The words stress and anxiety get used interchangeably so often that most people treat them as synonyms. You have a brutal week at work and you say you are anxious. Your friend is going through a difficult divorce and says she is stressed. Both words float through daily conversation describing a vague state of mental […]
It comes out of nowhere. Your heart starts racing so fast you can feel it in your throat. Your chest tightens. You cannot get a full breath. Your hands tingle. The room feels unreal, like you are watching yourself from outside your body. And underneath all of it, a wave of absolute certainty that something […]
Most people feel some degree of nervousness in social situations. The flutter before a first date. The dry mouth before speaking in front of a crowd. The mild self-consciousness at a party where you barely know anyone. These feelings are so universal that they are essentially a feature of being human, and most people navigate […]
Most people worry. About money, about health, about the people they love, about whether they said the wrong thing in a meeting last Tuesday. Worry is a normal part of being human, and in moderate amounts it can even be useful — it motivates preparation, helps us anticipate problems, and keeps us from being blindsided […]
Everyone feels anxious sometimes. Before a job interview, before a difficult conversation, before a medical procedure you have been dreading. That tight feeling in your chest, the racing thoughts, the sense that something is about to go wrong — these are normal human experiences. Anxiety in these moments is not a disorder. It is your […]
Ask any group of pregnant women about heartburn and you will get knowing looks all around. It is one of the most universally shared experiences of pregnancy, affecting an estimated 17 to 45 percent of pregnant women in the first trimester and climbing to as high as 80 percent by the third trimester (Richter, 2005). […]
You get a blood test. The report comes back with four or five numbers – serum iron, ferritin, TIBC, transferrin saturation – and none of them seem to be telling the same story. One is low. Another is high. Your doctor says something about iron deficiency, but you’re not sure what any of these markers […]
You’ve probably heard it your whole life: drink eight glasses of water a day. It’s on wellness posters, in fitness apps, repeated by well-meaning friends. The only problem? There’s no solid science behind it. That’s not to say hydration doesn’t matter – it absolutely does. But the conversation around hydration has been oversimplified to the […]
Most people have a pretty clear mental image of acid reflux. Burning in the chest after a meal. A sour taste rising into the throat. The classic heartburn that sends you reaching for a Tums at 10pm. It is uncomfortable, it is recognizable, and it tells you pretty directly that something is going wrong in […]
Of all the terms that come up in conversations about GERD, Barrett’s esophagus is probably the one that causes the most anxiety. People hear it and immediately think of cancer. They worry that their years of heartburn have quietly been doing something irreversible. They search for it online at midnight and come away more frightened […]