April 9th, 2012 by Kelly Young

The past three years are positively beyond anything I could have imagined. Do you have a moment? When I started blogging, I had dreams of this website. But it could take forever to learn enough about “code” to manage it… We’ll save the rest for another day, but do you realize rawarrior.com has at least [...]
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April 6th, 2012 by Kelly Young

This was written in October 2011 as the fourth in the Frying Pan Post series. As most of you know, I’ve been crazy-busy since then, leaving many things on hold. These posts examine crucial ideas that have surfaced over the last couple of years on the blog. The Frying Pan Posts challenge the status quo [...]
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April 4th, 2012 by Kelly Young

Dactylitis and diagnosis A woman I know is an educated patient who has worked hard to make certain she is diagnosed and treated appropriately. Recently, she showed pictures of swollen fingers to her rheumatologist and had her diagnosis changed again. Her doctor explained that the swelling in her photo looked like dactylitis or “sausage finger.” [...]
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April 2nd, 2012 by Kelly Young

Aren’t X-rays and MRI’s infallible? I used to think that imaging is the one certain thing in medicine. A friend’s broken pelvis taught me differently. It was fractured, whether we had evidence of it or not. I was one of the people who believed in her the whole time, but her treatment would certainly have [...]
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March 30th, 2012 by Kelly Young

Headlines can have a curious effect. They’re supposed to make you read a story, but people don’t always read the whole thing. Sometimes they just make you laugh: Lung Cancer in Women Mushrooms, Miners Refuse to Work After Death, Woman Improving After Fatal Crash. 1 With medical topics, a headline rarely tells the whole story. [...]
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March 23rd, 2012 by Kelly Young

Have you seen a television commercial claiming a supplement “works with your immune system” as an over the counter arthritis treatment? Remembering this brand has been marketed to RA patients, I wondered whether the “improved” product would increase or decrease immune activity. So I looked for research on the ingredient “UCII” (undenatured collagen type II). [...]
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March 21st, 2012 by Kelly Young

3 interesting Rheumatoid disease news items I knew you’d want to read! 1. Steroid injections found to reduce citrullination in synovial tissue with Rheumatoid disease Researchers found that steroids applied directly joint tissues had a specific affect on disease activity that methotrexate did not have. Glucocorticoids (dexamethasone) decreased citrullination and PAD (peptidylarginine deiminase, an enzyme [...]
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March 18th, 2012 by Kelly Young

My mom used to read to me John Godfrey Saxe’s 19th century version of a famous Indian legend, The Blind Men and the Elephant. I’m certain it contributed to my zealous love of evidence. Over the last couple of years, interacting with thousands of people with Rheumatoid disease, I came to the conclusion that only [...]
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