TUESDAY, Jan. 20 (HealthDay News) -- New research on the brain suggests that women unconsciously have a tougher time resisting their favorite foods than men do.

"This gives us another piece to put into this puzzle," said Dr. Gene-Jack Wang, the study's author, who speculated that women may have more trouble saying no to food because they sometimes have to eat for two.

"Maybe evolution leads them to this because of their important mission to have a baby," said Wang, a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

According to Wang, the new study aimed to understand why some people don't stop eating when they're full. Your body tells you that you've eaten enough by sending a signal to your brain from the gut, he explained, "but if you go to the buffet, sometimes you just cannot stop."

This wasn't a big problem throughout history because people rarely had a chance to eat more than they needed, Wang said. But modern society has changed that, he said, especially over the past 30 to 40 years as obesity has become much more common in the United States.

For the study, which appears in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers asked 13 women and 10 men about their favorite foods. The participants said they liked a variety of dishes and desserts, including lasagna, pizza, brownies, ice cream and fried chicken.

Then, after they fasted for 20 hours, the researchers presented them with their favorite foods; the dishes were even warmed up, if appropriate, to make them more tempting. The men and women were allowed to smell and taste the food but not eat it. Then, in an experiment, they were told to try to inhibit their desire to eat the food.

Meanwhile, PET scans examined their brain activity.

The researchers found that certain areas of the brain became more active in both the men and women when they were tempted with food. The brain areas that lit up control emotions such as motivation.

Also, both men and women succeeded in making themselves feel less hungry by inhibiting their desire to eat the food. But the brain scans suggested that the women's brains were still acting as if they were hungry.

In other words, the women may have thought they were less hungry, but their brains didn't seem to be entirely on board.

What's going on? Hormones could play a factor in women, Wang said, because they need to eat more when they're pregnant.

The research could help scientists understand why some people can't resist certain kinds of high-calorie food, Wang said. "Some people cannot inhibit themselves, and we need to help those people."

More information

Learn more about obesity from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

MONDAY, Jan. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Women appear to have less access than their male counterparts to kidney transplants as they age, a new study shows.

The report, published in the March edition of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, found that a woman's access to donated kidneys seems to decrease starting in those aged 46 to 55. That group had only a 3 percent lower chance of moving from the waiting list for a kidney to the actual transplant list but the disparity grew much greater in older groups -- 15 percent less access for those aged 56 to 65, 29 percent for 66- to 75-year-olds, and 59 percent for women over age 75.

Once on the list for a transplant, though, a woman's odds of getting a new kidney were equal to a man's. The researchers found that women in this study had an equal to slightly better survival benefit from a kidney transplant than men in all age groups, a finding that showed no reason to limit a woman's access to a transplant because of age.

"Knowing that the gender disparity is limited to older women indicates that efforts should be made to identify specific differences between older men and older women rather than general differences between all men and women in an effort to minimize the gender disparity in access to transplantation," study leader Dr. Dorry Segev, of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, said in a news release issued by the journal.

The findings were based on national data from 563,197 patients with end-stage kidney disease diagnosed between 2000 and 2005.

More information

The U.S. National Kidney Disease Education Program has more about kidney disease.

FRIDAY, Jan. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Either in person or over the phone, women struggling with postpartum depression can be treated effectively by professionals or mothers who have gone through the same thing, two studies find.

Both reports, published in the Jan. 16 online edition of BMJ, find that talk therapy and caring communication can help new mothers deal with their depression without the need for antidepressants.

"Approximately 13 percent of women will experience postpartum depression," said Cindy-Lee Dennis, an associate professor at the University of Toronto and lead researcher on one of the studies. "There are significant consequences of this condition for the mother, the infant and the family."

Once a woman has had postpartum depression, she is more likely to have future bouts of depression, Dennis said, and that puts infants and children at risk for cognitive, behavioral and social problems.

"For the family, often you see with postpartum depression [that] the partner can also experience depression," she said. "We know that this leads to marital conflict and potentially divorce."

People need to understand what the signs and symptoms of postpartum depression are and seek help, Dennis said.

Jane Morrell, research leader at the University of Huddersfield in the U.K. and an author of the other study, agreed.

"Women need to be encouraged not to bottle up their feelings and talk to other people, including their partners and health-care professionals," she said.

Morrell and her colleagues randomly assigned 418 mothers with postpartum depression to have one-hour weekly visits for up to eight weeks from a health-care worker who delivered counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy (sometimes called talk therapy) or traditional postnatal care.

The researchers found that at six months and 12 months, mothers who had received counseling or therapy had greater reductions in depression than did mothers who had received usual care.

In fact, mothers who were depressed at six weeks were 40 percent less likely to be depressed at six months if they had gotten counseling or therapy, the researchers found.

Morrell's team also found that this method of dealing with depression was cost-effective. "There is no stronger evidence of an intervention to help women who have depression postnatally," she said.

In the other report, Dennis's group studied the benefit of telephone support to prevent postpartum depression in high-risk women.

In this case, 701 women who were at high risk of postpartum depression were randomly assigned to standard postnatal care or to standard care plus telephone support from women who had experienced postpartum depression themselves.

The researchers found that women who received peer support were 50 percent less likely to develop postpartum depression 12 weeks after giving birth than were women who didn't get the support. In addition, more than 80 percent of the women who got telephone support said they would recommend this type of support to a friend.

For any new mother with symptoms of depression, "providing her with telephone-based support from another mother who has experienced postpartum depression and has recovered, and has been trained, might be able to prevent the development of postpartum depression," Dennis said.

William S. Meyer, an associate clinical professor in the departments of psychiatry and obstetrics/gynecology at Duke University Medical Center, said that both reports highlight what people who work with women suffering postpartum depression see.

"These papers provide further support for what those of us who work in the field learn every single day," Meyer said. "The support of new mothers is the single best deterrent of postpartum depression."

Study upon study demonstrates that the most severe risk factor for postpartum depression is the mother who does not feel supported, Meyer said. "Is it any wonder then that providing support from mothers, even fairly minimal support, even by modestly trained lay people, would not mitigate the incidence and severity of depression in the postpartum period?" he asked.

But Dr. Kimberly Yonkers, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and an expert in treating postpartum depression, said that for many women with severe depression, these treatments aren't enough.

"Modest forms of psychotherapy are helpful for mild to modest forms of depression," Yonkers said. "These therapies can be administered by trained paraprofessionals or lay personnel. These interventions decrease the burden of depressive symptoms in postpartum women."

"But there are still substantial numbers of women who seem to require stepped-up treatment," she said.

More information

For more on postpartum depression, visit the National Women's Health Information Center.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 3 (HealthDay News) -- SheKayla Love, 26, of Dallas, had the first cyst in her breast removed when she was just 14, the second when she was 19.

By the time she found the third lump, she was 25 and had watched her grandmother die of breast cancer (after being diagnosed at 55) and her mother endure both chemotherapy and radiation after being diagnosed with the same disease and undergoing a full mastectomy at age 45.

Love's first two cysts had come back benign, but a mammogram revealed the third one to be ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), when abnormal cells appear in the lining of the breast duct. The condition can turn into cancer.

She had had enough. Last year, after intensive praying and consultation with her family and doctors, Love underwent a preventive bilateral mastectomy.

"I was with my mom when she was going through all the doctor's appointments, the radiation, the chemo, just seeing her and the pain she went through and her hair falling out, the more I thought about it, I've had this going on for so long I don't want to get to that point that I have to go through that and, not only me, but if I have children, I don't want to put them through that."

Love is a "previvor." Her odds of developing breast cancer have now plummeted by about 90 percent, and she joins a growing cadre of women who opt for some kind of preemptive strike against higher odds of breast cancer.

Many of these women, like Christina Applegate, test positive for the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic mutation which puts them at heightened risk for developing breast cancer and others (like Love) because they have a significant family history of the disease.

Applegate was diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast but opted to have both breasts removed in August. She is undergoing reconstructive surgery.

"We've been seeing it for a long time," said Dr. Claudine Isaacs, medical director of the Cancer Assessment and Risk Evaluation Program at Georgetown's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. "There are studies that exist that show [a double mastectomy] is associated with a greater than 90 percent reduction in developing breast cancer."

In addition to having both breasts surgically removed, women intent on prevention can also choose to have their ovaries removed before menopause (which also lowers the risk of ovarian cancer) or for hormonal management taking birth control, tamoxifen or another drug to cut their risk.

Intensive screening is another option, Isaacs said. "This isn't going to prevent it but you hopefully are going to pick it up at its earliest stages," she said.

But the prevention route certainly seems to be gaining acceptance.

"I think what has recently changed is the acceptance of the technology. Genetic testing for breast cancer has been around for a while but wasn't approved by insurance companies," said Dr. Ricardo Meade, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. "With molecular genetics, you are able to predict your risk for developing breast cancer, also your risk for ovarian cancer. You have unlocked your own genetic code, and you're predicting what the chances are for your future."

"This is very difficult, because the sickness hasn't even come up yet," Meade continued. "All you're seeing is that you might be programmed to potentially develop breast cancer, an 85 percent chance in a lifetime [in the case of a BRCA mutation]. The previvor is the patient that takes action against this and tries to counter this by having the operation before the cells start acting. . . She is potentially avoiding chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and those are two of the hardest things that a human has to go through."

Love learned she had DCIS on Sept. 4, 2007, and underwent surgery on Oct. 23. During the intervening weeks, her doctors told her the mass had already spread, although it was still localized.

"I feel I made the right decision," Love said. "If they had taken [the mass] out, they wouldn't have gotten it all."

Love gets a check-up every six months and will continue that until November 2009, when she will start annual check-ups.

"Women should just make sure they do the monthly exam themselves, and if you feel anything, even if you think it's nothing, let a doctor know," Love advised.

More information

Breastcancer.org   has more on bilateral mastectomies.