Hot MedFax

Though they both happened long ago, they are still among two of the worst experiences of my life. I'm talking about miscarriages.  Now a new study is finding that most people don't know the first thing about them, and what causes them.  It's not stress.  It's not doing something wrong.  It's not even alcohol or smoking.  It's almost always genetic -- something wrong with the chromosomes in the fetus. And even though this may soothe, somewhat, the women who suffer them, we still suffer shame, guilt and heart-breaking sadness.  The worst part?  No one talks about it. I remember after finally becoming pregnant with my son, mentioning in passing to a salesperson that I'd had two miscarriages (I can't for the life of me remember why!), and this huge look of relief spread over his face.  "My wife had one!" he said.  You don't tell people because you feel like you are defective.  Your body let you down, couldn't do it, especially some...

If you're anything like me, if a doctor says something that insults  or embarrasses you, you may never go back, a new study has found. I can remember when I was lugging around 30 post-partum pounds and a new internist I was planning to start seeing told me I really needed to lose weight.  I dropped the pounds (he was actually my incentive to join Weight Watchers) but I never went back. But not everyone gives up on a doctor who challenges them.  Some people lie the next time they see the doctor ("Oh yes, I cut 'way back on my calories"), while others decide to draw the wagons around and take the advice. Shame and guilt as a direct result of interacting with a doctor are quite common, says Christine Harris, professor of psychology in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences, as are both positive and negative reactions at newswise.com.  Gaining insight into patient reactions is important, the she and her co-authors write, because “more than one third of all...

I could hardly believe it myself.  But a new story in The New York Times today says the number of people who hoard in this country is between 3 and 5%. Now, I'm not talking about people like my husband, who saves every newspaper because he's going to read it, he really is, one day soon. But there are people who hoard ashtrays and stuffed animals and clothing and shoes until it's piled all around them.  And maybe it's because I used to love the show, "Hoarders" on TLC, but this fascinated me to learn  that many people do indeed live amid chest-high piles of newspapers and dirty dishes and pet messes and just about anything else you could think of. I had to stop watching because, over time, it was just too depressing to see all these very sad individuals who, usually after some catastrophe -- a divorce, death of a child, a diagnosis of late-stage cancer --  found that buying and buying and buying things, stockpiling things, helped salve the hurt and loss. ...