So far, this has been a three-bears summer where I live in Lafayette, swinging from a too-cold foggy chill to a too-hot swelter with the sun beating down and the temp pushing past 100 degrees. I’m missing those “just-right” days we usually count on at this time of year. The chill is easy to […]

New research suggests that statins, traditionally used for cholesterol lowering, could be used in the management of patients with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), a blood clotting disorder that causes miscarriages, deep vein thromboses, and strokes. The new research shows that the statin fluvastatin could reduce the inflammatory proteins that are elevated in patients with APS. The […]

Professor Anisur Rahman of University College, London, discusses the latest thinking on Antiphospholipid Syndrome, its causes and treatments in a 35-minute lecture delivered October 10, 2012, at the Royal Society of Medicine. The easy-to-understand video presentation, with slides, is available here.  (http://bit.ly/VORFdC) It’s a great resources to help educate physicians, patients, and their families. Antiphospholipid […]

Have you ever gone to a doctor’s office armed with information pertinent to your illness that you’ve gleaned from the web, only to have him (or her) do the eye roll that seems to send the message: “I don’t have time for this?” That may be changing. Everywhere these days, it seems the health care […]

  Am I Crazy? As an autoimmune patient with APS, as a stroke  survivor on blood thinners, people sometimes ask why I travel to places teeming with opportunities for disaster. “Places where medical care is thin, the water is often unsafe and the food chancy; places with infectious diseases, malarial mosquitoes, venomous snakes and the […]

  It’s a jungle out there and I just can’t get enough of it! Come help me celebrate publication of my story “Why I Still Travel to the Wild” at a book party sponsored by Left Coast Writers. It’s  on Monday evening, November 14, at 6 pm at Book Passage San Francisco store at the […]

The Australians call them ‘mozzies’–such a cute name–as though mosquitoes were just pesky little creatures that buzz and bite, one of the minor annoyances of venturing off the beaten track. I used to think of them that way, too, until I started traveling to the tropics and meeting people who’d had malaria, dengue fever (its […]

Here’s a great opportunity to learn more about autoimmune disease: a free public forum in San Francisco on Saturday, August 20, at the Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel. Details at:  http://sanfranpublicforum.eventbrite.com/ Rita Baron-Faust, Author of The Autoimmune Connection, will speak on “Women and Autoimmunity: Making the Connection,” and Virginia. Ladd,  President and Executive Director […]

  In May, I posted on the benefits of Vitamin D as a way to help reduce the risk of blood clots – as a stroke and APS (antiphospholipid syndrome) patient, that’s  always on my mind. Now a new study, reported in Internal Medicine News, has linked low Vitamin D to increased musculoskeletal pain. The […]

  June is APS awareness month – APS, the acronym for Antiphospholipid Syndrome, the blood clotting disorder that caused my stroke nine years ago. I remember feeling like the doomed heroine of a bad sci-fi when I first learned the cause of my stroke – an unpronounceable, incomprehensible disease: ‘Antiphospholipid Syndrome,’ or APS. I’d never […]