Health and Beauty tips

Most teenagers don’t plan to get pregnant, but many do. Teen pregnancies carry extra health risks to the mother and the infant. Often, teenagers don’t receive timely prenatal care, and they have a higher risk for pregnancy-related diseases and its complications.
Teenage births pose considerable health risk for the baby including the following:

• Teenage mothers sometimes fail to gain adequate weight during their pregancy, leading to low birth weight, which can lead to infant and childhood disorders or infant mortality. Low-birthweight babies are more likely to have underdeveloped, which can result in a variety of complications.
• Teenage mothers tend to have unhealthier diet and disregard recommended daily multivitamins. They are also more likely to smoke, drink, or take drugs during pregnancy, which can cause health problems for the baby.
• Teenage mothers are less likely to seek regular prenatal care which is essential for monitoring the growth of the fetus and advising the mother on nutrition and ensuring a healthy pregnancy.
• In case of unprotected sex, the chances of contracting sexually transmitted diseases are really high. These diseases then get contracted to a baby.

In addition to increased health risks, children born to teenage mothers are more likely to experience social, emotional, and other problems such as abuse and neglect, lack of proper nutrition, health care, and attention.

Teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of school and only about one-third obtain a high school diploma. In the United States, the annual cost of teenage pregnancies from lost tax revenues, public assistance, child health care, and foster care, is estimated to be about $7 billion.

We all know a popular saying that a pregnant woman is eating for two. The latest research has proved that actually that a woman should be eating for two before she becomes pregnant. Certainly it is all about quality, not quantity of the foods taken in.
The studies have proved that many aspects of the fetus’s normal development depend greatly on the mother’s nutrition before pregnancy, one of the most crucial links being that between the future mother’s intake of folic acid and neural-tube birth defects in her child.
According to research, the risk of neural-tube birth defects can be substantially decreased by eating a healthier diet and increasing their intake of folic acid. By the way, this treatment can be followed before and during pregnancy.

Undoubtedly, a woman’s diet and lifestyle during pregnancy greatly affect the likelihood of having a healthy baby, too. Adequate weight gain during pregnancy is vital for reducing the chance of having a low-birth-weight infant, and avoiding toxic substances (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other illegal drugs), and some legal medications during pregnancy also increases the chances of delivering a healthy baby.

Studies have shown that by getting enough of the folic acid in the month before conception and during the first several weeks of pregnancy, a woman can help prevent neural-tube defects (or NTDs) in her baby. NTDs are proved to be the only birth defects to be so directly linked to the mother’s nutritional status. Unfortunately, pregnant women usually start taking prenatal supplements that provide folic acid when it makes no sense as all NTDs occur in the first four weeks after conception. After that, spinal-cord development is complete.
So, it’s clear: Any woman who might become pregnant should get plenty of folic acid through foods and supplements. Indeed, the U.S. Public Health Service recommends that any woman capable of becoming pregnant consume 0.4 milligram (400 micrograms) of folic acid a day.

Besides multivitamins or prenatal vitamins, food sources of folic acid include fortified breads, cereals, rice, pasta, and other grain foods. Good food sources of folate include leafy green vegetables (romaine, endive lettuce and mustard greens), broccoli, legumes (dried beans and peas and lentils), and orange juice. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now mandates that manufacturers add folic acid to enriched grain products (breads, flour, cereals, crackers, cornmeal, rice, pasta), just as they add other B vitamins and iron. Some breakfast cereals are fortified with the full 400 micrograms of folic acid per serving.

It should be mentioned, that folate is in fact the naturally occurring form of B vitamin; folic acid is the synthetic form found in supplements and fortified foods. Folic acid is more easily absorbed by the body. Since your body requires B vitamin in either form for proper protein metabolism, for cell division, and to make the red blood cells that carry life-giving oxygen throughout your body, it’s vitally important for men, women, and children to get plenty of folate from their diet.

Infertility is usually defined as inability to conceive after at least one year of trying. About one-third of cases is infertility due to female factors. In another one third of cases, infertility is caused by male factors. The remaining cases are provoked by a combination of male and female factors or by unknown factors.

The most common cause of infertility in women is ovulation disorders. The first line of treatment for most women with ovulation problems is through taking fertility drugs as(Clomid, Femara, Gonadotropins).

If the problems are found with the fallopian tubes microsurgery may be required to open the blockage or a procedure in which an egg is removed and replaced beyond the point of the obstruction, where it may be fertilized normally.

Female hormone estrogen which stimulates the increased production of mucus necessary to transport the sperm may be helpful if a cervix prevents the survival of sperm. Sometimes sperm can be transported directly into the uterus, bypassing the cervix completely.

Endometriosis can be treated by the surgical removal of displaced tissue and the scar tissue that has formed around it.

Hormonal imbalances can be corrected with hormone therapy.

If there’s a problem with the woman’s cervical mucus, or in cases of unexplained infertility artificial insemination, also known as IUI (intrauterine insemination), may be used. This procedure entails placing specially washed sperm directly into the uterus.

Test-tube, or in vitro, fertilization starts with stimulation of ovaries by fertility drugs. If everything goes well at that stage, those eggs are removed from the woman’s ovary and then placed together with sperm in a special cocktail of nutrients, and left alone until fertilization takes place. Once the eggs have been fertilized, one to three embryos are placed inside the woman’s uterus, where they will continue to grow. This technique is used primarily in women whose blocked fallopian tubes cannot be opened by surgery.

Another technique used to treat infertility is called gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT). In this procedure, the egg and sperm are not fertilized outside the body. Instead, after treatment with fertility drugs, they are placed together into one of the woman’s fallopian tubes, where fertilization may then take place normally. GIFT is a complicated and expensive procedure that is recommended only to couples who have been unable to conceive using standard treatments for infertility.

With all positive results, it should be noted, that although infertility treatment methods are advancing rapidly, about 15 percent of all female infertility problems remain undiagnosed and therefore untreatable.

Hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus (womb), which causes the termination of menstruation and the inability to bear children. Now it ranks as the second most common surgery among women.

A hysterectomy may be total, radical or partial. Total hysterectomy involves total removal of the uterus and the cervix. Partial hysterectomy refers to removal of the upper part of the uterus, while leaving the cervix in place. Radical hysterectomy is an extreme surgery which involves the removal of the uterus, cervix, the upper part of the vagina, as well as some surrounding tissues. The most common illnesses hysterectomies are used to treat are fibroids (benign growths in the uterus), endometriosis, gynecologic cancers, uterine prolapse (falling of the uterus out of its normal position), persistent vaginal bleeding and chronic pelvic pain.

Removal of the uterus can be performed through an abdominal incision or through the vagina.
To conduct abdominal hysterectomy the doctor makes a cut in the belly, either across the bikini line or straight up and down to reach your uterus. The advantage of entering through the abdomen is that the surgeon has a better angle to view reproductive organs and more room to operate. This type of hysterectomy is the most common and is generally done when cancer might be present or when severe endometriosis, or a very large uterus makes the uterus hard to remove. The downside is that this type of surgery usually involves more visible scarring than a vaginal hysterectomy, as well a longer and more painful recovery period.

In the procedure of vaginal hysterectomy, the doctor will enter your uterus via your vagina; this technique requires no external incision and, therefore, leaves no external scar.

Some risks of having a hysterectomy include damage to the urinary tract, bowel or bladder, breathing or heart problems, blood transfusion, resulting from heavy blood loss, and opening of wounds. Contrary to common myth, a hysterectomy does not interfere with, or diminish the pleasure of, sexual intercourse. Nor does a hysterectomy cause a woman to gain weight.

Artificial insemination, sometimes known as “alternative insemination” or “donor insemination,” is a procedure when sperm is inserted into a woman’s uterus to attempt to create a pregnancy. Artificial insemination using semen from a donor can be an alternative to adoption when the man cannot father a child, whether because of low sperm count, absence or poor quality of sperm, lack of motion by sperm, or inability to perform sexual intercourse. It may also be considered when the man does not want to transmit to the child a genetic defect he has. It is also often used by lesbians, heterosexual single women who wish to conceive without sexual contact with males and by gay men create families through surrogacy or through co-parenting.

Sperm donor may be classified as a donor or as a father. While the latter is known to the mother and assumes parental responsibilities, the former is generally anonymous and legally relinquishes parental rights and responsibilities. However, a growing number of sperm banks allow children, with the consent of the donor, to initiate contact with their genetic father at a specified age.

There are some advantages of getting pregnant using a known donor: first of all, you are aware about his physical and mental health, family history, and personality; besides, you don’t have to pay for the sperm, although you may have to pay a doctor to inseminate you. On the flipside of the coin, there is always a risk of HIV, AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases; moreover, issues around parenting can come up if the known donor chooses to stay involved in the child’s life.

Getting pregnant using a sperm bank (unknown donor), though being expensive and not covered by most insurances, can be beneficial as sperm banks test semen for diseases and collect health and genetic information from donors.