BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Got this in email from a friend and felt it was worth sharing: This is for the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, saying, "It's all right honey, Mommy's here." Who have sat in rocking chairs for hours on end soothing crying babies who can't be comforted. This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes. This is for all the mothers who go hungry, so their children can eat. For all the mothers who read "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a year. And then read it again. "Just one more time." This is for every mother whose head turns automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own offspring are at home -- or even away at college. This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the words to reach them. For all the mothers of the victims of r...

Health experts recommend lots of sleep, nutrition goals for sufferers. By Holly VanScoy Fibromyalgia was once dismissed by many traditional medical practitioners as a phantom illness. But that view is changing rapidly. Not only is fibromyalgia accepted as a diagnosable illness, it is also a syndrome that researchers are finding more complicated as new information emerges. As recently as a year ago, many physicians still associated some of fibromyalgia's symptoms with emotional problems, but that's no longer the case. A simple description of fibromyalgia is that it is a chronic syndrome characterized by widespread muscle pain and fatigue. For still unknown reasons, people with fibromyalgia have increased sensitivity to pain that occurs in areas called their "tender points." Common ones are the front of the knees, the elbows, the hip joints, the neck and spine. People may also experience sleep disturbances, morning stiffness, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety and other ...

Smell, Sleep & Memory - Linked Doctors have long advised that a good night's sleep is important for memory -- but researchers now say a familiar scent wafting in the bedroom might help sometimes, too. The caveat: In the study, being published Friday in the journal Science, it only worked for some kinds of memories and during one stage of sleep, meaning it's not the answer for people hunting a quick memory boost. German scientists used medical students as their guinea pigs, having them play a computer version of a common memory game: They turned over pairs of cards to find each one's match. Some played in a rose-scented room. Later that night, while they were in a deep stage of sleep known as slow-wave sleep, researchers gave them another whiff of roses. The next day, the rose-scented sleepers remembered the locations of those cards better than people who didn't get a whiff -- they answered correctly 97 percent of the time compared with 86 percent. People exposed to ...