Sarah Densmore

Ah, spring. The trees bud, the flowers bloom and the grasses flourish. But for 60 million Americans, our beautiful, burgeoning landscape brings a host of misery, including sneezing, sore throat, and watery eyes.There are a wealth of both over-the-counter and prescription medications available to ease allergy misery.

If you’ve ever tried to locate the Facebook passageway that takes you through the steps to permanently delete your account, you know it’s not easy to find. That’s because the popular social networking Web site doesn't present an obvious “delete my account” button. Deactivating your Facebook account is not the same thing as deleting it.

It probably happened slowly and innocently enough: a quick beer with coworkers after a hard day. Or maybe it was just one glass of wine to relax after the kids were tucked into bed. But lately you’ve noticed that alcohol has become an increasingly important part of life for you or someone close to you. You might be telling yourself that alcoholism only happens to people who are alone, unemployed, or homeless.

About 75 percent of bad breath originates in our mouths. Decaying food caught between our teeth, coupled with dead cells and bacteria sitting on our tongues are the major culprits. Regular flossing and brushing our teeth and tongue can improve or eliminate many cases of bad breath, which is medically termed halitosis.

Choosing a therapist can seem like a daunting task. You’re already overwhelmed by life’s challenges. How do you find a therapist with the right temperament, training, and therapeutic focus to help you figure out healthy ways to overcome your particular problems? Luckily, there are plenty of referral sources you can turn to and common sense questions you can ask that will make it easier to choose the right mental health professional for you.

Every year, millions of people enroll in thousands of clinical trials conducted around the world. These research studies are crucial to evaluating the effectiveness and safety of new medical procedures and medications. Maybe you’ve heard the results of various clinical trials in the news and wondered how people are recruited for these studies — or even how you can enroll in one yourself.

While the “colon prep,” as it is commonly called, involves an inconvenient 1- or 2-day liquid diet and a bathroom camp out, it's a necessary step toward ensuring your continued colon health. Properly flushing out your large intestine before undergoing a colonoscopy allows your doctor to see your colon clearly and identify any abnormalities, including cancerous polyps.

Chemotherapy can be a life-saving cancer destroyer. Unfortunately, the drugs don’t take aim solely at cancer. They can also kill hair, skin, and reproductive tract cells. This collateral damage leaves some chemotherapy patients with thinning hair, nail loss, uncomfortably dry skin, and permanent reproductive damage.

The same properties that make chemotherapy drugs effective cancer killers also cause them to damage healthy cells in your bone marrow, blood and nervous system. The damage, although often temporary, can make cancer patients vulnerable to a series of side effects and secondary conditions, including bleeding, anemia, infections, numbness in the extremities, and memory loss.