Harvard Health Blog
Read posts from experts at Harvard Health Publishing covering a variety of health topics and perspectives on medical news.
My local farmers’ market was busy with the Saturday morning bustle of people buying homemade goods and locally grown fruits and vegetables. One of the vendors had a swarm of customers inspecting freshly baked breads. “They’re sprouted-grain breads,” the baker told me, and explained that they tasted better and were healthier than regular whole-grain breads. A sample was delicious — the recipe included sprouted Kamut and spelt, and the bread had a nutty flavor — but was it more nutritious than the regular whole-grain bread I’d just purchased from another vendor?
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a condition that causes damage to the substance that covers nerve cells. This interrupts normal communication between nerves, leading to problems with movement, speech, and other functions. We don’t know what causes MS but we think it is an autoimmune disease.
The changes in understanding around substance use disorders are making treatment more readily available to those who need it and reducing the stigma attached to addiction, but may make those with addiction in their family history feel that the change has come too late for them.
Today I led a small group of medical students on inpatient rounds. We had a patient on the seventh floor of the hospital. As I always do, I headed for the stairs, but told the students they could take the elevators if they wanted. (I promised them that they wouldn’t lose any points on their academic performance!)
As many as 10% of children in the US have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, creating challenges for them as well as teachers, classmates, and family members. Understanding the condition is crucial to treating it successfully.
Once you have taught a child the mechanics of riding a bicycle, the real challenge is teaching them how to ride safely on the streets. Our tips will help instill important safety and awareness practices in your young rider.
Challenging a long-held belief, a new study found that women who received epidural anesthesia during labor did not have prolonged labor or higher rates of cesarean births.
Use of mobile devices by children up to age 8 has exploded in recent years. This isn’t necessarily bad, but parents should be aware of how much time their children are spending on devices daily, and make the effort to ensure they are being used responsibly and appropriately.
Lately, I’ve been checking the number of steps I take each day. It’s not hard to do. My phone tracks it without me even asking it to. It also tracks the number of flights of stairs I’ve climbed and the number of miles I covered. And there are other options: I could track how often I stand up, how many calories I’ve burned by being active, and how many minutes I’ve engaged in brisk activity.
As a primary care doctor, I see a lot of women dealing with the inconvenience, discomfort, and embarrassment of urinary incontinence (unintended leaking of urine). Some are comfortable bringing this up right away. Others suffer needlessly because they feel too shy or awkward to mention it.
Spending time every day asking children questions in an open-ended way that encourages them to talk fosters an openness that can help parents know what’s going on in a child’s life outside the home, including any potential bullying issues.
Medication side effects are a big problem. It’s estimated that about half of filled prescriptions are not taken as directed, and a major reason for this is side effects. If you’ve ever had diarrhea, felt sleepy, or developed a rash after taking a new medication, you know how unpleasant side effects can be. And sometimes it’s much worse than unpleasant: drug side effects can cause permanent damage and even be deadly.
In the late 1980s, psychologist James Pennebaker developed a form of writing therapy called expressive writing. When you engage in expressive writing, you write about your deepest thoughts and feelings without concern for spelling, grammar, or sentence construction. It is free-flowing and unfocused self-expression.
Let’s face it: we are all getting older. As I write this, I am aging, and as you read this, you are, too! Today I want to talk about an aspect of aging that we don’t often think about, but which research shows we can do something about: osteoporosis, or brittle bone disease.
Did you know certain viruses can cause cancer? Two common examples include hepatitis C (which is linked with liver cancer) and human papilloma virus (HPV, which causes cervical cancer). The discovery of these virus-cancer connections is particularly important, because if a vaccine can prevent these viral infections it may also prevent cancer. And there is preliminary evidence that the HPV vaccine is making this happen. More on that in a moment.
In August, The New York Times published a guest op-ed by a man named David Roberts who suffered from severe chronic pain for many years before finally finding relief. The piece immediately went viral, with distinguished news journalist and personality Dan Rather posting it to his Facebook page with the addendum that it could “offer hope” to some pain patients. However, for many of us in the chronic pain community, particularly women, the piece was regarded with weariness and frustration.
Find out a Harvard Medical School doctor’s secret to a quick, budget friendly, and simple healthy breakfast.
While it’s true that one’s inclination to happiness is partially inherited, an individual’s choices and behaviors also contribute significantly, and research has found that the happiest people all have certain traits in common.
Charles Schmidt As they get older, do men with prostate cancer come to regret the treatment decisions they made? A new study of men diagnosed during the mid-1990s indicates that some of them will. Richard Hoffman, a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, […]
The experience of having an “earworm”—a song that’s stuck in your head—is extremely common. But why do they happen? And how do you get rid of one?
The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending that parents approach feeding their babies based on signs of hunger and fullness, with the intent of preventing obesity.
Charles Schmidt Does screening for prostate cancer with the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test save lives? A new study suggests that it does, but at the risk of exposing men with slow-growing tumors that may not be life-threatening to treatments they may not really need. Published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the study reconciles conflicting results […]
While there are more than 100 types of arthritis, osteoarthritis is by far the most common.
Plenty of research supports the common-sense notion that a healthy lifestyle can prevent or treat many diseases. A diet high in fruits, veggies, whole grains, and plant protein and low in processed carbs, added sugars, saturated fats; regular physical activity; and emotional well-being are the potent treatments that can prevent the need for or even replace many prescription medications.
