Chronic Bits 

Medgadget reports that Olympus has announced the winners of its annual Bioscapes competition. If you ever wondered what a "brainbow" looks like, you must check out the gallery of winners. Our favorite: the chicken retina.

Babe Shannon points us today to this article from the Mayo Clinic on forgiveness. It offers great advice on how to forgive someone, and a list of the health benefits of forgiveness, which include a reduction of chronic pain symptoms, lower blood pressure, fewer anxiety symptoms... all from simply forgiving someone. Sign us up!

Grand Rounds is new today at Prudence, M.D., and ChronicBabe is included! Check out some terrific health writing and if you're new to Grand Rounds, check out the archives.

Editrix Jenni just posted an article on resiliency, our power to bounce back from awful situations and find the good in them. If you're too busy to read the full article, you should still check out these 10 tips on resiliency from the American Psychological Association - they've got terrific resources on this topic.

MSNBC recently ran an article on the challenges of working with chronic illness, citing some of our favorite folks as resources, like Rosalind Joffe and her blog Keeping Working, Girlfriend. Nice!

That's getting the stress OUT of your life, not stressing out about it. The Anxiety Disorders Association of America is sponsoring National Stress Out Week, offering info on how to throw a stress-free party (could the timing be better with winter holidays around the corner?) plus tons of other tips for better managing stress in your life.

Check out these tips from the FMS Community on accomplishing housework or other chores and work in spite of pain or fatigue. Great advice for us tired and sore Babes!

Catch up on some fun, interesting, enlightening health-related reading with Change of Shift, a nursing blog carnival. It's new today!

One of our favorite health reporters, Jane Brody of the New York Times, recently wrote about the causes of chronic pain, and her piece nicely encapsulates an explanation of how chronic pain comes to be and how it affects people. Then she wrote a terrific follow-up piece on how family members are affected, and how they can play a positive role and simultaneously take care of themselves. Good reading, Babes!

ChronicPal Paula Kamen, author of All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, And Only Slightly Enlightening Headache (one of our fave books!) has crafted a new, riveting story of mental illness and its impact on a young, creative Babe: Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind. Editrix Jenni devoured it over two nights, and we consider it recommended reading for all Babes. We'll interview Paula soon, too!

Diabetes is one of the most pervasive diseases we face today—yet many people with pre-diabetes don't know they can prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes. Learn more and educate the folks you love with tools at the National Diabetes Education Program.

You know those folks on your team who take good care of you? Time to recognize their efforts! (Really, you should be going that every day, but we know it's not always easy.) Get resources from Caring Connections and the National Family Caregivers Association.

Our ChronicPal Brenda just won $20,000 in the Apartments.com Possession Obsession contest! Thanks for voting for her, and check out her celebratory blog: Brenda's Babes.

...we must share this incredible educational film, via our pals at Early to Bed. What a fantastic HIV/AIDS awareness moment!

Grand Rounds is fresh at Running a Hospital. Enjoy some thoughtful health and medical blogging! Newbies: check out the (newly redesigned!) Grand Rounds archives and schedule.

Then check out Baldiness, a new blog we found that's all about being bald. Whether you've got alopecia, are losing your hair because of illness (or treatment of said illness) or just choose to go hair-free, you'll dig this site's irreverent approach to smooth pates.

We're digging Disaboom, a new-ish site for folks with disabilities, with a career center, tips on staying active, lively forums, health info and a lot more.