• Cyclists shave their legs, swimmers buzz their heads, and track stars…remove their implants? An Australian Olympic runner recently undid $13,000 worth of breast augmentation because she was worried her new chest was slowing her down on the track. [Lemondrop]

• The Mommy Makeover can seem like a quick fix for the sags and stretch marks that come with pregnancy, delivery, and breast-feeding. But not all women consider the side effects. Here, one woman dishes on the incredible pain of her new look. [MomLogic]

• Is it just us, or does it feel like we’re freezing to death in these below-average winter temps? It’s pretty difficult to literally freeze to death, but the cold’s no joke: Some seriously scary things—including death—occur long before the body actually freezes. [LiveScience]

• Wouldn’t it be great to curl up for an afternoon nap? A lack of sleep can make us fat and lower our IQs. Luckily, a little extra shut-eye during the day can go a long way if you do it right. Here, how to be a better napper. [Huffington Post]

Previous news from Around the Web:

It’s shocking, but it’s true: Being a woman who’s more than 20 pounds overweight may actually hike your risk of getting poor medical treatment. In fact, weighing too much can have surprising—and devastating—health repercussions beyond the usual diabetes and heart-health concerns you’ve heard about for years.

A startling new Health magazine investigation reveals that if you’re an overweight woman you:

• May have a harder time getting health insurance or have to pay higher premiums;
• Are at higher risk of being misdiagnosed or receiving inaccurate dosages of drugs;
• Are less likely to find a fertility doctor who will help you get pregnant;
• Are less likely to have cancer detected early and get effective treatment for it.

What’s going on here? Fat discrimination is part of the problem. A recent Yale study suggested that weight bias can start when a woman is as little as 13 pounds over her highest healthy weight.

“Our culture has enormous negativity toward overweight people, and doctors aren’t immune,” says Harvard Medical School professor Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors Think. “If doctors have negative feelings toward patients, they’re more dismissive, they’re less patient, and it can cloud their judgment, making them prone to diagnostic errors.”

With nearly 70 million American women who are considered overweight, the implications of this new information is disturbing, to say the least. Here, what you need to know to get the top-quality health care you deserve—no matter what you weigh.

Next: How weight gets in the way

What is it?
Orthorexia is a controversial eating disorder marked by an obsession with healthy food. It’s usually seen in people older than 30, and women may be more likely than men to have it. Common symptoms include sticking to a stringent regimen—maybe it’s a vegan or raw-food diet—as well as nervously avoiding any foods with artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives.

The buzz:
Not all experts think orthorexia is a real disorder like anorexia (obsessive fear of gaining weight). But Pittsburgh-based psychologist Elizabeth Lombardo, PhD, does: “Compulsive healthy eating can lead to physical problems like chronic hunger,” she says. “I’ve worked with clients who, regardless of how hungry they are, refuse to eat anything ‘unhealthy.’”

You need to know:
There’s a difference between a healthy diet and an unhealthy fixation on a healthy diet. Warning signs of orthorexia: being overly concerned with how food is prepared, making a never-ending list of foods you won’t eat, and focusing on the healthfulness of food instead of how it tastes.

The bottom line:
The good news is that a treatment like cognitive-behavioral therapy works really well, says Cynthia Bulik, PhD, director of the Eating Disorders Program at the University of North Carolina. “We can help people replace the thoughts that lead to this rigid behavior with healthier alternatives,” Bulik says. “That can also stop an orthorexic pattern from cascading into anorexia.”

 
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I was 18 when I first felt a lump in my breast. Of course, I was convinced that I was going to die. This was three decades ago—back when we knew far less about breast cancer. A general surgeon removed the lump, which, thank goodness, wasn’t malignant.

But before I was even a fully developed woman, I was rendered lopsided and scarred. My surgeon had wielded his scalpel with outsized caution, cutting out a quarter of my breast just to test a pea-size growth. He gave little thought to how his young patient would feel about a healthy breast, surgically deformed.

Fortunately, far fewer women have to put up with such blunt “solutions” these days. Although 190,000-plus will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, many of them will go on to live wonderfully cancer-free lives because of enormous improvements in how we detect, treat, even prevent this disease. Here’s how we’re actually winning the war on breast cancer.

We know more than ever
Once identified only by how far the disease had advanced—such as stage 0 or stage IV—scientists now know that breast cancer is actually many diseases and that each tumor has a unique genetic fingerprint. There is luminal A and B, HER2 type, and triple negative, among others. That means physicians can more effectively target treatment with therapies that have the best chance of working.

Treatment gets personal
Researchers now know that women diagnosed in the early stages of estrogen-receptor-positive cancer respond well to hormonal therapies like tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors, which starve breast cancer cells of the hormones they need to grow. And, since 2004, the Oncotype DX test that helps identify the best treatment has been available to women who get this type of cancer—which is about 75% of breast cancer patients.

“In the past, we were giving chemotherapy to women who would have done just as well on hormonal therapy,” says Susan Love, MD, president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and clinical professor of surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Now, with this test, we can tell if a woman doesn’t need it. That’s great.” This means you might be spared chemo’s nausea, exhaustion, and hair loss. About 100,000 women have gotten the test. Patients should ask their doc if it’s right for them.

Next: Surgery is less traumatic

When the swine flu burst onto the scene in April, the bug arrived with a few particularly ominous signs: The flu was resistant to a class of drugs often used to fight flu in the past, and experts were surprised that a nonhuman virus could have such rapid human-to-human transmission. Why was Swine Flu resistant to current medicines, and was this strain a new supergerm?

Flu bugs develop drug resistance when a virus mutates in a way that makes medications ineffective. Overusing and misusing antiviral meds can cause the problem. But mutations can also crop up spontaneously, even when the drugs aren’t overprescribed, says Anne Moscona, MD, a flu expert and an infectious-diseases physician at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York Presbyterian Hospital.

“Swine flu seems to respond to Tamiflu, but we weren’t sure at first. And we’re seeing more strains of other types of flu, including some bird flu, that are resistant to it. That’s been sobering for lots of people in public health because Tamiflu is the drug the country has been stockpiling for a possible pandemic,” she says. “The issue we’re facing now is ‘What do we do if the drugs we’re counting on don’t work?’”

This question is being asked with increasing urgency these days, as more and more bugs, including some truly nasty bacteria, become impervious to the effects of our best drugs. Acne and some STDs aren’t clearing up the way they once did.

More worrisome, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)—bacteria that are resistant to methicillin, a common antibiotic—now kills more people in U.S. hospitals than HIV, AIDS, and tuberculosis combined. And, scarier still, the bug is becoming increasingly common outside of hospitals, affecting everyone from infants with ear infections to young, healthy athletes. And MRSA, experts warn, is just the tip of the drug-resistance iceberg.

“Drug-resistant bacteria have developed in large part because of our overuse and misuse of antibiotics—and it has led us to a crisis point,” says Helen W. Boucher, MD, a specialist in the division of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. “We’re even seeing bugs today that are resistant to all antibiotics.”

But while some germs may be outpacing our ability to kill them, we’re not completely defenseless. In fact, there are plenty of things we can do to slow their spread. Here, five of the scariest threats right now, and what you can do to keep yourself—and future generations—safe.

Next: Scary strains of flu

With drug options dwindling due to increased antibiotic resistance, doctors are having to develop new strategies to combat common maladies. Here are ways to beat (or avoid) Salmonella poisoning, gonorrhea, and acne, which are getting harder to treat.

Salmonella poisoning
In 2006, an outbreak of food poisoning associated with ground beef affected an estimated 2,200 people in the Northeast. It was caused by a highly drug-resistant form of Salmonella typhimurium DT104 that doesn’t respond to five commonly used antibiotics.

“It’s worrisome because it means we’re losing oral antibiotics as an option for treating salmonella,“ says Paul Auwaerter, MD, clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “We’re using up the antibiotics that work and don’t have new ones in the pipeline.”

Your best defense: Practice good kitchen hygiene. And keep raw meat, poultry, and seafood separate from other foods in your grocery cart and fridge, and during food prep.

Next page: Gonorrhea and Acne

They’re at the gym. The office. Your house. A new epidemic of drug-resistant bugs and viruses has arrived and you need to know how to protect yourself.

1. Wash the right way. There is some concern that the triclosan in antibacterial soaps could lead to resistance, and it’s not clear whether they’re any more effective than scrubbing for 30 seconds with regular soap and water. Alco­hol and bleach are also effective surface cleaners that don’t create resistance.
2. Buy organic. The antibiotics in the feed of some nonorganic farm animals may contribute to antibiotic resistance. Check your local farmers’ markets and food co-ops for the best deals on organic milk and meat.
3. Don’t take an antibiotic unless you absolutely have to. “We could probably cut our antibiotic use by 70% if people only took them when they are absolutely necessary,” says Louis Rice, MD, an expert on resistant bugs and chief of medical service at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center. With some illnesses that typically go away on their own, like ear infections and sinus infections, you can practice what docs call watchful waiting—get the prescription, but don’t fill it unless the condition persists.
4. Ask for the shortest course of antibiotics. “The optimal length of antibiotic use for most illnesses may be much less than the current recommendations,” Dr. Rice says. “There might be a three-day course or a seven-day course that is equally effective as a longer one.” For example, when doctors studied treatments for urinary-tract infections, they found that 87% cleared up with a single dose of antibiotics and 94% were cured with a three-day course.
5. Speak out. Urge Congress to fund more research into antibiotic resistance and alternatives to antibiotic.

 
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Tell us what you need to reach your goals—from “Help me stop bingeing after a stressful day of work” to  “Help me ditch this mom haircut.” Send your biggest challenges when it comes to fitness, beauty, dieting, money, sex, health, or relationships to HelpMeHealth@health.com. Include any photos or videos you’d like to share, along with contact info. Keep questions to 100 words or less.

Nearly 40,000 women die every year from breast cancer, and 180,000 will be newly diagnosed this year. But there’s a simple way to lower your risk of death from this disease: exercise. Five hours a week of walking (or any moderate aerobic workout) reduces your risk by more than half, according to a new study from the University of South Carolina. And just 20 minutes a day cuts the risk by a third.

Researchers call their study, involving more than 14,000 women, the first to objectively connect fitness levels and the risk of dying from breast cancer. Will exercise cut your chances of getting the disease in the first place? Other studies say yes—by about 20%.

 
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A healthy 30-year-old has only about a 20% chance each month to get pregnant naturally; by age 40, that drops to about 5%, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Almost a third of women ages 40 to 44 are infertile, compared with 22% of women ages 35 to 39 and 9% of women 25 to 29.

“By the time a woman reaches 43 or 44, she really only has a 1% chance per month of conceiving naturally on her own,” says Richard Paulson, MD, a leading pregnancy researcher. “After that, she needs to use donor eggs.”

Here, success rates (transfers resulting in live births) using assisted reproductive technologies (ART), of which in vitro fertilization (IVF) is the most common.

 
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