GynoFiles

Oddly as we have honed in on unique family diseases and traits, it turns out we are all each others family. Your primary care physician may be very interested in your family history as a window on your past and future heath needs, however, are we barking up the right (family) tree? It's still a good idea to be mindful of your family's health, and g reat tools can help you track this . Family history is important, but the critical question is "do we really know all our genetic family history." The intermixing of populations has gone on for many generations and it's difficult to determine "high risk" for diseases in the old way according to Dr. Ron Wapner in a Dec 2013 discussion in Ob Gyn News . He also cautions that both partners should be screened and counseled together if possible, and we should remember that screening never eliminates all risk of a particular condition. And at Women's Health Practice we urge revisiting this subject often as t...

In a recent work shop there were two factors emphasized that will help women and their birth attendants avoid Cesarean birth: skills and patience. A third factor has been added: weight management. Since it is one of the most commonly performed surgeries in the US, accounting for a million operative procedures on women in the USA each year, avoiding this surgery is still a goal for obstetrical providers of care. In 2010 the Health People act aimed at 15% rate of Cesarean Birth, but we have over a 30% rate and climbing. So the goal, as reported in a recent workshop report seen in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, is to get that rate to 23.9% which would lower our rate down to what it was in the first decade of this century. Staying home also keeps the shortest labor possible, and there is some thought that will even make it less likely to have a c-section. For first timers, if you hit the hospital it is several hours before you birth. Once you actually hit 6 cm dilated, it only tak...

Did you know the origin of natural pain medication free labor and controlled breathing and pain prevention in childbirth? What is thought by most people to be the discovery of the French physician Dr. Frenand Lamaze, was actually an adaptation of Dr. Anatoly Nikolaev, an obstetrician practicing in Leningrad, which built upon the vast psychological works that began with Pavlov and continued through the psychotherapist I.Z. Velvovskii who applied his conditioned response theories to childbirth. Physicians had long let women labor under many misconceptions. Literally the most renown text of birthing in 1513 entitled Rose Garden for Pregnant Women and Midwives was more a recitation of lore and historical versions of medical cures than it was based on any sound science at all. Luckily in those ancient times many women were suspect of 'mainstream'' medicine. And though years of progress women have been subjected to all manners of herbs and chemicals and gases to help them th...