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It’s common for people with psoriatic arthritis to occasionally need a change in their treatment plan, whether it’s adding a medication, switching to another medication within a drug class, or starting a new treatment in a new drug class. But how do you know if it’s time to talk to your doctor about changing your psoriatic arthritis treatment? The first step is often simply knowing “what your baseline is. What was your life like prior to your diagnosis, at the time of diagnosis, and in the last several months,” says Amanda Lusa, MD, a rheumatology fellow at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill....

One of the most important parts of your colonoscopy is the colonoscopy prep. If you don’t do a good job of emptying out your colon, your doctor will not be able to see it clearly. That can result in a missed polyp, a longer procedure, or even the need to repeat the colonoscopy, which you really don’t want. You will need to stop eating solid foods before your colonoscopy. Different doctors have different colonoscopy diets....

Trade routes eventually spread kombucha to Russia and Eastern Europe. During the 1950s and ’60s, the drink was especially popular in Germany, France, and Italy after researchers in Switzerland reported it had similar health benefits to eating yogurt. (1) Kombucha first became commercially available in the United States in 1995, notes the Colorado School of Public Health. (2) Today, you can find kombucha online and at many major grocery stores....

I was having a phone conversation with my special someone the other day. She had been away for a couple weeks and while talking, she said to me, “I miss you.” I responded, “I miss you too!” After we hung up, I began to think about what it means to misssomeone. That feeling can tell you a lot about your relationship with that person and how important he or she is to your sense of self and your daily life....

At the time she had a 4-year-old. She worried about losing her ability to walk, she says. “I thought that losing my ability to walk would be the ultimate irony; I had been a runway model for Los Angeles Fashion Week and Ebony Fashion Fair!” She lived in Southern California and loved trips to the beach. “But you’re supposed to avoid sun exposure with lupus. So, no more beach trips,” she says....

Medical lingo can be intimidating at first, but it doesn’t have to be a source of stress. This glossary can be a first step in helping you understand your condition — the symptoms, the triggers, the possible complications, and available medications — in order to optimize your health while living with lupus. Anticoagulants In cases where lupus causes serious blood clotting, anticoagulants can be used. These medications thin the blood to prevent clots....

— Susan, Georgia Magnesium has hundreds of important functions in the body, from energy production and proper nerve function to muscle relaxation. Studies are mixed about whether its potential heart benefits come from the magnesium itself or from a combination of magnesium and other beneficial nutrients (such as potassium and fiber). Or perhaps it’s simply that people who eat a magnesium-rich diet are more health conscious in general. But there is no question that this important mineral plays a key role in the prevention of cardiovascular disease....

“The first thing I tell a family to do is to contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and use their support and educational resources,” says Andrew Savageau, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. Here are more steps your family can take to help a relative cope with schizophrenia. 1. Learn as much as you can about schizophrenia. There are many misconceptions of schizophrenia in popular culture....

“More is not always better when it comes to medical care. We need to look at what we’re using our healthcare dollars for,” says the first author of the paper, Kevin Platt, MD, an internal medicine resident at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. More than 30 million Americans have diabetes, with 90 to 95 percent of those cases being type 2 diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association....

A study published June 29 in the American Journal of Cardiology examined data from 61,267 adults who participated in the National Health Interview Survey from 2012 to 2017, including 5,851 people (9.6 percent) who said they practiced meditation. These surveys ask about a broad range of health topics, including whether or not people meditate. Compared with people who didn’t meditate, those who did had a lot of heart health benefits, including:...

People who have 15 or more migraine attacks each month are said to have chronic migraine.2 Many people have been working from home since the onset of the pandemic or become permanent telecommuters, and video chats with friends and family have also become more commonplace. One side effect of this setup: The bright, glaring light from a computer can trigger migraine attacks. Other possible reasons for worsening migraine attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the September study, include:...

The medication itself is not the unique aspect of the product. DHE, which was approved for the treatment of migraine in 1946, has become a well-established short-term treatment of migraine and other vascular headaches such as cluster headache, according to the National Headache Foundation. The medication is also given for status migraine (a prolonged and severe attack lasting multiple days). Robert Cowan, MD, a headache specialist and a clinical professor of neurology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, stresses that an intravenous formulation of DHE is generally regarded as the gold-standard for breaking a status migraine that has gone on for greater than 72 hours and has not responded to the usual acute treatments such as triptans, NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen), and antinauseants....

The study, published April 21, 2021, in the Journal of the American Heart Association focused on Native American patients with an average age of 61 who received care at the Absentee Shawnee Tribal Health System in Oklahoma and had never been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. Researchers compared atrial fibrillation diagnosis rates for 1,019 patients who consented to screening and got checked with the smartphone app and for 1,267 patients who didn’t agree to screening and got tested only if they reported symptoms....

Having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2007, the Brooklyn, New York, native thought her condition might get in the way of successful parenting. However, “three and three-quarter years” later, Stamm has not only learned a lot herself about raising Jack while she also contends with the effects of MS, but she has also self-published a book sharing some of those lessons learned. Early Decision Not to Hide Her Multiple Sclerosis From the very beginning, Stamm made the decision not to hide the fact that she had MS from her son....

Anemia Gout Genital Herpes Vertigo Tonsil Stones Strep Throat Flu Psoriasis Hemorrhoids Tuberculosis Multiple Sclerosis Gerd Osteoarthritis Osteoporosis Staph Infection Thrush Athlete’s Foot Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis Pregnancy Mono Migraine Sinus Infection Alopecia Costochondritis Allergy Stomach Ulcer Fifth Disease ADHD Diarrhea Crohn’s Disease Ulcerative Colitis Eczema Ankylosing Spondylitis Hepatitis C Macular Degeneration Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Atopic Dermatitis What is RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus)? Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) in Adults Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) in Children Nausea Ear Pain Cloudy Urine Ketones in Urine Abdominal Pain Cough Cataplexy Vaginal Itching Cyst Ingrown Toenail Early Pregnancy Symptoms Dyspnea Swollen Stomach and Weight Gain What Causes Rheumatoid Arthritis?...

Jim Collins leads a team at Wyss working on anticipatory medical and cellular devices, he said this discovery led him to think about medical applications of this phenomenon, “We discovered that you could deliver very small amounts of noise in the form of mechanical vibration to the soles of subject’s feet and have them balance better.” So much better, in fact, Collins has shown that they can take a 75-year-old and have them balance as well as a 25-year-old when they’re using Wyss’ vibrating shoes....

Presented on June 8, 2019, at the American Society for Nutrition annual meeting in Baltimore, preliminary results from the study indicate that low fruit and vegetable consumption may be responsible for millions of deaths from heart disease and stroke each year worldwide. In fact, the study estimates that 1 in 7 cardiovascular deaths are caused by not eating enough fruit, while 1 in 12 are caused by not eating enough vegetables....

“To my knowledge, our study is the first to assess the relation between adding salt to foods and premature death,” lead author Lu Qi, MD, PhD, HCA Regents Distinguished Chair and professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, said in a release. These findings present new evidence to support recommendations to modify eating behaviors to improve health, said Dr. Qi. “Even a modest reduction in sodium intake, by adding less or no salt to food at the table, is likely to result in substantial health benefits, especially when it is achieved in the general population,” he said....

For the U.S. study, researchers examined the eating habits of 79,952 men. They found that men who consumed the most vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes were 22 percent less likely to develop bowel cancer than their counterparts who rarely ate these foods. But this was true only for men. Among the 93,475 women in the study, whether or not they followed a more plant-based diet didn’t appear to influence their bowel cancer risk, according to the study results, published November 29 in BMC Medicine....

Take, for example, a recent shopping trip to my local Costco. I grabbed a shopping cart before entering, much like any other time. On this visit, though, a bleach wipe container sat on a table inside the door. I dutifully took a wipe to disinfect the cart handle. Then I looked at my hands, wondering if I should wipe them too and thinking about how it might irritate my skin....