Your Health

By Janice M. Horowitz

GOOD NEWS

PANGLOSS POWER Here's something to really smile about. A 30-year study shows that folks with a positive perspective live 19% longer than pessimists. How this might work is not clear, but it may be that an optimistic attitude somehow strengthens the immune system or simply inspires people to take better care of themselves. In the study, the optimists were happy to credit themselves when things went right, and they tended to view crises as fleeting. Pessimists, on the other hand, were chronic self-blamers. Most of us are, no doubt, a bit of both.

FERTILE FINDINGS Young women found to have ovarian cancer routinely have their reproductive organs removed to try to stem the disease's spread. The consequence: the abrupt onset of menopause, eliminating any chance for future childbearing. Now researchers say it may be possible to preserve these women's fertility. A six-year study shows survival rates among those with early-stage ovarian cancer are about the same whether doctors take out all the reproductive organs or keep the womb and unaffected ovary--and fertility--intact.

BAD NEWS

ANDRO STRIKES OUT Good thing Mark McGwire stopped taking it. In doses of 300 mg daily, androstenedione, the over-the-counter supplement the slugger used during his record 70-home-run season, can raise testosterone above normal levels and increase blood levels of the female hormone estrogen. Both are potentially hazardous. In men, elevated testosterone may lower good HDL cholesterol; in women, it's linked to beard growth and male-pattern baldness; and in kids, it can cause premature puberty. And elevated estrogen? In guys, that can lead to breast enlargement.

WORT-LESS Here's a downer about the wildly popular herbal antidepressant Saint-John's-wort. However potent its many fans may believe the pretty yellow flower's extract to be, it interacts dangerously with two medications: the antirejection drug cyclosporine, used in organ transplants, and the protease inhibitor indinavir, used to treat AIDS. In both cases, Saint-John's-wort reduced blood concentrations of the drug, rendering it less effective.

--By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources: Good News--Mayo Clinic Proceedings; Society of Gynecologic Oncologists meeting. Bad News--Journal of the American Medical Association (2/9/00); The Lancet (2/12/00)