Jen Laskey

An eLIT BOOK AWARDS — SILVER MEDAL WINNER, Jen’s Candy Jar is a unique collection of recipes that celebrates the comeback of the artisanal candy-making tradition and embraces its author’s distinctive taste in sweets. Artisanal candy-maker and author Jen Laskey has honed in on her 10 favorite confections and given them a distinctly epicurean upgrade. This 76-page, richly-photographed eBook provides easy-to-follow step-by-step recipe instructions, candy-making tool and tip suggestions...

Being healthy isn’t just about making smart choices and behaving in a certain way. Systemic and structural racism can stand between you and good health.

For almost a decade now, Selena Gomez has been using her stardom to help educate the public about lupus. Lupus is a sometimes debilitating chronic condition that Selena was diagnosed with in 2013. Later, she disclosed her diagnosis to the public in a 2015 Billboard article...

Hernias can be smaller and harder to detect in women, and pregnancy can increase hernia risk. Here’s what you need to know about spotting hernia signs and getting treatment.

The symptoms of bipolar disorder vary from person to person, but could you be doing more to control yours? Take this assessment to find out.

You finally get bloodwork done after months of feeling exhausted, foggy-brained, and unlike yourself. The results come back “normal.” Your doctor seems satisfied. You, on the other hand, wonder: If everything’s fine, why do I feel so bad? Just because a lab result is “normal” doesn’t mean everything’s fine. It simply means that, statistically, you probably don’t have a disease—not that you’re functioning optimally. That gap between normal and optimal is where many people get stuck....

Stroll weekend lights up Nantucket during its darkest days, kicking off the year’s final season of gathering, feasting, toasting and tippling before giving way to winter’s quieter pleasures. It’s a splendor of festivities where conviviality and glasses of cheer help keep spirits high. For this festive season, a veteran beverage shop owner recommends a rich California cab fit for a holiday meal—and a gift-worthy Japanese whisky—a wine director shares her pick for a perfect Italian pizza-pairing wine, and the GM of a restaurant and fish market reveals his recipe for a hot, spiced winter warm-up.

Let’s cut right to the chase. By all accounts, Nicole Austin is one of the biggest badasses in American distilling today. She’s broken new ground at every career turn — from her early days bucking industry trends at Kings County Distillery, to her adventures co-founding two craft distilling trade organizations, to winning accolades for her first release as general manager and distiller at Cascade Hollow. Now, with the muscle of Diageo behind her and a vision for putting Tennessee whiskey back on the bourbon map, Austin is hitting new strides.

Waking up refreshed from a good night’s sleep feels great, but can too many hours be a bad thing? A social media trend called “sleepmaxxing” encourages people to sleep as much as possible – sometimes 10 hours or more a night – in the name of self-care.
University Hospitals licensed clinical psychologist and sleep researcher Carolyn Ievers-Landis, PhD, DBSM, says more sleep isn’t always better. “I’m very supportive of optimizing sleep, but regularly oversleeping can come with risks,” she says....

When the weather takes a seasonal turn for the worse, you may prefer to stay inside rather than hit the pavement. And while there are plenty of ways to stay physically active indoors, getting outside offers some special benefits. “It's really important to stay physically active no matter what the weather is,” says Priscilla Heimann-Waldheger, MD, a pathologist in private practice and a board-certified health coach at University Hospitals Connor Whole Health....

If you’ve ever noticed tiny, faint shapes drifting across your line of vision while reading a book or looking at the sky, those are eye floaters. They may move or disappear if you try to look right at them, but they reappear moments later. “You may notice floaters in one or both eyes, and it’s possible to have more floaters in one eye than the other,” says Linda Ohsie-Bajor, MD, an ophthalmologist and the Director of Comprehensive Ophthalmology Service at University Hospitals Eye Institute....

Stomach and gut ulcers are sores that develop when digestive acids damage the lining of your stomach or the upper part of your small intestine. Both stomach and gut ulcers are types of peptic ulcers. “Pain is the most common symptom of a peptic ulcer,” says Rami Abass, MD, a University Hospitals gastroenterologist and clinical instructor at Case Western Reserve University. “If your upper abdominal pain is recurrent, persistent or it gets worse, it should not be ignored.”

Night sweats are commonly associated with menopause, but anyone can experience them – at any age. Waking up in a sweat can be a side effect of certain medications or even a normal part of some people’s circadian rhythm, but it can also be a sign of underlying illness, says Dana Habash-Bseiso, MD, an internal medicine specialist at University Hospitals. If night sweats are regularly disrupting your sleep, it’s important to tell your doctor....

When it comes to abdominal pain, it can be hard to know what’s really going on. “Abdominal pain is a very vague complaint, so we usually need to know more,” says Amandeep Singh, MD, a gastroenterologist at University Hospitals. One possible cause? A condition called diverticulitis....

Independence is an important part of growing up and becoming an adult. For Kenan and Tristan, two young men living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a degenerative neuromuscular disease, it’s essential to their quality of life.
What independence means and the path to getting there is unique to each person living with Duchenne. In addition to typical coming-of-age challenges, Tristan, 18, and Kenan, 19, focus on maintaining function and mobility at each stage of their disease...