OHMYGOSSIP – Cervical acid peels may sound like something you get done at the salon, but scientists claim they could prevent cancer. Many beauty fans already know the benefits of a facial peel, which targets problems like acne and aging, by separating outer layers of skin. A similar treatment used in the cervix has now been found to rid the area of precancerous cells, caused by HPV (human papilloma virus).
Scientists from Austria’s Comprehensive Cancer Center have trialled a chemical peel they developed, which uses 85 per cent trichloroacetic acid on the cervix in women with HPV. Trichloroacetic acid is what is commonly found in beauty chemical peels.
The team found 82 per cent of the patients using the peel went into complete remission.
“The results are extremely promising, since the procedure can be performed very easily by experts in the field of HPV-induced mutations of the cervix,” lead study author Dr Paul Speiser said.
“Very little training is needed to perform the procedure, it does not require any special equipment or other operating theatre infrastructure and the acid itself is very inexpensive. This means that we now have a real alternative for treating this condition and one that would also be very attractive to poorer countries.”
About 14 million people become newly infected each year with HPV, and it’s so common that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculate that most sexually-active men and women will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lives. In women it can lead to a pre-cancerous condition, and ultimately cervical cancer.
The precancerous cells are detected during a smear test, and can be removed from a surgical procedure called cervical conization. Freezing via liquid nitrogen, heating with an electrical generator and lasers are also ways to remove them.
However the new treatment is much less painful, using a gentle acid peel that is dabbed on to the affected area. Few side effects have been found, and other than mild discomfort, patients only reported a mild discharge that lasted for roughly two weeks.
While the news is promising, Dr Speiser adds more research needs to be done.
“We are going to conduct another study to investigate whether the success of the treatment can be increased by a second application,” he said. “Preliminary data suggest that a second treatment could increase the success rate to more than 90 per cent.”
The results have been published in journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Featured image: PantherMedia/Wavebreakmedia ltd/Scanpix
OHMYGOSSIP – Bowel cancer is one of the most common types of cancer diagnosed in the United Kingdom, with around 40,000 new cases detected every year. Early diagnosis and treatment is essential for helping people survive the cancer – and that means making sure people are aware of the symptoms so they can identify them and seek help. As April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, here’s a breakdown of the symptoms of the disease.
What is bowel cancer? Bowel cancer is also called colorectal cancer and includes large bowel cancer (colon cancer) and cancer of the back passage (rectal cancer).
What are the symptoms? While the survival rate of this form of cancer is higher than others, bowel cancer shares symptoms with many other common health ailments and thus can be missed. Alarmingly, the deadly disease is often mistaken for hemorrhoids, also known as piles. Health experts advise that the main symptoms of bowel cancer are blood in the stools (faeces) and changes in bowel habit – such as more frequent, looser stools – and abdominal pain. Symptoms of bowel cancer can also include bleeding from the bottom and unexplained weight loss and abdominal pain. A persistent change in bowel habits including constipation and diarrhoea and unexplained tiredness, dizziness or breathlessness can also be a warning sign of the deadly disease – however subtle they may be.
Who’s at risk? While it’s not known exactly what causes bowel cancer, but there are a number of things that can increase your risk. The NHS advises that people aged over 60, those who eat a diet high in red meat, people who are overweight or obese, smokers or those who have a family history of the disease should be vigilant. However younger people can also be affected, so don’t shrug the cancer form off as an older person’s disease.
What is the screening process? Bowel cancer is treatable and curable especially if diagnosed early. Nearly everyone diagnosed at the earliest stage will survive bowel cancer. However, this drops significantly as the disease develops. Taking part in bowel cancer screening is the best way to get diagnosed early, with a test offered called a “flexible sigmoidoscopy” used to look for any polyps or growths that could be cancerous, and in some cases they will take a biopsy or remove them.
Experts urge that you seek advice from your doctor if you note any symptoms or if your body does not respond to the treatment prescribed.
Featured image: PantherMedia/Lev Dolgachov/Scanpix
OHMYGOSSIP — Multivitamins are the most commonly used supplements in the world. Their popularity has increased rapidly in the past few decades. Some people believe that multivitamins can improve health, make up for poor eating habits or even reduce the risk of chronic diseases. But what does the science say about multivitamins? Do they actually work?
NordenBladet – Pregnant women exposed to air pollution are five times more likely to have children who develop behavior problems related to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, a new study reports.
OHMYGOSSIP — It’s a well-known fact that being a couch potato is no good for your health, but new research has discovered lack of exercise may even shrink your brain.
She wants you to touch her mindlessly while the two of you watch a movie – she doesn’t want that ‘Netflix and Chill’ touching, where the movie is clearly just a pretext to do something else. She wants you to drag your fingers lightly along her arm, in her hair, on her hand. She wants to know that you want to touch her as a matter of habit, as a reflex that just feels more right than doing nothing at all. Touching should become second nature, not always a means to an end.
She wants you to surprise her, but not with some grand gesture you saw in a movie. She doesn’t need the guy lighting a hundred candles in the shape of a heart or a cheesy word, and she doesn’t need to be serenaded with soft guitar music. She needs something that is romantic to just the two of you, exactly to your definition. Surprise her with a bacon egg and cheese and coffee on a Saturday morning after she’s been working hard all week. Surprise her with a bar that’s full of board games, so you can finally see who’s actually better at Connect Four over vodka and orange soda. Pick a movie that you know she loves more than anything, even if she’s already seen it a dozen times, and set up a movie night around it. Let her know that you notice the little things.
She wants you to say that you love her, at weird, random moments when no one would expect it. She wants your words to feel like a kiss on her forehead in the dark, something she can barely feel but which she absolutely needs to feel is there. She wants your love to be something fluid and effortless, not built around “big moments” you feel obligated to mark. Sure, there can be special events, but there’s something a thousand times more heart-swoony about hearing a quiet “I love you” when she’s got a face mask and bathrobe on, when she thinks she’s at her least lovable, when it’s the last thing she expects.
She wants you to love her just as much in front of your friends. She wants you to kiss her cheek, to joke with you, to be the exact same way around them as he is around you. She never wants to feel like the girlfriend who has to be dragged around, like she’s an anchor to all of the fun you would otherwise be having. She hears the way other guys can talk about their girlfriends when they’re not around, like their relationship is an obligation. She knows it would sound needy to ask, but she wants to know that you are never like that with her.
She wants to get a letter from you, to be surprised that you remembered something that she didn’t, to hear the words “I already took care of it.” There is nothing more wonderful than knowing that someone else has already been putting in the thought, that you were on their mind enough to commit it to writing or make real plans. Because that’s the real romance that’s been dying – the romance of being thoughtful, the romance of taking your time and doing things right. She doesn’t want to be the thing you remember only when it’s late and you don’t want to sleep alone. She doesn’t want to be the one you come over to pretend to watch a movie with, just so you can spend a few hours in her arms. She wants to be the one you plan ahead for, the one you take a few extra minutes to make things special for. She doesn’t want your money or the things you can buy her, she wants your time. She wants your attention.
She wants your patience, in a world where everyone is going way too fast.
Featured image: (PantherMedia/Lev Dolgachov/Scanpix)
Source: ThoughtCatalog/Charlotte Green
OHMYGOSSIP — For a long time, drinking water has been thought to help with weight loss. In fact, 30–59% of US adults who try to lose weight increase their water intake. Many studies show that drinking more water may benefit weight loss and maintenance.
1. You’ve typically accomplished 25 things before 7:30 AM.
You’ve changed 1-2 diapers, brushed multiple sets of teeth, made multiple meals, gotten multiple people dressed and watched at least one cartoon or episode of Sesame Street. You have no idea what is going on in the world because your child won’t let you watch the news and you’re too busy making milk bottles to check your phone. There’s also a fairly good shot you’ve read a board book, colored, mashed Play-doh together and stepped barefoot on a Lego.
2. Every time you walk out the door, someone’s got a heartache. You say your goodbyes to the kid, who either screams and cries like it’s the end of the world or, worse yet, completely ignores you and pushes you away when you attempt to kiss her good-bye. You spend the commute to work worrying about whether the crying kid is still crying, if you should just quit your job now or if you can perhaps come home early to spend more time with the crying kid, who most definitely stopped crying 30 seconds after you left.
3. Every moment of peace is quickly followed by torturous worry and/or guilt.
The morning flies by and for about 15 minutes, you indulge in a quiet cup of coffee at your desk followed by an uninterrupted trip to the office bathroom. This is, without question, the most relaxing part of your day because a small person will not barge in on your bathroom time or scream, “Mama!” repeatedly until you acknowledge her or let her watch you do your thing. Then as soon as you actually feel yourself relax, you worry about the 10 things you have to get done at work that morning so you can eventually get home on time. That’s when the guilt circles back.
4. You learn a lot of things about your kid from a secondhand source.
You hear about what your kid is doing from your nanny, your spouse or a friend who saw your kid at a music class or play date and sends you a text or a photo of your kid. Your heart immediately jumps into that text or photo and wants to be there, reassuring your kid that you love them to itsy bitsy pieces and just want to scoop her up and hug her to infinity. You spend the next hour worrying that you’re not spending enough quality time with your kid and that she’ll grow up to resent you being away so much.
5. It’s a serious challenge to spend quality time with your kid during the week.
On days where there are doctor appointments, the rare music class that you can attend or the opportunity to have dinner together, you race out of work, paranoid that even though you’re leaving a mere 30 minutes early, everyone is judging you for lack of dedication. Then you’re cursing the hurdles that are making your commute longer than normal. You can feel your pulse jump out of your neck with anxiety. How much longer until you can get there? Will you make it in time? When you finally arrive, you’re usually sweating, starving (because you skipped lunch so you could finish your work) and exhausted.
6. You’re a walking collage of kid excrement.
During one of your sacred office bathroom trips, you go to wash your hands only realize while looking at yourself in the mirror that you have milk, oatmeal or snot wiped across your blouse and it’s been there the entire morning while you’ve had multiple meetings with senior executives. You’re grateful that it’s not poop and regularly travel with hand wipes and miniature organic laundry spray to get stains out. Discovering that the arm of your black blazer is covered in dried glue is not that surprising considering you were wearing that blazer when trying to drop in on your toddler’s playgroup’s holiday art project during your lunch hour.
7. You’re a walking pharmacy.
Your oversized, bowling ball heavy work bag contains most of the following: a pacifier, organic pureed ready-to-eat pouches, hand sanitizer, wipes, children’s Tylenol with syringe applicator, a disposable bib, a hair bow if you have a daughter, your wallet which is open and been sifted through by tiny fingers, a few loose credit cards, a Lego or two, a board book, a diaper (hopefully a clean one, but a pee soaked one might make an occasional appearance) and two cell phones (one you use, and an old one you let your kid play with).
8. You always leave work feeling as if you’re not quite finished.
You’re consumed by the projects that you’re working on, but there’s always something tugging at your heartstrings like curiosity over what your baby is eating for lunch. How is she spending her day? Is she happy? Sad? Is she wondering where you are? Does she ask for you? Does she understand why mommy isn’t there? When you finally make the decision to pack up for the day and head home, you feel unaccomplished and stressed about everything that’s left to do. Then you get home and your second job starts. You don’t want to take a break because you haven’t seen your kid all day, but you’re exhausted.
9. You’re the worst date in the world the night before.
The day before an actual date night with your spouse, you go from being extremely excited for some quality time to worried about how much the babysitter and a dinner out will cost and whether leaving your kid at home so you can have a peaceful evening as a couple is even worth it. You finally learn to enjoy yourself with a glass of wine at dinner and realize that you need to do this more often. You’ll get lost in conversation with your husband, and if you can stop thinking and talking about your children for 5 minutes, you’ll find that you’re actually having a great time. It will seem like you just got there when you realize that it’s been 3 hours and your little night out with your husband that used to be free now costs over $100.
10. Your to-do list is literally neverending.
By the time you get home at night, you’ve been going strong since the early morning hours but there are a hundred other things to do in addition to spending time with the people you’ve been thinking about all day. You want to chase your kid around and read to her and stack wooden blocks and boxes and watch Bubble Guppies, but there’s laundry to do and bills to pay and dinner and mail and grocery shopping and the complete mess of a home you left that morning. You are very aware of the limited free time you have and have enough experience to realize that you’ll only accomplish a small fraction of your to-do list no matter how many hours there are in the day.
11. The kid(s) are finally asleep and you can barely keep your eyes open. You consider it a victory if you make it through an entire episode of Homeland without falling asleep. You tell your husband that you’re, “just resting your eyes,” but he’s on to you and makes you go to bed. You don’t argue because you feel like a cross between a zombie, a mental patient, a great-grandmother and a master of all trades for having balanced another day as a working parent.
Featured image: (PantherMedia/ Wavebreakmedia ltd/Scanpix) Source: ThoughtCatalog/Stacey Becker
OHMYGOSSIP – I started to develop Swedish Ohmygossip’s platform already in 2014, but now I have also opened a separate webpage Ohmygossip.se. As you can see the page is still in development but I’m planning to do the blog posts in 4 languages. Estonian (Ohmygossip.ee), English (Ohmygossip.com), Finnish (Ohmygossip.fi) and Swedish (Ohmygossip.se). This is the order I’m planning to translate the articles, thus on the last pages the stories will appear with a little delay.
As the plan is to regularly grow and expand and my target is the Scandinavian market, I’m planning to move towards that direction step by step. In September we opened Ohmygossip.fi page and this worked out so well that I thought not to wait anymore with the Swedish page. It feels great as I wanted to do this a long time ago. I have blogged in Swedish before at Mondoblog.se, Spotlife.se and Blogg.se platforms, but some of those platforms have even stopped their work by today. I want to dedicate more time to Finnish and Swedish page and increase Ohmygossip’s fame in the Northern countries. I know that due to lack of time and financial means I am doing mainly baby steps but even a small step is a step in the right direction.
My goal is to become one of the major bloggers in Scandinavia. In social media I have already reached that goal with my followers but I still have the desire to reach that aim also with daily unique readers and general fame. Although I believe that it is not possible to decide who is the biggest influencer as there are many variables to measure it – readers’ number, the fame of the blog, the base of blog’s social media, the income of the blog, the internationalism of the blog, blog’s name as a brand, brand’s value, services/products sold under blog’s name, the number of collaborations and contacts, the amount of subscribers, blog’s activity on social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc), blog’s Google Analytics and blog’s ratings in different lists.
OHMYGOSSIP – There were two amazing and sunny days in Estonia. So, yesterday, before I went to sleep (without checking today´s weather forecast), I made a plan in my head that I will start with spring gardening today. But I woke up already in the night as there was a huge storm and torrential rain which was beating against the window, and I realized that I have to replan my day.
I have left the children home from school second time this week. I allow them to play truant when I see that there is a huge sleep debt. They study so hard during the year that spring fatigue does not surprise me at all. Estella Elisheva will go to the Lehaim camp next week and she started with packing already. Ivanka Shoshana surfs around the internet, for eight-year-old, she is very skillful with computers. And I think there is no way I can any longer postpone cleaning the house. Otherwise, we need a house extension. A lot of pointless and unnecessary things accumulate all the time and I usually just throw them away during the cleaning process (except children’s clothes and toys which I give away for recycling). Actually, I like cleaning and sorting. I love when I have an overview of everything and the things are in order. For example, when I was a child, I couldn´t start to learn before my room and drawers were in order, disorganization disturbed me a lot. After getting children this branch of perfectionism is gone for good. Every free second I have, I use for work or to develop my projects. However, clean house is always a pleasing phenomenon.
Rainy view in front of and behind the house. I´m waiting the summer so much already! There´s so much to do in the garden and once the weather will be fine and goes green, it is wildly beautiful here in my countryside!
