Younger Women

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.

If men were plagued by a cancer of mysterious origin that assailed the organ that most basically defined them, and if the only way to diagnose that cancer was to strip a man naked, take that organ and smash it flat between two plates of glass and then shoot it with radiation that they feared might feed that cancer or create another one -- well, my guess is men would find another way.That is mammography. That is a woman's best defense against breast cancer, and it isn't all that great.A mammogram is only as good as the technician reading the X-ray, and it takes a lot of skill to recognize the tiny, light spots that could easily be dismissed as dust spots or flaws in the film.

WASHINGTON -- An expert panel was asked by the National Institutes of Health to provide a recommendation: Should women in their 40s get routine mammograms?When the panel held a press conference to release its recommendation, the doctors and other experts said the science offers no clear guidance. While there is no controversy that mammograms every year or two for women in their 50s are beneficial (decreasing by 30 percent the likelihood of dying of breast cancer), the data for mammograms on younger women are inconclusive.

Q: I'm 59, a college graduate and at an age where it seems impossible to find men. I am active but find the men my age look only at the younger women. I want someone physically and mentally active, and the ones who fit the bill just don't see women my age. I'd have to go up 10 years to find an eligible man, and almost 70 is very different from 59 in most cases. Have any suggestions?A: Fasten your safety belt; it's going to be a bumpy ride when I suggest you start seriously looking at younger men. Yes, I know the arguments against: wrinkles, mother complex, looking older and aging faster than he does.

NOT LONG AGO, after a midnight session with a male friend who was considering fatherhood at 50, I decided that middle-aged men suffer from a distinct biological disadvantage. They don't go through menopause.This was a fairly quirky, contrary point of view. My friend did not long for the growth experience of hot flashes. It is more often women who resent the biological clock ticking loudly over their leisurely plans.If anything, the female fertility deadline seems positively un-American, unfair.

Valentine's Day is the perfect occasion to tell you about this guy I know. He has a psycho-traumatic disorder called ''Crone Dementia.''It strikes men like him. Late 40s or early 50s. Recently divorced. Their children are all grown and living on their own.These men all seem perfectly healthy. Take this guy. He plays tennis. Jogs regularly. He's bright, curious, energetic. Likes to travel. Good looking. Good sense of humor. Good company.He's been searching for someone to date. You wouldn't think he'd have any trouble.

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.

WE'RE pretty familiar with the seed and the egg in our house. They've become like cartoon characters, like Road Runner and Coyote, chasing each other around the byways of biology. The seeds have tails (but not top hats) and swim. The eggs are round and go on a fantastic voyage once a month.All this and more has been elicited over years of incremental kid information gathering, culminating one day in the Lincoln Tunnel, natch, in the question of how the seed and the egg wind up in the same place at the same time.

IT HAPPENED about a year ago. He left her for a younger woman. Judy is 62. They'd been married 44 years."It's been a terrible time," she tells me on the phone. "Because now I am having some guilt about how much of it was my fault. I wasn't pretty enough, sexy enough, I needed a face lift, I wasn't interesting enough. I did volunteer work, but I had never had a real career, there was never time, I was too busy raising our five children."Then she added the kicker, "You see, when you are a widow you get sympathy, at least for a while.

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.