Author: Lance Garrison
We’re living in a brutalizing time: Scenes of mass savagery pervade the media. Americans have become vicious toward one another amid our disagreements. Everywhere I go, people are coping with an avalanche of negative emotions: shock, pain, contempt, anger, anxiety, fear.The first thing to say is that we in America are the lucky ones. We’re not crouching in a cellar waiting for the next bomb to drop. We’re not currently the targets of terrorists who massacre families in their homes. We should still start every day with gratitude for the blessings we enjoy.But we’re faced with a subtler set of…
So you’ve been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. You have some questions. We have some experts with some answers.
People of South Asian descent may have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes than they might expect, even if they’re not overweight. South Asians – people who are from or trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent, which includes India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal – are up to four times more likely to have type 2 diabetes than people of other ethnic backgrounds. And many South Asians diagnosed with type 2 diabetes have a normal weight and body mass index (BMI). Afreen Idris Shariff, MD Afreen Idris Shariff, MD, an endocrinologist and assistant professor at Duke University School…
These are times that try our commitment to the Bill of Rights. Grief, rage and fear are radiating outward from the Middle East and tearing at the fabric of our own liberal democracy, especially on college campuses. The stories are already legion. Activists have ripped down posters of kidnapped Israeli women and children. The chancellor of the State University System of Florida ordered the deactivation of two campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine. At Cooper Union in New York City, Jewish students sheltered inside the library while pro-Palestinian protesters pounded on the doors. And in Ithaca, N.Y., a…
Most people with Crohn’s disease know all too well what a flare feels like. Symptoms like diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, and exhaustion can be uncomfortable and embarrassing. So it’s a relief when they disappear. But if you don’t have any symptoms, does that mean you’re in remission? The answer is more complicated than you might imagine. There are several types of remission. And “remission” tends to mean something different to patients than to their doctors, says Ariela Holmer, MD, a gastroenterologist with the NYU Langone Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center.“Patients focus on symptoms, because those are what cause decreased quality of life…
When I was a kid, my mother delineated a roughly four-block area around our house that I was never to go beyond. She called the perimeter my “boundaries.” But within them, where all of my friends lived, I was free to play after school and all day on the weekends, coming home only for meals, hearkening to her calling my name out the window. (Her voice could carry!)But from 1981 to 1997, American kids’ unstructured playtime went down 25 percent. In the ’70s, nearly half of students in kindergarten through eighth grades walked or biked to school; today, only about…
By Gonzalo Laje, MD, as told to Kara Mayer RobinsonI’m a psychiatrist, board certified in child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry. After my own personal experience with depression during my 20s, I’ve been on a lifelong quest to both understand and help others.I spent almost a decade at the National Institutes of Health searching for ways to predict which depression treatments may be most effective for different people. Today, I manage Washington Behavioral Medicine Associates, a group practice in Chevy Chase, MD, where we help patients of all ages with treatment-resistant depression, or TRD.Here’s what you should know about TRD and…
Learn how to figure out the best approach to finding the right medicine if you have treatment-resistant depression.
To the Editor:Re “Give the Gift of Your Attention,” by David Brooks (column, Oct. 22):What Mr. Brooks is talking about in his wonderful essay reminds me of the Korean idea of “inshim,” a term similar to the ancient Chinese concept of “ren,” which is best rendered in English as “human heartedness.”The people in the Korean village where I did fieldwork 50 years ago often spoke admiringly of those who had “good inshim,” meaning people who lived their lives unselfishly, showing consideration for others, doing “the right thing” even if they didn’t always succeed.Another word that comes to mind in this…
In The Times, Jason Horowitz and Elisabetta Povoledo appraised the art collection of Silvio Berlusconi, the flamboyant former prime minister of Italy, who died earlier this year: “The paintings are now stashed in an enormous hangar that critics have characterized as a sort of Raiders of the Lousy Art warehouse.” (Thanks to Rob Hisnay of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Miriam Bulmer of Mercer Island, Wash., for nominating this.)Also in The Times, Erin Thompson reflected on the fate of statues memorializing the Confederacy: “We never reached any consensus about what should become of these artifacts. Some were reinstalled with additional historical…