When 4½-year-old Leon Sidari got sick a couple of days before last Christmas, his parents, both of them doctors, weren’t immediately concerned. Leon had never had a serious illness. “We treated his fever, and thought he had a run-of-the-mill cold,” says Leon’s mother Laura, a psychiatrist. When Leon woke up the next morning, he was having trouble breathing, and his parents rushed him to a hospital in San Antonio, Texas....
Schizophrenia is a complex disease. The causes aren’t well understood, and experts worry that the lack of understanding contributes to the lack of treatment. But insights from these artistic and intelligent people with schizophrenia can help others understand the human side of living with the condition. Where to Get More Information, or Help, for Brain Diseases Such as Schizophrenia The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) are excellent resources for those looking to find treatment and support for schizophrenia in their local area....
Personal trainers are fitness professionals who work with individuals to teach exercise form and technique, keep clients accountable to their exercise goals, and create customized workout plans based on the individual’s specific health and fitness needs. RELATED: How Much Exercise Is Enough? Many exercise institutions, such as the American Council on Exercise (ACE), the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), and the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) certify personal trainers....
That convenience helped motivate Jennifer Ashton, MD, the chief medical correspondent for Good Morning America and ABC News and the author of a new book, The Self-Care Solution: A Year of Becoming Happier, Healthier, and Fitter — One Month at a Time, take on a month-long push-up and plank challenge. Ashton’s objective was a simple one: Do as many push-ups and planks as you can every day for 30 consecutive days....
The most common sign of an ulcer is a burning pain that is either made better by eating or aggravated between one and three hours after a meal, when food can no longer neutralize the acid produced by the stomach. Other ulcer symptoms include vomiting, gastrointestinal bleeding, and severe abdominal pain or bloating, brought on by a penetrating ulcer that has perforated and needs emergency surgical repair. Horrible gas and excessive bloating are more likely to be associated with gallstone-related disease, dyspepsia, or irritable bowel syndrome....
Doctors rely on a variety of methods and tools to accomplish this. These generally include biopsy (removing skin, lymph-node samples, or other tissues and sending them to a pathology lab to be examined under a microscope); or, for more advanced cancers, imaging tests such as CT, MRI, or PET scans. (1) Accurate staging is vital for determining the best course of treatment. For people with advanced melanoma, for instance, researchers have, in recent years, developed breakthrough drugs that harness the power of the body’s own immune system to fight the disease....
For the study, published October 4 in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers examined data on 166,000 people who received care through the Veterans Affairs health system and were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 2003 and 2015. Half these individuals started treatment with statins during the study period, and the other half did not. Diabetes progression, including dangerous spikes in blood sugar or the need for new medications to manage blood sugar, occurred with about 56 percent of participants on statins, compared with 48 percent of people who didn’t use these cholesterol-lowering pills....
Sometimes, it is not only the visible part of the tongue that swells, but also the back of the tongue, the mouth, the gums, and occasionally the larynx or voice box, says Lorraine Smith, MD, of the Osborne Head and Neck Institute in Los Angeles. The tongue is primarily a muscular structure covered by layers of cells called epithelium. Its surface is lined with taste buds, which allows us to differentiate tastes like bitter, sweet, and salty....
When he and his wife, Christine, met in Anguilla, an island in the Eastern Caribbean, in 2008, they often went out to eat, filling their plates with delicious barbecued meats, fritters and patties, and fried fish. When the couple moved to New York, in 2010, where Christine grew up, home-cooked meals consisted of restaurant-style burgers, steaks, and pizza. The couple ate the same foods on a daily basis. They both also smoked cigarettes — at his peak, Nota smoked a pack a day — and got the same limited amounts of exercise....
— Mary, Minnesota Darkening of the armpit skin can be caused by a number of conditions. Since others in your family have the same problem, you may have acanthosis nigricans, which can be hereditary and is characterized by dark patches of thick, velvety skin on the underarms, thighs, and/or sides of the neck. It’s often associated with insulin resistance or other hormonal imbalances. It’s thought that elevated insulin levels can overstimulate skin cells, leading to thickening and darkening of the skin in certain areas....
Perhaps for those reasons, today fewer Americans than ever are trying to lose weight. (1) But in this age of never-ending fad diets, the Body Reset diet brings a tempting new option: a 15-day, smoothie-based, low-exercise detox that aims to help followers shed unwanted pounds — and keep them off. Harley Pasternak, celebrity trainer and author of The 5-Factor Diet, created the smoothie-based Body Reset diet with the aim of keeping dieting simple....
I’ve oft said that giving a child an unusual name could be beneficial as, at least in my case, it gave me permission to advocate for myself from an early age. How many times can a 5- or 6-year-old stand up to an adult and tell them that they are wrong (in their pronunciation of their name)? It’s an empowerment that can stick with them for life. RELATED: Best of Tippi MS: How to Be Your Own Health Advocate...
But the exact mechanism by which stress induces disease has remained a mystery. Until now. A review published in June 2017 in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience concluded that inflammation is a common pathway of stress-related diseases. “Chronic inflammation is an essential component of chronic diseases,” the authors wrote. “There’s no one simple answer,” says Alka Gupta, MD, codirector of integrative health at the Brain and Spine Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City....
Breast cancer starts with a tumor in the breast. A tumor is a mass of abnormal cells that rapidly divide and grow. Most tumors begin in either the lobules (the glands that produce milk) or in the ducts (the tubes that bring milk to the nipple). Though it is less common, a tumor can also begin in the connective tissue of the breast. The largest risk factor for breast cancer is simply being a woman: An estimated 12 percent of women who have an average risk of breast cancer will develop it at some point in their lifetimes....
HIV infection is a progressive disease, meaning that it typically worsens over time. In the early stages, the symptoms may be mild and easily mistaken for an illness like the flu. However, as the disease advances and breaks down the immune system, other, more serious symptoms can develop. It’s important, therefore, to recognize the signs of HIV at different stages of the infection. By doing so, you can be tested and begin taking life-extending HIV treatment....
This week we discuss the COVID-19 vaccine rollout with Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, the director of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Listen and subscribe on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or Google so you don’t miss the next episode. And if you like what you hear, a five-star rating goes a long way in helping us Track the Vax! That was a big ethical question and undertaking....
One in three women in the United States experience intimate partner violence, which is defined as physical, sexual, or psychological harm committed by a current or former partner or spouse. Also called domestic violence, these encounters can often cause traumatic brain injuries (TBI) that occur when the brain is twisted, stretched, penetrated, bruised, or swollen as the result of rapid movement within the skull. To see how well understood the TBI risk is, researchers conducted focus groups with 49 domestic violence survivors, 45 staff workers, and 17 administrators at service agencies participating in a brain injury awareness project run by the Ohio Domestic Violence Network....
But just because a child constantly runs around, refuses to do what you say, or has a room that looks like a tornado tore through it doesn’t mean attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is the cause. ADHD: Is It or Isn’t It? While it’s possible your child’s behavior is due to ADHD, it may also be due to: Normal growth and developmentAnother medical condition (such as a thyroid imbalance)Simple immaturity...
Eisai Inc., the maker of Belviq and Belviq XR (lorcaserin) said in a February 13, 2020, statement that it is voluntarily withdrawing the drugs, even though the company didn’t find the same cancer signal in its own analysis of clinical trial data that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identified. “Patients should stop using the medication Belviq and Belviq XR (lorcaserin) and talk to their health care professionals about other treatment options for weight loss,” Janet Woodcock, MD, the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a February 13, 2020, statement....
GEP-NETs are sometimes called carcinoid tumors or islet cell tumors. They typically develop in neuroendocrine cells, which produce hormones. GEP-NETs can be cancerous (malignant) or noncancerous (benign). They’re usually slow-growing, taking many years to form, and may not cause symptoms until they’ve spread to other parts of the body. (1,2) A functional GEP-NET is one that secretes extra hormones. Some types include: Carcinoid These tumors secrete abnormal levels of serotonin, a hormone that helps regulate mood and multiple other bodily functions....
