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Science of Resilience: How to Thrive in Life
How do you thrive in life no matter where you are in life? If you’re lucky to live long enough, you know that life has many pieces to it. It has the wonderful bits: falling in love, having a career, traveling, following your passion. And it often contains difficult times: illness, divorce, and loss. How…
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You’ve been invaded – by your Microbiome!
“If you like science fiction, I’m going to open with this,” begins David Granet. “You have been invaded. And the invaders are 10 times more than the number of cells in your body. They affect your health, they affect much about what your life does, and about who you are, and what you look like.…
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The Mind and Methods of V.S. Ramachandran
“A lot of the time when you think the patient is crazy, it means you’re not smart enough to figure it out.” – V.S. Ramachandran Seeing numbers as colors. Feeling the pain from a phantom limb. Sensing shadowy figures around your bed. V.S. Ramachandran, PhD studies these seeming anomalies of the mind to discover the…
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Prevention is the Essence of Wellness and Good Health
Certainly it is better, easier and cheaper to prevent disease than treat it. Although preventive medicine has focused traditionally on children and younger adults, current medical thinking is that adults — and especially older adults — also need specific attention to preventive medicine to minimize the chance of acute and chronic illnesses. This series with…
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Silicone Breast Implants and the Politics of Risk
Silicone, not to be confused with Silicon, a chemical element that exists in nature, was first polymerized in the late 19th century. Not much was done with it until the 1930s when a chemist at Dow Corning refined it for use as a lubricant in submarines and planes. The first known medical use of silicone…
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Learn the Facts About Sugar
A dangerous white powder is in the news – sugar. We’ve heard so much about the harmful effects of sugar lately, that it may be hard to distinguish facts from fiction, and it’s left many consumers with more questions than answers. That’s a problem because, let’s face it, when we’re talking about possibly reducing something…
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Arthritis – From Snake Oil to Science and Success
Achy, stiff joints brought on by osteoarthritis have been experienced by many millions of people for a very long time. Experts have found skeletons dating to the Ice Age that show signs of osteoarthritis. Sometimes called “wear-and-tear” arthritis, osteoarthritis is a common condition that many people develop during middle age or older. In 2011, more…
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Women’s Health: A Critical Update Across the Lifespan
It seems obvious that men and women are different, biologically. But until the 20th century, serious women’s health research was largely neglected. It wasn’t until 1987 that the National Institutes of Health adopted guidelines to include women in clinical research. Fortunately, things have changed. In this new series from UC San Francisco’s Mini Medical School…
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Preventing HIV By Understanding Patterns of Transmission
“Understanding the spread of infectious diseases in a population is the key to controlling them.” AIDS is one of the most devastating infectious diseases in human history, and its cause, HIV, has been responsible for millions of infections. Every 9.5 minutes, someone in the U.S. is infected with HIV. It is estimated that there are…
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Need more vitamin D? Step outside!
Our growing concern for skin cancer has given sunshine a bad name. New research on the benefits of sunshine – and vitamin D in particular – indicates that it’s time to make friends with the sun, once again. You may know that vitamin D is necessary for Calcium absorption, but according to Dr. Robert P.…