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English News: 6 Compliments That Land Every Time

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On a recent weekday afternoon, Xuan Zhao popped into the post office shortly before it closed. The man helping her was incredibly patient and went out of his way to assist her with a pile of packages. So before she left, she handed him a compliment card she had designed. “Your willingness to go the extra mile never goes unnoticed,” it said on the front. The flip-side read: “You’re receiving this compliment because your awesomeness deserves a big shoutout,” along with a reminder that kind words have the power to brighten other people’s day more than we might expect, and a suggestion to pay it forward. “He had such a big smile on his face,” she recalls.

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Zhao, a behavioral scientist at Stanford University who’s the CEO and co-founder of the well-being start-up Flourish Science, has spearheaded research that suggests we tend to underestimate the positive impact compliments have on both ourselves and the receiver. As a result, we don’t give as many as we should. “The compliment is one of these really powerful, small actions that brighten your day and brighten someone else’s day,” she says. “And it costs nothing.”

Why is a compliment so impactful? One of the most important things to humans is to feel valued and respected by others, and like we belong, says Vanessa Bohns, a social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, who has researched compliments. “We’re always attuned to any scraps of information we get about how we’re viewed by other people,” she says, but rarely do we receive any. “When we get a compliment, it gives us that feedback we want to know so badly about what other people think of us.” An expression of admiration provides a “sliver of hope” that we’re viewed positively in some attribute, she adds, like work or fashion—which activates the reward center of the brain and bolsters our spirits. According to Bohns’ research, people feel “significantly better” after both giving and receiving a compliment, compared to how they felt beforehand.

With that in mind, we asked experts to share some of their favorite compliments—and why they resonate.

“You handled that situation so well.”

Bohns recently used her favorite compliment when she saw a server navigate a difficult situation with a customer at the bar. “I like it so much because you use it in fraught moments where the other person is often unsure of whether they handled a situation OK,” she says. “It reassures the person that they did and shows them that their efforts to defuse a situation or help someone out have not gone unnoticed.”

In situations that call for a compliment, don’t second-guess yourself. Dole them out generously. People sometimes worry that they’re going overboard with compliments and will start to sound insincere. That concern is unfounded, Bohns says. “Our threshold for how many compliments we think we should be giving is lower than what people find acceptable,” she points out. “You don’t need to go crazy, but you could probably be giving compliments more frequently than you think.” As long as you genuinely mean what you’re saying—versus making something up in hopes of personal gain—consider compliment permission granted.

“You make even ordinary moments feel extraordinary.”

This compliment—one of Zhao’s favorites—works well among romantic partners and close family members. “It’s a beautiful and profound way to highlight how their presence turns life into something meaningful and worthwhile, despite mundane routines and the ordinariness of our everyday lives,” she says.

Read More: 7 Low-Stress Ways to Start Decluttering

If you’re afraid that giving a compliment like this will feel weird, you’re not alone. People tend to be overly concerned about how to give a compliment competently. We feel pressure to perform well—like if we don’t word our kind words perfectly, we’ll be laughed at. One way to overcome this fear is to do a practice run, says Erica Boothby, a social psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author of Bohns’ compliment research. “If it makes you personally feel like the bar is lowered for you to give a compliment if you write it down, or if you practice saying it out loud or giving your pet cat the compliment first, do that,” she says. Making yourself feel comfortable—by reciting compliments into the mirror, if that’s what it takes—is worth the effort.

“I’m really impressed with your ability to work under pressure.”

Respect is essential when delivering compliments. Most women can recall so-called “compliments” that didn’t land—think catcalling and other unwanted remarks about physical appearance. “These aren’t really compliments because they aren’t showing respect,” Bohns says. Before you say something nice to someone, make sure you’re doing so in a thoughtful, appropriate way. If a colleague has just finished an impressive work presentation, for example, don’t compliment her looks. To do so “wouldn’t be saying, ‘We value you in this work context, where work is the important attribute,’” Bohns explains. “It’s like, ‘Nice try, but you looked pretty doing it.’” It’s also important to avoid backhanded compliments, which may appear innocuous but actually contain hidden criticism or insults—and to ensure your language isn’t sneakily comparing two people.

“I love the way you bring out the best in people.”

Be specific. Details can elevate a so-so compliment to a great one, so make it a point to highlight specific qualities or actions. Zhao likes this one because “it acknowledges an individual’s willingness, effort, and growth mindset in recognizing and cultivating the potential in others—often before these individuals see it in themselves,” she says. “This is high praise for anyone seeking to make a positive impact, such as a leader or a teacher.”

If you just watched someone deliver a compelling talk at a conference, for example, tell them which part resonated with you the most. Instead of a generic “good job,” say, “Your talk was really inspiring,” Zhao suggests. “If you can say a bit more about how it inspired you to think about something in a new way, that’s even better.” You can also tailor a compliment by, for example, acknowledging someone’s progress in an area they’ve been working hard on—like slowing their pace or cutting filler language out of their sentences—-which shows you value their progress and effort.

“Hey, great earrings!”

Feel free to compliment strangers. In Bohns’ research, students on a college campus were told to approach a stranger of the same gender and compliment them—about, for example, their nice shirt. Before heading out, the study participants were asked to guess how good the compliment would make the other person feel, and it turned out they underestimated the positive effect—while overestimating how annoying it would be to be stopped by a random stranger. “Across all contexts, it makes people feel better than we expect,” Bohns says. Strangers are more likely to be flattered than befuddled. Plus, who knows? You might make a new friend in addition to making someone’s day.

“Your performance was brilliant.”

People rarely tire of receiving kudos, so if you’re with a friend who’s considering paying a compliment, encourage them to do so. “If you’re not the one who has to figure out the right wording and go talk to a stranger, you can see more clearly that it’s going to make someone feel good,” Bohns says. Say something like, “You really enjoyed that person’s talk—go tell them how great it was.” And if they demur, saying the speaker has probably heard it a million times? Remind them that once more might be the icing on the cake.

And when you receive one: say “thanks.”

Many of us feel awkward accepting compliments—we might blush, avert eye contact, start mumbling in embarrassment, or even disparage ourselves. If that’s you, remember how good the person complimenting you stands to feel—and smile while responding, “Thank you, that means a lot,” Boothby suggests. Though it might be hard to think outside of yourself in the moment, consider it an “opportunity for building or enhancing your connection with the other person,” she adds. Both of you will leave the interaction happier—and it will fuel the rest of your day.

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We could all afford to give more compliments. Here’s how to make them resonate.

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Health – TIME

We could all afford to give more compliments. Here’s how to make them resonate.

Breaking News
April 12, 2024
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10 minutes Read

English News: What It’s Really Like to Have a 4-Day Workweek

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To many people in corporate America, working five days a week—Monday to Friday, 9 to 5—feels as habitual as brushing their teeth. But it wasn’t always that way. In the late 1800s, a full-time manufacturing worker could easily spend 100 hours per week on the job. It wasn’t until around 1940, after a concerted push from labor unions, that the 40-hour workweek became standard in the U.S.

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Now, almost a century later, there’s growing momentum for an even more condensed schedule, with major companies—including Panasonic, Kickstarter, and the online thrift store ThredUp—trying out four-day workweeks. “We’ve all been working far too hard, and we’re missing out on life,” says Charlotte Lockhart, co-founder of 4 Day Week Global, a group pushing for shorter workweeks worldwide. “It’s affecting our health and our planet and our communities.”

Lockhart’s group advocates for what she calls the “100-80-100 rule”: workers hit 100% of their productivity targets in 80% as many hours, while earning 100% of their regular pay. For some companies, getting there is as simple as canceling some meetings and making better use of technology to free up time, while others need to completely overhaul their workflows and scheduling systems. But, Lockhart says, employers in fields ranging from hospitality to law enforcement have seen success with shortened schedules.

Pilot studies in countries including the U.K., Spain, Portugal, and South Africa suggest that shorter workweeks can help employees reduce burnout, manage stress, get more sleep and exercise, spend additional quality time with loved ones, and feel all-around happier and healthier. Employers see perks, too, including lower rates of turnover and absenteeism. The study in Spain even tracked a drop in fuel emissions due to fewer commuting trips.

Additional trials are underway in countries including Germany, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. Much of the research on shorter workweeks, however, has been done by advocacy groups like Lockhart’s. Independent surveys, like one conducted by Gallup in 2022, sometimes show a more complex picture.

In the Gallup survey, people who worked four days a week were slightly more likely to report feeling burned out, compared to those with traditional schedules—potentially because they had to cram the same amount of work into less time. That result is in direct conflict with the results of pilot studies run by groups like 4 Day Week Global; in fact, Lockhart identified burnout reduction as one of the largest benefits of a condensed schedule.

Lawmakers in states including Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and California seem to be focusing on the positive, introducing bills that would encourage four-day workweeks or at least enable further research on them. Bernie Sanders, chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, has pushed for four-day weeks as well.

Read More: Ambition Is Out

It’s hardly a new phenomenon for people to want to work less, says Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College who studies working hours. But with growing support from employers and lawmakers, she believes a sea change is coming. “Pre-pandemic, it felt like something that would be great but was unrealistic,” Schor says. “Once the pandemic came, the thinking switched because people felt so beleaguered and stressed and burned out. It became common sense that we should do this.”

Companies that have already gotten on board have taken different approaches to implementing a shorter workweek. Some achieve the full 100-80-100 system, while others take more modest steps, such as asking employees to clock in for four 10-hour shifts per week or giving half days off. TIME spoke with employees at four companies trying out these schedules to learn more about the real-world effects of a shorter workweek—and if they’re as life-changing as the hype suggests.

Name: Ashya Majied
Age: 37
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Job: Brand and marketing lead at Be Equitable, a company that partners with organizations to advance equity and inclusion in workplaces.
Schedule: Monday to Thursday, with Fridays off for the entire company.

That very first Friday that we had off, I woke up and moseyed downstairs to make myself some tea. It happened to be a sunny day. I looked out the window, smiled, and thought, ‘I’m so happy. This is what the research was talking about. I get why this works.’ It makes me want to go harder the other days of the week to have this feeling on Friday.

Do I have to be really intentional about my time during the week? Yes. But everything can get done in four days. It always could.

Having a weekday to handle your business—to call the doctor’s office, to call the mortgage company, to clean the house—has been huge. This Friday, I’m going to get my nails done in the morning. Before, I would try to squeeze it in at lunch, because my nail tech only works during the week. Now, I don’t have to have that guilty feeling or work late to make up the time; I just schedule my appointments on Fridays. That peace of mind is priceless. I’m also Muslim, and the day we go to the mosque is Friday. The other major religions in our country are off on their important days, and now I am, too. Fridays off means I can better support my spiritual well-being, and I love that for me.

I really feel like I needed an extra day to rest. The state of the world, to me, feels like the weight of the world, and it takes a toll on me. The four-day workweek takes just a little of that weight off. It gives me a little bit of energy, a nice little boost in a world that is suffering.

I wouldn’t want to go back to working five days a week, but I would if I had to. To any role that you have, there are pros and cons. This is a really big pro.

Names: Greg and Kelsey Brown
Ages: 36 and 33, respectively
Location: Missoula, Mont.
Jobs: Greg is the vice president of operations at Linehaul Logistics, a freight brokerage. Kelsey is a counselor at a public school.
Schedules: The Browns, a married couple, both have four-day workweeks. At Greg’s company, employees have different days off (Greg’s is Friday) and work 10-hour shifts on the days they are scheduled. Kelsey’s school has a Monday to Thursday schedule for students, faculty, and staff. She works nine-hour shifts.

Kelsey: As mundane as it sounds, it’s nice that we get chores done on a Friday so we can enjoy the weekend fully. I also really look forward to working out for an hour on Fridays. I go to classes at Orangetheory Fitness. That small piece alone has helped my overall health and well-being. I also use my three-day weekends to catch up on sleep, because I have to get up at 5:30 a.m. to get to school on time when I’m working. Sometimes I think, ‘Man, it would be nice if I didn’t have to be at work until 8 or 8:30 a.m. like other schools,’ but I don’t think that in any way outweighs the other benefits of my schedule.

I do so much more with my personal time, compared to when I worked five days a week in previous jobs. By the end of the three days that I have off, instead of having the Sunday Scaries, I’m ready to go back because I feel refreshed and recovered. I believe it makes me better at my job, because I feel ready to go on Mondays. Before, it was like, ‘Holy smokes, where does the weekend go?’

It’s awesome that Greg and I are both on a four-day schedule, too. We spend that extra time together, or we will be spontaneous and go out of town.

Greg: It definitely helps with traveling with our daughter, too. We love to go camping, and it extends the camping weekends.

I don’t always take Fridays off because I’m a manager, and because I have to leave work early some weeks to meet my daughter at the bus stop after school. I feel bad taking the four days when I have to leave early, because I’m not doing my full 10-hour shifts.

When it’s someone’s day to be off, someone else has to cover for them. That’s hard, because you’re doing two jobs. It can be kind of stressful to be out, too, handing that baton off and making sure that when you get back it’s not all dented or destroyed. But when I can do it, taking Friday off gives me that extra time to decompress. It’s very common to work long hours and weekends in this industry, so having that extra time to myself 100% helps me manage stress.

As a manager, I’ve seen how this schedule helps my employees, too. I know that we’ve seen less turnover because of it. It’s easier to hire as well. We do have one person that does the five-day workweek voluntarily because she didn’t like a four-day schedule, but that is an outlier. Every single other person would not want to go back to five days. It can be hard to implement a four-day workweek and hard to keep it going, but it is definitely worth it.

Name: Siobhan Stewart
Age: 36
Location: Richmond, Va.
Job: Marketing communications manager at Pixite, a company that makes creative apps.
Schedule: Monday to Friday afternoon, for a 4.5-day week.

A five-day schedule honestly feels arbitrary to me. It didn’t, and doesn’t, seem balanced. You’re supposed to be on top of your steps and drinking enough water and your social life and your mental health and self-care. How do you fit that into a five-day workweek? In previous jobs, I couldn’t in a way that felt restful. I’m also a writer, and that wasn’t something I had energy for when I worked five days a week.

Now that I’m on a 4.5-days-per-week schedule, I feel lighter. I feel happier. I don’t have the Sunday Scaries anymore, and I attribute that, in part, to feeling like I’ve had enough time to rest and recharge over the weekend. On a Friday afternoon I might read, work on my novel, journal, catch up on some chores, go on a walk with my husband, or just relax. We will do long weekends, take off and go somewhere. Even having an extra handful of hours, you feel like you have a little extra space. During the winter, getting outside for that extra daylight is also a big thing.

In general, if you are less stressed and overwhelmed and feeling better, I think you’re a better, more productive worker. That’s been the case for me. It’s hard to imagine leaving this job. Being a middle-class American means you have to trade your time for money, and when a company gives you time it’s almost like an existential gift—like you’re getting a chunk of your life back.

“}]]

Four workers weigh in on whether it lives up to the hype.

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Health – TIME

Four workers weigh in on whether it lives up to the hype.

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April 11, 2024
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English News: What Happens to Your Body If You Don’t Stretch

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Be honest: do you stretch before and after your workouts? If you don’t, you actually might be onto something. Most physically active adults with reasonable fitness goals may not need to stretch at all.

Here’s what every busy person should know about stretching—and how little you can get away with doing.

What is stretching, anyway?

There are two main types of stretching: static and dynamic. Static is when you hold a stretch for at least 10 to 30 seconds. Reach toward your toes for half a minute, and you’re doing a static stretch. “That’s the stuff you can do at home when you’re on your own in the evening to maintain flexibility,” says Kieran O’Sullivan, a lecturer who studies musculoskeletal pain and injury at the University of Limerick in Ireland.

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The second type is dynamic stretching. This is a faster, “bouncy” type of stretch repeated multiple times. This type of stretching is common among athletes preparing for a game or a race because it helps warm up the muscles more than static stretching does, O’Sullivan says. A dynamic stretch is never held; the person stretching is always in motion. (Imagine swinging your leg up in front of you, then touching your toe with your opposite hand and repeating.) It’s a great way to get warm, which helps bring oxygen to the muscles, activating them so they’re ready to work.

Why do people stretch?

There’s a scientific reason. During a stretch, you temporarily reduce the amount of blood flowing to your muscles, explains Judy Delp, a professor of biomedical sciences at the Florida State University College of Medicine. “That’s actually a good signal for the muscle and for the blood vessels to stimulate changes in metabolism in the muscle,” she says, and stretching triggers the growth of capillaries that deliver blood, oxygen, and nutrients to your muscles to help them function more efficiently.

But mostly, we stretch because it feels good, says Nicolas Babault, a professor who studies the physiology of exercise at the University of Burgundy in France. “Sometimes that’s the reason why people do some stretching at the end of a very exhausting training session,” he says. “After that, they feel better.” However, stretching either before or after your workout does little to impact muscle soreness over the next few days, according to a Cochrane review of 12 randomized controlled trials.

The limitations of stretching

As you stretch, it might seem like your muscles are getting longer over the course of a few minutes, but that’s not really the case. While long-term regular stretching could have this effect, O’Sullivan says that if you can’t touch your toes when you start stretching but you can after two minutes, what’s really happening is that your muscles become more tolerant of stretching. “Your body relaxes and lets you go a little further,” he says. After you’re done, your muscles pretty much go back to normal.

For athletes whose sports require major flexibility—such as dancing, gymnastics, and ice skating—regular stretching over months and years can elongate muscles and greatly increase range of motion. But some casual stretching before or after a workout probably isn’t going to make you any more flexible than the workout itself does.

What happens if you never stretch?

If you’re completely sedentary—forgoing both stretching and physical activity—your muscles won’t be able to use oxygen as effectively, meaning you’ll lose strength and endurance, says Delp. You’ll also start to lose range of motion over time. Stretching is a good way for people who have become inactive to start working their muscles and rebuilding the blood vessels they need to deliver nutrients that can help them get moving again, she says.

However, “if you walk regularly and you’re taking your joints through that range of motion, you are [stretching] without realizing it,” Delp says. “With every phase of your gait, you are actually lengthening different muscles, and you are actually stretching muscles.”

You can also get some stretching in by doing muscle-strengthening sessions. “Strength training done well will also increase your flexibility,” O’Sullivan says. To get the greatest flexibility gains from weightlifting, make sure you’re working through your full range of motion. That means if you’re doing a bicep curl, once you reach the top and your hand is near your shoulder, you should slowly let the weight back down rather than immediately dropping and releasing the weight.

Stretching has its benefits and can have a place in your exercise routine, but it’s not the most important piece of the fitness puzzle.

“Most people I know say, ‘I have about 45 minutes about four to five times a week,’ or some variation of that,” O’Sullivan says. “And in that period of time, the value of stretching relative to other workouts becomes much less.”

“}]]

In a busy world, is stretching really necessary? Here’s what experts say.

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Health – TIME

In a busy world, is stretching really necessary? Here’s what experts say.

Breaking News
April 11, 2024
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8 minutes Read

English News: How to Tell if Someone Is Lying to You, According to Experts

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It’s fortunate that liars’ pants don’t really catch on fire. If they did, much of the world’s population would be ablaze at any given moment. “People lie most days,” says Kevin Colwell, a professor of psychology at Southern Connecticut State University who researches deception. The majority of fibs are the sorts of harmless white lies that don’t hurt anyone. (You don’t actually like Aunt Mildred’s new haircut? She’s not going to be any worse off believing otherwise.) “Lying is a very important social skill,” he says. “It greases the wheels of society and makes our relationships work better.”

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More harmful lies, however—those that are intentional misrepresentations of material facts—have the opposite effect. Being lied to or about can deteriorate someone’s mental health and lead to a ripple effect of outcomes in their life, Colwell notes, including destroying their relationships. That’s why many of us play detective, trying to separate fact from fib.

So how can you tell if someone is lying to you? The key is to enter the conversation without assumptions, says Colwell, who has trained law enforcement officers and investigators with groups like the National Counterterrorism Center in deception detection. “You have to not go into it assuming they’re lying to you, because if you do, it’s going to change how they interact with you,” he says. “You have to be engaging and connect with them in a way that makes the conversation easy for them.”

You won’t always be able to tell for sure. But here’s what to look and listen for if you’re trying to figure out if someone is lying to you.

There will likely be physical signs

To know whether someone’s lying, you must have a baseline understanding of what’s normal for that person, explains Jim Clemente, a former New York State prosecutor and retired FBI special agent. The more time you spend with them, the better you’ll be able to recognize changes in behavior and communication. Some people, for example, might struggle to make eye contact in every conversation; for others, it will be a tell that something is amiss. Once you know what their norm is, pay attention to physiological changes caused by the fight-or-flight response: someone who is lying might start sweating, or their pulse will visibly pound in their neck. As their heart rate and blood pressure shoot up, their salivation will decrease, which means you might notice they’re gulping or licking their lips. Some people will begin fidgeting. “Shifting their torso, moving the chair away from the person talking to them, standing or attempting to leave—I’ve seen all of that,” Clemente says. “You might see rubbing or wringing of the hands, pinching parts of the body, clearing the throat, pulling on the hair. All these things can be stress and tension releases.”

They’ll repeat the same story over and over

Let’s say you ask your partner what they were doing on Wednesday night. After they fill you in, respond: “That sounds neat. I wish I had been there—tell me more about what happened.” People who are telling the truth tend to talk in a natural, free-flowing way, Colwell says—they aren’t worried about getting caught. So they’ll supply new, relevant details they didn’t include the first time around.

People who are lying, on the other hand, tread carefully. They might talk a lot, but “they’ll tell you the same thing they just told you, the same as how they already said it,” Colwell says. “They’re making sure they don’t contradict themselves and give information that could lead to them getting caught.” If you’re hearing a whole lot of the same thing, continue asking specific questions—and it will likely soon become obvious that you’ve discovered a lie.

They’ll be oddly chronological

People who are lying tend to tell stories chronologically, Colwell notes—as opposed to those who are being truthful, who will go from the most important parts to the least important. If you don’t have anything to hide, “the first thing you’re going to remember is the most important piece of that event, and then the rest of it will come back,” he says. “If you know you’re going to lie, you’ve practiced and you have a script—and scripts start at the beginning and end at the end. Scripts don’t start in the middle.”

They’ll speak more eloquently

Surprisingly, people often speak better when they’re lying than they do when they’re telling the truth. “They’re engaging in impression management,” Colwell says. That might mean using a more complex and sophisticated vocabulary than you would expect, with words you didn’t even realize they knew. So if you’re marveling at your friend’s newfound language mastery? “It’s a clue that they’re lying to you at that moment,” he says.

They’ll drop or change pronouns

When a woman asks her lying husband about his day, he might reply: “I went to the park. Ate lunch.” Notice that he dropped the “I” in front of “ate lunch,” Clemente says. That could be because he’s covering up that he and another person—“we”—ate lunch. Similarly, he recalls suspects who said: “Left my house. It was on fire.” His response: “You left your house because you discovered it was on fire, or because you lit it on fire?”

Their sentences may be full of qualifiers

Some lies are indirect: People omit crucial facts or feign forgetfulness. In these cases, they’ll often answer questions with questions, Clemente says. Consider the famous scene in Seinfeld where Elaine’s friend asks her if she’s having an affair with George. “Why would you think I was having an affair with George?!” a frazzled Elaine responds. (Spoiler alert: She wasn’t, but she was covering for George, who had gone on a date with Marisa Tomei.) Or, when asked if he killed his brother, a murderer might respond: “Why would I want to hurt Jack?” If you ask a yes-or-no question, Clemente says, pay close attention if you don’t get a straight response.

Read More: Are Personality Tests Actually Useful?

People who are lying by omission also tend to be vague or evasive by using phrases like “I think,” “probably,” “sort of,” “maybe I was,” and “I started to,” Clemente points out. “If somebody says, ‘I started to drive to work, and then when I got there….,’ they probably edited out what happened in between,” he says.

They’ll sound different

Paying attention to non-linguistic verbal cues—like tone, volume, pace, and pitch—can be revealing. People who are telling the truth usually speak in a consistent way, Clemente says; those who are lying are likely to have a broken rate, with variations in pitch and amplitude. “If somebody’s under stress, their pitch might go up quite a bit,” he says. “Their pace might slow down because they’re trying to think, or it might be really fast because they’re so nervous.”

Their eyes might hold secrets

There’s a common assumption that people look away when they’re lying—but actually, research suggests that gaze aversion is common when we’re thinking, which doesn’t necessarily equate to telling a fib. “People who have a lie ready to go often look at you straight in the eye, because they want to know if you’re going to buy it,” says Wendy Patrick, a longtime prosecutor and author of Red Flags: How to Spot Frenemies, Underminers, and Ruthless People. “They’re trying to see if you’re buying what they’re selling.”

Plus, people who are lying usually don’t smile with their eyes, she adds. Generally, if someone is telling the truth, “you’ll see their crow’s feet as their eyes relax into their smiles.” It’s probably a safe bet to trust what they’re saying.

Their mannerisms won’t match the situation

When people are truthful, their mood and mannerisms should match the message, Patrick says. If you detect a visual-verbal mismatch, consider it a red flag. That might mean smiling or giggling while discussing a serious subject—like Christopher Watts famously did in 2018 when police interviewed him about whether he murdered his missing wife. (Though Watts initially maintained his innocence, he later confessed to killing his pregnant wife and their two daughters.) “It doesn’t always have to be something so sensational,” she adds. “But it is the dynamic of how our emotions belie our words, and indicate that we’re lying.”

“}]]

There will be physical signs—and you’ll hear the same story over and over.

Uncategorized, Evergreen, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

There will be physical signs—and you’ll hear the same story over and over.

Breaking News
April 11, 2024
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9 minutes Read

English News: How to Talk to Your Family About Their Heart Health History

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Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) is the most common genetic heart disease, affecting about 1 in every 500 people, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). In people with HOCM, genetic variants cause the heart’s walls to thicken and stiffen, blocking blood from flowing freely from the left ventricle to the aorta. This, in turn, results in shortness of breath and chest pain (especially during physical activity), abnormal heart rhythms, lightheadedness, dizziness, and fainting, and can worsen over time.

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If a parent has HOCM, offspring have a 50% chance of inheriting it. That means knowing your family’s heart health history is crucial: If your doctor is aware that you have relatives with HOCM, they can “screen family members early on, before they get sick or have any cardiac complications” using EKG and echocardiogram, says Dr. Ali Nsair, co-director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Clinic at UCLA Health.

About 60% of the time, genetic testing can identify a specific change in a gene that causes HOCM. Even if you (or your kids) test negative for the particular genetic variant your parent with HOCM has, you can still be screened every few years with EKGs, echocardiograms, and visits to a cardiologist to make sure complications haven’t popped up, Nsair says.

And it’s not only HOCM that can cluster in families. “A lot of what ails us is in some sense heritable,” says Dr. Daniele Massera, associate director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Program at NYU Langone Health. “Whatever affects your family members might directly affect you.” Other heart conditions, like familial hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol) and high lipoprotein (a) (proteins and fats that carry cholesterol), can be inherited, and a family history of heart disease that isn’t genetic puts you at higher risk, too.

But no single risk factor—including genetics—is a guarantee that heart disease will develop down the line: “For me, the most important reason to know your family history is prevention,” says Dr. Svati Shah, a member of the American Heart Association’s National Board of Directors and director of the Duke Adult Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic. If you know you have an increased risk for heart disease due to your genes or family history, which you can’t control, you can take heart-healthy steps to improve the lifestyle factors you can control, such as getting plenty of sleep, eating a balanced diet, and staying active, according to the AHA.

To make sure you get access to the testing, treatment, and information on lifestyle changes that can help you avoid or delay inherited heart health complications, it’s important to stay on top of your family’s medical history. Here’s how to have those conversations with honesty and compassion while still getting the potentially life-saving answers you need.

Start with broad questions

You might open the conversation with a question as simple as “Do you have any kind of heart disease?” or as general as: “Have you ever had any chest pain?” Shah suggests.

If your relative isn’t entirely sure about their diagnosis or past procedures, consider asking if a doctor has ever told them they had any of the following, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

Coronary artery disease or atherosclerosis

Heart attack

Arrhythmia

Atrial fibrillation

Cardiomyopathy

Heart failure

Aortic aneurysm

Stroke

Also ask if they have a pacemaker or have ever had heart bypass surgery. If they’ve given birth, Shah suggests adding: “Did anything happen [to your heart] when you had your babies? Did you get really high blood pressure?” And whenever possible, ask what age they were when they experienced these conditions or complications for the first time, according to the CDC.

The details might get fuzzier as you go back generations. “Often people say [things like], ‘My dad died at 47 from a heart attack,’ but it’s actually that they didn’t wake up from sleep, and it may not have been a heart attack,” Massera says.

Try to get as many details as you can, because those specifics can help your doctor determine the best next steps for you. For example, you might need different testing if your 47-year-old father died of sudden cardiac arrest (when the heart suddenly stops beating) rather than a heart attack (when an artery to the heart is blocked). “To distinguish between the two is really critical: A heart attack is common, but if we identify sudden cardiac death as the real mechanism, then we’re homing in on a more narrow group of conditions that will require testing that you wouldn’t necessarily do if you’re talking about a heart attack,” Massera says.

While heart attacks, strokes, and sudden cardiac death might stand out the most in your relatives’ memories, make sure to ask about heart disease risk factors too, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. “There is a strong predictor among those factors that can lead to heart disease and heart failure,” Massera says.

Talk to three generations on both sides of your family

Ideally, aim to include three generations on both sides of your family in your discussions about heart health: your grandparents, your parents and their siblings, and your siblings.

“Backwards more than three generations, people don’t really know what happened to those relatives,” Shah says. But any information you can collect is still better than nothing, especially if you continue to gather knowledge over time. “[Learn] as much as you can, and it can be over the course of many years that you fill in the details,” she says.

If you or your siblings have children, note any known heart health information about them, too, per the CDC.

Be gentle

These discussions may not go as well if your brother feels interrogated or your mother feels blamed. “These can be really laden conversations,” Shah says. “Especially when you start talking about weight, high cholesterol, blood pressure—people can get sensitive about that.”

If a family member remains standoffish, don’t press: “If that person isn’t ready, it’s OK, circle back to it,” Shah says. Your relatives might feel more comfortable in a group setting. “Sometimes one on one, people ask: ‘Why are you calling me? Why are you worried about my health? Why aren’t you worried about other people’s health?’” Group conversations have the added benefit of helping to nudge everyone’s memory in the right direction, too. “Sometimes one person remembers one thing, another person remembers another thing, but if you spoke with each one independently, you wouldn’t have made the connection,” Shah says.

These conversations don’t have to be done in person, but face-to-face discussions allow you to pick up on a relative’s body language more easily and change the subject if you can tell they’re uncomfortable.

Record the information somewhere you can access it easily

You can use digital tools like the Surgeon General’s My Family Health Portrait or the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health’s Family History Toolkit to record and store your family’s heart health history.

Don’t feel pressured to use software: Typing notes into your smartphone or jotting them down on paper is fine, too. As long as it’s a system that works for you and you know where the information is, you’ll be less likely to forget any details when you’re actually sitting in front of your doctor.

“I love it when patients come in with a printout,” Massera says. He makes sure to devote plenty of time to walk through all of a patient’s relatives and their relevant health history, but recognizes a typical primary care doctor might not have that luxury. “You can’t do this if you see a patient in five minutes,” he says. If you feel like your doctor isn’t giving you enough time to cover your family history thoroughly, it’s OK to ask for a longer appointment to address your concerns, he adds.

Read More: How Stress Affects Your Heart Health

Report back to your doctor

Simply knowing your family’s heart health history isn’t enough to prevent your own heart issues. Sharing what you’ve learned with your doctor is key to determining the screenings, treatment, or lifestyle changes that might benefit you.

To that end, share “broadly” with your primary care doctor once you’ve asked your family about their heart health, Nsair says. Your doctor will dig deeper into the information that’s most relevant to your individual health, but it’s always better to provide too much than too little.

A history of heart failure, heart rhythm disorders, stroke, and sudden death, especially in relatives younger than 40 or 50, will likely prompt your primary care doctor to refer you to a cardiologist. That person or your primary care doctor can help you identify modifiable risk factors that you can change, such as quitting smoking, adopting a balanced diet, starting an exercise routine, and maintaining a healthy weight.

You won’t have to do this every time you visit the doctor: Once you’ve shared your family heart health history, that information is entered into your medical records, so anyone who is a part of your care team will have access to the same details.

Chat again whenever big changes occur

Your family’s heart health will continue to change over time—after all, many heart issues, including HOCM, are more common in middle age—so it’s hard to say exactly how often to ask your relatives about their heart health.

In general, it’s a good idea to collect more information whenever a family member experiences a major heart-related health issue, like a sudden death, cardiac arrest, or having a defibrillator implanted. “This is not a conversation you need to have every year. But every few years, reassess,” Shah advises.

Remember, these conversations may be challenging, but they’re empowering you with the information you need to live well for longer. “Genetics is not destiny. There’s a saying that genetics loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger,” Shah says. “You have control over this.”

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These conversations can empower you with the information you need to live well for longer.

Uncategorized, Evergreen, freelance, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

These conversations can empower you with the information you need to live well for longer.

Breaking News
April 11, 2024
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7 minutes Read

English News: Breaking Up Can Be Easier If You Have a Ritual

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In his song “Hearts and Bones,” Paul Simon, describing the dissolution of his marriage to Carrie Fisher, sang, “You take two bodies and you twirl them into one . . . And they won’t come undone.” The pomp and pageantry of love and commitment—whether that of a traditional wedding or a conventionally romantic night out with red roses and candles—looms large in our collective imagination. These rituals offer couples emotional generators to affirm their shared reality and identity. But rituals can also provide opportunities for much-needed transitions when ending relationships, whether we call it breaking up, divorcing, or separating.

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Can couples craft new rituals to help them decouple—to acknowledge that their once-shared reality is now fragmented?

This is precisely where Ulay and Marina Abramović found themselves in the spring of 1986, despite their cosmic connection and shared birthdays. They had just performed a show together at the Burnett Miller Gallery in Los Angeles. The show, for her, was symbolic of their love and their artistic vision. It represented what she describes in her memoir, Walk Through Walls, as “creating this third element we called that self—an energy not poisoned by ego, a melding of male and female that to me was the highest work of art.”

Ulay, on the other hand, felt their performances and interactions with the spectators afterward were becoming routine. The business and networking aspect of their art had become a habit he wasn’t sure he wanted to cultivate. Whereas Abramović was ready to embrace the life of a world-famous art star—with its requisite duties and attendant inconveniences—Ulay longed to live a more itinerant and anarchist existence. Instead of attending celebrity parties and art pavilions, he was eager to return to his nomadic life traveling across Europe in a van.

“Oh, you know how to deal with people,” he told Abramović while she worked the room at the show’s after-party. “I’m just going to have a walk.” During his lengthy absence, Abramović later found out that Ulay was cheating on her with a beautiful young gallery assistant. It was (another) tale as old as time.

How do two people who have spent more than a decade making work about becoming inextricably linked find a way to call it off? The artists did the most reasonable thing they could think of doing given the circumstances: they devised their own unique ritual for breaking up. They decided to take the better part of a year to walk the Great Wall of China together—each starting from an opposite end of its 13,171 miles—and meet in the middle to say goodbye. The project—initially called The Lovers and conceived of as a kind of wedding—had turned, over years of waiting and broken trust, into a meditation on their incompatibility and separation. On March 30, 1988, after close to a decade of cutting through bureaucratic red tape from the Chinese Communist Party, the artists were finally granted permission to perform their walk. Abramović started at the Bohai Sea, a part of the Yellow Sea, which sits between China and Korea. Over months of trekking, she walked the more treacherous path through eastern China’s elevations and along parts of the path that had been destroyed to only shards of crumbling rock and stone under Mao’s Communist diktats. She and her guides had to walk hours from the wall each night just to reach the villages where they slept.

Ulay set out 700 miles to the west in the Gobi Desert. While Abramović had the mountains to conquer, much of Ulay’s journeys took him through hundreds of miles of desert dunes. Instructed to lodge in the nearby villages and hostels, he characteristically broke the rules and spent many of his nights sleeping under the stars on the broken stones of the Great Wall. Both of them invested extreme effort in putting their bodies in motion to prepare for the moment of meeting again and severing all ties to each other.

After each walking for 90 days and covering around twelve and a half miles a day, the artists reunited on a stone bridge in Shaanxi Province. Ulay arrived first and sat down to wait. Abramović eventually approached toward the end of the day. They looked at each other as they had once done so many years ago in that Amsterdam airport, and they embraced. They then parted ways and did not speak again for 22 years.

Ulay and Abramović might be an extreme example, but we can still glean guidance from them when facing our own breakups. Colleen Leahy Johnson, an expert in the psychological impact of divorce, uses the wonderful phrase “socially controlled civility” to describe how former couples can move past their acrimony by engaging in patterned, symbolic ceremonies—that is, rituals—that help them to keep their emotions in check. One divorcing couple chose to have their dissolution ceremony in their church and created reverse vows: “I return these rings which you gave me when we married, and in so doing I release you from all marital responsibilities toward me. Will you forgive me for any pain I have caused you?” The ceremony was so moving that one attendee later had an epiphany: “Too often I see a ritual as an ending to a process without realizing at the same time it is a new beginning.”

The philosopher and public intellectual Agnes Callard crafted her own, unique new beginning. She now lives with her ex-husband, Ben Callard, a fellow philosopher, as well as her former graduate student, now husband, Arnold Brooks, in one household. The three adults have shared domestic and caretaking duties with their three children—two from her marriage with Callard and one from her current marriage with Brooks. Because she and her ex-husband are still close, the two of them celebrate their divorce every year with their own unique ritual. “Happy Divorciversary to us! This is a big one: #10,” she wrote on her Twitter feed with a picture of her beaming next to Ben. They went out to dinner and savored the joys of growing old together—over a decade of successful divorcing is nothing to sneer at. “Remember kids, marriages come and go but divorce is forever so choose your exes wisely,” she quipped on social media.

The equanimity of the domestic situation of these three might be hard for many people to emulate, but luckily there’s a ritual for less amicable former couples, too: the “annivorcery.” An investment banker named Gina noted, “I’ve been divorced for three years, and each year I throw a big party to celebrate my separation. I make my ex look after the kids while I invite all my best single boyfriends and girlfriends.”

Paul Simon felt that once couples were twirled into one, there was no undoing the bond. And moving on from meaningful relationships is, for sure, one of the hardest transitions we have to make in our lives. Given the pain involved, it’s no wonder that people have devised so many different means of moving on. Think of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s stated plan to engage in “conscious uncoupling” when announcing their divorce. The pair met with some ridicule, but in its essence, conscious uncoupling is a guided ritual that helps couples let go of each other without burning bridges. Though, in a pinch, a little fire can help as well—we could simply borrow from Taylor Swift’s relationship-ending ritual of striking a match on the time she spent with her ex, who’s now “just another picture to burn.”

Excerpted from THE RITUAL EFFECT: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, copyright © 2024 by Michael Norton, PhD. Reprinted by permission from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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In life, rituals don’t only exist within relationships you want to keep, writes Michael I. Norton.

Uncategorized, freelance

Health – TIME

In life, rituals don’t only exist within relationships you want to keep, writes Michael I. Norton.

Breaking News
April 11, 2024
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3 minutes Read

English News: Whooping Cough Is Surging in China With Tens of Thousands of Cases and Over a Dozen Deaths

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Whooping cough is making a post-pandemic comeback in China, with cases surging more than 20-fold in the first two months of 2024.

The world’s second-most populous country reported a combined 32,380 cases of pertussis—more commonly known as whooping cough—in January and February, compared with 1,421 cases during the same period in 2023, according to the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration. There were 13 deaths.

The number of infections detected in the first 60 days of the year is near the full 2023 total, underscoring the risk of the highly contagious respiratory disease in China. The country endured a major respiratory disease outbreak in 2023 after pulling itself out of the Covid mire in late 2022, well after other nations had thrown open their borders and allowed pathogens to resume their traditional circulation patterns.

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China provides free vaccines for whooping cough, usually in a combined shot that also protects infants against diphtheria and tetanus. Experts say the vaccine-induced immunity tends to wane as kids reach adolescence. Chinese health authorities don’t mandate or provide booster shots to help shore up immunity.

Discussions are needed to determine if the country should update the vaccine it uses for the disease or adjust the immunization program, Shen Hongbing, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a conference in March.

“It requires close attention to prevent and control the spread of whooping cough in China,” Shen said, according to local media reports.

Vaccination woes

Whooping cough infections have been rising in China since 2014, with more than 30,000 in 2019, according to the Chinese CDC. After a respite during the Covid isolation days, they bounced back to almost 40,000 a year in 2022 and 2023, the agency reported.

Nuances around vaccination are contributing to the increase. Covid disruptions, waning protection and genetic changes may all be playing a role.

Older patients can experience atypical symptoms, leading to misdiagnosis and allowing them to covertly carry and spread the infection. Meanwhile, genetic changes may help the bacteria elude an immune system primed to detect it, allowing the pathogen to continue sickening even the immunized, according to a Beijing Daily report.

Vaccination rates worldwide suffered during the pandemic. The percentage of children getting all three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis shot plunged to 81% in 2021, the lowest level since 2008, according to the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Global issue

The disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis is transmitted through respiratory droplets. It’s a significant cause of infant death worldwide and continues to be a public health concern despite high vaccination rates, according to the WHO.

China isn’t alone in its comeback. Whooping cough is endemic and epidemic cycles are occurring every two-to-five years, despite vaccination programs, according to the WHO.

Some European countries have posted rising cases since the middle of 2023, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. The Czech Republic is suffering its biggest outbreak since 1963, and both it and the Netherlands have reported whooping cough-related deaths.

“}]]

China reported a combined 32,380 cases of pertussis in January and February—compared with 1,421 cases during the same period in 2023. There were 13 deaths.

Uncategorized, News Desk, overnight, wire

Health – TIME

China reported a combined 32,380 cases of pertussis in January and February—compared with 1,421 cases during the same period in 2023. There were 13 deaths.

Breaking News
April 10, 2024
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4 minutes Read

English News: Why a New Study Dubbed India the ‘Cancer Capital of the World’

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A new study has unveiled an alarming picture of declining overall health in India. The report, released by the Indian multinational healthcare group, Apollo Hospitals, found that skyrocketing cases of cancer and other non-communicable diseases across the country have now made it “the cancer capital of the world.”

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Despite reporting more than a million new cases every year, India’s cancer rate has not yet surpassed countries like Denmark, Ireland, and Belgium, which record some of the highest cancer rates in the world. It is also currently lower than the U.S., reporting 100 cases for every 100,000 people compared with 300 in the U.S.

But that could soon change due to what some experts have called an “epidemiological transition.” The new report finds that currently, one in three Indians is pre-diabetic, two in three are pre-hypertensive, and one in 10 struggles with depression. Moreover, chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and mental health disorders are now so prevalent that they have reached “critical levels,” according to the report.

In particular, the number of cancer cases is expected to rise at a rate that will surpass global averages—from 1.39 million in 2020 to 1.57 million by 2025. Among women, the most common forms of cancer are breast cancer, cervix cancer, and ovarian cancer. Among men, they are lung cancer, mouth cancer, and prostate cancer. While men generally report a 25% higher incidence of cancer than women globally, India bucks this trend with more women getting diagnosed with cancer, according to a study published in the Lancet Oncology. Certain cancers are also affecting younger people sooner than in the U.S., U.K., and China. The median age for lung cancer, for example, is 59 in India, but 70 in the U.S., 68 in China, and 75 in the U.K., according to the new report.

The high incidence of cancer stems from a mix of environmental and socioeconomic factors, like high levels of pollution, as well as lifestyle and dietary preferences. Almost 40% of cancer cases in India are due to rampant tobacco use, which significantly elevates the risk of lung, oral, and throat cancers, while factors like poor diet and lack of physical activity cause 10% of cases.

The report also warns of an eventual healthcare crisis across the country because of a surge in obesity rates (9% in 2016 to 20% in 2023) and hypertension (9% in 2016 to 13% in 2023). Moreover, pre-diabetes, prehypertension, and mental health disorders are manifesting at increasingly younger ages, while the risk of obstructive sleep apnea among Indians has reached higher proportions.

“The importance of health in our nation’s development cannot be overstated,” said Dr Preetha Reddy, the Vice Chairperson of Apollo Hospitals Group. “We strongly believe that the entire healthcare ecosystem and the nation needs to come together and have a unified outlook so that we can combat non-communicable diseases in the truest sense.”

The experts highlighted the importance of regular health screenings, including monitoring blood pressure and body mass index levels, in reducing the risk of cardiac-related ailments. Currently, India has a screening program in place for oral, breast, and cervical cancer, but screening rates are less than 1%, according to national data. However, the latest report also noted that “people are increasingly choosing more comprehensive health checks today than before,” highlighting a “positive step” towards safeguarding health and wellness.

Still, the experts warn that health checks need to expand their reach across India. In the long term, that can only be done “by prioritizing investments in health infrastructure, promoting preventive healthcare measures, and addressing health inequities,” the report stated.

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A new study sheds light on declining health in India, with cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and mental health disorders at “critical levels.”

Uncategorized, India

Health – TIME

A new study sheds light on declining health in India, with cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and mental health disorders at “critical levels.”

Breaking News
April 10, 2024
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7 minutes Read

English News: Taylor Swift Is Embracing the 5 Stages of Grief. Should You?

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Call it the Five Stages of Grief (Taylor’s Version). Last week, ahead of the release of her album The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift shared five new playlists that sort her old songs into stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. “These songs represent making room for more good in your life,” she says in a brief audio message accompanying the final playlist, acceptance. “Making that choice. Because a lot of time when we lose things, we gain things too.”

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In the two months since Swift announced her new album, which comes out April 19, fans have speculated that it will explore themes related to coming to terms with the loss of a long-term relationship. (The pop star revealed the end of her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn last April; she’s now dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.) “She’s doing the same thing with grief that she did with the NFL,” introducing the concept to a new audience, says Jason Holland, a clinical psychologist in Nashville who has researched grief, loss, trauma, and stress. “Grief isn’t a topic that gets talked about a lot—so anything that someone can do to bring more attention to it, and get people thinking about it and talking about it, is a good thing.”

But the “five stages of grief” is a contested concept among psychologists, as not everyone experiences them the same way. We asked experts what they like about the theory—and which limitations and caveats to keep in mind.

Grief is less predictable in reality

The five stages of grief were introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. The theory, born out of her work with terminally ill patients, initially focused on how people grapple with their own mortality. “She was a pioneer at the time,” says Mary-Frances O’Connor, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss. “She described what people were telling her, and those descriptions are still accurate. Many people do feel angry; many people do feel depressed.”

Kubler-Ross later expanded her work to apply to people grieving a loved one—and, clearly, it resonated, evolving into a cultural touchstone. The problem, O’Connor says, is that “it became used not as a description, but as a prescription.” People interpreted the stages strictly, assuming that mourners had to pass through each one sequentially. (That thinking has persisted, though in a book Kubler-Ross wrote shortly before her death in 2004, she noted it was not her intention, and that the stages do not have to happen in one particular order.)

Though little research has examined the theory, the studies that do exist offer mixed results. One study, for example, found that during the two years after someone lost a loved one, their experiences of grief did tend to follow Kubler-Ross’s predicted order. Other research found that the pattern of grieving depended on the circumstances of how someone died, and that grief and acceptance rose and fell in an unpredictable way. “We know now that it is a much more variable path, and that there isn’t an end point where we stop feeling grief,” O’Connor says.

Not everyone goes through all of them

While many people experience some or all of the five stages of grief, others only relate to one—or none. Grief is complex, O’Connor points out, and not a one-size-fits all process. Some people might skip a step, jumping straight from denial to bargaining (when you try to make deals with God or torment yourself with “what if” statements, no matter how irrational). Others will experience depression before they move on to anger. Research suggests that most people do eventually achieve some form of acceptance, but “it’s like the stock market,” O’Connor says. “It goes up and down.”

Grief hits us in all different ways and at different times, staying with us indefinitely and surging when we least expect it to, says Gina Moffa, a grief therapist in New York City and author of Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting Go. “The idea that it can be wrapped up in a neat bow and that it has a clear beginning, middle, and end is a real disservice to people going through the grieving process,” she says. “Grief is messy. It’s important to know that there’s no timeline.”

Grief isn’t just emotional

The five-stages theory doesn’t acknowledge the physical symptoms and anxiety that can accompany grief, Moffa points out. People who are bereaved often experience panic attacks, brain fog, sleep issues, a weakened immune system, gut issues, and headaches, among other issues, she says. After her mother died, she landed in the hospital with pancreatitis and a thyroid problem. “This experience of five stages doesn’t account for the fact that grief is a trauma to our bodies and to our nervous system,” she says.

Read More: How Grief Upsets Your Gut Health

What particularly bothers Moffa is that when some people feel like their experience doesn’t conform to the five stages, they become distressed. “They think they’re doing it wrong,” she says. “When we talk about the five stages of grief, it becomes a ‘right and wrong’ thing. And grief is not something that can be right or wrong.”

A different way of thinking about grief

Many people who specialize in grief work prefer the dual process model of grief, which posits that grieving involves two tasks that can mostly only be handled one at a time: working through the emotions of grief itself—whatever they are and whatever order they come in—and rebuilding a life. The person grieving will oscillate between both modes—at times mourning, and at times setting aside emotions to nurture new relationships or figure out the logistics of a different life without their loved one. “Spending some time coping with the grief, and some time coping with the restoration, is actually a sign of mental health,” O’Connor says. “Being able to put your grief aside for a time so that you can attend to your life is a mentally healthy thing to do.”

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for the five stages of grief. Holland’s clients often bring it up, explaining that it resonates with them. “It’s a simple model that people can understand,” he says. “If you’re in the midst of grief, you’d like to think that there’s some predictable road ahead.” If people feel that the theory fits them, he says, why not talk about it in those terms? “If it gives them hope, and a sense of empowerment, then I think that’s very positive,” he says.

Having a roadmap like the five stages provides a sense of comfort, he believes. Plus, it fits with our idea of a classic story—and Swift, of course, famously loves a good tale. “It’s this idea that we’re battling grief, that we go through this journey where we have to do battle with denial and bargaining and anger and depression, and we come out this renewed person with insight or knowledge we can share with others,” he says. “It fits with the way that we see human struggle.”

“}]]

Taylor Swift has drawn new attention to the framework, but psychologists disagree about how useful it is.

Uncategorized, Evergreen, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

Taylor Swift has drawn new attention to the framework, but psychologists disagree about how useful it is.

Breaking News
April 10, 2024
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8 minutes Read

English News: Why So Many Women Are Waiting Longer to Have Kids

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In 1970, the average woman in the U.S. had her first baby at around 21 years old. That’s hard to imagine now: new federal data published in April show that in 2022, the average first-time mother was a little older than 27—a record high for the country, and a sign of a major demographic change.

This shift has been underway for years. Teenagers and women in their early 20s are having fewer kids, while the opposite is happening among older age groups. In 2022, for the seventh year in a row, the birth rate among U.S. women in their early 30s was higher than the rate among those in their late 20s. Perhaps even more notably, the number of babies born to women 40 and older, while still low overall, rose considerably from 2021 to 2022: up 6% among women ages 40 to 44 and 12% among those older than 45.

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Dr. Florencia Polite, chief of general obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, says those data track with what she sees in the clinic: U.S. parents are getting older. “This is the first time I’ve had three patients who are pregnant in their 50s,” she says.

The foundation for this trend was laid in the 1960s, when the birth control pill came onto the scene and gave women unprecedented control over their fertility, says Aurélie Athan, a clinical psychologist who researches the psychology and identity of motherhood at Columbia University’s Teachers College. In the decades since, it has become increasingly common for people to have children later in life for a range of reasons, including concerns about finances and child care, waiting longer to get married or find a partner, and prioritizing education, career, or leisure time during young adulthood. The decision to stay child-free has also become less stigmatized, Athan notes, and some data suggest more people are taking that route.

“Women are having a pregnant pause,” Athan says. “They’re really taking time to say, ‘Do I want to do this?’”

It’s not just women. Research suggests many young men are also thinking deeply about when and whether to have kids, says Karen Guzzo, a family demographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

But waiting doesn’t always mean people aren’t enthusiastic about eventually having children. Guzzo found in a 2023 study that it’s still far more common for people to want children than to plan to stay child-free, and that most prospective parents want more than one baby. What’s different from decades past, Guzzo says, is that people are increasingly pushing back the ages at which they have those kids, often into their 30s and beyond.

That can be a gamble. In a 2018 New York Times survey, about 25% of respondents said they had or expected to have fewer kids than they originally wanted, often because they couldn’t afford or ran out of time to have their ideal number of children. People of color in the U.S. often say they want large families but end up with smaller ones, Guzzo notes—a sign that not everyone is able to achieve their ideal scenario.

“What I really worry about,” Guzzo says, “is that we’ve become a country where some people get to have the kids that they want and some people don’t.”

In some ways, delayed parenthood is a sign of progress. Waiting to have kids is a kind of empowerment for some women, ensuring they can finish their education, find a fulfilling job, become financially stable, choose the right partner, and grow and mature as a person before settling down to have a family. Some studies suggest that kids born to older parents—who tend to be college-educated and relatively affluent—often grow up to be healthier, better educated, and better behaved than peers with younger parents, and that women who have children later in life report bigger happiness boosts around and after their birth, compared to younger mothers.

Untangling why people feel they need to be educated, financially secure, and partnered before having kids is more complex. For many people, it’s related to societal expectations—many rooted in class and race hierarchies—about what makes a “good” parent, research suggests. For others, it comes down to cold, hard math. Child care is prohibitively expensive in the U.S., paid parental leave isn’t guaranteed, and living costs are sky-high in many places. Those structural barriers cause some people to postpone having kids by necessity.

Some people who wait to have kids, whether by choice or circumstance, may find that they’ve waited too long. Fertility begins to decline around a woman’s 30th birthday and starts to drop more dramatically around age 35. By the time a woman turns 45, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says, it’s very unlikely she’ll get pregnant naturally. (Although some men father children well past middle age, their fertility also declines with time.)

Read More: The Silent Shame of Male Infertility

Enter the world of assisted reproductive technology, where demand for services like egg freezing and in vitro fertilization (IVF) is booming. As of 2023, 42% of Americans said they or someone they knew had used fertility treatments, up from 33% five years earlier. That growing popularity—and the hefty price tags attached to these services—have made it a multi-billion-dollar industry in the U.S.

These scientific advances have allowed some people to have children who otherwise couldn’t because of fertility issues, age, or life circumstances. In 2021 alone, almost 100,000 U.S. infants were born using these methods. But they’re not accessible to everyone: a single IVF cycle can cost well over $10,000, and it may not be covered by insurance.

Even for people who can afford that price tag, it’s not a guarantee. In 2020, about 37% of assisted reproductive technology cycles undertaken in the U.S. resulted in a baby, meaning the majority of people either needed multiple cycles or did not end up conceiving. And as with natural conception, success rates decline with age, a cruel fact that means people who use fertility treatments as an insurance plan sometimes still face an uphill battle. Technology allows a woman to “stretch” her reproductive window, Athan says, “but it’s still not elastic as maybe we’ve internalized.”

Read More: Menopause Is Finally Going Mainstream

Studies also show that the risks of pregnancy and birth complications—such as gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, preeclampsia, and miscarriage, plus low birth weight and genetic disorders in babies—rise with age. But as medical care advances and social norms shift, some women are pushing back on the idea that older mothers are automatically putting their health, and the health of their baby, in danger.

Some doctors agree. Labels like “geriatric pregnancy,” once applied to all mothers 35 and older, seem outdated at a time when birth rates are exploding among people in that age group. The more common medical term now is “advanced maternal age,” but some doctors are reevaluating who fits into that category, says Polite, from the University of Pennsylvania. “The truth is, a lot of women from 35 to 40 are not really considered high-risk anymore,” she says. With the testing methods and research available today, she says, it’s pregnant women in their 40s and 50s to whom she pays closest attention.

Dr. Lisa Dunn-Albanese, an ob-gyn at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, agrees that it’s become routine to see older parents in the clinic, and that most of them have healthy pregnancies. “I’m not too worried, I have to admit, about my 30-year-olds,” she says. Age is often a less relevant risk factor than something like an underlying health condition, she adds.

To Dunn-Albanese, the data on delayed motherhood isn’t overly concerning, at least from a medical perspective. But what it says about who is waiting to have kids and why, and the resources available to them when they do, is a more complex question, Guzzo says.

“We might be settling into this new, lower fertility rate where people are waiting longer to have kids,” which is not inherently a bad thing, she says. What’s more concerning, in her eyes, is the reality that not everyone who waits does so by choice, and that postponement can turn into not having children at all.

“This is a pretty basic thing,” Guzzo says. “If people want to have children someday and they can’t, that’s an indictment of how our society is structured.”

“}]]

It’s not always by choice.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

It’s not always by choice.

Breaking News
April 10, 2024
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6 minutes Read

English News: Should I Take Supplements to Sleep? What Experts Think

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If you want to understand the importance of sleep, ask someone who spent the previous night tossing and turning. Sleep is a vital function: essential for physical recovery, preparing for the next day, even clearing waste material from the brain. Mounting evidence suggests that getting adequate amounts of sleep each night is even more critical than previously believed, responsible for reducing the risk of serious conditions including dementia, obesity, and stroke.

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Yet so many of us struggle to fall and stay asleep, with more than one-third of U.S. adults failing to get the recommended seven to nine hours of shuteye each night, according to a 2020 survey from the National Sleep Foundation.

Many people are turning to over-the-counter solutions to help them get the rest they need. But do sleep supplements really work?

Melatonin

Melatonin has emerged in recent years as one of the most popular sleep supplements, given its reputation for being effective as well as safe. Nearly two-thirds of adults say they’ve turned to melatonin to help them sleep, according to a 2023 survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).

“It’s not something that is generally harmful or toxic, which is probably why people are tempted to take more when a little bit doesn’t work,” says Dr. Milena Pavlova, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital and an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Melatonin is a hormone released by the brain in response to darkness, helping our bodies prepare to shut down for the night. Synthetic melatonin is readily available at pharmacies and online, but experts caution that it’s not always easy to tell what you’re buying.

That’s because melatonin, like other supplements, is not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meaning it’s impossible to know for sure whether the product in the bottle matches the label.

“We don’t actually know what’s in it,” says Dr. Indira Gurubhagavatula, professor of medicine in the division of sleep medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “It varies pill to pill, bottle to bottle.”

And despite its reputation as a sleep aid, melatonin is actually more of a timing hormone. Gurubhagavatula says doctors sometimes use melatonin to help patients reset their body’s internal sleep clock, or circadian rhythm, and that while it can help with sleep, it doesn’t necessarily have a sedative effect.

That means timing—and lighting—are key to melatonin’s success. Pavlova says she counsels her patients to calculate how many hours of sleep they need to feel rested and then count backwards, taking melatonin one hour before they should fall asleep. Maintaining dim lights, no brighter than candlelight, will help the hormone take effect.

Magnesium

Magnesium is another supplement some people use to induce drowsiness, and it’s often marketed as a way to boost the effects of melatonin and improve relaxation. But Gurubhagavatula, who is also a spokesperson for the AASM, says the evidence published to date has left her unconvinced. A review of existing research published in 2023 by the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Canada, which promotes the dissemination of evidence-based scientific information, concluded that magnesium as a sleep aid is more hype than help.

Read More: Why Not Everyone Needs 8 Hours of Sleep

Pavlova agrees, noting that while magnesium may help some patients who experience migraines, it doesn’t appear to make much difference when it comes to sleep.

Allergy meds

Some over-the-counter antihistamines, like Benadryl, contain diphenhydramine, an ingredient that can make people feel sleepy. Doxylamine, an ingredient in some antihistamine and insomnia medications, can also help people fall asleep. But these ingredients come with a range of side effects, with the most notable being a hangover effect the next day.

“The big problem with antihistamines is they can make people extremely groggy and really impair cognitive function the next day,” says Gurubhagavatula. And while those ingredients in sleep aids can help people lose consciousness, they typically don’t promote quality, restorative sleep.

The bottom line

For people who are experiencing a particularly stressful life event, such as a death in the family or a job loss, these sleep aids can provide temporary relief, but they shouldn’t be used on a regular basis, Pavlova says.

Start by eliminating any substances that may be interfering with sleep. For instance, alcohol and sleep is a tricky combination: a glass or two of red wine can certainly make it easier to fall asleep, but Pavlova says “you end up paying for it the second half of the night” because people tend to wake more often and typically rise earlier after indulging.

And having a cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon can come back to haunt you at bedtime. According to Pavlova, if bedtime is at 10 p.m., you shouldn’t consume caffeine past noon.

There are other changes you can make to help promote quality, restorative sleep. Physical activity, even small amounts during the day, can help people feel tired enough at bedtime to actually fall asleep, Gurubhagavatula says.

Another common culprit that interferes with a good night of sleep is overthinking. People tend to bring many of their problems to bed because it’s the first time they’ve had all day to be alone with their thoughts, says Gurubhagavatula. But thinking about problems when it’s time to rest can cause stress hormones to kick in, making sleep impossible. She suggests setting aside time during the day to write in a journal or think so that those creeping thoughts have less of a chance to interfere with the nightly routine.

But when people try all of those behavior tweaks and still can’t get a good night’s rest, it could be a sign of a disorder, such as sleep apnea. According to the National Institutes of Health, a person has chronic insomnia when they have unexplained trouble falling asleep or difficulty staying asleep three or more nights a week for more than three months.

“Insomnia is sometimes just a warning light,” Gurubhagavatula says. “Any time you feel like you can’t address it by yourself, reach out to a health care provider around you”—instead of reaching for the supplement bottle.

“}]]

Melatonin and magnesium might sound like shortcuts to better sleep. Here’s what to know before taking them.

Uncategorized, Evergreen, freelance, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

Melatonin and magnesium might sound like shortcuts to better sleep. Here’s what to know before taking them.

Breaking News
April 10, 2024
39 views
6 minutes Read

English News: EPA Imposes Limits on ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set its first-ever national, legally enforceable limits on PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” in drinking water on Wednesday.

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are chemicals widely used in consumer and industrial products to repel oil and resist heat since the 1940s. They break down very slowly and can build up in people, animals, food, and water and may lead to adverse health effects including decreased fertility, development delays, increased risk of cancer, and more, according to the EPA.

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“This new standard will reduce PFAS exposure for approximately 100 million people. It will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said at a press conference in Fayetteville, N.C., where residents found out in 2017 that the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for one million people, was contaminated with PFAS from nearby chemical company facilities.

“Everyone should be able to turn on their tap and trust that the water that they’re drinking and giving their children is safe,” Regan said.

The new regulation, which requires public water systems to reduce contamination by 2029, sets limits for five individual PFAS chemicals and for mixtures of at least two of three of these and one more. (There are nearly 15,000 chemicals in the class). Regan said the EPA started with six because it had the best data about them, but added “we’re going to continue until we get all of them.”

The government estimates roughly 6% to 10% of the country’s 66,000 public drinking water systems subject to this rule may have to take action to meet new standards. Public water systems will have until 2027 to comply with initial monitoring and report drinking water contamination levels to the public. If findings show levels exceed the limits, they must implement solutions to reduce PFAS in the water supply by 2029.

When the rules come into effect, systems that don’t comply must take action to reduce levels and provide notification to the public of the violation. If the EPA pursues a non-compliant water system, it will rely on its statutory authority and existing enforcement policy (which says it focuses on “return to compliance” rather than simply “addressing” a violation), the agency told TIME in an email. Regan said the EPA would provide technical assistance to water facilities that need it: “We don’t want to leave anyone behind.”

To help, President Joe Biden’s administration is pumping nearly $1 billion in newly available funding to help states, territories, and communities implement PFAS testing and treatment, and to owners of private wells to address contamination. The new funding is part of a $9 billion investment over five years to address PFAS and other contaminant pollution, the administration said.

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Regan said he agreed with “those who say we should be stopping at the source and that’s what we’re doing at the state and federal level.”

“We are holding polluters accountable,” he said, noting settlements with companies nationwide.

David Andrews, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, tells TIME in an email that the new regulations “are the most health protective drinking water standards that I am aware of anywhere in the world.”

“For decades, the American people have been exposed to incredibly toxic forever chemicals known as PFAS with no protection from their government. “Those chemicals now contaminate virtually all Americans from birth, in fact before birth,” said Environmental Working Group president and co-founder Ken Cook, who was moved to tears when he described fighting PFAS as his organization’s “life work,” during the press conference. Cook said PFAS evaded U.S. environmental regulation for generations until this administration.

“Is it enough money to do the job? No, of course not,” Cook said about the accompanying funding, but added that to get the rest “let’s start with the guy”––meaning Biden—who got the initial money.

Other speakers honored victims of PFAS contamination. Brenda Mallory, the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, remembered Amara Strande, 20, who died of cancer in April 2023. Strande was an advocate against PFAS after a chemical plant dumped pollutants, contaminating the water supply of her home in Oakdale, Minnesota and leading to cancer being a far likelier cause of death for children than neighboring communities, Mallory said.

Emily Donovan, a North Carolina resident and co-founder of non-profit organization Clean Cape Fear⁠, spoke, her voice breaking at times, about how she raised her children on toxic water and lost four friends in recent years to cancer and chronic health problems.

“I know we can’t change the past, but we can fight for a more just future, and that’s exactly what we’re doing today,” Donovan says.

Some governments, such as that of Canada and the European Union, have already set limits on PFAS, but these rules haven’t always been effective. A study published by researchers from the University of New South Wales in Australia and one from the University of Oklahoma in the journal Nature Geoscience on April 8 showed that the chemicals exceeded limits set by different countries in surface and groundwaters around the world.

Researchers found that 31% of water samples in the U.S. exceeded the EPA’s Hazard Index threshold, one of the study’s authors Denis O’Carroll tells TIME in a phone call. O’Carroll, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New South Wales, says the EPA is “quite stringent,” for instance compared to Australia. Despite global violations, he says rules are enforceable.

“We can certainly treat and measure to those levels––it becomes expensive,” he says.

“Monitoring is really, really important,” he continues, adding that a local authority can set up a source zone catchment area around a known polluter, and if they find the source water is at risk, put in appropriate systems to clean the water system.

Andrews points out that cleaning up ground or surface water requires stopping contamination at the source. He says this is possible with restrictions on industrial releases of PFAS, as Michigan has done with success. “In many cases, strict regulation of environmental contamination levels will be difficult due to the large number of PFAS uses and sources,” he adds.

In general, O’Carroll urges caution in a world with a “significant reliance on chemicals,” explaining there’s no “crystal ball” to know the downstream environmental impact.

“Just because we can use them doesn’t mean we should be using them,” he concludes.

“}]]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set its first-ever limits on PFAS, called “forever chemicals,” in drinking water.

Uncategorized, News, News Desk, News desk edits

Health – TIME

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set its first-ever limits on PFAS, called “forever chemicals,” in drinking water.

Breaking News
April 9, 2024
26 views
7 minutes Read

English News: America’s Growing Birthweight Crisis

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Americans are increasingly at risk of having lower incomes, poorer health, and a worse shot at opportunity even before they are born. More babies are now born with low birthweights than in the last 30 years. This has caused growing inequalities that can persist if not properly addressed. In certain parts of the country, that risk may be ten-times greater.

Underweight newborns are at an increased risk of long term health challenges, lower IQ scores, and developmental delays. New data shows that the frequency of this problem is rising with more than 300,000 newborns now experiencing low birthweight. This public health and equity issue is increasingly common in low-income communities, communities with poor access to healthy foods, and homes that are near high-polluting sites.

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Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University and author of Expecting Better writes, “Babies that are born in this group are much more likely to have complications. These include difficulty breathing, difficulty regulating blood sugar, and abnormal neurological signs… Some studies suggest that babies who are born SGA [Small for their Gestational Age] have more long-term issues, including a higher risk for diabetes and lower cognitive skills.”

Lower birth weight can also predict career trajectory and earning power. In a paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers looked at thousands of government officials in England and found that even after controlling for other factors like parental education that people born with low birthweight tended to have lower wages and lower ranking roles.

Our team at American Inequality wanted to see how pervasive the issue of low birthweight is not just nationally but within specific communities. We found 29 counties, largely in the South and Midwest, where babies are twice as likely to be born with lower birthweights than the national average.

Pollution during pregnancy

A new report from Human Rights Watch found that babies in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” are three times more likely to experience low birthweight. This 85-mile stretch that runs along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge contains over 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical plants—reportedly the highest density in the Western Hemisphere. Americans living in the area are exposed to higher concentrations of harmful substances. This current generation is paying the price.

The role of food deserts

Low birthweight is a product of many compounding factors including inadequate nutrition. In the 29 counties we looked at, all had elevated levels of obesity and were considered food deserts. Many Americans who don’t have access to healthy foods often turn to fast food as an alternative. In two of the counties, 50% of residents were food insecure, with some residents sharing that when the only grocery store in town closed, they would have to drive 130-miles round-trip to find the next nearest place to purchase food for their family.

I spoke with Dr. Gillian Goddard at ParentData who shared this, “Low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developing insulin resistance in adulthood, which can progress to type 2 diabetes. This results in varying health challenges, which aren’t always diagnosed promptly.”

Low incomes and poor healthcare

In the 29 counties we looked at, median household income was $35,830 and 1 in 3 families lived in poverty. Healthcare is deeply connected to income in America, meaning low income communities often had poor health outcomes and inadequate care.

No place struggles with low birthweight more than Issaquena County in Mississippi. This rural county of 1,100 people has no hospitals, one of the highest poverty rates in the country, and 1 in 4 babies is born weighing less than 5 pounds 8 ounces. Taneria Williams has lived in Issaquena for years, and has given birth to three children with low birthweight, despite her best efforts to avoid it. “As a mother you try to nourish your body as much as you can when you are pregnant. You try to do all the necessary things you have to do to have a healthy baby and I felt because I don’t have the proper health care, I am not able to do that.”

Black families routinely receive worse healthcare in America, and this impacts Black babies too. Black babies are twice as likely to be born with low birthweight as white babies. Babies born to college-educated Black women are more likely to have low birthweight than are babies born to white women who dropped out of high school. This indicates that race seems to be a much stronger factor than education in contributing to this social issue.

Economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the U.S. spends more than $5 billion each year addressing challenges emerging from low birthweights.

The trend is getting worse

The preterm birth rate is now at its highest point since 2014. One of the main drivers of this is that food insecurity in America has also risen to its highest point over that same period.

In 2022, 1 in 12 babies in America was born with a low birthweight. This rate puts the U.S. in a similar ranking with Hungary, Turkey, and Brazil. Nordic countries, on the other hand, have half the rate of low birthweights as is seen in the U.S., largely due to strong healthcare systems, low pollution, healthier foods, and higher incomes.

Preterm babies account for the vast majority of low birthweight babies. 1 in 10 babies is born preterm (born before 37 weeks of the typical 40 week gestational period), which can often come with its own set of health and developmental challenges. The World Health Organization explains that most preterm births happen spontaneously. But, increasingly, health issues for parents like diabetes, pre-eclampsia or heart disease (which are far more common in low-income communities) are driving more preterm births.

Stopping the low birthweight epidemic

Regular doctor visits are the best method for warning pregnant women about low birthweights, but some lesser known factors can also make a difference. Safer environments and better nutrition can address the low birthweight challenges that the nation is facing. Specifically, this can be done by reducing the exposure pregnant women have to pollution, while also increasing the adoption of the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which is far too low in certain states.

Promoting healthy habits through WIC: WIC is eligible to low-income women who are pregnant all the way up until their infant’s first birthday, but most women don’t know about it. Women who enrolled in WIC saw an 11% reduction in babies born with low birthweight, and this number could rise to 65% if they enrolled early in pregnancy. Children whose mothers participated in WIC while pregnant scored higher on mental development assessments. However, in California, 65% of families that are eligible for WIC participate in the program, whereas in 8 states (Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Montana, Utah, and Arkansas) the participation rate is only half that figure. Encouraging more parents to make use of the service in these low uptake states is a data-driven way to ensure that children face fewer challenges throughout their lives.

Reducing exposure to hazardous environments: A study of 32 million births in the U.S. found that high exposure to pollution is a direct cause of low birthweight. In Cancer Alley, expansion is underway with at least 19 new fossil fuel and petrochemical plants in regions with the highest poverty rates and highest percent of Black residents. Reducing just 5 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3) of fine particle pollution can decrease the risk of low birthweight by 15%. Polluting factors should not be developed near vulnerable communities, and in the meantime, pregnant women would benefit from staying away from polluting sites (like downwind of highways) as much as possible. The EPA has a free app to help monitor this, and you can buy some in-home devices too.

The next generation deserves basic nutrition and clean air; and expectant parents deserve the same. We just have to determine how best to ensure they are actually receiving these key factors for success.

“}]]

More babies are now born with low birthweights than in the last 30 years.

Uncategorized, freelance

Health – TIME

More babies are now born with low birthweights than in the last 30 years.

Breaking News
April 9, 2024
27 views
3 minutes Read

English News: Young Adults May Soon Be Able to Get an RSV Shot

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Pfizer Inc.’s RSV shot produced immune reactions in young adults at higher risk of severe illness just as well as in older people, spurring the company’s plans to apply for wider U.S. approval.

A single dose of the vaccine, called Abrysvo, produced a strong immune response in adults ages 18 to 59 with conditions such as asthma, diabetes, or chronic lung disease, Pfizer said. Based on the final-stage trial results, the company plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration to extend the shot’s approval to adults 18 and older.

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RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a flu-like illness that affects elderly adults and babies most severely. The market for adult vaccines alone could reach $11 billion by 2032, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, making it a lucrative target for drugmakers like Pfizer as sales of COVID-19 shots fade. Last year, Pfizer and GSK Plc were the first companies to reach the US market with RSV vaccines, and another made by Moderna is expected to gain U.S. approval next month.

Pfizer’s vaccine is now approved for adults 60 and up, as well as for use in pregnant women to protect newborns for up to six months after birth; sales were $890 million last year. Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in January that he was committed to stepping up efforts to take more market share for the vaccine in 2024.

No shots have yet been approved to prevent RSV in high-risk adults ages 18 and up, though Moderna is also running a trial in a similar population. Generally, these young adults don’t get as seriously ill from the virus as older people and babies do. The company is also conducting a study in immunocompromised patients 18 and older and expects to share results later this year.

Usage in younger adults would ultimately depend on the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. If the vaccine were approved, the committee would have the flexibility to modify recommendations as appropriate, said Iona Munjal, executive director of clinical vaccines R&D at Pfizer.

GSK is exploring the possibility of running a clinical trial in patients younger than 50, but is currently focused on adult populations with the highest risk of RSV, according to a spokesperson. The company has already filed for FDA approval to extend RSV vaccination to adults 50 to 59 years old who are at increased risk of disease.

Pfizer’s trial included 681 people, roughly two-thirds of whom got one dose of the vaccine while one-third received a placebo.

“}]]

After a promising trial of Abrysvo in younger adults, Pfizer plans to apply for wider U.S. approval.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate, wire

Health – TIME

After a promising trial of Abrysvo in younger adults, Pfizer plans to apply for wider U.S. approval.

Breaking News
April 9, 2024
39 views
9 minutes Read

English News: What Experts Really Think About Diet Soda

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Growing up, Olivia Dreizen Howell, 39, “lived on” diet soda. So did her family. At a family reunion in 1996, everyone sported T-shirts with their shared surname in Diet Coke-can font. “We drank Diet Coke, Diet ginger ale, and Diet Sprite like water—there was no difference in our household,” she says.

Like many, Howell believed that sugar-free soda was a benign choice. But the latest research casts doubt on that assumption, linking diet drinks to mood disorders, fatty liver development, autoimmune diseases, and cancer, to name a few.

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Before you pour your diet soda down the drain (a step one health expert does, in fact, recommend), know this about diet-soda research: the vast majority of it is observational—drawn from public-health records and long-term population studies—as opposed to the scientific gold standard of double-blind placebo-controlled studies.

Here’s what we know so far about what diet soda might be doing to your health.

Diet soda is linked to a higher diabetes risk

“Type 2 diabetes seems to be the strongest link” when it comes to diet soda and health risks, says Susan E. Swithers, a professor of neuroscience at Purdue University who researches diet soda’s effects on metabolic health.“That seems to be a fairly consistent finding.” A 2023 study of nearly 106,000 people found that people who consumed more artificial sweeteners had a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes than people who didn’t eat or drink any.

Earlier work by Swithers found that people who drink a lot of diet soda face increased risks for excessive weight gain, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome, a constellation of conditions which include excess body fat (especially in the middle), elevated blood sugar and blood pressure, and higher triglycerides — “all of which are risks for the development of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease,” says Dr. Barry Schuval, an endocrinologist at Northwell Health.

It’s linked to worse heart health

Several studies have linked artificially sweetened drinks like diet soda to heart issues, particularly increased risks of stroke, coronary heart disease, and heart attacks. Most recently, a March 2024 study found that people who drank more than two liters of artificially sweetened beverages per week had a 20% higher risk of atrial fibrillation than people who didn’t consume sweetened drinks. “It’s important not to assume that low-calorie [diet drinks] are inherently healthy,” says Dr. Ningjian Wang, lead author and professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital in China.

Melissa Prest, a dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (who was not involved in the study), emphasized that the observational nature of the study means we don’t know why this link occurred. Before leaping to any conclusions about whether diet drinks increase the risk for atrial fibrillation, we need more research “to understand all potential variables, like health conditions, body weight, physical activity, and other dietary habits,” says Prest.

Diet soda is linked to cancer

In July 2023, after reviewing research on humans and animals, the World Health Organization (WHO) added aspartame, a common ingredient in diet soda, to a list of ingredients that are “possibly carcinogenic in humans.” That might sound worse in theory than it does in practice: the WHO concluded that a person who weighs about 150 pounds can safely drink about eight cans of aspartame-sweetened diet soda per day.

Even with this designation, aspartame isn’t necessarily carcinogenic, says Schuval. “We must keep in mind that correlation does not necessarily imply causation,” he says, and the existing research isn’t conclusive.

Other research has found potential links from diet soda to cancers including colon, uterine, kidney, and pancreatic. But instead of diet soda being the culprit, weight gain may be, says Schuval.

Diet soda is linked to weight gain

Artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin are much sweeter than sugar and may alter sweet-taste receptors in your body. Some experts think that this can cause changes to your body’s hunger and satiety hormones, leading you to eat and drink more than you otherwise would. The theory isn’t a slam dunk, however. “While this change has been commonly reported in animal studies, human-based studies have had inconsistent results,” says Prest.

Another possibility is that both sugars and artificial sweeteners can disrupt the healthy balance of gut bacteria in the GI tract, which may lead to the development of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes, says Prest. This, too, is hard to prove in studies, and ones that point to this pathway are often small and inconclusive, says Leah Reitmayer, a dietitian in Sanford, N.C.

As is the case with much nutrition research, the associations found between diet soda and weight gain (and obesity) may be red herrings. “The research shows that more obese individuals drink diet soda than regular—but also eat more food than healthy weight adults,” says Reitmayer. More research is necessary to determine if diet soda is making people gain weight, or if the relationship is complicated by other factors.

What to make of all this research

Overall, the findings are mixed, leading to bewilderment among consumers about whether diet soda is a safe beverage.

Swithers believes we still have more questions than answers. While she says she feels persuaded by a true link between diet soda and Type 2 diabetes, the evidence for artificial sweeteners contributing to cancer and heart disease is less clear, she says. “It just comes down to what explains that relationship,” says Swithers. Are people who choose to drink diet soda already at higher risk for certain health conditions? Are all artificial sweeteners the same? Is there another variable scientists aren’t looking at?

“That’s where it gets really muddy,” she says. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait to get a fuller picture of diet soda’s health effects.

Is diet soda at least better for you than regular soda?

If you routinely drink sugary sodas, all experts would rather you switch to water (naturally). But barring that, many would prefer you drink diet. “Some people find that artificially sweetened beverages help them have better control of their blood sugar,” says Prest.

Another reason is we have much more persuasive evidence of the harms of excess sugar than we do for artificial sweeteners. Over many years, research has linked sugar to conditions like obesity, inflammation, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes or worsening of prediabetes, weight gain, and tooth decay, and some studies have even indicated that reducing added sugar in the U.S. food supply could save money and lives.

It’s also important to consider what else your diet soda might be replacing. Dan DeBaun, a 32-year-old public relations manager in Minnetonka, Minn., uses diet soda as a tool to cut back on alcohol. “I never drank much alcohol previously, but I wanted to cut back even more after more studies emerged about the negative health impacts,” he says. After a successful “dry October,” where he abstained from alcohol completely, he realized he still liked having something to drink when he was out with friends or at a sporting event or concert. So he’d order a Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi.

Read More: How to Be a Healthier Drinker

“Diet soda doesn’t necessarily make me feel great while I’m drinking it, but I consider it a net positive compared to alcoholic beverages,” says DeBaun. “I’d only drink one, but I found having it was a good substitute.”

And dentally speaking, diet soda does clearly trump regular. “One benefit of artificial sugars is their role in reducing dental caries,” says Prest. “When sugar-sweetened beverages are exchanged for artificially sweetened beverages, the risk of developing dental caries or cavities is reduced,” she says, and this is due to the reduction in the growth of bacteria that cause them.

How to limit your diet-soda intake—or quit it altogether

Few among us can give up a hard-core diet-soda habit cold turkey, but there’s still plenty you can do to cut back, Swithers says.

Dump it down the drain (really)

People typically think they need more of a food or drink to feel satisfied than they actually do. If you simply crave the taste of diet soda, open a can or bottle, take a few sips, and dump the rest down the sink. You might find your craving is satisfied after only a few gulps. “Drinking just a little bit, then stopping and thinking about whether you even want more soda, could be a helpful step to reducing consumption,” Swithers says.

Treat your diet soda like candy

Instead of thinking about your diet soda as a drink, think about it as candy, suggests Swithers. That way, it might start to seem ludicrous to have one with meals. “Most adults wouldn’t open a bag of candy and pour it onto their dinner plate,” she says. “Just because it’s in a glass doesn’t make it magic in some way. Would you pour a bag of jelly beans as a side dish with your meal?”

Disguise your water

A lot of people drink diet soda because they don’t like the taste of water. To give a glass of water an appealing flavor, drop in some frozen fruit (especially the kind that releases juice, like pineapple, strawberries, and mango). Using seltzer instead of still water will make it feel even more like the bubbly treat you love.

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It’s linked to Type 2 diabetes, cancer, and more—but the health effects aren’t clear cut, according to experts.

Uncategorized, Evergreen, freelance, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

It’s linked to Type 2 diabetes, cancer, and more—but the health effects aren’t clear cut, according to experts.

Breaking News
April 9, 2024
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9 minutes Read

English News: The Relentless Cost of Chronic Diseases

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At first, my legs buckled. Then I started nearly fainting and was struck by fierce jaw, neck, and back pain—six unhappy faces-worth on the scale. Just as quickly, as one tends to do, I created narratives to explain these sudden symptoms. That one glass of wine had done me in. The steamy weather led my knees to wobble. It was the aftermath of a concussion I got after I fell in a hole in the sidewalk. It was from when I hurt my neck when I was thrown down on a subway platform by a man with low spatial awareness and somewhere to be.

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It turned out I was fainting because I had gotten COVID-19 for the second and then the third time and now had Long COVID, although it took six months for the doctors to arrive at this conclusion. It seems I had fallen prey to what I call “gray diseases”—the post-viral, hormonal, autoimmune or psychological conditions like PTSD that have unclear shapes, multiple possible cures, or no cure at all. (In addition to Long COVID, think Lyme, endometriosis, and chronic pain.) After months of waiting in agony during which I couldn’t work at my ordinary pace, I realized that my experience was not separate from my work as the director of a poverty reporting organization but referred back to my job explicitly. In fact, I was standing directly in an area of inequality that receives too little attention: the sheer number of people with gray diseases that aren’t getting the care they need due to their economic status. (For Long COVID alone, a recent CDC report says that 6.8% of Americans having recently noted having symptoms of the disease while 17.6% say they’ve had long COVID at some point.) I was personally lucky enough to have certain safety nets that allowed me to manage my condition. I was given all the paid medical leave I needed.

And then there’s the economic cost once you have these diseases. An estimated two-thirds of people with rheumatoid arthritis tend to be unable to work full-time. In a 2023 study by published in JAMA “The Association of Post–COVID-19 Condition Symptoms and Employment Status,” researchers found that people with long COVID are nearly 1.5 times as likely to be unemployed than those without, or one in eight is out of the group surveyed.

Even before my diagnosis I was no stranger to the economic dynamics of gray diseases, having written about similar issues faced by dozens of sources in my books, and having worked with several writers at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project who’ve written directly about their experiences. The reporters include Anne Elizabeth Moore and Alex Miller. Despite being a Navy veteran, Miller, an EHRP fellow, still couldn’t get adequate help from the Veterans’ Administration for his PTSD and housing, even after living on the streets. I was struck by how he much he had to enact his suffering in order to get the help he needed, that his own account was disbelieved and he was stonewalled by those in power. And this lack of care can extend further up the income gradient as well. Even as a relatively privileged middle-class person, I have waited for month for appointments to see doctors and in many of their medical rooms, I had to perform the reality of my condition anew.

At each medical appointment, I’d tell a new recommended specialist of the postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome that arrived out of nowhere, which was why I was as close as possible to fainting dozens of times, apparently, in itself, part of the post-COVID syndrome. (I nearly fainted once in the Metropolitan Museum and the whole room went gray: it was like being in the children’s book, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, where 1970s kids wind up in the Met overnight, sleeping on the beds of ancient aristocrats.) I was sent to a neurologist and an optometrist and a dentist, an ophthalmologist who turns out to specialize only in eyelids, as if she was NYU Hospital’s resident surrealist. I told them of pain reaching a seven and sometimes they didn’t seem to believe it, as the blood tests were unremarkable. All in all, I hated going to doctors because the sick role was not one I had auditioned for: none of these specialists had known the “me” I was before I became an unwell person.

When I asked Moore about her medical journey, she told me about the six years of pain caused by diseases that were as of then unnamed. Back then, in the late 2000s until 2014, she was uninsured and her earning regularly put her near the poverty line, so it was hard to go to doctors in the first place to get answers about what appeared to be autoimmune conditions, or to get to specialists. (The apparent insolubility of these problem can cause discomfort in others, with lots of people try telling you, in so many words, that it’s “all in your head.”) Moore’s experience reminded me about a facet of gray diseases I was becoming aware of: that women are far more likely to suffer from multiple chronic conditions than men, and gender does appear to play a role in the attitude towards and analysis by medical professionals when diagnosing. In addition, the poorer you are the likelier they are to haunt you for long periods.

For example, the situation only changed for Moore when she got full coverage under the Affordable Care Act in 2014. She got diagnosed with multiple autoimmune conditions that had caused her chronic pain. “You work really hard, can’t eat food, and will never make any money, and then get sick from all those things,” Moore says, of her existence. She is now on “an enormous volume of medication” but can’t afford more costly help from alternative sources that aren’t covered.

For Nicholson, the disability and pain activist who has lived with chronic pain and injury that was so bad she couldn’t stand or walk for 20 years, the general “pull yourself up by your bootstraps attitude,” as she calls it, applies heavily and negatively to how Americans are taught to consider their own health, especially if they have diseases that have nebulous origins and symptoms. If you add poverty or economic insecurity to the mix it only worsens the outcome. “If your provider doesn’t see themselves in you, they will encourage you to feel shame and blame,” she says. “There’s a false belief that people with these gray conditions you describe are takers and fakers not makers, or are simply trying to get out of work.”

What are some fixes that might ease the economic freefall of these sufferers as well as the stigma and disbelief that tend to trail them? What might help them access greater wellness and greater equity around their healing? To start, we need to give employees substantial medical leaves for all illnesses and disability pay if needed. We need to recognize these “gray diseases” can be exacerbated by fatigue and stress which are experienced more intensely by people who are lower income and doing low wage work. (They are also altered by the seismic hormonal shifts that happen to women more than men, from monthly cycles to pregnancy and menopause.) We must take these sometimes-invisible-seeming diseases seriously, and not assume those who have them are malingering. Senator Bernie Sanders has just recently started to devote energy to a campaign around just this in terms of Long COVID. If we don’t, the consequences can be grave. As Moore says, “The number one cause of death for people with these difficult-to-measure diseases is suicide.”

We could use a branding campaign to raise awareness of these conditions and how they tie into class and racial injustice. Data from the CDC shows that the Hispanic population was most likely to have had or currently have Long COVID and Black and Latino Americans are also more likely, however, to experience the symptoms of Long COVID. There’s one ad I noticed recently, on New York City’s bus stops in late 2023 and early 2024, from Advil and the Morehouse School of Medicine. It featured a Black woman and face and the legend, “Believe my pain,” and advanced the term “pain equity.” It would be great if these attempts at raising awareness didn’t just come from drug companies trying to push products. What we need are grassroots campaigns with a similar message, similar to the activism of AIDS patients in the 80s, who fought to be taken seriously and for concrete policy changes that could save their lives, or the Patient-Led Research Collaborative today.

We also need to fund more programs like NYU’s Post-Covid clinic, which I wound up finally visiting recently, and not just for conditions like post-COVID but the vast number of people with chronic pain and other “mystery” diseases that make it hard for them to work. There, I was greeted by a nurse who didn’t roll her eyes or express confusion at my symptoms. They accepted Medicaid, as did Mount Sinai’s center, making them relatively accessible for people all along the income gradient, although the waiting times are considerable. They offered a set of ameliorative medications. They included certain vitamins and minerals—Nac and CoQ10—as well as 10 days of Paxlovid, the retroviral (one of the two drugs in it is also an HIV drug) typically used for five days for regular COVID cases. On the one hand, the antidotes seemed a little bit of a medley. On the other hand, the salves they offered were affordable: this would be welcome for the many sufferers who didn’t have the means to purchase costly medications, massages or out-of-network doctors.

The affirmation I received at the clinic was itself a tonic. We need this kind of accessible, patient-centered care everywhere, not just in New York City but also in the hospital deserts that have arisen around the country. As the doctor at that NYU Clinic told me, “Let people know we are here if they need us.”

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We must help ease the economic burden for patients who have chronic diseases, as well as the stigma and disbelief that tend to trail them.

Uncategorized, freelance

Health – TIME

We must help ease the economic burden for patients who have chronic diseases, as well as the stigma and disbelief that tend to trail them.

Breaking News
April 9, 2024
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7 minutes Read

English News: Suffering Shouldn’t Be a Normal Part of Womanhood

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One of the most important lessons medical schools teach is one my mom mastered as a teenager left to fill her own mother’s shoes: how to figure out who is really sick and needs immediate attention and who can wait (or what we in the medical field call “triage”). Nothing I learned in med school or since has contradicted what I learned at Bertha’s knee.

At the time, the practice of medicine was rudimentary—and that’s putting it nicely. So, the diagnoses typically made at home were probably not that different from those of a bona fide doctor. The more serious common ailments were things like dropsy (now known as “swelling” or “edema,” due to congestive heart failure); consumption (used to describe any disease that seemed to consume the body, like tuberculosis); weak hearts (for people who tired easily or had fainting spells due to congestive heart failure); and “fits” (which could apply to anything from seizures to strokes). These were terms my mother and aunties still used when I was a child, although I had no idea what they were talking about.

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I had 12 years of training to become an OB/GYN and have benefited from some outstanding teachers and colleagues. But I still stand in unmatched awe of my mother’s incredible gifts as a diagnostician.

As big and boisterous as our brood was, no family doctor or pediatrician ever saw our family on a regular basis. An earache, known in today’s parlance as an “ear infection,” was treated with sweet oil (which I have only in adulthood come to know was olive oil) on a cotton ball stuffed in your ear. I have no idea why it worked, but my siblings and I can all hear. And pediatricians are now acknowledging the overuse of antibiotics in the treatment of many childhood infections. Such treatments were commonly known, but by and large, prevention was not a thing. Sickness, like bad weather before Doppler radar, was unpredictable, unavoidable, and something to be endured.

And it’s true: life comes with some unanticipated and unavoidable suffering. But why, when we’re given the option to suffer or not, do so many of us choose suffering? The answer to this question is complex.

For starters, we’ve been raised to view suffering as an integral part of womanhood. In short, we have normalized suffering. We have incorporated the language of misery into the lexicon so effectively that we take suffering for granted. Girls suffer from menstrual cramps. Women suffer through childbirth and postpartum depression. We also suffer with migraines, suffer from heartbreak, and suffer through abusive relationships.

At one end of the reproductive life spectrum, we suffer from PMS, or premenstrual symptoms, only to then suffer on the tail end from the onslaught of symptoms that accompany The Change. In that sense, menopause is simply the finale on a continuum of suffering that starts the moment we begin puberty.

But the expectation that feeling bad is a natural part of growing up and growing older has got to go. Chronic pain, persistent discomfort, and feeling lousy are not normal. We have incorporated the perceived inevitability of suffering into our psyches so much that we cannot fully grasp the notion that not suffering is a viable option.

Where did this tendency come from? For Black women, it has its origins in slavery. The surgeon J. Marion Sims, once lauded as the Father of Gynecology, is documented as having operated on enslaved women repeatedly and without anesthesia, even after anesthesia became available. We’re not talking minor procedures here.

Sims performed gruesome vaginal surgeries on these Black mothers, sisters, and mere girls, some of whom had been raped by their slave masters, to learn how to fix injuries sustained during childbirth. And trust me, he wasn’t doing this for their benefit. Sims performed these surgeries in an attempt to restore these women’s value as breeders.

The common misperception—still prevalent today in certain misguided corners of medicine—that Black people are capable of enduring more pain than white people, was reinforced by the circular logic of having to endure more pain. In fact, a study done in 2019 found that some white medical students and residents believed that Black patients had higher pain tolerances than white patients. It is galling and enraging that in the twenty-first century, Black people are still consistently undermedicated for surgical and post-op pain as well as for chronic medical conditions known to be excruciating, such as sickle cell crises.

This occurs, in part, because of miseducation and the stubborn prevalence of these misguided beliefs. They must be eradicated.

Women’s pain is all too frequently ignored or simply minimized as women being hysterical or overly dramatic. Even the word hysteria is most often associated with females, as it is derived from “hystera,” the Greek word for uterus. The linguistic implication is that being born with a uterus makes one more inclined to unfounded, uncontrollable emotional exaggeration, which is, of course, untrue. Back in 2020, more than 200 women were not believed when they complained mightily of excruciating pain during their egg retrievals at a Yale fertility clinic. The following year, a nurse at the facility pleaded guilty to tampering with the fentanyl meant for the women’s procedures, having replaced the opioid with saline. Now ask yourself why it took five months and two hundred women before anyone figured out what was going on.

I did mention that this took place at Yale, right? Why do we continually doubt women or decide that their concerns are unworthy of redress?

The ongoing lack of gender and racial diversity, self-examination, and historical knowledge within the medical profession has led to a complicity in the acceptance of suffering, particularly for certain groups. We should never forget the hard lessons of the past, and we must continue to hold the medical establishment accountable for its ethical failings and broad inequities. But we mustn’t allow these problems to prevent us from seeking every medical benefit available to us today. Mother wit and homeopathy have their place, but there are things that only modern medicine can do.

Our mothers and grandmothers did the best they could with what they had. Imperfect as things are today, we have more and better resources available. We just need to stay aware of what those resources are and how best to access them. We have to learn how to prevent disease and recognize its early warning signs. Today, we have more in our medical tool kits than leeches and rusty saws. To honor these women and the dreams they placed in us, we must do more, and be better at alleviating our own suffering and getting the care they could not.

From the book Grown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy by Sharon Malone, M.D.. Copyright © 2024 by Sharon Malone, M.D.. Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

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“We have incorporated the language of misery into the lexicon so effectively that we take suffering for granted,” writes Dr. Sharon Malone.

Uncategorized, health

Health – TIME

“We have incorporated the language of misery into the lexicon so effectively that we take suffering for granted,” writes Dr. Sharon Malone.

Breaking News
April 8, 2024
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2 minutes Read

English News: Why Your Head and Eyes Hurt After Viewing the Eclipse

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If you have a headache or eye pain after viewing the solar eclipse—even if you wore eclipse glasses—you’re not alone. But don’t panic. Experts say it’s probably not a sign of serious damage.

Looking straight at the eclipse without protective glasses can potentially cause permanent damage to your vision. It’s dangerous to look directly at an eclipse—except during the period of “totality,” when the sun is entirely covered by the moon—for the same reason it’s never a good idea to stare at the sun: its light can burn your retina, a risk that’s formally known as solar retinopathy.

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But if you suffered this kind of damage, you’d be more likely to experience visual disruptions—such as blurriness, light sensitivity, or dark spots—over the following hours, rather than eye pain. The retina doesn’t have pain nerves, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).

Headaches can be a symptom of solar retinopathy, AAO says. But in most cases, someone develops a headache because of other vision issues, rather than as a primary symptom, says Dr. Lucia Sobrin, a retina specialist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

If you have a headache without accompanying visual issues, you’re almost definitely in the clear, particularly if you wore protective glasses as directed, says Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, an ophthalmologist at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai. Most likely, he says, you’re experiencing regular old eye strain, which can make your head hurt.

Focusing on something far in the distance can strain the eyes, Deobhakta says, particularly after wearing dark eclipse glasses that cause the pupils to dilate. “It’s very similar to when people stare at a screen for a long time in the dark,” he says.

Or, Sobrin adds, you could just be feeling the effects of light sensitivity after staring at the sky in a way you usually don’t.

In most cases, headaches and eye pain should fade within a few hours of viewing the eclipse, Deobhakta says, though you can always consult a physician if you’re worried. Like the eclipse, “this too shall pass,” he says.

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Experts say it’s probably not serious.

Uncategorized, Eclipse, healthscienceclimate, Solar Eclipse 2024

Health – TIME

Experts say it’s probably not serious.

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April 8, 2024
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English News: Pregnancy Can Make You Age Faster

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Pregnancy is a wonder of biology, but new research shows that feat may come at a price. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists found that women who have been pregnant showed more signs of biological aging compared to women who had never been pregnant before. The more times a woman had been pregnant, the faster her rate of biological aging.

“We’re learning that pregnancy has long-term effects on the body,” says Calen Ryan, associate research scientist at the Columbia University Aging Center at the Mailman School of Public Health. “They are not all bad, but it seems to increase the risk of some diseases and all-cause mortality.”

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The study

Ryan and his team analyzed data from more than 1,700 people in the Philippines who were part of the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey. The participants, who were all ages 20 to 22 back in 2005 when the study began, provided blood samples and answered questions about their reproductive and sexual history, including how many times they had been pregnant and whether or not those pregnancies had resulted in live births. A smaller group of women provided additional blood samples from 2009 to 2014 to let researchers compare changes over time.

All of the blood samples were analyzed for a number of biological factors associated with aging, including changes in DNA known as epigenetic modifications. As cells age, they accumulate molecular imprints of which genes have been turned on or off, and these changes can serve as a proxy for how biologically old the cells are. These so-called “epigenetic clocks” can also capture the effects of things such as stress and other physiological and psychological experiences that impact cells, and therefore make the cells either “older” or “younger” than their chronological age.

What they found

Ryan and his team used six such epigenetic clocks, which assessed 19 different indicators including changes to the length of chromosomes (which shorten the more a cell divides), to assess the participants’ ages. They found that overall, women who had been pregnant at least once were biologically older than women of the same age who had not been pregnant. Pregnancy led to anywhere from four months to more than a year of faster aging, at a rate of about 3% more per year than women who had never been pregnant.

The researchers then looked at how being pregnant more than once might affect measures of aging. Women with more pregnancies aged up to five months faster compared to women with fewer pregnancies, or an acceleration of the pace of aging by nearly 2% a year per pregnancy.

Those measures looked at the women as a whole, so changes could have been due to more dramatic changes in some women compared to others. To zoom in on the effects of pregnancy, Ryan then focused on a smaller group of women and compared each woman’s epigenetic clock results at the start of the study to those up to nine years later. These results were more mixed, and women who had been pregnant more times showed more changes on only two of the epigenetic clocks, compared to women with fewer pregnancies.

Finally, as a type of control to ensure that they accounted for other factors that could affect aging—such as exposure to air pollution, smoking, and socioeconomic status—the group used the same six epigenetic clocks on the men in the study. They found that the number of children the men fathered had no association to the pace of their biological aging.

“It seems there is something about pregnancy as young women in the Philippines that affects biological aging,” says Ryan.

How pregnancy could age the body

There is still a lot more to learn about the association between pregnancy and aging. One explanation for the connection could involve the idea that pregnancy takes a major physical toll on the body, in terms of energy and resources. “The idea is that the body performs certain functions, but is always constrained about optimizing any one of those functions, and it creates a tradeoff,” says Ryan. “So energy going toward reproductive function may draw away from maintenance of the body.”

It’s also unclear how much of this tradeoff is dynamic, or even reversible. In another recent paper, researchers led by Kieran O’Donnell at Yale School of Medicine reported in Cell Metabolism that while they found similar acceleration in aging factors during pregnancy, they also saw encouraging signs that those changes reversed after pregnancy, especially when mothers breastfed. In that study, O’Donnell found that pregnancy increased biological age by one to two years, but that the pace of aging had decreased by 16% by three months postpartum. “The reversal in postpartum in terms of the effect size was much greater than the increase in biological age found during pregnancy,” he says. “That raises the provocative idea that pregnancy may be associated with potential rejuvenation. But we simply can’t answer that question for sure with the data we have so far.”

Read More: Menopause Is Finally Going Mainstream

Ryan is among those eager to see additional data on the reversal question, which has implications for the millions of women who get pregnant every year. He emphasizes that his results do not definitively conclude that pregnancy makes women age faster. “We have evidence that pregnancy can speed up biological aging,” he says. “And we have evidence that there is recovery after pregnancy. What we don’t know precisely is how much of that recovery compensates for pregnancy, and how much it varies from person to person, or from country to country.”

Ryan, for example, did not include breastfeeding in his analysis but plans to do so in further studies. He also hopes to study the long-term effects of pregnancy over time; since his study included only younger women, it’s not clear how pregnancy affects disease and mortality later in life. He says researchers are only beginning to unlock the power of epigenetic studies, and that deeper understanding of how the body age—and what factors impact that process—are on the way. “Now the floodgates are opening on epigenetics,” he says.

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Having children may take a biological toll on the body, according to the latest research.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

Having children may take a biological toll on the body, according to the latest research.

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April 8, 2024
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English News: Most Cancer Drugs Granted Accelerated FDA Approval May Not Work

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval program is meant to give patients early access to promising drugs. But how often do these drugs actually improve or extend patients’ lives?

In a new study, researchers found that most cancer drugs granted accelerated approval do not demonstrate such benefits within five years.

“Five years after the initial accelerated approval, you should have a definitive answer,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a cancer specialist and bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research. “Thousands of people are getting those drugs. That seems a mistake if we don’t know whether they work or not.”

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The program was created in 1992 to speed access to HIV drugs. Today, 85% of accelerated approvals go to cancer drugs.

It allows the FDA to grant early approval to drugs that show promising initial results for treating debilitating or fatal diseases. In exchange, drug companies are expected to do rigorous testing and produce better evidence before gaining full approval.

Patients get access to drugs earlier, but the tradeoff means some of the medications don’t pan out. It’s up to the FDA or the drugmaker to withdraw disappointing drugs, and sometimes the FDA has decided that less definitive evidence is good enough for a full approval.

The new study found that between 2013 and 2017, there were 46 cancer drugs granted accelerated approval. Of those, 63% were converted to regular approval even though only 43% demonstrated a clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.

The research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and discussed at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in San Diego on Sunday.

It’s unclear how much cancer patients understand about drugs with accelerated approval, said study co-author Dr. Edward Cliff of Harvard Medical School.

“We raise the question: Is that uncertainty being conveyed to patients?” Cliff said.

Drugs that got accelerated approval may be the only option for patients with rare or advanced cancers, said Dr. Jennifer Litton of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who was not involved in the study.

It’s important for doctors to carefully explain the evidence, Litton said.

“It might be shrinking of tumor. It might be how long the tumor stays stable,” Litton said. “You can provide the data you have, but you shouldn’t overpromise.”

Congress recently updated the program, giving the FDA more authority and streamlining the process for withdrawing drugs when companies don’t meet their commitments.

The changes allow the agency “to withdraw approval for a drug approved under accelerated approval, when appropriate, more quickly,” FDA spokesperson Cherie Duvall-Jones wrote in an email. The FDA can now require that a confirmatory trial be underway when it grants preliminary approval, which speeds up the process of verifying whether a drug works, she said.

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The program is designed to give patients access to promising drugs, but most do not demonstrate benefits.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate, wire

Health – TIME

The program is designed to give patients access to promising drugs, but most do not demonstrate benefits.

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वस्तुनिष्ठ मूल्याङ्कनको आधारमा न्यायाधीश नियुक्ति गर्ने प्रधानन्यायाधीश राउतको प्रतिबद्धता

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श्रम, मन्त्री भण्डारीले मन्त्रालयको जिम्मेवारी सम्हालेको एक सय दिन पुरा हुँदै, यस्तो छ, प्रगति विवरण

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नेपालगञ्जमा पुस ४ देखि १६ गतेसम्म प्रादेशिक महोत्सव आयोजना गरिने

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October 21, 2024
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मंसिरमा अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय शैक्षिक सम्मेलन गर्दै प्याब्सन

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October 21, 2024
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ग्लोबल आइएमई बैंक र प्राइम पावरबीच ३० मेवाको सौर्य उर्जा परियोजनाको समझदारीपत्रमा हस्ताक्षर

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October 21, 2024
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“You handled that situation so well.”

“You make even ordinary moments feel extraordinary.”

“I’m really impressed with your ability to work under pressure.”

“I love the way you bring out the best in people.”

“Hey, great earrings!”

“Your performance was brilliant.”

And when you receive one: say “thanks.”

What is stretching, anyway?

Why do people stretch?

The limitations of stretching

What happens if you never stretch?

There will likely be physical signs

They’ll repeat the same story over and over

They’ll be oddly chronological

They’ll speak more eloquently

They’ll drop or change pronouns

Their sentences may be full of qualifiers

They’ll sound different

Their eyes might hold secrets

Their mannerisms won’t match the situation

Start with broad questions

Talk to three generations on both sides of your family

Be gentle

Record the information somewhere you can access it easily

Report back to your doctor

Chat again whenever big changes occur

Vaccination woes

Global issue

Grief is less predictable in reality

Not everyone goes through all of them

Grief isn’t just emotional

A different way of thinking about grief

Melatonin

Magnesium

Allergy meds

The bottom line

Pollution during pregnancy

The role of food deserts

Low incomes and poor healthcare

The trend is getting worse

Stopping the low birthweight epidemic

Diet soda is linked to a higher diabetes risk

It’s linked to worse heart health

Diet soda is linked to cancer

Diet soda is linked to weight gain

What to make of all this research

Is diet soda at least better for you than regular soda?

How to limit your diet-soda intake—or quit it altogether

Dump it down the drain (really)

Treat your diet soda like candy

Disguise your water

The study

What they found

How pregnancy could age the body

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