Mental illness is a notorious thief, stealing joy, peace, and ease from the estimated one billion people worldwide who suffer from it. Now, it appears that mental illness steals still more too: years and youth. According to new research presented Mar. 26 at the European Congress of Psychiatry in Paris, people suffering from a range of psychiatric conditions—particularly depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety—carry markers in their blood indicating that their biological age is older than their chronological age. The findings, presented by Julian Mutz, a post-doctoral research associate at King’s College London, were based on a robust survey he and his colleagues conducted of more than 110,000 blood samples maintained at the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database containing blood and genetic samples from more than half a million U.K. residents. The samples are cross-indexed with the donors’ age, gender, and medical history, providing a detailed portrait of the overall health of a representative sampling of the U.K. population. Mutz and his colleagues used the biobank data to study blood for 168 different metabolites, including cholesterol, fatty acids, inflammatory markers, and more, all of which can indicate a person’s biological age. “Some of those markers increase with age,” says Mutz, “some decrease, and some have a nonlinear relationship, so they would increase for a number of years [and then decrease].” Among the key metabolites Mutz and his colleagues studied were creatine, an amino acid involved in muscular health, which tends to decrease with age; fatty acids, which also decrease with age; and the inflammatory markers known as c-reactive proteins, which can be indicators of declining heart health. The researchers then compared the blood analyses to the records of the patients’ age, as well as to baseline questionnaires they answered between 2006 and 2010 regarding their mental health and whether they’d ever been diagnosed with any clinical condition. The data in the biobank is also linked to primary care records and hospital inpatient records. Read More: There’s a Mental Health Crisis At Work Because Life Is Changing Too Fast The results of all of this analysis were striking. On the whole, Mutz found, patients with bipolar disorder had a biological age that was two years greater than their calendar age. For depression, it was one year older, and for anxiety conditions it was 0.7 years older. “This helps explain why, at least on average, people with mental health disorders tend to have a higher prevalence of age-related diseases,” such as heart disease and diabetes, Mutz says. Multiple large population studies, including one of nearly 7.4 million people that appeared in the Lancet in 2019, have found that men who suffer from mental health conditions have a 10-year shorter life expectancy than the general population; for women, it’s seven years shorter. “The estimates differ a little bit depending on the diagnosis,” Mutz says. “For example, people with schizophrenia or a psychosis have a greater difference in terms of life expectancy than people with depression or anxiety.” Going forward, Mutz hopes that his findings can help researchers gauge the effectiveness of mental-health interventions, using ongoing blood studies of people receiving psychiatric therapy to help determine how effective the treatment is. “I could imagine a randomized control trial where we look at, say, exercise, which is very helpful for physical health and mental disorders,” says Mutz, “and see if it improves overall biological aging. Keeping track of these molecular aging clocks can be useful in providing care.” from https://ift.tt/Z02GmE4 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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A consistent journaling routine can be transformative. Research suggests it’s a reliable way to increase your health and happiness: It can relieve stress and anxiety, improve depression symptoms, enhance memory retention, and boost optimism. That resonates with Margaret Ghielmetti, author of Brave(ish): A Memoir of a Recovering Perfectionist, who’s been journaling for most of her 63 years—starting with a small, white diary that required a golden key to access her childhood thoughts, and evolving through many Marimekko and Moleskine beauties. Growing up, she journaled about the confusion of being an introverted kid and her all-consuming crush on her eighth-grade science teacher. As an adult, she keeps what she calls “Trip Reports”: journal entries documenting her travels, which she can share with her parents, who are too frail to accompany her. “Journaling is extremely therapeutic, and that’s why I’ve been at it for years,” says Ghielmetti. She appreciates having access to a lifetime of memories—journals are like a personal archive—and after writing in one, she feels unburdened and satisfied. “It’s been a constant companion to me.” One reason why journaling is so powerful is because it promotes mindfulness, says Alison McKleroy, a therapist and author of The Self-Compassion Journal: Prompts and Practices to Inspire Kindness in Your Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions. She sees the practice as a “beautiful, radical act of caring for yourself.” It can help us identify the harsh ways we talk to and about ourselves, and begin to understand why and shift our language. Journaling is also an effective way to reexamine things we’re stuck on—like past failures—and figure out what we learned from them and how to move on. “It can be a way to put the past back into the past and complete it, so you can create anew,” she says. “It’s really taking some space to offer yourself clarity and compassion.” But ask anyone who’s ever bought a fancy new notebook and then stumbled upon it six months later, pages blank: Consistency can be challenging. Here, experts share eight strategies to actually stick to a journaling routine. Name why you’re doing itAs you begin journaling, tap into your deeper motivations. Why is developing this practice important to you? How do you hope it will improve your life, and what do you expect to get out of it? “It could be a commitment to health and well-being, or to joy and happiness. It could be committing to learning and growth or meaning and purpose,” McKleroy says. Whatever the reason, “really connecting to why you’re doing it is crucial.” She recommends putting a sticky note on your journal that encapsulates why you’re embarking on this new journey. It might say “meaning and joy,” for example—a big-lettered reminder of what you stand to gain by filling up those pages. Make a standing journaling appointmentOne of the best ways to establish a new habit is to tag it onto an ingrained one, says Asaf Mazar, a behavioral scientist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. This is often called habit stacking: linking a new behavior to one you do automatically. It helps ensure there’s a designated time and place for whatever you’re vowing to do. “What happens a lot of times is people think, ‘I’m going to journal, I’m going to exercise,’ and that it will just kind of happen sometime throughout the day,” he says—but it never does. Instead of leaving things to chance, plan to journal for 15 minutes as you enjoy your morning coffee, immediately after your nighttime shower, or around the same time as some other time-tested ritual. Create ridiculously achievable goalsSetting doable benchmarks can help keep you motivated and focused, says Masica Jordan-Alston, a psychologist and assistant professor in the department of counseling at Bowie State University in Maryland. That could mean aiming to hit a specific word count or number of pages each day. Or, you might pledge to journal for a certain amount of time—and it doesn’t have to be long. “Say, ‘I’m going to journal for five minutes today. I’m going to journal for three minutes,’” Jordan-Alston suggests. “If you only have one minute, you can draw a picture, just to get your thoughts out.” Try different formats and toolsThere’s no need to feel tied to or limited by pen and paper. Lots of people journal in other ways: Jordan-Alston, for example, has years of journal entries stored in the Notes app on her phone. After her brother died, she adopted a video-journaling routine and shared some of what she was feeling on her social-media platforms. “You can keep an audio journal in your phone as well,” she says. “I do it as Voice Memos—I have tons of them.” There are a variety of other speech-to-text tools that can also assist. Or you could download an online program. The app Day One offers helpful templates and the ability to password-protect your journal, and it captures things like your location so you can sort through past entries on a map. Diarium allows you to dictate your thoughts with a speech-recognition tool, and you can attach photos and drawings. And Dabble Me sends regular reminders to journal via email—which you can do simply by replying to the message. Minimize barriers—even the tiny onesThe smallest obstacles could prove to be the biggest reasons why you fail to stick to a journaling routine. If you’re going the pen-and-paper route, make things easier for yourself by ensuring your journal is always within eyesight, Mazar says. If you have to dig through a drawer to find it, you’ll probably move on to something else. It can also be helpful to opt for a bright color, like hot pink or orange, which increases the odds that your journal will stay in your line of sight and on your mind. Make sure, too, that you always have easy access to fully functioning pens. “If you’re tired, and you want to journal, but there isn’t a pen next to you at that very moment, it’s more likely you’ll give up,” Mazar notes. “It sounds silly, because it’s such a small obstacle, but that’s just how we work.” Experiment with different journaling stylesJournals don’t always revolve around words—or traditional sentences. “There are times when I’m just freestyling poetry,” Jordan-Alston says. Others will feel most drawn to art journaling, which typically means blending color, words, and images on a page. Jordan-Alston’s 9-year-old daughter enjoys doodling in a journal; to her, it’s the best form of self-expression. Bullet journaling is another popular approach. These journals typically don’t have lined pages; instead, there are sections to log to-do lists and aspirations, and to track things like fitness or fertility, often using shorthand and symbols. You could also opt for a gratitude journal, which is designed to record what you’re grateful for—often, for example, three things per day. Lean on promptsOne of the challenges to consistently journaling can be figuring out what to do with all that blank space. If the words don’t come easily, consider utilizing a prompt—there are lots of books and websites that list options. For example, some people like the “rose, bud, thorn” approach, which means logging a rose (something positive that happened), a bud (something you’re looking forward to), and a thorn (something bothering you or that you need help with). Writing letters to your future or younger self can also be powerful, McKleroy says. “I have people write letters to different parts of themselves, and that can be really lovely,” she says. “Like the part of you that’s scared, nervous, or sad.” Enlist an accountability partnerSharing your journaling practice with a friend or family member can help keep you motivated and hold you accountable. Experts suggest starting a journaling group with friends or finding an online community to share your progress with. Don’t feel comfortable broadcasting your most private thoughts? Jordan-Alston instructs her students to share just one thing with their accountability partner. “It doesn’t have to be everything,” she says. And remember: There’s a big payoff to tapping into your vulnerable side, whether you keep your musings to yourself or share them with others. “When you want to get strong, you exercise and lift weights,” Jordan-Alston says. “When you want to restore your brain, you journal.” from https://ift.tt/cmiEpJI Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The pathologists who performed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s autopsy noted he had the heart of a 60 year old, although he was 39 when he died. His damaged heart was duly noted in the official record as a curiosity, but there was no question as to the cause of death: homicide; indeed, assassination. A racist hate crime. But if we were to try to understand the poor condition of his heart, we might be flummoxed. Our general repertoire for understanding the early onset of heart disease points us to demographic and behavioral risk factors like poverty, low education, family breakdown, unhealthy diet, and little exercise. King certainly looked physically fit, capable of leading miles-long civil rights marches. He was well-educated, not impoverished. He grew up in an “intact” household and had a strong father figure. His faith was unswerving, as was his sense of purpose. He had a loving wife and family. We might ask, did he partake of a particularly unhealthy diet? Did he have a genetic predisposition, a family history of heart disease? We can neither rule out nor rule in such possibilities for King. Yet, the more likely explanation, according to data on the prevailing causes of heart conditions, is that chronic stress or exhaustion took a toll on his heart. But what does that really mean? Would his heart have been healthy if he had managed his stress with meditation? (We don’t know that he didn’t.) Or if he reduced his travel and public engagements to get more rest? Perhaps marginally. But those strategies alone would not have addressed the source of his most severe and chronic stressors—the fact that he lived continuously on alert to threats, maintaining his composure, nonetheless, and in survival mode. This chronic vigilance and adaptation takes a huge health toll on the human biological canvas—a condition known as “weathering.” After almost 40 years of research in public health and a lifetime of wrestling with questions of racial and class injustice, I have concluded that a process I call “weathering” is critical to understanding why someone like King, whom we’d consider young and healthy by all conventional measures, would have the damaged heart of someone in late middle age. Weathering afflicts human bodies—all the way down to the cellular level—as they grow, develop, and age in a systemically and historically racist, classist, stigmatizing, or xenophobic society. Weathering damages the cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, immune, and metabolic body systems in ways that leave people vulnerable to dying far too young, whether from infectious diseases like COVID-19, or the early onset and pernicious progression of chronic diseases like hypertension. Because of the physiological impacts of unrelenting exposure to stressors in one’s physical and social environment, as well as the high physiological effort that coping with chronic stressors entails, weathering means that relatively young people in oppressed groups can be biologically old. Take Erica Garner. She became a tireless advocate for racial justice after her father, Eric Garner, was murdered by a New York City in 2014 police officer who placed him in an illegal chokehold for the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes. Her father’s dying words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. Afterward, though she was initially apprehensive, Garner became a major force in the movement for police accountability. She died at age 27 in 2017, only three and a half years after the death of her father, and four months after the birth of her second child. Her own difficulty breathing, due to asthma, precipitated a major heart attack that killed her. According to her doctors, the pregnancy had stressed Garner’s already enlarged heart, so her death was classified as a maternal death. But why did she have an enlarged heart at her young age? In the weeks before her death, Garner described the stress, exhaustion, and frustration she suffered as a spokeswoman for the Black Lives Matter movement. “I’m struggling right now with the stress and everything,” she said. “This thing, it beats you down. The system beats you down to where you can’t win.” Or as her sister, Emerald Snipes Garner, described it a week after Garner’s death, “It was like a Jenga”; they were “taking out pieces, taking out pieces, ripping her apart.” Read more: Toxic Stress Load Is the Biggest Barrier to Living Longer. Here’s How to Reduce It Weathering is a life-or-death game of Jenga. The Jenga tower appears strong and upright as the first pieces are removed, one by one. To all appearances, it continues to stand strong as pieces keep being taken away until the removal of one last fateful block exposes the many weaknesses of its interior, and the tower collapses. In spring 2020, COVID-19 turned out to be that last fateful block for tens of thousands of people of color. Every day, towers collapsed, as they continue to do, before our eyes. “The only thing I can say is that she was a warrior,” Garner’s mother, Esaw Snipes, said after she died. “She fought the good fight. This is just the first fight in 27 years she lost.” After she had spent 27 years of battling headwinds, fighting the same system that had killed her father for selling a few cigarettes, those headwinds took their toll and killed her too. She was weathered to death. I think the same could be said of Fannie Lou Hamer, the 1960s voting rights activist who famously observed at age 46 that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” She died 13 years later at age 59, of breast cancer and complications of hypertension. I think she intuitively understood the price she paid for her years of activism. After failing the literacy test in her first attempt to register to vote, she told the registrar of voters, “You’ll see me every 30 days till I pass.” In later years, as she reflected on her persistence, her words suggest she knew she was being weathered: “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared—but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kind of seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.” “A little bit at a time,” piece by Jenga piece, the assaults on the body continue to accumulate as weathering. You don’t have to be a high profile political activist to experience weathering. Any marginalized person who persists daily to survive or overcome and to see to their family’s and community’s needs in the face of long odds and systemic barriers will weather, to greater or lesser extent. Through my decades of research, I have seen how cultural oppression and economic exploitation move from society to cells in the bodies of people of color, working-class people, political refugees, the deplored or stigmatized, and the impoverished who sustain ferocious hope as they work hard and play by the rules. However, as the Reverend William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, asserted in June 2020, “Accepting death is not an option anymore.” He emphasized that the imperative extends far beyond the issue of police brutality. Echoing Fannie Lou Hamer, he said, “In everything racism and classism touch, they cause a form of death.” Barber’s words read as metaphor, but they are the literal truth. The country is waking up to what Black Americans have known for centuries and what public health statistics have shown us for decades: systemic injustice—not just in the form of racist cops, but in the form of everyday life—takes a physical, too often deadly toll on Black, brown, and working-class or impoverished communities. Contrary to popular opinion and accepted wisdom, healthy aging is a measure not of how well we take care of ourselves—but rather of how well society treats and takes care of us. When society treats our community badly, it doesn’t just “cause a form of death,” it causes damage that can literally age and kill us. Adapted excerpt from the book WEATHERING by Arline Geronimus. Copyright © 2023. Available from Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. All rights reserved. from https://ift.tt/X1TrAzY Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Even relatively easy bouts with COVID-19 can still take a toll on the immune system, according to a paper published Mar. 15 in the journal Immunity—particularly on T-cells, which provide long term and durable protection against viruses. Mark Davis, a professor of immunology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation, and Infection, and his team made the discovery when studying T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 among 72 people through the early months of 2021, as the first COVID-19 vaccines were becoming available. They used the most sensitive method available to track changes in T cell responses, relying on an engineered molecule that can detect up to five-fold more T cells targeting SARS-CoV-2 than other molecules. The researchers focused on three groups of people: those who were not yet vaccinated and had gotten COVID-19, those who were fully vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine and had not been infected, and people who had gotten vaccinated after recovering from COVID-19. The researchers looked at a group of T cells called CD8 cells, or killer T cells, which destroy and remove infected cells during the latter part of an infection. Davis was surprised to find that levels of CD8 cells were lower among people who had gotten vaccinated after recovering from COVID-19, compared to those who had been vaccinated and never infected. The results differ from changes in antibodies, which are the body’s first line of defense and help block viruses from infecting cells. Studies of COVID-19 patients show that antibody levels in people who have been vaccinated and infected tend to be slightly higher than levels of antibodies among those who have been vaccinated and never been infected—creating hybrid immunity. The opposite was true with CD8 cells. “Sometimes you do experiments and don’t always know what you’re going to get, and something jumps out at you, and that was the case here,” Davis says. The fact that they saw “dramatically lower CD8 or killer T cell responses than everyone else” indicated that “there was some damage—something was happening after the infection in these people.” More from TIME[video id=PIMYtj8I autostart="viewable"]Read More: How COVID-19 Changes the Heart—Even After the Virus Is Gone Because researchers took multiple blood samples from the volunteers over the four-month study, they were able to delve deeper in how the T cell populations were changing, and confirmed the pattern. Vaccinated people who had not had COVID-19 generated CD8 T cells up to 67.1-times higher than they did before they got the shots. While people who had recovered from COVID-19 and then got vaccinated also produced higher levels compared to baseline, these were anywhere from 3.6- to 54-times lower than the levels generated by the first group. “It turns out the virus suppresses CD8 responses,” says Davis. “It could be making it more difficult for CD8 cell populations to come back up again.” “The message is that with this disease, we are not completely out of the woods yet when the virus is gone,” says Davis. “We generally think in terms of the T cell response that more is better, so what we saw in the reduction in the number of cells can’t be good.” Researchers don’t yet know what a weaker CD8 response against SARS-CoV-2 means for a person’s health. But the study also showed that people in this group still benefited from the vaccine—just not as much as those who hadn’t been infected before getting it. Levels of CD8 cells among those who had infections and then were vaccinated were still higher than levels among unvaccinated people. The results raise the question of whether the apparent damage to CD8 T cell production might contribute to a greater risk of Long COVID, but more data are needed to explore that possibility. “There can be lasting damage that might be resulting in something like Long COVID, or it might be something else,” says Davis. “We don’t know yet.” Given these findings, can repeated COVID-19 infections continue to dampen the T cell response, and increase the likelihood of Long COVID or worsening symptoms? It’s possible, since experts believe that the T cell response is responsible for the more durable protection that keeps people from experiencing severe disease resulting in hospitalization or death. But that question, too, remains unanswered. These results, which shed light on how T cell immunity responds to natural infections and vaccines, should play a role in ongoing discussions about booster shots, says Davis. Another key will be studying whether the same pattern is found with other types of COVID-19 vaccines that don’t rely on mRNA. He and his team also looked at CD4 T cells, or helper T cells, which work with antibodies soon after infection to block as many viruses from infecting cells as possible. They found that, unlike with other vaccines against viruses, the CD4 and CD8 T cell responses are not synchronous after immunization. Normally, both populations of cells rapidly increase in response to a vaccine, but after the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, levels of CD4 cells rose first, while CD8 cells didn’t peak until two weeks later. Davis suspects that may be related to the mRNA vaccine formulation and the way the mRNA shots present the viral targets to the immune system. “We hope that with this study, people will look at some of the more recent vaccine formulations, not just mRNA,” he says, to gain more knowledge about which formulation might produce the strongest T cell response. As more and more people get infected, “the best impact of this would be to stimulate further investigations to see if we can boost those CD8 T cells.” from https://ift.tt/fXmHKr1 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ California legislators are considering a bill that could potentially ban the sale of Skittles and several other popular snacks because research shows some of the chemicals in them are toxic. The bill would force companies to change the recipes of some beloved sweets, including M&Ms and Nerds candy, or to take drastic measures and pull their items from the California market. It’s unclear if the bill will gain momentum, but if passed, California would become the first state to ban specific additives in food. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The ban would apply to five chemicals--red dye No. 3, titanium dioxide, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil and propylparaben—which are generally used as preservatives, dyes and texture enhancers. The chemicals are approved for consumption in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but are all banned in Europe due to safety concerns. Some of the bill’s supporters believe that federal regulations have overlooked scientific research linking the chemicals to ailments including cancer, neurological problems and behavioral issues in children. Here’s what to know. What are the intentions behind the bill?The assembly member behind the bill, Jesse Gabriel, confesses that he loves candy, especially Skittles, and that he definitely wouldn’t support a bill to ban Skittles. That’s not the bill’s intention, he tells TIME. “This bill is about getting companies to change their recipes,” Gabriel says. “They still sell Skittles in Europe. They just removed titanium dioxide, which is a very dangerous ingredient.” As a father of three young children, Gabriel worries about additives like these chemicals, citing risks for children’s development, reproductive issues and concerns over carcinogens and damage to the immune system. “Part of the reason we chose [these five] is because for each of them, there is a readily available safer alternative,” Gabriel says. Opposition against the bill has been strongest from trade associations, including the American Chemical Industry, the American Bakers Association and the California Chamber of Commerce. In a letter to the California Assembly’s health committee, 11 groups wrote, “this measure usurps the comprehensive food safety and approval system for these five additives and predetermines ongoing evaluations.” What are the potential risks of these chemicals?Much of the research around these chemicals showed potential health risks on animals, which scientists believe can apply to humans too. In 1990, the FDA banned the use of red dye No. 3 in cosmetics, but continues to permit it in thousands of food items. Potassium Bromate has been banned in the U.K., India, Brazil, Canada and across Europe, over fears that it could be carcinogenic. Although all of the chemicals proposed in the bill are FDA approved, some of them, like propylparaben and titanium dioxide, are restricted to make up 1% or less of the food item’s composition. “A number of things on that list have been shown to potentially have harmful consequences,” Carolyn Slupsky, a nutrition professor at the University of California, Davis, tells TIME, adding that although we didn’t know about many of the risks when the chemicals first entered the market, more information is available now. “The government has to be willing to help fund research into these chemicals that people want to put into the food supply, or that are already in the food supply, and start looking at it more carefully,” Slupsky says. The FDA classifies many chemical additives as GRAS, or “Generally Recognized as Safe,” permitting their use. Gabriel criticizes the FDA’s review process, claiming that most of the chemicals were never independently reviewed or were last reviewed decades ago. The FDA’s process for reviewing food additives entails collecting data directly from manufacturers and rejecting or approving the additives for specific uses, but some researchers think the decades-old data on certain additives needs to be re-evaluated. “These companies are going to have to put some of their money into finding alternate ways to preserve their product,” Slupsky says. “A lot of it is just for [food] color[ing].” Recent research has also raised alarms that ultra processed foods increase the risk of various health issues, including obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and dementia. “It’s not just that everybody sits on their butts and eats chips,” Slupsky says. “I think that we need to start looking more carefully at the types of food that we’re eating.” Gabriel is hopeful that as companies begin to recognize the social responsibility they owe consumers, trade associations will also face pressure to push for new alternatives. “If this passes, it will certainly have an impact beyond California,” he says. “No one’s going to walk away from the California market; it’s too big.” The bill will enter committee hearings next month, beginning April 11. from https://ift.tt/m7ysSMt Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Apologies are how we smooth over conflicts and repair relationships, prove our character to others, and coexist as imperfect beings. Yet few of us know how to do it well—or have the bravery to do so. “A good apology builds bridges. It heals wounds,” says Marjorie Ingall, coauthor of the new book Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies. “It’s also really hard. Apologizing is a courageous act, because we’re overcoming all of our own animal instincts and all of our own self-protectiveness when we do it.” Sincere apologies can be difficult to nail. Everyone wants to feel like a good person, which can lead to defensiveness—we talk ourselves out of the idea that we did something wrong in order to safeguard our sense of self. “We immediately turn to excuses, justifications, reasons why the victim provoked us,” says Karina Schumann, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh who’s researched the barriers to apologizing. “And if we’re able to convince ourselves of that, then that can—in our minds—preclude the need for an apology.” Or, perhaps we don’t care enough about fixing a certain relationship to apologize, she adds. We might also overestimate how uncomfortable delivering the apology will be, or assume that it won’t work. But sincere apologies bring a host of benefits to the person delivering the message and the one receiving it. They help solidify relationships and mend trust, both of which can lower stress and improve mental health. “It’s really unhealthy to hold onto shame and guilt and not try to work through your emotions around negative behaviors and harmful acts you’ve committed,” Schumann says. Plus, some research indicates that those receiving apologies can experience improvements in blood pressure and heart rate, as well as increased activation of empathy-related brain regions that set the stage for forgiveness and reconciliation. If you’re ready for your mea culpa moment, here are eight keys to apologizing well. Don’t rush into itApologies are better late than early, says Cindy Frantz, a social psychologist at Oberlin College who has researched how timing influences apology effectiveness. “What we found is that there can be a temptation to offer an apology quickly,” she says. “It’s an effort to shut the whole incident down and move on. And that benefits the perpetrator, but it doesn’t meet the needs of the victim.” You can’t deliver an effective apology until and unless the injured party believes that you fully understand what you did wrong, she says. “If the apology comes before that, it’s not going to be seen as sincere.” Be open to a variety of formatsIf you’re dealing with a relatively minor offense, consider apologizing over text message or in person, Ingall suggests. Emails often work well for more serious situations. “And if you really screwed up, there’s something very powerful about a stamp and nice stationery and a pen,” she says. Just don’t issue your apology via social media, which can be humiliating for everyone involved. Another rule of thumb: “When you’re apologizing to someone, you have to give them an out,” Ingall says. “You don’t want somebody to feel trapped by you—they need an escape route.” Don’t block the pathway out of someone’s work cubicle, for instance, or lean into their car window so they’re unable to pull away. Start with specific wordsUse the words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize.” Opting instead for phrases like “I regret” or “I feel bad about what happened” often results in non-apologies, which “have the vague contours of an apology, but don’t actually get there,” Ingall says. (See: The classic “sorry if you were offended” or “sorry, but…” approaches.) Plus, saying you regret something puts the focus on you and your emotions, when it needs to center squarely on the wronged person’s feelings. Accept responsibilityWhy should you apologize if you’re both at fault? That’s exactly the question many people struggle with, Schumann says—and certainly, there often is dual-responsibility. “But I like to encourage people to really focus on taking responsibility for the parts of the conflict that they’re responsible for,” she says. Avoid the urge to phrase it as, “I’m sorry I did this, but you also did that.” The inclination to do so is “normal, because we want to contextualize our behavior and call attention to the fact that we’re also hurt,” she says. But save it for later on in the conversation. Emphasize certain wordsAlways choose your words carefully when apologizing, advises Lisa Leopold, an associate professor of English language studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey who has analyzed the language of public apologies. Avoid conditional phrases, like “if” or “may”—as in, “I’m sorry if anyone was offended,” which suggests that perhaps there were no victims. “But” is another misstep. It undercuts your message, she notes. It’s crucial to use “I” or “my” while apologizing, Leopold adds. For example, say “I’m sorry for my outburst,” rather than “I’m sorry for the interaction this morning.” And always use the active voice. “If you say something like, ‘I apologize for what happened,’ well, ‘what happened’ is something you have no control over,” she says. It can also be helpful to utilize intensifiers such as “very,” “truly,” “sincerely,” “deeply,” and “extremely.” These can “enhance the language of an apology,” Leopold notes. Be clear about how you plan to repair thingsOne of the core elements of an apology is making reparations. Sometimes, Schumann says, that will be possible in a direct way: You broke their favorite wine glass? Buy them a new one. Spilled coffee on their dress? Pay for the dry-cleaning. If that’s not feasible, consider more symbolic forms of repair. For example, if you hurt someone’s feelings with a critical comment, make it clear that you misspoke. “Sometimes you can’t repair what’s happened, but you can think about the relationship moving forward,” she says. “How can you communicate a promise to behave better?” It’s important for the other person “to hear that this is not going to continue…and they can trust you to improve your behavior in the future.” Communicate sincerityA variety of things can help make it clear your words are coming from the heart, Schumann says. First, the apology should match the severity of the offense. If you’re apologizing for infidelity and say, “Sorry about that, love,” you won’t come across as very genuine, she notes; however, those words might be adequate if you’re 10 minutes late for dinner. You should also aim to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and convey that you understand what you did was hurtful to them, and the consequences they dealt with as a result. It can be helpful to listen first and ask them questions about their vantage point, Schumann advises. “That might allow you to really understand what they’re going through, and therefore be able to offer a more authentic, victim-focused apology.” Don’t expect forgivenessAn apology is a starting point. Particularly with severe offenses, the person wronged will often need time and space to heal, and it’s important not to pressure them. It can be tempting to follow up with something like, “What’s wrong? I apologized—how long are you going to hold onto this?” Instead, Schumann suggests checking in like this: “I understand this isn’t going to fix everything, and I want to continue to do whatever I can to make this right by you. I hope that, even if you’re not ready to forgive me, you’re open to working with me to get us to a point where we can move forward.” from https://ift.tt/G27U95F Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The only guaranteed way to prevent Long COVID is to avoid getting infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Recently, however, researchers have found promising signs that certain drugs may reduce the risk of developing Long COVID if they’re taken shortly after infection. Those studies are preliminary, but they raise an intriguing question: Should everyone who gets COVID-19 take medication in hopes of avoiding Long COVID? Here’s what experts say. Which drugs might prevent Long COVID?Studies have recently highlighted two promising drugs: Paxlovid and metformin. Paxlovid is an antiviral authorized to treat COVID-19 among people at high risk of severe disease, including elderly adults and people with underlying health conditions. Last year, researchers found that high-risk people who took Paxlovid within five days of testing positive for COVID-19 were 26% less likely to have Long COVID symptoms after 90 days, compared to people who weren’t treated. On Mar. 23, the same researchers published updated data in JAMA Internal Medicine. Among a larger group of high-risk people who were tracked for six months—more than 35,000 of whom took Paxlovid—the drug showed the same reduction in risk. Metformin, meanwhile, is not a classic antiviral; it’s long been approved as a Type 2 diabetes treatment. But studies suggest that it may have antiviral properties, potentially limiting SARS-CoV-2’s ability to copy itself. In one recent study (which has not yet been peer-reviewed), metformin cut the risk of Long COVID by more than 40% among overweight or obese adults who took it when they had COVID-19, compared to those who didn’t take the drug. I have COVID-19. Should I take an antiviral to prevent Long COVID?It’s too soon to recommend that for the general population. Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine who is studying Paxlovid as a potential treatment for Long COVID, says even the most promising study results need to be confirmed before they influence medical decisions. “We zig and we zag on evidence all the time. To simply start telling everybody to start taking a medication” before there’s solid data is overzealous, he says. More from TIME[video id=PIMYtj8I autostart="viewable"]There’s still debate about what causes Long COVID, adds Stefan Sarafianos, a professor at Emory University who studies antivirals. Some experts think remnants of the virus linger in the body and cause long-lasting symptoms. If that’s true, it’s “intuitive” that an antiviral drug could help prevent that outcome—but, Sarafianos says, it’s not clear if that hypothesis is the right one. “Long COVID is a big mystery,” he says. Despite the unknowns, certain patients may want to pursue Paxlovid prescriptions, says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, an assistant professor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and co-author of the JAMA study on Paxlovid. For people at high risk of severe COVID-19, who already stand to benefit from Paxlovid, the possibility of preventing Long COVID is an added bonus, Al-Aly says. But “in people who don’t have risk factors,” Al-Aly says, it’s basically “an evidence-free zone.” Studies have shown that Paxlovid has minimal effect among lower-risk people up to 28 days after their illnesses began. Krumholz says it’s worth tracking the drug’s effects over a longer period of time, but as of now, there’s no strong data to suggest younger, healthy people should be taking it. Metformin may be useful for a larger group of people, argues Dr. David Boulware, a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School and co-author of the study on the drug’s potential ability to prevent Long COVID. Boulware and his colleagues studied adults ages 30 to 85 who were either overweight or obese. More than 70% of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese, so that includes a large swath of the population. Boulware personally decided to take metformin when he caught the virus last summer. But, he says, it’s one thing for a physician to make a personal choice, or to recommend a drug for a specific patient based on their health profile, and another to make a sweeping recommendation for the whole population. Dr. Anand Viswanathan, a clinical assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, agrees that it’s too soon to recommend metformin to the general public. The research “represents a good early signal,” he says. But “we need more studies to corroborate that data before I would vouch for mass use.” That’s especially true, Krumholz says, because metformin isn’t a classic antiviral. He’d like more information on how it may work against SARS-CoV-2 before recommending it to patients for the prevention of Long COVID. Is it risky to take Paxlovid or metformin to prevent Long COVID?Both Paxlovid and metformin are safe, but they come with possible side effects including gastrointestinal issues, muscle pain, and unpleasant aftertastes, as well as rarer but more serious issues. Plus, Paxlovid interacts with a number of common medications, Viswanathan says, meaning patients may have to pause their other treatments while they take it. That may be worthwhile for someone who could get seriously ill from untreated COVID-19, but it’s a harder sell for someone who may not even benefit from taking Paxlovid. Widespread Paxlovid use could also theoretically raise the risk of antiviral resistance, Sarafianos says. Drug resistance happens when pathogens mutate enough to stop responding to the medications meant to tame them. Overuse or misuse of drugs (such as by missing doses or stopping treatment early) increases the chances of that happening. Although resistance to Paxlovid is not currently a major concern, Sarafianos says it is possible—potentially more so if the drug is widely used, since some patients might not take Paxlovid properly because of its unpleasant aftertaste and side effects. It’s “a numbers game,” Sarafianos says. “As more people take [a drug], the more possibilities there are to come up with a resistant strain.” Viswanathan adds that there could be shortages if everyone with COVID-19 starts clamoring for these drugs, regardless of whether they really work. “These medications are a limited resource, they have side effects, and we should be prioritizing their use for the intended patient populations that would actually get the [proven] benefit,” Viswanathan says. The situation may change in the future, as more research comes together. But for now, experts say, it’s best to use Paxlovid and metformin in the ways regulators have authorized them. from https://ift.tt/IuHJeaY Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Climate experts have long warned about the myriad ways that warming temperatures can negatively affect human health. Now that global temperatures are predicted to increase by 1.5°C by the 2030s, that risk is becoming increasingly real. One long-held prediction that appears to be coming true—according to the results of a new study—is how climate change can potentially expand concentrations of bacteria that thrive and spread through warm U.S. waters and cause an infection with a particularly high fatality rate. In a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, scientists at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. analyzed infections that were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1988 to 2018 caused by Vibrio vulnificus, a type of bacteria that lives in sea or brackish waters warmer than 68°F. Vibrio vulnificus kills approximately 20% of the healthy people, and 50% of those with weakened immune systems, that it infects—though it’s rare in the U.S. (for now). People can get infected either by eating raw shellfish such as oysters or by exposing small cuts or wounds to waters where the bacteria live; eating infected shellfish can cause diarrhea vomiting, fever and chills, while infected wounds can lead to serious skin infections. There is no strong evidence that antibiotics can control the infection, but doctors may prescribe them in some cases. The researchers focused on wound-based infections, since those are easier to pinpoint to specific locations. They then created models predicting the pattern of new infections over the next few decades. One model assumed a more sustainable trajectory, in which emissions would be relatively low and the rise in global temperatures would be slower. Another assumed more of a worst-case scenario, in which containing emissions and addressing warming were low priorities for nations around the world. In the first model, the scientists concluded that Vibrio vulnificus infections would likely extend as far north as Connecticut as soon as half a century from now, in 2081. Under the latter model, these infections would be be reported in every eastern U.S. state by then. Currently, only about 80 cases are reported in the U.S. each year; by 2081, that could jump to anywhere from 140 to 200 cases under the worst-case scenario, the authors say. Current trends, they add, are somewhere between the two ranges they used. Those cases would be the result of a continued northward creep of Vibrio vulnificus infections, extending from the Gulf coast, where infections have historically been concentrated, all the way to the waters off of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where infections have been reported since 2018. This expansion represents not just outlier cases, but the concentration of cases, which is increasingly moving higher up the coastline as temperatures warm. “We’re seeing the core distribution of infections extending to areas that traditionally have very few and very rare cases,” says Elizabeth Archer, a PhD researcher in the School of Environmental Sciences and the lead author on the study. “But these areas are now coming into the main distribution of infections.” The reason why has to do not only with warming sea temperatures but warming air temperatures as well, which are drawing more people to the coasts and bays and into contact with the bacteria. “The bacteria are part of the natural marine environment, so I don’t think we can eradicate it from the environment,” says Archer. “It’s more about mitigating infections by increasing awareness and improving education about the risk. That means having more tools to alert people if there are particularly high concentrations in certain areas on particular days.” The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, has developed models to estimate changing concentrations of Vibrio vulnificus in the Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, Gulf of Mexico, and other coastal areas. The models are still for research purposes, but they’re a starting point for future ways to track and alert people about bacterial surges that could pose a health risk. The European Center for Disease Control and Prevention has a tracker that provides six-day information on Vibrio vulnificus concentrations in waters in the region. “We need bigger geographical areas covered by these tools in order to visualize where the risk might be occurring in the near future,” says Archer. Ultimately, what would help to curb Vibrio infections is an index that would allow the public to monitor Vibrio levels similar to the way people currently have information about air quality. “Just as we currently have pollen alerts, there could be something similar with Vibrio,” says Iain Lake, professor of environmental epidemiology at University of East Anglia and senior author of the paper. He notes that the bacteria are so sensitive to temperature changes that concentrations could bloom even after a day of warmer water, so consistent monitoring and alerts are critical. Lake says the expansion of Vibrio vulnificus is concerning for public health since the bacteria is now invading waters closer to heavily populated areas, such as New York and Philadelphia. “Everyone can get a Vibrio vulnificus infection,” he says. “But the more interaction there is between warmer waters and people, the more the bacteria can move into populations such as the elderly and those with other health conditions, who are more vulnerable to infections.” from https://ift.tt/vc3C5yR Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Coffee lovers—and their doctors—have long wondered whether a jolt of java can affect the heart. New research published Wednesday finds that drinking caffeinated coffee did not significantly affect one kind of heart hiccup that can feel like a skipped beat. But it did signal a slight increase in another type of irregular heartbeat in people who drank more than one cup per day. And it found that people tend to walk more and sleep less on the days they drank coffee. Coffee is one of the most common beverages in the world. In the U.S., two-thirds of Americans drink coffee every day, more than bottled water, tea or tap water, according to the National Coffee Association, a trade group. Coffee contains caffeine, a stimulant, which is widely regarded as safe for healthy adults at about 400 milligrams per day, or roughly the equivalent of four or five cups brewed at home. Coffee has been associated with multiple health benefits and even a lower risk of dying, based on large studies that observed participants’ behavior. Despite research that has shown moderate coffee consumption doesn’t raise the risk of heart rhythm problems, some professional medical societies still caution against consuming caffeine. The latest research: The experimentResearchers outfitted 100 healthy volunteers with gadgets that continuously monitored their heart function, daily steps, sleep patterns and blood sugar. The volunteers, who were mostly younger than 40, were sent daily text messages over two weeks instructing them to drink or avoid caffeinated coffee on certain days. The results were reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. This type of study, which directly measures the biological effects of drinking or not drinking caffeinated coffee in the same people, is rare and provides a dense array of data points, said study co-author Dr. Gregory Marcus, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who specializes in treating heart arrhythmias. The findingsResearchers found that drinking caffeinated coffee did not result in more daily episodes of extra heartbeats, known as premature atrial contractions. These extra beats that begin in the heart’s upper chambers are common and typically don’t cause problems. But they have been shown to predict a potentially dangerous heart condition called atrial fibrillation. They also found slight evidence of another kind of irregular heartbeat that comes from the lower heart chambers, called premature ventricular contractions. Such beats are also common and not usually serious, but they have been associated with a higher risk of heart failure. The researchers found more of these early beats in people on the days they drank coffee, but only in those who drank two or more cups per day. The volunteers logged about 1,000 more steps per day on the days they drank coffee—and they slept about 36 minutes less, the study found. There was almost no difference in blood sugar levels. One interesting result: People with genetic variants that make them break down caffeine faster experienced less of a sleep deficit, while folks with variants that lead them to metabolize caffeine more slowly lost more sleep. What it means for youBecause the study was performed in a small number of people over a short period of time, the results don’t necessarily apply to the general population, said Dr. Dave Kao, a cardiologist and health data expert at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. However, the study is consistent with others that have found coffee is safe and it offers a rare controlled evaluation of caffeine’s effect, Kao added. Co-author Marcus cautions that the effects of drinking coffee can vary from person to person. He said he advises his patients with heart arrhythmias to experiment on their own to see how caffeine affects them. “They’re often delighted to get the good news that it’s OK to try coffee and drink coffee,” he said. from https://ift.tt/of0rLA5 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ When Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor and 2024 presidential hopeful, was inaugurated for a second term in February, DeSantis centered his vision for the next four years on the idea that “freedom lives” in the Sunshine State. Baked into DeSantis’ speech was an emerging battle for the public memory of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Over the past few years,” he said, “as so many states in our country grinded their citizens down, we in Florida lifted our people up. When other states consigned their people’s freedom to the dustbin, Florida stood strongly as freedom’s linchpin.” Yet behind this soaring rhetoric of liberty lies a very uncomfortable fact that DeSantis wants us to forget: Florida has been among the worst-performing states when it comes to protecting people from COVID-19 deaths. As Oliver Johnson, mathematician at the University of Bristol, England, noted last December, if Florida were a country, its COVID-19 death rate would put it at “10th worst in the world, behind Peru and various East European countries that got slammed pre-vaccine.” It’s true that Florida has a high proportion of older people, who face the greatest risk of death from COVID-19 if infected by the coronavirus, and the state’s performance looks better if its COVID-19 death rate is adjusted for age. And when you examine deaths from all causes (known as “all-cause mortality”) over the full three years of the pandemic, Florida’s performance is only a little worse than that of California. But Florida is doing extremely poorly at vaccinating its most vulnerable citizens. Booster coverage among elderly residents of nursing facilities in Florida is the second lowest among all U.S. states, and general booster rates are among the worst in the nation. These critical public health indexes are unlikely to improve, given DeSantis’s embrace of anti-vaccine rhetoric. Such rhetoric plays well with the conservative base that he needs to excite if he is to beat Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. Across the country, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, rumored to be a possible presidential candidate if President Biden doesn’t run for a second term, was also sworn in for a second term. He too campaigned under the rhetorical glint of freedom, upheld by his version of the history of the pandemic; and he too had his own struggles curbing the COVID-19 pandemic. “In our finest hours,” Newsom boasted, “California has been freedom’s force multiplier. Protecting liberty from a rising tide of oppression taking root in statehouses.” Newsom’s version of freedom includes a protection of reproductive rights, access to health care, and green growth, which he contrasted with the January 6th, 2021 attack on the White House amidst turmoil over pandemic policies. In a statement seemingly hurled directly at DeSantis, Newsom argued that “Red state politicians, and the media empire behind them,” are “selling regression as progress, oppression as freedom.” The context for the continued debates over COVID-19 policy in the U.S. is in part the ongoing death toll of around 2,700 deaths every week. But the subtext is the looming 2024 presidential election. Both likely seeking their respective party’s nomination, DeSantis’ and Newsom’s political platforms squarely rest on a calculated set of claims about how they see the history of the past three years. As we enter what promises to be a fierce campaign cycle, Americans will be voting for more than their next president. They are voting over the public memory of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Republican and Democratic nominees will present a vision of the past three years that panders to their respective bases and distorts the history of the pandemic. Pandemic memories, in other words, are jarringly malleable political weapons. Despite an uptick in COVID-19 cases in the 2022-23 holiday season, around 6 in 10 Americans say they think the worst of the pandemic is behind us. But how do we reckon with the mass death, disability, and orphanhood that COVID-19 caused in the U.S.? As Yea-Hung Chen, epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told NPR: “There are neighborhoods & communities in the U.S. where you have COVID deaths maybe every three homes. It’s just been numbingly awful.” Some U.S. politicians are attempting to memorialize what we have been through. Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, for instance, announced in January that state officials are constructing a COVID-19 memorial on the capitol grounds in Lexington to honor the nearly 18,000 Kentuckians who have died of COVID-19. One Houston couple, Mohammed and Ruth Nasrullah, have curated a virtual memorial, “COVID-19 Wall of Memories,” sharing personal stories of 15,000 Americans whose lives were lost to the pandemic. As we enter a new phase of the pandemic, one centered on how to remember, we might look towards the past. Reeling from World War I and the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Ohio’s Republican Senator Warren G. Harding spoke before the Home Market Club of Boston on May 14th, 1920, in what became a hallmark speech, “Back to Normal.” His speech is credited as helping him win a convincing victory in the Presidential Election in November 1920 over Democratic candidate James Cox (Harding won 60% of the popular vote). “Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been wracked, and fever has rendered men irrational,” Harding began. “America’s present need,” he urged, “is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity.” Taking aim squarely at former president Woodrow Wilson’s progressive foreign and domestic policies, and set against the context of race riots in Chicago, strikes in the steel and meat packing industries, and controversial attempts by local authorities to ban public gatherings and institute mask mandates to curb the flu pandemic, Harding jabbed that “the world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation.” “Let’s get out of the fevered delirium,” Harding concluded, and head towards the “normal forward stride of the American people.” Harding struck a chord that many Americans wanted to hear in 1920, campaigning on freedom, resiliency, and, above all else, normalcy. And in part it worked, ushering in a wave of so-called post-pandemic normalcy, a term coined in 1976 by historian Alfred Crosby in America’s Forgotten Pandemic. Many Americans today, gripped by the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic of the past three years, will likely resonate with the same campaign promises, which is why on both sides of the political aisle, DeSantis and Newsom are gearing up their campaigns under the banner of freedom. But, like Harding’s victory in 1920, the deeper battle this election cycle will be over pandemic memory. The U.S. ended 2022 with something of a cultural amnesia over the ongoing pandemic, with a wish to forget the past three years. Throughout the pandemic, one common, nonpartisan frustration has been: “why does the pandemic have to be so political?” The answer is that politics always permeates public health. What we need to brace for now is the politics of historical memory. How will the first three years of the pandemic be remembered? How will they be forgotten? from https://ift.tt/pFlos3M Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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