Candida Abrahamson's Blog

Apps so you can talk like a doctor--if you're so inclined

Sun, 19 May 2013 09:46:10 -0500

Does this happen to you? Do you ever find something–something unusual, that perhaps no one else wants–and think to yourself, “Where have you been my whole life?”

Well, anyone who has followed my love affair with mobile health apps will understand that,…

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Awareness Times Two: Anxiety/Depression and Women's Health

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:24:18 -0500

If you’re anything like me (and let’s hope for your sakes you’re not), being aware really takes a lot out of you. With ‘aware’ having synonyms like ‘cognizant,’ ‘mindful,’ ‘wide-awake,’ ‘vigilant,’ and ‘wary’ (I took ‘conscious’ alright–I’m pretty sure…

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May is National Mental Health Awareness Month and. . . .

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:14:49 -0500

Let’s just say I’m a slow starter.

I mean, I think I ate solid foods on time and all that – but when it came to riding a bike, four, five, and six passed me by before there was any success on a two-wheeler.

The lovely sound of ‘teen’ at the end of my age…

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May is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month

Thu, 02 May 2013 20:33:12 -0500

Yup, it’s May, and, therefore, thanks to House Resolution #1005, passed 4/1/08, it’s also Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month. [If you’re into politics, or are just plain curious, the House passed the Resolution by a vote of 414-0—for…

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Things Are Sure Different Around the Health World Since Apple Came Along

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:53:08 -0500

I’m an Apple girl, through and through, dedicated to my trifecta of a Macbook Pro, an iPhone 5, and an iPad [not yet a mini, but you can’t have everything. (I really mean you can’t have everything the second it comes out, but it sounded better the…

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Sickness, Grief, and . . . the Loss of the Self: What Makes Bipolar Disorder A Source of Such Pain?

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:30:12 -0500

Linda Logan married her high school sweetheart. She is a mother of 3 children, a Ph.D. in geography, a former co-teacher at M.I.T.

And she suffers from bipolar disorder–badly. It has ravaged her life.

But she has come back to talk about it in a fresh…

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Not that, too! Anxiety can shorten your life.

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 08:51:14 -0500

Frankly, I’m anxious.

I spent a good amount of time trying to think of a way to put it that involved less brutal honesty, perhaps some more word craft–a bit of extra verbiage that might distract from such an unplesant truth.

But, ‘sometimes I worry’ was…

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Who Knew? New Off-Label Uses for Well-Known Drugs, Part II

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:53:55 -0500

Recall in Part I that, although Pfizer’s angina treatment did little for the chest pain, it changed multiple thousands of lives in the bedroom when the scientists reincarnated it as Viagra. And date rape drug ketamine earned itself some points from ‘the…

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Who Knew? New Off-Label Uses for well Known Drugs, Part I

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 11:35:07 -0500

Every so often, the drug that scientists are certain will serve one purpose in fact serves a completely different one. Take scientists for Pfizer’s research center who developed an angina treatment that they gave to their subjects, who had very little of…

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Predicting Longevity

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 22:19:14 -0500

Look, it’s not like I have anything against the crystal ball. In fact, I use the exquisite glasses my mother left me for the holiday of Passover, and they happen to be crystal. But I’m just a wee bit skeptical about its powers to predict how many more…

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Are You Reading This After Midnight? More Thoughts on Insomnia

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:58:20 -0500

“Up All Night” by Elizabeth Holbert, a nice piece in the March 11 New Yorker, reprises the research of Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, an anthropologist with an alternate model to our 11pm to 7am “ideal sleep schedule.”

In The Slumbering Masses” Wolf-Meyer looks…

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Tolerating Insomnia is Halfway There--Part 2

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:43:18 -0500

If my hypothesis (see previous post, Part 1) proves correct that fear of insomnia increases insomnia, successful treatment should involve mastery of the fear. We know from both experience and from cognitive-behavioral theory that avoiding the source of…

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Is fear of insomnia like fear of flying--exposure-response prevention for the sleepless? Part I

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:19:39 -0500

What are two major miseries of our well-off modern society? Obesity and sleeplessness. No surprise that they seem to be connected; looks like those who fail to get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight.

They’re connected in another way: for…

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Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 11:08:23 -0500

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in their paper ”Policy Impact: Prescription Painkiller Overdoses,” declared prescription drug abuse “an epidemic” in the United States. By far the biggest factor in prescription drug abuse is an eruption in…

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Sleep Deprivation and Depression--Everything You Don't Expect

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:57:34 -0600

Sleep Deprivation and Depression–Everything You Don’t Expect

ECT, TMS, antidepressants, Ketamine–ever thought you’d heard of just about every way there is to treat depression?

Well here’s one I bet you haven’t heard of: Sleep deprivation. That’s right: doctors have found that depriving patients of sleep can ease…

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ECT--The Less Than Shocking Story, Part II

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:47:46 -0600

ECT–The Less Than Shocking Story, Part II

Georgios Petrides, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, found in a study of 253 patients with severe depression that the remission rate was 87%. Interestingly the statistics…

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ECT--The Less Than Shocking Story, Part I

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:17:55 -0600

ECT–The Less Than Shocking Story, Part I

Why write about ECT today? Isn’t it yesterday’s news? Actually, in the words of health writer Melissa Dahl (msnbc.com, 8.6.2008), “the practice has been making a quiet comeback.”

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next” did nothing to help make ECT fashionable.…

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ADHD becomes a trend

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 09:51:42 -0600

ADHD becomes a trend

Certain things become trendy. Everyone’s wearing boxy jackets, and anyone cool is drinking Cosmos. Brooklyn itself has become a trend, hard as it is to imagine, and who doesn’t have an iPhone 5?

But in a trend much less desirable, attention…

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ADHD becomes a trend

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:22:30 -0600

ADHD becomes a trend

Certain things become trendy. Everyone’s wearing boxy jackets, and anyone cool is drinking Cosmos. Brooklyn itself has become a trend, hard as it is to imagine, and who doesn’t have an iPhone 5?

But in a trend much less desirable, attention…

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Bullying--It's All In the Mind

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:17:51 -0600

Bullying–It’s All In the Mind

“My son is miserable in his first few months of high school,” his suffering mother told me. “He’s picked on for being short again.” Jeffrey comes from short parents, but he was little even by their standards. After much thought (and more worry), his…

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