click HERE to see the segment

Relax!! This won't hurt a bit....

Surviving your pap smear

Here in Australia, our Federal government send us a courtesy love letter to remind us to attend our biennial grease and oil check; the pap smear.

For reasons that hardly need expanding, women are often not overly keen to strip off and bare all for this fun little test. But it is necessary. The pap smear is trying to detect the red flags that suggest a cervical cancer might me on the way. The red flags on a pap smear are completely without symptoms so unless you have your tests, you’d never know they’re there.

The red flag changes come as a result of contracting Human Papilloma Virus, sexually. Don’t freak too much if that’s you because this virus is really common. In a recent US study, researchers found that around 27% of women test positive for the virus. That’s twice as common as herpes. I just got my stats back from the pathology company I use and 20% of my pap smears come back with a ‘low grade abnormality.’ So if you’ve had the dreaded call from your doc telling you all is not well with your pap smear, you’re in good company.

Very few of the pap smear red flag changes will go on to become cervical cancer and even if they do, we think there’s around a 20 year lag between the first abnormal pap smear and the cancer in earnest.

Once you’re convinced of the necessity of a pap smear, there’s the other business of surviving the process without making 100,000 excuses to be elsewhere.

Meanwhile here are 5 hot tips to make your pap smear less daunting;

1. Chocolate. Try having a piece while you’re in the waiting room. The stress busting ingredients in dark chocolate will take the edge off the event.
2. You can leave your socks on. Nothing makes you feel even more naked than being cold as well as stripped down. Leave your warm socks on.
3. Make a fist. In fact 2 fists under your bottom will tilt your pelvis forward and make it easier for your doc to find your cervix if it points backwards- as do the little womb necks in a third of women. Less digging and excavating makes it less painful for you!
4. Have a wash. Believe me this is more for you than for me. But being self conscious about smells etc makes it all worse. A quick 5 minute bathroom stop can make you feel more at ease.
5. Don’t rush. Coming in frazzled having left work 5 minutes late for the appointment is a nightmare. Allow yourself some time and arrive feeling calmer.

Hoping yours is only every 2 years!

Sunrise today – click HERE

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/practical-parenting/opinion/show/1431848/oops-where-did-i-put-my-libido/

Easy for you to say!!

I still break out into a cold sweat when I see old video footage of ONJ in her leotard ‘getting physical’. No, not that sort of cold sweat; the kind that confirms my complete nausea and fear of a spin class or anything else that will force me into a gym.

So how happy was I to read the latest issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine?  A study published in the latest issue found that it’s not the volume of high intensity hard core work outs you do that kick your health along, but the amount of general activity. You know, passive stuff like walking around, without getting your heart rate up and your armpits saturated!

For every 1000 steps people take per day, the authors reported, there were huge reductions in waist circumference, triglycerides in the blood and boosts in good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Being moderately active (5000 steps a day) gave you a 40% lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome (spare tyre around the middle plus high blood pressure, high triglycerides, low HDLs and funny sugar metabolism) than people who were  total couch potatoes.

Gym junkies are often so exhausted after getting physical 80s style that they collapse in front of their computer screens for the rest of the day and end up with no net benefits in terms of steps taken than those of us who are gym avoiders.

So there you go. If the thought of heading out for a pump class or a fun 10k run makes you want to puke, it’s not all curtains for your health after all.  Just make sure that you get your steps in bit by bit!

Bonding at what cost?

This is one for all the pregnant ladies out there; I don’t mean to be too blunt, but we need to have a pretty frank conversation. And nobody else is going to have it with you, so here goes;

How have you pictured your labour? OK, specifically, where is your husband or boyfriend going to be situated during the process of bringing your precious baby into the world? Is he going to be the welcoming party ready to say g’day to the little emerging face? I want you to think about it carefully. Because lots of guys feel pressured to hang around at the business end of your body to usher his new offspring into its mum’s arms. And that might not be the best spot for poor dad.

Once down at ground zero he is likely to see his Holy of Holies, the temple of love where he used to worship being stretched into a grotesque and very large hole; possibly it will rip in a less than sexy way; chances are that mum will be adroit at pushing and push out a little poo as well, with or without some brand new shiny haemorrhoids; and the sight of a crowning head ain’t no aphrodisiac. The problem with seeing a birth is that once seen, it can’t be unseen and seeing it is often extremely traumatic.

No matter how extreme the joy of holding his precious, living, breathing baby in his arms for the first time and hearing his healthy cry fill the room, in the weeks and months after the birth, the vision of the vagina in full flight doing what nature intended can haunt men and kill their once thumping desire for you.

Right now, having your husband panting for your love might not be top of your agenda. But you and your baby need a strong partnership at the rock hard foundations of your new family. And your relationship with the father of your child, including your sexual relationship, will be the glue that holds your little family together.

I have no way of predicting who will adore the sight of an emerging baby and who will faint at the sheer ugliness of it all. But before everyone just assumes that ‘he’ll be right, mate’, it might be worth having the conversation that gives him permission to take up a tactical position at the human end of the process, holding your hand and kissing your forehead, instead of base camp watching it all unfold.

Good luck with it all!

Oh no! I can’t look!

Out of a combination of vanity and paranoia, I subscribe to ‘google updates’ for my name. Every day I get a little alert of anything new posted under Ginni Mansberg. Always benign and usually boring.

 So today you can imagine my abject horror to receive an alert yesterday with the words ‘ FREE video download of HOT Doctor Ginni Mansberg….’  

I followed the link with my heart in my mouth. Had someone superimposed my face on some nasty porn reel? Had I been caught on someone’s phone cam with my bra showing or scratching my bum? The website is clearly Russian or Bulgarian or maybe Khazak… It’s clearly done on a budget but the welcome page does have a pic of a lass in lingerie minus the head. So far so hideous. And there was my name;

‘FREE download video of HOT doctor Ginni Mansberg…..’ The link in red was blinking evilly at me. My God someone had to do it and it might as well be me….

 I clicked on the link and up popped…..

A Morning Show video. Unedited. I have all my clothes on and do nothing embarrassing with my hands. I almost laughed out loud.

If you come across someone who speaks Russian, Bulgarian, Khazak etc, maybe I’ll ask for a translation!

Oh and if you’re interested….. The link seems to be broken when I tried to hit it today

Judging Amy- don't go there!

The other morning you might have seen the segment we did on Sunrise on lap band surgery for teenagers. It amazes me that people have very firmly held opinions on the subject. They feel that to go for surgery is a cop out and that these teens should ‘just lose weight.’ I have to put my hand up and defend the kids and their adult sisters and brothers in crime who don’t ‘just lose weight.’

As we get to know more about obesity, the idea that anyone can just decide to shift a few kgs is becoming more absurd. There are so many factors that go into the process that ends in obesity. Your hormones, your mum’s habits during her pregnancy and even the bacteria you harbor in your gut can all influence your need to overeat, your inability to burn fat like everyone else and your propensity to stubbornly maintain your weight in spite of giving it a good shot. Not a perfect shot- NONE of us (except those with an unhealthy eating obsession) do that. But even sticking to the 80:20 rule doesn’t help.

Have enough set backs in the dieting and exercising game and any of us would give up. Once you have diabetes and you’re tired all the time, and once you’re so overweight your back hurts too much to walk let alone run, you are going to find it exceptionally difficult to lose weight the old fashioned way. Gastric banding helps the seriously obese? Well for goodness sake who needs to be a martyr? Get it done and give yourself the one shot we KNOW works. Sure it’s not the silver bullet but it is more often than not the best shot at getting your life back. It can reverse diabetes and high blood pressure, take pressure off your joints and put you before the posts so you can actually get somewhere with your diet and exercise program. I wish people wouldn’t judge those who have battled their weight all their lives without trying to walk a day in their shoes.

Ditto another patient I saw today. She had a childhood I can only describe as incredible. Let’s just say I’m used to hearing her story from the heroin addicts I used to see in Kings Cross every day. A day in the Cross treating people whose lives had become a train smash was always a smell the coffee moment. Their stories of abuse, neglect, emotional vandalism at the hands of those who were meant to nurture and love them leave you shaking your head. Of course they’re on heroin. What would any of us do given that introduction to the big wide world? My patient somehow defied her destiny, and unlike the people who walk the streets of the Cross at night and shoot the proceeds up their arms to numb the pain, she has a degree, a profession and almost unbelievable success. Thumbs up to her and thumbs down to anyone who judges drug addicts without understanding their experiences.

a growing problem

Doctors used to poo-poo the idea that your hormones could make you fat. That’s until we found out there is an entire group of people (a group growing in every sense of the word) whose hormones are doing just that.

Take my quick quiz;

1.       Do you have a spare tyre around your middle?

2.       Do you eat reasonably well and do some exercise but can’t shift your weight?

3.       Are you tired all the time?

4.       Do you have yo-yo blood pressure?

5.       Are your cholesterol tests a bit dodgy?

You might have insulin resistance.

Insulin is the key that unlocks the doors that allow glucose into your cells so it can fuel up the cell. Insulin resistance is when the locks on your doors get dodgy and the keys aren’t working that well any more. The locks go wonky when you put on weight and a vicious cycle starts.

As a result, your glucose isn’t making it into the cells at quite the rate it’s needed (you feel tired). Secondly glucose backs up out the door waiting to get into the cells. Your body responds to all that sugar hanging around and pumps out more insulin. Your insulin levels start creeping up.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against insulin. It’s a really useful hormone. But when it is at higher levels in your blood, your body takes it as a signal that there is plenty of carb/ sugar around. So it decides to turn off all fat burning and starts turning every sugar in its path to blubber. Hence you get saddled with far too much fat and no ability to break it down. At that point, going for a walk every day and eating like a Weight Watcher on steroids gets you nowhere fast!

Put together with the spare tyre around the middle and blood pressure that Yo Yos its way upwards and some high triglycerides and you have the metabolic syndrome. Believe me that is not one you want- because it delivers you a 500% increase risk of dying a cardiovascular death.

Could this be you? To find out for sure, go to your GP and ask for three blood tests;

1.       OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test)

2.       Triglyceride test

3.       CRP (C-reactive protein)

The OGTT is a barrel of laughs. It takes 2 hours and follows a few days of strict dieting. It measures how well your body processes carbs you eat.

The triglyceride is one of the fat storage molecules that tends to be up in people with metabolic syndrome, and the CRP measures the state of inflammation in your body. Scientists are toiling madly to understand exactly what the role of inflammation is in all of this; is it the chicken or the egg? What we do know that is that a high CRP means more inflammation in your body and greater chances of heart disease, strokes and diabetes.

And if you work out your hormones are out of whack and making you fat? What then?

You can sign up for our FREE Women’s Health Update on March 16^th at 8pm where I’ll be talking about hormones and weight loss in more details. Interested? Email susie@susieburrell.com.au

For those of you who have tried and failed, we are fully booked but mention my blog and we’ll MAKE space for you!!

 Or keep reading the blog and I’ll post some info up on how to combat the fat hormones over the next week.

x

How did my life become this?

How does she do it? She being any number of successful women in the media/ Hollywood/ CEO positions who seemingly effortlessly juggle incredibly successful careers, perfect snot-less toddlers, a body you can capture on high res photography in a bikini and smile at and an Aston Martin? Forget her ‘secret’, I want her life!

I’m not stupid. I get that her success buys her a tribe of people who scrub her kitchen drawers and remove the mouldy zucchini for her, as well as fold her laundry while she’s signing contracts over a latte. I get that she has a personal trainer, and an industry that at worst incentivizes her to look great and at best picks up the tab for it.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, in my surgery, I see the real woman who wants it all and has no chance. What she does have is a mortgage that’s hobbling her. She also has kids that are exhausted after day care or school and each want her undivided attention while they bore her to tears with a detailed log of their activities (between bouts of tears). She has a lounge room that more closely resembles the local tip than the Vogue Living magazine she’s been looking at wistfully. She has the best intentions of doing the laundry, but falls into an exhausted heap on her bed fully clothed at 10pm crippled by guilt; guilt that she’s too tired for sex. Guilt that she snaps at her husband whenever they talk about it. Guilt that she finds the kids boring rather than endlessly cute and incredible like every other woman she talks to. Guilt that her housekeeping skills leave her mother tutting in disbelief whenever she comes over- which is rarely. Guilt that the gym membership that she can’t cede defeat on remains unused for the fourth month in a row.

When I see her she is becoming anxious or depressed or both. Her blood pressure is starting to creep up. She’s putting on weight and blood tests are starting to look slightly less pearly than they did five years ago.

This rat-in-a-cage phase doesn’t end when the last child goes to school, or when they’ve had a holiday or when she gets a promotion. It just continuously morphs into another form that deftly manages to replace one stress with another.

There’s always an excuse for not changing stuff because change is hard.  But I always ask; how are you not going to be here in three years? Or even five?

My tips;

1. Murder the martyr. Does your hubby do a crap job of the ironing? I call that a better option than you doing it. So I’d say ‘Thanks so much, that’s a great help.’
2. Trim the excess. What in your day is unnecessary? For example pegging out socks and underpants is TIME CONSUMING. Now is not the time to put the environment before you. Use your drier.
3. Vitamin S. (Sex). Not a charity bonk. Because when words are too hard, having an orgasm together is about as intimate and as pleasurable an experience as you can have. This is a reward for you.
4. Road runner. For now, sacrifice 20 minutes of sleep in the morning and get out and burn some energy as you see the world waking up. I prefer walking or running on the road in your environment, under the sun, the rain, past trees, flowers, dogs and other things that make you smile. Good way to avoid or manage depression and anxiety.
5. Wunder kids. Even the youngest tot does not benefit from being waited on by anyone- least of all a stressed out mum who feels like an undervalued minion. Get them off the couch and into the kitchen/ laundry etc. Then reward them with your time. Yeah you might have to listen to a blow by blow account of who kicked the ball to whom over lunch time.

Enjoy your cage-less-ness x