Author: Lance Garrison
By Christina Gentile, PsyD, as told to Barbara BrodyFirst things first: Stress does not cause Crohn’s disease. But physical ailments often overlap with mental ones. And Crohn’s is hardly the exception. Research suggests that people with inflammatory bowel disease (such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis) are two to three times more likely than members of the general population to struggle with anxiety or depression.Even if you don’t meet the official criteria for an anxiety disorder or major depression, living with Crohn’s disease might make you feel stressed, frustrated, upset, or scared. Navigating a new diagnosis, having debilitating symptoms, and adjusting to…
By Patti DavisProduced by Jillian WeinbergerIn a memoir published a year ago, Matthew Perry wrote about his longtime struggle with drugs and alcohol. His recent death prompted the author Patti Davis to reflect on her own experience with addiction. In this audio essay, Davis explains why she believes loneliness is at the center of addiction and how Perry’s life story reflects that.(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available midday on the Times website.)The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of…
Crohn’s disease can affect your entire body. A doctor explains what to expect.
Last week, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter to nearly 200 college presidents urging them to investigate campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine for potential violations of federal and state laws against providing material support to terrorism. As evidence for these very serious accusations, the ADL and the Brandeis center offered only the student group’s own strident rhetoric, including a sentence in its online tool kit, which praised Hamas’s attacks on Israel and said: “We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue…
By Kimberly Weaver, MD, as told to Stephanie WatsonI’m fortunate to work as a gastroenterologist at a time when we have many excellent options for treating Crohn’s disease, including new biologic and small-molecule drugs. The number of new treatments that researchers are studying in clinical trials makes me even more hopeful about the outlook for people with this chronic inflammatory condition.Choosing the Right TreatmentTreatment for Crohn’s disease is very personalized. I always try to include my patients in the decision-making process. When choosing a medication, I consider its effectiveness and safety. I also consider things like:The person’s ageTheir overall healthWhether…
Here are a few snapshots from higher education in America:Under a new provision in state budgeting, public universities in North Carolina will cease funding distinguished professorships in the humanities, reserving them for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.The furor around elite universities over their responses (or non-responses) to Hamas’s massacre in Israel has now inspired a group of white-shoe law firms to collectively demand a stronger response to antisemitism from leading law schools.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in his continuing higher education wars, is trying to shut down pro-Palestinian student groups whose national chapter supported Hamas’s attacks.A new survey from the…
Crohn’s disease can cause a variety of digestive tract issues. It can also affect your sex life. A gastroenterologist has advice on dealing with that.
Spears describes the way she felt physically and emotionally trapped by the paparazzi and writes that during the messy process of divorcing her husband at the time, Kevin Federline, he was preventing her from seeing their sons: “After not getting to see the boys for weeks and weeks, completely beside myself with grief, I went to plead to see them.” The paparazzi followed her constantly, and out of her mind with that grief, at one point in 2007 she decided to shave her head. It was a way of fighting back against the judgment of her family, the photographers who…
Managing Crohn’s flare-ups is easier when you’ve got a strong support system.
Before the fire that destroyed almost everything here, Paradise was one of those blunders of American suburbia, a misplaced place that made little ecological sense. It inhabited a California landscape that wasn’t quite rolling foothill or rugged Sierra but an in-between zone where Ponderosa pines, Douglas firs and incense cedars kept the earth from baking like the great valley below.Psychically, it represented California affordability and escape, a refuge that drew a whole carnival of believers: hippie gun nuts and backwoodsmen, growers of pot and fruit, trailer park dwellers and two-income families in middle-class houses and retirees from the city who…