Sherri Willis-Prater’s baby boy was 2 months old, and she was about to return to her job at a school cafeteria in Chicago. But as she walked up the short flight of stairs to her kitchen one evening, she nearly collapsed, gasping for breath. At the hospital, Ms. Willis-Prater, who was 42 at the time, […]
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When Dr. Frank Clark was in medical school studying to be a psychiatrist, he decided to write his first poem. “All that chatter that is in my head, everything that I’ve been feeling, I can now just put it on paper and my pen can do the talking,” he said, recalling his thoughts at the time. […]
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In the early 1960s typical Americans were eager to get on with adult life. As soon as they could, they married, launched careers and started popping out kids. In those days, half of all women married before their 20th birthday. Then the boomers came of age. Typical members of that generation wanted to enjoy their […]
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We’re nervous about an upcoming work presentation, then lament our lack of confidence. We get angry at our partner, then feel guilty about our impatience. Our emotions undoubtedly influence our well-being — but recent research suggests that how we judge and react to those emotions may affect us even more. In a study published last […]
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LOGANVILLE, Wis. — Brenda Statz remembers the rain on the day they lost Leon, her husband of 34 years. The deluge had fallen for weeks, flooding their fields, delaying the harvest, pounding the roof of the barn where Mr. Statz finished his morning chores, then ended his life. It was Oct. 8, 2018, a Monday. […]
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One morning last summer, I sent a rough draft of a speech to a colleague for feedback. Even though it was a long read and she was away at a conference, she sent me her initial comments that very evening. “Sorry for the delay,” she wrote. I hadn’t expected to hear back from her that […]
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If you believe TikTok and pastel-colored ad campaigns, here is an incomplete list of what ashwagandha can do: reduce stress, “kill” emotions, focus a frantic mind, squelch social anxiety, fend off depression, give you a boost at the gym. The ashwagandha plant — a staple of Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years — has gone […]
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Is it rude to knit at work? Recently, a county councilor in Wales was accused by a colleague on Twitter of bringing the body “into disrepute” for knitting during a virtual public meeting. The criticism has touched off a debate about whether it is appropriate to pull out knitting needles in video huddles. Knitters say […]
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Gradually, though, the visits and texts slowed. A series of disagreements distanced Randi from her mother and sisters. Randi’s mother told me that one of their first arguments started when Keith was still in the hospital. She worried that taking care of him would overwhelm Randi and felt that he should instead be looked after […]
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“At a basic level,” Dr. Pelayo said, “feeling in danger or under stress are the same to the brain.” Worse, sleep loss has been shown to beget more anxious thoughts. In a 2019 review of 13 studies published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews, researchers concluded that insomnia was a significant predictor of anxiety, among […]
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Instead of using the C.D.C.’s report to confirm our prior suspicions, we need to get curious — about the results, about how to think differently about potential causes of mental health challenges and about what teenagers are really trying to tell us about the world when they say they’re stressed, anxious or depressed. The Limitations […]
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Earlier this year, millions of Americans got a notice: Your food budget is about to be cut, potentially by hundreds of dollars a month. Here are some tips on how you can manage. You can’t appeal. The notices signaled the coming end of a federal increase in food stamps that started in the early days […]
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“There are hundreds of chemicals that could be at play at this point, and we absolutely have the tools in academia to test for most all of them,” said Dr. Kari Nadeau, the head of the environmental health department at Harvard, who studies the toxicological effects of smoke in air pollution, including burning plastics. But […]
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Hamby spoke to “more than 40 patients who said their access to the drug was expanded through telehealth” and found that while some said they were helped by taking ketamine, others admitted to abusing their prescriptions and concealing resulting health issues from their providers. Two people Hamby spoke to felt embarrassed about potentially permanent bladder […]
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Susan Tilton’s husband, Mike, was actually in good health. But after a friend’s husband developed terminal cancer, she began to worry that Mike would soon die, too. At night, “I’d lie down and start thinking about it,” recalled Ms. Tilton, 72, who lives in Clayton, Mo. “What would I do? What would I do?” The […]
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Calling It Quits is a series about the current culture of quitting. One morning, in fall 2020, Francesca Camacho drove away from her 12-hour night shift as a critical care nurse at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and tried to merge onto the highway. The day’s work, in her words, was “just very terrible.” […]
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CALGARY, Alberta — Aidan’s tics erupted one day after school in early 2021, about a month after the long pandemic lockdown had ended. The 16-year-old convulsed while walking into the house, head snapping and arms swinging, sometimes letting out high-pitched whistles and whoops. Aidan’s parents looked up from the living room couch with alarm. They […]
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On Oct. 1, 1975, when I was 14, my best friend and I went to the closed circuit broadcast of the epic, brutal third and final fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. We were in a crowded high school gym in Richland, Wash., watching the match on a large screen. I have vivid memories […]
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Rachael Howe, 32, has been dealing with chronic pain in her back since she herniated three disks between 2013 and 2016. Both her physical pain and mental distress prevented her from getting restful sleep. Ms. Howe, who lives in Auburn, Wash., tried years of physical and talk therapy in addition to medication, but they didn’t […]
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Young mothers gather with baby carriages in the morning chill and exchange village gossip while waiting to visit a health clinic on a truck. The vehicle’s arrival is a big event. For eight months, the village of Levkivka in eastern Ukraine was under occupation by Russian troops, who cut off roughly 300 residents from the […]
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It’s grim, but in every post-apocalyptic story line, I wait for the moment when the characters float their theories about how the world fell apart, hoping to glean something useful. In HBO’s series “The Last of Us,” survivors of a global pandemic live in harsh, government-controlled quarantine zones to evade a parasitic fungus that turns […]
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But when metrics substitute for self-worth, it’s easy to fall into the trap of giving precious pieces of yourself away to feed an audience that’s always hungry for more and more. Documenting my darkest moments began to feel like the only way people would truly understand me. In 2018, I impulsively released a video about […]
Read MoreDivert your attention. One of the most effective things you can do when your thoughts are spiraling out of control is to distract yourself, Dr. Siegle said. In one study published in 2011, for instance, researchers found that when socially anxious college students redirected their attention by using word-rearranging exercises shortly after giving a three-minute […]
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You should spend that time doing something pleasant and soothing, like listening to a favorite podcast, chatting on the couch with your partner or watching TV. Dr. Prather offers his patients what he calls a menu of options for that power-down period — they can take a luxurious bath, write in a gratitude journal or […]
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A quick peek at the nutrition labels of a dozen popular de-stressing drinks reveals just five to 25 milligrams of CBD per container. (According to the Food and Drug Administration, “it is currently illegal to market CBD by adding it to a food or labeling it as a dietary supplement.” But some states allow products […]
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My I.B.S. journey started about nine years ago, at age 44, when I noticed that my migraines — for decades reliably yoked to my menstrual cycle — were accompanied by a sour stomach, like my gut was sucking on lemons. Cutting out gluten helped, but as the years passed, my gut continued to deteriorate. I […]
Read MoreIt’s also important to ask for help, Ms. Dixon said. Start by learning to recognize the signs that your mind, along with your body, has been affected by a fibroid diagnosis. Ask yourself: Have your social activities or preferences changed since your diagnosis? Are you sad or depressed, having trouble concentrating or sleeping, or experiencing […]
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Nov. 9, 2021 By Juno DeMelo Leer en español Every time someone tells me their back’s been giving them trouble, I lower my voice before launching into my spiel: “I swear I’m not woo-woo, but … ” Let me rewind a bit. For more than a decade, I had a near-constant throbbing in my left […]
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Nov. 18, 2021 Well readers share advice on how to get away from it all. “How did relaxing for one day become so hard to do?” Lena Poole, a primary care doctor in Austin, Texas, posed this question recently as she and her husband, who works in public health, decided to schedule a much-needed mental […]
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Sleep is challenging — but crucial. Autistic burnout isn’t a permanent state, however. One of the best ways for anyone to recover from burnout is rest, particularly sleep, according to Amelia Nagoski, the co-author of the best-selling 2019 book “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Response Cycle.” But autistic people have a harder time […]
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