Health

All of those exhausted from Halloween take heart: You get an extra hour of sleep this weekend. Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 4, so turn your clock back an hour before heading to bed on Saturday night (unless you live in Arizona or Hawaii, two states that remain on consistent schedules).

Sitting at a desk for long periods of time can make any worker want to get up and move around. But for people with Restless Leg Syndrome (also known as Willis-Ekbom disease), the urge to move the legs in order to stop unpleasant sensations is irresistible. People with this neurologic condition sometimes use words such as “creeping,” “itching,” “pulling,” “creepy-crawly,” “tugging,” or “gnawing” to describe the feeling, and movement puts an end to the discomfort.

Some 1.5 million Americans are affected by Parkinson’s -- a chronic, progressive, neurological disease that results from the loss of cells that produce the chemical messenger dopamine that is responsible for transmitting signals within the brain. Loss of dopamine causes critical nerve cells in the brain to fire out of control, leaving the person unable to control his movements in a regular manner.

In times when many workers have more than a full plate on their hands, it isn’t unusual to develop a short fuse. While we all know that being quick to anger isn’t good for our health (not to mention our professional reputation), calming that burst of anger when the Internet is down again or a deadline gets moved up is often easier in theory than in reality.

Sometimes it isn’t easy to decide whether or not to stay home from work. While symptoms such as a high fever or vomiting cannot be ignored, many of us tough out a cold or write off a headache while continuing to conduct business as usual.

Your boss commends various members of the team for their work on an important project but forgets to mention your name. A co-worker invites some people from the office out for drinks but doesn’t ask you. A friend throws her hat into the ring for a job in another department that she knows you’ve been eyeing.

We all know that some people need eyeglasses in order to drive or see things at a distance. Others (especially those over age 40) depend on reading glasses to focus on things up close. But there is another type of glasses becoming common in our tech-centered world – computer glasses.

Many schools are taking part today (Oct. 1) in Blue Shirt Day: World Day of Bullying Prevention. Wearing the color symbolizes unity in the effort to reduce and prevent bullying, cyberbullying, hatred, and violence. According to the group STOMP Out Bullying, as many as 160,000 students stay home on any given day because they are afraid of their bullies and/or just can’t take the pain anymore.

Chances are that you haven’t thought much about chicken pox since having them in grade school, but the virus that causes that itchy condition can reactivate in one’s body many years later in an even more troublesome form – shingles. According to the Center for Disease Control, about 1 out of 3 Americans will experience shingles at some point in life. It is known for causing a painful, blistering skin rash that can last 2-4 weeks, but some people develop severe nerve pain that may remain for months or even years.