When Wendy Holman noticed her hair was falling out, she immediately assumed the cause to be a recent hair color treatment, and even changed stylists. However, what she thought was one bad hair week quickly turned into a nightmare.  → Read More

This month, millions of previously uninsured women across the country are finally gaining desperately-needed health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. But some of our country’s newly-insured women may have trouble actually using their health coverage to seek urgent care, get a mammogram or take a sick child to the doctor. That’s because they work for employers that offer no paid sick time, and risk losing their jobs if they are ill and can’t come to work.  → Read More

As a Washingtonian, I hear lots about solving problems—although we do not always seem to find solutions that work. Our problems seem so intractable, from climate change to feeding billions of people. The solutions are not going to come from approaches that involve repeating some formula that has always worked in the past. Instead, like a beloved math professor who advised me to do just this, we are going to have to sit back and dream about it, envision things that challenge us, and try to imagine better strategies, ones that have not yet emerged in text books or treatises or laws or policy.  → Read More

Our ever-expanding waistlines have implications for women of all ages. While most of us don’t like the look of a “muffin top” hanging over our pants, the real concern is the underlying health implications, which can be very serious. The National Institutes of Health warns that women with a waist circumference exceeding 35 inches are at higher risk of developing health problems.  → Read More

Since being overwhelmed by chronic oral pain last spring, I’ve done lots to cope, including things that would proved to be my downfall: I comforted myself with way too much ice cream (full-fat, every day, it was soothing and numbed the pain), and I put my scale away. Physicians prescribed an array of painkillers and novel approaches, and I even underwent a few nerve blocks. I learned to meditate and distract myself. But nothing kept the pain at bay as effectively as a huge bowl of ice cream, followed by just one more.  → Read More