Posted by
Anni
on
Monday, April 16th, 2012
Image source: Resources.teachnet.ie
It freaks me out a little when I try to imagine my digestive system at work. It’s easy to go through our lives ignorant of the visceral biological processes chugging along within. We breathe, we eat, we talk, we think, we sleep, we wake, we love, and, eventually, we die. It all happens, with or without our permission, and that’s a good thing: if I were in charge of keeping my heart beating or my lungs inflating or my liver doing whatever it does…well, let’s just say it probably wouldn’t end well.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Friday, April 13th, 2012
Image source: Calorielab.com
I’m not immune to the brilliant marketing of the cleansing industry. It makes a certain intuitive sense. We do eat a lot of unhealthy food. There are toxic chemicals in our environment. We expose ourselves to dangerous illness-causing materials on a daily basis. So why don’t we just empty out our systems? Clearing out all that food and stuff will surely leave us healthier and more vital, right? If only it were true.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Thursday, April 12th, 2012
Image source: Popularvirals.com
PMS has a bad rep. Yeah, it’s painful and annoying, for women, and for anyone lucky enough to be around women. It makes us irritable, angry, tired, bloated, headachy, backachy, and sad. It makes us unreasonable, inconsolable, and endlessly hungry. But I have a strange fondness for the condition. I’m not sure why exactly. I feel a certain communion with other women, a sisterhood that men just don’t understand. When I meet a woman for the first time, I know she knows how I feel, even before she knows anything else about me. And then there’s what PMS represents: fertility.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Image source: Nlm.nih.gov
There is nothing quite like the sharp jab to the brain, the ache that clouds the eyes and furrows the brow, the global trembling that sets the teeth. According to the World Health Organization, 50 to 70 percent of adults age 18-65 reported suffering from at least one headache in 2011. Headaches are a universal experience. They bring us together! If only we could find something less painful to make us feel connected.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
Image source: Be-bop-a-lu-la.tumblr.com
My husband and I want to have a baby. I dream of holding her, teaching her about nature, showing her old movies and sharing my favorite music. I dream about what she’ll look like and what she’ll be when she grows up. I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ve been trying for a few months and so far haven’t had much luck. The statistics show that only 50% of normal, healthy couples will conceive within five months. It is not unusual for it to take up to a year. When you want a baby, a year is an eternity. I’m trying to stay calm. If I let my mind wander I start imagining all the things that could be wrong with me. Since stress is a known cause of infertility, I’m doing my best to relax and be patient.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Monday, April 9th, 2012
Image source: Julieholden167.blogspot.com
These days every college kid knows about the focus-enhancing powers of ADHD medications. There is an illegal black market on college campuses. Kids who have legitimate prescriptions sell pills to kids who don’t. It’s easy to understand why: college is a high-pressure environment and work has to get done. I wonder what long-term effects this kind of drug use has on people. The in-demand ADHD medications are stimulants. They flood the brain with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that makes focusing easy. But they also speed up the heart, raise blood pressure and disturb sleep. Dopamine over-excitation in normal (non ADHD) brains can result in a long-term deficit leading to depression, listlessness, and a pervasive difficulty with concentration. These medications are strikingly similar to cocaine, methamphetamine, and other dangerous street drugs.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Friday, April 6th, 2012
It happens to every man sometimes, and often at the least opportune moment: you’ve just gone back to her place, you’ve planned a special Valentine’s seduction, or you’ve been trying for a baby and your partner is ovulating. Stress, alcohol, exhaustion, and bad luck can all result in a… er… limp evening. For most men it’s nothing a little sleep and a day off work can’t cure. But for others, especially older men, erectile dysfunction can pose a more serious problem.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Image source: Nytimes.com
A few weeks ago I wrote about IBS, a chronic medical condition with no known cause and no cure. Chronic fatigue syndrome is another mysterious ailment that medical science has failed to understand, and it’s the patients who suffer. One of my distant cousins suffers from CFS. She describes it as a feeling of fundamental weakness, like how a healthy person feels on a starvation diet. She’s had it ever since she was a teenager (she’s in her fifties now) and back then her doctors thought it was a psychological condition. Sadly, doctors are still making CFS patients feel invalidated, like their condition is somehow fabricated in their own minds.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
Image source: Alz.org
I think losing my memory is the thing I fear most. I fear it even more than being buried alive or losing the people I love, my two other driving fears. If I can’t remember the people I love, I’ve lost them, along with everything else that makes me who I am. I know I’m not alone. Many of us have watched aging relatives lose their grasp on themselves. They cling to memories from their childhoods but forget their children. Dementia is so startlingly common in old age, it’s a fear many of us will have to face.
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Posted by
Anni
on
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Image source: Woodburyhealthcenter.com
There is nothing quite like having to use the bathroom when there’s no bathroom in sight. I’m a biology student but one day I want to be a chiroptologist, a bat biologist. I’m already pursuing my dream by volunteering with a team of local bat scientists. I spend long days out in the field, trapping, banding, and counting bats in caves and abandoned mines. It’s exciting work! The downside: there aren’t a lot of bathrooms.
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