Younger Women

After carefully sorting through the nominations submitted to me as candidates for Lie-of-the-Month, I am ready to announce a winner. The envelope, please.First place goes to the recent Esquire magazine survey that asked American men the following question: "In a romantic relationship, how many years younger than you would a woman have to be to make you feel uncomfortable about the age difference?"The answer? Ten years younger.That means -- in case you're missing the point -- that a 40-year-old man would feel uncomfortable with a woman under 30; a 50-year-old man with a companion under 40; and that a 60-year-old male would prefer not to date a woman under 50.Are we laughing yet?

In a change of existing guidelines, an influential government panel said Monday that women do not need mammograms in their 40s and discouraged teaching breast self-exams - decisions that have sparked controversy and confusion among some breast cancer specialists and patient advocates. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel that issues federal recommendations on preventive medicine, said that breast cancer screening in a woman's 40s does not save many lives and can do more harm than good.

As Mother's Day approaches, health organizations are once again gearing up to send mothers -- and daughters -- a powerful message about breast cancer. The message: Catch it early. Get a mammogram.But this week, many younger women will be greeting this appeal with profound confusion and annoyance. News trickling out of a massive study of Canadian women has suggested that women in their 40s who get annual mammograms do nothing to lower their chances of dying of breast cancer."I've had calls today from patients who are reasonably hysterical," said Dr. Alex Munitz, chairman of radiology at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center and a vocal critic of the study.

Two-time breast cancer survivor Lillie Shockney knows mammograms save lives. Her patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital heed her advice when she implores that screening can detect the disease early enough to fight it. And women all over the world e-mail her anxious questions about how to protect themselves from cancer at all costs. When should they begin having breast X-rays and how often? Are mammograms sufficient or should they demand sophisticated MRI scans? What about their daughters - how soon should they have mammograms?

A 2002 study that led millions of women to throw out their hormone pills may have overestimated the dangers of that medication to women in their 50s, new research suggests. The new study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association found that for women near the start of menopause, the pills do not increase the incidence of heart attacks or other cardiac complications. Findings regarding stroke were less clear cut, but researchers said that the youngest women appeared to be at the lowest risk.

TC BETHESDA -- New analyses of data from around the world have failed to show that women under age 50 benefit from mammograms, confirming a Canadian study published late last year.The new data, reported at a two-day meeting of experts on mammography sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, addfuel to a growing debate over whether the cancer institute and the American Cancer Society should change their guidelines recommending that women in their 40s have mammograms every one to two years to detect cancers before they are big enough to feel.

BETHESDA, Md. -- New analyses of data from around the world have failed to show that women under age 50 benefit from mammograms, confirming a Canadian study published late last year.The new data, reported at a two-day meeting of experts on mammography sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, addfuel to a growing debate over whether the cancer institute and the American Cancer Society should change their guidelines recommending that women in their 40s have mammograms every one to two years to detect cancers before they are big enough to feel.

Estrogen therapy not only does not protect women age 65 and older against Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia, as scientists once hoped, but it might slightly hasten senility, according to the results of a study of women's health. These results, reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, could end scientists' hopes for estrogen replacement therapy in older women. The treatment, once thought to reduce many of the ravages of age, such as strokes and dementia, seems to enhance those problems.

A growing debate over when women should get routine mammograms intensified yesterday as an advisory panel voted to maintain National Cancer Institute guidelines recommending routine tests beginning at age 40, while a new study suggested most women do not need testing until they're 50.The 14-1 vote by the institute's civilian advisory panel -- made up of scientists, medical specialists and lay members -- was contrary to advice from the NCI staff and a...

Statistics of breast cancer leap from billboards and public service ads everywhere: One out of nine women will develop the deadly disease if she lives to be 85.Thirty years ago, it was one woman out of 16.Although these numbers are partially influenced by earlier cancer detection and longer life spans, no one knows why the incidence of breast cancer is growing. And breast cancer activists point out that mortality rates remain virtually the same as they were in the 1950s.It also appears the disease is increasing in younger women.

Women worry more about retirement than men. We fret more about inflation eroding our purchasing power. We agonize more over declining health and the rising cost of medical care. We stew more about outliving our money. In fact, according to a recent survey by The Hartford and MIT AgeLab, there's only one retirement issue where men's anxiety level was higher: Men are more concerned about being bored in retirement. But we have good reason to worry. Women tend to earn less than men and are more likely to quit work to care for children or elderly parents.

As with most of Washington's titanic battles, many of the casualties from the immigration debacle were unintended victims. Among those with the poor luck to be in the line of fire were Maryland's shrinking crab-processing industry and the mostly Mexican women who make up its seasonal work force. Congress should remedy this injustice as soon as possible by establishing a permanent program that allows such workers visas to come for a few months each year and then go home, without making them and their employers sweat through the 11th-hour theatrics of annual renewals.

A 2002 study that led millions of women to throw out their hormone pills may have overestimated the dangers of that medication to women in their 50s, new research suggests. The new study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association found that for women near the start of menopause, the pills do not increase the incidence of heart attacks or other cardiac complications. Findings regarding stroke were less clear cut, but researchers said that the youngest women appeared to be at the lowest risk.

Estrogen therapy not only does not protect women age 65 and older against Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia, as scientists once hoped, but it might slightly hasten senility, according to the results of a study of women's health. These results, reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, could end scientists' hopes for estrogen replacement therapy in older women. The treatment, once thought to reduce many of the ravages of age, such as strokes and dementia, seems to enhance those problems.

Just weeks after the National Institutes of Health halted a large study, finding that estrogen's risks outweighed benefits for post-menopausal women, a privately funded trial will look at whether hormone therapy prevents hardening of the arteries in younger women, ages 40-55. The private Kronos Longevity Research Institute, based in Phoenix, Ariz., selected eight research centers at some of the most prestigious medical schools - including Columbia, Harvard and Yale - to participate in the $12 million study.

BOSTON -- The heart of the story is the tape measure. Try to imagine the best and the brightest female tenured professors lurking around the halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, measuring the size of the men's labs and offices against their own.There is something so techie about it, so wonky, so MIT. The 15 women -- physicists, chemists, biologists -- were in search of hard numbers to prove what they had once been reluctant to admit: Men...

Just weeks after the National Institutes of Health halted a large study, finding that estrogen's risks outweighed benefits for post-menopausal women, a privately funded trial will look at whether hormone therapy prevents hardening of the arteries in younger women, ages 40-55. The private Kronos Longevity Research Institute, based in Phoenix, Ariz., selected eight research centers at some of the most prestigious medical schools - including Columbia, Harvard and Yale - to participate in the $12 million study.

Their gamble paid off.When the Women's Civic League members voted last year to move the annual Flower Mart to War Memorial Plaza from its original site in Mount Vernon, traditionalists were furious. The annual spring festival had endured around the base of the Washington Monument just about every year since 1911, for heaven's sake.But yesterday, as hundreds of workers poured out of downtown buildings to stroll through the mart and get lunch, even the strongest opponents of the move were conceding that the day was a success.

Fall clothes start dribbling into the stores in the stickiest days of summer. However, the seasonal change doesn't smack female fashion-consciousness in the head until the last week in August, when the glossy September mags hit the newsstands. Watch women this holiday weekend. By the pool, on the patio, at the lunch table they casually flip through encyclopedia-weight volumes releasing strip scents into the picnic atmosphere.The flipping appears languid, even disdainful, but don't be fooled for a minute.