I’ve written before on this blog about my long struggle with panic attacks and anxiety. Every now and then, my brain chemistry gets screwy, and the highly unpleasant experience of major anxiety/panic returns for a time. I’ve recently been suffering through one of these periods, and, as usual, I’ve found significant relief from meditation. In…
I’ve been following the swine flu scare quite closely, having long been interested in infectious diseases that have spread widely, causing the great pandemics of history. One of the reasons I went back to grad school recently to study biology was because of my concern over the devastation wrought by HIV-AIDS. I wanted to know…
Like many women of a certain age (i.e., menopausal), I have experienced the insidious outward creep of my waistline. It’s been awhile since I was last able to fit into my “skinny jeans,” as the girls from Sex and the City named those pants you can’t bear to throw away. But, to my own honest…
Every time I start meditating again, I wonder why I ever stopped. Over the years, meditation has proved to be the best strategy I’ve ever found for reducing stress and anxiety. Not only is it very relaxing, but meditation seems to ramp up my creativity as well. I have had some truly visionary experiences while…
The first time I had a panic attack, I didn’t know what was happening, and neither, it seemed, did anybody else. I felt what folks who suffer from anxiety states and panic attacks will well recognize — that foggy, sticky sense of doom. Mind whirring, heart galloping, palms slick and limbs unsteady — surely I…
This week’s medical news brought a report about the disappointing results of one of the (thought to be) most promising weapons in the small arsenal against HIV-AIDS: a vaginal gel microbiocide, Carroguard. The gel was being tested in a large-scale trial in South Africa and Botswanna. This clinical trial had been ongoing for three years,…