HelpGuide's Collaboration with Harvard
We are collaborating with Harvard Health Publications, the consumer health publishing division of Harvard Medical School. The articles below have been adapted from Harvard Health Publications.
Autism Behavior Problems
Autism is not a hardwired impairment programmed into a child’s genes and destined to remain fixed forever. Paying attention differently to and recording the environment around and prior to incidents can lead to an understanding of triggers for occurrences. Sensory breaks can help your child regroup and refocus.
Recognizing Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s Disease can be caught in the early stages—when the best treatments are available—by watching for telltale warning signs. If you recognize the warning signs in yourself or a loved one, make an appointment to see your physician right away. Brain imaging technology can diagnose Alzheimer’s early, improving the opportunities for symptom management.
Tips to Improve Your Sex Life
Whether the problem is big or small, there are many things you can do to get your sex life back on track. Your sexual well-being goes hand in hand with your overall mental, physical, and emotional health. Communicating with your partner, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, availing yourself of some of the many excellent self-help materials on the market, and just having fun can help you weather tough times.
Benefits of Mindfulness
In the rush to accomplish necessary tasks, you may find yourself losing your connection with the present moment—missing out on what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. Mindfulness is the practice of purposely focusing your attention on the present moment—and accepting it without judgment. Mindfulness is now being examined scientifically and has been found to be a key element in stress reduction and overall happiness.
The Biology of Sleep
Your body’s natural daily rhythms are regulated by structures in the brain that help determine when you fall asleep and wake up. During the night, stages of quiet sleep alternate with periods of REM (dreaming) sleep. Quiet sleep is important because it helps restore the body, while REM sleep restores the mind and is important for both learning and memory.
What’s Causing Your Memory Loss?
More than 50 conditions can cause or mimic the symptoms of dementia, and a small percentage of dementias are reversible. Getting the right diagnosis is important so that you know what options you have, because symptoms subside when the underlying problem is treated.
Not Sleeping Well?
People who feel they sleep perfectly well may still be troubled by excessive daytime sleepiness because of a variety of underlying medical illnesses. A sleep disturbance may be a symptom of a health issue or an adverse effect of therapy to treat the problem. The stress of chronic illness can also cause insomnia and daytime drowsiness.
Vitamins and Minerals
Vitamins and minerals are essential nutrients because they perform hundreds of roles in the body. There is a fine line between getting enough of these nutrients (which is healthy) and getting too much (which can end up harming you). Eating a healthy diet remains the best way to get sufficient amounts of the vitamins and minerals you need.
What’s the Best Exercise Plan for Me?
There is no single type of exercise that can take care of all your needs. In fact, to get the most benefits from your routine, you want a mix of activities during the course of a week. Otherwise, it’s like a diet consisting only of fruit—healthful as far as it goes, but lacking a lot of the
nutrients.
Stress and Your Health
Skeptics have long believed that meditation and other stress reduction techniques are nice but ineffectual practices that do little for you. Nothing could be further from the truth—and now we have the science to prove it.
Opioid Addiction
These days, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the toll that opioid addiction is taking on everyday people. Each day in the United States, 78 Americans die from an opioid overdose, 46 of those from an overdose of prescription pain relievers.
