Young Women Experiencing Dramatic Increases in Skin Cancer

By Hugh C. McBride

Cases of melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer, have increased dramatically among young women over the past three decades, according to a report by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that was published in the July issue of The Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

The report, which was based on data from 20,000 cases that were gathered from nine NCI-managed tumor registries, noted that incidences of melanoma among young white women have increased at a much higher rate than have occurrences of the same condition among young white men.

In 1973, melanoma was diagnosed an average of 5.5 times per every 100,000 young white women. By 2004, that incidence rate had more than doubled, increasing to 13.9 per 100,000. Among young white men, the increase was far less pronounced, with the rate rising from 4.7 per 100,000 in 1973 to 7.7 in 2004.

A July 11, 2008 article by Washington Post staff writer Rob Stein indicated that researchers are looking at behavior patterns of young women in their search for the cause of this cancer increase:

"One possible explanation is increases among young women of recreational sun exposure or tanning bed use," said Mark Purdue, a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute, who led the analysis. "Both of these things have been identified as risk factors. It's possible [that] increases in these two behaviors may be responsible."

Young women are much more likely than young men to frequent tanning salons, Purdue and others noted.

About 62,000 melanoma cases are diagnosed each year in the United States, and more than 8,400 people die of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

C. William Hanke, the president of the American Academy of Dermatology, told Stein that the NCI report should reinforce warnings against spending excessive time in the sun or under a tanning lamp.

"The take-home message is [that] unprotected outdoor ultraviolet exposure is dangerous," Hanke said. "Ultraviolet radiation is a carcinogen. If you bathe your skin in the ultraviolet light carcinogen long enough, skin cancer is going to develop."

New Exercise Guidelines Should be One Hour per Day, Not a Half-hour

Overweight women need not only to eat less but also to exercise almost an hour a day in order to lose weight permanently, according to a new study from the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. John Jakicc assigned 200 overweight women to one of four groups. Groups 1 and 2 performed moderate or vigorous exercise in order to burn off 1,000 calories a week. Groups 2 and 3 were assigned either moderate or vigorous exercise to burn off 2,000 calories per week. All 200 participants went on 1,200 to 1,500 calorie diets. Within six months, they lost an average of 8 to 10 percent of their body weights.

However, within two years, the majority had gained back half their losses.

However, about 50 participants managed to maintain their losses by exercising an average of 275 minutes per week to burn off 2,000 calories. It did not matter if their exercise was vigorous or moderate.

Dr. Jakicc says his study, which appears in Science Daily, indicates that the United States government should increase its exercise recommendation of 30 minutes a day to 55 minutes.

Are Sports Responsible for Girls' Eating Disorders?

When gymnast Nastia Liukin earned the all-around gold August 15 in Beijing's National Indoor Stadium, she joined legends such as Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton as an idol who will inspire future generations of young girls to nurture their own Olympic dreams.
But for some girls, Liukin's success may be seen as motivation to starve themselves.

In a Feb. 2, 2006 USA Today article, writer Nanci Hellmich noted that anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders are among a wide range of health problems faced by young female athletes.

At least one-third of female athletes have some type of disordered eating, according to two studies of college athletes done by eating disorder experts, one in 1999 by Craig Johnson of the Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital in Tulsa and another in 2002 by Katherine Beals, now at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

In the 2002 study of 425 female college athletes, 43% said they were terrified of being or becoming too heavy, and 55% reported experiencing pressure to achieve or maintain a certain weight. Most said the pressure was self-imposed, but many also felt pressure from coaches and teammates. ...

Female athletes who seem especially vulnerable to disordered eating and excessive exercise are in either the "thin-build sports" or activities that require a lean body weight, such as long-distance running, gymnastics, swimming, diving, figure skating, dance, cheerleading, wrestling and lightweight rowing, says Beals, author of Disordered Eating Among Athletes.

At least one athlete who once struggled with an eating disorder echoes the assertion that the problem is particularly prevalent among girls who compete in sports in which appearance is emphasized.

"It would be hard to find a female athlete in the aesthetic sports - gymnastics, diving, cheerleading, figure skating, dancing - who isn't preoccupied with body image and somewhat obsessive about what she is eating," former Olympic diver Kimiko Hirai Soldati, herself a recovering bulimic, told Helmich.

Report Counters Claims of Increased Violence by Teen Girls

A report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice calls into question the "conventional wisdom" that says modern American girls are becoming more violent.

According to Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Context (which was written by members of the DOJ's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention program), statistics that some have interpreted as indicating a rise in girl violence are actually indicative of changes within the law enforcement community.

Available evidence based on arrest, victimization, and self-report data suggests that although girls are currently arrested more for simple assaults than previously, the actual incidence of their being seriously violent has not changed much over the last two decades.

This suggests that increases in arrests may be attributable more to changes in enforcement policies than to changes in girls' behavior. ... There is no burgeoning national crisis of increasing serious violence among adolescent girls.

The DOJ report was written in part as a response to media claims, such as those put forward in a 2005 Newsweek article titled "Bad Girls Go Wild," that aggression and violence is on the rise among teen girls.

The report's authors concede that arrest rates for girls have increased over the past quarter century, but, they write, these statistics fail to answer a fundamental question: "Do the increases in arrests indicate real changes in girls' behaviors, or are the increases a product of recent changes in public sentiment and enforcement policies that have elevated the visibility and reporting of girls' delinquency and violence?"

By the end of the 15-page report, they have their answer. Though factors such as domestic violence, gang activity, familial dysfunction, and poverty have drawn some girls into violent lifestyles, there is little definitive evidence to suggest that today's girls are more violent than those of previous generations.

"One of the most consistent and robust findings in criminology is that, for nearly every offense, females engage in much less crime and juvenile delinquency than males," the authors write.

Fish Oil May Protect Against Heart Disease

Japanese men may have lower rates of heart disease than their American counterparts because they eat more fish, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Omega-3 acids found in fish may protect Japanese men from heart disease, even though their rates of cholesterol, blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes are similar as those of American men.

Dr. Akira Sekikawa studied 281 Japanese men living in the United States, 280 living in Japan, and 306 Caucasian males. All participants underwent periodic blood tests. The men living in Japan had the highest rates of omega-3 acids in their bodies and the least amount of plaque build-up in their arteries.

Japanese people eat about three ounces of fish a day, while Americans eat less than two servings a week.

Researchers Advise All Girls Be Vaccinated Against HPV

A new study in the journal Pediatrics indicates that human papillomavirus (HPV) is so common that all girls ages 11 to 25 years old should be vaccinated against it, regardless of their sexual experience.

Some varieties of HPV lead to genital warts or cervical cancer, although the virus usually goes away on its own. Because the virus is transmitted through sexual contact, many parents of young adolescent girls are reluctant to have their daughters vaccinated because the girls are not sexually active.

However, researchers at the University of Michigan who studied the sexual behaviors of 3,180 adolescent girls found no links between being infected and the number of sexual partners, the use of drug, alcohol and cigarettes, or having sex while intoxicated.

"You really can't pick out one or two behaviors that predict if you've been exposed to HPV," said the study's author, Dr. Amanda Dempsey. "It is just so common and so easily transmitted from person to person that it doesn't take more than one partner to get exposed."

High School Cliques Linked to Girls' Weights, Diet Habits

Life in high school is often about being in a clique - for example, the jocks, the brains, or the non-conformists. Now, a study from Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., indicates that the social group a girl belongs to may influence her approach to dieting.

Scientists surveyed 236 girls ages 13 to 18 years old about both their cliques and weight concerns. Girls who considered themselves athletes or "jocks" were least likely to diet, although they did not necessarily have healthy eating habits. On the other hand, girls who were "rebels" or in alternative lifestyle groups were most likely to diet and worry about their weights. The "brains" had the healthiest eating and exercise habits. Overweight girls expressed concerns about their weights and diets, regardless of which clique they belonged to.

This study appeared in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Academic Failures Increase Odds of Depression for Female Students

A University of Washington study has discovered that adolescent girls who experience serious academic failures - being suspended or expelled, or dropping out - are at significantly greater risk for developing depression later in life than are peers who are more successful in school.

Carolyn McCarty, the study's lead author, said in a university press release that her team's research leads to greater understanding of the potentially life-altering effects academic failure can inflict upon female students. "We already know that it leads to more poverty, higher rates of being on public assistance and lower rates of job stability," McCarty said. "And now this study shows it is having mental health implications for girls."

McCarty's team analyzed data collected by the Seattle Social Development Research Project, which has been tracking 808 individuals from high-crime neighborhoods since 1985. Their results, which were published in the August 2008 edition of the Journal of >Adolescent Health, included the following findings related to academic failure and depression:

• Forty-four percent of girls who were expelled from school suffered from depression by age 21 (compared to a 20 percent depression rate among girls who weren't kicked out of school).


• Thirty-three percent of the girls who dropped out later became depressed, but only 19 percent of non-dropouts did.


• Twenty-eight percent of the girls who were suspended became depressed later in life, compared with 19 percent of female students who weren't suspended.


• Though 45 percent of the girls and 68 percent of the boys in the study experienced a major school failure, the 22 percent depression rate among girls was significantly higher than the 17 percent rate for male students.

In the July 22, 2008, university press release that announced the study's findings, McCarty said that her team has discovered a "gender paradox" in which boys experience more school-related failures, but girls suffer from more long-term consequences with "cascading effects."

The team's findings, McCarty said, point to a need for a more comprehensive approach toward helping students deal with a wide range of issues that may cause - or be affected by - academic failures.

"We need to look more broadly at functioning and see what is going on with other aspects of their lives including the psychological," she said. "We can't just put a Band-Aid on one thing that seems to be a problem because often there is an underlying bigger issue that has to be addressed."

Study Finds No 'Math Gap' Between Girls, Boys

It looks like Barbie's critics were right all along.

In 1992, Mattel's famous doll came under considerable criticism when it was discovered that some versions of that year's "Teen Talk Barbie" had been programmed to say "Math class is tough!" Sixteen years later, researchers with the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley, have reported that female students don't have any more difficulties than their male counterparts do when it comes to mathematics.

The researchers, who reported their results in the July 25, 2008, edition of the journal Science, analyzed the results of annual math tests that were taken by 7.2 million students in grades two through 11. The tests had been given between 2005 and 2007 as part of the federal "No Child Left Behind" laws.

After examining the average test scores of all students, the performance of the most gifted children, and the ability to solve complex math problems, the study group found virtually no difference between girls and boys.

Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin psychologist who led the study, told Los Angeles Times staff writer Wendy Hansen that the results should help refute the myth that girls aren't good at math. "Both parents and teachers continue to hold the stereotype that boys are better [at math] than girls," Hyde said in a July 25 Times article. "That's just not accurate."

Peer Pressure Has Strong Influence on Body Image of Teen Girls

A study conducted by experts with the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the University of Miami has found that peer pressure exerts a strong influence on the body image of adolescent girls. Researchers Eleanor Mackey and Annette La Greca reached this conclusion based on their evaluation of 236 teen girls in Florida.

"Teen girls' concerns about their own weight, about how they appear to others and their perceptions that their peers want them to be thin, are significantly related to weight-control behavior," Mackey told Washington Post writer Sally Squires for her July 14, 2008 article.

According to the Post article, Mackey and La Greca found that girls who were part of low-achieving or more rebellious peer groups reported the highest degree of worry about their weight, and said they undertook more efforts than members of other peer groups did to control their weight.

The researchers also found that girls with higher body mass indices believed that their peers were more concerned with weight - and dieted more often - than slimmer teens did.

The study's authors, who reported their findings in the July 2008 issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, wrote that their insights into peer pressure could be of use to teachers, doctors, and others who work with teen girls. "Health care providers and school personnel might ask adolescent girls about their peer crowd affiliations in order to help identify adolescents with the highest levels of risky behaviors," they wrote.

The National Mental Health Information Center has reported that teen girls are three times as likely as teen boys to have negative images of their own bodies. This claim is supported by a study that was published in the July/August 2003 issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior. According to a July 18, 2003 article on the WebMD website, this study determined that the average teenage girl believes herself to be 11 pounds over her ideal weight, while teen boys' body perception usually matches their actual current weight.

Teen Birth Rates Rise for First Time in 15 Years

For the first time since 1991, birth rates among teenage girls have risen in the United States, according to the latest national report on the health and welfare of American youth.

Released by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2008 presents statistics on U.S. youth that were collected and compiled by a number of governmental agencies and private organizations.

According to a July 14 article on the ScienceDaily website, the report cited a rate of 22 live births per 1,000 U.S. girls ages 15 to 17 in 2006 (the last year for which statistics are currently available). This rate rose from 21 per 1,000 in 2005, the first such increase in 15 years.

In December 2007, WebMD Health News writer Miranda Hitti wrote that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had also reported birth-rate increases among 18- and 19-year-olds, as well as among women in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s.
Dr. Edward J. Sondik, the director of the National Center for Health Statistics in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted in the Science Daily article as expressing concern about the ramifications of the rate increase among teenagers:

"It is critical that we continue monitoring this trend carefully," Sondik said. "Compared with other teens their age, teen mothers are less likely to finish high school or to graduate from college. Infants born to teen mothers are more likely to be of low birth weight."

The report also noted an increase in the prevalence of low birth weight (which is defined as less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces). According to information posted on the March of Dimes website, children who are born at these low weights are at increased risk for health issues including respiratory distress syndrome, heart and intestinal problems, and bleeding in the brain.

Overloaded Backpacks Pose Health Risk to Young Girls

Experts with the University of Washington in St. Louis and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission have confirmed what some students have been saying for generations: School can be a real pain in the neck.

According to a recent CPSC report, 7,000 students suffered back and neck injuries resulting from overloaded backpacks last year. Dr. Matthew Dobbs, an orthopedic surgeon with the Washington University School of Medicine, says the risk of injury is greatest for young girls.

"Adolescent girls ages 11 to 16 are most at risk, which may be attributed to the rapid growth spurt they experience during this age range and the susceptibility of rapidly growing spines to back pain," Dobbs said in a July 11 university press release. "In addition, girls often weigh less than boys, but still carry the same amount of backpack weight."

Dobbs also cited statistics in the release indicating that as many as 50 percent of all students complain of backpack-related pain, with 10 percent of students missing school or extracurricular activities because of injuries related to backpacks.

Though orthopedic experts advise that children should avoid carrying backpacks that weigh more than 15 percent of their body weight (for example, a 115-pound student shouldn't have a pack that weights more than 17 pounds), studies have found that the average student is lugging around a pack equal to 20 percent of her weight.

To help offset the potential for backpack-related pain and injuries, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents help their children pick out packs with the following features:

• Light weight - That leather one may look cooler, but a canvas pack will be a lot lighter, and thus less likely to put added strain on your student's neck and back.


• Two wide, padded shoulder straps - Narrow straps can dig into the shoulders, and slinging the pack over just one shoulder can put extra pressure on the body as it attempts to balance the heavy load.


• A padded back - In addition to being more comfortable, extra padding offers extra protection from sharp edges on objects being transported in the pack.


• A waist belt - As any outdoor backpacker knows, strapping the pack with a weight belt ensures that the pack's weight is more evenly distributed across the body.


• Multiple compartments - Though this would seem to be merely an organizational feature, packs that contain multiple compartments also encourage a more even weight distribution, which means that more muscles can help bear the burden.