What is Hormonal Imbalance – Symptoms, Diagnosis, Causes & Effect

If a teenager acts up or sulks because he or she has not been allowed to go to a party, parents usually excuse this behaviour by saying, “Oh, it is those over-active teenage hormones working again.” When a woman gets into an argument with her boyfriend or husband, the man would usually throw in one particular accusation during the quarrel, “You are just being unreasonable and hormonal.” This has caused hormones to have a very bad reputation since a majority of people have the misconception that these chemicals within the human body are responsible for erratic behaviour and emotional instability. However, hormones actually do a lot of useful things for people. They stimulate growth, regulate metabolism, activate the immune system, and prepare the body for reproduction. But when the levels of hormones present in the body are not in their proper balance, then problems will occur. People will start to exhibit hormone imbalance symptoms which can cause issues that affect their general health and well-being.

Teen Hormonal Deficiency

In young people like teens, though it is normal for them to be moody and unpredictable because of the large amounts of hormones in their systems that serve to prepare their bodies for adulthood, these symptoms can be problematic if they continue for an extended period of time. Some of the typical symptoms of a hormonal imbalance in teens are depression, insomnia, irritability, and migraines. Women who suffer from hormone imbalance, meanwhile, display symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, dizziness, obesity, hair loss, mood swings, and wrinkles. Men, on the other hand, experience symptoms like abdominal weight gain, breast enlargement, erectile dysfunction, prostrate disease, heart disease, and decreased libido. The hormonal imbalance causes for these symptoms can range from a variety of sources. For teens, their constant exposure to different kinds of chemicals that can be found in the environment can cause their hormonal levels to be unbalanced. Some of these chemicals are present in beauty products, garden cleaners, pesticides, and plastics. Women’s hormone levels can be affected through consuming food products that contain large amounts of oestrogen such as meat or milk from animals that have been given hormones. Some vegetables and fruits are also capable of increasing oestrogen levels in a female’s body. The hormone levels in men can also be influenced by the foods they consume. The production of testosterone can be affected by a diet that has a low content of fibre yet large amounts of fat.

Senior Hormonal Symptoms

It is therefore important for teenagers, women, and men to be mindful of the effects the environment and other factors such as stress can have on their hormone levels and their health. One of the most common hormonal imbalance disorders is a deficiency in the progesterone hormone levels in the body. Progesterone is one of the most important hormones in females since it is responsible for initiating changes in the endometrium during the second part of a woman’s menstrual cycle. It prepares the uterus for the successful implantation and development of a fertilized egg, and it maintains the proper functioning of the uterus throughout the entire period of pregnancy. The hormone is responsible for ensuring that the placenta functions correctly and fighting off any cells that could potentially harm the foetus. It also strengthens the mucus that covers the cervix to prevent the occurrence of infections, among other functions. The progesterone deficiency symptoms include breast tenderness, ovarian cysts, water retention, irregular periods, and early miscarriage or abortion of the foetus. For more information regarding hormonal imbalances such as its causes, symptoms, and available treatments, the other articles on this website would provide you with several facts and tips. Plus, there is a link that is very helpful for individuals who need guidance before getting disability insurance in order for them to choose one that is most suitable for their needs. Browse every category here and we guarantee that the time spent here is certainly worth it.

Source: hormonal-help

About Facebook

Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press, Via Associated Press

Facebook, the world's largest social network, announced in July 2010 that it had 500 million users around the world. The company has grown at a meteoric pace, doubling in size since 2009 and pushing international competitors aside. Its policies, more than those of any other company, are helping to define standards for privacy in the Internet age.

The company, founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, began life catering first to Harvard students and then to all high school and college students. It has since evolved into a broadly popular online destination used by both teenagers and adults of all ages. In country after country, Facebook is cementing itself as the leader and often displacing other social networks, much as it outflanked MySpace in the United States.

But it has also come to be seen as one of the new titans of the Internet, challenging even Google with a vision of a Web tied together through personal relationships and recommendations, rather than by search algorithms. In a major expansion, Facebook has spread itself across other Web sites by offering members the chance to "Like'' something — share it with their network — without leaving the Web page they're on.

In May 2011, Facebook was working on developing features that will make the sharing of users’ favorite music, television shows and other media as much a part of its site as playing games or posting vacation photos.

The company was in discussions with several online music services, including the European company Spotify, to develop a tab or widget that would display a user’s most-played songs and provide an easy way for friends to hear them. Facebook wants to do the same for other kinds of media, like video and news.

Analysts and media executives said the company’s move into media was part of its ambition to become a hub for all types of activities on the Internet.

The company raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in January 2011 in a deal that values the company at $50 billion — more than companies like eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner. The stake by Goldman Sachs, considered one of Wall Street’s savviest investors, signals the increasing might of Facebook, which has already been bearing down on giants like Google.

Facebook has increasingly been seen as the only company to pose a threat to Google, which has used its dominant position in search and online ad placement to expand into most corners of the Web. But as a closed network, Facebook's oceans of content are out of the reach of Google's search engines, and some analysts think the personal recommendations made through Facebook networks could become a rival to the algorithm-based results pioneered by Google.
In one sign of how much Facebook regards Google as a competitor, The Daily Beast reported that in May 2011 Facebook had hired a public relations firm to persuade reporters and privacy advocates to write stories critical of a new Google service, Social Circles.
Privacy is a sore subject for Facebook, which has made a series of stumbles on the subject. With the potential for legal and regulatory clashes growing along with its influence, the company has layered its executive, legal, policy and communications ranks with high-powered politicos from both parties, beefing up its firepower for future battles in Washington and beyond.
Disputed Origins
The company's rise has been marked by strings of controversies. Three other Harvard students maintain that they came up with the original idea and that Mr. Zuckerberg, whom they had hired to write code for the site, stole the idea to create Facebook. Facebook has denied the allegations. A long-running lawsuit is pending. Another Harvard classmate, Aaron Greenspan, claims that he created the underlying architecture for both companies, but has declined to enter the legal battle.
A 2010 movie about Facebook’s tumultuous origins, "The Social Network," offered up what A.O. Scott called "a creation story for the digital age and something of a morality tale, one driven by desire, marked by triumph, tainted by betrayal and inspired by the new gospel: the geek shall inherit the earth."
Facebook has strenuously, and Mr. Zuckerberg more quietly, asserted that the portrayal of the company's founding is fiction. And Mr. Zuckerberg disputed the characterization of him in the film, though in a New Yorker magazine profile, he acknowledged having indulged in a bit of sophomoric arrogance.
Privacy Concerns
Like other social networks, Facebook allows its users to create a profile page and forge online links with friends and acquaintances. It has distinguished itself from rivals, partly by imposing a spartan design ethos and limiting how users can change the appearance of their profile pages. That has cut down on visual clutter and threats like spam, which plague rivals. It has decisively outstripped other networks that preceded it, like MySpace and Friendster, becoming what many analysts see as the "default platform'' of a new age of information organized around personal relationships.
The back and forth between Facebook and its users over privacy is gaining importance as the company's growth continues unabated. Facebook's policies, more than those of any other company, are helping to define standards for privacy in the Internet age.
Bowing to pressure over privacy concerns, the company in May 2010 unveiled a set of controls that he said would help people understand what they were sharing online, and with whom.
Facebook's biggest mistake, Mr. Zuckerman said, had been in failing to notice that as Facebook added new features and its privacy controls grew increasingly complicated, those controls became effectively unusable for many people.
In October 2010, Facebook acknowledged that some applications on its site, including the popular game FarmVille, had improperly shared identifying information about users, and in some cases their friends, with advertisers and Web tracking companies. The company said it was talking to application developers about how they handled personal information, and was looking at ways to prevent this from happening again.
The Goldman Deal
In January 2011, Facebook raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in a transaction that values the company at $50 billion. As part of the deal with Facebook, the bank could raise as much as $1.5 billion from investors for Facebook. The new money will give the company more firepower to steal away valuable employees, develop new products and possibly pursue acquisitions — all without being a publicly traded company. The investment may also allow earlier shareholders, including Facebook employees, to cash out at least some of their stakes.
The new investment came as the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an inquiry into the increasingly hot private market for shares in Internet companies, including Facebook, Twitter, the gaming site Zynga and LinkedIn, an online professional networking site. Some experts suggest the inquiry is focused on whether certain companies are improperly using the private market to get around public disclosure requirements.
Also in January, catching many off guard, Goldman said that it would limit its Facebook offering to foreign investors, excluding clients in the United States because of worries that the deal could run afoul of securities.
The offering to high-net-worth clients was supposed to have been a triumph for the firm, not the serious embarrassment it became. Goldman has been trying to move past run-ins with regulators, including a $550 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2010 over a complex mortgage investment. The Facebook plan will likely raise new questions about whether Goldman tried to push regulatory boundaries once again.
Mr. Zuckerberg had sought to keep close control over the company, spurning a $1 billion offer from Yahoo in 2006 and playing down the idea of a stock offering. But in the wake of the Goldman investment, Facebook said that it will begin reporting its financial results by April 2012, setting the stage for a likely IPO.
The company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., earned $355 million on $1.2 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2010, according to a document prepared by Goldman for potential investors. That is up from $220 million in earnings on $770 million in sales in 2009.

Source: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html

A new iPad is hours away, what do you think we’ll see?

Today Apple will have its March 2nd event and we’ll finally get to meet the iPad 2. Things might not be exactly as they have been in the past, with Steve Jobs on medical leave, but you can bet there will be a a lot to talk about before, during, and after the unveiling of the new iPad (and anything else today may bring).
We’ve heard a tremendous amount of rumors about the next iPad, opening the door to a multitude of possibilities. Maybe the iPad 2 will be available in white, with DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, a carbon fiber back, and a 7-inch screen, just to combine some of the less likely rumors. Maybe it will be delayed, maybe it will have an SD slot, and a high resolution display. Or maybe it’ll be a rather slight improvement on the original iPad, making for something akin to an iPad 1.5. It’s still anyone’s guess right now.
The rumor mill is going strong, with some people seemingly more informed than others. We don’t have any special information, but we’ve done a lot of reading and we’re guessing that some of you have as well.  So fill us in–based on your reading and experience, give us an educated guess on what you think think the iPad 2 will be like.
I’ll kick things off with my personal guess, and then please do continue in the comments.
I’m guessing the iPad 2 will not be a revolutionary change from the iPad, in fact I’m playing this one very conservative. I’m not expecting a higher resolution display, a carbon fiber back, a 7-inch screen, or any of the more extreme things we’ve heard. In my estimation we’ll see a modest spec bump (hopefully to a dual-core processor, but almost definitely faster and with more RAM), front/rear cameras, and some slight changes to the chassis. These changes could make for a thinner, sleeker iPad and possibly something with improved audio. I’m torn on the issue of NFC–some outlets seemed very confident of it, but talk has tapered off in the last month–but my guess is we don’t see it tomorrow.
I’m guessing the iPad 2 will be the iPhone 3GS  equivalent–it’ll get an already compelling and competitive product to up speed with the competition and it’ll throw in a few cool features so iPad owners have to at least consider upgrading. I see these as being a performance bump, the FaceTime camera, a rear camera, and possibly an SD card slot. I’d guess we see a late March to early April release date and, yes, I do think it will come in white.
What do you expect to see?

From: http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/new-ipad-release-thoughts-2011032/

Magsundalo

Kulas: Sir, Mangaplay ko pagkasundalo.

Col. Tikyo: Lisod ka makasud, daghan ka og pangag ug daut nga ngipon.

Kulas: Unsa diay ning magsundalo, sir, pinaakay? :)

Exam

Tikyo: Las, naka-answer ka sa atong exam?

Kulas: Wa gyud bay Tiks.

Tikyo: Mao na niron, dudahan na sad ta ni Ma'am ani nga nagkinopyahay ta! ^_^

Was burying bin Laden at sea a mistake?

Amid the justified celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden, an awkward question is starting to rear its head: Did U.S. policymakers err in burying the al Qaeda leader at sea?

Already, the decision has provoked criticism from some Islamic scholars, who say a maritime burial isn't in keeping with Muslim law. And there are signs that the move could help fuel skepticism, especially among President Obama's critics, about whether bin Laden was really killed at all.

The Pentagon has said the body was treated in accordance with traditional Islamic procedures--including washing the corpse--before it was placed in the waters of the northern Arabian Sea.

U.S. officials have said they wanted to avoid the al Qaeda leader's grave site becoming a shrine for his followers. They've also said it would have been difficult to find a foreign country willing to accept bin Laden's remains, especially in so short a time: Islamic tradition and practice call for the body of the deceased to be buried within 24 hours of death.

But several Muslim authorities said today that the sea burial in fact violated Muslim tradition--and warned that it could help trigger calls for revenge from militant Muslims.

The sea burial "runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs," Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand Imam of Cairo's al-Azhar mosque, told the AP.

And Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai's grand mufti, echoed that view. "If the family does not want him, it's really simple in Islam: You dig up a grave anywhere, even on a remote island, you say the prayers and that's it."

He added: "Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances," he added. "This is not one of them."

And Abdul-Sattar al-Janabi, who preaches at Baghdad's Abu Hanifa mosque declared: "It is not acceptable, and it is almost a crime to throw the body of a Muslim man into the sea," adding that the action "might provoke some Muslims."

But the religious verdict may not be quite that open and shut. Imam Shamsi Ali, of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, told The Lookout that in emergency circumstances, any Islamic law can be overlooked. "For example, you're not allowed to eat pork," he said, but added that if you were starving to death, it would be considered acceptable. Ali said that because the United States appears to have been unable to find a country to take bin Laden's body within 24 hours, this might have qualified as such an emergency.

Islamic practices aside, the decision is already triggering conspiracy theories that cast doubt on whether bin Laden is truly dead--even though DNA testing is said to have confirmed with virtual certainty that the al Qaeda leader was indeed killed. An assertion by Pakistan's Taliban that bin Laden is still living was picked up on several users of the conservative website FreeRepublic.com. In addition, one writer on the Andrew Breitbart website Big Peace called for bin Laden's body to be"digitally scanned" so that Americans could verify his death for themselves. On Twitter, Emily Miller, an editor at the conservative Washington Times, demanded a photo of the body as "proof."

Skepticism could only increase in some quarters if the Obama administration declines to release photos of bin Laden's body.  No decision has yet been made on that question, according to White House counter-terror adviser John Brennan, who said this afternoon that doing so could jeopardize future operations.

(In an image taken from a video broadcast, Dec. 24, 1998, Osama bin Laden spoke during an interview at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan.: ABC News/AP) (Yahoo News)