The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recently come out advising women that they should not get regular mammograms in their 40’s, as women have been told that they should do for quite a number of years now, and that they should wait until their 50’s. They have also advised that self breast exams do not work, therefore women should not worry about giving themselves self breast exams.
As soon as I heard about this new information I was instantly skeptical. Whose best interests are in mind here, those of women or those of the medical profession working in a recession and eager to cut as many costs as possible? After delving into the research about these new guidelines, I have determined that my initial skepticism was correct and that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are actually now contributing to the rise of deaths due to breast cancer that will occur as soon as women start following these guidelines because they think that this “task force” has their best interests in mind and they absolutely do not. A huge amount of breast cancer survivors have been women who have noticed lumps in their breasts by doing self breast exams and women who have been lucky enough to survive breast cancer have been women who have had their cancer detected early. If these same women who are survivors of this disease were told not to worry about having frequent mammograms before the age of 50 would be dead right now and we would have even more women dying from breast cancer than ever before just by taking the advice of this so-called task force who are giving out very bad information.
For the first time in…well, probably forever, I agree wholeheartedly with what Elisabeth Hasselbeck said on a recent episode of The View. Check it out below:
This contest is closed. Check out our winner here.
While there are many benefits, events, charities, organizations, businesses and people who have dedicated their time, their experiences, their inspiration and their money to helping in whatever ways they can in the fight against breast cancer, there are still very limited resources for women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer themselves or who are close to someone who has been diagnosed to receive the support they need most. A diagnosis like this, regardless of the stage is absolutely terrifying, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking and truly difficult to go through, especially if you don’t have a rock-solid support system of various people around you who understand your grief and frustration and people who will understand while you go through the emotional roller coaster a diagnosis and treatment will send you through. But luckily, Pink Together was created just for this purpose.
Pink Together is a national campaign dedicated to supporting those impacted by breast cancer. Their website, PinkTogether.com is a safe space where everyone can share hope and inspiration by sharing stories of breast cancer survivors and supporters within the community. Pink Together has already helped countless survivors and supporters of those survivors.
For the month of October, General Mills has come to the support of Pink Together and will be donating $2 million to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. They have also turned the packaging of some of their most trusted products pink for the month in an effort to continue to raise awareness about breast cancer.
Giveaway!
Thanks to Pink Together and MyBlogSpark, we have been given the opportunity to give away an Inspiring Hope gift basket that includes a sleeved travel mug, a running ribbon charm bracelet, a pink leather strap keychain, a pink cinch bag and a set of inspirational note cards.
All of the gifts in the Inspiring Hope gift basket are from Shop Komen, where 25% of the merchandise purchase price benefits Susan G Komen for the Cure in the fight against breast cancer. All of these fabulous gifts will remind you of how important the fight against breast cancer is throughout the entire year, and not just in October when we spread awareness for breast cancer awareness month. I can also personally attest that the sleeved travel mug is the absolute best quality travel mug I have ever found.
To win the Inspiring Hope gift basket, all you have to do is a leave a comment telling us what woman inspires you the most and why. [REQUIRED]
Blog about this giveaway with a link back to this post. This is worth 3 entries so leave 3 separate comments with a link to your post.
This contest ends Friday, October 30th at 11:59PM EST. The winner will be contacted by email and has 48 hours to respond with their necessary information. If no action is taken, another winner will be picked.
October is breast cancer awareness month and over the month we have been covering a great deal of initiatives that through people-powered activism have seen great strides in fighting against breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime–that’s 12% of all women who will be personally impacted by this disease. But because people know that with hard work, dedication and doing what they can to help fight against breast cancer, we will hopefully see an impact through research to find a cure for breast cancer and also spreading the word on how to prevent it.
While there are many different ways you can participate in the fight against breast cancer, but the simplest by far is Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives program. It’s super simple, but you will be making a tremendous impact! Over the past 11 years Yoplait has donated more than $22 million to the breast cancer cause through Save Life to Save Lives as well as other initiatives. Last year alone, participants across the country helped Yoplait meet its $1.5 million donation goal to Susan G Komen for the Cure and this year, Yoplait needs your help too and they have also teamed up with Kristi Funk, Founder of the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills. She has committed herself to educating women and men about the importance of breast cancer risk reduction, early detection and ways to support the cause.
How You Can Help
When you’re in the grocery store, pick up Yoplait yogurt with the pink lids. Save your lids and mail them in (don’t forget to rinse them off!) by December 31, 2009. For every lid that is mailed in, Yoplait will donate 10 cents to Susan G Komen for the Cure up to $1.5 million, with a guaranteed donation of $500,000! That is absolutely incredible! Don’t forget to also encourage your friends and family to do the same and you can even create an online lid collection team just by visiting Your Lid Matters.
Giveaway!
Thanks to MyBlogSpark and Yoplait, I have the opportunity to help a lucky Woman Tribune reader help Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives program!
When you promise to make a difference, we are giving away a Promise to Make a Difference gift which includes a coupon for a free package of any flavor Yo-Plus or Yo-Plus Light yogurt 4-pack and two other Yoplait breast cancer awareness keepsakes
To win the Promise to Make a Difference gift leave a comment on how you plan to help Yoplait in the fight against breast cancer whether it’s participating in an annual walk/run, collecting your Yoplait pink lids, donating directly to Susan G Komen for the Cure, talking to your friends and family about breast cancer or how to give yourself a self breast exam–whatever you’re doing to help the fight, what is it? [REQUIRED]
For additional entries:
Tweet about Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives campaign and raise awareness about the importance of saving your Yoplait lids. Don’t forget to leave a comment with the URL of your tweet!
Feel free to copy and paste this tweet:
RT @WomanTribune Join Yoplait in the fight against breast cancer. Save your pink lids & send in by Dec 31! http://tinyurl.com/ykuanzz
Start or join a collection team on Your Lid Matters and leave a comment indicating what you have done.
Send an ecard to a friend or family member about breast cancer awareness and to raise awareness about Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives. To do this go to Your Lid Matters and click all the way on the bottom ‘Share Your Passion.’ Leave a comment here saying what ecard you chose to send.
Blog about Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives campaign and post Dr. Funk’s video (above). Leave a comment here with the URL of your blog post!
This contest ends TONIGHT, October 23rd at 11:59PM
The Love/Avon Army of Women is the partnership of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and the Avon Foundation for Women. It was created to recruit one million healthy women of every age and ethnicity, including breast cancer survivors and women at high-risk for the disease, to partner with breast cancer researchers and directly participate in the research that will eradicate breast cancer once and for all. They have also committed themselves to challenging the scientific community to expand its current focus to include breast cancer prevention research conducted on healthy women.
I love this community so much because it’s exactly what the name of the community is–it is an army of women who are not going to accept the harsh truth that one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer sometime in their lifetime. They are committed to doing something about it that goes beyond finding a cure; it’s essentially working to ensure that breast cancer doesn’t plague so many women with such devastating effects. They are demanding prevention research so we can prevent breast cancer in millions of women.
The Love/Avon Army of Women have recently conducted a Public Service Announcement contest hosted by Glamour magazine, open to film students from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and New York University’s Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television. Their mission with this contest was to encourage one million women of all ages and ethnicities from across the nation to sign up and be part of the Army of Women movement. In just a one-week period, more than 28,000 Glamour readers and Army of Women members voted for their favorite PSA’s among the four finalists. These PSA’s have and will continue to air on Lifetime Television for Women during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, reading millions of viewers.
The winner of their first-ever PSA contest was recently announced and I absolutely love it! The winner is “Million in the Mirror” by Marc Parees and Ryan Silbert of New York University’s Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television. For their PSA contest win, the filmmakers will receive an Apple Final Cut Studio Package and the opportunity to meet with the senior vice president of production at New Regency Productions.
The fact that one in eight women will be diagnosed with some stage of breast cancer in their life is unbelievably tragic. Even with so many people committed to fighting breast cancer and who are donating either money or their time to help fund breast cancer research and spread the word about the disease and raise awareness, there is still a great deal of work to do. Luckily, there is a lot that you can do to detect breast cancer early, in its earliest stages and one of the biggest and life-saving things you can do for yourself is to do a self breast exam.
Babeland has posted an article containing all the information you need on how to effectively perform a self breast exam, but remember not to just pay attention to your breasts and love your body in October, during breast cancer awareness month. Breast cancer is a serious disease and it’s time to get serious about loving your body and making sure it is as healthy as it can possibly be. A self exam only takes about 10 to 15 minutes and it is important to consistently pay attention to your breasts throughout different points in the month; this way, you’ll get to know your breasts and can detect when something may be wrong a lot sooner.
Here’s how a self breast exam works:
Lay down and place a pillow under your right shoulder, and your right arm under your head.
Using the three middle fingers of your left hand, massage your right breast with the pads of your fingers. Check the entire breast for any lumps or abnormalities. You can move in a circular motion, or up and down–just make sure you use the same motion every month.
Continue the motion, extending to the outside of the breast, and to your underarm.
Repeat on left side.
Next, repeat exam standing up, with one arm behind your shoulder as you examine each breast. Standing or sitting up allows you to feel the outside of the breast more accurately.
For added precaution, stand in front of a mirror and squeeze each nipple. Look for any discharge.
Take note of any dimpling, redness or swelling.
If you notice anything unusual, contact your doctor as soon as possible; it may be nothing to worry about, but it’s far better to know than to wonder.
Tips:
You can do a portion of the exam in the shower. Incorporating it into a normal activity can make it easier to do, and less of a time constraint. Remember to mark your calendar every month as a reminder.
Do the self breast exam every month at the same time. Menstruating women should perform it a few days after their period. Women taking oral contraceptives should do the exam on the first day of starting a new pack of pills.
Report any change to your physician, even if you feel it is minor.
Remind your friends and family members to do their self-exams, too!
For breast cancer awareness month Babeland is also pitching in to help fund mammograms for women in need. When you buy any Pink October toy, Babeland will donate 20% of its sale to fighting breast cancer.
SIDS is a medical disorder that baffles doctors as it remains unexplained; there is no known cause or cure and all possible causes of the disorder have been ruled out through autopsy, death scene investigation and medical history. SIDS claims the lives of nearly 2500 babies in the US from one month to one year of age. Luckily, researchers who are dedicated to unraveling the mystery of SIDS have made great strides in identifying deficits, behaviors and other factors that may put an infant at higher risk. Scientists are currently exploring the development and function of the nervous system, the brain, the heart, breathing and sleep patterns, body chemical balances, autopsy findings and environmental factors. People are working amazingly hard at reducing the number of babies who fall victim to SIDS every year; since 1992 when the Back To Sleep advisory was first introduced, the rate of SIDS has dropped more than 50% and has spared the lives of about 3,000 infants every year in the US.
While it’s true that any baby of any race, medical background and class can be affected by SIDS, there are some steps parents can take to reduce their baby’s risk.
Place your baby on their back to sleep at night and naptime.
Use a firm mattress, covered with only a sheet, in a safety-approved crib.
Remove all soft and loose bedding from your baby’s sleep area, including pillows, blankets, comforters, bumper pads, sheepskins, positioners, toys and all other soft objects.
Consider using a Halo SleepSack, a wearable blanket, or other type of sleeper as a safe alternative to loose blankets.
Do not place your baby to sleep on a sofa, waterbed, pillow, soft mattress or any other soft surface.
Keep your baby’s face clear of coverings.
Be careful not to overheat your baby with excessive clothing, bedding or room temperature.
Do not smoke or allow anyone else to smoke around your baby.
Educate babysitters, day care providers, grandparents and anyone else who cares for your baby about reducing the risk of infant death.
One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. Dr. Kristi Funk, celebrity breast cancer surgeon is helping Yoplait spread the word about their Save Lids To Save Lives initiative to help in the fight against breast cancer.
There are annual events that benefit breast cancer research all across the country, but if you don’t have time to take part in these events or the money to donate to the cause, you can still make a huge difference, and there’s an easy way to do it!
For every pink Save Lids To Save Lives Yoplait lid that is sent in (don’t forget to rinse them off!) by December 31, 2009, Yoplait will donate 10 cents to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, up to $1.5 million, with a guaranteed donation of $500,000. That is some serious breast cancer research cash!
Log onto YourLidMatters.com, where you can print tools for your lid-collecting and you can also start your own lid collection team and inspire your friends, family, co-workers and anyone else you think would love to help Save Lids To Save Lives. You can also download a $1.00 off coupon for YoPlus or YoPlus Light with pink lids and jump start your collecting!
Every year once the weather starts to get warmer, we have a series of colds in this house where everyone gets sick right after one another. Living in Pennsylvania, all of our seasons are very harsh; our winters are very cold and then out of the blue, it’s very warm so the drastic change in temperature can have really harsh affects on our immune systems.
Parents are very weary of medication in most cases, and for good reason. Most medications contain harsh chemicals drowsiness, and those same chemicals that are in medications find themselves in our waterways quite frequently, which end up in our drinking water supply which is never good! Thinking about being medicated just by drinking a cup of water from your tap is pretty unsettling. Luckily, there are some great herbal remedies on the market for children, thus eliminating those harsh chemicals from our water supply and also leave your child feeling great, helping them get over their colds faster without sleeping the days away and becoming nocturnal!
The FDA actually recommends against treating children under four with drugstore cough and cold medicines, warning of potentially severe side effects and a 2007 pediatric study found that kids slept better and coughed less after a dose of honey than after a dose of honey-flavored cough suppressant; just keep in mind that children under one year old should not eat honey because of botulism risk. So what better reasons are there to look into herbal remedies!?
Some children’s herbal remedies and medications to look into are Herbs for Kids Throat Spray, it is certified organic, peppermint-flavored spray with echinacea and thyme, which thins mucus. It is recommended for kids age one and up. Traditional Medicinals Just for Kids Organic Cold Care is a tea with elderflower, which treats congestion and helps break fevers. It is recommended for kids two and up. Hyland’s Homeopathic Complete Flu Care 4 Kids is an immune-boosting, dissolving tablet that relieves fever, aches, cough, and congestion. It is recommended for kids two and up.
If you’re looking for a DIY at home herbal remedy so you know exactly what you’re giving to your kids, just mix 1 cup of honey with 1/2 cup of thyme and heat on the stove for 15 minutes. Serve 1 tsp warm (not hot!) three times a day. This is recommended only for kids two and up.
Linda Fleming, a 66 year old woman with terminal cancer has become the first person to die with dignity under Washington state’s new assisted suicide law, Death with Dignity, which took effect in March. Fleming died at home with her family, her dog, and her physician at her bedside after taking a lethal dose of prescribed drugs.
The new law was approved last November with nearly 60% of the vote in favor of passing the assisted suicide law. Under the law, in order to end your life you must be at least 18 years of age, declared competent, and be a state resident. Two doctors would have to certify if the patient has a terminal condition and six months or less to live. The patient must make two oral requests for the procedure, 15 days apart, and make a written request witnessed by two people.
For physicians and pharmacists who are opposed to the law, they are not required to write or fill lethal prescriptions and even some hospitals have opted out of the law, which precludes their doctors from participating on hospital property.
Assisted suicide has been a controversial topic for many generations, but it is great to see a state that is giving its citizens a way to have control over their own fates; someone who has less than six months to live and who is suffering astronomical amounts of pain due to their illness, I believe, has every right to die in a manner that they see fit. We see a great deal of cases where patients are in too much pain than they can handle and who want to die; the least we can do is give them a compassionate and dignified way out.
What do you think? Do you want to see other states introduce assisted suicide laws?
Many companies and organizations have done great work through the years raising awareness as well as money for research for breast cancer; a cancer that undoubtedly plagues countless women and the people who love them every single year. This year Bumble Bee Foods are doing what they can to help women battling breast cancer who can’t wait for a cure.
The Breast Cancer Network of Strength has helped thousands of people find the information they need to make educated and informed decisions through their 24/7 Hotline and YourShoes peer counselors. While they don’t give medical advice, they do help the women battling breast cancer and their families by explaining what they are likely to encounter in their lives due to breast cancer and beyond.
To help the Breast Cancer Network of Strength, Bumble Bee Foods will donate 15 cents up to $200,000 for every mile logged on their website, BeeWell Miles from April 1st to December 31, 2009. The BeeWell Miles program was created to make it easy for people to get active and help those in need of support and information.
With BeeWell Miles, your healthy lifestyle will go a long way. Just log the miles you walk or run in one day on their website and see how much of a difference you have made and can continue to make through the end of the year. BeeWell Miles can also help you and your journey through a healthy lifestyle, giving you the ability to interact with healthy living experts, share your favorite route with others and calculate the route’s mileage. You can also enter the meals you eat every day to see and understand your calorie intake, and you are also able to speak to other people on the path to a healthy lifestyle and who are also helping Bumble Bee Foods and the Breast Cancer Network of Strength.
October is breast cancer awareness month and over the month we have been covering a great deal of initiatives that through people-powered activism have seen great strides in fighting against breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime–that’s 12% of all women who will be personally impacted by this disease. But because people know that with hard work, dedication and doing what they can to help fight against breast cancer, we will hopefully see an impact through research to find a cure for breast cancer and also spreading the word on how to prevent it.
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October is known as the awareness month of many issues, including 
One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. Dr. Kristi Funk, celebrity breast cancer surgeon is helping Yoplait spread the word about their 
