One of the most eloquent books about life, love and understanding is called A River Runs Through It. Written in 1976 it starts, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing…” and takes you on a journey through the natural beauty that is the Black River in Montana where fly-fishing is art and...
Read More
“There is no health without mental health” This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week (October 5-11). Working at the intersection of physical and mental health is Ann Becker-Schutte, PhD, a Kansas City psychologist whose practice is focused on supporting people impacted by serious illness. “Challenging stigma requires that you have some...
Read More
Being a Spoonie You may not know it but if you are a patient with a chronic illness, you may be a spoonie. In 2010 Christine Miserandino wrote a post called The Spoon Theory. In the post, Christine describes explaining to her best friend what it really feels like to live with Lupus. She asks her friend to hold 12 spoons and tells her that the spoons are...
Read More
Why does nature repeat the same forms over and over again? This is a question that has driven Dr. Mina Bissell‘s cancer research. In a 2012 TED talk, Dr. Bissell spent 17 minutes summarizing decades of research–asking and answering unique questions that are toppling and evolving our understanding of cancer. Developmental Genetics Her talk...
Read More
Blood pressure measurement history Before the first sphygmomanometer, doctors put tubes in arteries to measure systolic blood pressure. Happily, in 1881 Samuel Siegfried Karl Ritter von Basch figured out a way to measure blood pressure in a less invasive way, using a rubber ball that restricted blood flow to the artery and attaching that to a column of...
Read More
