Breaking News
March 13, 2024
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3 minutes Read

English News: Olivia Munn Shares Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Reveals She Had a Double Mastectomy

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Olivia Munn has revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023 and had a double mastectomy. Munn shared the health update in an Instagram post that included a statement about receiving the diagnosis and photos from her treatment in the last year.

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“In the past ten months, I have had four surgeries, so many days spent in bed I can’t even count and have learned more about cancer, cancer treatment and hormones than I ever could have imagined,” she wrote. “Surprisingly, I’ve only cried twice. I guess I haven’t felt like there was time to cry. My focus narrowed and I tabled any emotions that I felt would interfere with my ability to stay clearheaded.”

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A post shared by o l i v i a (@oliviamunn)

She writes that she kept the diagnosis private because she “needed to catch my breath and get through some of the hardest parts before sharing,” but allowed people to see her when she had the energy.

Munn added that doctors caught the cancer “with enough time that I had options,” adding that she got an MRI after her OBGYN calculated her Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score and found her lifetime risk was 37%, based on factors like Munn’s family history, her age, and the fact that she’d had her first child after the age of 30. The MRI “led to an ultrasound, which led to a biopsy,” Munn wrote. The biopsy showed that Munn had Luminal B cancer—an “aggressive, fast-moving cancer” in both breasts, she says. A month later, she got a double mastectomy.

Munn ended the letter by thanking her doctors and her boyfriend, the comedian John Mulaney. “I’m so thankful to John for the nights he spent researching what every operation and mediation meant and what side effects and recovery I could expect,” she wrote. “For being there before I went into each surgery and being there when I woke up, always placing framed photos of our little boy Malcolm so it would be the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.”

In her caption on Instagram, Munn added: “I hope by sharing this it will help others find comfort, inspiration, and support on their own journey.”

“}]]

Olivia Munn said in an Instagram post that she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and had a double mastectomy

Uncategorized, culturepod

Health – TIME

Olivia Munn said in an Instagram post that she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and had a double mastectomy

Breaking News
March 13, 2024
28 views
7 minutes Read

English News: Why Online Shopping Is Tanking Your Mental Health

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Recently, I wanted a new pair of leather sandals. I narrowed my search down to a few favorite pairs, then compared prices before scouring the reviews. An hour later, I was still pondering which pair was the cutest, how much money I should spend, and whether the company’s return policy was good enough, should I change my mind. My brain was reeling. What used to be a pleasant experience at a physical store—shoe-buying—was now majorly stressing me out, alone in front of my screen.

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Going shopping used to be known as “retail therapy.” Indeed, research has shown that traditional brick-and-mortar shopping can ease sadness, at least temporarily, and give people a sense of control.

Online shopping, however, is often overwhelming for your brain. Both shopping and the internet can be addictive, and combining them creates a dopamine rush, says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford Medicine—who studies compulsive buying disorder, or shopping addiction—and director of the Stanford OCD Clinic. “Online, the urge to shop can be satisfied much more quickly, making it more difficult to resist.” Anxiety and depression seem to intensify those effects. “One thing that can certainly make it riskier is something like untreated depression, because people are looking for a quick, temporary boost to their mood.”

I was looking for such a mood boost during the early months of the pandemic. Though I didn’t have a shopping addiction, I occasionally coped with my anxiety, stress, and isolation by shopping online. But once my packages arrived, I didn’t want them anymore. What little pleasure I had wrought from shopping online had come from the anticipation of the purchases—not the items themselves.

“The act of filling the cart or purchasing the item can almost feel more powerful than actually getting it,” says Thea Gallagher, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at NYU Langone Health. Past studies have conditioned rats to expect cocaine when a bell rings—but researchers found that they got an intense dopamine rush from the sound of the bell, even when the drug didn’t come. “Obviously, there’s no cocaine in online shopping,” she says, “but there’s a dopamine bump that keeps people coming back for more.”

Online shopping is inevitable—there are, of course, certain things we need. But there are ways to become a happier online shopper.

Focus on “good enough”

There are two types of decision-makers, psychologists say: maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers fret over each decision, intent on getting the “best” no matter how much planning or research it takes. Satisficers, meanwhile, are content with making a choice that ticks the relevant boxes—and then they move on with their lives.

If you need to purchase something, Gallagher says, be the second type of decision-maker, and don’t worry about finding the perfect item. “Research actually shows people who make decisions that are ‘good enough’ are happier and less overwhelmed,” Gallagher says.

Unsave your credit card information

One of the keys to avoiding impulse buys is removing the automatic component of the behavior, says Aboujaoude. A good first step, he says, is not having your credit card and personal information saved on your web browser.

Put a waiting period on all purchases

Whether it’s a day, a week, or a month, consider enforcing a waiting period on all of your non-essential purchases. (I typically paste a link to the item in my phone’s Notes app, then revisit it a week later.)

“My quickest rule is just to sleep on it,” says J.B. MacKinnon, author of The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the World and Ourselves. You likely won’t want the item after the waiting period. But if you do, then it probably makes sense to buy it—and at least you’ve developed some self-awareness about your shopping habits, he says. “We often have these urges to consume, but if we took a minute, we’d realize it wasn’t going to bring much to our lives, if anything at all.”

Give yourself a no-buy month

Courtney Carver, author of several books about the virtues of minimalism, says that she became enamored with a simpler life when she decided not to buy anything she didn’t absolutely need for three months.

“Consider a week-long, month-long, or three-month-long shopping ban [where you] don’t shop for anything that’s not essential, if only to give your brain a break from having to seek that next new thing and to assess whether or not that serves you,” says Carver.

When I went on a three-month buying strike, I had more time to focus on pursuits that brought me pleasure (like reading and cross-stitching), and I felt more excited about the purchases I did make. MacKinnon says we develop a stronger attachment to our possessions once we decide to shop less. Small impulse purchases bring a dopamine rush that’s often fleeting and guilt-ridden. Once you start shopping online less and focusing more on meaningful purchases, you’ll likely derive more joy from your items.

“I don’t buy a ton of things, but when I do, I’ve thought about them,” says MacKinnon. “And when I bring them home, I’m happy to have them. They tend to give me enduring happiness rather than flash-in-the-pan happiness.”

Edit your inbox and social media feeds

Experts in the field initially thought online shopping would be better than traditional shopping because people wouldn’t be tempted by in-store marketing and could instead buy only the item they wanted, Aboujaoude says. “Of course, it turned out to be the exact opposite,” he says. “The incredibly sophisticated micro-targeted marketing and advertising that takes place makes some people even weaker in terms of resisting these impulses.”

Unsubscribing from the advertising emails designed to make us shop is one good defense. Unfollowing or muting Instagram influencers is another. They often share posts—sponsored or not—that make us think we need something we never considered buying before. “I think social media has really blurred the line between authentic relationships and transactional relationships,” MacKinnon says.

Don’t fall victim to your aspirational self

I love colorful floral sundresses. But I’m a part-time freelance writer and part-time stay-at-home mom who’s usually wearing leggings and loose thermal tops. It might be nice to picture myself wearing a sundress as I write from a coffee shop or care for my kids—but in reality, I know I’m not going to. Once I began shopping for my actual self instead of my aspirational self, I saw a positive shift in my online shopping habits.

Carver can relate. She recently traveled to Amsterdam during a cold snap, and saw a coat that would’ve been perfect for the freezing weather. But it wasn’t something she’d likely wear once her trip had ended. “I tried to picture future Courtney: Would she wear this coat in her day-to-day life, or is this just a vacation Courtney coat? I decided to wait,” she says, “and just continue layering.”

“}]]

It’s possible to become a happier online shopper.

Uncategorized, Evergreen, freelance, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

It’s possible to become a happier online shopper.

Breaking News
March 13, 2024
26 views
8 minutes Read

English News: Fake Ozempic Is Surging

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When Andy Morling heard about a revolutionary new weight-loss cure on the BBC last spring, he figured it might spark a shadier market for fakes.

His hunch was right. Almost a year later, the law-enforcement veteran who spent the last four decades helping to bring down drug gangs and child sexual abusers is leading the charge against criminals looking to profit from the very human desire to slim down.

Both organized crime and unscrupulous lone entrepreneurs are looking to capitalize on the weight-loss frenzy with concoctions that range from useless to potentially deadly. Their packaging mimics Novo Nordisk A/S’s Ozempic and Wegovy, the sister drugs that made the company the most valuable in Europe last year.

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“This is a brand new criminal threat for us,” Morling said, speaking from an office outside London that sits adjacent to a secure warehouse filled with thousands of seized medicines, including large sacks of fake Ozempic. “It was born essentially last spring.”

That’s when the Novo medicines became a social media phenomenon, fueled by Hollywood celebrity endorsements, even as supply shortages kept them out of reach for many, especially outside the US. Wegovy, the weight-loss successor to the diabetes drug Ozempic, was first introduced in the U.K. last September, but its maker restricts how much can be shipped.

When there aren’t enough legitimate products to meet demand, Morling said, “criminals are very quick to find a way into it.”

Morling doesn’t work for the police. He heads the criminal enforcement team at the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA—a government agency better known for reviewing medicines than catching criminals.

Yet his team tracks down illegal websites and monitors social media to stamp out sales of fake “skinny jabs.” They even carry out raids. Their hands-on approach stands out in Europe, where some other agencies don’t actively seek out bogus treatments.

The U.K. medicines agency has seized 869 fake Ozempic pens so far—more than its counterparts in Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, and the Netherlands combined. The pens found in Britain include crude fakes as well as ones distributed in bulk by more sophisticated criminals.

Some contained insulin—a potentially lethal filling—rather than semaglutide, the active ingredient in both Ozempic and Wegovy. While vital to people with diabetes, insulin can cause seizures and even death for the average person.

Patients have been hospitalized after taking suspected falsified Ozempic beyond the U.K., with reports from Austria, Lebanon, and the U.S. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it’s aware of five adverse events linked to the counterfeit drugs.

Wegovy and Ozempic have ignited something of a gold rush in the pharma industry, with drugmakers vying to capture a piece of the $100 billion market opportunity. While Novo was first, Eli Lilly & Co. has since introduced a similar injection and others are snapping at the drugmakers’ heels.

Morling’s team initially started to hear from colleagues at the U.K. border about Ozempic pens being seized, he said. The products were fake—crudely disguised insulin pens with the label peeled off and replaced with an Ozempic sticker.

But the trade grew in sophistication, culminating in the seizure of 500 counterfeit pens at two U.K. wholesalers. To the uninitiated, some of them could be confused for the real deal, according to Morling. The fakes at the regulator’s warehouse include bar-codes and packaging that appear similar in color, size, and shape to legitimate pens.

To date, the U.K. border force has seized 369 fake Ozempic pens on the medicines agency’s behalf. The bigger tranche of counterfeits—500 in total—were found “knocking on the door of the regulated supply chain,” Morling said.

The products showing up in legal channels “concerns me greatly” because of the health risk, said Morling, who spent 37 years leading intelligence at government agencies including the Serious Fraud Office and the National Crime Agency.

Read More: Should We End Obesity?

Falsified drugs are big business for criminals globally, with pharmaceutical crime spiking by 50% between 2018 and 2022 and impacting the majority of countries, according to data from the Pharmaceutical Security Institute. The World Health Organization has estimated that one in ten medical products in low- and middle-income countries is substandard or falsified.

With the advent of online pharmacies, it’s becoming harder for customers to distinguish between real medicines and imitations.

“It only takes one or two rogue pharmacies to have a negative impact,” said Bernard Naughton, assistant professor of pharmacy at Trinity College Dublin.

In Britain, whose supply chain Morling describes as one of the safest in the world, fake drugs have rarely been an issue for the medicines agency.

So when the weight-loss imitations started to trickle in last year, his team sprung into action. The first task was to ensure that the border force had the latest intelligence.

There was no shortage of places to look. Notices had started to pop up on TikTok; Facebook forums were advising people which beauty salons to attend, and suspicious websites were promising stock.

Multiple sites and Facebook pages still advertise “skinny jabs” for sale in the U.K. Several claim that their injections contain semaglutide. Some of the prices advertised are also well below the roughly £195 ($249) charged by high street pharmacies like Superdrug for a four-week course—and there’s no question of a prescription.

The MHRA’s criminal enforcement unit can take a page from the police’s playbook and go undercover to trace a product’s provenance, according to Morling.

“We will sometimes form relationships with the people behind these websites to try and understand who’s doing what to whom and we will conduct test purchases as well to trace things through bank accounts,” he said.

But the team can also take a softer approach, for example if a beauty salon is selling what they claim is semaglutide and advising on how to mix it with water.

“We don’t go in with the big stick to begin with,” Morling said. “I’ll reduce the threat in whatever way I can. If the most appropriate way of doing that it is to go and knock on the door and have a quiet word in somebody’s ear, then that’s what we’ll do.”

The MHRA is willing to prosecute those who put patients’ health at risk, said Alison Cave, the agency’s chief safety officer. That hasn’t happened yet in relation to Ozempic fakes.

For Danish drugmaker Novo, the proliferation of counterfeits is a “critical issue” that the company says it’s investigating with international and local health authorities.

The company is also taking action on its own, working with a third party to monitor illegal online sales of drugs purporting to be Ozempic or Wegovy. In some cases, Novo works with a private-investigations firm to try to identify a manufacturer and report it to the authorities.

While Morling and his team believe they have come down early and hard on fake products entering Britain, the weight-loss counterfeit market globally looks like it’s only just getting started.

In December, South Africa’s drug regulator issued a warning about potentially fake Ozempic. That same month, the U.S. said it had seized thousands of units.

While the rest of Europe is also working to prevent fake Ozempic entering their supply chains, in many places, the approach is distinctly different from the U.K. drug regulator’s.

In Austria, criminal intelligence lead the investigations, with medicine agencies acting as support. Denmark, Austria, and Belgium’s drug regulators don’t monitor social media for potential counterfeits, although Belgium hopes to do so in the future when a new law comes into place. Denmark, Austria, and the Netherlands also said that they mainly rely on reports from external sources such as the police or citizens before carrying out investigations.

Ireland and Switzerland’s regulators have taken an approach more similar to that of the U.K., actively monitoring for fakes. Ireland has detained 286 units of products claiming to be semaglutide between 2022 and October 2023.

In the U.S., the FDA also takes an active role and is continuing to investigate counterfeit semaglutide in both the legitimate and illegitimate supply chains, a spokesperson said. The agency has also issued warning letters to stop the distribution of illegally marketed semaglutide.

In Britain at least, Morling believes the worst of the fake Ozempic surge is behind him.

The situation was unique, he said, because there was “a supply challenge at the same time as huge social media and mainstream media interest, plus this brand new thing that had been licensed, all coming at the same time—it was the perfect storm.”

“}]]

Patients have been hospitalized after taking suspected falsified Ozempic, in the U.K. and beyond.

Uncategorized, bloomberg wire, healthscienceclimate, wire

Health – TIME

Patients have been hospitalized after taking suspected falsified Ozempic, in the U.K. and beyond.

Breaking News
March 12, 2024
43 views
4 minutes Read

English News: Why You Suddenly Have Allergies

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When Dr. Gailen Marshall was training to become a physician, he was taught that allergies were a kid thing. “Back in the day, the allergist’s office was full of children,” says Marshall, who is the president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. “If you ever thought about doing allergy testing or allergy shots in someone older than 40, that’s because you were just a money-grubbing doctor.”

A lot has changed since then. In 2021, about a quarter of U.S. adults reported seasonal allergies, compared to 19% of children.

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It’s become clear, Marshall says, that allergies aren’t only a concern for kids—and that seasonal allergies can change throughout the course of someone’s life.

Allergies can get worse—or even begin—as you age

Allergy symptoms happen when the immune system interprets typically harmless substances, such as grass or pollen, as threats. People without allergies don’t have immune responses to these substances. Those who are sensitive to them, however, produce antibodies to fight them off, kickstarting a process that leads to symptoms like sneezing, runny nose, and itchy eyes.

“If you have the allergic antibody present, we say you’re sensitized,” explains Dr. Lily Pien, an allergy and immunology specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. But it can take a while—even years—for sensitization to build to the point where someone experiences symptoms. When someone reaches that point depends on a mix of factors, including their genetic predisposition, intensity and timing of exposure to allergens, and underlying health conditions, Pien says. That variation helps explain why allergies “can manifest at different times during someone’s life,” she says.

Moving to a different region can also spark adult-onset allergies, says Dr. Rana Misiak, an allergist at Henry Ford Health. “Pollen seasons can be really different from the Midwest to the Southwest to the Northeast,” Misiak says, and adjusting to a new one can lead to issues that were never present previously.

In recent decades, there have also been societal and environmental shifts that contribute to upticks in allergies among people of all ages, Marshall says. The warming climate contributes to longer, more intense allergy seasons; globalization has introduced certain plant species to new areas; and air pollution can exacerbate all sorts of health conditions, he says.

But if you’re suddenly experiencing seasonal allergies for the first time well into adulthood, Pien says it’s worth first ruling out other causes. Bacterial and viral infections can cause allergy-like symptoms, as can anatomical issues like a deviated septum. Some people are also sensitive to irritants like cigarette smoke and perfume, but are not technically allergic to them.

Can you outgrow allergies?

Yes—but it’s not guaranteed. Roughly a quarter to a third of kids outgrow their childhood allergies, Misiak estimates. Unfortunately, though, “it’s much more difficult to lose allergies or outgrow allergies as an adult,” Pien says.

Some people with allergies do see their symptoms improve over time, but it’s not always clear why. Sometimes it’s related to lifestyle shifts, like spending more time indoors and away from pollen, or moving to a new region. Other times, Misiak says, someone may build up a tolerance to their triggers—though she says she sees that most often with pet allergies.

How to prevent and treat allergies

As a first resort, avoid your allergen to the extent possible. But since that’s easier said than done with environmental allergens like pollen, Marshall suggests starting allergy medications—like antihistamines or corticosteroids—a week or two before the worst of allergy season for a better chance at preventing symptoms.

Some studies also suggest that seemingly unrelated health factors, including your stress levels and the gut microbiome, influence allergies. That means taking care of your overall wellness by eating nutritious food, exercising, getting enough sleep, and keeping stress in check may pay off in allergy season, Marshall says.

People who aren’t able to manage their allergies through lifestyle changes or over-the-counter remedies may want to try immunotherapy, which involves repeatedly exposing someone to small amounts of their allergen until it no longer causes symptoms. Immunotherapy traditionally involves a series of injections, but there are also oral tablets for allergens including ragweed, some grasses, and dust mites.

Immunotherapy, Pien says, is the most scientifically sound way to get over an allergy, regardless of when in your life symptoms started.

“}]]

You can outgrow an allergy as you age—or develop a new one.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

You can outgrow an allergy as you age—or develop a new one.

Breaking News
March 12, 2024
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3 minutes Read

English News: Why You Shouldn’t Wear Makeup When Exercising

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Working out is great for your skin. It increases blood flow to all your organs—skin included—delivering oxygen and nutrients along with it. But if you exercise in a full face of makeup, you might be hurting your skin health, not helping it.

To find out what makeup does to skin during exercise, researchers applied a drug-store-brand cream foundation to the foreheads and under-eye areas of 43 university students. They left the bottom halves of everyone’s faces makeup-free. All of the students then ran on a treadmill for 20 minutes.

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“Our hypothesis was that makeup can block pores partially or completely, and because pores are important for evaporation, sweating, and getting rid of debris, makeup would negatively impact skin health,” says Sukho Lee, a professor in the department of counseling, health, and kinesiology at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and senior author of the study published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology. Skin plays an important role in helping the body to regulate temperature—especially during exercise, when heart rate goes up and metabolism increases. Allowing pores to expand so that sweat can escape is just one of the ways that the skin releases excess heat from the body.

Using a device that can scan the skin for moisture levels, oil amounts, and pore size, the researchers compared people’s made-up and makeup-free parts of the face. Moisture levels on the makeup side were higher than those on the bare side—and though that might sound like a good thing, it actually indicates a negative effect of the foundation. “Moisture on the skin is evidence of poor evaporation, so a lot of moisture on the skin is not a good sign, since it should be evaporating,” says Lee.

People’s pores were also smaller on the areas where they wore makeup, which indicates that the skin wasn’t able to open up and properly regulate moisture and remove oil and debris as it normally does, Lee says.

Sebum levels were also higher on the makeup sides compared to the non-makeup sides. Sebum is a marker of debris, dirt, and bacteria buildup on skin, which may contribute to conditions like acne. Oil levels were lower on the makeup side, but it’s not clear why, says Lee. It’s possible that the foundation was interfering with the skin’s ability to regulate its oil levels.

The findings also raise questions about other products people apply to the face, such as sunscreen, which is designed to form a barrier on the skin against UV rays. With the help of dermatologists, Lee is hoping to extend the study to include other types of foundation that contain different ingredients—such as oil-free formulations—as well as sunscreen to determine what they do to the skin during exercise.

“}]]

This is your skin on foundation.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

This is your skin on foundation.

Breaking News
March 12, 2024
33 views
6 minutes Read

English News: The Anxiety You’re Feeling Might Be Pandemic Grief

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Despite a global pandemic that caused the deaths of millions of people and drastically altered our way of life, we still haven’t mastered the art of recognizing grief when it shows up.

Four years ago, life as we knew it slipped away. As news of the covid death tolls rose around the world, we watched footage on television of our front-line workers struggling with overcrowded hospitals, our children were sent home from school, weddings and graduations were canceled, jobs came to a halt, and toilet-paper flew off the shelves. Everywhere you turned someone was losing something or someone. But instead of grief rising to the surface, it was anxiety that was soaring.

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By November of 2020 research shows that in the United States reports of anxiety increased to 50% and depression to 44%—six times higher than in 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that globally the prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%, with women and young people being affected the most. But what hasn’t been studied as closely is the amount of grief we were also experiencing. I believe there is a direct correlation between the two.

As a therapist specializing in grief for almost two decades now, I’ve come to understand that anxiety is a common response to loss. At its core, loss is about change, and when we lose someone or something we care about the landscape of our world changes. Feelings of uncertainty arise, fear surfaces, and anxiety blooms.

I’ve also come to understand is that while loss is something that happens to us, how we grieve is up to us. We can choose to move through the experience of loss consciously and with intention, or we can avoid it and suppress it. Grief is a process that requires support, attention, and room to breathe. When we attempt to avoid or suppress grief it almost always spills out in the form of anger, anxiety, and irritability.

There was a moment, early in the pandemic, when it seemed as though a new wave of grief understanding was cresting and that perhaps Americans were finally willing to acknowledge all the ways loss impacts our lives. In July of 2020, sociologist Ashton Verdery and his team at Pennsylvania State University introduced the COVID-19 Bereavement Multiplier and calculated that for every person who died of covid-19, nine grieving loved ones were left behind. Then in February of 2021 a coalition of national bereavement organizations and grief experts urged President Biden to fund grief intervention, services, and training for front-line workers. Later that same year, prolonged grief disorder was added as an official diagnosis to a revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, outlining a type of grief that can persist in a seemingly endless cycle of mourning that impacts daily functioning.

During that same time grief started trending on TikTok and Instagram. Art installations centered around mourning cropped up in major cities. The phrase “disenfranchised grief” was being used to validate all the kinds of loss (divorce, racial injustice, illness, lost jobs, and canceled vacations) that typically go unrecognized.

Now, on the fourth anniversary of the onset of the pandemic, many of these efforts have been thwarted or dismissed. It seems as though we have slipped back into our age-old habit of sneaking out the back door of the funeral home and dusting our hands of all that grief. The majority of my clients who lost a loved one directly or indirectly to COVID-19 tell me how no one recognizes their grief anymore. Even with COVID still surfacing, people have moved on.

We have long been a “grief illiterate nation,” as Maria Shriver wrote in her introduction to Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s On Grief and Grieving. People tend to show up in the beginning of a loss, attending memorials, dropping off casseroles, and sending grief books, but after a few weeks or months, even the most well-meaning folks move on. When this drop-off in attention to the bereaved occurs it sends a message that they too are supposed to be ready to move on from their loss.

When we lose someone significant the fallout can be immense. Grief can be a lengthy process and secondary losses in the form of finances, identity shifts, childcare help, and even physical health are common occurrences. But because of the lack of available and affordable grief support, many Americans are being denied the opportunity to grieve in healthy ways. And for someone who doesn’t know where to turn in their grief, they often struggle in silence, attempting to suppress their grief in the same ways our culture does externally.

When this happens an undercurrent of anxiety thrums beneath our surface. The world no longer feels like a safe place. Uncertainty and catastrophe loom on every corner. Panic attacks, social phobias and healthy anxiety take hold. We even become anxious about anxiety. But what if much of this anxiety is due to repressed grief?

The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a new realm of grief for many of us–not just for all the deaths that occurred, but also grief for jobs lost, for the overwhelming technological advances, marriage inequality, racial disparity, illnesses, and political strife we have experienced, not to mention the loss of safety and certainty in the future. We don’t know what to do with these kinds of losses, all that accumulated and collective repressed grief is now showing itself in soaring rates of anxiety, making anxiety the most common mental illness in the world.

It’s time our culture does the same. We need to acknowledge the individual and collective grief we are carrying. We need to lean into it, embrace it, memorialize it, and let it teach us more about ourselves. I always say that grief asks a lot of us because I believe that is true, but in turn, grief can offer us a new lens with which to discover what really matters to us, what is meaningful in our lives, and who we want to be going forward.

“}]]

“We need to acknowledge the individual and collective grief we are carrying,” writes Claire Bidwell Smith.

Uncategorized, freelance

Health – TIME

“We need to acknowledge the individual and collective grief we are carrying,” writes Claire Bidwell Smith.

Breaking News
March 11, 2024
30 views
6 minutes Read

English News: COVID-19 Shows Why the World Needs a Pandemic Agreement

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Today marks four years since I said the global outbreak of COVID-19 could be characterized as a pandemic.

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My decision to use the “p-word” was not one I took lightly. Pandemic is a powerful word, evoking fear linked to plagues and pandemics throughout history that have claimed millions of lives and caused severe disruption to societies and economies—as COVID-19 did.

Many of WHO’s critics have pointed to my use of “pandemic” on March 11, 2020 as evidence that WHO was “late” in taking the threat of COVID-19 seriously. By that stage, more than 118,000 cases had been reported in 114 countries, and more than 4,000 deaths. The horse had bolted.

However, the far more significant date was January 30, 2020, six weeks earlier, when I declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)—the highest level of alarm under the International Health Regulations (IHR), an instrument of international law designed to govern the response to global health emergencies. At that time, fewer than 100 cases, and no deaths, had been reported outside China.

A PHEIC has legal and technical meaning; “pandemic” does not—it’s a descriptor, rather than a technical designation.

I declared an end to COVID-19 as a PHEIC on May 5 of last year. Although the crisis has passed, the threat has not. The virus is still circulating, still changing, and still killing.

As countries learn to manage COVID-19 alongside other disease threats, and continue to grapple with the complications of Long COVID, they must also learn the painful lessons of COVID-19, and take corrective action to address deficiencies in the IHR and gaps in global health security that the pandemic exposed.

History teaches us that the next pandemic is not a matter of if, but when. It may be in our lifetime; it may not come for another 100 years or more. But it will come. And as things stand, the world remains unprepared.

That’s not to say nothing has been done. In the past two years, WHO, our Member States, and partners have established several initiatives to detect outbreaks earlier, strengthen sharing of biological samples and sequences, expand regional manufacturing of vaccines and other tools, improve equitable access to medical countermeasures, and strengthen financing of national preparedness and response capacities, especially in lower-income countries.

But there is still one key missing ingredient: an agreed framework between countries on how they will work together to counter the threat of a future pandemic.

The lack of coordination and cooperation between countries was one of the greatest failings of the global response to COVID-19. Countries became competitors, rather than cooperators, especially in seeking access to vaccines.

While the development of multiple safe and effective vaccines in such rapid time was an unprecedented triumph of science, before a single jab reached an arm, high-income countries had used their financial muscle to pre-order most of the world’s supply—often ordering more than they might ever need—leaving lower-income countries behind, waiting for scraps.

Of course, every sovereign government is responsible for protecting its people. But in a pandemic, no country can truly protect itself without working with other countries—especially those with the least financial, technical, or political capital—to ensure they too are protected. A global threat demands a global coordinated response.

Countries have recognized that, which is why they decided to strengthen the IHR and, in December 2021, to develop an international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response—a legally-binding generational pact to work together to keep themselves and each other safe.

They set themselves a deadline of completing the agreement and the IHR amendments in time for adoption at the World Health Assembly in May 2024. That’s now just 10 weeks away.

Read More: Is There a ‘COVID’ Season Yet?

Countries are making good progress, and have agreed on significant elements of the draft agreement, although there are still some issues which require further negotiation. I remain confident they can and will find common ground.

A more pernicious problem is the avalanche of lies, fake news, and conspiracy theories about the pandemic agreement that are propagating on social and traditional media.

Just as the response to the pandemic itself was hampered by mis- and disinformation, so the agreement’s negotiators are operating amid a frenzy of falsehoods: That the agreement is a power grab by WHO; that it will give WHO power to impose lockdowns or vaccine mandates on countries; or that it’s an attack on freedom.

These claims are completely false. WHO does not have, and has never had, the power to impose anything on anyone. We don’t want that power, and we’re not trying to get it.

The agreement is being written by countries, for countries, and will be implemented in countries in accordance with their own national laws. No country will be signing away its sovereignty to WHO. Why would it?

Legally-binding international agreements are not new. They are a tool that countries have used often since the end of the Second World War to meet common threats with a common response: the Geneva Conventions; the UN Charter; the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the Paris Agreement; the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control; and the WHO Constitution, to name a few.

All are binding agreements in international law, and none give UN staff, including me, power to dictate to sovereign states.

In his classic novel La Peste, Albert Camus wrote, “There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”

As the generation that lived through the COVID-19 crisis, we have a collective responsibility to protect future generations from the suffering we endured.

Because pathogens have no regard for the lines humans draw on maps, nor for the color of our politics, the size of our economies, or the strength of our militaries.

For everything that makes us different, we are one humanity, the same species, sharing the same DNA and the same planet.

We have no future but a common future.

“}]]

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on how we must prepare now to counter the threat of a future pandemic.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on how we must prepare now to counter the threat of a future pandemic.

Breaking News
March 11, 2024
36 views
9 minutes Read

English News: Experts Can’t Agree If We’re Still in a Pandemic

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As a health journalist, I’ve written the phrase “the COVID-19 pandemic” more times than I care to count in the four years since the World Health Organization (WHO) first used that term on March 11, 2020. But lately, the word “pandemic” has given me pause.

Maybe you’ve noticed it too: these days, a lot of people refer to the pandemic in the past tense. “During COVID,” they say, or, “when we were in the pandemic.” The implication is that the virus is gone and the pandemic is over.

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The former is clearly untrue. The SARS-CoV-2 virus still kills thousands of people around the world each month, saddles still more with chronic symptoms known as Long COVID, and continues to evolve, with the highly transmissible JN.1 variant recently causing waves of infection across the globe.

But are we still a pandemic? No one seems to know for sure.

When I asked Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), she didn’t give a direct answer. “Rather than getting caught up in the semantics of it,” she says, people should feel confident that “we are outside of the emergency [phase]. But I don’t want folks to forget that COVID is still here and still poses a risk.”

Even Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic prevention and preparedness at the WHO, admitted that the issue is a “confusing” one. The WHO continues to describe COVID-19 as a pandemic on its website. Van Kerkhove says that’s reasonable given the virus’ continued global presence, even though we are no longer in the crisis state we were in 2020—but, she says, there’s no definitive, yes-or-no conclusion about whether that’s the right term to use.

“There is no universal, agreed definition of what a pandemic is,” Van Kerkhove says. “If you asked 100 epidemiologists to define what a pandemic is, or, ‘Are we currently in a pandemic?’, you’d get a lot of different answers.”

What’s a pandemic, anyway?

Epidemiologists consider a disease “endemic” when it spreads in a consistent way, as the flu does each winter in the Northern Hemisphere. An endemic level of disease is the baseline amount for a particular area, which might not be zero but is at least predictable. If a disease suddenly causes a higher-than-average number of cases in a set area, the situation becomes an “epidemic.”

The definition for a “pandemic”—when an epidemic crosses borders, infecting lots of people across multiple countries or continents—is perhaps the squishiest of all.

Calling something a pandemic is essentially a “judgment call,” because “there isn’t a precise number” of cases, hospitalizations, deaths, or affected countries that definitively denotes one, says Dr. Jonathan Quick, an adjunct professor at the Duke Global Health Institute and author of The End of Epidemics. “Anybody who gives you a precise number is just pulling it out of their head.”

Using that label is, in some ways, as much a political and public-relations decision as it is an epidemiological one. “If you’re trying to really reduce the number of deaths, you’ve got to be very strategic in what you do,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Language is part of the calculus, in that it can spur action from officials and the public alike.

But, technically speaking, labeling something a pandemic has no immediate policy implications. Even the WHO does not formally declare pandemics. The agency’s highest official level of alert is a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), a designation meant to mobilize a global, coordinated response. (The PHEIC related to COVID-19 started in January 2020 and ended in May 2023, the same month the U.S. government stopped calling the virus a public-health emergency.)

But, Van Kerkhove says, PHEIC is “not a good acronym. It doesn’t evoke the kind of action like the word ‘pandemic’ does.”

Representatives from WHO member countries around the world are working on a formal definition of a pandemic—four years after COVID-19 came onto the scene—as part of a wider effort to strengthen global pandemic preparedness. An alleged recent draft, which was published in February by Health Policy Watch, is a mouthful: “the global spread of a pathogen or variant that infects human populations with limited or no immunity through sustained and high transmissibility from person to person, overwhelming health systems with severe morbidity and high mortality and causing social and economic disruptions, all of which requires effective national and global collaboration and coordination for its control.” (A WHO spokesperson declined to confirm the legitimacy of that draft definition, but said a new draft of the group’s work is set to be published this week.)

That reported definition doesn’t include numbers, but it does lay out more precise ground rules for what constitutes a pandemic. The pathogen in question must be contagious, novel—since humans don’t have significant preexisting immunity to it—and virulent enough to cause lots of death and disease, overwhelming health systems and disrupting society in the process.

Is COVID-19 still a pandemic, or is it endemic?

Under those terms, SARS-CoV-2 still has some pandemic-y features. It’s still highly transmissible and circulating widely in countries around the world, and it remains a major cause of death and disability globally.

But it isn’t novel anymore, says Katherine Xue, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University who has studied viral evolution. The majority of the world’s population now has some immunity to the virus through vaccination, prior infection, or both, which means that “even a new viral variant is probably not going to be able to infect everybody” in the way the original strain could in 2020, she says.

COVID-19’s spread isn’t perfectly predictable—new variants are emerging all the time, causing spikes in infections all year round rather than seasonally—but it is consistently circulating around the world. To Xue, that means it’s fair to call it endemic. “The picture of COVID that we have now is probably going to be very similar to what we have four years from now, [whereas] the way we dealt with COVID was very different four years ago,” she says. “The rate of change is different.”

COVID-19 also does not overwhelm health systems in the way it once did. Today, with masks, tests, vaccines, and treatments available to some extent around the world, fewer people develop severe disease, and it’s easier to care for those who do. The virus continues to kill people and cause Long COVID, but global death rates are way down from their peaks.

Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has stopped using the word “pandemic,” which he says was a “shorthand way to convey to the public” that COVID-19 constituted a worldwide emergency that required a global shift in behavior. But calling it a pandemic now “just doesn’t feel right,” he says. In his opinion, we’ve been out of the pandemic phase for about a year, given the widespread availability of tests, treatments, and vaccines.

So what’s the word to use now? Experts interviewed for this story were hesitant to pick one. “We really don’t have the language for things that are somewhere between flus and cold viruses and pandemics,” Quick says.

Does the label matter?

It may seem purely semantic, but ambiguity over the p-word has political and public-health implications. While many countries use other labels, like emergency declarations, to unlock funding and trigger coordinated governmental responses to a crisis, calling something a pandemic—even informally—has gravitas. And saying one has ended implies, rightfully or not, that the threat is gone, which may have trickle-down effects on research funding, disease-prevention efforts, and policies around sick leave and public services.

That may be why public-health experts are so loath to take a firm stance. “I would be worried if the headline of your story is, ‘WHO Says We’re No Longer In a Pandemic,’” Van Kerkhove told me. “That would have a different level of meaning from a political point of view.”

Saying a pandemic is over also sends a message to the public that they can move on—assuming, of course, that they haven’t already. Only about 20% of U.S. adults got the latest vaccine, and a similarly small percentage said they were worried about COVID-19 going into this past holiday season, according to KFF data from late 2023. Lots of people stopped paying attention long before COVID-19’s four-year anniversary, and “the pandemic is over for them” regardless of how much experts debate the right vocabulary to use, Osterholm says.

Contrast that with the daily lives of people who remain especially vulnerable to the disease— including those who are elderly, immunocompromised, or coping with Long COVID—and it can feel like we’re living in separate timelines, Osterholm says. “Is the pandemic over for some people earlier than it is for others?” Osterholm says. “That doesn’t seem to make sense. That’s kind of like saying that there’s two different temperatures in Minneapolis in one night.”

Still, even Osterholm wouldn’t say which view is the right one, or when a pandemic is definitively over. “I couldn’t answer it for you,” he says.

Reconciling those different realities is unlikely at this point. And to Quick, that’s okay. “The key messaging is not about terminology, but about what behaviors are appropriate,” he says.

For people who still observe the pandemic, those behaviors won’t be at all surprising. Experts recommend getting vaccinated, staying home when you’re actively sick, getting tested and treated if necessary, and considering additional precautions like wearing a mask and improving ventilation. But with emergency declarations expired, mandates gone, and public guidance relaxing, whether you choose to do those things is now largely up to you. “We’re in a different place with COVID,” CDC director Cohen says.

Is that place a pandemic? It seems that’s also up to you.

“}]]

No one seems to know for sure.

Uncategorized, COVID-19, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

No one seems to know for sure.

Breaking News
March 11, 2024
33 views
4 minutes Read

English News: The Isolation of Having Long COVID as Society Moves On

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When Karyn Bishof started experiencing Long COVID, there wasn’t a name yet for the symptoms that lingered after her infection in March 2020.

“I had these continued, prolonged symptoms that I wasn’t hearing about initially,” says Bishof, who founded a group called the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project to help advocate for those suffering with Long COVID. She experienced extreme fatigue, nausea, and insomnia, among other things, but doctors kept testing her for COVID-19, or telling her her symptoms were psychosomatic.

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March 11 marks four years since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. But while much of society has moved on from masking, quarantining, and isolating, some still feel the effects of the pandemic every day. Bishof, 34, who continues to experience Long COVID, says that many patients she speaks to still find it difficult to get people and doctors to take their symptoms seriously, or feel concern at being the only person masked in a hospital waiting room. “There’s no mitigation left,” Bishof says. “It’s hurry up and move on.” “

Having the government guidelines for prevention largely rolled back has only made the experience for Long COVID patients and immunocompromised people in 2024 more isolating.

Cynthia Adinig, 38, has been dealing with symptoms of Long COVID since 2020, and says that, as someone who is immunocompromised, trying to avoid reinfection in a society in which most people have stopped masking has drastically impacted all aspects of her life. “It shrinks everything down so much,” she says. “My world gets smaller and smaller outside of these doors.”

Adinig says it’s a constant struggle to create a sense of normalcy for her son, who contracted COVID when he was 4 and also deals with mild Long COVID symptoms. Now 8, he’s an avid chess player, but competing in tournaments has become tough now that masking is no longer a requirement. “Places don’t understand how much not masking excludes those of us who are immunocompromised,” Adinig says. “I’m really forced to say no, you can’t pursue your dreams.”

Many public health measures that were standard protocol during peak waves have fallen by the wayside. Nationwide free at-home COVID-19 testing ended last May. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently ended the mandatory 5-day isolation period for people who are infected. As testing for and tracking the virus becomes less common, many people might not know that the sickness they’re experiencing is COVID-19—or that lingering symptoms are Long COVID.

Liza Fisher, 39, says that the way accommodations, like work from home policies and at-home testing kits, were quickly implemented during the peak pandemic years showed that society could adjust to make itself more inclusive towards people with disabilities. But now, she just feels left behind. “It makes you turn to isolation or recognize that you are now of lesser value in society,” she says.

As of January 2024, 17% of American adults have reported experiencing symptoms of Long COVID according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics—up from an estimated 14% in fall of 2023. Almost 3%, or 7 million, U.S. adults are immunocompromised in some way—and some people who are immunocompromised don’t get sufficient protection from COVID-19 vaccines, according to research from Johns Hopkins. Data from a 2022 Brookings study estimated that Long COVID was keeping an estimated 4 million Americans out of work.

Fisher says she struggles to get people around her to understand what Long COVID is, and that task is only growing more challenging as the pandemic fades out of the public conversation. “How do I talk about it when people just want to forget about it?” she says. “I don’t get to forget. I live with it every single day. My body lives with it, my mind lives with it. But how do you bring that into conversation?”

“}]]

“My world gets smaller and smaller outside of these doors.”

Uncategorized, COVID-19, feature, News Desk

Health – TIME

“My world gets smaller and smaller outside of these doors.”

Breaking News
March 10, 2024
42 views
4 minutes Read

English News: West Virginia Lawmakers OK Bill Drawing Back One of the Strictest Child Vaccination Laws

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s GOP-controlled state Legislature voted Saturday to allow some students who don’t attend traditional public schools to be exempt from state vaccination requirements that have long been held up as among the most strict in the country.

The bill was approved despite the objections of Republican Senate Health and Human Resources Chair Mike Maroney, a trained doctor, who called the bill “an embarrassment” and said he believed lawmakers were harming the state.

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“I took an oath to do no harm. There’s zero chance I can vote for this bill,” Maroney said before the bill passed the Senate 18-12. The House already approved a version of the bill in February and swiftly approved the Senate bill on Saturday, the last day of the state’s 60-day legislative session.

“It’s a bad bill for West Virginia, it’s a step backward. There’s no question, no question there will be negative effects,” Maroney said. He added, “It’s an embarrassment for me to be a part of it, it should be an embarrassment to everybody.”

West Virginia, with some of the lowest life expectancy rates in the U.S. and a quarter of all children living in poverty, is one of only two states, along with California, that don’t permit nonmedical exemptions to vaccinations as a condition for school entry.

Mississippi had the same policy until July, when a judge allowed people to start citing religious beliefs to seek exemptions from state-mandated vaccinations that children must receive before attending day care or school.

The new proposed vaccine law in West Virginia, which now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Jim Justice, allows virtual public school students to be exempt and for private and parochial schools to institute their own policies either exempting students or not.

All students participating in West Virginia school activities that result in competition, including but not limited to sports, still need to be vaccinated.

The bill stipulates parents can’t sue private schools and school owners, administrators, boards and staffers for deciding whether to allow exemptions or not, as long as the school provides families with a notice for parents to sign acknowledging the policy annually and upon enrollment.

“I personally do not urge passage, but your health committee urged passage of this bill,” Maroney said before introducing the bill in the Senate.

The bill’s original intent, as introduced in the state House of Delegates, was to eliminate vaccine requirements for students in public virtual schools. It was expanded in a House committee to allow private schools to set their own vaccination standards, unless a student participates in sanctioned athletics.

The bill also created a religious exemption for any child whose parents or guardians present a letter stating the child cannot be vaccinated for religious reasons. That was taken out in the Senate.

During the Senate Health Committee meeting earlier this week, West Virginia University School of Medicine Professor Dr. Alvin Moss argued for the bill, saying the state’s current compulsory vaccination policy is medically unethical because it doesn’t allow informed consent.

The number of parents who don’t want their children to receive vaccinations is growing, Moss said.

In 2017, the anti-vaccine requirement group West Virginians for Health Freedom had 300 families included in his members. That number has grown to at least 3,000 members in 2024, Moss said.

Former West Virginia Republican Delegate Chanda Adkins, a group member, said during the meeting that religious families who don’t want to vaccinate their children deserve to be able to live their convictions.

Former West Virginia Medical Association Dr. Lisa Costello disagreed, saying West Virginia’s current vaccine policy is the “gold standard” across the nation.

“West Virginia is seen as a national leader when it comes to our routine, child immunizations,” she said, later adding, “Measles does not care if you go to private school or public school. Measles does not differentiate depending on where you go to school.”

West Virginia law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis-b, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough, unless they receive a medical exemption. West Virginia does not require COVID-19 vaccinations.

“}]]

West Virginia Lawmakers voted to allow some students who don’t attend public schools to be exempt from state vaccination requirements.

Uncategorized, News Desk, wire

Health – TIME

West Virginia Lawmakers voted to allow some students who don’t attend public schools to be exempt from state vaccination requirements.

Breaking News
March 10, 2024
39 views
5 minutes Read

English News: How Psychedelics Could Help Soldiers Overcome Trauma

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“The soldier above all others prays for peace,” the former American military general Douglas MacArthur once said, “for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” But what about peace with oneself?

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More than 120,000 U.S. veterans have died by suicide since record keeping began in 2001, according to Veterans Affairs department data. Many more, in the U.S. and elsewhere, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as conflicts spiral around the world. Ukraine’s health ministry estimates that 3 to 4 million people in the country live with PTSD.

Amid this mental health catastrophe, authorities have begun turning to psychedelics for help—and for good reason.

On Feb. 21, Ukraine’s special parliamentary commission responsible for the medical care of veterans and service personnel, voted to establish a working group to assess the effectiveness of MDMA-assisted therapy on PTSD. “We have to deal with mental health issues,” Minister of Healthcare Viktor Liashko, who still needs to sign off on the group, told Ukraine’s official parliament TV channel, “[and examine] how new methods will help quickly and qualitatively.” In December, the U.S. Congress voted to study the effects of psychedelic therapy on soldiers suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injury. In Israel, a study that would treat Oct. 7 survivors with PTSD, including soldiers, with MDMA could get underway later this year.

The current conventional treatments for PTSD include cognitive behavioral therapy and the FDA-approved antidepressants Zoloft and Paxil. Patients may also be prescribed antipsychotic medications, and benzodiazepines. But, for many veterans, these options are ineffective, and can lead to serious side-effects.

The adoption of psychedelic-assisted therapy could represent a tectonic shift in psychiatry around the world. Research suggests that the psychedelic drug MDMA, an empathogenic stimulant also known as Molly or ecstasy, can spark changes in the brain that induce a childlike state of neuroplasticity and help forge new neural connections. (It could well be approved for PTSD by the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration in August after two advanced stage trials showed significant benefits.) Researchers are also studying other psychedelics as well, like the powerful drug ibogaine.

But Ukraine may be at the vanguard given its wartime realities. Some soldiers have already received legal ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic with some hallucinogenic effects, at private clinics. Dr. Vladislav Matrenitsky, who began working with ketamine in 2018, a year after it was permitted for medical use, is now seeking funding for a study to build on existing research in an effort to bring ketamine therapy toward mainstream healthcare in Ukraine. Underground practitioners elsewhere also provide MDMA and psilocybin therapy, which is illegal.

Meanwhile, efforts are underway to remedy a serious shortage of therapists trained to provide the requisite support before and after psychedelic treatment. Some 15 Ukrainains attended a psychedelic therapist training program in Sarajevo in December, convened by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the organization behind the MDMA-assisted therapy studies in the U.S. Hundreds of mental health specialists have also signed up for an online psychedelic therapy training program with U.S. company Fluence.

The use of drugs by soldiers during war, both to recover and as battle stimulants, is nothing new. During World War II, the U.S. army treated soldiers suffering with “shell shock” with sodium amytal, or “blue heavens.” It would precipitate a deep sleep of more than 24 hours and most returned to combat within days. But the powerful sedative is addictive and has serious side-effects, and soldiers eventually stopped using it.

Methamphetamines were central to Nazi Germany’s high octane blitzkrieg strategy, and the stimulant was also given to Japanese, U.S., and British troops to keep fatigue at bay and improve endurance. A report published in May by the Royal United Service Institute suggested that Russian soldiers in Ukraine are being given amphetamines before battle. Small numbers of Ukrainian soldiers, in the highly decentralized army, are also experimenting with ibogaine—which is a potent stimulant in low doses—to improve battle preparedness.

But there are concerns among experts over the use of hallucinogens by active duty soldiers, especially if intended to improve combat readiness, or in the trenches to reduce the fear of death. Research suggests that MDMA and ketamine can help treat PTSD but more study is needed into these and other psychedelics. “We should decide wisely how we use these medicines,” Leor Roseman, a neuroscientist at the University of Exeter, told TIME. “Psychedelic therapy should not be undertaken lightly to heal soldiers and just put them back into the field.”

For some Ukrainians, who view the conflict with Russia in existential terms, they view the use of psychedelics primarily through a wartime lense. “It’s not a choice between war and a peaceful life for a lot of people,” Oleh Orlov, the chair of the Ukrainian Psychedelic Research Association (UPRA) and deputy director for research at the Mykola Yarmachenko Institute of Special Education and Psychology, told TIME. “It’s between existing and not existing.”

Some Ukrainian troops have already reportedly returned to the frontlines after receiving psychedelic treatment. Welcome to psychedelic psychiatry’s brave new world, sanctioned or not, where much more research is needed.

“}]]

The U.S. is studying the effects of psychedelic therapy on soldiers with PTSD. Other countries, like Ukraine, are doing similar research.

Uncategorized, freelance

Health – TIME

The U.S. is studying the effects of psychedelic therapy on soldiers with PTSD. Other countries, like Ukraine, are doing similar research.

Breaking News
March 8, 2024
30 views
2 minutes Read

English News: Wegovy Is Good for More Than Just Weight Loss

[[{“value”:”

The obesity drug Wegovy can now claim to lower the risk of heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular issues in people who are overweight or who have obesity, and also have cardiovascular disease. It’s the first weight-loss drug to carry an indication for heart benefits.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the addition to the label on March 8 based on a study from Wegovy’s manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, showing that the drug lowered the risk of heart attack, stroke, or dying of heart-related issues in this population by 20% compared to people receiving placebo.

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When the results of the study were first released at the American Heart Association meeting last November, the findings were greeted with a round of applause from the heart experts in attendance. Obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease, and while doctors have an arsenal of medications to treat many other risk factors—such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes—they haven’t had a powerful enough drug to help people lose weight until now.

Wegovy, which was approved in 2021, is the brand name for semaglutide. Ozempic, which was approved in 2017 to treat diabetes, is a lower dosage of semaglutide; in 2020, it too received FDA approval for reducing the risk of major cardiovascular events in people with Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Patients taking Wegovy inject themselves once a week in increasing doses until they reach the target dose of 2.4 mg. People with a history of thyroid cancer should not use Wegovy, since semglutide has been linked to a higher risk of that cancer in animals (though not in people). Side effects of the injections include inflammation of the pancreas, kidney problems, and depression.

“This is an entirely new pathway to harness, of addressing obesity and its metabolic complications,” said Dr. Amit Khera, director of the Preventive Cardiology Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, after the results on which the approval was based were released in November. “The fact that we have a new treatment avenue for patients with cardiovascular disease is incredibly exciting, and welcome.”

“}]]

It’s the first weight-loss drug to carry an indication for heart benefits.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

It’s the first weight-loss drug to carry an indication for heart benefits.

Breaking News
March 8, 2024
34 views
2 minutes Read

English News: Today Is Your Last Chance to Order Free COVID-19 Tests

[[{“value”:”

March 8 is your last day to order free rapid COVID-19 tests, as the U.S. government prepares to suspend its at-home test program. Households in the U.S. can receive at least four rapid antigen tests, free of charge, simply by entering a name and address.

The federal government has been shipping free tests since early 2022. The program was suspended for a few months in 2023, after the U.S. government stopped considering COVID-19 a public-health emergency, but was reinstated this past fall, as new variants began to spread and cause upticks in infections and hospitalizations. Now, the free testing initiative is again coming to an end.

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Today is the last day the U.S. Postal Service will accept orders, here. Households that have not ordered any tests since the program was reinstated in September 2023 can place two orders of four tests each, while those that have ordered more recently can get one set of four tests.

Rapid tests will also remain for sale in retail stores, and may be available for free through certain community organizations, after March 8.

The end of the government’s free testing program is the latest in a string of public-health decisions that signal officials are moving on from COVID-19. On March 1, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ended its long-standing recommendation that people isolate themselves from others for at least five days when they have COVID-19. Instead, the agency now recommends that people stay home until they’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours and their other symptoms are improving—an approach that brings COVID-19 guidance in line with that of the flu and other common respiratory diseases.

“}]]

March 8 is the last day to get them from the U.S. government.

Uncategorized, COVID-19, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

March 8 is the last day to get them from the U.S. government.

Breaking News
March 7, 2024
24 views
3 minutes Read

English News: Melatonin Overdoses Are Spiking In Young Kids

[[{“value”:”

More adults are using melatonin to get to sleep at night. Unfortunately, that means more young children are finding their parents’ tablets and gummies and taking them by accident.

A new analysis in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, finds that melatonin was responsible for a surprisingly large share of emergency-department visits—7%—among infants and young kids who accidentally ingested a medication from 2019 to 2022. During that time span, melatonin caused about 11,000 such incidents.

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Past research shows that from 2009 to 2020, emergency department visits of this type spiked by 420% among this age group. In 2022, other research found a 530% increase in accidental melatonin poisonings from 2012 to 2021 among people 19 years old and younger.

Melatonin, a naturally occurring hormone, helps regulate the body’s circadian cycle and is sold as tablets and gummies. In the new analysis, 47% of the kids who went to emergency departments had ingested candy-like melatonin gummies, and about half of all visits were caused by a flavored product. Alarmingly, in nearly 36% of the cases, children had swallowed ten or more gummies or tablets. Fortunately, most cases overall—about 94%—did not result in hospitalization.

The risk of accidental ingestion is made greater not just by the availability of candy-like formulations, but by the fact that melatonin is not required to be packaged in bottles with child-resistant caps—though manufacturers can use the caps voluntarily. The new analysis did not determine what share of the emergency department visits involved tamper-resistant packaging, but 75% of the cases involved bottles—suggesting that the containers either had not been closed properly or did not have child-proof tops.

Despite the small share of cases that resulted in hospitalizations, melatonin carries real risks for kids. There’s limited data on what happens when children take too much, but large amounts can result in nausea, headaches, diarrhea, irritability, and even suppressed breathing, according to Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Melatonin should not be given to children before consulting with their pediatrician. In all households with children, the researchers recommend buying melatonin only in containers with child-resistant packaging. The CDC also refers parents and other caregivers to its Up and Away campaign, which encourages keeping medicines out of the reach of children and educating children about drug safety, firmly recapping containers, asking guests to keep their own medications out of reach, and keeping the phone number to the nearest hospital and poison control center handy at all times. Over-the-counter supplements like melatonin may seem benign —but they can pose real dangers, especially to kids.

“}]]

Few cases required hospitalization, but the sleep supplement is still risky for children.

Uncategorized, medicine

Health – TIME

Few cases required hospitalization, but the sleep supplement is still risky for children.

Breaking News
March 7, 2024
28 views
6 minutes Read

English News: Daylight Saving Time Is the Worst

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On Sunday, March 10 at 2 a.m., the U.S. and about a third of the world’s other countries will set their clocks forward by one hour, which will make the sun seem to rise later in the morning and hang in the sky longer in the evening. I am not alone in dreading it. Plenty of people want nothing to do with the whole hoary practice.

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It’s bad for health, bad for safety, bad for your mood, and just plain unpopular. But that doesn’t stop us from changing the clocks, pointlessly, twice a year.

The ridiculous history of Daylight Saving Time

The first push for changing the clocks took place in 1907, when British builder William Willett penned a pamphlet titled “A Waste of Daylight,” in which he proposed setting clocks forward one hour. “The sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep,” he wrote, and yet there “remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal.”

For years, Willett lobbied Parliament for legislation mandating the change—then died just a year before it was adopted, when the U.K. followed Germany in making the move to conserve daylight, and thus fuel, during World War I. In 1918, the U.S., which was by then one of the combatants too, got on board with the time change. The clocks returned to their pre-war settings after the fighting ended, only to resume the Daylight Saving Time tradition in the U.S. for the duration of World War II. Finally, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, dividing the year into two: six months of Daylight Saving Time and six months of Standard Time. In 2005, lawmakers mandated eight months of Daylight Saving Time.

Daylight Saving Time is not even effective

But does changing the clocks really conserve fuel? According to Stanford University, one meta-analysis of 44 studies found that it essentially does not, leading to just a 0.34% reduction in electricity consumption. Some research shows it even backfires. A 2008 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that nationwide, added daylight can actually increase energy consumption by about 1%, due partly to greater use of air conditioning when the sun is out later in the evening.

It’s lousy for your health

The downsides are even clearer in terms of health. Sleep expert Adam Spira, professor of mental health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, cites a range of problems that can occur when we trade an hour of sleep for an extra hour of sun—as we do with Daylight Saving Time—including daylight-induced sleeplessness when bedtime arrives and morning drowsiness when we wake up in the dark. Studies have linked such circadian disruption to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, inflammatory markers, and even suicide. Spira also cites a 2020 study which found that moving clocks forward one hour carries an alarming 6% increased risk of fatal traffic accidents, due to similar circadian scrambling and sleep deprivation.

Young children and teens suffer too. Establishing a fixed and predictable sleep cycle for infants and babies can be a challenge, and once things are set, even small disruptions can cause headaches for parents and fitful slumber for babies. A 2019 study in the journal Sleep found that springing ahead one hour into Daylight Saving Time leads to broken sleep during the night and earlier awakenings in the morning for babies in the newborn-to-24-month age group. In 2022, research conducted by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine revealed that teens lose an average of 32 minutes of sleep a night after the switch to Daylight Saving Time—a seemingly small difference that can lead to not-so-small consequences, with increased sleepiness, slower reaction times, lack of attentiveness, and sluggish psychomotor reactions resulting.

“We’re affected by this not just one day of the year, but really eight months of the year,” says Dr. Beth Malow, professor of neurology and pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt Sleep Division at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “We need morning light to reset our clocks. Teenagers are going through puberty and their melatonin levels are delayed, and it just cuts into their sleep when they get too much light too late in the day and not enough light in the morning.”

No one can agree how to lock the clock

All of this is exasperating to Americans who are broadly in favor of eliminating the practice of changing the clocks twice a year. In a YouGov poll of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted last year, 62% said that toggling between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time should be eliminated, with just one fixed time established year-round. Daylight Saving Time actually proved more popular than Standard Time: 56% of respondents said they preferred the extra hour of sunshine at the end of the day and 26% preferred the darker, winter way of doing things.

State legislatures are trying to respond to this sentiment, with 29 considering laws last year that would establish permanent Daylight Saving Time, but those efforts are going nowhere. One problem, as The Hill reports, is that federal law allows states to establish permanent Standard Time, but not permanent Daylight Saving Time. The rule goes back to 1966, when the Uniform Time Act sought to forestall some states from rushing pell-mell to grab that extra hour of evening sunlight while others resisted.

To change those rules requires Congressional action. The Sunshine Protection Act of 2023 is trying to establish permanent Daylight Saving Time and eliminate further time changes after this one. So far, it hasn’t been successful. Some groups, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, oppose it—instead favoring permanent standard time. In a January position statement, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine wrote that permanent standard time “aligns best with human circadian biology.” Daylight Saving Time was made permanent in the U.S. once before, in 1974, then repealed eight months later after concerns for children’s safety going to school in the dark.

The one thing everyone seems to agree on, though, is that the clock should not switch twice a year. Not that it’s likely to stop anytime soon.“I think a lot of this is inertia,” says Malow. “People don’t want to change.”

For now, the best Americans can do is resign themselves to the fact that this spring, as in so many springs past, we will be selling an hour in the morning to buy an hour at night—and in the fall we’ll do things the other way all over again.

“}]]

We’ve been changing the clocks for generations, but plenty of doctors say the practice should end.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

We’ve been changing the clocks for generations, but plenty of doctors say the practice should end.

Breaking News
March 7, 2024
29 views
7 minutes Read

English News: TikTok Influencers Are Now Treating Ozempic Side Effects

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Every day dozens of people come to Jennifer Witherspoon—a former dental office manager with zero medical training—for help managing nausea, headaches, and other side effects that can come with taking weight-loss shots. She even crafted a template response to help her quickly get through the messages.

“People have offered to pay me, begged me to start a podcast, asked me to call their sisters-in-law, wanted me to call their doctor,” she said. “One lady even invited me to her wedding.” Even Oprah’s production company reached out to feature one of her videos in a prime time special.

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What makes Witherspoon’s advice so appealing? It’s filling a void. As a Mounjaro user herself, Witherspoon figured out ways to minimize her own side effects, absent guidance from the doctor who prescribed her the drug. In August 2022, she started sharing that wisdom on TikTok with hundreds of thousands of others.

“I’m known as, like, the side effect girl,” she said.

Influencers have found an audience desperate for information. As demand for GLP-1 drugs that cause weight loss, such as Novo Nordisk A/S’s Ozempic and Eli Lilly & Co.’s Mounjaro, explodes, more people are getting them from sources that offer little or no follow-up care. More than half of the several dozen U.S. telehealth companies that offer GLP-1s launched after Ozempic came to market in 2018, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Some have real expertise and bespoke services, but others offer little beyond the prescriptions they dole out.

And while the number of certified obesity doctors has more than doubled since 2018, the number of prescriptions for Ozempic alone has grown more than 5,000% in that same period—up to around 20 million last year. “Most physicians have very little or no training related to the treatment of obesity,” said Kimberly Gudzune, the medical director of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. While Ozempic and Mounjaro are technically diabetes drugs, they’re often used for weight loss. Shots with the same active ingredients are marketed under different names, Novo’s Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound, specifically for obesity.

There’s a lot of “hand-holding” that goes into prescribing GLP-1 drugs, said Robert Kushner, an obesity specialist at Northwestern Medicine. He and multiple obesity experts told Bloomberg it took time to develop best practices. Many learned to increase the dosage over a series of weeks or months. What’s best for one patient might also not work well for others, which is why it’s important to coordinate with a physician while taking the drugs, they said.

Not everyone is getting that kind of treatment. Holly Lofton, the director of the medical weight management program at NYU Langone Health, has patients who first went to dermatologists or telehealth companies for weight-loss drugs and weren’t given proper oversight. Another doctor said some patients came to him after ending up in the hospital with dehydration because they weren’t advised to drink more water when taking a GLP-1 drug.

Witherspoon said most of the people that come to her say they were prescribed the medications by non-obesity specialists, like an OB-GYN or general practitioner, who never told them that certain foods or behaviors could worsen side effects. For them, TikTokers like her are a trusted source of information.

“Jen is like my doctor,” said Ashley Hamilton, who started taking Ozempic to lose weight last May.

When Hamilton’s primary care provider suggested she treat the nausea she experienced from the shot with a drug called Zofran, she knew from TikTok it could worsen the constipation she was also experiencing. Instead, the 37-year-old opted for magnesium supplements and tweaked her food and water intake—tips she learned from social media.

Medical professionals don’t advise patients to get health advice from TikTok, where misinformation flourishes. Some of the guidance floating around—like switching injection sites to reduce nausea—has no scientific evidence to back it up, according to experts. But doctors say some of the information sharing among patients on TikTok, like advice to cut back on fatty foods and drink more water, is positive.

Witherspoon cautions she’s not a doctor, saying that she’s not a medical professional and is just sharing her personal experience. But there’s virtually no oversight of what she and other influencers like her do or say. TikTok prohibits harmful medical or public health misinformation, including discouraging people from getting appropriate medical care for a life-threatening disease, a spokesperson said. The company will remove videos, suspend certain posting privileges, or ban users altogether. It’s not clear if content like Witherspoon’s meets that criteria.

Even if patients are in contact with a specialist, some more easily trust their peers—particularly if they’ve had negative experience with the medical system before.

Branneisha Cooper started posting on TikTok about Mounjaro for that very reason. “When it comes to Black women going to medical providers, we’re just not taken as seriously as other races,” she said. “Having my face online, hopefully that aids in more trust.” One of her tips is to drink a protein shake before her injection to avoid side effects.

Fredi Pepper has also found a group eager for information. The 70-year-old retired school teacher said she learned how to manage Mounjaro’s side effects from TikTok. That’s not where her friends spend their time, though. She helps run a Facebook group called “Zepbound / Mounjaro Women Over 60 Support” for those not on the app. For the even less social media savvy, she shares her wisdom with them offline.

This social media effect may help explain why the newer drugs, Mounjaro and Wegovy, started out with lower rates of side-effect reports than their older peers, doctors say.

When Ozempic first came out in 2018, there was a deluge of patient complaints about vomiting, diarrhea and even more alarming reactions, like pancreatitis, according to a Bloomberg analysis of tens of thousands of cases sent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Over time, however, reports of such events—including ones so serious they sent people to the hospital or were life-threatening—have dropped dramatically, the analysis found. Side effect reports associated with drugs tend to wane over time, in part because doctors hone their prescribing behaviors. But it’s notable that the newer drugs to market have far lower rates of reported side effects to begin with.

Spokespeople for both Lilly and Novo said patient safety is a top priority at the drugmakers and they recommend that those experiencing side effects to speak to their health-care provider.

Doctors and regulators are on especially high alert for dangerous side effects from obesity shots. A handful of approved weight-loss treatments have been pulled from the market after links to serious health concerns, including suicide and heart damage. European regulators are investigating reports of suicidal thoughts from GLP-1 patients.

But even when compared to other drugs, reports of serious adverse events to the FDA among GLP-1s are low, according to Bloomberg’s analysis.

The FDA’s side effect data isn’t a comprehensive look at all patients taking the drugs, and has its limitations because it’s self reported. More robust clinical trials and scientific studies are needed to get a full picture of the risks.

But the stark difference in the rate of side effect reports between the newest GLP-1s and other drugs suggests that people are likely better tolerating the former. And social media seems to be having an impact.

Doctors are now realizing that if they want to keep up with best-practices and reach patients, they need to be on TikTok too. Daniel Rosen, a bariatric surgeon and obesity specialist has more than 57,000 followers on the app. Between seeing patients he posts videos and responds to comments and messages. The information goes both ways with patients: He answers questions and asks them about what they’re learning from their experiences. “It’s the next frontier,” he said.

“}]]

Patients are turning to social media in the absence of good medical advice.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate, wire

Health – TIME

Patients are turning to social media in the absence of good medical advice.

Breaking News
March 7, 2024
29 views
2 minutes Read

English News: Cinnamon Sold at Discount Stores Is Tainted with Lead, FDA Warns

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Ground cinnamon sold by U.S. discount retailers is contaminated with high levels of lead and should be discarded, federal health officials said Wednesday.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said cinnamon sold by stores including the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar contains lead at levels that could be unsafe for people, particularly children, with prolonged exposure to the spice. The agency urged suppliers to recall the products voluntarily.

Cinnamon products included in the agency’s safety alert include the La Fiesta brand sold by La Superior and SuperMercados; Marcum brand sold by Save A Lot stores; MK brands sold by SF Supermarket; Swad brand sold by Patel Brothers; El Chilar brand sold by La Joya Morelense; and Supreme Tradition brand sold by Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores.

“Removing the ground cinnamon products in this alert from the market will prevent them from contributing elevated amounts of lead to the diets of children,” the alert said.

Consumers should not buy the products and should throw away any containers they have at home, the agency said.

Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores have removed the cinnamon from their store shelves, a company spokesperson said. Customers can return products to nearby stores for a refund.

FDA officials launched what they called a “targeted survey” of cinnamon products sold in discount stores after an October 2023 recall of lead-tainted cinnamon applesauce pouches that sickened nearly 500 U.S. children.

The ground cinnamon products in Wednesday’s notice had lead levels of 2.03 to 3.4 parts per million, far lower than the puree pouches, which contained 2,270 parts per million to 5,110 parts per million of lead.

No illnesses or other health effects have been reported in connection with the new ground cinnamon alert, the FDA said.

There is no safe level of lead exposure for humans. Long-term exposure of lead can cause problems, especially in growing children, including learning disabilities, behavioral difficulties and lower IQ.

The FDA monitors foods for lead levels, but the U.S. government doesn’t broadly limit lead in food products. The agency sent a letter to all cinnamon manufacturers, processors, distributors and facility operators in the U.S. reminding them they’re required to prevent contamination from chemical hazards in food, including spices.

“}]]

Cinnamon sold by stores including the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar contains lead at unsafe levels.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate, wire

Health – TIME

Cinnamon sold by stores including the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar contains lead at unsafe levels.

Breaking News
March 7, 2024
47 views
4 minutes Read

English News: Study Links Tiny Bits of Plastic to Worse Heart Health

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We breathe, eat, and drink tiny particles of plastic. But are these minuscule specks in the body harmless, dangerous, or somewhere in between?

A small study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine raises more questions than it answers about how these bits—microplastics and the smaller nanoplastics—might affect the heart. The Italian study has weaknesses, but is likely to draw attention to the debate over the problem of plastic pollution. Most plastic waste is never recycled and breaks down into these particles. “The study is intriguing. However, there are really substantial limitations,” said Dr. Steve Nissen, a heart expert at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s a wake-up call that perhaps we need to take the problem of microplastics more seriously. As a cause for heart disease? Not proven. As a potential cause? Yes, maybe.”

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What did the study find?

The study involved 257 people who had surgery to clear blocked blood vessels in their necks. Italian researchers analyzed the fatty buildup that the surgeons removed from the carotid arteries, which supply blood and oxygen to the brain.

Using two methods, they found evidence of plastics—mostly invisible nanoplastics—in the artery plaque of 150 patients and no evidence of plastics in 107 patients.

They followed these people for three years. During that time, 30 or 20% of those with plastics had a heart attack, stroke or died from any cause, compared to eight or about 8% of those with no evidence of plastics.

The researchers also found more evidence of inflammation in the people with the plastic bits in their blood vessels. Inflammation is the body’s response to injury and is thought to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

“I hope that the alarming message from our study will raise the consciousness of citizens, especially governments, to finally become aware of the importance of the health of our planet,” said Dr. Raffaele Marfella of the University of Campania in Italy, who led the study, in an email.

What are the problems with the study?

It’s very small and looked only at people with narrowed arteries, who were already at risk for heart attack and stroke. The patients with the plastics had more heart disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol than the patients without plastics. They were more likely to be men and more likely to be smokers.

The researchers tried to adjust for these risk factors during their statistical analysis, but they may have missed important differences between the groups that could account for the results. This kind of study cannot prove that the plastics caused their problems.

The researchers had no information on what the people consumed or breathed that might account for the plastics.

The specimens could have been contaminated in the lab. The researchers acknowledge as much in their paper and suggest that future studies be done in clean rooms where air is filtered for pollutants.

The researchers suggest the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death was four times greater in the people with the plastics. That seems high, Nissen said.

“It would mean that these microplastics are the most important cause of coronary heart disease yet discovered. And I just don’t think that’s likely to be right,” he said.

What’s next?

More research is needed, said Dr. Philip Landrigan of Boston College. Landrigan, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal, said it is the first report suggesting a connection between microplastics, and nanoplastics with disease in humans. Other scientists have found plastic bits in the lungs, liver, blood, placenta, and breast milk.

“It does not prove cause and effect, but it suggests cause and effect,” he said. “And it needs urgently to be either replicated or disproven by other studies done by other investigators in other populations.”

“}]]

A small study raises questions about how microplastics might affect the heart.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

A small study raises questions about how microplastics might affect the heart.

Breaking News
March 7, 2024
32 views
6 minutes Read

English News: Popular Acne-Treatment Products Found to Contain High Levels of Carcinogenic Chemical

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Hand sanitizers were tainted by benzene. Sunscreens and dry shampoos too. Now acne treatments are joining the list of widely used consumer products found to contain high levels of the chemical linked to cancer.

Acne products from brands including Proactiv, Target Corp.’s Up & Up and Clinique have elevated levels of the carcinogen, an independent testing laboratory said in a petition filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late Tuesday. The lab asked the FDA to recall the affected treatments—all of which contain the active ingredient benzoyl peroxide—while regulators investigate.

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Benzene is a natural component of gasoline and tobacco smoke and can cause leukemia in high amounts, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the past three years it’s been detected in several popular products, heightening consumers’ awareness of the potential threats in their bathroom cabinets and raising questions about the FDA’s oversight of the industry. Companies including Johnson & Johnson, Unilever Plc and Procter & Gamble Co. have recalled products.

New Haven, Connecticut-based Valisure LLC, the testing laboratory that filed Tuesday’s petition and uncovered the previous risks, has positioned itself as a gatekeeper for consumers. Valisure gained prominence conducting product research and has deals with large health-care systems, including Kaiser Permanente and the U.S. Department of Defense, to test drugs used by their members and weed out substandard treatments.

The FDA said the agency would work to verify whether Valisure’s data is accurate before acting on the lab’s petition. “The agency will continue to provide updates to the public regarding benzene in drug products, as appropriate,” Jeremy Kahn, a spokesperson for the FDA said in a statement. Companies are required to ensure the safety of their products, he said.

For its acne research, Valisure tested 66 benzoyl peroxide products, including creams, lotions, gels and washes available either over the counter from major retailers or via prescription. While FDA guidelines allow up to 2 parts per million of benzene, Valisure found up to nine times that amount in some treatments. Those levels jumped significantly when the products were tested at higher temperatures designed to replicate how they might break down over time, for example if stored in a medicine cabinet in a steamy bathroom.

Proactiv’s 2.5% benzoyl peroxide cream, manufactured by Taro Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., contained as much as 1,761 parts per million of benzene during Valisure’s stability testing, while a similar cream from Target reached 1,598 parts per million and a treatment from Estee Lauder Cos.’s Clinique hit 401 parts per million. A 10% benzoyl peroxide cream from Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc’s Clearasil initially tested just at the FDA limit, but jumped to 308 parts per million of benzene after being exposed to high temperatures for more than two weeks.

“Reckitt is confident that all Clearasil products, when used and stored as directed on their labels, are safe,” the company said in a statement. The safety and quality of products are its top priority, Reckitt said. It didn’t answer questions about whether it had tested its acne cream for benzene.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. said it’s reviewing Valisure’s petition. “We work with our suppliers to follow FDA regulations and guidelines for Walgreens branded products,” the company said in a statement.

Representatives for Taro Pharmaceuticals and Estee Lauder didn’t respond to requests for comment. Target declined to comment. Reckitt fell 2% and Unilever dipped 0.4% in London, while Estee Lauder slid 1.3% and Taro tumbled 2.4% at the close in New York.

Acne is the most common skin condition in the U.S., and affects as many as 50 million people each year, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. The numbers are even higher among teenagers and young adults: about 85% of those aged 12 to 24 have some form of the condition.

Sales of over-the-counter U.S. acne treatments totaled $1 billion last year, almost double the $593 million in sales in 2019, data from Chicago-based market research firm Circana showed. The AAD guidelines name benzoyl peroxide as one of its top recommendations for treating acne topically.

Valisure President David Light said the contamination happens because benzoyl peroxide can break down and form benzene.

“This has been well known for a long time,” he said in an interview. “All that was needed was for someone to check on it.”

Light is listed as an inventor on a patent filed last year for a method to prevent benzoyl peroxide from breaking down into benzene in drug products. The lab tested other kinds of acne products with different ingredients, mainly salicylic acid, and did not find elevated benzene levels in those.

Valisure’s most high-profile investigation was into heartburn drug Zantac, which the FDA pulled from the market along with generic versions in 2020, months after the lab discovered the drug’s active ingredient—ranitidine—could form a probable carcinogen called NDMA.

The FDA has questioned Valisure’s testing methods in the past. Specifically, the agency has said the independent lab should follow the same process that drug manufacturers use, which tends to be costlier than the way that Valisure tests.

Valisure stands behind its testing methods and points to its certification from the International Organization for Standardization, which sets testing guidelines for all kinds of products including drugs. In a statement Wednesday, Valisure said the results from its research on acne treatments were most similar to its investigation into those ranitidine products.

“The benzene we found in sunscreens and other consumer products were impurities that came from contaminated ingredients; however, the benzene in benzoyl peroxide products is coming from the benzoyl peroxide itself,” Light said in the statement.

In 2022, following Valisure’s previous benzene findings, the FDA warned companies that they should assess the risk of the chemical forming in their own products. The agency doesn’t regularly test products it oversees.

“The discovery made by Valisure regarding benzoyl peroxide acne treatment products is deeply troubling and gives renewed importance to the need to empower the FDA to immediately act once we are made aware of the dangers of prescription or over-the-counter drugs,” U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, said in a statement. “Benzoyl peroxide products saturate the current market and millions of consumers are unknowingly using a product that increases their exposure to life-threatening carcinogens.”

DeLauro has attempted to push legislation that would give the FDA the authority to recall drugs rather than negotiate with companies to do so on a voluntary basis.

Valisure’s testing also examined benzene in the air surrounding acne treatments and found that even an unopened Proactiv product leaked high levels when kept at 104 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of a hot shower, for almost 17 hours. The Environmental Protection Agency has said inhaling benzene at levels of 0.4 parts per billion chronically over a lifetime could result in one additional cancer per 100,000 people, a measure of risk the FDA also uses.

“}]]

Acne treatments from brands including Proactiv and Clinique have elevated levels of the carcinogen, an independent testing lab said in a petition filed with the FDA.

Uncategorized, News Desk, overnight, wire

Health – TIME

Acne treatments from brands including Proactiv and Clinique have elevated levels of the carcinogen, an independent testing lab said in a petition filed with the FDA.

Breaking News
March 6, 2024
37 views
6 minutes Read

English News: How to Use Apps to Actually Make Friends

[[{“value”:”

With loneliness at epidemic levels in the U.S., many people could use a few more friends to lean on. Survey data suggest that many U.S. adults want to make new friends—perhaps because strong relationships are one of the best predictors of happiness and well-being—but struggle to do so. About 8% of U.S. adults say they don’t have any close friends at all.

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Enter the apps. Bumble for Friends, Hey! VINA, Wink, and plenty more promise to help people make friends online. Many work just like dating apps: you build a profile that includes photos and a bio, then swipe through other people’s profiles until you find someone who seems like a potential match. If you pick each other, you can start chatting.

Despite their similarities, friendship apps haven’t taken off in quite the way dating apps have. Online dating is now the most popular way for U.S. heterosexual couples to meet, yet just 8% of U.S. adults say they’ve met a close friend online. (Data from Bumble, however, suggest that the practice is significantly more common among Gen Z adults.)

Jeffrey Hall, director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas, says there’s still a stigma around meeting friends online, just as there was with online dating in its earlier days. The common assumption is that “if you’re a normal person, you should have no trouble making friends,” Hall says. But in truth, “it’s hard to make friends.”

Friendship apps can help if you use them right. Here’s what experts say to do.

Think about your goals

Are you looking for a best friend? A workout buddy? A fellow parent to bond with during playdates? Get granular about what you want, and let that desire determine which app you use, suggests Miriam Kirmayer, a Montreal-based clinical psychologist who studies adult friendship.

Some platforms are geared toward specific groups of people—like Peanut for mothers and Amintro for adults 50 and older—while some sites, like Meetup, connect people through common interests. Using these specialized services (or at least being clear about what you’re looking for in your profile bio) may help you find friends who add to your social calendar in exactly the way you want, Kirmayer says.

Be yourself—and be specific

When you’re building your profile, it’s tempting to try to appeal to the masses. But Danielle Bayard Jackson, a friendship expert who works with Bumble for Friends, says that approach often backfires.

“I sometimes see people put, ‘I love brunch and travel and music,’ and I’m like, ‘Girl, who doesn’t?’” Jackson says. “Tell me your favorite album of all time, the meal you could eat every day, a crazy travel story. Those are the things that make you memorable and give us some clues as to your personality and history.” Being specific also increases your chances of connecting with the right people and gives potential friends better fodder for starting a conversation, she says.

Meet in person as soon as possible

Research suggests online-only friendships tend to be less meaningful than face-to-face relationships. So if you’re looking for a close bond, avoid getting stuck in the texting phase. “The only way you’re ever going to develop a strong relationship is risking the awkwardness of a first meeting,” Hall says.

And yes, the first hangout will probably be a little awkward. Culturally, we have clearer expectations for how romantic relationships start and progress than we do for platonic relationships, which can take many different forms. “As a consequence,” Hall says, “there is no script” for something like a friendship date.

To take some pressure off, Jackson recommends making your first meeting brief and activity-oriented—maybe meeting for coffee and browsing a bookstore for an hour, or checking out a museum exhibition together. “It feels less intense than sitting across from each other like an interview,” she says.

Find enjoyable ways to keep it going

It can be difficult to sustain momentum when you hit it off with someone new but aren’t quite at “friends” level yet. To power through, Jackson recommends chatting by direct message, text, or voice note between in-person hangouts to help things feel more natural when you do meet. Sending a link to an article or podcast is an easy way to keep the conversation evolving.

Kirmayer also recommends looking for activities that are naturally recurring, since it takes time and consistency to cement a bond. (Hall’s research suggests it takes around 50 hours together to go from acquaintances to friends.) That could mean inviting a new acquaintance to your book club, planning to hit the same workout class every week, or setting a standing date to debrief a TV show you both like.

Remember the friends you already have

In addition to dating-style apps that help make new friends, a variety of services promise to revive or strengthen existing bonds. Apps like Thoughtful and Garden, for example, prompt you to stay in touch with the people you love, while Marco Polo helps you easily swap video messages.

Hall says these apps could be great for people who want to stay in touch but simply need a nudge to do it. But they don’t necessarily help with mental barriers, like feeling needy or annoying by reaching out or not knowing what to say. These are common issues: psychological research suggests people often overestimate how much the content of their notes matters but underestimate how much people appreciate receiving them—and that many people don’t realize how much others enjoy talking to them at all.

It’s worth remembering that we are our own harshest critics, Kirmayer says. “The number-one wish that I hear in my work on friendship is that people wish their friends would be the ones to initiate more often,” she says. “It’s much more common to wish that our friends would reach out more often than to wish that our friends would stop.”

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Making friends is hard, but technology can help.

Uncategorized, healthscienceclimate

Health – TIME

Making friends is hard, but technology can help.

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November 21, 2024
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