Author: Lance Garrison

If you’re 50 or older and healthy, there are two things experts think you should know: You’re almost certainly as risk of getting shingles, and you should get vaccinated.“Shingles is not just an annoying rash that lasts for a week or two,” says Christine E. Kistler, MD, associate professor of family medicine and geriatric medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The rash itself is often very painful. Once it’s gone, a significant percentage of people go on to have severe nerve pain in the area where the rash was, a complication called postherpetic neuralgia [PHN].”The vaccine,…

On Saturday, President Biden warned that Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.” The Israeli prime minister replied the next day that Biden was “wrong.” The rift between the two leaders means that Israel risks losing its most important pillar of military and diplomatic support.I’ve argued that Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas as an effective fighting force. Here I imagine a conversation with an intelligent critic of that view.Thousands of Gazan civilians, many of them children, have now been killed, bombed in their homes or out of them. Now…

Editor’s note: As of Oct. 30, 2019, Lauren Glynn is back in remission after getting successful CAR T-cell therapy. “We are so thankful that Lauren continues to feel well and are very hopeful that this CAR T is her cure,” her mom says.Sept. 23, 2019 — Four small friends who met in the hospital while getting cancer treatment are back together for a fourth year of group photos. And the message on their shirts — “Never EVER Give Up” — carries an emotional new meaning.Chloe, Lauren, McKinley, and Ava — now 5 to 6 years old — enjoyed a day of…

In other words, Israel has a prime minister who apparently would rather see Gaza devolve into Somalia, ruled by warlords, and risk Israel’s military gains in dismantling Hamas than partner with the Palestinian Authority or any legitimate, broad-based, non-Hamas Palestinian governing body — because his far-right cabinet allies, who dream of Israel controlling all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including Gaza, will oust him from power if he does.Netanyahu’s government is apparently hoping to enlist local Palestinian clan leaders to post-Hamas Gaza, but I seriously doubt that will work. Israel tried and failed that strategy in…

Shingles can make everyday tasks — from getting dressed to getting into bed — a painful proposition. The culprit behind this agonizing rash, which is especially common in older people, is the same virus responsible for another common but debilitating condition: chicken pox.”Most of us never get rid of the chicken pox virus,” William Schaffner, MD, president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, tells WebMD. “It lies dormant like a bear in a cave during winter. When a person gets shingles, the virus has reawakened.”Fortunately, a vaccine is available that greatly reduces the risk of shingles. Schaffner, who is…

Dead bodies are rotting on the streets of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Clean drinking water is scarce, and a cholera outbreak threatens. Hunger looms. The outgunned police force has all but disappeared.Armed groups have seized control of ports and major roads in the capital and freed inmates from jails. They shut down the airport, preventing the country’s deeply unpopular prime minister, Ariel Henry, from returning from a trip abroad, and have threatened to overrun the presidential palace. Under intense pressure from the United States and other regional powers to speed the transition to a new government, Henry agreed to resign late…

At a yearly checkup in 2014, Kaley Karaffa, then 27, asked in an offhand way about some swollen lymph nodes she had near her collarbone for a few months. Her doctor sent her to a surgeon to get it checked out. Several weeks, scans, and biopsies later, Karaffa learned the news: She had diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.”I was shocked,” she says. “I was in the best shape of my life, exercising 6 or 7 days a week pretty vigorously, and working full-time.” It was hard for Karaffa to wrap her head around the fact that she could feel so healthy…

Just before Christmas a few years ago, Richard DiCarlo, MD, woke up in the night with burning pain on his left side. Turning on a light, he saw a row of red bumps and knew immediately that he had shingles, also known as zoster, caused by the reactivation of the chickenpox virus, dormant since a childhood infection.After shingles and a year of postherpetic neuralgia, a painful condition that made it difficult to sleep, DiCarlo, an infectious disease specialist at Louisiana State University in New Orleans, counts himself among the supporters of the shingles vaccine. The shingles vaccine Zostavax was licensed…

The sportswear brand Nike introduced new, inclusive mannequins to their Niketown stores in London earlier this month that include representations of physically disabled and plus-sized athletes.Other brands have come out with plus-sized mannequins and disabled mannequins in the last year, including Target, Nordstrom, and Old Navy.Fans of the mannequins praised the brand on social media for its dedication to inclusivity.  Others have criticized the brand for its plus-sized mannequins. An opinion article from the U.K. news site TheTelegraph called out the mannequins for representing an unhealthy standard for women, and claimed that they are “selling women a dangerous lie.”But studies have…

Way back in 1973, America was experiencing a troubling rise in inflation. But George Shultz, the Treasury secretary at the time, suggested that the problem would be transitory — that the economy could have a “soft landing.”It didn’t. The 1970s were infamously a decade of stagflation, and inflation was finally brought under control in the 1980s only via tight money policies that caused years of very high unemployment.So President Biden was tempting fate a bit when he declared in the State of the Union address that “the landing is and will be soft.” But he’s almost surely right.What do we…