Q: Could it be postpartum depression?
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A: If you’ve ever given birth or been around a new mom, you’re probably familiar with “baby blues” -- the few weeks after childbirth when roller-coastering hormones cause eight out of 10 new moms to burst into unexpected tears. But for 10 percent of women, these “baby blues” don’t go away. Instead, they develop into a more severe, lasting condition known as postpartum depression or PPD. Symptoms of PPD include irritability, anxiety, anger, insomnia or excessive sleeping, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, and lack of interest in the baby, family, friends and formerly pleasurable activities. Left untreated, PPD can have a serious impact on the entire family, interfering with mother-child bonding, child development and the new mom’s relationship with the new dad. What’s more, PPD is substantially underdiagnosed, notes pediatrician Adam Aponte, M.D., of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
So how do you tell the difference between normal “baby blues” and PPD? Read the following three statements to the new mom and ask her whether she feels they describe her most of the time, some of the time, not very often or never:
- I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong.
- I have felt scared or panicky for not very good reasons.
- I have felt anxious or worried for not very good reasons.
In a recent study, researchers at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver found that using these three statements, taken from the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale, was just as accurate in diagnosing PPD as using the full Edinburgh questionnaire. “We chose the anxiety questions,” says study co-author Karolyn Kabir, M.D., “because other studies have shown that anxiety plays a major role in postpartum depression.”
So if you’re
concerned that someone you love may be suffering from PPD, give her the above
mini-quiz. If she replies “some of the time” or “most of the time” to at least
two statements, encourage her to talk to her doctor. If she is indeed suffering
from PPD, treatment can help her feel better, which will in turn benefit the
entire family.
Q: Does marijuana increase the risk of testicular cancer?
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A: Possibly. Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle recently found that men who smoked marijuana have almost twice the risk of developing nonseminoma, the more aggressive form of testicular cancer, than men who abstained. In addition, the more often a man smoked, the higher his risk: weekly smokers had about twice the risk of nonsmokers, and daily smokers had three times the risk. Finally, compared with men who started smoking marijuana after age 18, those who started before 18 had twice the risk of testicular cancer.
“Incidence of testicular cancer has been rising in the U.S. and Europe over the last 40 years,” says lead researcher Janet Daling, Ph.D. “Marijuana use has also risen over the same period. It seemed logical that there might be an association between the two. We found a fairly strong relationship.”
However, an association between marijuana smoking and testicular cancer does not necessarily mean that the former causes the latter. In the U.S., both testicular cancer and marijuana use are most common among affluent white men. It’s possible, however, that it’s not marijuana but some other aspect of an affluent lifestyle that is causing the increase in cancer, notes Gary Schwartz, Ph.D., an associate professor of cancer biology and epidemiology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Experts agree that more research needs to be done. In the meantime, “men who smoke marijuana should keep our findings in mind,” advises Daling, especially if you have risk factors for testicular cancer, which include an undescended testicle, a family history of the disease, HIV infection or being white or between the ages of 20 and 54.
Q: If a workout leaves me with sore muscles the next day, should I rest?
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A: Not necessarily, says muscle-soreness researcher Patria Hume, Ph.D., a professor of human performance in the School of Sport and Recreation at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.
When you start a new exercise or push your body beyond what it’s accustomed to, you can develop “muscle micro-injuries” -- tiny tears in overworked muscle fibers. This is what causes that familiar soreness 24 to 48 hours after a new workout, explains Hume. But this “delayed-onset muscle soreness” or DOMS, as it’s called, is medically minor, and there’s no need to stop exercising. Instead, “reduce the intensity and duration of [your] exercise for a day or two” until the soreness clears up, advises Hume.
In the meantime, aspirin or ibuprofen can help relieve the soreness and reduce the inflammation that causes it, report researchers at The University of Georgia. Massage can also help, according to an Australian study.
But one popular DOMS treatment does not work: stretching before and/or after exercise. Researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia, reviewed 10 studies of stretching to prevent or treat DOMS. In every one, “the effects were very small.” Stretching before exercise reduced DOMS by only half a percent, while stretching after exercise reduced DOMS just one percent.
Finally, while DOMS is not serious, major injury to muscles, tendons or ligaments can be. How to tell the difference? DOMS occurs a day or two after you work out, whereas major injury causes immediate, sharp pain and swelling. So if you’re sore from that new workout you did a day or two ago, that’s no excuse to stop. Ease up on the gas but keep on truckin’!
This Live Right Live Well Expert Q&A was written by journalist Michael Castleman.
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