The Normal Bar for Happy Relationships

If you don't have a gift for your Valentine yet here's a suggestion that will give back over the next year. I've just started reading, "The Normal Bar--Surprising Secrets of of Happy Couples" and it is eye opening from the start. I'll be writing more about this juicy book over the next week.

You would expect great, well-documented information from the trio of authors: Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz and James Witte. All great writers and accurate digesters of information who have a high skill to put research into relevant lay language.

This book is not about Cosmo quizzes and what works for your friend. It's longitudinal social science research translated into, "Try This!" And we can all use some of that.

And you might be thinking, "A relationship book as a Valentine's gift?" But yes...the only implied message is "I love you and I want more." But just to be on the safe side, add some dark chocolate.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Breast Bumps

When I was a girl my mother would say to be very careful with your breasts. Don’t let them get bumped and later I wondered if that also included letting a boy squeeze them too hard. Even later I’d laugh at the idea that bumping or man-handling could hurt a breast or cause the dreaded—cancer. So unscientific, so old-fashioned.

Yesterday in the New York Times, and excerpted in many papers, the new-old research that an outside agent—bruise, wound or injury—may be the necessary catalyst for a dormant cancer cell to begin its changes. Cancer needs two factors: to exist in a dormant state and to have a trigger. An injury can be that trigger. Also explains –in a very crude way—why it happens that someone feels perfectly fine, undergoes surgery and then rapidly dies of cancer. Surgery may be a trigger wound.

Now isn’t that a scary dish to set before Cancer Land?

Cancer, Cancer Everywhere

Cancer, cancer everywhere and not a drop of info that makes sense.

Ok, mammograms are out—or they’re not. Pap tests are out—or they’re not. Prostate cancer. Whew- if you had surgery and are now impotent or incontinent maybe you and your doctor moved too fast. How does that make you feel? Ditto for mastectomy based on a mammogram interpreted as risk but now, maybe, the risk wasn’t quite what they thought.

Women are cancelling mammograms and lumpectomies. Men are baffled and even more afraid of a prostate exam. The fear goes way beyond the snap of the glove and “Is it really ok to let a man touch my bum—and what if I like it?”

What’s a human to do?

Combine this with the inverse economic incentive in healthcare: the more machines a hospital invests in the more radiologic services they have to sell. The more screenings we do the more cancer we’ll find. Yep. But what if some (a lot or a little) of what is found isn’t really a threat.

After age 50 we all have cancer cells in our bodies. So do we all “have cancer”? Do we all need treatment?

Language and the way the question is framed drive all of this. The best words I have read recently are Robert Aronowitz in his New York Times op-ed called, “Addicted to Mammograms” published November 20, 2009. What he shows us is that the way the argument is framed pre-determines the possible answers.