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Four new drugs promise major relief for arthritis
For years, millions of Americans with arthritis have been caught in a troublesome trap. If they don’t take medication, they often suffer severe pain and life-wrecking disability. Yet if they do, they risk worrisome side effects. Some drugs, like methotrexate and high dose prednisone, can suppress the immune system. Others — notably painkillers like aspirin,…
The other ways the sexes differ
Women, at least in America, outlive men by six years. So how, then, do you account for this: Women are five times as likely as men to get migraines and osteoporosis, two to three times as likely to get seriously depressed, and much more likely to get diseases like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and scleroderma, in…
New therapy for trauma is doubted
Eleven years ago, Francine Shapiro, was strolling through a park in Los Gatos, Calif., thinking dark thoughts. Suddenly, her eyes started darting back and forth, a spontaneous burst of what scientists call saccadic movement, much like the rapid eye movements that occur during dreams. Weirder yet, Shapiro noticed that as her eyes moved, her thoughts…
The debt we owe the guinea pigs
Fifty years ago this month, a band of researchers fanned out through the neighborhoods of Framingham, urging residents to sign up for a study designed to track ordinary people to try to detect early signs of heart disease – then, as now, the No. 1 killer of Americans. One of the 5,209 who agreed was…
Fish oil seen cutting risk of Mental Illness
Fish oils that are already believed to reduce the risk of heart disease may help combat a number of serious psychiatric illnesses as well, researchers said yesterday. At an international conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, scientists said that though the data are preliminary, a growing body of evidence suggests that higher consumption…
Good for you, no matter how you slice them
Ripening in the late-summer sun, filling garden baskets and salad bowls, reddening gazpacho in kitchen blenders, simmering in saucepans for spaghetti sauce, tomatoes might just be the best, maybe the only, reason for welcoming the end of summer. And beyond the tempting taste – a blessed relief from the cardboard baseballs we get the rest…
Ginkgo stock is continues to rise
Like many others at midlife or beyond, Wendy Fink, a health educator in her 50s, was appalled at the way her memory kept conking out. “I was having trouble getting words,” says Fink, who lives in Royalston. “I was feeling very stressed about this.” So she tried ginkgo, an herbal memory-booster that’s getting new respect…
A childhood with no cones or hotdogs?
When the seventh and posthumous – edition of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s “Baby and Child Care” was published recently, the guru’s endorsement of a vegetarian diet for kids over 2 caused many nutritionists and doctors to choke on their leafy greens. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, professor emeritus of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, thinks it’s “absolutely…
Your Health History – Up For Grabs?
Today, the federal government is taking the first steps toward a national system that would give each of us a single number or “identifier” linked to every medical record ever kept on us. It’s a prospect that privacy advocates fear may destroy what little confidentiality remains in the era of computerized medical records. Granted, so…
Stretching your fitness routine
Twenty years ago, the gurus at the American College of Sports Medicine told us to get off our duffs and get those lungs and hearts pumping. Eight years ago, they told us to pump iron, too. Now, they’ve added a third cornerstone to their fitness guidelines — get flexible. Don’t groan; it’s long overdue. And…
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