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Interesting articles

"Ill in a day’s work"*

Excerpt from the article:

Today, a growing number of midlife women face an array of chronic diseases that blindside their careers. Managing their health forces many of them to take pay cuts, scale back their aspirations, and give up socializing and networking. As a result, they face financial consequences that can be profound…

Women are especially susceptible to certain kinds of chronic illness. For instance, they are four times more likely than men to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, in which the body’s immune system, acting on misread signals, turns on itself. There are more than 80 such diseases, but women in their 40s and 50s are particularly vulnerable to Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Sjogren’s syndrome, polymyalgia rheumatica, and rheumatoid arthritis, among others. Rates of many autoimmune diseases have doubled and tripled in recent decades.

How a Marriage Survives When One Partner Gets Sick*

Excerpt from the article:

The contract changes when a husband or wife becomes chronically ill, but many couples learn to not just adjust but also thrive.

So what distinguishes the couples who do make it through? After hearing from many people across the country about their need for support—and their disappointment in discovering that so little help exists—I decided to find still-married couples and talk to them about how they make it work. While the specifics varied, I discovered that for the most part, the successful couples weren’t dealing with fewer or easier problems. But each of them was somehow able to use the challenges to strengthen their relation-ship rather than weaken it—often in ways that would benefit any marriage.

 

*from MORE.Com


 

Cover Get  A Grip BookGet a Grip: A Take-Charge Approach to Living with Arthritis by Amye Leong
Amye Leong was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was 18 years old. Written by someone who has suffered with the disease for more than 30 years, and enthusiastically supported by national arthritis organizations, "Get a Grip" is an emotional and inspirational story, as well as a handbook for coping with arthritis on a day-to-day basis.

Wellness Book: The Comprehensive Guide to Maintaining Health and Treating Stress-Related Illness by Herbert Benson, MD and Eileen M. Stuart,R.N., C., M.S.
The Wellness Book has been very helpful for people with chronic illness including RA and cited by some as the best book on mind/body techniques for healing and recovery of the body and spirit. One person stated, "What I really like about this book is that it enables each reader to really focus in on their individual lifestyles, needs, and habits and develop specific, realistic, and individualized action plans for improved and healthful living."


  • Effects of Writing About Stressful Experiences on Symptom Reduction in Patients With Asthma or Rheumatoid Arthritis, Joshua M. Smyth, PhD; Arthur A. Stone, PhD; Adam Hurewitz, MD; Alan Kaell, MD, JAMA, 1999

Patients with mild to moderately severe asthma or rheumatoid arthritis who wrote about stressful life experiences had clinically relevant changes in health status at 4 months compared with those in the control group. These gains were beyond those attributable to the standard medical care that all participants were receiving. It remains unknown whether these health improvements will persist beyond 4 months or whether this exercise will prove effective with other diseases.

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