Thousands of voices can create beautiful discoveries. (Photo: qthomasbower)

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A huge thanks to the amazing CureTogether community! Sharing your health conditions, symptoms and treatments is leading to many new associations.

Many of you have been asking for more personalized recommendations, like what treatment will work best for me given my set of symptoms? I’m excited to say this is in the works! Our query masters are knee-deep in stats right now to find answers for you.

In the meantime, a gift – here are 13 more co-morbidities we found, with a significant 99% confidence interval. We hope this advances research into these conditions and sparks new questions and ideas.
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Endometriosis – Infertility (757 people)

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Eating Disorders – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (724 people)

Read the rest of this entry »

Awesome awareness art by Kindreds Page .

Chronic pain – not fun, extremely common, and very poorly understood.

I recently learned that 10 million Americans are estimated to have fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, and up to 20 million Americans have neuropathy, a nerve disease that causes pain and numbness. (Statistics from the National Fibromyalgia Association and the Neuropathy Action Foundation).

With enough patients coming together, progress can start to be made on these conditions that affect so many people in their everyday lives.

Today’s announcement is that we found a strong association between Fibromyalgia and Neuropathy, which independent studies published in established journals also confirm. In graphical form:
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CureTogether members who report Fibromyalgia are 7x more likely to report Neuropathy than members with no Fibromyalgia. This comes from a study of 763 people sharing data online for the past year.

For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on… Read the rest of this entry »

Running yourself ragged is easy this time of year. (Photo: smellyknee)                     .

Does this look like you?

Around the holidays we often stop listening to our bodies. Family cheer comes along with a good dose of stress, overeating, and not much exercise.

For some people, this depletion of our bodies can increase susceptibility to yeast infection (candidiasis), or adrenal fatigue, or both.

Today’s announcement is that we found a strong association between Candidiasis and Adrenal Fatigue. This is a new association that has not been extensively studied by traditional research. In graphical form:
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CureTogether members who report Candidiasis are 4x more likely to report Adrenal Fatigue than members with no Candidiasis. This comes from a study of 750 people sharing data online for the past year.

For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on… Read the rest of this entry »

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What if depression and anxiety could be seen as a color on your skin? (Photo: Photomish Dan)                     .

This is our biggest study yet.

Almost 1,000 people came together to report on their experience with depression and/or anxiety.

Having post-partum depression myself after both of my girls were born, I got a taste of how devastating this condition can be.

But add anxiety on top of it, and it’s a double hit to mood, functioning, and quality of life.

Today’s announcement is that we found a strong association between Depression and Anxiety, which independent studies published in established journals also confirm. In graphical form:
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CureTogether members who report Depression are 3x more likely to report Anxiety than members with no Depression. This comes from a study of 953 people sharing data online for the past year.

For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on… Read the rest of this entry »

Do you see yourself as you really are? (Credit: Luis Muñoz)

Imagine looking in a mirror and hating what you see.

You eat alone, you may alternately starve and binge, you feel horrible about yourself. You’re probably tired and depressed too, to top it all off.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, tens of millions of people in America alone are dealing with this every day. I have two daughters, and I often wonder why nutrition and positive body image are not part of basic education.

But taking my Mom hat off and putting my Scientist hat back on, it turns out eating disorders and having an inaccurate or distorted body image are linked. Maybe this is not too surprising. It’s still important to talk about though.

We found a strong association between Eating Disorders and Body Image Distortion, which independent studies published in established journals also confirm. In graphical form:
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CureTogether members who report Eating Disorders are 7x more likely to report Body Image Distortion than members with no Eating Disorders. This comes from a study of 747 people sharing data online for the past year.

For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on… Read the rest of this entry »

A playful placement of pills. (Credit: me and the sysop)               .

“I’m using this with my cognitive therapist and it’s… amazing.”

I got this email from Christopher, a CureTogether member with Bipolar Disorder:

“I have never found a more useful “biofeedback” tool.  It has helped me enormously in understanding my Bipolar I condition… You’ve seriously changed my life.”

Words like Christopher’s inspire us to keep doing the work we’re doing, and putting out discoveries like today’s. So here goes.

We found a strong association between Bipolar Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which independent studies published in established journals also confirm. In graphical form:
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People at CureTogether who report Bipolar Disorder are five times more likely to report Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder than members with no Bipolar Disorder. This comes from a study of 464 people sharing data online for the past year.

For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on… Read the rest of this entry »

OK, this is a seriously scary load of fat and sugar. (Photo: VirtualErn)               .

It was sundae night at my house.

My parents would set out bowls, ice cream, and an obscene number of toppings, from whipped cream and chocolate sauce to marshmallows and sprinkles. We all chowed down, then lolled about in a vague stupor.

It didn’t happen that often, but it’s not something I ever want to repeat.

My parents are both on medication for high cholesterol, and I just found out from my 23andMe genetic scan that I have an elevated risk of getting diabetes. So I exercise and watch what I eat every day.

But I was surprised by today’s CureTogether research finding. I didn’t expect to learn that high cholesterol and insulin resistance (the first step on the way diabetes) are actually connected.

We found a strong association between the two, which independent studies published in established journals also confirm.

Here’s what we found…

People at CureTogether who report high cholesterol are six times more likely to report insulin resistance than people without high cholesterol. This comes from a study of 636 people sharing data online for the past year.

For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on… Read the rest of this entry »

1 in 6 women have vaginal pain in their lives. (Photo: hyperscholar)                 .

I lived with vulvodynia for 10 years.

You’ve probably never heard of it, even though it’s so common. Basically chronic vaginal pain, to put it mildly.

I never had interstitial cystitis, but it’s chronic bladder pain. These two kinds of pain tend to run together. We found a strong association between the two, which independent studies published this year also confirm.

Here’s what we found…
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Women at CureTogether who report vulvodynia are eight times more likely to report interstitial cystitis than women with no vulvodynia. This comes from a study of 724 women sharing data online for the past year.

For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on… Read the rest of this entry »

CureTogether Data Finds Link Between Self-Reported Depression and Insomnia

Patients at CureTogether (http://www.curetogether.com) who report depression are twice as likely to report insomnia than patients with no depression. This is among the first self-reported data that reproduces findings previously done in slow, expensive clinical research. It comes from an analysis of 761 patients, and is being released in conjunction with the TEDMED and BIL:PIL conferences this week – please see the chart, and details below.
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Chart: Patients with depression are more likely to report insomnia than patients with no depression. From patient self-reported data at CureTogether.
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Details of the CureTogether Finding… Read the rest of this entry »