Health Topic

Managing Low Back Pain

About Lower Back Pain

Eighty percent of adults will experience significant low back pain sometime during their lifetime. Low back pain usually involves muscle spasms of the supportive muscles along the spine. Also, pain numbness, and tingling in the buttocks or lower extremity can be related to the back. There are multiple causes of low back pain (see below). Prevention of low back pain, as well as knowing self-care options for acute low back pain, are important, as symptoms can recur on more than one occasion.

Common causes of lower back pain Muscle strain...

Cold Care

About Colds

A cold is an upper respiratory infection caused by a virus. There are at least 200 different cold viruses, the most common one being the rhinovirus ("nose virus"). Symptoms of a cold usually include a runny nose, sneezing, coughing, sore throat, muscle aches, headaches, low-grade fever, and congestion of the ears, nose, and head. Colds usually last for a few days, but symptoms can persist for weeks.

A perceptive physician once said, "If you treat cold symptoms vigorously, they will go away in seven days. If left alone, they will disappear over the course of a week."...

Meningitis: Meningococcal Disease

Meningitis is an infection of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. Cases can be mild if caused by a virus or more severe if caused by bacteria.

Meningococcal meningitis is a type of bacterial meningitis that is rare but can cause serious illness and death. According to CDC data, approximately 1,000-1,200 people get meningococcal disease in the USA each year. College freshmen living in dormitories are one of the groups at higher risk than the general population of a similar age. See the...

Skin Conditions

Skin is our largest organ and plays a very important role as our first level of defense and helps keep our bodies working properly.

Managing Sleep - Refresh Program

Many college students have difficulties with sleep, given intense schedules, overlapping deadlines and stress from academics, and often family and relationship issues. Research indicates that adequate sleep is important for learning, lowering stress, averting depression and even maintaining a healthy weight.

This 8-week self-study program can help you get your sleep back on track. This is a program that is meant to be done one unit per week. Weekly reading takes about 10-15 minutes and daily monitoring of sleep is done via a 30-second sleep diary. You can do this on your own, and...

Clinical Depression

What is Clinical Depression?

When we refer to depression in the following pages, we are talking about "clinical depression." Clinical depression is a serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Individuals with clinical depression are unable to function as they used to. Often they have lost interest in activities that were once enjoyable to them, and feel sad and hopeless for extended periods of time. Clinical depression is not the same as feeling sad or depressed for a few days and then feeling better. It can affect...