Portland, Oregon Set to Vote on Fluoride in Water

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(PORTLAND, Ore.) -- Residents of Portland, Ore., will vote Tuesday on whether to add fluoride to their drinking water -- a move hailed by some as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.  But critics say a “yes” vote would expose residents to a “risky” chemical in the name of stronger teeth.

Minute amounts of fluoride have been added to American drinking water since 1945 to help curb cavities in kids and delay decay in adults. 

In 2008, 72.4 percent of the U.S. population had access to fluoridated water, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  But in Oregon, the percentage drops to 22, which has created a statewide “dental crisis,” according to state epidemiologist Dr. Katrina Hedberg.

“Tooth decay is a serious problem and fluoridation is an effective, affordable and, most importantly, safe way to improve the public’s health,” Hedberg said in a statement, noting that one in three of the state’s first- through third-grade children has cavities, and one in five, has rampant tooth decay.  “It is also consistent with the state’s effort to focus health care on prevention rather than after-the-fact acute care.”

Like cereal fortified with folic acid, milk fortified with vitamin D and salt containing iodine, tap water containing fluoride delivers a healthful supplement that busy bodies don’t even have to think about, according to the CDC.  Water fluoridation has been shown to reduce a person’s risk of tooth decay by 25 percent, and a lifetime supply costs less than a single filling.

But skeptics question the safety of fluoride, citing a 2006 report by the National Academy of Sciences that suggested fluoridation could have serious consequences for certain subgroups of people, such as the very young, the elderly and the sick.

“Our campaign is not saying there’s complete consensus in the science on either side,” said Kellie Barnes, a volunteer with the anti-fluoridation group Clean Water Portland.  “We’re saying the emerging science shows a reasonable amount of concern.”

Barnes, a physiotherapist and mother of two, said she hadn’t thought about fluoridation until her dentist voiced his skepticism.

“I grew up on the East Coast not thinking about it,” she said, referring to her hometown of Baltimore, where water is fluoridated.  “But he raised questions about the effectiveness of the policy, and that was concerning to me.”

Clean Water Portland has taken safety concerns to heart, publishing a list of 12 reasons to vote “no” on their website.  The list also highlights the cost of water fluoridation, and suggests a possible alternative.

“Instead of spending up to $7 million on a fluoridation plant and $500,000 or more a year on fluoridation chemicals, a comparable investment in increased access to care would better help at-risk kids while protecting the entire community from the health risks of fluoridation,” the group’s website reads.  “While fluoridation activists like to focus on Oregon’s ‘untreated decay’ rate, this rate highlights the real issue: a lack of good access to dental care.”

Ballots must be delivered to a ballot drop-off location by 8 p.m. PT.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

College Women Binge Drinking More Than Men?

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(BOSTON)  -- Binge drinking has become a bigger problem for college females than for their male classmates, according to new research.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest says 44 percent of students at four-year colleges at some time drink alcohol at binge levels. But a new study from Harvard Medical School finds female students are more likely to exceed weekly alcohol limits than males.

For the study, researchers at Harvard's Center for Addiction looked at nearly a thousand students at three New England universities during their first year at college. They found the women exceeded their recommended limit of no more than three drinks a day and seven per week more frequently than the men outdid their limit. For males, the recommendation is no more than four drinks a day and seven per week. In fact, women were 1.57 times as likely as men to exceed weekly limits, and exceeded those limits for 15 percent of the weeks.  For men, it was 12 percent of the weeks.

And while the men's drinking declined over time, the women's drinking did not.

The study authors warn that women who do not grow out of this drinking behavior after they leave college increase their risk for liver disease and breast cancer as they age.

This study's findings have been published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

$165K Yale Fine Highlights "Hiding" College Sexual Assaults

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW HAVEN, Conn.) -- The $165,000 fine against Yale University for underreporting the frequency of sexual assaults might be a catalyst needed to remind colleges of their obligation to protect students from such crimes, according to a victims' advocacy group.

"I think once these cases come to light, it actually draws victims from other cases to speak up," Tracy Cox, spokeswoman for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said. "I think it says something about the culture everywhere."

"This may very well be a tipping point."

More than 90 percent of sexual assaults on U.S. campuses go unreported, according to a 2000 U.S. Department of Justice Study, and students have filed complaints this year against two universities for the way administrators handled students' reporting sexual assaults.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has fined Yale for its underreporting of sexual assaults on campus more than a decade ago.

In a letter last month issued to the New Haven, Conn., university's president, Dr. Richard Levin, the Department of Education cited Yale for failing to report four "forcible sex offenses" that took place in 2001 and 2002. The school also failed to designate parts of Yale-New Haven Hospital as part of its campus and, subsequently, report crime statistics in those areas to the federal government, for which it was fined.

The university was also fined for failing to include several statements that disclosed campus crime statistics, including sex offenses, in its 2004 Annual Security Report issued to enrolled and prospective university students and employees, according to the April 19 letter.

While the letter stated that the university had since corrected its crime reporting, "the correction of violations does not diminish the seriousness of not correctly reporting these incidents at the time they occurred."

The Department of Education characterized Yale's violations as "very serious and numerous."

The Department of Education initiated a review of the Ivy League university's compliance with the Clery Act after a 2004 Yale Alumni Magazine article questioned the university's policies with respect to sexual misconduct, according to the letter.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act is a federal statute that requires colleges and universities participating in federal financial aid programs to record and disclose campus crime statistics to students, faculty and staff, as well as the Department of Education.

Failing to abide by the Clery Act might jeopardize an institution's ability to provide federal aid to students.

University spokesman Tom Conroy told ABC News Monday that the university has requested that the fines be reduced, and is waiting for a final determination from the Department of Education.

"Yale has a structure in place to address these issues that is as strong as any school in the nation," he said. "Whatever guidance that the Department of Education gives to Yale in interpreting the Clery Act, we're going to follow."

Conroy said he was not aware of any student community reactions to the fines, but noted that the crimes in question, "were from over a decade ago."

"There is nothing Yale needs to do as a result of its letter with regard to its reporting," he said.

This isn't the first time a university's handling of sexual misconduct has come under fire.

Students at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Occidental College in Los Angeles, Calif. filed complaints this year with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights against their universities for the way administrators allegedly mishandled students' reporting sexual assaults.

Cox, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center spokeswoman, said underreporting of sexual assaults on college campuses is still a major issue, despite its recently becoming a subject that victims are more comfortable taking to authorities.

Raw numbers are difficult to come by, but the perceived increases in the number of rapes on U.S. campuses in recent years might be a result of more people reporting rather than more assaults, Cox said.

She added that university leadership should be out front of the charge to change policy, which is difficult when enrollment is often a school's top priority.

"It's kind of a double-edged sword for them," she said. "They want to promote safe campuses, but when you have more people reporting [sexual misconduct], and more people going to the police, it may look like they don't have a safe campus.

But Cox said the increase in sexual assault reporting might result, in part, from improvements in campus policies that allow for victims to come forward more easily.

"In order for change to happen, there has to be a level of transparency at schools and institutions," she said.

Abigail Boyer, a spokeswoman for the Clery Center for Security on Campus, a nonprofit that works to prevent crimes on university campuses, including violence, said, "We always caution people to look past just the data, to look beyond the numbers."

She said that when institutions provide support and resources for students, it is possible for the number of sexual assaults reported on campus to increase.

"It's not a reflection of how safe a campus is," she said of the reporting. "It's a reflection of institutions using best practices and doing things correctly."

Cox said the Yale University fines might serve as a wakeup call for college campuses that they can still be penalized for failing to report sexual assaults more than a decade after the fact.

"It still says that just because they happened 10 years ago doesn't make them any less important," she said. "If anything, it does show that if these crimes are committed on campus and there is a failure to report, they will be addressed."

"No one is going to skate through without any accountability," Cox vowed.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Sleep and Couples: For Better or Worse?

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(PITTSBURGH) -- Sleep. It occupies about one-third of our lives. We need it for our mental and physical health, and for our survival.

Compared with other health behaviors such as smoking or exercise, sleep is unique because for most adults, it is a behavior they “share” with a partner.  But according to studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association, sharing a bed doesn’t always produce sweet dreams.

Research by Wendy Troxel, a clinical psychologist and behavioral scientist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues found that for men, poor sleep predicts more negative interactions with his partner the next day.  For women, the converse was true: How she interacts with her partner during the day predicts how soundly she sleeps at night.  In other words, for women, marital strife can lead to a sleepless night; for men, a sleepless night can lead to marital strife. Taken together, these interactions can create a vicious cycle, potentially increasingly poor sleep and distressed relationships.

Despite the fact that most adults share their bed with a partner, and that sleep problems and relationship problems co-occur, only a handful of studies have investigated how sleeping together affects the sleep of both partners.

Evidence from these studies suggests that there may be costs to sharing a bed with a partner. That is, on nights when couples sleep together, they tend to have more fragmented or restless sleep than nights when they sleep alone. Some evidence suggests that these consequences are stronger for women. On the other hand, people generally prefer to sleep with a partner and believe that they sleep better when sharing a bed.

So why do we prefer to share our beds when, at least by objective measures, we tend to sleep better alone? Looking to our evolutionary past may help answer this question.

Sleep is a universal and essential health behavior, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous from an evolutionary perspective. Think about it: Sleep occurs while a person is lying down, in a semi-conscious state, and highly vulnerable to potential threats from the environment. But it is nearly impossible to fall asleep if you are feeling unsafe or insecure.

Humans are inherently social beings, and we derive a sense of safety and security from our social environment. This fundamental need for safety and security at night may explain why we generally prefer to sleep with another human being, even when sharing a bed may not always result in the best quality sleep.

Humans may no longer depend on sharing a bed to protect them from harm in the hostile environment of our evolutionary past. But focusing on the potentially adverse consequences of sleeping with another may obscure the importance of stable, good-quality relationships for healthy sleep.

For example, some research has indicated that women in stable, long-term relationships have better quality sleep than their unpartnered counterparts, and women who are in highly satisfying relationships have lower rates of insomnia than those in distressed relationships.

Should couples sleep together or sleep apart? The answer may be … it depends.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Couples need to decide what works best for them and consider how to optimize their sleep as well as their time together so that they can be the best possible partner for their loved one.

Ultimately, the time couples spend together before falling asleep may be the most important time for connecting, being intimate and just being “alone together” without all of the other distractions of the day.  Whether couples sleep in the same bed or separate beds, they need not give up on that important and satisfying pre-sleep time together. Perhaps the real benefits of “sleeping together” are realized in the precious lull before sleep comes.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Victoria’s Secret Declines to Make ‘Survivor’ Bra Line

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Allana Maiden wanted her mother to feel beautiful again after she’d undergone a radical mastectomy. But Victoria’s Secret, the company she hoped would design sexy lingerie for women who’ve had breast cancer surgery, has rejected her appeal for a “survivor line” of bras.

The Richmond, Va., 28-year-old was 6 years old when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and had her surgery. But she was always aware of her mother’s struggle to feel good about herself -- and to find a bra that not only fit but was reasonably priced.

Maiden was particularly disappointed in Victoria’s Secret’s decision after actress Angelina Jolie announced that she’d had a preventive mastectomy after learning she had the BRCA gene, which predisposes a woman to breast cancer.

“She put the news out there that you can still be attractive after having breast cancer and mastectomy,” Maiden said of Jolie. “But a beautiful bra would have been a great thing to have, and now these bras are very limited."

“My mom and I have always said how much we appreciate Victoria’s Secret research efforts,” said Maiden, who works at an animal shelter. “But cancer research doesn’t help survivors feel beautiful after the battle is over -- mastectomy bras do.  This is a company that prides itself in innovation that helps women feel beautiful. I don’t think cancer survivors like my mom should be the exception to the rule.”

A representative from Victoria’s Secret called Maiden two weeks ago to tell her that the company would not be creating a new line of “survivor” bras.

“Through our research, we have learned that fitting and selling mastectomy bras … in the right way … a way that is beneficial to women is complicated and truly a science,” said Victoria’s Secret Tammy Roberts Myers in a prepared statement Monday.  ”As a result, we believe that the best way for us to make an impact for our customers is to continue funding cancer research."

“I was disappointed, obviously,” Maiden told ABC News. “I understand her decision, that there is a science that goes [with these] bras, and it’s more complicated than a regular bra would be. But I felt that if anyone could do it, they could. They have everything in place.”

According to the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, and it estimates that more than 1.6 million new cases occurred among women worldwide in 2010.

Maiden’s mother, 57-year-old Debbie Barrett, works in the admissions office at Virginia Highlands Community College. She was 36 when she found a lump during a self-examination and soon learned it was malignant.

Barrett wears a prosthetic because at the time of her mastectomy, insurance did not cover the cost of breast reconstruction. Because she lives in a rural part of Virginia, she has to drive 1½ hours to find a store that sells bras that hold prosthetic breasts.

“It’s a huge ordeal,” her daughter told ABC News earlier this year after she filed a petition on change.org, asking Victoria’s Secret to consider her proposal for a “survivor” line of bras. To date, the petition has garnered 120,000 signatures.

The bras that Barrett wears have little pockets to hold the prosthetic breasts.  They can be bought online, but it’s hard to get a good fit without being measured in person, say both mother and daughter.

Maiden and Barrett met with Victoria’s Secret representatives twice -- once when they delivered petition signatures to the company’s New York office and again when they were flown by the parent company to Columbus, Ohio, to meet with additional team members and cancer researchers.

Victoria’s Secret parent company, Limited Brands, has donated more than $1.6 million to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the American Cancer Society to fund breast cancer research, education, screening and treatment. Additionally, in the past two years, it has raised nearly $10 million for cancer research at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, according to the company.

Limited Brands just participated in the local Komen Race for the Cure with the largest team in the world.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Marina Keegan's Words Live On, One Year After Her Death

Tracy & Kevin Keegan(NEW YORK) -- In the year since the death of 23-year-old activist/writer Marina Keegan in a car crash, her mother said the power of her daughter's words sustain her and continue to inspire others in the art world and beyond.

"My daughter totally inspired me and moved me," Tracy Keegan, 55, of Wayland, Mass., told ABC News. "Her words are how she will live on, and it's really important to me."

Marina had just graduated from Yale University, where her prophetic and inspirational essay, "The Opposite of Loneliness," appeared in a special graduation issue of the campus newspaper.

After her death on May 26, 2012, the celebrated writer's haunting words: "We're so young. We're so young. We're 22 years old. We have so much time" went viral.

Marina and her boyfriend, Michael Gocksch, were driving to the Keegan's summer house in Wellfleet, Mass., when the car hit a guard rail and spun across the road, rolling over twice. He survived, but she died instantly.

"It's been an unbelievably hard journey for all of us and of course, Michael," she said. "I am plodding along -- she would not want us to stop living. But it's unbelievably hard and Mother's Day was tough."

In the months since, Tracy and her husband Kevin Keegan, a cyber threat specialist, and their two sons, 18 and 26, have received hundreds of messages from around the world.

"Her words actually pushed people to make positive changes in their world view -- not only in their head, but their actions," said Keegan. "That to me is her legacy. As her mother, I really feel that my daughter continues her work as long as her words reach people."

And now Marina's sense of optimism and social justice will be memorialized in the national premier of her play, Utility Monster, at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater -- opening on the anniversary weekend of her death.

The play, written while she was a sophomore at Yale, is about two idealistic 15-year-olds who realize that 35,000 children die of hunger each day, and for only the price of a lunch at Taco Bell, two could be saved.

"This is a play that can change lives," said Dan Lombardo, artistic director for the theater, who met Kevin Keegan by accident and learned his daughter was a playwright. He asked to see the script.

"I knew immediately I was reading someone who was extra-gifted," said Lombardo. "I get hundreds of scripts a year from well-known playwrights ...It's rare that a play comes in this brilliant."

The car accident hit the small Cape Cod community "so hard," he said. "It just leaves us utterly bereft, and I cannot imagine what it is like for a parent to lose a child -- and then turn it around in a way that we have something tangible we can do to celebrate her genius."

Utility Monster was written while Marina was at Yale and produced in 2011 by the Yale Dramatic Association (DRAMAT), the first student show in four years.

Throughout her college years, she had been mentored by playwrights Donald Margulies and Deborah Margolin. Writer and critic Harold Bloom considered her an "unofficial granddaughter," according to the family.

Just before her death, Marina had been offered a full-time job on the editorial staff at The New Yorker.

Marina's musical, Independents, also written at Yale, won best overall production at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2012 as well as a New York Times Critics Award.

Additionally, a collection of Marina's writings will be published by Scribner and proceeds will go to creating a foundation for causes aligned with her passion for art and activism, according to Keegan.

Marina's former high school, Buckingham Browne and Nicols, has established a summer fellowship in her name that will inspire students to explore "artistic pursuits or activist causes." And Yale established its first playwright award, the Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting.

At both schools, awardees have already been named.

"We did not want an entire school year to go by without having our daughter's spirit continue to breathe through the acts and deeds of others," said Keegan. "This is what helps heal me."

Marina cared about whales (and wrote about it), the legalization of same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of marijuana and helping college-bound undocumented immigrants realize their dreams, according to her parents.

She was active in the Yale Democrats and the Occupy Morgan Stanley campaign.

Her mother said she, too, had been inspired by her daughter, who, like her younger brother Pierce, 18, was born with Celiac disease.

She volunteers with her son's charity, Pierce's Pantry, a gluten-free food bank. Their goal is to partner with national organizations to provide allergy-free foods for disaster relief.

Marina's father, Kevin Keegan, said the year since his daughter's death had been like an "emotional roller coaster."

"Regardless of what your son or daughter has accomplished, it's the same for any parent who loses a child," said Kevin Keegan, 56. "It's just horrible and what I've realized is that it happens every day to somebody."

Keegan said Marina would likely have not liked all the attention on her post mortem successes.

"She is looking down and laughing, 'Have you had enough now, Dad?'" said Keegan. "She never allowed anyone to brag about her accomplishments."

One of the last times he saw his daughter, Keegan told her how proud he was of her. "She said, 'I am going to live for love -- the rest will take care of itself.' That was her philosophy." "More than anything, she was a great daughter and a lot of fun to be with," he said. "She was a comet who shone very brightly, then she was gone."

Utility Monster will open at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre on May 25.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Colgate Planning Caffeinated Toothbrush?

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- News reports suggest Colgate-Palmolive applied to patent a caffeinated toothbrush, but the actual patent application only referred to a proposed device that hypothetically could release caffeine or any other substance or flavoring, and create sensations in a user’s mouth.

So maybe they did plan a caffeinated toothbrush; maybe not.

Colgate-Palmolive did not return a request for comment.

In any event, Colgate’s application for an “oral care implement” actually was rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, but for reasons that had nothing to do with caffeine.

Caffeine-addicted people and the media were drawn to the story after backlash over other caffeine-laced products.

Earlier this month, Wrigley said it was withdrawing its new caffeinated gum from stores after the Food and Drug Administration said it would investigate into the safety of caffeine-added foods.

In April, Wrigley released Alert gum, a stick of which had an amount of caffeine equivalent to half a cup of coffee.

In Colgate’s application, the company described the technology as “an oral care implement [that] includes a releasable sensory material that invokes a sensory response when in contact with tissues or surfaces of a mouth of a user.”

The company added that “the oral care implement may also include a soft tissue cleaner provided with the sensory material.”

The word “caffeine” was mentioned only once in the company’s application. That sentence read: “Other homeopathic teething or inflammation soothing additive include, but are not limited to Belladonna (atropa belladonna), caffeine and Passiflora Incarnata (Passionflower).”

The application also showed drawings that seemed to depict a toothbrush with various flavors or “sensory materials” such as lemon and mint.

Tracy Durkin, a director at the law firm Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox, and a registered patent attorney, said the fuss over what sounded like Colgate’s plans for a toothbrush with caffeine actually appeared to be a material that only included caffeine as a possible element.

“They’re not trying to patent any material or flavoring,” Durkin said. “It’s about Colgate patenting a user experience.”

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office actually rejected the patent last month after an initial review showing that the combination of two other patents issued to parties other than Colgate had similar elements.

One was a chewable toothbrush and the other was a flossing patent. “There are all sorts of crazy things patented,” Durkin said.

The application was filed in October 2012, and Colgate-Palmolive had three to six months to respond to the initial review.

Durkin said it typically takes three or four years to get a patent issued from the time it is filed.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Social Media a New Stress for Moms Seeking Perfection

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Jennifer Bathgate, a mother of three boys, is called “Cake-zilla” by her husband.

Bathgate’s elaborate, over-the-top cakes for her sons’ birthdays and celebrations have featured everything from Elmo to Cookie Monster to a soccer ball to a subway train to a Star Wars cake featuring Darth Vader.

While not every mom can create cakes like Bathgate’s, every mom can see photos of them online, along with other moms’ hand-sewn Halloween costumes for their kids or homemade Valentine’s Day treats for all their children’s classmates.

Parents’ ultra-sharing in today’s social media world on sites like Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter, just to name a few, is creating another opportunity and, some say, a new struggle for parents, especially moms.

“Definitely, there’s that mom competition,” Leslie Venokur, co-founder of Big City Moms, a support group for new mothers, told ABC News of the handiwork being displayed on mommy blogs and Pinterest boards.

“There’s that, ‘I saw this cake on Pinterest.  I’m going to make it,’” Venokur said.  “And then at the next birthday party, ‘I saw this one.  I’m going to one-up you.’”

The online deluge of photographs and descriptions of such “perfect” moments can be inspiring for some moms, but intimidating for others.

“It can make some women feel like they’re not enough,” one New York City mom said.

“A lot of people do put a lot of pressure on themselves to be this new mom who is kind of a superhero,” another said.

Jenna Andersen, a mother of two in California, grew so frustrated by not being able to recreate the perfect-looking posts she saw on Pinterest that she launched Pinterest Fail, a website where people can post photos of how their do-it-yourself attempts actually turned out.

The website has the tagline, “Where good intentions come to die.”

“We need these areas where we can gather together and say, ‘My life isn’t perfect and neither is yours and I’m perfectly happy with that,’” said Andersen, who also writes the blog That Wife.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Are Benefits of Testosterone Replacement Drugs Overblown?

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Testosterone replacement has long been touted for men who suffer from abnormally low levels of the male sex hormone, but new research from Consumer Reports finds that the benefits of the drugs may not be worth the risk.

"We started to really look, take a closer look at these drugs and we've discovered that there are some very significant risks and the benefits of them really may not be as fantastic perhaps as the ads might lead you to believe," says Lisa Gill, prescription drugs editor at Consumer Reports.

The potential dangers, Gill says, include "breast enlargement, blood clots in the legs, enlarged prostate, sleep apnea, fluid retention in both your ankles and your feet."

"Testosterone may actually speed up the growth of prostate cancers, which is very alarming to us, but really the most alarming risk is an increase risk of heart attack," she adds.

Gill points out that while drugmakers in their ads make it sound like many men have a low testosterone problem, most don't suffer from abnormally low levels of the male sex hormone.

"This condition -- hypo-gonadism -- really only affects less than 10 percent of the male population, probably something closer to about 5 or 6," she says.

If you think you suffer from abnormally low testosterone, Gill advises you make a doctor's appointment because it could indicate something greater.

"Low testosterone can be a sign of actually other conditions, things like heart disease or kidney failure, heart failure, even diabetes, having osteoporosis, problems with your pituitary gland, or even tumors on your pituitary glands," she says.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Army Wife Surprises Husband with 96-Pound Weight Loss

Photodisc/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Misty Shaffer has struggled with weight all her life.  When her husband was deployed to Afghanistan for a year, the Leland, N.C., woman decided to use his absence to re-commit herself to losing weight so she could surprise him when he came home.

In the year that Army Spc. Larry Shaffer was gone on his second deployment abroad, his wife changed the way she ate.  She switched to whole grains, ate mainly fruits, vegetables and lean meats, drank lots of water and controlled her portion sizes.

She also limited her food intake, going from eating about 2,000 calories a day to now eating about 1,200 calories.

Misty, who wore a size 20 then, watched the pounds melt away.  At her heaviest, she weighed 315 pounds, but she tipped the scales at 250 pounds when she started counting her calories in June.  When her husband came home last Wednesday, she weighed 154 pounds.

She now wears sizes 7 through 9, she said.

“In the beginning, the first couple of months (were) hard because I guess, people telling me the cleansing of the body because you’re still wanting that sugar, you’re still craving that stuff, and now it’s a lot easier,” the 24-year-old mother told ABC News.  “Whenever I go grocery shopping it’s like, I crave the healthy stuff over the non-healthy stuff.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do have a piece of cake here and there or whatever, but it’s just the size of it and how often I do it.”

Misty, who works as a personal grocery shopper, said she didn’t do any exercise beyond going to work and taking care of her 3-year-old daughter, Nevaeh.

When Larry got off the plane on Wednesday, he was stunned by his wife’s weight loss.  She had been standing behind a crowd of friends and family who had gathered to welcome him home, and when the crowd parted, Larry got his first look at his newly slender wife.

“All he did was ‘wow,’” Misty recalled, adding: “All he can tell me is he so proud of me and he loved me before, no matter what...he’s always seen me as beautiful.  But he said whatever makes me happy makes him happy.”

In the year that the Shaffers were apart, they would Skype and Misty would send her husband pictures of their daughter and of herself -- but she made sure that her images only showed her from the neck up.  Her friends and family helped keep the secret, too.

“When they took pictures they would either edit them to where it was just shoulder up or didn’t post them or either they blocked him to where he couldn’t see it,” she said.

Misty said she’s happy with her success. “I’m still like really conscious about my body but with clothes on and stuff I feel like I look good,” she said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio