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The research, published on November 9 in the journal PLoS One, is the first study to show the extent to which high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, can be directly linked to patients developing severe COVID-19. These findings further emphasize the importance of adequate blood pressure control, said senior study author Ian Wilkinson, BMBCh, a cardiology consultant at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) and professor of therapeutics at the University of Cambridge....

I probably sound heartless, but the truth is I’m simply at a loss for how to help. One of the last times this happened, I paid to put him up in a hotel for a couple nights and flew from New York City to Orlando, Florida, to be by his side. But, once I saw that he was struggling — we’re talking crippling delusions and paranoia that prevented him from trusting me to help with basic things like getting an ID card — I knew he still required hospitalization and monitoring....

The outskirts of our town afford wonderful views from the cliffs at the harbor’s mouth. They are a short (and safe) walk from small carparks on either side of the now automated lighthouse that guides fishing boats in and tourists out to its stunning vista. With weather and health on our side, we laced up, wrapped up, and packed up for some sea air and a quiet stroll. As we passed the old folly in the pasture, on a bluff on the town side of the lighthouse, pies of “evidence” of the field’s bovine residents proved obstacles for me to avoid and waypoints for Maggie’s stop-sniff-pee process of hiking....

Psoriasis and stress are intricately linked. Although psoriasis is a genetic condition, environmental factors, such as traumatic life events, can make symptoms worse, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. That’s why it’s crucial to make stress management a key component of your psoriasis treatment plan. Doctors and researchers do not yet fully understand what causes psoriasis, but the disease is thought to occur when the immune system turns on the body, causing skin cells to grow abnormally and rapidly....

The likelihood of that happening depends on the specific drug regimen prescribed. But the reality is that while not everyone who receives chemotherapy ends up bald, many do. And although some take hair loss in stride, it’s not unusual to feel profoundly sad or anxious about the possibility of losing your hair. “I’ve met thousands of women [going through breast cancer treatment] over the past 10 years, and so many have told me that losing their hair was harder than losing their breasts,” says Martino Cartier, a high-profile hairstylist and salon owner in Sewell, New Jersey, and the founder of Wigs & Wishes, a nonprofit that provides free wigs to women battling cancer....

It can depend on what symptoms you’re experiencing, how much inflammation you’re experiencing, and what your quality of life is, says Tauseef Ali, MD, FACG, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma, director of the Saint Anthony Hospital Crohn’s and Colitis Program in Oklahoma City, and author of Crohn’s and Colitis for Dummies. “It’s key for patients to understand and spend some time with their doctor, learning more about the disease, the disease process, and the goal of the treatment,” says Dr....

The findings demonstrate that when a person with one of these inflammatory conditions experiences a heart attack at a young age, they have a higher risk of future adverse cardiovascular events, according to a coauthor of the study, Brittany Weber, MD, a cardio-rheumatology specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. RELATED: Eat These 10 Foods to Help Beat RA Inflammation “Inflammatory conditions can occur at any age, but onset is often in young adulthood....

BPD affects an estimated 1.6 percent of American adults, but the numbers may be even higher, affecting nearly 6 percent of this population segment, notes the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). (2) One strong predictor of the disorder is family history. In fact, having a first-degree relative (parent, sibling, child) with BPD puts you at a 5 times greater risk of developing it yourself, according to NAMI. (2) With a first-degree relative, you share an average of 50 percent of your genes....

In 1993, Jillian Pransky was walking up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan when a small gold sign advertising a yoga studio caught her eye. A relative novice to yoga, she turned on a whim, went in, and some two hours later, found herself sobbing on her yoga mat. “I knew I was tight from years of sports, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that under the tightness I’d lived with from pushing myself around — muscling through everything I encountered without taking a rest — was also a deep, pervasive tension that came from the way I held myself together,” Pransky says....

When schools open in New York City on September 21, Jennifer V. will be sending her 7-year-old twin girls into the second grade under a hybrid model that combines in-class and remote sessions. She’s excited, but also nervous. “I care about my kids being around other kids so they can be part of a group and a community, but my number one concern is for their health,” she says. If you’re a parent of young children, you want to ensure they’re protecting themselves when you’re not around to supervise....

So it’s not that I cannot feel them, but rather that there is an odd lack of feeling. And I’ve noted this deterioration has crept up my leg. No Pleasant Sensation From the Joint Liniment I suppose I first began to realize the situation when I decided to put a medicated lotion on my aching feet. The product I used is meant for joint issues, but it has several natural ingredients (like rosemary, eucalyptus, lime oil, Scotch pine extract) which give a cooling-warming tingle to the skin, as well as delivering its active ingredients....

From the medical 180-degree turn on pain being recognized as an MS symptom to acknowledgment of the importance of exercise and diet, and now words like “vaccine” and “cure” are making their way into the discussion in a real sense. These past 20-odd years have really seen some massive shifts. Our Understanding of MS Lesions May Be Evolving One comment I remember from my early appointments with my neurological team had to do with the placement of lesions on my brain’s white matter relative to clinical symptoms....

This causes scar tissue (sclerosis, also called plaque or lesions) to form on nerve fibers, disrupting the flow of electrical impulses throughout the nervous system. This nerve damage can lead to a broad range of MS symptoms, from blurred vision to numbness to weakness to loss of balance and more. For people with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), symptoms can worsen significantly, and new symptoms may arise, during relapses, or periods of acute inflammation in the central nervous system....

She once had me repeat the description of my legs, in clinic, so she could get it down verbatim. “My legs feel like two dead sticks, surrounded with liver and wrapped tightly with cellophane. And, the cellophane is the only thing I can feel; it’s like my skin is moving my legs.” I have had skin hyper-sensitivity, off and on, for most of the past six plus years. It’s like, if my skin is touched, grabbed or bumped it’s ok, but if I’m lightly brushed, stroked or scratched, I’M THROUGH THE ROOF!...

It proves the point that drinking in moderation — or abstaining altogether — is the best way to avoid a hangover. In fact, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), there’s no proven way to cure a hangover; it just takes time for the body to recover. Still, that hasn’t stopped researchers and everyday imbibers from trying to learn how to lessen the effects of a night of too much drinking....

“Tanning nasal sprays are supposed to allow you to inhale the product into your nose and develop a tan rather than applying a product to your skin,” says Christine Ko, MD, a Yale Medicine dermatologist and dermatopathologist and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. “Tanning nasal sprays can be dangerous because they are not FDA-approved, and it is not always clear what is in them....

“After practicing yoga, many of us notice that our minds feel clearer and calmer and there seems to be a little bit more energy available to us,” says Baxter Bell, MD, a yoga instructor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who has an individual yoga therapist certification from the International Association of Yoga Therapists (C-IAYT) and is an experienced registered yoga teacher with a 500-hours-of-teacher-training credential from the Yoga Alliance (eRYT 500)....

“Instead, it embraces foods that could be hunted or gathered: meat, fish, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and fruits,” says Erin Dolinski, RD, a clinical dietitian specialist in Royal Oak, Michigan. Swapping a spaghetti-and-meatballs dinner for a plate that’s loaded with veggies and a lean piece of protein may not be easy, but it could be beneficial to your health. Mark Hyman, MD, the author of Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?...

Interim results from one of the studies presented at ESMO found that the drug combination of Balversa (erdafitinib) and cetrelimab is producing meaningful responses in people with newly diagnosed bladder cancer whose cancer has a genetic alteration that renders standard chemotherapy less effective. The other study found that a multidrug chemotherapy cocktail yielded better tumor control after three years than the standard regimen of gemcitabine and cisplatin in people whose bladder cancer had spread into nearby muscle....

Excess weight puts more pressure on your joints, which can lead to injury and inflammation. What’s more, excess weight can interfere with medications that treat psoriatic arthritis, so they don’t work as well. A review published in May 2018 in the journal PLoS ONE found that obesity was linked to a 60 percent greater chance that a class of biologic drugs commonly used to treat psoriatic arthritis, called tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors, wouldn’t work....