The health issues that I am concerned with are skin cancer and iron deficiency. I am a surviving melanoma skin cancer patient. My skin cancer was discovered by my family physician who thought my mole on the left side of my face was too large. I had a biopsy of the mole on my face and the biopsy revealed that I had an early stage of melanoma. I had been feeling tired a lot but I never thought my tiredness was caused by my melanoma. I had the mole removed from my skin by laser and I was placed on an oral chemotherapy plan. I am cancer free at the moment but I have to wear sunscreen every day and re-apply the sunscreen to my skin every six hours. I also have to take 60mg. of iron a day because I have an iron deficiency which is a side effect of skin cancer. If I don’t take my iron every day, I feel tired and dizzy. Everyone should wear some type of sunscreen every day whether the sun is shinning or not during the day hours to prevent skin cancer and sun damage to the skin. Untreated skin cancer and iron deficiency can be detrimental.
I asked my best friend Kelly who is 19 years of age, an American and a physical education major at U.N.T. what health issues concerned her? Kelly said obesity and depression were her concerns on health. She said that obesity is caused by not getting enough physical exercise and eating too many fatty, high calorie foods. Kelly believes that if women were to eat less high calorie foods and increased the level of physical exercise; then there would be no over- weight women and no depression.
I asked my mother who is an immigrant from France what health issues concerned her. My mother said she is concerned with obesity and high blood pressure. She explained to me that she is much older and was told by her doctor that she needed to loose 25 pounds. She said her doctor discovered that she now has high blood pressure and that he has prescribed medication to lower her blood pressure. My mother says she has to exercise three times a week and go on a strict diet so that she can be taken off her high blood pressure medication.
My concerns on women health issues were different from my mother’s and Kelly’s but we are taken preventive measures. The preventive measures are to use sunscreen, increase physical activity and eat healthier so that we can live a happy, fruitful life.
5 comments:
Depression is listed in our textbook on page 14, as one of the ten differences that make a difference between men and women. The textbook states that "women are two to three times more likely than men to suffer from depression, in part because women's brains make less of the hormone serotonin." According to several websites I looked at after reading that statement in the textbook, it is widely recognized that women’s brains do produce less serotonin that men’s brains do. Serotonin is a hormone that acts as a chemical messenger to transmit nerve signals between nerve cells, and cause blood vessels to narrow. Someone’s mood can be altered when their level of serotonin changes, which is why many medicines used to treat depression level out serotonin levels.
I can not begin to imagine how frightening it would be to have had skin cancer. Up until two years ago I visited the tanning salon about 3-4 times a week and never applied sunscreen, all I cared about was having a nice tan. This changed the more I started hearing about the increase in skin cancer and the constant urging from my dermatologist to seriously lessen my UV exposure. Hearing your story should help us all to know that we are not invinceable and are succeptable to skin cancer if we are not careful. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Casandra. You had some good ideas of some health issues that are affecting our women daily. Skin cancer is something that I would have thought about. Thats good you are doing better. I am glad you caught the cancer before it got out of control.
I apologize if I offended you in any manner by my comments, but I was trying to add information to support a further understanding to your friend's comment and nothing more.
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