fertility.

"It's easy to single out celebrities, when in reality our reproductive health knowledge in this country, whether you are a man or a woman, is terrible. If women knew more about their biological clock and their fertility potential, they would not need to rely on movie actresses to give them reproductive health information."

She also agrees that learning the facts is your best weapon against infertility at any age.

"It's not only important to understand your reproductive health, but to fully know the options that may be available to you," she says. ( self.com )

READ MORE - What Happens to a Woman's Fertility After 40?

Smokers are thinner than those who don't smoke

Smokers are thinner than those who don't smoke - US scientists have figured out exactly how nicotine acts as an appetite suppressant in the brain, a finding that could one day help in the fight against obesity, researchers said on Thursday.

Smokers tend to be thinner than people who don't smoke, and the study led by Yale University and published in the journal Science describes how nicotine activates certain neurons in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.

Those neurons tell the body when it's had enough to eat, according to senior author Marina Picciotto, a professor of neurobiology and pharmacology at Yale.

"Many people say they won't quit smoking because they'll gain weight. Ultimately, we would like to help people maintain their body weight when they kick the habit and perhaps help non-smokers who are struggling with obesity."

Researchers made the discovery by studying mice, but are hopeful that similar receptors can be isolated in humans, too.

A research scientist in Picciotto's lab was studying nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, which are on the surface of neurons, to see if an experimental drug to treat depression would have any effect.

"He noticed that mice given the drug ate less than those not on the medication," said the study, which led to a wider investigation with researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and the University of Hawaii.

A series of experiments showed that the drug could turn on a certain nicotine receptor which then told a subset of neurons in the hypothalamus - called pro-opiomelanocortin or POMC cells - that dinner time was over.

The receptor was also independent of the ones that trigger the craving for nicotine in smokers.

"This suggests it is possible to get the effect of appetite suppression without also triggering the brain's reward centres," Picciotto said.

"Identifying this receptor is important for the understanding of the mechanisms related to addiction, weight and smoking." ( AFP )

READ MORE - Smokers are thinner than those who don't smoke

Smokers face higher prostate cancer death risk

Smokers face higher prostate cancer death risk - Smokers who are diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to have aggressive tumors and face a higher death risk from the disease than non-smokers, US researchers said Tuesday.

Men who smoked at the time of diagnosis faced 61 percent higher risk of dying from prostate cancer and a 61 percent higher chance that the cancer would come back compared to men who never smoked, said researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and University of California, San Francisco.

Among smokers and non-smokers whose cancers had not spread at the time of diagnosis, known as non-metastatic cancers, smokers had an 80 percent higher risk of dying from their prostate cancer.

A man smokes a cigarette. Smokers who are diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to have aggressive tumors and face a higher death risk from the disease than non-smokers, US researchers said Tuesday

However, former smokers who had quit 10 years or more before they were diagnosed saw a risk of recurrence and death similar to men who never smoked, said the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"These data are exciting because there are few known ways for a man to reduce his risk of dying from prostate cancer," said senior author Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard professor of nutrition and epidemiology.

"For smokers, quitting can impact their risk of dying from prostate cancer. This is another reason to not smoke."

The study examined the health records of 5,366 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1986 and 2006. During that time, they found 1,630 deaths, 524 (32%) due to prostate cancer and 416 (26%) due to heart disease.

Cancer of the prostate the most commonly diagnosed cancer among US men, and affects about one in six Americans in their lifetimes. ( AFP )

READ MORE - Smokers face higher prostate cancer death risk

Smoking moms lower 'good' cholesterol in kids

Smoking moms lower 'good' cholesterol in kids: study - Women who smoke during pregnancy may lower the level of 'good' cholesterol in their children, with some negative impacts showing up later in life, according to a study released Tuesday.

HDL -- or high-density lipoprotein -- cholesterol helps protect against heart disease as one gets older.

The research, published in the European Heart Journal, showed that by age eight children born to mothers who smoked while pregnant had HDL cholesterol levels about 10 percent below normal, once other factors were taken into account.

Whether or not children were exposed to other people's smoke after birth did not change the outcome, a strong indication that prenatal exposure had the most impact on subsequent development, the study found.

Women who smoke during pregnancy may lower the level of 'good' cholesterol in their children, with some negative impacts showing up later in life, according to a study released Tuesday

"Our results suggest that maternal smoking 'imprints' an unhealthy set of characteristics on children while they are developing in the womb, which may well predispose them to later heart attack and stroke," said David Celermajer, a professor at the University of Sydney and leader of the study.

"This imprinting seems to last for at least eight years and probably a lot longer."

Smoking during and after pregnancy has long been linked to a range of health consequences in offspring, including behavioural and neurocognitive problems, and sudden infant death.

Up to now, however, it was unknown whether pre-natal exposure upped the risk of future cardiovascular disease.

Celermajer and colleagues examined the effects of maternal smoking on the thickness of the arterial wall and the levels of lipoproteins in 405 healthy eight-year-olds born between 1997 and 1999.

The children had been enrolled before birth into a clinical trial looking at asthma and allergic diseases.

The researchers collected data on the mothers' smoking habits during and after pregnancy, and on the children after they were born.

They used ultrasound scans to measure the arterial wall thickness and, in 328 children who agreed, took blood in order to measure lipoprotein levels.

There was no effect on the thickness of the children's arteries, a telltale sign of heart disease.

But levels of HDL cholesterol were lower, suggesting a 10 to 15 percent higher risk for coronary disease later in life for the children of smoking mothers.

The prevalence of smoking during pregnancy is around 15 percent in many Western countries.

"We will have to do long-term follow-up to see if these particular children continue to have lower HDL cholesterol levels than normal, but one should presume that this risk factor might indeed be persistent," said Celermajer. ( AFP )

READ MORE - Smoking moms lower 'good' cholesterol in kids

US unveils graphic cigarette warnings

US unveils graphic cigarette warnings - A lifeless body, a scarred mouth and a blackened lung were among the graphic images in a new set of cigarette warnings unveiled Tuesday by the US government to highlight the health risks of smoking.

The warnings will occupy the top 50 percent of the front and rear panels of cigarette packs sold in the United States and the top 20 percent of cigarette advertisements beginning in September 2012, the Food and Drug Administration announced.

The nine color images, which can be seen at fda.gov/cigarettewarnings, mark the first change in cigarette warnings in more than 25 years and are "a significant advancement in communicating the dangers of smoking," the agency added.

One of the images, which shows a man with his chest sewn up, bears the caption "Warning: Smoking can kill you." According to the FDA, smoking kills 1,200 people a day in the United States alone.

Another picture shows a close-up of a mouth filled with scattered, brown teeth and a lip with an open sore, warning: "Cigarettes cause cancer."

This handout image courtesy of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), shows a close-up of dirty teeth and a malignant lip lesion with a warning that says: "Cigarettes cause cancer."



This image courtesy of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), shows a sickly cancer patient with a warning that says: "Cigarettes cause cancer."

"We want kids to understand smoking is gross, not cool, and there is really nothing pretty about having mouth cancer," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at the White House in a briefing to unveil the warnings.

Smoking causes 90 percent of all lung cancer in men and 80 percent in women, and has been linked to several other cancers, the FDA said.

The new labels also seek to warn pregnant women and new parents of the dangers of smoking, with a drawn image showing a premature baby in a hospital incubator and a picture showing a real baby staring at a plume of smoke.

"This will be a dramatic change in what a cigarette package looks like, no doubt about it. These warning labels are very graphic. They are large," said FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg.

"It will change the consumer response to a packet of cigarettes and frankly that is what we want," she said, adding that a pack-a-day smoker would see the warnings 7,000 times in a single year.

However, the tobacco industry has filed a lawsuit challenging the labels, saying they put undue restrictions on tobacco companies' right to free speech by confiscating too much of the packet space.

"Even on acute poisons (e.g., pesticides and toxic chemicals), the warnings are not of this size and character," said comments submitted to the FDA in January by RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, Lorillard Tobacco Company, and Commonwealth Brands, Inc.

"It is therefore quite clear that the intended function of the proposed 'warnings' is not to warn consumers about the risks from smoking, but to communicate a government message: 'Don't buy or use this product.'"

An RJ Reynolds spokesman told AFP the company had no further comment.

"Regarding our lawsuit challenging certain provisions of the FDA law, including graphic warnings, oral arguments are scheduled for July 27th in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeal (in Cincinnati)," spokesman David Howard said in an email.

The label changes came about following a June 2009 law, signed by President Barack Obama about five months after he took office, that gave the FDA the power to regulate manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products.

The nine images were picked from a group of 36 proposals issued several months ago, after health authorities analyzed results on their effectiveness from an 18,000-person study and took into account about 1,700 public comments, the FDA said.

Each warning label also contains a phone number to call for help in quitting.

Anti-smoking groups such as the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids hailed the announcement as "the most significant change in US cigarette warnings since they were first required in 1965."

"The large, graphic warnings will be impossible to miss and represent a dramatic advance over existing text warnings," the group said in a statement.

Currently, the standard warning on cigarette packs in the United States is found in small print along the side: "Surgeon General's warning: cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide."

About 20 percent of the US population smokes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Similar graphic warnings can be seen on cigarette packs from Brazil to Britain and beyond, showing vivid pictures of rotting teeth, throat cancer, premature babies and heart surgeons operating on clogged arteries. ( AFP )

READ MORE - US unveils graphic cigarette warnings

A commentary on kids' caffeine consumption

Kids Are Getting Amped on Caffeine, Even at Age 5 - A commentary on kids' caffeine consumption

Most school-age children drink caffeinated drinks, and many of them are imbibing enough caffeine to give adults the jitters. And their sleep is suffering. That's the news from the Journal of Pediatrics, which surveyed parents on their children's caffeine habits.
Click here to find out more!

It turns out that 5- to 7-year-olds on average drink 52 milligrams of caffeine daily, or the caffeine equivalent of one Coke. That may not sound too bad, but the 228 parents in the new study admitted their 8- to 12-year-olds drink the caffeine equivalent of almost three Cokes daily. And the more caffeine the kids took in, the less they slept.

It's hard to imagine parents thinking double lattes are a good choice for kids, but the fact is that 75 percent of the 228 parents surveyed by the researchers, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, said their kids down caffeinated drinks daily. Soft drinks are the biggest culprit; they're also a bad choice for kids because they're high in sugar, with zero nutritional value. Schools don't always help on this. A recent study found that 14 percent of public elementary school students and 38 percent of private elementary school students can buy sugar-sweetened beverages at school. And kids often don't realize that Gatorade and other sports drinks are just soft drinks in disguise.

Here are three ways that parents can cut back on children's caffeine consumption, and increase their odds of a good night's sleep:

• Take soft drinks off the menu, at home and in restaurants. They're bad nutritional choices, and many contain caffeine.

• Beware of hidden caffeine. Many orange sodas have caffeine, but you'd never guess it from the taste. Indeed, not all caffeinated drinks are brown. One can of Mountain Dew has 55 mg of caffeine, which beats the amount in a can of Coke or Pepsi.

• Explain that energy drinks aren't the right kind of energy for kids. A 16-ounce Arizona Green Tea Energy has 200 mg of caffeine; that's four Cokes! Clearly this green tea is not a healthy choice.

The fact that so many high-caffeine drinks are also sugary makes them more attractive to children; think of it as training wheels for a caffeine addiction. That's not a lesson that grade-schoolers need to learn. ( usnews.com )

READ MORE - A commentary on kids' caffeine consumption

Japan Finds Plutonium at Stricken Nuclear Plant

Japan Finds Plutonium at Stricken Nuclear Plant - Plutonium found in soil at the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex heightened alarm on Tuesday over Japan's protracted battle to contain the world's worst atomic crisis in 25 years.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said the radioactive material — a by-product of atomic reactions and also used in nuclear bombs — had been found in soil in five places at the plant, hit by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The drama at the six-reactor facility has compounded Japan's agony after the twin disaster left more than 28,000 people dead or missing in the devastated northeast.

"I apologize for making people worried," Sakae Muto, vice-president of under-pressure TEPCO, said at a briefing around midnight in Tokyo. Yet he stressed the traces of plutonium-238, 239 and 240 were not dangerous and work would not be stopped.

"It's not at the level that's harmful to human health."

Officials scan people for radiation, 60 km west of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, in Koriyama on March 18, 2011

Muto said the readings were similar to those found in the past in other parts of Japan due to particles in the atmosphere from nuclear testing abroad.

TEPCO said it was unclear where the plutonium was from, though it appeared two of the five finds were related to damage from the plant rather than from the atmosphere.

Experts believe that at least some of the plutonium may have come from spent fuel rods at Fukushima or damage to reactor No. 3, the only one to use plutonium in its fuel mix.

The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the find was expected due to known fuel degradation.

Containment Breached

Japan's own nuclear safety agency was concerned at the plutonium samples, whose levels of radioactive decay ranged from 0.18 to 0.54 becquerels per kg.

"While it's not the level harmful to human health, I am not optimistic. This means the containment mechanism is being breached so I think the situation is worrisome," agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama was quoted as saying by Jiji news agency.

The plutonium discovery, from samples taken a week ago, was the latest bad news from the Fukushima plant, where engineers are resigned to a struggle of weeks or possibly months to re-establish cooling systems vital to control of the reactors.

On Monday, TEPCO said highly radioactive water had been found in concrete tunnels that extend beyond one reactor.

Fires, blasts and leaks have forced engineers to stop work at times, including at the weekend when radiation spiked to 100,000 times above normal in water inside reactor No. 2.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said a partial meltdown of fuel rods inside the reactor vessel was responsible.

The crisis, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, has already contaminated vegetables and milk produced in the area, as well as the surrounding sea.

Apocalyptic Scenes

With Japan's towns and villages on the northeast coast reduced to apocalyptic landscapes of mud and debris, more than a quarter of a million people are homeless. The event may be the world's costliest natural disaster, with estimates of damage topping $300 billion.

The environmental group Greenpeace said its experts had confirmed dangerous radiation of up to 10 microsieverts per hour in Iitate village, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of the plant.

It called for the extension of a 20-km (12-mile) evacuation zone. "It is clearly not safe for people to remain in Iitate, especially children and pregnant women, when it could mean receiving the maximum allowed annual dose of radiation in only a few days," Greenpeace said in a statement.

In most countries the maximum permissible annual dose for radiation workers is 50 millisieverts, or 50,000 microsieverts, according to the World Nuclear Association Industry body.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from a 20 km (12 mile) radius around the plant and people within a radius extending a further 10 km have been told by the government to stay indoors or, better still, leave too.

Beyond the evacuation zone, traces of radiation have been found in tap water in Tokyo and as far away as Iceland.

The U.S. government said tiny traces of radiation believed to be from Japan were being detected by sensors round the nation, but were "far below levels of public health concern".

Japanese officials and international experts have generally said the levels away from the plant were not dangerous for human beings, who in any case face higher radiation doses on a daily basis from natural sources, X-rays or flying.

Leadership Problems

Facing a long and uncertain operation, TEPCO sought outside help from firms including Electricite de France SA and Areva SA, a French government minister said.

Japan is also seeking American help, said Robin Grimes, head of the center for nuclear engineering at Imperial College in London. "Each country has its own expertise."

Mark Prelas, a professor of nuclear engineering at University of Missouri in the United States, warned against overreaction to the fast-moving events in Japan.

"It's worth remembering that millions of Americans in the west of the country would have been exposed to tiny traces of plutonium during the above-ground bomb tests prior to the 1960s," he said.

The risk of a core meltdown had receded, he added, and hopefully water pumps would be restarted in the next couple of weeks to get the reactors into a safe "cold shutdown" stage.

"The eventual clean-up still looks like it should be easily manageable," he added.

The crisis has put huge pressure on TEPCO, which has been criticized for safety lapses at the plant and a slow response to the disaster. Its boss Masataka Shimizu has barely been seen.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, leading Japan during its worst crisis since World War Two, has been similarly low-profile.

Even though Japan's culture stresses group efficiency over individual charisma, many are unhappy and a weekend poll suggested two-thirds of people felt Kan was not showing leadership.

"The characters involved are too weak to take decisive actions," said Jesper Koll, analyst at JP Morgan Securities. ( cnbc.com )

READ MORE - Japan Finds Plutonium at Stricken Nuclear Plant

Firstborn Children More Likely To Develop Food Allergies

Firstborn Children More Likely To Develop Food Allergies, Study Says - New Research Indicates 'Birth Order Effect' a Factor in Development of Allergies

From watching "The Brady Bunch," it's clear to see that the eldest girl, Marsha, gets the most attention. But according to a new study, she also might get the most allergies.

Birth order, thought by some to determine everything from romantic compatibility to IQ score, may be the reason your oldest child is allergic to peanuts and your younger children are not.

According to a new study, older children are more likely to suffer from food allergies than their younger siblings. The results indicate the "birth order effect" occurs specifically in food allergies, as compared with other types of allergies.

Among study participants, the prevalence of food allergies was 4 percent in firstborn children, 3.5 percent in second-born children, and 2.6 percent in those born later.

Kara Corridan, the Health Editor at Parents magazine, said the study is too preliminary to get "too excited about this." It may be reassuring to parents whose first child has an allergy.
For parents, raising a child with a food allergy puts them "in a club they really don't want to be a part of," Corridan said. Food allergies can sometimes be life-threatening, and parents may have to monitor everything their child eats and touches in all environments. "Even if there's a small fraction of a chance that younger children don't have [food allergies], that would be great," she said.

Firstborns were also more likely to have allergic rhinitis and conjunctivitis -- conditions that affect the nose and mouth, respectively -- than their younger siblings.

The study's authors say that multiple pregnancies may cause changes in the womb that help build the immune systems of the second and third children. Another contributing factor may be the "hygiene hypothesis:" in preparing for their firstborn to come home, parents may hyper-sterilize their environments. By the time babies 2 and 3 come around, there are more germs, and the younger siblings may develop stronger immune systems.

"The more you are exposed to an allergen, the more likely it is you'll be immune to it," Corridan said. The connection between birth order and allergies had been established by earlier studies, she said, but this study is the first that breaks the connection down by allergic condition.

Birth order does not seem to affect a child's likelihood to develop asthma or atopic dermatitis, a type of eczema.

The study surveyed 13,000 children ages 7 to 15. The researchers compared the incidence of each allergic disease with birth order. The survey also asked parents whether their children experienced wheezing, eczema or food allergies before age 1 -- and researchers saw the same trend: the prevalence of allergies was higher in firstborn children.

Birth Order Can Be An Indicator For Behavioral Characteristics

The findings were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in San Francisco on March 20.

The birth order effect has been studied in several other areas of children's lives; literature has indicated firstborns excel at school and science, while younger siblings tend to be more exploratory and take more risks.

Dr. Frank Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, has studied the birth order effect. He said examining children's behavior compared with their birth order opens up the issue of family niches and family dynamics.

"When the firstborn comes along, there are no younger siblings and they've got 100 percent of parental attention," he said. "It seems to be reflected not only in IQ differences ... but firstborns essentially do things that the parents value."

So it makes sense that firstborns score 3 points higher than their younger siblings on IQ tests. Twenty-one of the first 23 American astronauts to fly in space were firstborn, along with a disproportionate number of our nation's presidents and CEOs.

"The good story about younger siblings is they diversify in other ways," Sulloway said. "Younger siblings are always looking for alternative niches to explore and to exploit as a way of getting back some of that parental investment and attention they may have otherwise lost."

While more Nobel Prize winners for science are firstborns, more winners of the Nobel Prize for literature are younger siblings, Sulloway said. Younger siblings are also 50 percent more likely to play dangerous sports.

Sulloway said it's important to keep in mind that most birth order effects are "fairly modest in size," and that there are other contributing factors that influence human behavior and personality development.

"You just have to keep in mind that there are a lot of different things that are influencing behavior, and birth order is just one player in that whole complex process of how we become who we become," Sulloway said." ( abcnews.go.com )

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Cancer rare after fertility treatment

Cancer rare after fertility treatment- Fertility treatment such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) may not be tied to an increased risk of cancer despite the hormones used, said a study from Sweden.

Some previous studies had suggested that fertility drugs might be linked with breast, uterine and ovarian cancers.

In research reported in “Human Reproduction,” Bengt Kallen of the University of Lund in Sweden and his colleagues analyzed registry data from 1982-2006 on 24,000 women who gave birth after IVF, comparing rates of cancer in these women and in 1.4 million women in the general Swedish population who also gave birth in those years.

Fewer than 2 percent of women in the IVF group developed one or more cancers during an average follow-up period of 8 years, compared to close to 5 percent of the other group.

After accounting for maternal age, the number of previous pregnancies and smoking status, the overall risk of cancer was about 25 percent lower for women who had IVF.

“A couple who needs IVF does not have to be afraid that the hormone treatment used — at least those used in Sweden — will carry a risk for the woman to develop cancer,” Kallen told Reuters Health.

While the risk of ovarian cancer was more than twice as high in the women who had IVF as those who didn’t, Kallen suggested that this may be due to abnormalities in ovarian function that could both increase the risk for cancer and the risk for infertility, thus the need for IVF.

“The risk for two common cancers, breast and cervical, was significantly lower than expected,” he said.

He addd that this might be due to women who get IVF being healthier than average or, more likely, that IVF-treated women may undergo more cervical and mammography exams. ( arabnews.com )

READ MORE - Cancer rare after fertility treatment