Your health: Are you sad?
Is it depression?
While we all experience sadness at times, depression has more staying power and depth. It is more than a passing bout of sadness or dejection or feeling down in the dumps. Depression can have physical, as well as emotional, symptoms.
According to the Healthbeat newsletter from the Harvard Medical School, there are five questions a doctor may ask.
• Have you or anyone in your family ever suffered from depression or another mental disorder? If so, how was it treated?
• Do you get satisfaction and pleasure from your life?
• Do you ever have thoughts about suicide or have attempted suicide?
• Do you drink alcohol? If so, how often and how much?
• Do you use any drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, crack or heroin to get high or relax? If so, which drugs and how often?
Because a person may minimize symptoms or may not realize there is a potential problem, a doctor or therapist may want to speak to a family member on how to proceed with treatment.
Good veggie news
With fresh corn and watermelon turning up in grocery stores, summer can't be far behind.
Corn can be considered a whole grain, and watermelon is full of fiber and low in calories and make great additions to a diet, The Washington Post notes.
That's not the only good news from the produce aisle. Prices on many vegetables have dropped dramatically, a result of farms' recent recovery from winter's deep-freeze conditions, Safeway spokesman Greg Ten Eyck said.
Consumers should start seeing lower prices for green beans, lettuce, celery, bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and squash.
So get ready to make more room for those veggies on your plate at meal time.
Is it depression?
While we all experience sadness at times, depression has more staying power and depth. It is more than a passing bout of sadness or dejection or feeling down in the dumps. Depression can have physical, as well as emotional, symptoms.
According to the Healthbeat newsletter from the Harvard Medical School, there are five questions a doctor may ask.
• Have you or anyone in your family ever suffered from depression or another mental disorder? If so, how was it treated?
• Do you get satisfaction and pleasure from your life?
• Do you ever have thoughts about suicide or have attempted suicide?
• Do you drink alcohol? If so, how often and how much?
• Do you use any drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, crack or heroin to get high or relax? If so, which drugs and how often?
Because a person may minimize symptoms or may not realize there is a potential problem, a doctor or therapist may want to speak to a family member on how to proceed with treatment.
Smartphone science
Now you can get health information on your smartphone. In honor of microblogging website Twitter.com's fifth anniversary, Time has named the top 140 tweeters, including 10 that focus on health and science, The Washington Post reports.
The most followers is astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) with about 130,000. The host of PBS' “NOVA ScienceNOW” series, most of Tyson's tweets are about space, but he's also been known to tweet about wine and ballroom dancing. There is also nutrition expert Marion Nestle (@marionnestle), physician and New Yorker magazine staffer Atul Gawande (@Atul_Gawande) and the National Science Foundation (@NSF).