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But eczema has another very serious symptom: pain. Inflammation, injury to the skin from scratching, fissures (cracks and wounds), and intolerance to irritants related to eczema can cause pain that ranges in intensity from aggravating to agonizing. Research published in July 2020 in the Swedish journal Acta Dermato-Venereologica found that about 43 percent of the 305 adult and adolescent patients with eczema in the study experienced pain. An investigation published in November 2019 in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology revealed that among 365 participants with atopic dermatitis, 61 percent dealt with pain issues at least once a week and 5 percent had pain daily....

These patients have a new option: On September 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Opzelura (ruxolitinib), a cream for treating mild to moderate atopic dermatitis in patients age 12 years and older who can’t use other topical treatments or don’t get enough symptom relief from other therapies. Opzelura belongs to a class of drugs called JAK (Janus kinase) inhibitors. It is the first JAK inhibitor — either oral or topical — to be FDA-approved for eczema....

EPI is a condition where you are deficient in exocrine pancreatic enzymes, which play a critical role in digesting and absorbing nutrients from food, according to The National Pancreas Foundation. Patients with cystic fibrosis, chronic pancreatitis, or pancreatic cancer are especially likely to have EPI. Without sufficient enzymes, people with EPI can have trouble getting enough nutrients, says Lucy Gettle, RDN, CNSC, a clinical dietitian specialist with the University of Virginia Health System who works with people who have EPI....

My avoidance of needles led me to bolt out of the doctor’s office during a vaccination appointment a few years later. I knew I was destined to be a runner when I sprinted down the hall to elude the nurse. I know I’m not alone in my anxiety around needles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers the following information on its website: “It has been estimated that up to 25 percent of adults have a fear of needles, with most needle fears developing during childhood....

An ostomy is a surgically created opening in your stomach that allows you to pass stool without it going through the lower part of the digestive system, says Aline Charabaty Pishvaian, MD, director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, DC, a part of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Some people may become so sick that they need a lifesaving emergency ostomy, but many people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) choose to have the surgery to improve their quality of life or because their medication is no longer able to control the disease....

Allogeneic (donor) bone marrow and stem cell transplants are used to treat blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. A bone marrow transplant is a type of stem cell transplant in which the cells come from bone marrow. In a stem cell transplant, the cells can also come from another’s blood or blood from a baby’s umbilical cord, according to the American Cancer Society. (2) In either case, the goal of the transplant is to replace your bone marrow with healthy stem cells to treat the cancer....

While people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) often experience these signs of numbness, especially in their hands, the sensations are not directly related to rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes these symptoms are related to an RA complication: carpal tunnel syndrome, a painful condition caused by compression of the median nerve, which runs from the wrist to the fingers. Why Is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Considered an RA Complication? Carpal tunnel syndrome is somewhat common among those with RA; as many as 5 percent of people with RA will develop it....

TGCTs typically involve the synovium, or thin layer of tissue or membrane that covers the inner surface of the joint spaces; bursae, or small fluid-filled sacs that cushion the bones, tendons, and muscles around the joints; and tendon sheath, or layer of membrane that covers a tendon, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD). According to a review published in February 2017 in the journal Orthopaedics and Traumatology: Surgery and Research, there are two main types of TGCT: localized and diffuse....

“Women born after 1976 have a very low risk of hepatitis C infection,” says Camilla Graham, MD, an infectious-disease specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Dr. Graham is an expert in hepatitis C, including the special risks faced by women and children who have the infection. The CDC estimates that anywhere from 2.7 to 3.9 million Americans may have chronic hepatitis C....

About 85 percent of people diagnosed with MS are initially diagnosed with the relapsing form of the condition, usually referred to as relapsing-remitting MS, which is characterized by periods of active symptoms — sometimes called flares or exacerbations — alternating with periods of less-severe symptoms. Eventually, as many as 90 percent of these people reach a stage known as secondary-progressive MS (SPMS), in which symptoms gradually worsen and a person experiences increasing levels of disability....

But there’s one tiny check in the “pro” column for smoking: Cigarette smoking may have a protective effect on ulcerative colitis (UC). A review published in June 2020 in The American Journal of Gastroenterology noted that smokers were no more likely to experience severe ulcerative colitis flares. And, in some studies, smokers were less likely to need a colectomy than nonsmokers. An earlier study in The American Journal of Gastroenterology found that the heaviest smokers were the least likely to develop UC....

According to those partaking in the challenge, frozen honey is a delicious and fun treat. Just fill a plastic bottle or popsicle mold with honey and optional add-ins, like corn syrup for a thinner consistency or food coloring or powdered drink mixes for visual appeal. Then wait anywhere from eight hours to overnight. The result? A supposedly delicious glob of frozen, chewy honey that elicits an ASMR response directly before melting in your mouth....

There’s a nutritional cost involved, too. Take pumpkin. If you roast this festive squash whole but gut the inside and toss the remains, you’re missing out on valuable nutrition! Those pumpkin seeds contain antioxidants, iron, magnesium, zinc, and fiber, according to the USDA. As the World Health Organization points out, eating a whole-foods diet rich in nutrients such as these can help protect against chronic conditions like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes....

“Eco-anxiety can be mild or more severe,” says Caroline Hickman, PhD, a lecturer and eco-anxiety researcher at the University of Bath in England. Hickman has experience helping people cope with all forms of eco-anxiety. She and others say there are several helpful ways to lessen the burden of climate-related distress so that people can move forward with their lives and contribute in a positive way to the fight against climate change....

How to Lose 50 Pounds: Strategies That Work A two-year study of 1,801 obese women working on a weight-loss goal found that those who included one or more of the following strategies in their 24-month effort were most successful at losing weight: Counting calories to cut caloriesLowering the amount of fat in their dietEating more fruits and vegetablesBeing more physically activeCutting sweets out of their dietEating smaller portions Women who used some or all of these strategies lost weight, while those who didn’t use any of them actually gained....

And the part you may dread the most is not the test itself, for which most people are put to sleep with light sedation, but the notorious lead-up, which involves drinking a bowel preparation designed to clean out your colon the day before the test, along with nothing else but a clear liquid diet. While few people have ever considered it at all fun to prep for a colonoscopy, there are ways to make it more bearable — and the screening test more successful — even before you begin chugging the prep....

You may have kept in touch with your closest friends during the past year of isolation, and maybe you found it easier to find time to connect. “It was a pause,” says Mahzad Hojjat, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, who studies friendships and close relationships. “It was an opportunity to catch up with old friends that maybe lived on the other side of the country or in another country....

The joint statement, published in NEJM, warns that rapidly rising global temperatures could bring “catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.” “Despite the world’s necessary preoccupation with COVID-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions,” write the scientists who authored the editorial. The article praises governments, financial institutions, and businesses that have set net-zero emissions targets and goals aimed to protect at least 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030....

But if you’ve been on the job for a while and still feel as if you can’t do anything right, despite having been hired for your expertise and experience, it may be that an inferiority complex is keeping you from peak performance. According to Nickia Lowery, a licenced professional counselor with Optimum Purpose Counseling and Education in Lawrenceville, Georgia, some of the ways that the persistent, irrational signs of inferiority complex might pop up at work include:...

I was among them. I am a cofounder of The Breasties, a nonprofit organization that provides free retreats, events, and a resourceful online community for those affected by breast and reproductive cancers. Four months ago, I had a preventive bilateral mastectomy to reduce my risk of developing hereditary breast cancer. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I lost my mother to breast cancer at a young age, and I’ve spent years going back and forth between screening, genetic testing, and biopsies....