Author: Lance Garrison
By Steven R. Feldman, MD, PhD, as told to Jodi HelmerWhen you have psoriasis, your immune system overreacts and causes inflammation. It can cause plaques — red, thick, itchy, inflamed patches of skin — along with silver-colored scales, cracked skin, and swollen and stiff joints. These can be embarrassing and uncomfortable, and may leave you wondering whether the symptoms will ever disappear.There’s no cure for this disease. But there are treatments that work to reduce symptoms and can help you achieve the goal of clear skin or remission.Older medicines used to treat psoriasis were quite toxic. So we’d try to get…
The savage terrorist attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza are spurring many young Americans to engage with the political moment at a heightened intensity that could, ultimately, influence the 2024 presidential race. President Biden is offering fulsome support to Israel, though with more words of caution recently. Yet according to multiple recent polls, fewer than a quarter of young voters — who were crucial to Democratic victories in 2020 and overperformance in 2022 — approve of the way that the president is handling the response to the war between Israel and Hamas.In an Economist/YouGov survey of U.S.…
By Allison C. Billi, MD, PhD, as told to Jodi HelmerFor the 7.5 million Americans diagnosed with psoriasis, it can be disheartening to hear that there’s no cure. But there are several treatments that can help keep this autoimmune disease under control.Your dermatologist may prescribe skin (topical) creams, ultraviolet light therapy, or oral medications to treat symptoms like:Itchy, red patches of skin that can crack or bleedSilver-colored plaquesThick, pitted nailsBut sometimes, these front-line treatments aren’t enough to treat moderate to severe psoriasis. If that happens, your doctor may recommend a biologic to get your symptoms under control.What Are Biologics?The traditional…
After months of troubled relations, and then some tentative steps to bridge the gap between the United States and China, there is one glaring omission: American and Chinese military leaders still don’t communicate with one another directly. That’s important because those lines of communication are the best way to avoid the kind of misunderstandings or overreactions that can lead to actual conflict. That’s why it’s encouraging that the countries plan to meet on Monday to discuss arms control.The talks come at a perilous moment for the systems of global controls, painstakingly built over decades, to avoid nuclear conflict. The landmark…
An earlier such attempt in Ohio was a special election, held in August, to raise the threshold to pass ballot initiatives on constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent. The state’s lawmakers, who have been introducing extreme abortion restrictions for years, wanted to change the rules in the run-up to the vote on the initiative, throwing the chessboard into the air while still setting pieces. The August date was selected, at enormous taxpayer expense, to circumvent the November election, with our secretary of state declaring the August vote to be “100 percent” about abortion. If passed, though, the…
To the Editor:Re “Kids Benefit From Having One Teacher Twice,” by Adam Grant (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 24):Dr. Grant is right on target on the value of “looping” for kids and teachers who stay with them for a grade or more. In my dissertation research on middle-school teacher teams, I found that the most effective team was one that followed the same group of students for three years.As the teachers explained, when they had students for just one year, they could blame the shortcomings of students on their previous teachers. After three years, they knew they should be able to…
“Talking is the slowest form of communicating,” John Lennon said in 1968. “Music is much better.” In a sense, the music of the Beatles, which brings so much joy and consolation, is the glorious fruit of male repression. We like to think we live in a more emotionally enlightened age. We have learned to talk it out. Yet sometimes I think that is itself a kind of avoidance or a failure of nerve. We’ve awakened from the dream and yet seem to be more confused than ever.Carl Perkins, the rockabilly guitarist and singer and a hero to the Beatles, collaborated…
There are two moments from Mike Johnson’s early days as speaker of the House that almost perfectly encapsulate the broken way that so many Republican evangelicals approach politics. The first occurred just after the House elected Johnson. ABC’s Rachel Scott started to ask Johnson about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But before she could finish, Johnson’s Republican colleagues started to shout her down. Johnson simply shook his head. “Next question,” he said, as if the query wasn’t worth his time. It was the kind of conduct that led the Florida Republican Matt Gaetz to dub the new speaker…
Nov. 3, 2023 — Intermittent fasting has become a popular, and effective, way to lose weight. According to the International Food Information Council, the weight-loss method surpassed all others in the past year as the most popular way to achieve results. Around 10% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 80 have given the eating approach a go. For the uninitiated, intermittent fasting is when you only eat during specific hours of the day, generally a much smaller window of time than normal. Rather than waking, eating breakfast, and then going about your day, you’d more likely delay your first meal until later…
On Oct. 24 my brother and I went to the United Nations to watch an emergency Security Council meeting in response to the war in Israel and Gaza. As the Israeli minister of foreign affairs listed the names and held up photos of some of the Israeli children who were taken hostage by Hamas, a white woman in her 30s stood up near us in the gallery to protest. She held up a handmade “Free Palestine” sign.The disruption should have been jarring, but by this point in the war, I am accustomed to this response from those I once regarded…