I had plans for my week off — but here I am sitting in a pool of formally white tissues — now covered in an array of tinted mucus. With my collection of antihistamines, decongestants, and anti-inflammatory drugs, I started to wonder about what was happening to my body’s immune system. Was it still fighting for me — or did it bail
Posts by Liz Belilovskaya
7 Steps To Better Relationships
We all want to have healthy and positive interactions with other people. Yet sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we simply can’t seem to achieve this goal. Much of our interpersonal conflict stems from how we communicate. Since communication is a multifaceted process involving two or more people, it’s important to
Meet Valisia LeKae: Award-Winning Actor and Fierce Cancer Warrior
Valisia LeKae received a life-changing phone call from her gynecologist on December 2, 2013. Picking up the phone, she assumed he was ringing her to check on how she was recovering post surgery — after all, she had a 6-centimeter cyst removed from her abdomen only 10 days prior — but he wasn’t. “He told me that
It Takes Guts: An Interview with Dr. Michael D. Gershon
Dr. Michael D. Gershon is all about the gut. Renowned for his pioneering work on the enteric nervous system and the role of serotonin within it, he’s been respectfully dubbed the “father of neurogastroenterology.” As the author of “The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine,”
The Wonder of Math: A Conversation With Danica McKellar
When you were a kid, did you have an easy time with math? Were you the type of student who intuitively took to it or were you in the other category, struggling to get the concepts and struggling even more to apply them in real life? Many young adults tend to experience difficulty mastering
Playing With Your Balls (It’s Not What You Think!)
Some would say that I am a nervous person. I often don’t know specifically what gives it away, but I tend to be a bit jittery. I also don’t sleep regularly, work too much, and don’t get out of the city often. All of these factors probably contribute to my ongoing nervousness, as well as my unfriendly neighbors. So, I certainly would like to
To Write or Not To Write? Living With Social Anxiety Disorder
It has come to my attention that I suffer a miniature panic attack whenever I have to write an article. Being a professional writer, I have these fairly often. Each assignment starts off seeming like a huge task, an uncalculated risk and a new venture into uncharted territory. I spend hours agonizing over what I have
Music: It’s Got the Power To Move You
You know that feeling you get when your favorite party track starts playing on the radio? Your feet start tapping to the beat, your body begins swaying to the rhythm, and your head bops side to side; you suddenly realize that you’re on the verge of breaking into dance because somehow
Brain Operating System: The User Manual for Your Mind
Yes! Our brains are operating systems. If you want to understand how they work, author, and educator Ilchi Lee suggests thinking of the physical organ as hardware with thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and preconceptions constituting the software that evokes our daily life experiences.
Simple Critters and Big Mysteries: An Interview with Dr. Thomas J. Carew
The excitement exhibited by Thomas J. Carew while talking about neuroscience is similar to that of a child discussing a favorite activity, as he seems to be thoroughly elated with his current position. “In a single day, I get to talk to a poet, a physicist and a Chinese historian,” cheerfully states Carew, in his role
Discovering Synesthesia: Loud Apples and Green Mondays
As a writer, I tend to cover a wide range of topics, and in the process, I usually get to learn something new. One of these topics is music. Every once in a while, I get to write an album review; doing so allows me to familiarize myself with the artists. This week, I learned about Annamaria Pinna, lead singer
Your Mind Illuminated: Lumosity and The Human Cognition Project
It was previously thought that the brain is a morphologically static organ. However, it has since been shown that the brain is in fact plastic. Neuroplasticity is the process by which changes in neural pathways and synapses can alter behavior. Every time one comes in contact with new information
Why We Experience Romantic Love: An Interview with Dr. Lucy Brown
Dr. Lucy Brown is currently a clinical professor in neurology at Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She also served as the director of the Laboratory for Functional Neuroanatomy and Movement Disorders for over 20 years — though admits that her greatest challenge was studying the neurophysiological basis of romantic love.
Understanding MS: A Q&A with Dr. Massimiliano Cristofanilli
“I would say that if a patient gets diagnosed now, they have a nice chance of living a normal life … with progressive MS, it’s not so much a matter of whether the symptoms get better or worse; it’s that you have loss of neural tissue, which normally doesn’t happen,” says Massimiliano Cristofanilli.
Syntonics: Colored Light Therapy for Balance
It is estimated that over 5 percent of people in the United States may have winter depression, and 10 to 20 percent suffer from a condition related to changes in the amount of daylight called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. One possible remedy to help the afflicted through this difficult time is syntonics.