It’s Not All in Your Head: Gluten Intolerance Is Real
Contributor: Leonard Calabrese, DO Do you experience discomfort or pain when you eat foods containing gluten — but when your doctor runs tests, they come back negative for both celiac disease and food...
View ArticleWill Cortisone Injections Ease My Painful Hip Arthritis?
Q: Will cortisone injections ease my painful hip arthritis? A: If your hip joint is severely arthritic, a cortisone injection may bring temporary, but not long-lasting, relief. Because the hip is a...
View ArticleHow You Can Avoid Losing Height as You Get Older
Do you think that it’s inevitable that you’ll get shorter or stooped as you get older? It’s not a foregone conclusion. In fact, a significant loss of height as you age is a sign of osteoporosis —bone a...
View ArticleRare or Common — What Type of Arthritis Do You Have?
By: Howard Smith, MD If you have painful joints, you might wonder if it’s arthritis. Many people don’t realize that this painful disease includes more than 100 different types, which all involve pain...
View ArticleHow Your Amazing Immune System Protects Your Health
You may not think about it very often, but your body is surrounded by danger. Danger can be external, in the form of infections, for example, from bacteria, viruses and other organisms. Danger also...
View ArticleIs Your Immune System Unhealthy? Why Things Can Go Wrong
Your immune system is a fascinating, interconnected network. It protects you from millions of harmful bacteria, microbes, viruses, toxins and parasites, yet most people often don’t give it a second...
View ArticleSodas, Tea and Coffee: Which Can Make Your Bones Brittle?
Colas and coffee appear to have some effect on women’s bone density and could lead to osteoporosis. But tea — even the kind with caffeine — and other sodas do not. And men are not affected at all by...
View ArticleGetting Too Many Colds? Try Some 20-Minute Workouts — Here’s Why
You know exercise builds muscles, strengthens bones, keeps your heart healthy and your mind sharp. But it also does something that you might not think much about: It helps keep your immune system —...
View ArticleWhy Arthritis Can Stress You Out — and Cause Anxiety
If you have arthritis, you already know about swollen joints and painful movement. But what may surprise you is that arthritis can get to your head and cause mental distress too — leading to stress and...
View ArticleHow to Keep Your Body’s Defenses Strong After Age 65
There’s an irony in living longer — we’re more likely to see our bodies decline. Your immune system itself is not immune. It’s known as immune senescence, which is a term to describe the tendency for...
View Article6 Places on Your Body That Lupus Can Affect
By: Howard Smith, MD Across the United States, nearly 1.5 million people are living with lupus. Although the incidence of lupus has tripled since the 1970s, scientists and medical researchers still...
View ArticleThe 4 Best New Medicines to Treat Your Lupus (Video)
By: Howard Smith, MD For several decades, the medicines available to treat lupus stayed pretty much the same. In recent years, however, we’ve seen a breakthrough with targeted therapies — medicines...
View ArticleWhat Happens When Your Immune System Gets Stressed Out?
For most of us, stress is just a part of life. It can last for a few hours — like the time leading up to a final exam — or for years — like when you’re taking care of an ailing loved one. Stress is...
View ArticleVasculitis: 5 Drugs to Control This Mysterious Blood Vessel Illness
Vasculitis is a complex illness. This spectrum of conditions involving blood vessel inflammation usually has unknown causes — and symptoms can be hard to pin down. The good news is that doctors are...
View Article5 Surprising Facts About Lupus That Many People Don’t Know
When I mention lupus to my patients, sometimes I get a confused look because it’s not a well-understood condition. People wonder why the body would attack itself, as is the case with lupus and other...
View Article5 Strategies for Coping With Lupus-Associated Brain Fog
By: Howard Smith, MD Monday morning finds many of us feeling foggy, but 20 percent to 50 percent of people with lupus have a unique feeling of mental fogginess, including: Depression Memory problems...
View Article3 Things You Should Know About Treatment for Psoriatic Arthritis
By: Howard R. Smith, MD If you have recently been diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, your doctor may have told you about a type of medicine that can reverse disease progression, stop damage to your...
View ArticleWhy Scleroderma Makes Your Gut Feel Funny and Other Questions
Scleroderma (also known as systemic sclerosis) is a chronic autoimmune rheumatic disease. An estimated 240 per million Americans have this disease; most are women between the ages of 30 and 50....
View ArticleMystery Back Pain Can Signal a Hidden (and Serious) Problem
You’ve heard of rheumatoid arthritis. But an equally common type of arthritis is probably not on your radar. Spondyloarthritis is a diagnosis doctors often miss. Yet it affects about 1 percent of the...
View ArticlePulmonary Fibrosis: How Doctors Treat You When Cause Is Unknown
Every day, the air you breathe contains smoke, dust and chemicals that can irritate and damage your lungs. For most people, the lungs do a good job of filtering out toxins and repairing themselves. But...
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