Columns
From Biotech to bees, new answers to MS
Kelly Ames, a staff assistant at Harvard Business School, is only 28 years old. But in the six years that she’s had MS, a neurological disease that causes loss of coordination, partial blindness, even paralysis, she’s tried nearly every remedy in sight. Drugs — steroids — helped some, she says, but she hated the side…
It helps to prepare for surgery
In late December, Ellen Wolk, a 36-year old Arlington woman, lay on a gurney amid the other patients awaiting surgery at Deaconess Hospital, getting more anxious by the minute. Her doctors weren’t sure, but they were worried that she had cancer of the thyroid, a plum-sized gland in the neck that makes a hormone critical…
Loneliness Can Be The Death Of Us
A little over 100 years ago, a small band of Italians left Roseto Val Fortore, a village in the foothills of the Apennines, in hopes of a better life amid the slate quarries of eastern Pennsylvania. Naming their new village Roseto, the group soon recreated the strong community ties they had nurtured in Italy. They…
Winners
Heaven knows that every one of the 38,500 official entrants (and even the 10,000 “bandits”) in today’s Boston Marathon should get some kind of a medal just for getting out there and doing what the rest of us can’t – or won’t. But for many on the sidelines, it’s the athletes with handicaps – 106…
A battle plan for surviving the repetitive strain wars
Jeff Del Papa’s hands and forearms gave out five years ago, after 15 years of pounding keyboards as a computer programmer for a company in Wilmington. Today, Del Papa, a 38-year-old Watertown man who once played medieval muscial instruments and opened jars with a flick of the wrist, is back working as a programmer, only…
Trying everything, more and more cancer patients seek out ancient Chinese remedies to augment modern medicine
For Ingrid Schorr, 36, an actor and writer who lives in Arlington, the bomb dropped last September: a totally unexpected diagnosis of breast cancer. The diagnosis was traumatic enough, she says, but she also felt “desperate and sad” about having to undergo chemotherapy. She knew it would leave her weak and drained. Her instincts were…
All vision problems are not equal
After 33 years in the rough and tumble of Cambridge politics, including several stints as mayor, Walter Sullivan, 73, has developed a new — albeit unwanted — preoccupation during retirement: eye troubles. In fact, there are four major vision problems that often plague older people — cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy — and…
We may be putting too much stress on stress
You spend months, maybe years, trying to get pregnant, watching in despair as friend after friend accomplishes this most elemental of biological tasks with apparent ease. Sooner or later, one of these blissfully fertile souls will look you in the eye and, with the best of intentions, diagnose your problem: Stress. Or perhaps you cough…
The guru does lunch: hold the fat — all of it
Dr. Dean Ornish, the California guru whose radical approach to diet has been shown to reverse heart disease, settles in at the corner table at the Ritz cafe, facing Temptation. Temptation, his luncheon partner one recent winter day, points to the lobster bisque, the special Ritz cheeseburger with aged cheddar, the Boston cream pie. “They…
Wax, pluck, zap. Hair today, gone tomorrow
Middle age is a time of many ironies – like increasing wisdom amid shrinking job options – but one of the most medically bizarre is this: At midlife, we start losing hair where we want it and start growing it where we don’t. Many men, especially those with genetic bad luck, start growing hair on…
Categories
Aging
Alcohol
Allergies
Alternative Medicine
Anxiety
Breast Cancer
Cancer
Dental
Depression
Exercise/Fitness
General Medicine
Heart Disease
Hormone replacement
Loneliness/Loss
Nutrition
Pain
Sleep Problems
Women's issues