In a fast-food culture, there may be few things better for your health than making a simple home-cooked meal. But while the meal itself may be a good idea, the cooking part can be a problem—at least if you own a natural gas or propane stove. That’s the conclusion of a new study in Science Advances, showing that dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are emitted by both kinds of stoves. The findings are a result of new work conducted at Stanford University by environmental scientist Rob Jackson and graduate researcher Yannai Kashtan. Jackson has been on the trail of the gas-stove problem for a while now—having co-authored a 2022 paper showing that the methane leaking from U.S. residential stoves is equivalent to the emissions of half a million cars a year. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Gas and propane stoves create NO2 when they heat the air so much that two atoms of oxygen combine with one atom of nitrogen. Electric stoves, which don’t get as hot, do not cause the same reaction. NO2 inflames the airways, reduces lung function, and exacerbates coughing and wheezing, according to the American Lung Association. It can be easy to get too much NO2 exposure, since NO2 is not put out just by stoves, but also by coal-burning power plants and tailpipes. To study how serious the problem of stove-generated NO2 is, Jackson and Kashtan arrayed sensors throughout more than 100 different homes to measure levels of the pollutant after a gas stove was used. They accounted for plenty of variables: Some of the homes were small—just 800 sq. ft or less.; some were large—more than 3,000 sq. ft. In some cases, the stoves had a ventilation or recirculation hood; in others, they didn’t. Other x-factors included using more than one burner or the oven as well; running the stove for minutes or hours; opening or closing windows; and being in a certain city and ambient air quality. (The study was conducted in seven different cities with distinct air-quality profiles.) The findings were troubling. For starters, while the kitchen was the first room in a home contaminated by nitrogen dioxide, most other rooms are eventually affected too. “We found that within an hour, concentrations are in some cases above health benchmarks in bedrooms down the hall,” says Jackson. Read More: The Best Stove for Your Health and the Environment Even when range hoods are used, they are not equally effective. In the study, they reduced NO2 levels by between 10% and 70%, depending on whether the hood’s fan is on low or high and if its opening is large enough to suck up the emissions from every burner. And that’s only for the most effective hoods—the ones that vent gasses outside. The kind that recirculate and filter air and then stream it back into the kitchen do a much poorer job. “They just suck the air in and they spit it back out, running it through a filter that’s perhaps never cleaned,” says Kashtan. “From our work, that seems to do absolutely nothing to reduce concentrations of molecular pollutants.” Size of a residence makes a big difference too, with people in apartments or smaller homes experiencing up to four times as much exposure as people in larger homes. That not only increases the actual dose of the gas that is consumed, but the time of the exposure too. The gasses “stay above [harmful] thresholds for hours after the stove is turned off,” says Jackson. On average, the researchers found, gas and propane stoves raise levels of NO2 in the home by 4 ppb. That sounds small but is actually quite high, since it takes people about 75% of the way to the World health Organization limit of 5.3 ppb, before even factoring in the ambient NO2 exposure they’re getting from cars and other sources of pollution. “They use up three-quarters of their allotment, if you will, without ever having been outside,” says Jackson. As with so many other things, race, ethnicity, and income play a role here. People of lower socioeconomic status—who tend to live in smaller homes and in communities with dirtier air—experienced twice as much chronic, long-term exposure to NO2 and three times as much acute, short-term exposure compared to people in wealthier households, earning $150,000 or more per year. The groups hit hardest were found to be Native American and Native Alaskan, followed by Hispanics and then Black Americans. Asian and white Americans had, on the whole, the lowest exposure. “Poor people breathe dirty air outdoors, and if they own a gas stove, indoors too,” says Jackson. “And that isn’t fair.” Read More: The $125 Climate-Friendly Hack That Electrified My Gas Stove Fixing the problem is not always easy. Renters have less freedom than homeowners to switch to an electric range or install a hood. Even when hoods are in place, many people don’t use them. “The safest hoods are big and loud, and that’s not what we want in our kitchens,” says Jackson. Simpler—and decidedly cheaper—is buying one or more plug-in electric burners that can be used instead of gas. “You can electrify your cooking a bit and only use the gas when you need to,” says Kashtan. Merely opening windows when you’re cooking can also help reduce the overall gas burden. “The risk is cumulative, and it’s long-term,” says Kashtan. “I wouldn’t shrug it off and say it’s no big deal, but there are concrete, actionable steps you can take to reduce your exposure.” from https://ift.tt/fuVJvxd Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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Bird flu, or avian influenza, can be deadly in birds but normally doesn’t infect people. While some strains have caused serious disease and even death in humans, most cause relatively mild symptoms. In the U.S., two people have been known to be infected with avian influenza: one person in 2022, and another earlier this year. In a report published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine—amid growing concern over infections jumping from birds to cows—health officials from the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Texas Department of State Health Services provide details on the latest human case. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]According to the report, a dairy farm worker in Texas developed redness and some drainage from his right eye in late March. Because the Texas Animal Health Commission and the U.S. Department of Agriculture had reported at the end of March that bird flu viruses were detected in two Texas and two Kansas dairy farms, veterinarians in the area were alert for symptoms of infection in sick cows and in people. A vet referred the dairy worker for testing at a Texas Department of State Health Services field office, according to a spokesperson for the department. He did not develop any fever or difficulty breathing—which are among the potential symptoms of infection—and his vision remained normal. Dr. Scott Milton, a regional health director for the department, took swabs from the worker’s eyes and back of his throat, and these were analyzed at the Texas Tech Bioterrorism Response Laboratory in Lubbock, where preliminary results were positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI)A and A(H5). Read More: Is It Safe to Eat Eggs and Chicken During the Bird Flu Outbreak? Health officials advised the man to isolate at home and prescribed the antiviral drug oseltamivir for five days to him as well as to members of his household to protect them from infection. So far, there have not been reports of sustained spread of avian influenza from person to person, but the antiviral medications were prescribed in an abundance of caution. The redness in his eyes resolved after several days, and the worker never developed any respiratory problems. Additional analysis of the worker’s samples by researchers at the CDC labs in Atlanta confirmed the specific type of avian influenza involved, HPAI 2.3.4.4b A(H5N1), which has recently been detected in bird and cattle populations. Such bird flu strains generally circulate among avian species, but there have been cases of human infections reported in 23 countries over the past 20 years, according to the new report. Overall, the virus has a 50% mortality rate—but that could reflect a skewed population of people with more susceptible immune systems who are vulnerable to infection, since many cases lead to mild or no symptoms, or symptoms that aren’t reported. The strain in the dairy worker was “closely related” to those found in dairy cattle and birds in Texas during that time, according to the NEJM report. But the genetic analysis was a mixed bag of reassuring and concerning news. The strain that infected the dairy worker does have a change that helps it adapt to infecting mammals, including people. But it does not contain changes that would make it resistant to current antiviral treatments. The virus is also close enough to versions that researchers have used to create candidate vaccines that could be made available if the virus begins to spread from person to person, which has not happened yet. Read More: Experts Can’t Agree If We’re Still in a Pandemic Health officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) continue to test milk, cottage cheese, sour cream, and beef to monitor for the virus. While about 20% of milk sold in stores contains fragments of the avian influenza virus, those viruses are not active, according to the latest FDA tests. The agency says that the pasteurization process is designed to kill viruses like HPAI, and therefore advises against consuming any unpasteurized dairy products, such as raw milk. from https://ift.tt/qzVgNCL Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ In a dramatic example of government yielding to public opinion the Senate has introduced legislation to legalize cannabis on the federal level. Though passage before the November election is unlikely, this long overdue legislative action seeks to update a statute stemming [pun intended] from marijuana’s demonized image as depicted in the 1936 documentary film “Reefer Madness” and better reflect public opinion and liberal social trends. Currently, under the Federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970, cannabis is considered to have “no accepted medical use” and a high potential for abuse and physical or psychological dependence. This Federal statute contrasts with the claims of therapeutic benefits of cannabis’ biochemical constituents such as cannabidiol and THC (tetra-hydro-cannabinol) when the sole FDA indication for their use is a rare childhood (Lennox-Gasteau) seizure disorder. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]While the scientific information to officially endorse cannabis products as having therapeutic benefits is lacking, a recent Pew Research Center Survey found that 88 percent of Americans felt that marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use. This wave of popular opinion has led to marijuana’s approval in 38 states for medical use, in 24 states for recreational use and decriminalization in an additional seven states. Who could have anticipated that in less than two decades, a naturally grown recreational intoxicant, cannabis sativa, would go from demonization (as) to mainstream, and begat a tsunami of popular demand for legalization and a gold-rush of commercialization fueled by $61 billion of investment. Some may see this as an impressive demonstration of social progress, while others consider it the result of reckless and ill-conceived policies that have created a tangled matrix of laws and conflicting incentives based on confused logic and incomplete knowledge. Americans now have access to a recreational intoxicant that is arguably no more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco without fear of the disproportionately severe punishments previously meted out to those apprehended for possession and use. But at the same time, there are numerous inconsistencies and cross-purposes integral to the legalization and commercialization of cannabis products. The most obvious of these is the fact that Federal law considers the use, sale, and possession of cannabis illegal. Read More: What Marijuana Reclassification Means for the United States The consequence of the latter was not just that the exaggerated therapeutic claims were not born out by scientific research, but that it served as a “Trojan Horse” to galvanize public opinion and advance cannabis advocates ultimate goal of unfettered access. This came to fruition when the state legislatures of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize the commercial production and sale of cannabis products in 2012. This triggered a stunning demonstration of states’ rights in which a majority of states followed suit by liberalizing their cannabis laws despite Federal prohibitions. The legislative conflict between Federal and state laws is not ideal, but not a grievous problem in large part because the conflict is tolerated and not enforced. More onerous is the conflict between legislative reform and public health that has emerged. By acceding to public opinion and false claims of salutary effects, state governments are exposing their constituents to health hazards. Compounding this misguided policy is the fact that state governments are incentivized by the prospect of increased tax revenues. In a glaring recent example of governmental missteps, on March 17, Gov. Kathy Hochul declared New York State’s commercialized cannabis licensing and distribution system “a disaster” and announced “a top-to-bottom review of the NYS Cannabis Control Board and its system for regulating legalized cannabis products.” The main purpose of the review was to process applications faster and enable more cannabis vendors to open. Just weeks before Hochul’s executive order which was intended to give New Yorkers greater access to cannabis, the American Heart Association had issued a warning on the higher risks of cardiovascular events associated with heavy cannabis use. This was based on a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study of nearly 435,000 American adults reported last November which found that “Daily use of cannabis –– was associated with a 25% increased likelihood of heart attack and a 42% increased likelihood of stroke when compared to non-use of the drug.” Prior to that, the NIH issued the following warning: “Regular recreational marijuana users had psychotic disorders at a greater rate than any other recreational drug. More than cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine, LSD, PCP, or alcohol. The risk of negative mental health effects is increased about five times by regular use of high potency marijuana.” High potency refers to the fact that the commercialized pot sold legally today is not the same naturally grown weed smoked by constituents of the counterculture. Such health hazards are not some abstract possibility or unconfirmed scientific speculation, but a growing current reality. As a practicing psychiatrist I have witnessed these effects first-hand as a burgeoning number of cannabis-induced medical and mental disturbances—particularly in young people—show up in our hospital emergency rooms and are referred to me for consultation. And while the rising numbers of adverse effects occurring in the wake of legislative reform are disturbing, they are not surprising. Rather, they were anticipated. At the start of the movement to liberalize access to cannabis in 2014, Roger Dupont, the founding director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and I published an article in the medical journal Science that predicted such adverse effects.“The debates over legalization, decriminalization, and medical uses of marijuana in the United States are missing an essential piece of information: scientific evidence about the effects of marijuana on the adolescent brain,” we wrote. “Much is known about the effects of recreational drugs on the mature adult brain, but there has been no serious investigation of the risks of marijuana use in younger users.” Part of the argument for legalizing cannabis was that it was no more dangerous than other legal recreational intoxicants like alcohol and tobacco. However, as Kevin Sabet, National Drug Control Policy Advisor in the Bush and Obama administrations pointed out in his book SmokeScreen: What the marijuana industry doesn’t want you to know, legislators didn’t reckon on the possibility that commercialization of cannabis would lead to inconceivably high potencies (with THC concentrations in some products approaching levels up to 99.9% as compared to less than 10% in naturally grown pot sold on the black market). This was revealed in an NBC News report on states enacting legislation to legalize cannabis in April 2022: “We were not aware when we were voting [in 2012] that we were voting on anything but the plant,” said Dr. Beatriz Carlini, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute. She has led the effort in Washington state to research high-potency pot and is now exploring policy options to limit access. Her team concluded in 2020 that “high-potency cannabis can have lifelong mental health consequences.” So while possible therapeutic value has been the lever, tax revenue for states and profits for new industries—resulting from broad access—has clearly become the goal with unsuspecting users as the potential victims. This is the template now driving rapid legalization of a host of previously prohibited recreational drugs including MDMA (ecstasy) and psychedelics. There are reasons to believe in, and support, the therapeutic potential and safe recreational use of cannabis. However, it is imperative that accurate knowledge derived from research carried out with scientific rigor, objectivity, and dispassion inform legislation and policy that will affect the lives of millions of Americans and particularly youth. Until we have this knowledge, we must be prepared to temper the irrational exuberance of advocates for unrestricted recreational use and restrain the commercial interests from expanding the user base and potency of cannabis products. The responsibility for this resides with government. Governors and legislators must hold the line and not succumb to the pressure of public opinion and temptation of additional tax revenues. from https://ift.tt/2BXjMdh Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ In the pharmaceutical world, where ideas far outnumber marketable products, executives adhere to the motto of “fail often, and fail early,” with the understanding that to do so requires the discipline to know when to cut their losses and say no. But Ivan Cheung followed other advice as CEO of Eisai, Inc. “The opposite is also true,” he says. “You have to have the discipline to say yes when everybody is trying to tell you to say no.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Cheung took a big risk in 2019 when he decided to continue developing lecanemab—which became the second treatment approved to address the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease—when data from aducanumab, which works in a similar way, showed conflicting results and experts questioned the approach. But Cheung’s team showed him promising early results on their drug, and he trusted the data. “Multiple aspects of the data were telling us that we needed to move forward,” he says. That conviction proved prescient when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved lecanemab in 2023—and aducanumab’s manufacturer decided to stop making it the next year. But Cheung’s job wasn’t finished; the drug wasn’t initially reimbursed by Medicare, but he worked with patient advocates to make the case for coverage and got it six months later. Cheung, who is now CEO of NextPoint Therapeutics where he oversees promising cancer treatments, sees lecanemab as the first in what will hopefully be a series of potent therapies for the memory disorder. “You always need an initial spark and I believe lecanemab provided the spark that will lead to more therapeutic options, more diagnostic options and more screening options to create a whole ecosystem to improve care for people living with Alzheimer’s,” Cheung says. from https://ift.tt/40kU9rw Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Dr. Stuart Orkin didn’t set out to develop a historic treatment for sickle cell disease 45 years ago when he decided to study how blood cells formed. He became a researcher at Harvard Medical School just as scientists learned how to clone, or make copies of, genes. “Everybody was talking about how we could now fix genetic diseases,” he says. “But no one had any clue what that really meant; it was kind of a Disney fantasy.” Orkin focused his attention on the hemoglobin gene, which is mutated in people with sickle cell anemia and another set of blood diseases called beta thalassemia. Understanding how those diseases worked could make them good candidates for a genetic-based therapy, if and when that happened. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Nearly half a century later, it did finally happen thanks to the gene-editing technology CRISPR. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene therapy using CRISPR to treat sickle cell in December 2023. The therapy involves reactivating a person’s ability to make a healthy form of hemoglobin—called fetal hemoglobin—from when they were babies. It requires a bone-marrow transplant to remove the diseased blood cells, edit them in a lab to turn on the fetal form of hemoglobin, and return them to the patient’s body. The procedure can essentially be a cure for many, freeing people from sickle cell’s painful episodes and frequent blood transfusions—and the life-changing treatment is based on Orkin’s research identifying the genes that regulate fetal hemoglobin. But Orkin, who is professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, isn’t resting on his laurels. The procedure is costly, invasive, and out of reach for most of the 20 million people with sickle cell disease around the world. He is now trying to find a way to trigger the production of fetal hemoglobin with a pill—an ambitious task. But he isn’t deterred. “The question now is, ‘What is the next iteration of this therapy?’” he says. “We really haven’t solved the problem we set out to solve, which is how to make lots of people better. That’s what we work on now.” from https://ift.tt/VubPeMd Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ In the next decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aims to replace all the country’s lead pipes. Few did more to bring about the change than Ronnie Levin, who published a cost-benefit analysis in 2023 on cutting lead in drinking water, tallying the dollar costs of problems like impaired cognitive function and increased risk of health issues like hypertension and preterm birth, against the cost of mitigating the lead. The EPA had pegged the rule’s annual health benefits at $645 million, and the cost to implement it at $335 million—a benefit-to-cost ratio of 2 to 1. But Levin and her collaborator (and husband) Joel Schwartz found that mitigating lead in American water would actually save more than $8 billion a year in health benefits and at least $2 billion more in infrastructure costs, at a benefit-to-cost ratio of 35 to 1. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Levin, an instructor in Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s department of environmental health, has spent much of her career making the case for getting serious on lead mitigation and said it was “mind-boggling” the EPA agreed to such an ambitious goal. While working for the EPA in the 1980s, she composed another cost-benefit analysis of lead in drinking water, which found that a fifth of Americans were consuming levels of lead in their water that the EPA considered unsafe. The document—which scandalized the country after it was leaked to the press in 1986—was a major factor in a 1991 rule designed to minimize the amount of lead and copper in drinking water. Levin credits the Biden Administration’s interest in lead for the speed of the change, as well as her own understanding of the EPA. Levin’s analysis strategically drew upon the EPA’s own data, assumptions, and estimates to make the case for lead mitigation, to make it harder for the government to dispute the research. While she’s thrilled about the new rule, Levin says that rulemaking isn’t good enough on its own. “Without good implementation, and without enforcement—which is what has been the case since ’91—not much is gonna happen.” from https://ift.tt/IC0P9bg Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Polio eradication has largely been a global vaccination success story. The disease, which can lead to paralysis or death, mostly in children, now circulates only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the front lines in the effort to stamp it out is Dr. Shahzad Baig, national coordinator of Pakistan’s polio-eradication program. In 2019, polio disabled or killed 147 people in Pakistan; since Baig assumed the position, in 2021, case counts have plummeted, with only six children stricken in 2023. The goal is to bring that number to zero by 2026. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In the run-up to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, the CIA staged a phony door-to-door vaccination drive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden lived, in order to collect DNA samples from his family and confirm his whereabouts. That helped exacerbate existing rumors that polio vaccinations were a Western ruse to sterilize Muslim girls, which led to the killing of more than 200 polio vaccine workers by Islamist extremists from 2012 to 2016. But Baig has declared that the days of extremists driving out polio workers are over. Under his leadership, the government has deployed 400,000 vaccinators and 80,000 security personnel to inoculate more than 90 million children this year alone, with another 24 million to come in a springtime vaccination drive. Before going to work in Pakistan, Baig was a technical adviser to Nigeria’s polio eradication effort, which succeeded spectacularly: in 2020, the country became the most recent one in the world to be declared polio-free. If Baig has his way, Pakistan will be the next. from https://ift.tt/Kco4Tbs Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Proteins, each with their own unique three-dimensional architecture, are the body’s molecular tools, adapted to perform the specific tasks necessary for maintaining life. For decades, researchers have modified proteins to augment or alter their function. Insulin lispro, for example, is a modified form of naturally occurring insulin that removes sugar from the blood more rapidly than the original protein, making it a useful diabetes drug. David Baker, director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, isn’t interested in tinkering, however. Rather than modifying the proteins that evolution bestowed upon us, Baker designs entirely new ones. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Much of Baker’s early research was aimed at understanding how proteins fold. But in the 1990s, after developing a software program, Rosetta, to help answer this question, Baker and his research team realized that they could, in essence, run the software backwards, and design a protein based on a desired shape. In recent years, Baker and researchers in his lab have designed proteins that act as biological “logic gates,” allowing scientists to program cellular functions, such as gene expression, just as they would a computer, and a protein-based antiviral nasal spray that targets COVID-19. Baker has co-founded 17 companies and been granted over 100 patents. Rosetta has evolved into RosettaCommons, one of the most widely-used protein design software packages. For his research, Baker, now director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, was awarded the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. from https://ift.tt/K60W2QZ Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ In recent years, the new immune-based therapy CAR T has dramatically improved outcomes for patients with certain blood cancers that involve B cells, like leukemia and lymphoma. Dr. Georg Schett, a rheumatologist at the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany, saw the potential of the treatment for autoimmune diseases like lupus, in which immune B cells attack the body’s own cells. He performed the first CAR T treatments on five patients with the disease in 2022, but “nobody knew whether it would work,” he says. Eight months after receiving the therapy, all five were in remission and no longer needed powerful immunosuppressive drugs to control their disease. Last year, Schett published a second groundbreaking study showing that another small group of patients receiving the therapy were still in remission more than two years later without immunosuppressive drugs. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The treatment involves removing key immune cells from patients’ bone marrow and genetically modifying them to target a protein that is responsible for signaling the self-attack mode of immune cells. Patients get those cells infused back into their bodies, where they start dividing to create new populations of cells that no longer make the antibodies that trigger immune cells to attack the body’s own cells. “The CAR T therapy is like a reset button on a computer; it basically restarts the system and the immune system works perfectly fine,” says Schett. “Not only are the patients in drug-free remission, but I believe many are cured of their autoimmune disease.” He even showed that these patients hadn’t completely lost their ability to respond to infectious diseases, and could still mount adequate responses to important vaccines such as measles, mumps, chickenpox, tetanus, and pneumococcus. The results provide an early but promising new strategy for some lupus patients, especially since it seems to wean them off of potentially toxic and expensive immunosuppressive medications. from https://ift.tt/Cc2oKvP Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The number of senior citizens is growing rapidly; individuals aged 65 and older increased from 39.6 million in 2009 to 54.1 million in 2019 (a 36% increase) and is projected to reach 94.7 million by 2060. This has come about as a result of advances in modern medicine and improved living conditions. However, over the last few years, reports not only in the U.S., but from around the world, have brought to light a major new pandemic that may reach deeply into the fabric and soul of our society: The usual respect and care of our aging population is decaying into a growing incidence of neglect and abuse. Increasing reports of horrific events that affect our aging population detailing prolonged suffering and premature death are now commonplace. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Frankly, elder abuse reflects a decay of basic human rights in a major segment of our society. This type of neglect has many faces which may include physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse. Victims are also commonly subjected to financial abuse, often losing savings, assets, homes, and other material property. Individuals may also be exposed to abandonment and loss of contact with family and friends. This form of neglect may impact the elderly the most, leading to emotional issues such as loss of dignity, self-worth, and respect. Such abuse may be a single event or a cycle of repeated acts. It can vary from subtle—such as not acting in a protective or loving manner in a relationship where there is an expectation of trust, but also within a family or in a senior care facility. Read More: Why Americans Are Uniquely Afraid to Grow Old Prior to the COVID-19, 1 in 10 elderly adults in the U.S. experienced elder abuse. A major review in 2017 of 52 studies from 28 nations reported that 15.7% of people over 60 were subjected to some form of abuse. In 2020, this number doubled to 1 in 5—a nearly 84% increase. A study by the Administration for Aging stated that hundreds of thousands of seniors were abused, neglected and exploited by family and others. What is even more disturbing is that in 90% of cases, the abuser is a member of the family, based on findings in the study. In fact, two-thirds of the abusers were adult children or spouses. We, of course, find this to be a shocking statistic; since the dawn of recorded history the elderly have been given great respect and were cared for by both the family and the community as a whole. Why did this natural relationship so greatly change in such a short period of time? We believe the root cause are shifts in family demographics: over time, adult children now live great distances from parents, but also may have stressful careers, leading to personal issues that distract from attention to parents. The pandemic further aggravated this issue with a marked decline in visits and travel related to restrictions. Families were also unable to visit elderly relatives in senior care facilities in most states. This may have been a mechanism that loosened family bonds and connections that were never fully restored since the onset of the pandemic. Moreover, growing economic pressures brought on by the pandemic also impacted families. In most households, fewer individuals are free from the obligation to care for parents on a daily basis. The reason is that children must work in order to pay bills, rent, and buy food. Read More: Why America Is Failing To Feed Its Aging The pandemic also pressured families to care for elderly and frail family members at home because nursing homes were not accepting admissions. Caring for individuals with cognitive issues such as dementia and Alzheimer’s at home without help of course created many issues. This stressful home environment can trigger strong negative emotions in caregivers and lead to physical and verbal abuse. Use of alcohol and drugs also peaked during the pandemic and may also have played a key role in the rise of such abuse. The escalating opioid crisis also led to an uptick in misuse and diversion of opioids by the elderly, which has transformed into an increase in pain and suffering of elderly persons with chronic pain. The increased prevalence of substance abuse has encouraged family members to raid the financial assets and valuables of elderly family members. Widespread layoffs and job loss during the pandemic are other factors underlying the exploitation of elderly parents by family members. Social isolation, a byproduct of lock downs, further magnified these events in that typical family interactions abruptly ended, leading to a breakdown in families’ ability to spot early signs of decline in function or cognitive impairment. Family members being unprepared or unable to take on the role of caregivers are an additional factor in the elderly being more susceptible to becoming victims of abuse and violence . Data indicates that it’s more likely for children to be raised without an extended family, devoid of exposure to elderly relatives living in the same household. The pandemic also disrupted access to community centers, social workers, and support agencies that often aid families by offering staffing and education. Rising food and utility prices added further financial stress, ultimately leading to moral injury and burnout among care givers. Technology has also played a role in the rise of financial abuse. It is now very easy to transfer financial assets electronically with a few key stokes from an elderly individual—often no signatures are necessary. Media reports are filled with stories of family raiding retirement accounts, selling assets, and taking homes away from the elderly. Elderly individuals may not be tech savvy and therefore vulnerable to financial abuse. They can also be easy targets for telemarketing schemes and internet fraud, placing them at risk for identity theft. Many families may believe that placement of loved ones into a senior living facility may be representative of a loving and supportive “safety net.” However, this industry is also in crisis. Over 3.2 million adults are currently living in nursing homes and other long term care facilities in the US. As many as one-third of all adults will enter a nursing at point during their lives as the US population ages. Sadly, nursing homes are not a safe haven: abuse is increasing due to understaffing, improper training and staff burn out. The industry was greatly affected by the pandemic with loss of beds, lost income, and loss experienced caregivers. These factors have led staff members to take out their anger on they people they should be caring for. A shocking report by the World Health Organization reported that 66% of nursing home staff members admitted to abusing individuals under their care. How can families and society deal with this pandemic of abuse? The most effective approach involves increased focus on education and community support. Families need access to home care services, including social workers, occupational therapists and physical therapists—team members who make important contributions to the comprehensive care of our loved ones. In some cases, this may also involve placement in a long-term care facility when the needs of a loved one are more complex in nature. Families should also be able to evaluate and monitor the care loved ones receive in long-term facilities. The need for transparency is essential, with “report cards” issued by government agencies available to the public. At the very least, we should all attempt to reconnect with the elderly members in our lives. It can be transformative for both parents, children, and all members of an extended family and community—and can also address the nationwide epidemic of loneliness that so many elderly people suffer from. from https://ift.tt/AGdcxIu Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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