Keeping the Women we Love Healthy

"The purpose of our lives is to be happy”.   –Dalai Lama  Did you know...   Over 70% of people report living in a state of chronic stress?  Happiness results from the strength of your neurological pathways and strengths are more powerful than weakness?  Your emotions have executive power in your brain? There is not one strategy that leads to happiness; it results from dedication to a holistic—or mind, body, and spirit—approach. It takes focus, effort, and intention on a daily basis. Life then, becomes a happiness journey, not a destination to attain.  Everyone wants to be happy. In fact, most everything we do is because we believe on some level it will make us happy.  We have been led to believe that when we are unhappy or stressed, all we need to do is change the way that we think and we will be happier. Or is it? The Happy Map is a result of two decades of researching and applying the best of conventional and unconventional strate...

Genomics is changing everything from oncology, to reproductive health, to genetic diseases.  And it is the underlying structure for the concept of 'personalized medicine'.   In the realm of recent biomedical discoveries, the mapping of the human genome has to be  the  most revolutionary... and illumina is the at the forefront of research involving the human genome.  As a matter of fact, 6 of Time Magazine's top ten science breakthroughs in 2012 included research done by  illumina .  According to Mr. Matt Possard, Senior Vice President of Translational and Consumer Genomics at Illumina Inc., the breakthroughs he presented in 2012 illustrate how genomic sequencing can help inform the decision making and care for patients from early to late care.  You can see the impact illumina is having in the research community here .  Why is Genomics so important?  You have probably heard the saying  "It is more importa...

Pictured above from left to right Taylor Bergstrom, Dr. Carole Banka and Deepika Suresh.  On May 22, 2016, the Kappa Beta Chapter at UCSD was installed as the newest chapter of the Alpha Phi International Fraternity.  What, you may ask, might this have to do with the Howell Foundation? Those who attended our May luncheon will remember that Deepika Suresh (a past Howell Foundation scholar) and Taylor Bergstrom, president of the new Alpha Phi chapter, made a brief presentation to inform our audience that the chapter had chosen the Howell Foundation to receive their installation donation. In donating to the Howell Foundation they help make possible a scholarship for another undergraduate to pursue research. The Alpha Phi Foundation, the charitable arm of the sorority, makes a donation each time a new chapter is installed. Supporting efforts to improve heart disease in women is their mission and, in making this donation, they have recognized our support of research and out...

Just last month we heard Dr. Sears talk about the negative impact of sedentary behavior and nutrition in the presentation ' Simple Lifestyle Changes for Improving Women's Health' ; where research on diet and sedentary behaviors opened our eyes to important risk factors in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. With obesity being characterized now as a national epidemic , it is becoming imperative that we do revise our lifestyle and most importantly, change it.  As to whether it is simple or not, that depends on the lens under which you are seeing the issue. Whenever someone prefaces any sentence with 'simple' there is an expectation of effortless actions.  Many times our lives will depend on those changes to maintain our health, but  'simple' ? The idea is to create a series of healthy lifestyle 'habits' to improve and sustain our health, as difficult as it might sound!  The National Institute of Diabetes and Kidney Diseases created th...

Dr. Dorothy Sears, Associate Professor of Medicine from UCSD came to speak at the Howell Foundation's luncheon last May with pretty interesting research on 2 key concerns and how they, for sure, improve or undermine our health: intermittent fasting and sedentary behavior. Turns out our parents were right: Eat your fruits and vegetables and exercise!  With the just released information from the CDC regarding the obesity epidemic in the US --now at 40% for women-- it is more than clear that type 2 diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease are also on the rise.  The benefits of a lifestyle makeover are clear: not only does it help to improve our health and reduce the risks of a life-changing disease, but also minimizes the adverse effects of medication while promoting healthy aging. One of the largest studies conducted throughout a 20-year span followed over 3000 participants with pre-diabetic conditions.  Individuals were divided into 2 groups; one would be charact...

FACT:  1 in 3 women will get cancer in her lifetime.   Whatever the statistics, the encouraging news is that cancer diagnosis in women is declining. According to this year's "Cancers Facts and Figures" published by the American Cancer Society, d eath rates have been declining in men and women since the early 1990s. From 1991 to 2011, the combined death rate dropped 22%. Over the past 5 years (2007 to 2011), the death rate for all cancers combined decreased by 1.8% per year in men and 1.4% per year in women (1) . But what are the most diagnosed cancers in men and women?  Recent news highlights the encouraging discoveries of cures for patients with cancer--  by women for women -- some  examples are listed below, but you can read all about it in the original source  here   (2) .  Kimberly Blackwell, M.D., director of the breast cancer program at the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, North Carolina, is researching a targeted drug which d...

Jaidev Bapat , one of  the recipients of the Mirandon Foundation Scholarships is focused on a form of cancer--ovarian.  Jaidev's work in the lab will focus on ovarian tumor metastasis and on understanding how it acquires drug resistance, as well as alternate approaches for treatment. Jaidev's project, "Exploring the Effects of Heterozygous Deletion of BECN1 and MAPILC3B Genes in Ovarian Cancer Cells," centers around understanding how either initiation of autophagy or inhibition of autophagy alters growth dynamics of ovarian cancer cells. Jaidev is a second year student at John Muir College majoring in molecular biology.  Jaidev is specifically interested in cancer because many of his family members have suffered from various forms of cancer. The Howell Scholarship has enabled him to center his research in the area of ovarian cancer.  He finds oncology a fascinating field of research; he believes the experience that he will gain from this research project will h...