I’m sorry, but are our country’s medical agencies smoking something? Just a few days after new breast cancer screening guidelines recommended mammograms only for women 50 and older and declared self-breast exams moot, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now telling women to delay getting their first pap smear until they are 21 and to get them less often afterwards. This is pretty confusing because, until today, the rule was that women should have their first terribly uncomfortable meeting with the dreaded stirrups shortly after becoming sexual active, and that they should get a pap every year at their annual check-up. So why the change? ACOG says that in young women, HPV—the virus that can lead to cervical cancer—is very prevalent and that the huge majority of women clear the virus on their own, without any medical intervention. They say that there are only one to two cases of cervical cancer a year for every million women between the ages of 15 and 19. But because testing has become so routine, ACOG says that young women who are very unlikely to develop cervical cancer are getting invasive procedures to remove precancerous growths and cells that would clear on their own. And that they’re having complications, like injury to the cervix, that can cause problems if they have a baby. As for recommending less frequent testing, ACOG argues that cervical cancer develops slowly—it can take 10 to 20 years—so can be caught early even with less rigorous testing. [NY Times]

While these arguments sound logical, I have a hard time believing that this can be a good idea. And honestly, it makes me pretty mad.

A few years ago, I got Botox. A little here. A little there. The needle goes in. You want to scream. And a few days later, voilà! That part of your face is paralyzed. Over a couple years, I did it maybe eight times. Then I stopped. I’d had enough of injecting poison into my face. But a couple years after that, I wanted to do it again. I ponied up a few hundred dollars, lay down on the table, and got another round of botulinum toxin injected into my visage. But the unthinkable happened. It didn’t work!

The above documentary by CBS’s “60 Minutes” discusses the swine flu epidemic of 1976 and the federal government-sponsored inoculations that possibly caused 500 people to get Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes the body’s immune system to attack the peripheral nervous system. At first, sufferers feel a tingling sensation in the legs, but weakness and the sensations can spread to the arms and upper body. These symptoms can increase in intensity until certain muscles or the whole body is paralyzed. In extreme cases, the disorder is life-threatening, because the paralysis affects breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. The patient is often put on a respirator to help with breathing and is watched closely for other problems. The government cut short its vaccination program after 10 weeks because of the public backlash that resulted after 25 people died from Guillain-Barré.

Michelle Thompson suffers from persistent sexual arousal syndrome, a condition which makes her orgasm about 300 times a day. Sweet, I have to imagine, but it probably gets in the way when she’s trying to shop for groceries, or do her taxes or, as it turns out, when she’s trying to build a relationship. Michelle says she used to wear men out. She said, about a man she dated for five years, “By the time we broke up, he was exhausted, he left as a defeated man.” And most men give up much more easily.

“Early detection” has been the rallying cry for many breast cancer survivors and organizations, and for years that meant getting a yearly mammogram once a woman turned 40. Now, however, those guidelines have changed. Most women should start breast cancer screening at the age of 50 instead of 40, 50- to 74-year-old women should have mammograms every two years, and doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts regularly, according to the United States Preventative Services Task Force, an independent committee of prevention and primary care experts appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

A hospital in the U.K. has some overweight mothers-to-be outraged. Weston General Hospital will refuse to deliver babies to pregnant women with a body mass index of 34 or more. That roughly equates a woman who is 5’6” and weighs about 210 pounds. Their reasoning behind what many women are calling discrimination? Mothers with a high BMI are at risk for bleeding and severe labor complications. They will send these mothers to another hospital 20 miles away with a more hi-tech maternity ward. This all sounds shady to me. The last thing any woman in labor needs is to: a) be told she’s fat and b) to take a full-on road trip to deliver her baby. Sounds like Weston General Hospital needs to upgrade their freaking maternity ward. But what do you think? Is this discrimination or a step forward in the war on obesity? [Daily Mail]

Vaginas! Let’s talk about them. Perhaps, like me, you don’t know much about what anyone’s vagina looks like, except for your own. But it turns out the lips of the labia can be “innies” or “outies,” just like belly buttons, and “outies” ... well, they look just like they sound. Surely, women with “outies” can feel discomfort down there when riding a bike or wearing tight-fitting jeans. But the truth is, the majority of the time a woman gets labioplasty surgery on her vagina, she’s letting a plastic surgeon have a go at her hooda with a scalpel for aesthetic reasons. She wants the perfect vagina, but what the heck is that?

Ask an American to name the leading cause of death for child-bearing women across the globe and I reckon he or she might say “heart disease,” “breast cancer” or maybe even car accidents. After all, those are some of the greatest killers for American women, ones we are warned to be aware of day-in and day-out.

But the World Health Organization just released the results from its first-ever study of women’s health around the world and the results are telling. HIV/AIDS, actually, is the #1 cause of death or disease for women between the ages 15 and 44 across the globe. Not surprisingly, unprotected sex from lack of access to contraceptives is one of the leading risk factors, warned the W.H.O. How sad: a disease most American women would never expect to die from is actually the leading cause of death for everyone else. [The New York Times]

So I’ve heard about this “sperm allergy” before but never really knew if it was true. Believe it or not, scientists confirm that not only is it a legitimate allergy—the technical name is “seminal plasma hypersensitivity”—but it’s also really common for women. Stats say that between 20,000 and 40,000 women in the U.S. are allergic to their man’s spunk. About 30 minutes after sex, sufferers may experience hives, swollen eyes, diarrhea, and breathing problems—the same symptoms common to food allergies. What are women suffering from this allergy supposed to do? Become celibate? Subscribe to a “sperm-free” diet? Carry around an epi-pen for sexytime? Not necessarily. Doctors say, aside from using condoms, there may also be a vaccine that can help woman’s body become more tolerant. Good news, I guess? [Glamour]

I thought I was done with vaginal tragedies after hearing about the poor woman with two vaginas. I was mistaken. Brave lady, Allison Henry, is speaking out about her vagina ... which literally fell out. The clinical term for this is “vaginal prolapse.” Read on at your own risk.

Here’s a unique scholarship money idea: earning cash for your empty womb! A program at University of North Carolina at Greenboro called College Bound Sisters,  started by two doctorate-holding nurses, has paid teen girls one dollar per day for college if they don’t get pregnant.

In an always appreciated roundup of information I actually need, the folks over at Asylum put together a list of bizarro breast enlargement techniques that don’t require several thousand dollars and a surgeon. The approach given the most credibility is, surprisingly, tit-no-therapy. I mean hypnotherapy. Because I’m not nine years old. Some people really do seem to take it seriously. The Body Contouring Programme, which sells hypnosis books and CDs for brightening the headlights, cites a list of publications that have given the thumbs up to hypnosis for bigger boobs, including two references by Deepak Chopra. The most recent of Deepak’s articles, though, was written in 1993. In fact the most recent publication referenced on the website was from 1993. Have breast enlargement hypnotherapy techniques sat stagnant that long? Are boob whisperers on the endangered species list? The Body Contouring Programme says its current in-office sessions cost $1500—is it wrong that I’m this curious? [Asylum]

What if you woke up one morning in bed, lying next to your loving husband/boyfriend/whatever, and didn’t have any concept of what day, month, or, hell, year it was? And what if you found out, after being rushed to the doctor, that the reason for your short-term memory loss was that you had sex the night before? I dunno about you, but it would freak me the eff out. According to an article on CNN, “for decades, doctors described cases of a rare neurological condition that usually occurred in patients over age 50. Neurologists noted that patients knew their identities, but couldn’t retain recent memory, where they were and how they got there. They showed no other symptoms.”

They now have a name for this condition—transient global amnesia (TGA)—and sex is one of the primary triggers. People with this condition lose their ability to retain immediate memories after engaging in strenuous activity—like bumping uglies, working out, or even submerging themselves in hot or cold water. “The unifying thing about each of them is they produce a sudden and significant change in blood flow,” Dr. Louis Caplan, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, told CNN.

Have you been following health care reform? Earlier this autumn, I was rushing home from work to watch Hardball every night. Then all those “town hall” people screaming about Nazism irritated me so much I’ve mostly tuned out. But there is one health care reform issue I’ve followed closely and that is abortion coverage under President Obama’s plan. Now, if you watched Obama’s big speech about health care reform, he stated loud-and-clear that abortion would not be funded under his public health care plan. Unfortunately, nothing in politics is ever that easily explained…

• Illinois’ controversial parental notification law for minors seeking an abortion has been delayed at least until Wednesday morning as officials meet to verify that girls can waive the notification process by petitioning a judge, who has 48 hours to rule on it. The parental notification law does not give parents consent, but requires that they be notified. An exemption is made in the case of a medical emergency or if a girl puts it in writing that she was sexually abused. [Chicago Tribune]

Here’s a strange study for you. Gynecology professor Aletha Akers just led a study about the sexual activity of teenage girls, surveying almost 7,200 girls about risky sexual behavior. The survey concluded that girls who are underweight, healthy weight, and overweight are equally as likely to have had sex. But apparently girls in the overweight and underweight categories are more likely to have had risky sex—they’re more likely to fail to use condoms, have sex while drinking, and to have had sex with more than four partners. Akers believes that this effect has more to do with a teenager’s self-perception than with the actual number on the scale. Women on the ends of the spectrum may feel dips in their self-esteem, which maybe leads to some of these behaviors? Also interesting, the type of unsafe sex can be predicted to a certain extent by the girl’s race. For example, overweight Caucasian girls are less likely to use condoms than Caucasians of normal weight, and African-American teenage girls who are underweight are less likely to use a rubber. Why on earth is there a difference? [Salon]

Girls don’t snore, right? (Wink.) But your guy probably does. For those with snoring problems, there’s a frightening new solution—an injection treatment called “snoreplasty,” which can supposedly replace surgery for those who wish to solve their severe snoring issues (or, at least, appease the women they’re torturing on a nightly basis). The shot, currently available in England, is done under local anesthetic, and targets the roof of the mouth. The compound is a “hardening agent” which prevents vibration in the nasal passageways. While the injection sounds pretty suspect and a little nasty, snoreplasty is apparently cheap, only 3 GBPs (about $5), and it takes only two minutes to administer. Whaddya think? Wanna sign the man friend up? (Or, um, someone else you know?) [Marie Claire]

Often when people find out how short I am, they say, “Only a few inches away from being a midget.” Hardy, har, har. Instead of thinking about mashing their face with a fork, I can take solace in the fact that we short girls are more evolutionarily advanced than our tall counterparts. Although tall women are fantabulous, a new study claims that human beings are continuing to evolve and that women of the future will be shorter and heavier, with lower cholesterol and blood pressure. But why?

First the bad news: Opting for white wine over red is not the answer to saving your pearly whites, says a recent study by the British Dental Association. White wine is far more acidic than its red sister, and high amounts of acid wear down tooth enamel. If you’re a regular sipper of Chardonnay, your teeth may even be susceptible to enamel loss. While this is clearly unhealthy for your chompers, it can also cause aesthetic repercussions. When the enamel wears down, your teeth become more susceptible to stains from the traditional culprits—coffee, dark beverages, food. If you’ve previously had your teeth whitened, it can also mess with your brightened color.