Author: Emma Yasinski

Emma Yasinski

I am a freelance science and medical journalist, fascinated by how the scientific process leads to incredible discoveries, but also can lead to publication bias leaning toward positive findings and minimizing negatives. With a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Lafayette College and a Master’s in Science and Medical Journalism from Boston University, I’ve written about clinical trial transparency, organ donation, and basic molecular biology for publications like The Scientist, The Atlantic, Undark.org, Kaiser Health News, and more. At MedShadow, I research and write about the sometimes unexpected ways that medicines can affect us, and what we can do if and when it does.

A woman wrote to doctors at the University of California Los Angeles asking whether stress could be behind her new irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) diagnosis. She’d been diagnosed during the pandemic. She’d just started a new job, then lockdowns had her working in addition to homeschooling her children. Like many of us, she’d been incredibly stressed.  Spoiler alert: the doctors cannot definitively tell her the cause of her irritable bowel, but stress is a known trigger that often precedes both diagnoses and flare ups. Over the past few years, researchers have begun to understand  more and more of the reasons…

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Read through MedShadow’s coverage of the side effects of drugs and you’ll see many of the same side effects mentioned over and over. For example, patients report nausea after taking a whole host of drugs, such as those for Lupus, HIV prevention, cancer and more. It’s crucial to differentiate side effects from symptoms, explains Suzanne Soliman, PharmD, founder of the Pharmacist Moms Group, so that you and your healthcare provider can work together to improve your care. She says, when she works with patients who are experiencing new symptoms or side effects, the first step is for her to take…

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Alzheimer’s disease is scary. While pharmaceutical treatments exist, their effectiveness is minimal at best, and with the headlines about fraud in one of the early studies on the nature of the disease, you may be feeling like dementia is more mysterious than ever, or that there is nothing you can do about it. But some lifestyle changes you can make today can prevent Alzheimer’s for you down the road. MedShadow’s Medical Advisory Board Member, George Grossberg, MD, works with people who have Alzheimer’s and their families at the St. Louis School of Medicine in Missouri. He explains that, while we…

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Madeline Shonka told MedShadow it took her years to get an accurate lupus diagnosis. Even then, she had to go through trial and error with many different combinations of medications for treatment, all the while trying to decipher the best lifestyle changes to manage her condition. For example, she eventually discovered that making time for light exercise had a huge positive impact on her quality of life. Jill Dehlin, an RN who suffers from migraines, told MedShadow that tracking her symptoms helped immensely. “I recommend to everyone that I speak with to keep a journal or diary and keep track…

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When personal trainer and nutrition coach Erik was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), he says he felt almost betrayed: “The foods I consider paramount to my physical success are now turning against my body.” He says medicines haven’t helped much either, so he’s been experimenting with different foods and testing out an anti-inflammatory diet. None of those attempts have yet managed to end his first months-long IBS flare-ups. What Is IBS? IBS is “chronic abdominal pain with altered bowel movements in the absence of an identifiable cause,” says Aniruddh Setya, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Kidz Medical Service in Hollywood,…

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