Piaf’s Early Childhood and Illness Piaf was born Edith Giovanna Gassion in 1915 in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris to a mother who soon abandoned her; she lived with her maternal grandmother and then with her paternal grandmother in the latter’s brothel. Her father was a skilled street acrobat and circus performer. As a teenager, Piaf would sing on the Parisian streets for money. Illness was an ongoing issue for Piaf....

Studies on valerian as a sleep aid have come to mixed conclusions on the herb’s effectiveness, which may be related to varying amounts of its active components in different products. But almost across the board, studies have concluded that for most people, valerian is safe, with few serious side effects reported. (1) But that doesn’t mean there are no risks to taking this supplement. Long-term studies of valerian are few and far between, so it’s unknown whether there are health risks associated with taking it regularly for years....

Age: 38 Condition: Rheumatoid arthritis How long she’s been living with RA: 18 years I’ve always loved to sleep, but ever since my diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) at the age of 20, I’ve really come to appreciate how important a good night’s sleep is for my overall health and well-being. Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune disease which causes a variety of body-wide symptoms, including joint pain and fatigue, both of which can interfere with sleep....

Pregnant Women Are More Vulnerable to Mental Health Problems Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic What’s New Pregnant and postpartum women in 64 countries, including the United States, have been experiencing a higher level of symptoms of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and loneliness as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published in April 2021 in PLOS One. Factors that put women at the greatest risk were worrying about their children and medical care, as well as seeking information about the pandemic at least five times a day from any source, whether online searches or talking to others....

Actual numbers of STDs are much higher among older teenagers and adults in their twenties than in adults in their fifties and sixties. For example, 1,420,838 cases of chlamydia were reported among people between the ages of 15 and 29 in 2018, compared with 14,867 cases among adults 55 and older. But the steep increases in STDs among older adults in the space of five years shows that baby boomers and the generation older than boomers, sometimes called the silent generation, have as much need to practice safe sex as their younger counterparts....

Calories from carbs have often been thought to promote weight gain more than other calories. Many current diets emphasize a low-carb approach, including the popular ketogenic diet. “Our study adds to the literature that suggests metabolic benefits for reducing processed carbohydrates in our diets,” says David Ludwig, MD, principal investigator in the study and an endocrinologist at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts. “We found that diet had a major impact on metabolism — people consuming the lower-carbohydrate diet in our study burned 250 calories more than those on the high-carb diet....

Insurance claims from telehealth appointments increased by 8,336 percent from April 2019 to April 2020, according to FAIR Health, a nonprofit organization that collects data from private health insurance claims. Even among the four largest telemedicine providers in the U.S. — Amwell, Teladoc, MDLIVE, and Doctor on Demand — telehealth visits increased by 154 percent the last week of March 2020 compared with the same week in March 2019, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)....

This means your cardiologist may well be your most important physician. Cardiologists are doctors who specialize in conditions related to the heart. They have at least three years of cardiology training after their medical residency, and some subspecialize, studying an additional year or two. Your time in your cardiologist’s office, as with many doctors, will likely be brief. Since there’s a lot you’ll want to cover, it helps to know in advance what you want to ask, says Amy Pollak, MD, assistant professor of cardiology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida....

Kelly tried calling her supervisor to say she wasn’t feeling well, but she struggled to type her password into her cellphone and got locked out. She went back to bed, telling herself she was just having a bad morning and that all would be fine when she woke up later. When Kelly didn’t show up for work, however, her supervisor called her parents, who contacted her roommate. When the roommate entered the room to try and rouse her, she realized something was amiss....

You can listen and subscribe on Apple, Stitcher, and Spotify. And if you like what you hear, a five-star rating goes a long way toward helping us Track the Vax! Richard Kuhn: Traditionally, for viruses, we’ve either taken a virus and inactivated it, and used that as a vaccine, or we’ve taken a virus and made it less infectious — that is, it’s attentuated — and made that a vaccine; or we’ve expressed proteins that are on the surface of a virus and used those proteins as stimulants for your immune system....

DME is a condition in which fluid builds up in the macula, the center of your eye’s retina, according to the National Eye Institute (NEI). “This part of your retina is essential for reading, driving, and seeing people’s faces,” says Lee M. Jampol, MD, an ophthalmologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Louis Feinberg, MD, a professor of ophthalmology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Diabetes weakens the blood vessels throughout your body, including those in the eyes....

Medication Options for Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP) There is no cure for ITP, but there are effective ways to manage it. One of these strategies is to use medication. Medications include the following: Oral corticosteroids such as prednisone, dexamethasone, methylprednisolone are usually the first line of treatment for ITP, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD).These drugs can get your platelets back to safe levels, but are only recommended for short-term use because they can increase your risk of a number of health conditions, including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, infections, and osteoporosis, according to the Mayo Clinic....

Many strategies patients use to manage type 2 diabetes — including lifestyle changes, medication, and weight-loss surgery — can help them get to remission, according to the guidelines, which were drafted by members from the Endocrine Society, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, Diabetes UK, and the American Diabetes Association. Whatever intervention, or combination of approaches, people use, the guidelines note, there’s still one target they need to hit for doctors to consider the disease in remission: an A1C of below 6....

— Bonnie, Minnesota I am happy to say that usually, Bonnie, for a person like you, who has a normal heart structure and a normal exercise stress test with good exercise tolerance, the prognosis is excellent, even with inverted T-waves. T-waves are a part of a normal electrocardiogram (EKG), representing the electrical recovery (or repolarization) of the ventricles, the lower chambers of the heart, after a contraction, or heartbeat. There are many reasons why T-waves can be inverted....

— Sunshine, Louisiana Urethral polyps can mean different things for different people. In the urinary tract, a fibroepithelial polyp is usually a benign polyp that has no malignant potential — that is, it cannot become cancerous. However, some malignant tumors of the bladder and urethra have a polyp-like appearance; usually a simple biopsy to remove them adequately treats the problem. Women may experience urethral lesions called caruncles, which are also benign lesions of the urethral epithelium....

On July 3, Ray celebrated his 85th birthday. He is one of a small group of people living with type 1 diabetes worldwide who have hit this milestone in longevity. Boston-based George King, MD, the chief scientific officer with the Joslin Diabetes Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, estimates that since the introduction of insulin in the 1920s, about 50 to 100 people with type 1 diabetes have lived beyond age 80 with the disease....

“Compression garments help to prevent the blood pooling in the veins, they prevent fluid pooling in the legs, and they help return the blood in the veins back to the heart,” says Natalia Fendrikova Mahlay, MD, an internal medicine doctor at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Dr. Mahlay says that the arteries are like “supply vessels” and the veins “collectors.” Usually, the veins collect fluid from the periphery and return it to the heart, which circulates it back through the body....

Everyone has hemorrhoidal tissue in this area, made up of blood vessels, connective tissue, and some muscle. These “cushions” don’t always become enlarged or distended, but as we age, this phenomenon becomes more common — causing what we call hemorrhoids, also known as piles. Hemorrhoids can be associated with various conditions, and it’s thought that they’re most often related to straining to pass a bowel movement. Lifting heavy objects, along with other activities that can cause straining, may also lead to hemorrhoids....

These attacks are often painful, unpredictable, and disfiguring. They can interfere with your everyday life, and in some cases they can cause a medical emergency. It’s important to recognize the first signs of an HAE attack, so you can seek prompt treatment, notes the U.S. Hereditary Angioedema Association. (1) Subcutaneous Attacks These attacks affect areas of the skin, usually on the face, hands, feet, or genitals. Your skin will swell and may turn red, but it usually doesn’t itch....

A hernia can be external, pushing through muscle toward the outside of your body and visible under your skin, or internal, when it pushes through a different muscle layer deep under the skin. There are several types of hernias, each of which is associated with its own set of symptoms. Your doctor will diagnose a hernia based on your symptoms and health history, a physical exam, and possibly blood tests or imaging scans of the affected area....