Hip Check

Your study found a woman's vulnerability to breast cancer was greater if the widest distance between the structures at the top of her hip bone was more than 11.8 inches and if these structures were round. Can you tell, just by looking, that a woman has hips this size?
With clothes, no.  Unclothed yes. We're talking about mothers who gave birth in Finland 60, 70 years ago. Because so many babies weren't born because of difficulties coming out of the birth canal, they routinely measured these pelvic bone measurements on women who were pregnant. We're not talking about exceptionally large women.

Why do we have bigger hips now?
Because we're better nourished. When I first went to China 20 years ago, I was told that if you see a woman with broad hips, she comes from Hong Kong or Taiwan. At that time, nutrition was poor. At that time, there wasn't enough nutrition around for the hips to broaden.

What are "round" hips?
The crest of the hip bone, which you feel above your hip bone on the side, in a woman, it is rounder than in a man. What happens to girls at puberty that distinguishes them from boys is that they broaden their hips, and they also round the crest of the hip.

Can I measure my hips?
It's not a circumference. You could improvise with calipers. Then you could mark off the outermost points of the crest of the hipbone on either side. You can do it with a ruler.  You measure the outermost part on the right-hand side and the outermost on the left-hand side.

The big hips are a marker of extra estrogen?
Yes. The placenta does not develop until 10 weeks. So for the first 10 weeks of all our lives, we were just bathed in the mother's fluids.

Maybe some day we will routinely measure moms' hip bones?
Nobody's ever thought it was important to measure mother's hormones in the weeks after conception. Now that we know it's important, we can start sorting it out.