Conditions

For over a year, I have watched and witnessed the multitude of ways that COVID has ignited crisis after crisis in our country and across the world. At first, the crisis of the unknown and the ill-prepared – we as health care professionals did not know what we were dealing with, nor did we even have the resources to battle it as we watched other areas of the world helpless ...

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The term “mRNA lipid nanoparticle” has become common of late, given the use of Pfizer/BioNTech’s and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines make of nanoparticles to carry mRNA into cells. Once inside a cell, the mRNA instructs the cell to make pieces of the proteins that make up the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a process called “translation.” In so doing, our cells trigger an immune response, developing antibodies that will enable the immune system to ...

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An excerpt from Tenacity in Children: Nurturing the Seven Instincts for Lifetime Success. Did you ever wonder why babies quickly develop a social smile and look you in the eyes? Is it surprising to learn that the muscles in your ears are set within the range of women’s voices at birth or that babies prefer looking at women’s faces ...

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United States health officials have lifted the 10-day pause of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine. This pause dealt a devastating blow to the nationwide vaccination effort. The seven-day moving average of vaccinations in the U.S. peaked right before the pause, and has been trending downward. Fear of developing blood clots is adding to vaccine hesitancy. Moving forward, ...

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You have seen those harrowing pictures.  Patients dying outside the hospitals while waiting for a bed.  People on oxygen masks gasping for air-sharing beds. Dead bodies piling up in morgues. Overstretched crematoriums and burial grounds.  COVID has hit India very hard in April 2021. This is the second wave of disease in the country. They largely escaped the first wave and were confident by the end of 2020 that they ...

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I feel privileged to have received both of my COVID-19 vaccine doses. Although, despite the COVID-19 pandemic killing over 562,000 Americans, 37% are hesitant about receiving this vaccine themselves. The World Health Organization defines vaccine hesitancy as a “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccine services” and in 2019, named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 ...

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I've been limiting my COVID-19 related engagement with social media because this has been a rough year. I like being a resource for my loved ones about COVID-19 stuff, but it feels never-ending.

A friend of mine asked me to weigh in on a letter sent to our local school board. It claimed that masks in school were a direct assault on human rights. This letter listed ...

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Emily Watters is a physician who explains the connection between blood clots and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (click to enlarge): Emily Watters is a psychiatrist and can be reached at The Cartoon Shrink. Image credits: Emily Watters

People who find themselves reaching for antacid several times a month, might consider reaching out to their doctor instead. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), the same condition that causes heartburn, is also linked to a deadly form of esophageal cancer, adenocarcinoma. Lack of awareness about the link between reflux and cancer has contributed to a 733 percent increase in adenocarcinoma in the last 30 years. That’s not a typo. Adenocarcinoma of the ...

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