All posts under ‘Health’

Angelina Jolie stuns in Saint Laurent during her first appearance post double mastectomy

By | June 3rd, 2013 | 12:00 pm

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Angelina Jolie First Appearance Double Mastectomy

Photography by Karwai Tang/Getty Images

“Very grateful” are the words Hollywood’s leading lady Angelia Jolie used to describe how she was feeling during her first red carpet appearance since undergoing a widely publicized double-mastectomy. The brunette beauty, who announced the news of her preventative procedures to the New York Times on May 14th, described her happiness in seeing the discussion about women’s health expanded since sharing her story. The news has made waves all over the world, encouraging women everywhere to consider their options. FASHION contributor Amy Verner was inspired to share her own experiences with the suddenly “trending topic” in article for the Globe and Mail.

Jolie, who has six children with fiancée Brad Pitt, lost her own mother to ovarian cancer in 2007. When the actress learned that she carried the faulty gene that increased her chances of breast cancer to 87 percent, she chose to take action to minimize her risk. “Life comes with many challenges”, the actress wrote in her New York Times article, “The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.”
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How Angelina Jolie’s preventive double mastectomy has changed the conversation about breast cancer

By | May 15th, 2013 | 3:30 pm

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angelina jolie double mastectomy

Photography by Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images

When Angelina Jolie announced her preventive double mastectomy in yesterday’s New York Times, the almost-instant reactions were unanimous: Jolie was praised for her courage in both having the surgery and opening up to the public about it. Today that openness has continued, with Jolie’s doctor at the Pink Lotus Breast Center posting further details about the decision making process and medical procedures the actress undertook. It is by far the most detailed account we’ve ever read of any celebrity’s private medical information—to the point that you actually have to remind yourself while reading that it’s specifically about Angelina Jolie.

While Jolie’s double mastectomy makes headlines all over the world, other women with “the breast cancer gene” are now coming forward to talk about their own experiences. Read more »

How to keep your New Year’s Resolutions: 4 essential steps to staying on healthy track all year round

By | January 9th, 2013 | 10:30 am

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It’s less than two weeks into 2013 and we bet many of you have already wavered on your New Year’s Resolutions. We get it. They’re hard, they usually offer no immediate gratification and they’re just not fun. Health-related resolutions mostly lead to drastic short-term changes (like spending January drinking only maple water or working out eight times a week) that leave you burnt out and resenting anything that vaguely promises to be good for you until next December rolls around. But baby changes can make a really big difference when they’re followed for the whole year. Here are a few mini resolutions that are making my life a bit healthier in 2013.

How to keep your New Year’s Resolutions »
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Health: A new school of thought says good fat isn’t a dietary demon

By | January 7th, 2013 | 3:30 pm

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Photography by Natasha V. Food styling by Heather Shaw for judyinc.com.

The fat has long been sucked out of our food in the name of health. Rani Sheen weighs the newest thinking on good fat.

Imagine a world where you got to the front of the coffee shop line and didn’t feel compelled to say the word “skinny” before the word “latte.” Or where, facing down the legions of yogurt options at the grocery store, your hand bypassed the zero per cent Greek yogurt, landing instead on the full-fat version. The idea that fat is bad for us has become so all-pervasive that it is now fixed firmly in our minds that full-fat dairy, bacon or even a hefty serving of avocado are flabby demons waiting to send chub to our waists and clog our arteries. But a growing school of thought is suggesting that actually, it isn’t fat that makes us fat.

The low-fat movement took off in the early 1980s, largely informed by the “Seven Countries” study begun in 1958 and published in 1980 by physiologist Dr. Ancel Keys (who popularized the Mediterranean diet and BMI as an indicator of body fat). It showed a strong link between dietary fat and heart disease, though Keys has since been accused of disregarding countries that didn’t fit the hypothesis, plus he only studied men. Other research followed, and in 1984 the National Institutes of Health recommended all Americans over the age of two reduce their dietary consumption of fat from 40 to 30 per cent of their total calories. Canada followed suit. This ushered in the era of margarine, skim milk and boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
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Breast Cancer Awareness Month: How being diagnosed with breast cancer convinced a makeup artist to go green

By | October 5th, 2012 | 1:00 pm

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Sheri Stroh

Makeup artist Sheri Stroh was looking into ways of greening her life as well as her kit when, at 36, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

LIVE CLEAN

Sheri Stroh’s favourite green products »

More about FASHION and the Canadian Breast Cancer Support Fund »

About five years ago, I read the book Not Just A Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry by Stacy Malkan, which is about potential toxins in beauty products. In general, I’m a bit of an alarmist—I kind of freak out, go hardcore and then lighten up on certain things. I mean, I basically live in a cloud of hairspray, but I decided I wanted to look into green products. The book just made a lot of sense: there are so many chemicals we’re exposed to, either by eating them, breathing them or putting them on ourselves. I thought maybe I could try to lessen my own exposure.

Then, in the spring of 2009, I began to feel an ache in my right breast. My bra was aggravating something and I found a lump. It concerned me enough to go to the doctor, but she wasn’t overly concerned because I was only 36 at the time. She said my breast contained dense tissue and that it was probably fibroadenoma, and I was told the same thing at the ultrasound. They told me to come back in six months. Oddly enough, the ache just went away, so nothing really reminded me to follow up.
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Watch where you put that brush! A new report finds incredibly disgusting things in the testers at makeup counters

By | June 25th, 2012 | 3:30 pm

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Photography by Flickr/Haleyface

What exactly are you putting on your face when you use the testers at makeup counters? Good Morning America recently went undercover to determine how safe it is to use communal makeup, and the results make us think that ignorance really is bliss. Read more »

On the defense: Whether you call them beauty marks or moles, we report on the latest ways to keep tabs on your skin spots

By | June 22nd, 2012 | 11:00 am

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On the defense

Photography: model by Peter Stigter; product by Nicole Stafford

By Malwina Gudowska

While most childhood memories are composed of bosom friends and pivotal events, my youthful days can be mapped out in a connect-the-dots trajectory—literally. I rarely spent serious time in the sun, but I have plenty of little dark marks on my skin, including the four moles on one side of my face that I’ve had since birth.

At seven, when I dressed up as Madonna circa 1984 for Halloween, my mother drew a small mark above my lip with her brown eyeliner to mimic Madge’s signature mole. A couple of years later, as if I’d willed it to happen, a mark appeared above my lip, just a centimetre down from where the Material Girl’s spot had been. I was no longer a fake; I was part of the Marilyn (Monroe), Cindy (Crawford) and Madonna club. Plus, my mole quintet was complete! But what I thought was a blessing—who wouldn’t like the comparison to Cindy Crawford?—became a curse when a cruel classmate took notice and used it as a source of inspiration for his playground intimidation tactics. Upset and teary-eyed, I sought refuge near the balance beams, and a teacher came up to ask what had happened. “David says that if you connect all the moles on my face, they make an upside-down house,” I said.

“Those aren’t moles, my dear,” the teacher replied. “Those are beauty marks.”

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They said/We said: Could spray tanning cause cancer?

By | June 13th, 2012 | 4:30 pm

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Photography courtesy of H&M

Toddlers in tiaras take heed: a panel of scientists is warning that dihydroxyacetone (DHA), the main ingredient in spray tanning and other sunless tanning products, may have some dangerous side-effects.

In a large-scale ABC News investigation, top scientists in a range of fields were tasked with combing through the most recent research on DHA, and the discoveries they made aren’t great news for spray tan aficionados.

According to the panel, DHA, the colour additive in sunless products that creates the products’ telltale “tan,” may actually cause genetic alterations and DNA damage. Several of the 10 peer-reviewed studies found that DHA altered the genes of some cells and organisms, which could lead to the development of cancer or other serious diseases.

The FDA, which first approved DHA for external use in 1977, told ABC news that they could not have foreseen the chemical being used as a spray application thirty years down the road, and what’s more, its use as an all-over spray has never been FDA-approved. They stressed that DHA should never be inhaled or ingested. For those who do get spray tanned (or for tanning salon workers, for that matter), protective gear should always be used for the mouth, eyes, nose and mucous membranes.

Researchers have also discovered that DHA may actually permeate through more layers of skin than they’d thought. We already knew DHA binds to the already-dead top layer of skin, but apparently trace amounts of DHA can make their way down to deeper, living layers of skin, which means it can get to the bloodstream.

Will you continue your spray-tanning regime or will this news be what pushes you to just embrace paleness once and for all?
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