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 […]

A research team at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has identified a genetic mutation that is strongly associated with a typical form of migraine headache—migraine with aura.  The research “puts us one step closer to understanding the molecular pathway to pain in migraine,” according to Louis J. Ptáček, senior investigator on the study […]

The proliferation of medical information on the web makes it easier than ever for patients to be informed about their health. It’s also easy to be misinformed and confused by page after page of Google results that are often confusing and contradictory. Last week I posted on Ten Reliable Sources of Health Information on the […]

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 […]

It’s a pleasure to have four of my stories published over the past few months in three different anthologies. Each story, in its own way, explores the theme of traveling with chronic illness. That’s something I think about often as a stroke survivor and autoimmune patient chained to a steady diet of blood thinners to […]

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 […]

  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 […]

When I feel the sniffles coming on, I always reach for some extra vitamin C. And as an autoimmune patient with Antiphospholipid Syndrome (APS) I know to get plenty of rest. But until a few years ago, I’d never thought about Vitamin D.

Healthy hard bodies whose ills amount to the occasional cold or case of shin splints from overdoing the marathon circuit don’t need advice on managing medications. For rest of us these common sense tips on drug safety can apply to everyone, but are but are crucial for stroke and autoimmune patients, anyone with impaired memory, or chronic illnesses that involve multiple meds.