Migraine is a neurodisease.

Scientists report their findings with inherent bias. It can be explicitly stated or implicit. In college, I first encountered this underpinning of science in ethology. This course elective focused on quantifying and understanding animal behaviors in nature. I was shocked to learn that most of what we understand about animals in nature is based on the observations of one or two scientists or naturalists. Even in science, bias is explicit. It can be difficult to undo the infl

Current U.S. health care insurance policies make a distinction in their coverage of diseases that affect the body and mind. A disease is a disease. Disease process often impacts the entire body. The brain, gut, nervous system, and immune system are intricately interconnected. Enough about mental hygiene — a term coined in the 1800s, which then morphed to "mental health" and more recently "mental illness." It is moving in the right direction as the onus is no longer placed en

The landscape of my childhood was varied and expansive, bounded by the Mississippi River to the east and north and as far as I could ride my bike to the west and south. The streets in my neighborhood were made of city blocks, which were 1,000 feet by 400 feet in parallel, east to west and north to south. Flat streets, with few hills, so that as a child I could bike a far distance and reach a rural area with farms to the south and still make it back home for supper. But my fa

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore is an unrelenting and horrifying story of industrial wrongdoing. This book, a historical account of workers injured due to an unchecked occupational hazard, is foremost a warning that people, even physicians who take an oath to do no harm, are capable of the cruelest denial to benefit themselves financially and to protect the interests of business. The author Kate Moore features the stories of an almos

I recently finished a wonderful memoir by scientist Hope Jahren. One of her many wise observations in Lab Girl is that everyone has a favorite tree from childhood. I share the author's sentiment, as I had a beloved tree in the backyard of my childhood home. One of my favorite places to play when I was young was a lilac specimen. Dubbed a tree by me, because the remarkably overgrown shrub had limbs strong enough to support two boards that made up my two-story treehouse. My Da

Thick ice covered the gravel path so I trudge in the frozen swamp amidst the trampled grass reeds pushing aside the suckered branches about my knee caps capturing my hands and mind No longer afraid of falling I roam the terrain usually reserved for deer, coyote, ducks, cormorants, heron, and red-winged blackbirds I stop to rest and catch the eyes of two fawns, double nodding their heads to me bobbing twice in reply I turn and follow my snow prints And return to the glassy pat

Seeing a two-year-old in our neighborhood singing about honey and hearing from his parents that he loved all things honey brought back a memory of myself loving all things sticky and sweet, including nectars (even sucking the nectar from the plucked flower stems of petunias and nasturtiums) and my personal favorite sorghum (even the biting Sulphur taste). Here, before me, was the sweetest child—had all that honey sweetened his disposition? My mother loved bread, as does my