Happy Easter!

Linked at The Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and linkfest. The Wombat has Rule Five Monday: Blue Monday up and garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

Regrets, They've Had a Few

Rita Ora

But then again, too few to mention. The WaPo has an article on egg freezer's regrets: Egg-freezing regrets: Half of women who undergo the procedure have some remorse

When 27-year-old Rita Ora announced recently that she had frozen her eggs, she joined a long list of celebrities touting the procedure. “I wanted to be safe,” the singer-actress said. "Bachelorette" star Kaitlyn Bristowe called egg freezing a “backup plan.” Comedian Whitney Cummings tweeted that “freezing my eggs is going great.” And actress Olivia Munn advised that “every girl should do it.”

Kaitlyn Bristowe

Social egg freezing — or egg freezing to delay childbearing rather than for medical reasons such as for infertility or a cancer diagnosis — has become an increasingly popular choice for women in recent years. But the positive narratives about the option being empowering represent only one side of the story.

Whitney Cummings

On Friday, one of the first studies exploring the patient perspective in elective egg freezing was published in the international journal Fertility and Sterility. The findings provide a more nuanced view, reflecting a complicated mix of positive and negative feelings.

Olivia Munn

“Working with more and more patients going through egg freezing, we had the sense that this was emotionally more complex than people might have assumed initially,” said study co-author Heather Huddleston, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California at San Francisco.

For the most part, the women indicated they felt good about the experience. Some 89 percent said they were glad they froze their eggs even if they never used them, 88 percent said the procedure made them feel as if they had more options for their life, and 80 percent said they felt they had adequate information when choosing to freeze and store their eggs.

But there were a number of worrisome findings. A significant percentage of women grossly overestimated the probability of having a child, with some believing they had a 100 percent likelihood of having a child with their banked eggs. In a commentary accompanying the study, fertility specialist Kara Goldman of New York University Langone Medical Center called this finding alarming and “obviously unrealistic.”

“To the extent that this expectation of success may alter a patient's procreative plans, this misconception could lead to unintended childlessness with devastating consequences for these individuals,” Goldman wrote.

The extent of some women's regret was striking. Half of them reported some degree of regret a few years after undergoing the procedure. Most said their regret was mild, but 16 percent described moderate to severe regret.

FWIW, my advice is, if you're going to have kids, have them young. It might be nice to have the extra money you might make by putting it off, but you're going to need the stamina.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Eponymous Shorts" up and at 'em at The Other McCain.

Nutritionists Get Egg on Their Faces

The U.S. government is poised to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol

The nation's top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.

The group's finding that cholesterol in the diet need no longer be considered a “nutrient of concern” stands in contrast to the committee's findings five years ago, the last time it convened. During those proceedings, as in previous years, the panel deemed the issue of "excess dietary cholesterol" a public health concern.

The new view on cholesterol in the diet does not reverse warnings about high levels of "bad" cholesterol in the blood, which have been linked to heart disease. Moreover, some experts warned that people with particular health problems, such as diabetes, should continue to avoid cholesterol-rich diets.

But the finding, which may offer a measure of relief to breakfast diners who prefer eggs, follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now believe that for a healthy adult cholesterol intake may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease. The greater danger, according to this line of thought, lies in foods heavy with trans fats and saturated fats.

This reaffirms a belief I've held for a long time, that cholesterol in the diet is not particularly important. The "normal" human is more than capable of metabolizing cholesterol in the diet, using it where necessary for the body (cholesterol is a major component of cell walls), and metabolizing it for energy if it's abundant.

That's not so say cholesterol can't be a problem. Some people produce excess cholesterol, and it does accumulate in blood vessels and lead to strokes. I have relatives (by marriage) with the condition. The father and half his children have familial hypercholestoremia, high levels of blood cholesterol despite a low cholesterol diet and medicine. The disease is genetic, and a dominant gene (you get it if you have one copy of the gene). Life just ain't fair. But to deny the rest of us the benefit of eggs as a result is just silly.

Now if they would just get down off their high horses and declare bacon the perfect food, all would be good.

And egg producers should be allowed to sue to government for years of suppression of their production due to the anti-egg propaganda put out by the government.