Live for Today, Live for Tomorrow.

STAY TUNED!

For my interview and photo piece on my good friend and roommate, Melinda McNally, a college sophomore living with hypothyroidism. To give you an idea of what to expect, the Mayo Clinic explains:

Hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) is a condition in which your thyroid gland doesn’t produce enough of certain important hormones. Women, especially those older than 50, are more likely to have hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism upsets the normal balance of chemical reactions in your body. It seldom causes symptoms in the early stages, but over time, untreated hypothyroidism can cause a number of health problems, such as obesity, joint pain, infertility and heart disease.

I have another friend and peer with the same condition, so I’m curious as to how prevalent it is within young women of college age.

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We need to acknowledge that even though we are young, we are not invincible. Our health in the future depends on how we treat ourselves today, so we can’t just live carelessly and do whatever we please.  

James Madison University‘s high scoring point guard, Dawn Evans, is currently fighting focal segmental glomerular sclerosis, or kidney disease. A basketball star in college has Stage 4 kidney disease. This should be a message to us all to be more aware of our own mortality.

But this isn’t supposed to be a message of doom ‘n gloom: it is our responsibility to take care of ourselves and to enjoy life at the same time.

The BACCHUS & GAMMA Peer Education Network published a ”Disease Prevention for College Women” in the Peer Educator.  In this pamphlet, the Peer Educator recommends:

• Women aged 20 – 40 years should get a cancer-related check-up as part of their annual physical exam every 3 years. Be aware of skin, lung, breast, and cervical cancers.
•  An estimated 3 million American women “have died prematurely from smoking-related diseases since 1980. More and more women in their 20s and 30s are being diagnosed with serious tobacco related illnesses such as lung cancer.” It’s probably time to go cold turkey.
• Drink milk and take calcium supplements: About 80% of people who have osteoporisis are women. The bone density that you have between 30 and 35 years is your bone density for life, so you need to take preventative measures now to ensure your bones are healthy in the future.
• Conduct a monthly breast self-examination. If you don’t know how to do this, talk to your doctor.
• Get a breast-exam from your doctor every 3 years if you’re between the ages of 20 and 40.
• Get checked out for cervical cancer by getting a Pap Test if you have abnormal bleeding or discharge.
• Get checked out for skin cancer if you have changes in the surface of a mole, scaling, oozing, or bleeding of a bump or nodule, or changes in sensation such as itchiness, tenderness, or pain.
• Prevent the number 1 killer of women, heart disease, right now by limiting your daily cholesterol intake to 300 mg or less and cooking with olive or canola oil.

Additional resources include 4CollegeWomen.org’s Diseases and Conditions page and the CDC’s site on bacterial meningitis, which students at Rowan are required to get vaccinated against.

As the great Spock of Star Trek said many a time, “Live long and Prosper.”

-R.

(AP Photo of Dawn Evans taken from here)

 

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