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An article in the Ivanhoe Newswire tells us:

"Breast cancer patients who opt for reconstructive surgery following a mastectomy may be able to see better results, thanks to a new technology involving stem cells."

The article goes on to explain:

"These cells, which have the ability to turn into other types of cells in the body, are then transplanted into the breast, where they take on the properties of typical breast tissue cells."

In Science Daily, J. Peter Rubin, M.D., assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, has this to say about surgical methods of breast reconstruction:

"The surgical options for breast reconstruction involve either the use of implants or a procedure whereby fat tissue taken from another part of the body is shaped into the form of a breast. Neither is ideal nor without risk."

The use of stem cells for breast reconstruction may improve this surgery because of the stem cell's ability to develop into different specialized cell types.

Christmas and other holidays are a time of joy and fellowship. Families get together to exchange gifts and enjoy holiday feast and cheer.

For some, however, Christmas may bring on the blues. Yahoo News has some timely tips from Dr. Rajnish Mago, director of the Mood Disorders Program at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia to help you get through the holidays and tame the blues. They range from

"Maintain your daily routine as much as possible"

to limiting chocolate consumption to giving gift certificates or buying online to cut down holiday shopping stress.

For a more spiritual solution, check out the tips on Spiritual Oasis. There, Bill Wiiliams lists some excellent ideas for combatting the holiday blues and ends with:

"With these things in mind, we can move into the next few weeks with a sense of well-being. We can also focus on the real reason for the season."

Home remedies are a huge part of life. My grandmother had non-traditional methods for just about every ailment we had growing up. In fact, I don't think I took traditional medicine until I was a teenager. But, the latest unusual is making news.

Placentophagy. What is it? Its when a woman who just gave birth ingests her placenta. Why? To help combat, cope, and fight postpartum depression, or the baby blues, a condition over 80 percent of new moms suffer. According to an article on MSNBC, the unusual practice is not new. A Nevada woman recently fought for the right to get her placenta from a Las Vegas hospital.

New moms who swear by the benefits of consuming their placenta point out that it's a common practice among mammals - and after all, women are mammals, too. But no studies have examined health benefits of human placentophagy, says Dr. Diana Dell, an assistant professor in ob-gyn and psychology at Duke University.

"There's certainly no data," Dell says. "And, truthfully, the only place there may be data is in veterinary journals."

Because the placenta contains estrogen and progesterone, some women believe that the sudden withdrawal of those hormones after the delivery is what causes the baby blues, and that ingesting the afterbirth restores hormone levels.

"The placenta does produce estrogen and progesterone," says Mavis Schorn, the director of the nurse midwifery program at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. "So the theoretical idea is that it may help, but there's absolutely no research on it."

Schorn also points out that because no research exists for this practice among humans, it's not clear what the cooking or encapsulating does to the nutrients and hormones that are in the blood.

Short women get a bad rap. It's hard for them to find great jeans (without shopping at a petite store), they can't wear capri pants, and long boots are almost a no-no. Now, we learn that short legged women who face a health risk.

A recent study, conducted by Abigail Fraser of University of Bristol, found that women with short legs may face a higher risk of liver disease. Over 3,600 women were studied and showed that those with shorter legs was more likely to have signs of liver damage.

"Adult liver function is affected by early life environmental exposures as reflected in leg length, and this may suggest common childhood influences on liver development and adult risk of diabetes and coronary heart disease," they wrote.

Fraser's team looked at women aged 60 to 79 who were taking part in a larger health study. They measured their leg length as compared to trunk length and also measured four liver enzymes: alanine aminotransferase, gamma-glutamyltransferase, aspartate transaminase and alkaline phosphatase.

"Each of these markers reflects a different aspect of potential liver damage," they wrote in their report, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Leg length can point to how well a person was nourished in early childhood. "In particular, evidence shows that breast-feeding, high-energy intake at four years and childhood affluent socioeconomic position are all associated with longer adult leg length," Fraser's team wrote.

The findings held even when Fraser's team took into account smoking, drinking and other behaviors that can damage a person's liver.

There's great news on the fight against breast cancer. A study released today reported that women who are fighting breast cancer can be spared the agony of chemotherapy. The study discovered that women who were give a less harmless version of the drug, Adriamycin, were less likely to suffer a relapse or die.

The findings are sure to speed the growing trend away from chemo for many breast cancer patients and targeting it to a smaller group of women who truly need it, doctors said Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, where the studies were reported.

"We are backing off on chemotherapy and using chemotherapy more selectively" in certain women, said Eric Winer, a doctor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

The gene test in particular "will start changing practice nearly immediately," said Dr. Peter Ravdin of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "The results are compelling that this test ... helps select patients who will most benefit from chemotherapy."

Breast cancer is the most common major cancer in American women. More than 178,000 new cases are expected this year. Most are helped to grow by estrogen, and hormone-blocking medicines like tamoxifen are used to treat those.

Chemo usually is added if the disease has spread to lymph nodes - a situation faced by about 45,000 U.S. women each year. Doctors know that chemo won't help most of these women, but they have had no good way to tell who can safely skip its cost and misery.