Nocturnal Leg Cramps: Night-time Calf Muscle Pain
Nocturnal leg cramps can lead to a rude awakening: You're suddenly sleepless and in pain in the middle of the night. Symptoms of nocturnal leg cramps include excruciating contractions of the calf muscles [more…]
Looking at Liver Function Bloodwork
When you go for a physical, your healthcare practitioner frequently orders blood tests. Many folks first find out they have hep C after undergoing a routine blood test and finding that one or more of the [more…]
Comparing Formula and Breast Milk
One of the major issues to consider when deciding how to feed your baby is the quality of the food itself. Perhaps you've heard that breastfed babies get hungry sooner than bottle-fed babies. Does that [more…]
Making the Grade with the Gleason Score
When men who have prostate cancer talk to each other, they sometimes exchange their Gleason scores or their cancer stages with an intensity that two combat veterans might use when exchanging the name of [more…]
Lowering Your Salt Intake
Salt, which is made up of 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride, is critical to your life. You can't live without it. Sodium helps to maintain your blood's water content, serves to balance the acids [more…]
Knowing When Not to Massage
As innocuous as massage may seem, there are still times when you should refrain from giving one because it may adversely affect a health condition of the person who receives it. [more…]
Taking Your Blood Pressure Correctly
Your blood pressure can be taken with a mercury blood pressure gauge, an aneroid manometer, or an electronic device for measuring the blood pressure, as long as the device has been recently calibrated [more…]
Defining Digestion
Digestion is the process of changing food into a form that the body can absorb and use as energy or as the raw materials to repair and build new tissue. It's a two-part process, half mechanical, half chemical [more…]
Understanding the Principles of Feng Shui
Everyone appreciates the benefits of beautiful, comfortable living environments; America's billion-dollar interior decorating industry attests to this fact. However, Feng Shui takes the approach that your [more…]
Understanding Genital Warts and Herpes
One out of four Americans between the ages of 15 and 55 will contract at least one sexually transmitted disease. The more you know, the more you can prevent this from happening to you. Below, two incurable [more…]
Pinpointing the Causes of Hypothyroidism
The two most common causes of hypothyroidism are iodine deficiency and chronic thyroiditis. Iodine deficiency is rare in the United States and Europe but very common throughout the rest of the world. Chronic [more…]
Reviewing Mom's Health Benefits of Breastfeeding
Although many breastfeeding advocates focus on the positive effects for the baby, moms also reap physical benefits from breastfeeding. For starters, breastfeeding is the best way to get your body back [more…]
Evaluating Your Esophagus
When you're talking about tests, this section is the Big Time for your esophagus. To reach this level of testing, you must exhibit symptoms of GERD which suggest esophageal damage that requires your doctor [more…]
Maximize Fertility: Monitoring Ovulation
Assuming that you know the basics of how to get pregnant, many people don't know how to make the process efficient. You'll want to give yourself the best chance of getting pregnant. To do that, you need [more…]
Knowing Which Drugs Raise Blood Pressure
Plenty of drugs are on the market that actually raiseblood pressure on their own or because they block the action of a drug that lowers blood pressure. If you can possibly avoid them, do so. Sometimes, [more…]
Understanding How Stress Can Make You Sick
Researchers estimate that 75 to 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for complaints and conditions that are, in some way, stress-related. Every week, 112 million people take some form [more…]
Understanding the Dangers and Causes of Hypertension
Hypertension isn't called a killer for nothing. High blood pressure is a significant risk factor for developing coronary artery disease (CAD), the leading cause of death in the United States, and it's [more…]
Assessing the Consequences of Smoking
The physical and medical consequences of smoking are numerous, and the extent and seriousness of smoking-related illness are shocking. More than 450,000 Americans die each year as a result of smoking. [more…]
Building Up and Breaking Down: Your Bones Day by Day
Bone is constantly reshaping itself in a complex process of building and remodeling. You don't notice this reshaping because it happens on a microscopic level. The major players involved in bone building [more…]
Noting the Signs and Symptoms of Hyperthyroidism
Hyperthyroidism, whether caused by Graves' disease or another condition, produces consistent signs and symptoms that affect every part of your body. The major abnormalities are described in the following [more…]
Identifying Variations on the Migraine Theme
As if migraines aren't big enough mischief-makers as it is, they also like to sing show tunes and take on different personas. So here we turn to migraine variants [more…]
Modifying Your Exercise Routine for a Healthy Pregnancy
During pregnancy, you need to modify your exercise routine whenever something isn't quite right. Modifying means fine-tuning your exercise program to keep it safe and effective. Your baby's health is your [more…]
Sex after a Heart Attack
Not every ailment is visible, and one of the most common problems that affect sexual functioning is a heart attack. [more…]
Clearing Up Common Myths about Thyroid Health
Thanks to the Internet, you have access to incredible amounts of information about your thyroid. Unfortunately, much (perhaps most) of it is not accurate. Much of what you read online is based on the experiences [more…]
Looking Into Systemic Conditions that Mimic Alzheimer's Disease
A number of other conditions can mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, including an underactive thyroid, vitamin deficiencies, too much calcium in the blood, and syphilis that's spread to the brain [more…]
