OAKTON, Va. – The last time lawyer Erika Byrd talked her way out of an alcohol rehab center, her father took her to lunch. “Dad, I know what alcohol has done to me,” she told him that day in January 2011. “I know what it has made me do to you and mom. But that wasn’t...
Kids with anxiety can be a real challenge for parents to recognize. As you would expect, the biggest reason may be that children don’t yet have the ability to fully express themselves verbally. They’re unable to say to you, “Going to the playground today is causing me some anxiety, so I don’t want to go.”...
Consuming just one energy drink could increase your risk of heart attack and stroke in 90 minutes, a new study finds. Researchers from the University of Texas at Houston says the drinks narrow blood vessels, which restricts blood flow to vital organs. Past studies have linked energy drinks – such as Red Bull, Monster and 5-Hour Energy –...
In 2011, Gisèle Pelicot’s life became a nightmare, though she wouldn’t know it for nearly a decade. Her husband, Dominique Pelicot, had begun drugging her with sedatives and anti-anxiety medication. While she lay in an unconscious state, Dominique allegedly invited strangers from online chatrooms to rape her. Between 2011 and 2020, over 50 men, aged 26...
The first time Fiona Symington rode a bike after working so hard to cure her chronic pain, she felt terrified but excited. The 42-year-old resident of Oxford, England, was afraid that after a quarter-century coping with enduring hurt, she wasn’t physically fit enough to ride and that her “proper pain,” as she puts it, might...
One of the biggest arguments couples have is about money, but when one woman’s husband gave away US$800 ($1165) of their holiday fund her reply was mostly unexpected. It all began when the husband, who is a teacher, noticed that one of his students was wearing the same clothes every day. A hoodie and sneakers,...
When I was growing up, both of my parents had demanding jobs. We lived in the suburbs and they worked in the city — my mom a court reporter, my dad a lawyer. They would endure the usually long and annoying commute back and forth every day, and many nights they’d still have some work to...
Today is my 40th birthday. When I turned 30 a decade ago, I wrote an article sharing life lessons to survive your 20s and crowd-sourced advice on how to excel in your 30s. And apparently you guys loved it. So, here’s more of the good stuff: 40 life lessons I now know at 40 that I wish I...
In a perfect world, no child would be neglected or abused. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world and the unsettling reality is that there are children out there that are not getting taken care of as they should. Recognizing the signs of neglect is perhaps the most important way to give a...
Iron is an important mineral that helps your body make hemoglobin, the part of red blood cells that carries oxygen. If a woman doesn’t have enough iron, her body can’t make enough healthy red blood cells, which can lead to a problem called iron deficiency anemia. It’s important to know the signs of low iron...
Jim McCants took green tea capsules in a drive to get healthy in middle age. His doctors now say they left him needing an urgent liver transplant, writes the BBC’s Tristan Quinn. It should have been one of the happiest days of his life. But Jim McCants looks back on his youngest son’s high school...
At3 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, death announced it was coming for him. He was only eight years old; his cancer cells were not responding to treatment anymore. His body’s leukemic blast cell counts were doubling daily. Bone marrow was no longer making red or white blood cells, not even platelets. The marrow was only...
