If you have sickle cell disease (SCD), your red blood cells aren’t round and flexible like they should be. Instead, they’re stiff and sticky. They’re also shaped like a crescent or a sickle, and get wedged in small blood vessels. The sickled cells can clump and block blood flow. This makes it harder for your blood to carry oxygen through your body, which can leave you tired, in pain, out of breath, and more likely to pick up infections.

Breast cancer in men is rare, but it can happen. It’s more common in women. But everyone — including men — has some breast tissue. Men get the same types of breast cancers that women do. In the U.S., men make up about 1% of breast cancer diagnoses.

An episodic migraine is a painful form of headache that can last for hours. It can happen up to 14 times a month. If you have it, there are many different types of health care professionals you can turn to for help.

Breast cancer is when the cells under one or both breasts grow out of control. Those cells may spread beyond your breasts and nearby lymph nodes. When that happens, the cancer is called metastatic.

When you have Crohn’s disease, you want to prevent flare-ups and keep them away for good.

Inflammation in your intestines causes symptoms like belly pain and diarrhea. Anti-inflammatory drugs ease them and may even keep them away for years. Although they aren’t a cure, they can help you feel much better. Your doctor will help you decide which one is best for you.

There’s no single option that’s right for everyone with prostate cancer. Some tumors grow very slowly or not at all, so you may never need treatment. Others grow faster and spread to different places in your body. In either case, you and your doctor will work together to decide what’s best for you.

Treatment plans for obesity often combine a lower calorie diet, more physical activity, and medication. If you have obesity, many treatment options can help you lose weight. Doing so lowers your chances of getting diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and other conditions.

How well do you know your asthma inhaler?

What drugs are in it? Do you puff and breathe, or breathe and puff?

Inhalers are the most effective way to get lifesaving medications to people with asthma and other lung conditions. Whether you have asthma or care for someone who does, here’s what you need to know about inhalers, including how to use one correctly.

Advances in our understanding of asthma have helped experts define specific types of asthma, such as exercise-induced asthma, occupational asthma, and nighttime asthma. Understanding the type of asthma you have can help you get the most effective treatment.

Prostate cancer is usually called "advanced" if it’s spread outside of the prostate gland. It may have moved to the tissues nearby, which doctors call “locally advanced.” It also could spread to your lymph nodes, bones, or other parts of your body. Then, it’s called metastatic prostate cancer.

A blood transfusion is a way of adding blood to your body after an illness or injury. If your body is missing one or more of the components that make up healthy blood, a transfusion can help supply what your body is missing.

If you’re LGBTQ — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or nonbinary, or queer — your gender and sexuality can affect your mental health and wellness. There are external things that might affect you more than a straight, cisgender person (someone whose biological sex aligns with their gender identity).

Coming out is when you decide to tell people about your gender or sexual orientation. We live in what you might hear called a heteronormative society, which means people usually assume you identify with the sex you were assigned at birth (cisgender) and are attracted to members of the opposite sex (heterosexual). But that isn’t always the case, and it’s just one of many reasons LGBTQ people decide to come out. Here are some things to consider about coming out, along with tips for how to do it. 

HIV status discrimination is when people living with HIV and AIDS face negative attitudes, abuse, and discrimination.

There was a lot of fear and anxiety when HIV became an epidemic in the 1980s. During that time, doctors didn’t know much about how HIV was spread, so people were scared of getting it. That same fear continues, even today.

No matter where you are on the gender spectrum, you might choose to use birth control if there’s a chance you could get pregnant and you don’t want to.

Not all people who are transgender, nonbinary, or gender expansive choose to get gender-affirming care. But some people do take hormone therapy as part of their medical care to help align their sex characteristics with their gender identity. If you do, keep in mind that gender-affirming hormone therapy isn’t made for birth control, so you shouldn’t rely on it for that purpose. 

Maurie Lung, PhD, was in second grade when she realized what she wanted to do when she grew up.

“When I went away to summer camp, my little Strawberry Shortcake diary said, ‘When I grow up, I want to help people in the outdoors,’” Lung says. And that’s exactly what she does today.

Lung oversees the nature-based and adventure-based counseling programs at Prescott College and is also a licensed therapist and counselor who does nature-based and adventure-based counseling for individuals, couples, and families.

Reading blogs created by others living with it (or blogging yourself) can be a good way to connect to other people in the breast cancer community. Here are six of the best breast cancer blogs, recommended by doctors and people living with breast cancer.