You might think of hormones as acting on the parts of the body that aren’t hormones, and it’s true that a lot of them do that. What you also have, however, are tropic hormones. These influence the very same glands that produce hormones in the first place. The endocrine system really is all interconnected. Take […]
You may have noticed a trend in recent years. A bottle of water is not just a bottle of water; it’s a bottle of water with added electrolytes. The label says this like it’s a good thing, but do you actually know what electrolytes are and if they’re as important as people say? Electrolytes, perhaps
If you exercise a lot, chances are you’ll end up with an injury. You may be the most careful, restrained practitioner in the world, but sometimes you just can’t help it. Injury is a fact of life for the sportsperson, and that means you need to know how to deal with it. Sometimes, you won’t
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Things that cause your blood pressure to drop can be as simple as nutritional deficiencies or being dehydrated. One of the most common causes is blood loss. Slightly rarer, and a little more complex, is a neurological cause. This is known as reflex syncope. There are three types of reflex syncope: vasovagal, situational and carotid
Just as every vitamin has its own specific role in the body, every vitamin deficiency has its own symptoms. Some are better-known than others. On the more obscure side is the one-two punch of Wernicke encephalopathy and Korsakoff syndrome, which so often come as a pair. The vitamin to blame in this particular case is
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Echinacea is another one of those plants that people have been using in traditional medicine for years but where you might wonder exactly what it does and if there’s science to back up the claims. Well, I’m always here to try to help when you’re wading through the ever-confusing information that accompanies most supplements. There
Potassium isn’t as famous as iron or calcium, but that doesn’t make its role as a dietary mineral any less important. You can’t survive if you don’t have enough potassium, which you generally find by eating potassium-rich foods. Those foods include, as with most vitamins and minerals, lots of fruit and vegetables, particularly apricots (especially
When it comes to glands, there are two main ways they can go wrong. They can work too hard and produce too much of a certain hormone, or they can produce too little and create a hormone deficiency. Addison’s disease is the second. You might hear Addison’s disease called primary adrenal insufficiency. It’s caused when
Many conditions can be discovered through a blood test, but that’s not the be-all, end-all of medical testing. If you’ve got a genetic disorder, it can only be identified with a genetic test. In fact, genetic testing has a variety of useful purposes. Genetic testing means looking at DNA to identify any changes in the
What exactly happens when your cholesterol levels are too high? You’ve probably been warned about the dangers, but sometimes those warnings can sound a little vague. If you don’t have some medical knowledge, a complicated-sounding term like atherosclerosis may even make you zone out a little. Unfortunately, atherosclerosis is too serious to ignore. It may
