Brain health is a huge topic, spanning everything from nutrition and sleep to cognitive training and dementia prevention, and no single blog can cover it all. To help you dig deeper, we’ve rounded up some of the most popular and…
Author: Brighter Health
I WENT THROUGH THREE ANTIDEPRESSANTS BEFORE ANYONE MENTIONED MY GENES MIGHT BE WHY NONE OF THEM WORKED
The first medication did almost nothing after two months, other than some mild side effects that made the wait feel even less worth it. The second worked marginally better, enough that my doctor and I debated whether to stay the…
MY STOMACH ONLY ACTED UP ON SOME DAYS, NEVER ALL DAYS, AND THAT INCONSISTENCY DROVE ME CRAZY
I could eat the exact same breakfast on a Tuesday and a Thursday and get completely different results. One day, nothing. The next, cramping and discomfort that would linger for hours. I kept waiting for a pattern to emerge from…
RANDOM HIVES SENT ME TO THREE DIFFERENT DOCTORS BEFORE ANYONE LOOKED PAST “ALLERGIES”
The first time it happened, I assumed it was a new laundry detergent. Raised, itchy welts across my forearms, gone by the next morning. I switched detergents, and it happened again a few weeks later anyway, this time across my…
I THOUGHT I WAS JUST “HIGH-STRUNG.” IT TURNS OUT MY NERVOUS SYSTEM WAS DOING EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS WIRED TO DO
Friends have called me high-strung for as long as I can remember, usually affectionately, sometimes less so. I notice a shift in someone’s tone before they’ve finished a sentence. I scan a room within seconds of entering it. I have…
EVERY PAINKILLER MY DENTIST PRESCRIBED EITHER DID NOTHING OR KNOCKED ME OUT FOR A DAY
My relationship with dental procedures has always come with an asterisk: whatever painkiller gets prescribed afterward is a gamble. One wisdom tooth extraction left me barely covered, gritting through real pain on the standard dose. A different prescription after a…
MY PMS WAS SO DIFFERENT FROM MY SISTER’S THAT I GENUINELY WONDERED IF SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH ME
My sister and I grew up in the same house, eating mostly the same food, sleeping on similar schedules. When it comes to PMS, we might as well be describing two different biological processes. She gets a little tired, maybe…
MY JOINTS ACHED LIKE I WAS SIXTY. I WAS THIRTY-TWO, AND NO ONE COULD TELL ME WHY
I started describing my knees as “creaky” at thirty, the kind of self-deprecating joke people usually make decades later. It stopped being funny somewhere around thirty-two, when the joke had become a genuine daily reality, stiff fingers in the morning,…
I’D SEEN A CARDIOLOGIST, A DIETITIAN, AND A SLEEP SPECIALIST SEPARATELY FOR YEARS. ONE REPORT FINALLY CONNECTED THE DOTS
By my late thirties, I had a small team of specialists, each managing their own piece of me. A cardiologist for occasional heart palpitations that never quite qualified as alarming but never fully went away either. A dietitian for a…
HEART DISEASE RUNS IN MY FAMILY. I FINALLY STOPPED ASSUMING THAT MEANT NOTHING I DID WOULD MATTER
My father had his first heart attack at fifty-two. His father had his at fifty-five. An uncle didn’t make it past fifty-eight. By the time I was in my thirties, I had absorbed a quiet, unspoken belief that my own…