The other morning, I woke up with Dobie Gray singing “Drift Away” swirling around in my head, and tears in my eyes. “Day after day I’m more confused, yet I look for the light in the pouring rain…Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul, I want to get lost in your Rock ‘n’ Roll and drift away.” I stumbled upon the song on YouTube and started to listen along, playing it through a couple of times. Almost instantly, the words and music shifted something in me. Just before, I was feeling a sense of melancholy, but as the song came on, I felt my spirits lift, transporting me from sadness towards a more hopeful feeling. It’s a song that I have loved since I was a teenager, and maybe it was the unexpected tenderness of the singer’s voice, or the longing I felt just sitting underneath words, but I was moved. As a translational researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, studying how the arts help us to heal, learn and flourish, I’ve read thousands of studies that offer foundational findings about how music and sound impact many parts of our brains and bodies. This day, I was comforted once again by the power of music to support my mental wellbeing. The simple act of listening to a favorite song can alter your mood, triggering long-ago memories. And when we remember to use this knowledge for prevention, wellness practices and interventions, it can significantly enhance your daily life. Read More: You Asked: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health? The song “Drift Away,” unleashed a cascade of neurobiological responses, initiating increased blood flow to different regions of my brain including the limbic system and igniting a flood of emotions and memories. It also activated my reward system, and I started to feel better. Music has an immediate effect on us. It soothes us, inspires us, makes us happy, guides and directs us, validates our feelings and connects us to our deeply human needs and nature. The structure, rhythms, melodies, syntax, genres, lyrics of songs, a particular instrument, or even the voice of the singer speak to us in the language of humanity. We are wired for music. We bring the world into our bodies and brains through our senses. On a biological level, when I was listening to “Drift Away,” the music and sound activated my eardrums, which caused fluid in my inner ear to move. The fluid bent hairs on my cells, which converted to nerve impulses that traveled to my brain. These impulses moved through my brain’s neural networks, evoking strong emotions and memories—and altering my mood and outlook almost instantly. At its core, we feel music—and now we are closer than ever to understanding why. One reason music has such an immediate impact on us is due to the way it is processed rapidly in the limbic system, the part of the brain which helps us experience emotions. As I was listening to “Drift Away,” the neurotransmitter dopamine was being released in response to this pleasurable stimuli, and musical frisson occurred. In other words, I had an emotional peak experience that triggered a physical reaction. Dopamine makes us feel good, and it also helps cells communicate better, enhances focus and planning and even to think more clearly. Over the last 20 years advances in technology including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and positron emission tomography (PET) have enabled us to see what is inside our heads and study the extraordinary ways the arts and aesthetics impact us, offering mind expanding gateways to whole health. Music is the most studied art forms, and researchers are now beginning to understand some of the ways they alters a complex physiological network of interconnected systems in the brain including the prefrontal frontal, visual cortex, the amygdala, hippocampus, auditory and sensory cortex, to name a few. Turns out that not only listening to music, but making it, also has significant benefits. For example, mothers sing to their babies to help relieve symptoms of postpartum depression and enhance bonding by reducing cortisol, a major stress hormone. And people with dementia are singing too, accessing autobiographical musical memories encoded in multiple brain regions that have not been damaged by the disease. The result is a radical presence with family and friends, if only for a short time. These are not random acts of dabbling with music, or just nice things to do. Rather, they are intentional, evidence-based approaches that help one heal physically and mentally, flourish and learn, and build strong cultures and communities. To some, it may seem overly simplified to believe that a song can soothe the soul. But like exercise, nutrition, and sleep, we are discovering how the arts are essential for our health and wellbeing. from https://ift.tt/EhFrUaR Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Abortion bans in deeply conservative Nebraska and South Carolina each fell a single vote short of passing in their legislatures amid heated debates among Republicans, yet another sign that abortion is becoming a difficult issue for the GOP. As the last vote was cast in Nebraska, where abortion is currently banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy, cheers erupted outside the legislative chamber, with opponents of the bill waving signs and chanting, “Whose house? Our house!” In South Carolina, Republican Sen. Sandy Senn criticized Majority Leader Shane Massey for repeatedly “taking us off a cliff on abortion.” “The only thing that we can do when you all, you men in the chamber, metaphorically keep slapping women by raising abortion again and again and again, is for us to slap you back with our words,” she said. The Nebraska proposal, backed by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, is unlikely to move forward this year after the bill banning abortion around the sixth week of pregnancy fell one vote short of breaking a filibuster. And in South Carolina, where abortion remains legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy, the vote marked the third time a near-total abortion ban has failed in the Republican-led Senate chamber since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade last summer. The state has increasingly served patients across a region where Republican officials have otherwise curtailed access to abortion. Six Republicans helped block motions to end debate and defeated any chance the bill will pass this year. Read more: Mifepristone Is Under Legal Threat. The Other Abortion Pill Could Be Next Thirteen other states have bans in place on abortion at all stages of pregnancy. They are Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Four other states have bans throughout pregnancy where enforcement is blocked by courts. The majority of those bans were adopted in anticipation of Roe being overturned, and most do not have exceptions for rape or incest. In Utah, a judge on Friday will consider a request from Planned Parenthood to delay implementing a statewide ban on abortion clinics, set to take effect next week. Planned Parenthood argues a state law passed this year will effectively end access to abortion throughout the state when clinics next week stop being able to apply for the licenses they’ve historically relied on to operate. In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum signed a ban Monday that has narrow exceptions: Abortion is legal in pregnancies caused by rape or incest, but only in the first six weeks of pregnancy. Abortion is allowed later in pregnancy only in specific medical emergencies. The North Dakota law is intended to replace a previous ban that is not being enforced while a state court weighs its constitutionality. Pat Neal, 72, of Lincoln, was among those cheering the Nebraska vote Thursday. She, like others in attendance, expressed shock at the bill’s failure. “This gives me hope for the future,” she said. “It gives me hope that the direction we’ve been seeing — across the country — could turn around.” Read more: Column: Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too The bill failed to get the crucial 33rd vote when Sen. Merv Riepe, a former hospital administrator from Ralston, abstained. Riepe was a cosigner of the bill but expressed concern this year that a six-week ban might not give women enough time to know they were pregnant. Riepe introduced a measure Thursday that would have extended the proposed ban to 12 weeks and add to the bill’s list of exceptions any fetal anomalies deemed incompatible with life. When he received pushback from fellow Republicans, Riepe warned his conservative colleagues they should heed signs that abortion will galvanize women to vote them out of office. “We must embrace the future of reproductive rights,” he said. Independent South Carolina Sen. Mia McLeod criticized leaders who prioritized the near-total ban over efforts to make South Carolina the 49th state in the country with a law allowing harsher punishments for violent hate crimes. McLeod, who shared during a previous abortion debate that she had been raped, said it is unfortunate that women must reveal intimate experiences to “enlighten and engage” men. “Just as rape is about power and control, so is this total ban,” McLeod said Thursday. “Those who continue to push legislation like this are raping us again with their indifference, violating us again with their righteous indignation, taunting us again with their insatiable need to play God while they continue to pass laws that are ungodly.” ____ Beck reported from Lincoln, Nebraska. Associated Press writer Freida Frisaro contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. ___ James Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. from https://ift.tt/ZLiTmQ7 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ NEW YORK — U.S. cigarette smoking dropped to another all-time low last year, with 1 in 9 adults saying they were current smokers, according to government survey data released Thursday. Meanwhile, electronic cigarette use rose, to about 1 in 17 adults. The preliminary findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are based on survey responses from more than 27,000 adults. Cigarette smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, and it’s long been considered the leading cause of preventable death. In the mid-1960s, 42% of U.S. adults were smokers. The rate has been gradually dropping for decades, due to cigarette taxes, tobacco product price hikes, smoking bans and changes in the social acceptability of lighting up in public. Last year, the percentage of adult smokers dropped to about 11%, down from about 12.5% in 2020 and 2021. The survey findings sometimes are revised after further analysis, and CDC is expected to release final 2021 data soon. Read More: 7 Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp As You Age E-cigarette use rose to nearly 6% last year, from about 4.5% the year before, according to survey data. The rise in e-cigarette use concerns Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health. Nicotine addiction has its own health implications, including risk of high blood pressure and a narrowing of the arteries, according to the American Heart Association. “I think that smoking will continue to ebb downwards, but whether the prevalence of nicotine addiction will drop, given the rise of electronic products, is not clear,” said Samet, who has been a contributing author to U.S. Surgeon General reports on smoking and health for almost four decades. Smoking and vaping rates are almost reversed for teens. Only about 2% of high school students were smoking traditional cigarettes last year, but about 14% were using e-cigarettes, according to other CDC data. from https://ift.tt/yiu18IY Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Probiotics have long been star ingredients in dairy foods, drinks, and supplements, promising to generate a better bacterial balance to our guts. On Apr. 26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a step toward formalizing the idea of adjusting gut-bacteria populations when it approved the first oral drug designed to treat the microbiome. Called SER-109, the pill is a cocktail of bacteria that can prevent recurring infections of C. difficile bacteria in people who have had previous episodes, and help them maintain healthy levels of gut bacteria. Keeping beneficial bacteria in proper balance could be an important way to keep disease-causing ones like C. difficile at bay. The FDA based its decision on clinical trials that the drug’s maker, Seres Therapeutics, conducted in collaboration with Nestle Health Science in nearly 200 people who had had recurring C. diff infections. These infections spread easily in hospitals and are challenging to treat, since many of the bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in six people who have had a C. difficile infection will have another one in two to eight weeks. About 156,000 infections occur in the U.S. each year, causing diarrhea, cramping, dehydration, and fever. Between 15,000 and 16,000 people die from C. diff annually. In studies on which the approval was based, people took four capsules of SER-109 daily by mouth for three days to try to prevent recurrence of the infections. 88% of the participants did not have another infection eight weeks after a single course of treatment—the time period during which many infections come back—compared to 60% of those who received a placebo. Six months later, 79% of those who took SER-109 remained free of re-infections, while only 53% getting placebos did. The pills are given after patients finish a course of antibiotics to first kill as many of the C. diff bacteria as possible; the microbiotic therapy then helps to restore the beneficial bacteria. “This could potentially transform how this disease is treated,” says Eric Shaff, president and CEO of Seres. Until now, efforts to change the microbiome to address specific medical conditions have mostly involved fecal transplants. Studies have supported the idea that transplanting fecal matter from people with healthy gut bacteria can seed those good bacteria in the guts of people with less healthy makeups. But fecal transplants—which the FDA approved in late 2022 to treat C. diff—are tricky to develop and administer. Fecal matter is collected from healthy donors and treated in a series of purifying and sterilizing steps to ensure that only the desired populations of bacteria are transferred from one person to another, and it’s then given rectally. However, some recipients develop infections from insufficiently purified fecal matter, and questions about the balance of benefits and risks continue to plague the approach. Seres’ product, which eliminates rectal administration, is also made from donated fecal material that is sterilized and processed—but in spore form to contain a combination of bacteria that only activate once they reach the gut. The recipe, which took the company nearly a decade to perfect, features bacteria from the Firmicute phylum, one of the dominant populations of human gut bacteria. Currently, the fecal material is collected from screened donors at a handful of Seres’ sites, and Shaff says it only takes a few dozen donors to supply what’s needed to potentially treat every U.S. case of C. diff. Seres’ journey to approval wasn’t smooth. After positive early results in patients in 2016, the company’s second phase of testing, completed in 2021, was a disappointment, showing that most people did not benefit from getting the treatment. After adjusting the dose and the way that patients were tested for C. diff, the final phase of human testing produced more encouraging results. Those findings, which support the initial data from the early trial, were the basis for the FDA’s approval. The approval opens the door to a new class of treatments for the microbiome that are easy to take and effective. Shaff says C. diff infections are only the start; the company is already testing another combination of bacteria, SER-155, that seems to prevent deadly infections in people who receive organ transplants. With the right combination of bacteria that can suppress populations of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, these patients could have a greater chance of battling infections and surviving their transplants. “If we see traction [with transplant patients], then we think there are opportunities in treating cirrhosis, cancer neutropenia, and other conditions where antimicrobial resistance is a problem,” says Shaff. If the data on SER-109 and SER-155 continue to show benefit in adjusting the gut microbiome, then other infections might also join the list, such as urinary tract infections. “This approval is the tipping point for the field,” says Shaff. “We have the opportunity to treat patients with C. difficile infections, but that is by no means the end of the story.” from https://ift.tt/uHTUM8L Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ I’ve been in dance therapy for all of 90 seconds when I embarrass myself. The group is doing a follow-the-leader exercise, with one person picking a dance move that everyone else must mimic. When my name is called, I panic and launch into an extremely uncool move that could be generously described as disco-inspired, my cheeks flaming as a group of strangers mirror it back at me. I’d traveled to the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine to take this humiliating stab at vulnerability in the name of science (and my own sanity). The Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab (CORAL), an ongoing research project at the school, aims to help people who are burned out from their jobs build resilience and improve their mental well-being. For three months, participants meet weekly for 90-minute sessions that weave together therapy, community, and art to provide an outlet for the stressors of working in health care. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] But this week, the group includes one participant who doesn’t work in health care: me, a health journalist with a personal interest in whether CORAL’s program really works. After writing about the pandemic for three years, I had started seeing in myself some of the warning signs of burnout, as compiled by Christina Maslach, who has researched burnout for four decades: emotional and mental exhaustion, feeling negative or cynical about work, and believing your work doesn’t matter or your efforts aren’t enough. Tick, tick, and tick. Toward the end of 2022, I experienced significant writer’s block for the first time. The “quiet quitting” trend—doing the bare minimum at work—spoke to me more than it should have. And as the world forgot about COVID-19, I sometimes wondered if there was any point in continuing to cover it. I genuinely love my job, so I wanted to fix those issues before they got worse. But when I asked Dr. Google “how to cure burnout,” I couldn’t find much. That’s because it’s not totally up to me, Maslach says. Fixing burnout is truly possible only when employers eliminate the conditions that produce it in the first place and pare down workloads, support and listen to employees, and give people control over their work and time, Maslach told me. “It’s not that coping is not important,” she says. But if we see it as the solution, we’re blaming workers and “not actually changing the stressors themselves.” Read More: Ambition Is Out But what if the stressors don’t change, no matter how much we want them to? In an ideal world, sure, every boss would want to eliminate burnout. But businesses are driven by profits, employees are often told to do more with less, and too many people scrape by on minimum wage and no benefits. Leaving workers responsible for their own burnout may not be the answer, but in many cases, waiting for work to change feels like an equally hopeless path. Is there anything I—and the 42% of office workers who said they felt burned out in a late-2022 survey—could do to make an imperfect situation better? I turned to the scientific literature for answers. Plenty of researchers have looked for ways that individuals can ease their burnout, but many don’t seem to work. A 2022 research review analyzed 30 previous studies on burnout interventions for doctors. Many of the programs—free food, subsidized gym memberships, weekly meetings with a psychologist—didn’t yield significant results. Nearly all of those that did involved a group element, like wellness classes or mentorship programs. That makes sense, even though it’s harder to DIY; other research also suggests social support can improve mental health and protect against burnout. But some individual interventions make a difference. Studies suggest physical activity, a proven mood booster and stress reducer, can decrease burnout. Mindfulness practices such as meditation and yoga have been shown in some, but not all, studies to help, apparently by building resilience and improving emotional regulation. Creativity practices may also chip away at burnout by reigniting passions and facilitating “flow,” or being engrossed in a task. So: socializing, exercise, meditation, and arts and crafts. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff. The first three are foundational aspects of good health, recommended by nearly every expert I’ve ever interviewed. Despite how familiar they felt, I used them as the protocol for my highly unscientific burnout-busting experiment: I’d work out at least three times a week and do yoga at least once a week, meditate daily, and complete a daily creativity exercise. (I chose to doodle my emotions.) Since my experiment coincided with TIME’s return-to-office plans—mandating my presence in the office three days a week—I figured I’d get my workplace social-interaction fix whether I liked it or not. As a longtime gymgoer, I also found my exercise quota manageable. The idea of meditating and doodling, however, filled me with dread. The most in touch I’ve ever been with my artsy side was when I started painting by numbers during the desperate boredom of lockdown. And you know how mindfulness experts often say there’s no wrong way to meditate? They’ve never been inside my anxious brain as it ping-pongs from what to make for dinner to whether I forgot to feed the cat to an awkward thing I said six years ago. But—at least at the beginning—I was committed. Read More: Long Waits, Short Appointments, Huge Bills: U.S. Health Care Is Causing Patient Burnout Socializing at work was by far the easiest part. I found it energizing and soul-nourishing to see co-workers face-to-face, even if we mostly chatted about bad Keurig coffee and reality television. I also felt virtuous about taking leisurely lunch breaks with colleagues. However, adding in a long commute made every other element of my plan harder. Exercising four times a week became a scheduling headache. Meditating and drawing fell even lower down my priority list. Sometimes I listened to a guided meditation during my subway ride home, which was futile. And on more than one occasion, I actually said the words “Ugh, I still have to doodle,” out loud to my fiancé at the end of the day. Exercise, at least, reliably lifted my mood and eased my stress when I managed to squeeze it in. But meditating often felt more boring than centering, and I frequently stared down at a blank page in my notebook, wondering what the heck my emotions looked like. Katina Bajaj, a clinical psychology researcher who launched a startup aimed at using creativity to bust burnout, was the one who suggested my daily doodling. The instructions she sent recommended starting by “drawing repetitive lines, dots, shapes or blocks, and notic[ing] how your mind begins to create more space.” I tried—I really did. But doodling and deep breathing didn’t cancel out the drains of deadline pressures, rude emails, and constant bad news. If anything, my regimen made it clear that adding to my to-do list made my stress worse. My experiment had failed. Which brought me to the dance circle at the University of Colorado. The burnout study there had the extreme misfortune of trying to launch in March 2020, just as the U.S. was shutting down. Dr. Marc Moss, a critical-care physician and CORAL’s principal investigator, had intended to study burnout reduction among intensive-care providers. But by the time COVID-19 was controlled enough in Colorado to get the program up and running in -September 2020, “the whole world was stressed out,” Moss says. He and his colleagues decided to open the first few study sessions to any patient–facing health care workers, then broadened the eligibility criteria over time. Now in its sixth round, CORAL welcomes anyone in the Denver area who works in the health care field, from researchers and lab technicians to food–service workers and case managers. When people sign up for CORAL, they’re assigned to a group focusing on visual arts, writing, dance, or music. For 12 weeks, facilitators use creative exercises to help people express their identity and values, channel negative emotions, build resilience, and develop self-care routines. To build community, participants are also encouraged to share experiences from their lives and jobs and take part in a group project, such as contributing a work of art to an album or performing a dance. “We’re building resilience more than curing burnout,” says Katherine Reed, an art therapist who runs CORAL’s visual-arts group. But the data suggest one leads to the other: for almost 150 health care providers who joined the study from September 2020 to July 2021, the approach led to small but significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and burnout, according to a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Medicine. If the framework proves effective for people in a wider swath of health care jobs, Moss says CORAL’s approach could feasibly be adopted by burned-out workers in any industry. That’s what made me want to try the program. Burnout has been studied extensively among health care workers, but few researchers have looked at interventions for the general public. During my visit in March, I dropped in on the music, writing, and dance groups. (I missed visual art because of a flight delay, because apparently the universe wanted my baseline state to be as stressed as possible.) For three days, I used all of my senses to describe how humor looks, sounds, feels, smells, and tastes; wrote about my emotions as if they were characters in a short story; and practiced vulnerability by dancing in front of strangers. I listened as members of the study talked about frustrating moments in their days, applauding along with everyone else when people described emotional breakthroughs with their bosses or co-workers. Even as an aggressively uncrafty, professionally skeptical person, I felt calm and happy during my time with CORAL—a combination, probably, of getting away from my daily routine, paying attention to my emotions, and trying something new. I was encouraged. But when I asked Moss and his team if the CORAL curriculum could be distilled into something I, or any individual, could do on my own, I was met with a resounding no. The program’s magic, its facilitators said, is in bringing people together to feel the solidarity and community so often lacking in modern life. People can draw or dance or write or sing on their own, but it likely won’t have the same transformative effect without a human connection. Read More: How to Find Your New Favorite Hobby That’s what Dr. Colin West, who researches physician well-being at the Mayo Clinic, found in 2021, when he published a study on what happened when physicians met up for group discussions over meals. Their burnout symptoms improved, but it wasn’t necessarily the food that made the difference—it was support. “We have so many shared experiences and so many stressors that are in common, and yet physicians will often feel like, Well, I can’t talk to anybody about this,” West says. Bringing people together to share their experiences can help. West believes there are other reasons the program worked: it was easy for people to join, since they had to eat anyway, and the hospital made meals free for study participants. “The individual needs to contribute something, and the organization needs to contribute something,” West says. That two-sided approach helps people feel supported and valued by their organization, which can go a long way toward easing some of the bitterness and cynicism that accompany burnout. Since my solo study didn’t work, and I couldn’t take off 12 weeks to join CORAL for real, I felt resigned to the relief I’d gained from exercise and my in-person days at the office. But over time, something changed at work. My editor—tipped off to my burnout when I pitched the story you’re reading—encouraged me to take a step back from the COVID-19 news cycle and pursue other topics. As I settled into my less-COVID-centric routine, it felt easier to get excited about pitching ideas and writing stories, and to show up each day feeling more engaged and energized. In a way, my experiment proved that burnout expert Maslach was right all along: the self-care tactics I used on my own were less effective than workplace adjustments. But after visiting CORAL, I believe the solution to burnout isn’t just to sit back and hope employers make the right changes. Moss, the research lead for CORAL, thinks about it like this: a hospital could make administrative tweaks to lighten doctors’ workloads, but it can’t protect them from the death and sadness they see every day. “We see things that are not normal, and we see a lot of tragedy,” Moss says. “I can’t work in an intensive-care unit and not have that happen.” The stressors baked into other industries might be different or less intense, but they’re present in some form, no matter the job. Maybe it’s obnoxious customers, or exhausting overnight shifts, or bureaucratic red tape; there’s always something. When done right, interventions like the ones used in CORAL can provide communal outlets for the stressors that won’t ever go away. I’m hoping happier health news lands on my desk soon. But in the meantime, I’m pursuing better ways to manage stress and searching for people willing to join me. So long, solo doodling. I’m thinking of joining a book club instead—or maybe a dance class. from https://ift.tt/MCoUpj7 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his presidential campaign on April 19 in Boston, he highlighted his family’s political pedigree and his history of championing “numerous environmental causes,” saying he was running to “end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power.” Notably absent was any direct acknowledgement of the decades-long crusade that has made the 69-year-old the most famous face of the anti-vaccine movement in the country. It was a stark contrast to the speeches he was giving last year. In January 2022, Kennedy rallied thousands of people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington at a massive demonstration opposing vaccine mandates in which he shared discredited conspiracies about COVID-19 and compared U.S. public health officials’ actions to Nazi Germany. As the pandemic fades from public view, the anti-vax movement finds itself in a state of flux. Kennedy’s decision to not even use the word “vaccine” in his announcement speech likely reflects his desire to gain traction in the Democratic primary among voters looking for an alternative to President Joe Biden. It’s a different story on the other side of the aisle, where some candidates appear to be actively courting a right-wing contingent made up of anti-vaxxers and vaccine skeptics, opponents of public health mandates, and conspiracy theorists that grew during the pandemic. The extent to which presidential candidates embrace the sentiment could signal whether the movement, and the larger anti-science conspiracies and anti-government views associated with it, has staying power in the American electorate. Before 2020, the idea of anti-vaxxers having any kind of foothold in national politics was widely viewed as unthinkable. Yet now, a significant number of vaccine skeptics have “made this part of their identity, and engaging with them is actually going to harden their opposition,” says Dr. Tom Frieden, who served as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2017. After years of engaging in anti-vaccine activism, Kennedy further built his following during the pandemic by capitalizing on many Americans’ distrust of public health officials, their fears of the virus, and widespread misinformation. He became one of the “Disinformation Dozen,” a group of twelve individuals identified by the the Centers for Countering Digital Hate as responsible for 65% of the anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter. Last year, Facebook and Instagram removed the pages of his nonprofit, the Children’s Health Defense, for spreading medical disinformation. But to a growing audience of hundreds of thousands of supporters and online fans he was a hero, speaking out against dangerous schemes by government officials and pharmaceutical companies. Despite being a Democrat, he remains popular on right-wing anti-vax channels, where his candidacy was greeted with “Trump/RFK 2024!” stickers. While Kennedy did not directly mention vaccines in his announcement, it was clear that was not necessary for his most enthusiastic supporters. “This is the candidate for vaccine truth that promises to dismantle the vaccine deep state!” one popular right-wing anti-vaccine Telegram channel told its 81,000 followers on April 16, encouraging them to attend his announcement in Boston. “RFK may not be perfect but we know he’d take a wrecking ball to the pharmaceutical industry and vaccines,” one poster said on a popular pro-Trump forum. “Even Trump may not do that.” Five days after launching his campaign, Kennedy alleged on Twitter that Fox News had let go of Tucker Carlson because the right-wing host had claimed “that the TV networks pushed a deadly and ineffective vaccine to please their Pharma advertisers…Fox just demonstrated the terrifying power of Big Pharma.” But Kennedy is not the only presidential candidate employing anti-vaccine rhetoric. The pandemic and resistance to the vaccine mandates that followed provided a surge of momentum to the movement, and spurred a partisan split that turned support of vaccines into a political litmus test. While vaccine skepticism has been limited to longshots like Kennedy on the left—President Joe Biden is widely expected to coast to the Democratic nomination—more prominent contenders on the right appear to be courting it. “I think Robert Kennedy Jr. is in a class by himself, because a huge portion of what he works on is opposition to vaccination,” says Joshua Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins. “I don’t think he’s credible within his own family, let alone you know, as a national speaker on the topic … More concerning is the Florida governor.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has fallen in polls recently but is still expected to challenge former President Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, has raised questions about the safety of vaccines in Florida. In December, DeSantis asked the Florida Supreme Court to empanel a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing” tied to COVID-19 vaccines. “I think people want the truth that I think people want accountability,” DeSantis said at the time. “You need to have a thorough investigation into what’s happened with the shots.” Read More: How the Anti-Vax Movement Is Taking Over the Right The embrace of vaccine skepticism, and often anti-vaccine conspiracies, by many on the right turned the public health campaign into a partisan issue. A Washington Post-ABC poll conducted in June 2021 found that 47% of Republicans said they weren’t likely to get vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to 6% of Democrats. Unvaccinated adults are three times more likely to lean Republican than Democrat, according to a November 2021 analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. “According to the data, there’s a pretty tight correlation between partisan beliefs about vaccines and death rates,” Frieden says. “Politicians respond to what their potential voters think and some of the people who will be voting in primaries have very strong beliefs about vaccines. … So that’s concerning.” The politicization of COVID-19 vaccines led to an often bizarre spectacle, as Republican lawmakers became reluctant to publicly disclose their own vaccination status. In 2021, nearly half of House Republicans declined to say whether they had been vaccinated when asked by CNN. In New York City, a GOP city council member refused to disclose her vaccination status even though failing to do so barred her from entering the chamber. DeSantis has staffed his administration with prominent vaccine skeptics. In 2021, in the midst of a nationwide public health effort to vaccinate Americans against COVID-19, he appointed vocal vaccine critic Joseph Ladapo as Florida’s Surgeon General. Since then, Ladapo has become a hero in online anti-vaccine communities, who follow his guidance over the advice of U.S. public health agencies. Last year, guidance released by Ladapo warned against vaccinating men between the ages of 18 to 39, claiming there was a 84% increase in cardiac-related deaths related to the COVID shot. He also recommended against vaccinating healthy children, which contradicts U.S. public health guidance. This led to CDC and FDA leaders sending a letter to Ladapo last month. “It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve, particularly the vulnerable,” the federal letter said. “Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines this effort.” Trump, on the other hand, has a more complicated history with vaccine disinformation. In 2017, Kennedy said Trump had asked him to lead a vaccine safety commission in his administration. But in the wake of the pandemic, Trump vacillated between taking credit for the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines under his administration and seemingly recognizing that anti-vaccine sentiment has embedded itself among the MAGA faithful. After initially denouncing politicians who refused to disclose their vaccination status as “gutless,” the former President seemed to go quiet on the matter. But many in his orbit were still happy to engage: his son Eric spoke at a conference of anti-vaccine activists in Nashville last fall, and some of his most prominent supporters, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and strategist Steve Bannon, raised questions about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Should either DeSantis or Trump emerge from the Republican primary by stoking anti-vax fervor, they may regret it when it comes time for the general election, when they will have to appeal to the broader electorate. “The vast majority of Americans understand the value of vaccines, and the importance of sufficient vaccination levels so that infectious diseases can’t threaten us all,” Sharfstein says. from https://ift.tt/dciXntg Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Exercise is a powerful tool for mental health. It’s been shown to improve mood, relieve stress and depression, boost creativity and cognition, and even make therapy more effective—among other benefits. Now, a new research review suggests physical activity may also help people cut back on drug and alcohol use. Adding physical activity to traditional treatment for substance-use disorder seems to lead to better results, says review co-author Florence Piché, a doctoral candidate in physical activity at the University of Montreal. Treatment for substance use “is very often centered on psychological health. Physical health is sometimes set aside,” Piché says. Her research, however, suggests that combining the two may be more effective. The review, published Apr. 26 in PLOS ONE, examined 43 previously published studies on treatment programs for alcohol or narcotic use (such as residential treatment or supervised detoxification) that included an exercise component. Jogging was the most-studied form of exercise, but some studies also tested yoga, cycling, strength training, walking, and other types of movement. The most common cadence of exercise was three 60-minute sessions per week, but that varied, too. Sixteen of the papers looked at whether people who followed an exercise regimen in addition to typical treatment stopped or significantly reduced their substance use—and in 75% of those studies, they did. Piché and her colleagues didn’t directly compare the effectiveness of typical treatment for substance-use disorder versus treatment that included exercise. But most of the studies in the review used standard treatment in the control group; based on those results, they concluded that physical activity may make treatment more effective, she explains. That’s not an entirely new finding. A 2014 meta-analysis also found that exercise can make people more likely to abstain from drug, alcohol, or tobacco use and less likely to experience withdrawal symptoms, leading the authors to conclude that it could be an effective complement to other treatment programs. Read More: Rock Climbing Is a Thrill. It’s Also Really Good for You There are a few potential explanations for the apparent relationship between exercise and substance cessation, Piché says. One is that healthy behaviors tend to build upon one another—so if someone’s physical health improves with exercise, they may become more motivated to stop using drugs. Exercise can also become a healthier stand-in for substance cravings, studies suggest. A research review published in 2022 found that, over time, habitual drug users can swap their narcotics habit for an exercise routine. Previous research has also demonstrated that people who exercise are less likely to use illicit drugs overall—perhaps because physical activity promotes similar reward sensations in the brain and improves overall psychological health. Many people who become addicted to alcohol or drugs have other psychiatric diagnoses, Piché says, so improving one mental-health condition may have a positive domino effect. In her review of treatment plans that included exercise, symptoms of depression improved in 50% of the studies that tracked that outcome, while symptoms of anxiety improved in more than 70%. Because all of the included studies focused on people in structured treatment programs, it’s not possible to say whether a self-guided exercise routine could help ease substance-use disorder. It’s a complex disease that can be difficult to treat—anestimated 40% to 60% of people relapse at least once—so it’s too simple to suggest that going for a jog can cure it outright. But physical activity is an intervention with few downsides, a low barrier to entry, and the potential for great benefits—not just for substance use, but also for overall health. from https://ift.tt/CObpLkc Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Only about 20% of U.S. adults say they have a best friend at work. Should the other 80% start looking for one? Yes and no. There’s no doubt that social support in the workplace is important for health and well-being, says Catherine Heaney, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford who researches the relationship between work and health. That support can come from a co-worker who has become a close friend, but it doesn’t have to; interactions with supervisors and friendly acquaintances can also boost your well-being, Heaney says. Here’s how to harness workplace relationships of all kinds to improve your health. Why social support at work matters“People will say, ‘Oh, I don’t need social relationships at work, that’s not important to me, that doesn’t matter,’” says Constance Hadley, an organizational psychologist and lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. “I would argue they should rethink that.” Research on the topic is clear: having friends in the workplace can not only boost job satisfaction and performance, but also improve wellness. It’s linked to a lower risk of burnout, better mental health, fewer traumatic experiences, and maybe even a longer lifespan, according to studies conducted by researchers in Spain, Japan, Germany, Iceland, and Israel, among others. On the flip side, the research is equally clear that loneliness is bad for your health. It’s often equated to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, given its links to health problems including depression, anxiety, dementia, substance use, self-harm, and cardiovascular issues. And Hadley’s research suggests workplace loneliness is common. Even before the pandemic, she and her colleagues found that 76% of executives had difficulty making connections with colleagues and 58% felt their workplace relationships were superficial. Remote work seems to have exacerbated the situation. More than half of hybrid and remote workers said they have fewer work friendships and feel lonelier since switching to that work style, according to a 2022 report. Read More: How to Stay Social If You Never See Your Work Friends Considering how much time people spend at their jobs—the average employed American works for almost eight hours each day they’re on the clock—workplace loneliness shouldn’t be ignored. But if becoming best friends with your coworkers feels too daunting, or just not your style, you can still benefit from smaller doses of professional social support. When most people hear “social support,” they think of emotional support, like venting to a coworker over drinks, Heaney says. But it comes in many forms: when someone steps in to help you on a busy day, for instance, or shares advice and opinions. Even relatively minor interactions, like a manager allowing you to leave early to pick up your sick child or a coworker sharing wisdom gained on the job, can “buffer the negative effects of stress,” Heaney explains. The goal isn’t necessarily to make life-long friends—although it’s great if you do—but rather to foster “a sense of being in the right place” by becoming part of a community with a larger purpose, says Kim Samuel, author of On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation. How to strengthen your social relationships at workDon’t feel like you need to become the office social butterfly overnight. Hadley’s research suggests knowing a few people fairly well has a stronger effect than having superficial relationships with lots of people, so start small. If you have a colleague who you like but don’t know very well, ask an appropriate personal question next time you bump into them, or check in with a teammate after a tense meeting. (The same message applies if you work remotely, Hadley says. Try calling a colleague to brainstorm, or asking someone for their thoughts on an assignment you’re working on.) It’s easy to talk yourself out of making these gestures, Heaney says, but resist the temptation. One influential study found that people were happier when they chatted with strangers during their commutes by subway—an environment where people notoriously keep to themselves—versus ignoring those around them. That finding suggests people who make the first social move “are much more likely to be received positively than they are probably anticipating,” Heaney says. Employers should ideally foster environments where workers feel like they’re part of a community, Samuel adds. That could mean seeking input from people at all levels of the company, Samuel says, or offering opportunities for people of all backgrounds to come together outside the immediate scope of their jobs, perhaps through volunteer activities. Managers could also take a few minutes during meetings to allow for non-work-related conversation, Heaney suggests. Hadley echoes the importance of office-sponsored social events, which can complement the bonds that form organically among co-workers. Even if you inwardly groan when you get a corporate happy hour invitation, you may leave feeling glad you went—and that much closer to getting to know the people with whom you spend a large chunk of your waking hours. from https://ift.tt/BmDHz3O Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Some Melatonin Supplements Have Dramatically Different Dosages Than Advertised New Study Says4/25/2023 People who take the over-the-counter supplement melatonin for better sleep may be getting more—or less—of the drug than they think, according to a new study published Apr. 24 in JAMA. In an analysis of 25 different gummy supplements claiming to contain melatonin, researchers at the Cambridge Health Alliance and the University of Mississippi found that 22 of them contained dramatically different amounts than were stated on the bottle. The 22 mislabeled products were found to have melatonin quantities ranging from 74% to 247% of the amounts listed on their labels. One contained no melatonin at all. Lead author Dr. Pieter Cohen, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and internist at Cambridge Health Alliance, says that this didn’t surprise him. Even though melatonin supplements have long been “thought to be relatively safe,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate supplements as strictly as they do over-the-counter drugs. “Supplement manufacturers don’t need to keep the FDA happy,” he says. When it comes to quantities, “they don’t need to prove anything to the agency—so they do whatever they want to. Not obsessing about quality control keeps things a lot less expensive to make.” Cohen decided to take a closer look at melatonin gummies after a 2022 report found that calls to U.S. poison-control centers for pediatric melatonin consumption jumped more than 500% from 2012 to 2021. “The majority of those calls were due to unintentional ingestions,” he says, and gummies are especially appealing to kids, who can mistake the medication for candy. Though most of the kids were okay, nearly 20% of the poison-control calls reported some symptoms, which included gastrointestinal distress, cardiovascular symptoms, and more. Melatonin has not been well-studied in children, even though about 10% of U.S. parents have at least one child who takes it, according to Consumer Reports. Read More: What the Science Says About the Health Benefits of Vitamins and Supplements Past research has also found that melatonin supplements vary wildly in how much of the drug they contain. A Canadian study in 2017 found that 71% of over-the-counter supplements tested—some of which were also likely sold in the U.S. at the time—had mislabeled melatonin doses by a margin of at least 10%, the same threshold used in the new paper. That these findings have essentially been replicated more than five years later with a newer generation of products shows how the under-regulated supplement market in the U.S. provides no real incentive for manufacturers to change, Cohen says. Since melatonin is a hormone made in the brain, released to make us feel tired when it gets dark outside, companies will often highlight in their marketing that the top-off provided by a melatonin supplement is “natural.” But many of their actual doses far exceed what the body makes on its own, says Cohen. “What we know is that if you give a 20-year-old adult a very small amount of melatonin in the morning—like a 10th of a milligram, or three 10ths of a milligram—it raises their levels up to the normal nighttime levels,” says Cohen. Popular over-the-counter supplements often claim to contain as much as five or even 10 milligrams per dose. Considering the unpredictable dosages found in Cohen’s study, a nighttime melatonin routine could add many times what the body is able to produce. If melatonin has worked for you in the past or you want to give it a try, there are ways to guard against too large of a dose, says Cohen. Look out for supplements with a high-quality third-party verification stamp, which come from organizations such as the U.S. Pharmacopia (USP) or NSF International, which test and approve certain manufacturers of supplements. But before you try melatonin, consider cleaning up your sleep habits first to see if it helps. Taking melatonin isn’t in the same category as “listening to classical music to sleep, or drinking a warm glass of milk,” says Cohen. “Extra classical music isn’t going to harm you. Melatonin is a medication.” from https://ift.tt/BMVh0QT Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Biogen Inc.’s drug for a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was approved by U.S. regulators, marking the first clearance of a treatment targeting a specific genetic cause of the incurable paralysis disease. The Food and Drug Administration granted clearance for the drug, called Qalsody, through an accelerated approval pathway, meaning Biogen must conduct more research to establish its benefits for it to remain on the market. The approval was disclosed on the agency’s website Tuesday. ALS, sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease, destroys nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement, including breathing. Around 31,000 people in the U.S. are living with the disease, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Roughly 5,000 new patients are diagnosed with ALS each year. The FDA estimated there are fewer than 500 patients in the U.S. with the form of ALS that the Biogen drug treats. Qalsody’s clearance has been a challenging journey for Biogen and partner Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. After a late-stage trial failed to show that the drug slowed the disease, the companies didn’t conduct a second, larger trial to confirm whether the drug worked. A second trial would “not appear to be feasible” given the rarity of the disease, FDA staff said in a report in March. Instead, Biogen applied for clearance through the accelerated approval pathway on the basis that the drug reduces levels of a blood protein associated with brain injury. In an advisory committee meeting in March, Qalsody, formerly known as tofersen, got partial support from an independent panel of advisers. They said the company hadn’t proven the drug worked but they agreed that reducing proteins was a promising sign that the drug would help patients. “Today also marks a pivotal moment in ALS research,” said Christopher Viehbacher, Biogen’s chief executive officer, in an emailed statement after the approval. “We believe this important scientific advancement will further accelerate innovative drug development for ALS.” Shares of Biogen fell 3.5% at 2:03 p.m. in New York, while Ionis climbed as much as 0.5%. from https://ift.tt/vXSUxci Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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