Getting accurate blood pressure readings is like peering into a crystal ball focused on your heart and vascular health. That’s because blood pressure is a reading of the force your blood exerts as it presses against the walls of your arteries.   High blood pressure is a threat to your:  With such essential bodily systems at risk, it’s important to understand …

Imagine you’re living your life, taking care of your health, getting the recommended screening mammograms and periodically performing breast self-checks, and you notice a lump. How worried should you be?  In most circumstances, a situation like this means it’s time to make an appointment with your healthcare provider but know that not every lump and bump you feel in your …

Fibromyalgia — a syndrome that includes a wide range of symptoms — commonly causes pain throughout the body, including in the joints. There’s more at stake, however, than dealing with physical discomfort. That’s especially true for women, who are more likely to develop fibromyalgia and can experience some of its symptoms more acutely than men.  If you leave fibromyalgia untreated, …

Alternatively known as mastalgia, mastodynia or mammalgia, breast pain has many names and descriptors (breast tenderness, stabbing breast pain, breast soreness, just to name a few). No matter what you call it, breast pain hurts, but in most cases, you can alleviate it with home care or a doctor’s care.  What Causes Mastalgia? If you’re a female, breast pain kind …

Why Do I Look So Terrible on Zoom? If you spend a good part of your day in virtual meetings or on social media platforms where you see your reflection, you may find yourself drawn to study your digitally enhanced features. For some, that attraction can turn into fixating on perceived physical flaws, which has become common enough to be …

In honor of National Midwifery Week, St. Elizabeth Healthcare is celebrating our midwives and the tremendous services they bring to our healthcare network. What is a Nurse-Midwife? It’s a common myth that nurse-midwives don’t have a formal education and only perform home births. That couldn’t be further from the truth! All certified nurse-midwives (CNM) are advanced practice registered nurses. At …

“What’s going on with my eyesight?”   If you’ve recently started experiencing blurry vision or difficulty reading text up close, you may be asking yourself and even your physician that question. The answer may be related to aging if you’ve reached the time of life between 41 and 60 years of age when vision changes become common.  Many age-related vision problems …

When your temples are throbbing and you can’t see straight, understanding the type of headache you’re experiencing may help you find relief.   Headaches occur when blood vessels and nerves inside and outside the brain are affected by triggers or events. Women are more likely than men to get migraines, but migraines aren’t the only catalyst of head pain. A headache …

You may already know that too much stress is a bad thing. You may even know that too much stress can increase your risk for certain health issues, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. But did you know that women consistently report experiencing stress at higher rates than men?  What Is the Mind-Body Connection? Chronic stress in women …

Despite what Hollywood might make you think, it is possible to enjoy your middle years without a midlife crisis.   What is a Midlife Crisis? The term “midlife crisis” was coined in 1965 by psychoanalyst Elliot Jaques after he noticed a trend that during their middle years, people tend to realize their own mortality and that we can only do so …