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.

Mental health is a description of your psychological and emotional wellbeing. Your mental health can impact everything from your productivity at work or school, to your relationships to your risk for long term conditions like heart disease. Making sure you get regular exercise, eat a healthy diet, socialize and take time to relax are all crucial to maintaining your mental health. But sometimes, mental health conditions, also known as mental illnesses, strike anyway. A mental illness is any condition, such as depression or schizophrenia, that impacts your thinking, behavior, or mood. While they often emerge on their own, they can…

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​Early in Dee Mangin’s career as a primary-care physician, she noticed that many people, especially older adults, were prescribed large numbers and doses of drugs, which, in some cases, might actually be detracting from their health rather than improving it. Then, she realized that even when polypharmacy (being prescribed five or more medications simultaneously) was recognized as a problem, there wasn’t any systematic way to help patients and healthcare providers assess which medicines might be most effective in a lower dose or discontinued altogether.  Mangin is an MBChB (the New Zealand equivalent of an MD) and DPH (doctor of public…

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a term often “thrown around loosely,” says Howard Pratt, doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) and a psychiatrist at the Community Health of South Florida, who treats PTSD. In reality, it’s is a condition in which you might develop a variety of symptoms like nightmares, intrusive memories, or a tendency to avoid anything that reminds you of a traumatic event you experienced or even heard about. You might get startled easily or even blame yourself for what happened to you or to a friend. “What really makes it difficult is that these are not consistent things…

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