There was a joke I heard a lot growing up about people who get their periods. I won’t repeat it here, but believe me when I say it was disgusting, cruel, and harmful. It makes my blood boil when I think of it now, but when I was a teenager under constant pressure to be pleasant and agreeable, all I could do was try to laugh it off. That’s what we were taught cool girls should do—shrug off jokes, even if they were made at our expense. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]So many of us still carry that shame when it comes to our periods. We hide tampons up our sleeves so no one will see us carrying them to the bathroom. We keep quiet about what’s happening with our bodies. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, it shouldn’t be this way. I’m interested in learning more about menstruation and encouraging young people to ask more questions. Periods are not only natural—they’re also extraordinary. They shouldn’t be so hard to talk about. Here’s what I remember about my first period: I was in my childhood home in Boulder, Colo. My room was on the second floor, and I shared a bathroom with my brother. Our parents were down the hall. I was 11, and it was the day of the school play. I went to the bathroom, and when I looked down into the toilet I thought, Oh my God. There’s blood in there. I’m dying. My mother swears we’d already had the talk, but I don’t remember it, probably because I was embarrassed. I can picture myself rolling my eyes and trying to get away. That day I was truly terrified. I grabbed my mom, crying, and showed her the blood. She handed me a giant, puffy pad and told me not to worry—no one would see it. This thing was as unwieldy as a diaper, sticking out both sides of my underwear. I’d been so excited to put on my costume for the play—complete with a full beard, since I was playing the grandfather—and now I was horrified. Would I be able to go on? Would everyone be able to tell I’d gotten my period? Would I ever live it down? Read More: Teaching Girls to Have Shame-Free Periods Young people who get their periods often feel like they’re limited. What can I do while I have my period? Will I be able to be active? Will I still be able to participate in all the fun activities I like to do? I wish I knew then that there would be nothing to worry about. The show went on. I played my part, and it was great. But I have to admit that, more than 30 years later, I sometimes still feel out of my depth with this thing my body does. Periods can be mysterious. They come and go. You can find yourself waiting for it, and you can be blindsided by it. Learning your body’s signals can be helpful. When my period is coming, I can get deeply fatigued, sometimes to the point where I’m nodding off in the middle of the day. My midsection often talks to me—I’ll feel very crampy and bloated, and my back starts to ache. Listening to those signals helps me feel prepared. I was on the pill for quite a long time, and my periods were mild and brief. I only recently learned that the bleeding you experience while on the pill isn’t the same as an actual period—it’s a “withdrawal bleed” caused by the break from your regular dose of hormones when you take your placebo pills. The hormones in birth control prevent the lining of the uterus from thickening to the same extent as when you’re not on the pill, so this bleeding is usually lighter. Looking back, that makes so much sense, because my periods off the pill are real. Now my first few days are very heavy. I’m worried about being out of my house and I’m having to change my sanitary products all the time, sometimes even bleeding through my clothes. It’s a significant mindset shift, learning how to be cognizant of this change in my body and how to best support myself. But that’s all part of it—my relationship with my period has changed over the years and through different stages of life. Now, after having two kids, it feels more extreme than it’s ever been before. I didn’t expect to have more intense periods after going through puberty and my childbearing years, but here I am. I’ll be honest: I’m trying to have a good relationship with my period, but sometimes she really has a mind of her own. I know I’m not the only one who struggles sometimes. One thing that helps me is to remember that still being able to have a period is a pretty cool thing. My body is a pretty amazing machine. And when it gets to be too much, I try to do whatever will make me feel better. Often that means canceling plans. If I don’t want to get in my car and go somewhere, I don’t. It can be hard to miss out on things—there’s always pressure to show up and be part of events, and I never want to let anyone down—but I try to prioritize my wellbeing, even if that’s easier said than done. I want people to understand that if you don’t feel like yourself when you’re on your period, if you feel sad or angry, there’s nothing wrong with you, and you are not alone. And I want people who don’t get a period to be empathetic and to feel equipped to be helpful to the people they love when they’re going through it. I try to set that example at home, with my sons. When I was in school, all of the health education classes were separated by sex. We never learned about each other’s bodies, which created a mysteriousness that didn’t serve us. All that secrecy fed into a sense of shame, and there was no reason for it. So I want to talk to my kids honestly about my period, and I want them to understand what’s going on with me if I’m feeling off. I told my 9-year-old recently that I was on my period and feeling irritable—he just looked at me and said, OK. He understood that I needed a little break. If we speak to our kids about menstruation in a way that doesn’t bring in any judgment, they’ll understand that it’s just a part of life. And like so many things in life, it can sometimes feel like a blessing and sometimes like a curse. But either way, it always helps to talk about it. —As told to Lucy Feldman from https://ift.tt/oNscjRl Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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TIME celebrated on Monday the 100 most influential people leading change in health at a special dinner. The first TIME100 Health list spotlights doctors, scientists, business leaders, advocates, and others at the forefront of big changes in the industry. After a panel discussion on prioritizing women’s health, three TIME100 Health honorees gave toasts about surviving noma, a severe gangrenous disease of the mouth and face; the healthcare advocates pioneering research and treatments related to COVID; and hospitals under attack in conflict zones. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Surviving nomaFidel Strub, a survivor of Noma, has led an awareness campaign on the disease, which mostly affects malnourished young children living in extreme poverty. In 2023, the WHO officially recognized noma as a neglected tropical disease, noting that early detection is essential for effective treatment. Noma can be fatal and severely disfigure its victims; it typically begins as inflammation of the gums, before destroying facial tissues and bones if left untreated. Strub thanked his doctor for saving his life and spoke about turning to advocacy to feel empowered. He noted the 27 surgeries he underwent to reconstruct his face. “When Dr. Zala first saw me, I was just skin and bones. He had very little hope, but still he literally fought to save my life,” Strub said. “Just learning to blow out a candle took me three years through speech therapy.” COVID response pioneersDr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, shouted out more than a dozen TIME100 Health honorees who helped shape the world’s response to the pandemic. “Somehow during the course of the pandemic I went from a cardiologist to a covidologist,” he said. “I never planned for that.” Topol says that Monday’s event is the first time he has met many of these people working on COVID solutions in person—even though he has become close friends with some. Among those he recognized were researchers who have closely followed Long Covid: Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, and Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Hospitals under attackAlaa Murabit—director of global policy, advocacy, and communications for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—spoke about starting her medical career in a conflict zone and how she is inspired by frontline health workers in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, and Sudan. Murabit said in her toast that healthcare facilities have been increasingly caught in political violence over the last year. “Hospitals, which are meant to be places of healing and hope—I always say that a hospital is more spiritual to me than any mosque, church or synagogue because you hear more prayers in it—become at best overburdened and at worst, attacked,” she said. “It will come as no surprise to many of you that, in those moments of crisis and insecurity, it is women and children who are the most vulnerable. Violence exacerbates infectious disease, it exacerbates malnutrition and maternal and child death.” Murabit spoke in particular about Gaza, where Israeli attacks have killed more than 35,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. She pointed out how most of those killed are believed to be women and children. Murabit also paid tribute to female healthcare workers—noting that they make up more than two-thirds of the healthcare workforce. “They are on the frontlines of delivering care in the worst of circumstances,” she said. “We’ve been talking about everything from hyperemesis to menopause to COVID; you can imagine how much worse those are when there are bombs and bullets overhead.” The TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Shaping the Future of Health was presented by Eli Lilly, Northwell Health, Deloitte, On Purpose, A Podcast by Jay Shetty, and Apeiron Investments. from https://ift.tt/K7eZp9G Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Actress and healthcare advocate Halle Berry; geneticist Marlena Fejzo; and Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, spoke about the importance of investing in women’s health at a TIME100 Health panel in New York on Monday. By the end of the panel, Fejzo, who has experienced and deeply researched hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a condition that leads to extreme nausea and vomiting in 1% to 3% of pregnancies, pushed for literal investment in a potential solution from her copanelist. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]She asked Skovronsky about a drug Eli Lilly has shelved that could help come up with a potential treatment. “I’m ready to test it,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll find a way to work together,” he responded, closing out the panel. Eli Lilly sponsored Monday’s event, celebrating the 100 most influential people leading change in health. The TIME100 Health list spotlights doctors, scientists, business leaders, advocates, and others at the forefront of big changes in the industry. TIME’s senior health correspondent Alice Park moderated a discussion between Berry, Fejzo and Skovronksy—probing all three about how to ensure that women’s health is prioritized. Berry began the discussion with a graphic but enthralling description of why she became a strong advocate for funding more research and education around menopause in Congress. (In May, she joined a group of senators to push for bipartisan legislation that would put $275 million towards the issue.) Berry described to the audience that after having sex with her now-husband Van Hunt, it felt like she had “razor blades” cutting her vagina. She said she excreted a “heinous substance.” Her doctor initially suspected herpes—and she remembered grilling Hunt about giving her the disease. It turned out he didn’t have it, and neither did she, her doctor told her a few days later. “I’m like, wow, alright, so talk about putting your tail between your legs,” she said. Berry found out that she was dealing with perimenopause and vaginal atrophy; having sex when your vagina is dry can tear up your vagina, she learned, and Berry was shocked that she had such little information about menopause despite having access to the best doctors in California. So, she set her sights on advocating for more research and education around menopause. Fejzo also spoke about how her personal health journey influenced her advocacy. Years ago, she suffered from HG. “When I got pregnant, I was so ill that I could not move without violently vomiting,” she said. She had to “lie completely still” on her back, couldn’t even drink water and needed a feeding tube, she said. She was depleted; but her doctor accused her of just trying to get attention. “I was too weak to argue with him,” she said. But Fejzo spent the last two decades searching for the cause of HG. In 2010, Fejzo took a 23andMe DNA test—and eventually convinced the company to include questions about HG in its survey. Armed with genetic data and survey responses from about 50,000 people, she reported in her latest research paper in Nature, which published last year, that people with HG tend to have high blood levels of a hormone linked to appetite suppression and vomiting that the body produces during pregnancy. After GDF15 levels rise after conception, victims of the disease end up with intense nausea and vomiting. What she found in her 2023 Nature paper, Fejzo said, means that “we’re on the pathway towards a cure.” Skovronsky, of Eli Lilly, spoke at length about a disease that is not typically thought of as a women’s health issue: Alzheimer’s. Most people don’t realize that women make up two-thirds of patients with the disease, he said. They do partly because women live longer than men and the disease affects older people more. The disease also disproportionately impacts women because they are more likely to be a caretaker of someone with Alzheimer’s. He estimated the cost to society over the “next couple of years” could be as high as $5 trillion in “lost productivity and direct costs”—mostly borne by women. Skovronsky also spoke to Fejzo and Berry’s experiences as women facing dismissive responses from their doctors. He described the phenomenon of doctors disbelieving female patients as “medical gaslighting.” It’s part of the pharmaceutical company’s job, he said, to educate doctors to prevent this behavior. The TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Shaping the Future of Health was presented by Eli Lilly, Northwell Health, Deloitte, On Purpose, A Podcast by Jay Shetty, and Apeiron Investments. from https://ift.tt/VfNvXjm Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ U.S. law enforcement officials seized more than 115 million pills containing illicit fentanyl in 2023—a dramatic increase that experts say is “alarming” and shows the need for increased public health efforts to prevent the distribution of these pills and possible overdoses. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]A new study published Monday in the International Journal of Drug Policy found that the number of individual pills containing fentanyl that was seized by law enforcement was 2,300 times greater in 2023 than in 2017. In total, 115,562,603 pills containing fentanyl were seized in 2023, whereas 49,657 were seized in 2017. The study also found that the proportion of pills that were seized to the total number of fentanyl seized more than quadrupled—in 2023, pills represented nearly half of illicit fentanyl seizures, whereas they represented just 10% in 2017. “Availability of illicit fentanyl is continuing to skyrocket in the U.S., and the influx of fentanyl-containing pills is particularly alarming,” Joseph J. Palamar, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said in a press release from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Public health efforts are needed to help prevent these pills from falling into the hands of young people, and to help prevent overdose among people taking pills that unsuspectingly contain fentanyl.” Of the nearly 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, more than 75% involved an opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many experts link the overdose crisis to the spread of illicit fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid that is about 50 times more potent than heroin. As little as two milligrams of the drug could be lethal, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The new study found that most law enforcement seizures of fentanyl took place in the western U.S., even though historically, law enforcement seizures have been less common in that part of the country. Researchers said in their study that this highlights the importance of monitoring fentanyl supplies in different regions to improve the public health response. The study was funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. Researchers collected data for the study through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, a grant program administered by the Office of National Drug Control Policy that aims to reduce drug trafficking and misuse. Law enforcement seizures can help indicate the availability of illicit drugs, even if they may not reflect the prevalence of drug use, according to the NIH press release. from https://ift.tt/TFci9YX Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The weight room at the gym can be an intimidating place. The equipment looks like it could crush you if you use it wrong. People grunt as they haul heavy things up and down. And why don’t these machines come with instruction manuals, anyway? Figuring out how to start strength training as a beginner can be tough, but it’s worth the effort. Modern exercise science shows that strength training offers a host of benefits, like stronger bones, decreased inflammation, lower risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, plus better sleep, mental health, and cognitive function. And, of course, stronger muscles. “We start to lose muscle tissue as early as our 30s if we don’t [work to] maintain it,” says exercise physiologist Alyssa Olenick. That’s why current federal guidelines recommend that adults work all of their major muscle groups with strengthening activities two days a week, in addition to doing cardio. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Fortunately, getting started is simpler than you might think. “You definitely do not need a personal trainer to start strength training,” says Kristie Larson, a New York–based personal trainer who specializes in working with beginners. Many of the basic moves you probably learned in grade-school gym class can be the foundation of an effective routine. The best exercises to start withSo, what exactly counts as strength training? “Any sort of exercise modality that is putting your tissues under load with the intention of increasing strength or muscle tissue over time,” Olenick says. That can include bodyweight-only exercises like planks, or working with resistance bands, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, or resistance machines. A smart place to start is with exercises that simulate the activities you do in everyday life. “Things like squatting to a bench, which mimics sitting in a chair, or a lunge where we’re getting up from the ground using one leg,” Larson says. “It’s easy to feel how that is going to benefit your life.” To hit all the major muscle groups, you’ll want to check off each of the four foundational movement patterns: pushing (like with push-ups or bench presses), pulling (like with rows or biceps curls), squatting (like with lunges, leg presses, or squats), and hinging (like with deadlifts, where you lift a weight from the floor to hip level). “[Make] sure you have one of those on each day so you’re getting a little bit of everything,” Olenick says. Read More: Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise Also add in some targeted core work. Larson likes to give beginners moves like planks, bear holds (planks with bent knees hovering just off the ground), weighted marches (marching in place while holding weights), and heavy carries (where you just pick up a heavy weight and walk with it). Feel free to skip the barbells if they feel too intimidating. Instead, you can start with dumbbells, resistance bands, or just your body weight. “Just get comfortable being in the gym, doing these new movement patterns,” Olenick says. If you’re not sure how to put together a well-rounded program, you can find structured beginner workout plans online. (Larson, for instance, offers free simple guides to get started.) Just avoid any plans that offer unrealistic promises. “It should be scalable and modifiable—something where you can actually make it personalized to yourself,” Larson says. Each exercise should come with a suggested range of reps (the number of repetitions to do before taking a break), sets (how many rounds of those reps), and information about how long to rest between sets. Don’t be surprised if you start to feel stronger pretty quickly. “The first six to eight weeks of resistance training, you’re getting a lot of neuromuscular adaptations,” Olenick says. “Your nervous system is getting better at recruiting and contracting your muscle fibers. They call them newbie gains.” How to pick the right weightNewcomers sometimes get stumped by which weights to choose off the rack. “For a beginner, you want to feel like you can do between 10 to 15 repetitions without a break,” Larson says. “If you get to the end of your 10 reps and you feel like you could do 10 more, the weight’s too light. If you’re fighting to do that last rep or two and you’re a true beginner, that weight is a bit too heavy.” (Although you might see videos about “training to failure” on social media—meaning lifting weights until you hit your absolute limit—Larson says that’s an advanced method beginners shouldn’t worry about.) Read More: Why Your Diet Needs More Fermented Pickles Olenick likes to choose weights based on your rate of perceived exertion: On a scale of one to 10, where one feels super easy and 10 feels like the heaviest you can lift, she suggests aiming for about a six or seven. Over time, as you get stronger and more comfortable with the motions, you can start to reach for heavier weights. How much strength training to doAlthough the two-day-a-week federal guidelines don’t specify how long you should spend on your strength workouts, Larson recommends putting in 30 to 60 minutes per session. For each move, she says a good range to shoot for is two to three sets of 10 to 20 reps. “I would say 10 to 15 for weighted, externally-loaded exercises, and 15 to 20 if we’re talking about bodyweight [exercises],” she says. Then, between each set, take enough of a rest to let your muscles recover so you can give another quality effort. Read More: 8 Ways to Stay Hydrated If You Hate Drinking Water No matter how excited you are to begin, remember to keep your workouts doable. “Start with less than you think, then build from there,” Olenick says. “Make it maintainable for life.” How to start strength training without getting injuredIn nearly every strength-training exercise you do, you’ll want to focus on maintaining a neutral spine—a tall, open-chested posture with your rib cage stacked over the pelvis. But Olenick points out that form exists on a spectrum, rather than simply being good or bad. “Most things you do in the beginning will not be with perfect form,” she says, adding that that’s okay. “You’re not automatically going to get injured just because you’re doing it imperfectly.” The truth is, most beginners aren’t actually the novices they might think they are. “A lot of people have fear around strength training. But we lift heavy things in our everyday lives all the time: We’re carrying heavy grocery bags. We’re bringing in the dog food. We’re opening heavy doors against the wind,” Larson says. “Most people underestimate what they can lift.” No matter how you start or what your technique looks like, you’ll still be building muscle. As long as you keep things manageable, “you can’t mess it up in the beginning,” Olenick says. “Everything you do is beneficial.” from https://ift.tt/jCn5pFa Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ For all the hype surrounding status water bottles—looking at you, Stanley and Owala—it turns out many of us aren’t drinking nearly enough H2O. “It’s a struggle,” says Vanessa King, a registered dietitian nutritionist with Queen’s Health System in Oahu, Hawaii. “We see thousands of people a month, and drinking enough water comes up all the time.” Exactly how much you need to drink every day depends on a variety of factors, including your age, activity level, how much you sweat, and your health status, as well as which medications you take (some can cause dehydration) and your location (hot places call for more water). One rule of thumb, King says, is to drink half your weight in water (in ounces) every day. For example, if you weigh 140 pounds, your target would be 70 ounces—or at least eight 8-ounce glasses—per day. To zero in on a more specific number, she advises talking to your doctor or a registered dietitian. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]If you’re not getting enough water, you’ll be able to tell: Your mouth might get dry, King says, and your pee will become darker than normal. You might get a headache or feel dizzy. Plus, you’ll feel thirsty. People who are truly dehydrated—which is common among older adults—can experience altered mental status, hypotension, kidney failure, and other complications that may require hospitalization. Being well-hydrated, on the other hand, is linked to improved mood and cognition, as well as optimal physical performance. It can aid weight loss, alleviate constipation, and even make your skin look healthier. If you’re drinking the right amount of water, “there’s only positives,” says Maya Feller, a registered dietitian nutritionist based in Brooklyn and author of Eating from Our Roots: 80+ Healthy Home-Cooked Favorites from Cultures Around the World. “There’s just so many benefits.” But realistically, how do you glug all that water (especially if it’s far from your favorite beverage)? We asked experts to share how they manage to drink enough every day. Add one glass per weekLots of people avoid drinking water because they don’t want to have to make frequent beelines to the bathroom during the workday. Easing into it, however, can teach your body to tolerate a new level of water intake. “I encourage people to have that first glass as close to waking up as possible, because if they’re going to go to the bathroom, it’s going to happen at home and not on their commute or when they get to the office,” Feller says. After a week, add in an extra glass when you get home from work, which will allow your body to adjust to two additional glasses per day. Then, in week three, add an additional glass at any point during the day. “Keep going until you get to your desired amount,” Feller says, giving your body a week to adjust to each new glass of water. Schedule nudges throughout the dayIf you routinely forget to drink enough water, consider enlisting technological assistance. “Phone reminders are a very cool thing,” says Melanie Betz, a registered dietitian in Chicago who specializes in renal and geriatric nutrition. Lots of apps offer the ability to schedule hydration nudges throughout the day. Read More: What Experts Really Think About Diet Soda For people who want a fancy, high-tech solution, Betz sometimes recommends a HidrateSpark “smart” water bottle, which tracks how much you drink—and starts glowing when you haven’t had enough. It can also send reminders to your phone when you haven’t had any water in a certain amount of time. Or, of course, you can keep things simple and set alarms for, say, 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m., she says. That way, your smartwatch will vibrate or your phone will ding when it’s time to drink. Start a water logAny time you’re trying to make a lifestyle change, it helps to have a specific goal, Betz points out. Pledging to drink 100 ounces of water a day, for example, is more effective than thinking, “I’ll start drinking more water,” she says. It can be hard to keep track of your intake throughout the day, so consider starting a Notes app memo where you list how much you drank, and at what time. That will help reveal patterns and let you know where you could make changes, she says; you might notice you don’t drink much in the morning, for instance. And remember, It takes time to develop a new habit. “Give yourself some grace,” Betz says—you’re not going to jump from 16 ounces to 64 overnight. Add herbs to your water or ice cubesIf you find water boring—and let’s be real, it can be—experiment with fun ways to jazz it up. King likes adding “flavor enhancers” such as slices of lemon and lime and chunks of pineapple. “It becomes very tropical,” she says. Or prepare a glass of cucumber water: Drop sliced cucumbers into your water, along with some ginger and mint. “It looks pretty and makes it more inviting,” King says. “Plus it’s something your friends can get on board with when they come over and drink water.” Read More: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise Betz enjoys testing out different herbs. One of her favorite concoctions is water infused with watermelon and basil, which she finds much more interesting than plain. Blackberry and rosemary also work well, she says, and feel fancy. Speaking of elevated options: Feller suggests treating yourself to herb-filled ice cubes. Choose a couple of your favorites, like basil and mint, and then mash them up or mince them before adding them to an ice-cube tray. Pour water on top, freeze, and enjoy. “It’s so good, and it makes the drink pretty,” she says. Ditch the colorful water bottlesInvest in a clear water bottle, and always carry it with you, King suggests. “A lot of people who carry water bottles carry them home full,” she says. “A clear one lets you see how you’re doing.” If a completely full bottle is in your face all day, after all, you’ll probably get the hint that it’s time to take a sip. Another way to increase visibility, King says, is to put a glass of water on your bedside table. That way, you can make drinking water first thing in the morning a habit. It’s also helpful to keep pitchers of water on your kitchen counter and in other high-traffic areas. Play with temperatureFeller works with people around the globe, and many don’t drink ice-cold water—they consider it “an American thing.” Regardless of where you live, you might find you prefer a different temperature, too. Leave your water out so it’s room temp, add some ice, or even boil it like you would tea, Feller advises. As you experiment with different temperatures, “you’ll find that it becomes a bit easier to drink once you know what temperature you prefer,” she says. Pretend you’re a plantThe app Plant Nanny makes drinking fun, says King, who’s recommended it to her patients. Once you download it, you’ll become responsible for virtual plants; each time you log that you’ve had a glass of water, your plants will be watered, too. “When I first tested it out, I turned it on and my plant was wilted,” King recalls. “And it was super cute. I was immediately emotionally attached to it—you forget it’s not a real plant.” That made her want to meet her daily hydration goals, she says, noting that the app is a good fit for parents helping their kids understand the importance of staying well-hydrated. Read More: Your Houseplants Have Some Powerful Health Benefits Expand your definition of “water”Chugging glassfuls of water isn’t the only way to hydrate. Dairy and dairy alternatives, like almond milk and soy milk, also contain water, King points out; in fact, it’s the first ingredient listed on labels. And don’t overlook the role that fruits, vegetables, broths, soups, and stews can play in your daily hydration goals. Some of the most water-heavy choices include melons like cantaloupe and watermelon; berries such as strawberries; and leafy greens like spinach, cucumbers, and zucchini, King says. Other smart choices include bananas, pears, oranges, pineapples, carrots, broccoli, and avocados. “A good dose of fruits and vegetables in your day can also help with meeting your water target,” she says. So if you absolutely can’t stand the thought of one more glass of water, consider consuming it a tastier way instead. from https://ift.tt/6hwJAd9 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ I Dont Have Faith in Doctors Anymore. Women Say They Were Pressured Into Long-Term Birth Control5/13/2024 Miannica Frison was in the throes of labor in 2020 when a nurse entered her room at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Ala. Frison was screaming in pain. But rather than see how she could help, Frison recalls, the nurse said she heard Frison was having her third baby, and asked if she wanted to be sterilized immediately after she gave birth. Outraged, Frison kicked the nurse out of the room. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Doctors eventually told Frison she needed an emergency C-section. As she lay on the operating table, just moments after her son was pulled from her belly, a doctor entered the delivery room. “We can go ahead and put an IUD in right now, since you’re already open,” the doctor said, according to both Frison and her husband. Frison was woozy from her epidural, but had experienced a traumatic birth, and at that moment, she didn’t think she wanted more children. So she allowed the doctor to insert the Mirena, an intrauterine device (IUD) that would prevent pregnancies for up to eight years. In the months that followed, she didn’t like the way the IUD was making her feel. But Frison says she couldn’t persuade her gynecologist to take it out. The doctor told her she needed to lose weight first, Frison recalls, and that there were medicines to offset the side effects she was experiencing, such as nausea. It would be three years before Frison could get the device removed. Even then, she had to undergo three procedures, one lasting seven hours, she says, because the device had migrated to the lining of her uterus. It left her with four thumb-sized scars on her belly from where a doctor inserted an instrument to try to find the IUD. The experience caused Frison, a 32-year-old hairdresser, to have a profound mistrust of the medical system. “I don’t have faith in doctors anymore,” she says. “I can’t trust any of them.” Frison’s experience was more common than one might expect. In the last two decades, doctors have encouraged women to choose long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs, because they are the most effective method of preventing unplanned pregnancies. Doctors and many patients like that LARCs–either IUDs, which are inserted in a woman’s uterus, or implants, which are inserted in a woman’s arm–allow women to “set it and forget it” for years. But an increasing body of evidence indicates that an important public health tool intended to give women agency over their bodies is at times deployed in ways that take it away. A TIME investigation based on patient testimonials, medical studies, and interviews with 19 experts in the field of reproductive justice, including physicians, researchers, and advocates, found that doctors are disproportionately likely to push these contraceptives when treating Black, Latina, young, and low-income women, or to refuse to remove them when requested. This pattern, reproductive-justice experts say, reflects the race and class biases plaguing the U.S. medical system and extends a sordid and long-standing history of America’s attempts to engineer who reproduces. It also reflects what appears to be a broad push by policymakers to use birth control as a tool to curb poverty. “The idea is that we can stop people that we don’t want to be reproducing from reproducing, but can say, ‘This is temporary because it’s removable,’” says Della Winters, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus who has studied the history of LARCs and calls the rise of so-called provider-controlled contraception targeting certain populations a type of “soft sterilization.” Doctors pressuring patients into getting LARCs is a national phenomenon, experts say, but it may be especially prevalent in the South, where there is a troubling history of reproductive control. To explore what women are experiencing, TIME spoke with 10 women in Alabama, including four patients at UAB Hospital, who said they were pressured to get an IUD postpartum or had their doctors refuse to remove the devices when they initially asked. Four doulas who work in the state told TIME they’d witnessed doctors pressure Black women, especially those on Medicaid, into getting IUDs by asking them repeatedly during birth—but not, according to their clients, prior to it—about their preferred birth-control method and then strongly suggesting an IUD. UAB disputed that it engages in reproductive coercion and said in an email that it follows guidance from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which suggests that LARCs should be offered immediately postpartum as standard care. The hospital also says that its providers receive implicit-bias training to avoid disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes. Patients are counseled on contraception options throughout the course of their pregnancy, the hospital says, and “every patient makes her own decision on contraception, and our team supports them in the decisions they make about their health.” Federal privacy laws prohibit UAB from commenting on an individual patient’s care, UAB says. The ACOG says its recommendation for doctors to offer immediate postpartum LARCs refers to women who have already selected an implant or IUD as their contraceptive method. Though the group previously recommended that doctors emphasize LARCs as the most effective contraceptive, it said in 2022 that it now recommends a “patient-centered” approach to contraceptive counseling. (The Alabama patients who spoke to TIME shared experiences that took place between 2016 and 2023.) Doctors who pressure patients to get or keep LARCs may do so because they think they’re acting in the patients’ best interest, says Nikki B. Zite, an ob-gyn and professor at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine. They might advocate for women with substance-abuse problems or major health issues to get a LARC, Zite adds, because they want them to be healthy before they give birth, or might hesitate to take out a LARC because they know the devices are expensive for insurers, and that symptoms a woman experiences after insertion, like cramps or bleeding, will pass. Zite remembers being extremely enthusiastic when she first started recommending LARCs to patients in the early 2000s. Now she recognizes that could have come across as coercive. “If a patient came to me for diabetes, I would want them on insulin—that’s the most effective treatment,” she says. “I have a chart showing that LARCs are the most effective form of contraception, so doctors think, ‘Why wouldn’t I want them using a LARC?’ The answer is that reproductive health is different.” Even if they have good intentions, doctors, in their enthusiasm for effective birth control, may strong-arm certain women into getting and keeping contraceptive methods they don’t want. TIME examined 14 separate peer-reviewed studies in which Black and Latina women and lower-income patients reported experiencing higher levels of coercion from doctors to use LARCs. In one 2022 paper that reviewed asurvey of nearly 2,000 women in Delaware and Maryland, about 26% said they were pressured to get their LARC, and low-income women on Medicaid were more likely than higher-income women to feel pressured to keep it. Aseparate 2022 study of more than 2,000 adolescents found that Black girls were twice as likely as white ones to receive LARCs. In five additional studies reviewed by TIME, doctors admitted either to resisting some patients’ requests to remove LARCs or to pushing certain populations toward LARCs because they didn’t trust them to avoid a pregnancy that the doctor viewed as undesirable. “The other thing that really frustrates the crap out of me,” one doctor told researchers, according to a study published in 2021, “is the patient who comes in and says, ‘No, I don’t want to be pregnant, but I don’t use any birth control.’ You want to take that person and shake them. Some of it is ignorance, some of it is cultural.” In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, the question of just how widespread this pressure may be takes on greater urgency. Research shows that doctors in states with restrictive abortion laws are redoubling their emphasis on the use of LARCs. These may be well-meaning attempts to help women and teens avoid a pregnancy they don’t want and would not have the option to terminate. But reproductive-justice advocates say pushing LARCs on poor women or women of color is also a form of reproductive control. It can not only strip patients of autonomy over their bodies, but also erode their trust in medical providers, causing them to withdraw from care and eschew birth control altogether. “This is when the culture of medicine that centers providers’ perspectives over those of patients has its absolute worst impact,” says Christine Dehlendorf, a physician and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was one of the first to study how provider bias affects LARC counseling. “We are explicitly able to take away people’s autonomy by refusing to remove contraceptive methods, but all the time, providers can believe that they’re doing the best thing for the patient, and that they know better.” LeAnn, a stay-at-home mom from Tuscaloosa, Ala., was on Medicaid when she gave birth to her second child in 2018, at age 20. Her doctor kept asking her about her plans for contraception after she gave birth, says LeAnn, who did not want her real name used to protect her privacy. She eventually agreed to get the Mirena inserted at her six-week postpartum visit. Almost immediately, LeAnn says, she started waking up in the middle of the night with uterine pain so severe that she couldn’t stand up straight. After three months of pain, she says she asked her doctor to remove the IUD, but he refused, saying she needed to choose another form of birth control. The pain was so bad, LeAnn recalls, that she would sometimes end up in the emergency room. “I just suffered for a year,” she says. Finally she decided the best strategy was to lie and tell her doctor that she wanted another baby; with that, he removed the IUD. LeAnn is white, but says her doctor knew she was on Medicaid. Research suggests that doctors are often hesitant to remove IUDs in women who they know are poor or who have children at home. A 2016 study found that 1 in 4 women who went to a Bronx, N.Y., clinic asking doctors to remove their IUDs were not successful. “These ideas of who should and shouldn’t have children are still very much influencing our policies and practices, even if it’s more subtle than in the past,” says Mieke Eeckhaut, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, who found that young, economically disadvantaged, unmarried, and Hispanic women disproportionately reported being pressured to keep their LARCs. Systemic racism and classism have long pervaded the American medical system, including reproduction. Before birth-control methods like the pill and IUDs were legally available, policymakers used sterilization to prevent certain “low-status” women from having children. Laws permitting states to sterilize women whom lawmakers thought would be unfit parents were so common throughout the South that the civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer coined the term“Mississippi Appendectomy” after she went to have a uterine tumor removed and unknowingly got a hysterectomy instead. Read More: Why Maternity Care Is Underpaid. Advances in birth control in the 1950s gave women more options, but it also gave doctors a measure of control over who got pregnant. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, promoted the pill in part as a way to limit reproduction in “defective” populations. After the FDA approved the Norplant, a small contraceptive rod implanted in a woman’s upper arm, in 1990, states began pushing the device on low-income Black women,incentivizing welfare recipients with cash bonuses. In the 2000s, pharmaceutical companies started rolling out a new wave ofextremely effective hormonal IUDs, including the Mirena. To doctors, these devices, alongside safer implants introduced in the late 1990s, were something of a miracle. With one short insertion procedure, they could help women avoid pregnancies for long periods of time. (The duration of each device varies, but they generally last from about three to 10 years.) LARCs are not only 20 times more effective than the pill. They also offer the promise of convenience: no more worrying about picking up a prescription from a pharmacy on a regular basis, or remembering to take the medication at the same time every day. But as these devices entered the market, American women stayed away from them—just 5% used them in the late 2000s, compared to 19% of women in places like Sweden. This reticence prompted doctors to launch a campaign to market LARCs to women perceived to be at risk of unplanned pregnancy, a policy fixation in the wake of the welfare-reform push during the Clinton Administration. In 2007, an anonymous funder—Bloomberg laterreported that it was the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation—approached researchers at Washington University in St. Louis with a goal: promoting and providing the most effective contraception in an effortto prevent unintended pregnancies. They launched the Contraceptive CHOICE project, which recruited women “at thehighest risk for unintended pregnancy”—a group they defined as minorities, poor women, and women under 25. The CHOICE project did not ask those women which type of birth control best fit their lifestyles, or if they were seeking a method that they could stop on their own without a doctor’s assistance. Instead, doctors used a standardized script to counsel women that LARCs were the most effective contraceptive and that they could receive the devices for free. As a result, 75% of the women in the program chose a LARC, compared to just 5% of women attending the same clinics before the CHOICE counseling was launched, according to a study of the project, which included 9,256 women. The initial results, published in 2010, were a watershed in reproductive health. Counseling women to choose LARCs appeared to be a relatively simple way to prevent unintended pregnancies, and CHOICE researchers trumpeted the potential to save U.S. taxpayers$11 billion annually in costs associated with unintended births. Policymakers and philanthropists hailed LARCs as a “silver bullet” that would reduce unintended pregnancies and save states huge sums in public benefit costs. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundationreportedly put $200 million into research and promotion of IUDs. (The foundation did not respond to a request for comment.) Public health groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and ACOG launched “LARC-first” campaigns to increase uptake. The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a “tiered effectiveness” model urging doctors to talk about LARCs and sterilization as the best way to prevent pregnancy. Many providers were also counseled to ask women “one key question”: whether they were planning on getting pregnant within a year. If the answer was no, doctors were supposed to suggest LARCs. Informing women about their contraceptive choices is a laudable goal. So is ensuring access for women who may not be able to afford them otherwise. (Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, insurers have been required to cover contraception; Medicaid also covers the cost of contraception for lower-income women.) But experts say the LARC-first campaigns become problematic when doctors focus on effectiveness to the exclusion of other factors, including the ability to start and stop birth control when women desire. “There’s been a lot of targeted information about LARCs, which is great if that’s what the patient wants,” says Kavita Shah Arora, the division director of the ob-gyn department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “If we’re pushing people into a form of birth control that they don’t want, that is not great.” States like Delaware and Colorado launched programs to increase access to birth control, offering a range of contraceptive options but emphasizing the effectiveness of LARCs. Colorado said in 2017 that it savednearly $70 million in public-assistance costs because of LARCs. “Better birth outcomes, a reduced teenage birthrate and millions of dollars saved are cause for celebration,” Delaware Governor Jack Markell, a Democrat, wrote in a 2016New York Times op-ed about his state’s efforts to promote LARCs and save taxpayers money. But the notion of fighting poverty and saving money by reducing unplanned pregnancies misses a big point: poverty is not caused by pregnancy. Many women are poor when they get pregnant because of entrenched social issues. Advising them to wait for a better time to have a baby implies that women who are poor shouldn’t procreate. Saying that unplanned pregnancies cause poverty “stigmatizes poor women, especially poor women of color, and blames them for profound inequality that’s actually caused by things like lack of access to meaningful employment or safe schools,” says Patrick Grzanka, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee who has studied LARC coercion. Alarmed by efforts to target LARCs at low-income populations, a group of women’s health organizations led bySister Song, a nonprofit dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color, put out a statement of principles about LARCs in 2016. They warned that as funders set targets for the number of LARCs inserted, women reported being talked down to and undermined by doctors, who “treat them as though they do not have the basic human right to determine what happens with their bodies.” The group rejected efforts to direct women to any particular method and cautioned providers against making assumptions based on race, ethnicity, age, or economic status. The statement was endorsed by more than 150 organizations, but it’s taken a while for actual practices to change. That’s partly because many doctors were trained in a LARC-first approach and might not know that there are new recommendations about how to talk about contraception. Indeed, ACOG recently issued new guidance that eschewed a LARC-first approach and recommended patient-centered contraceptive counseling. But one recent study found that even some medical providers who said they were embracing this approach nonethelessrejected patients’ requests to have their LARCs removed. “I’ll never just walk in a room, “Oh, we’re just taking the IUD out?’” one medical provider told researchers about thelimitations of patient-centered care. “Sometimes I’ll get them to, ‘Let me just examine you, do some cultures, let me do an ultrasound and make sure it’s in the right position.’ And then secretly I know I’m not going to fix their bleeding, but secretly I’m hoping that they’ll just leave and not come back in … or they just can’t get back in to get it removed and things will calm down.” Charity Howard, a doula in Alabama, says there’s a striking difference in what happens to different types of women when they go to the hospital to give birth. Black women on Medicaid are asked to consent to having an IUD inserted immediately postpartum, according to Howard. But “when they have private insurance,” she adds, “they don’t run into this issue.” Doctors can be persistent, according to Howard, who says she witnessed a doctor at UAB persuade one of Howard’s clients, a lesbian who was pregnant from a sperm donor, to get an IUD, even though the woman was not at risk of an unintended pregnancy. When Howard protested, she says she was escorted out of the hospital. (In its statement to TIME, UAB said it could not comment on individual patients.) When Crystina Hughes went to UAB in 2019 to give birth, she planned to wait until her six-week follow-up appointment before deciding on a form of birth control. But as soon as her daughter was born, Hughes says, a doctor asked if she wanted to get an IUD inserted, noting her cervix was already dilated. Hughes says she declined, but when her husband went with her newborn daughter to the ICU, the doctor returned to ask again. Hughes, who is Black, reasoned that if the doctor asked twice, it had to be important. So she agreed. Her milk dried up around six weeks, and she had to have the IUD removed within a year because of a prolapsed uterus, says Hughes, 35, who has since become a doula. Hughes says she often sees her clients pressured into getting LARCs, once even while doctors were weighing a woman’s newborn. “It really took me becoming a doula to realize that I was coerced into getting the IUD,” says Hughes. “It’s like, ‘Can you let her have 24 hours before you ask her if she’s thinking about birth control?’” (UAB says that it provides equal care to all patients, regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion, and that to not offer a patient contraception based on their sexual orientation would be discriminatory.) There are reasons a doctor might want to insert an IUD right after a woman gives birth. The patient may already be on pain medication, so it won’t hurt as much, and she’s less likely to come back pregnant with another baby in a few months. Some women on Medicaid also lose their coverage soon after they give birth, which could be another reason doctors push IUDs on them and not others. Studies have found that IUDs are more likely to fall out or migrate if they’re inserted immediately postpartum, but ACOG says that it has reviewed “cost-benefit analysis data” that suggests placing IUDs right after a woman has given birth is the best approach, “especially for women at greatest risk of not attending the postpartum follow-up visit.” Still, reproductive-justice advocates say that pressuring a woman after the enormous challenge of childbirth, when she may be less likely to resist, is problematic. And they warn that ACOG’s criteria means doctors may pitch LARCs differently based on their biases about who they think will—or won’t— show up for a follow-up visit. Some of the discrepancy in who is directed to LARCs is also built into the health care system. Medicaid covers the postpartum IUD insertions in many states, while private insurance doesn’t, in part because of the higher expulsion rate for devices placed at this time. Hospitals are also often compensated by one lump sum, called the global fee, for a woman’s pregnancy and delivery care, which means they can lose money if they pay for and insert a LARC postpartum as part of that care. Since 2012, however, 43 states have altered their Medicaid policy so that hospitals could receive extra compensation for inserting an IUD or implant immediately after a woman gave birth, a change that may have incentivized hospitals to push this particular method of contraception on women with Medicaid but not others. Read More: She Just Had a Baby. Soon, She’ll Start 7th Grade. A study of the program in South Carolina, which adopted this policy in 2012, found that some women were dissatisfied with how providers talked to them about LARCs. Three out of 10 women who received a postpartum LARC later tried to get it removed, but encountered problems, the study found. “They just keep promoting these long-term methods,” one Black woman told researchers, recalling her encounters with doctors during her hospital stay. “It’s like they’re getting a commission or something.” The pressure doesn’t necessarily stop after delivery. When Rauslyn Adams gave birth at UAB in 2016, she says she was told that she would lose access to Medicaid if she didn’t get an IUD—which, she says, she later found out was untrue. Not wanting to lose her health care, Adams agreed to get the Mirena at her six-week postpartum visit. Adams says her milk production slowed soon after she got it. When she asked a doctor to take it out, the doctor refused, Adams says. When she successfully pleaded with another doctor to remove the device, she says, her milk supply improved. “They really treated me like a dumb poor Black woman,” says Adams, who went back to UAB twice to complain in the months after she gave birth. (UAB says that all patients are counseled on contraception and options available to them throughout their pregnancy, and that these conversations are documented and confirmed when they are admitted to the hospital. Consent forms are signed for the chosen plan, the hospital says.) Power dynamics in the South sometimes make Black women feel like they can’t refuse doctors’ recommendations, says Aisha Prewitt, a doula who works with women in Birmingham and who has observed postpartum coercion. “They will say, ‘It’s not coercion, it’s birth control,’” Prewitt says. “But they’re not presenting other options. Even if the women ask about other options, it’s, ‘Oh, you don’t want to be bothered with the pill. Let’s give you something that requires no thought.’” That pressure is heightened around the experience of birth because Alabama has the highest rates of maternal mortality in the U.S., and the numbers are particularly bad for Black women. . “A lot of Black women think, ‘I’ll go along with anything the doctors say,” Prewitt says, “ just to make sure I can get out of this hospital alive.” Since the Dobbs ruling, according to early findings by researchers in North Carolina, many doctors have narrowed their focus to promoting the most effective contraception, like LARCs, while actively dissuading young people from choosing shorter-acting methods, especially in states with more restrictive reproduction laws. A soon-to-be-published study from researchers in South Carolina, which interviewed more than 1,200 women in five Southeastern states, found that nearly half of Black women overall experienced pressure from providers about birth control, compared to 37% of white women. Some of this pressure is enshrined in law. In May 2023, for example, North Carolina passed a bill limiting access to abortion after the 12th week of pregnancy. It included a provision awarding $3.5 million in birth-control funding to health departments and community centers, with the stipulation that the funding could be used for only LARCs, not the pill, and only for poor or uninsured patients. “When this version came through in the wee hours of the night, I highlighted that section, and wrote in the margins, ‘REPRODUCTIVE COERCION’ because it was explicitly about LARCs instead of about funding any contraceptive options,” says Erica Pettigrew, a primary-care physician in North Carolina. “I was really disappointed in this earmark, but I saw so many of my colleagues thinking this was a good thing.” Adolescent-health experts worry this coercion will only get worse as policymakers and physicians try to prevent those in states with abortion restrictions from getting pregnant in the first place. “The slippery slope that we will go down is another type of reproductive restriction by coercing people to use these long-term methods who may not have chosen them,” says Aisha Mays, a doctor and founder of the Dream Youth Clinic, which provides free health services in the San Francisco Bay Area. That pressure has compounding effects. Women who feel pressured into getting an IUD or implant are less likely to trust their doctors or stay on any birth control as a result, according to studies. Some women turn to DIY medical care if they don’t trust their providers. A viral TikTok trend shows women removing their own IUDs because, in some cases, they can’t get an appointment or, in others, because doctors won’t remove them. It’s one more example of the disparate treatment poor women and women of color receive when it comes to medical care. Black women are twice as likely to be coerced into procedures like inductions and epidurals during perinatal and birth care, according to researchers. Some doulas in Alabama say that after bad experiences with labor and delivery, women are electing to have home births rather than risk beingignored or undermined by doctors. Once they feel that doctors aren’t taking their concerns seriously, women are less likely to seek out and receiveimportant screenings and preventative health measures, which leads to worse health outcomes overall. Miannica Frison is a prime example of this erosion of trust. She doesn’t currently have an ob-gyn, and after her years-long battle to get her IUD removed, Frison vowed to never get birth control again. One of the biggest ironies for Frison is that doctors seem so obsessed with getting her on birth control, but seem to care so little about her actual pregnancy outcome. Frison did not want a C-section, but doctors gave her little choice, she says. Because UAB is a teaching hospital, there were constantly people coming into the room to poke and prod her, she says, sometimes not even introducing themselves when they stuck fingers into her body. UAB says that decisions about a vaginal or C-section birth are made in the best interest of patients’ health and safety, and that every woman provides written informed consent for “a full range of services” when admitted, including a C-section. “UAB is one of the largest and most advanced academic medical centers in the nation, so patients benefit from the expertise of highly trained care teams who provide a patient with evidence-based care,” a spokeswoman said in an email, adding that medical students are not involved in hands-on care in delivering a baby. Frison was discharged from the hospital on Mother’s Day. Soon after she got home, she began vomiting. She’d been discharged, she says, even though she’d told doctors she felt extremely sick; when she was readmitted to the hospital, she says, she found out that she had sepsis. Frison couldn’t nurse her son because she had to spend five days in the hospital without him; when she got out, he wouldn’t latch. “They were happy to tell you about how you could get sterilized,” Frison says. “But when it came to aftercare, or pregnancy care, none of that mattered.” --With reporting by Leslie Dickstein This article was produced as a part of a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Impact Fund for Reporting on Health Equity and Health Systems. from https://ift.tt/lODink1 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ BOSTON — The first recipient of a genetically modified pig kidney transplant has died nearly two months after he underwent the procedure, his family and the hospital that performed the surgery said Saturday. Richard “Rick” Slayman had the transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in March at the age of 62. Surgeons said they believed the pig kidney would last for at least two years. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The transplant team at Massachusetts General Hospital said in a statement it was deeply saddened by Slayman’s passing and offered condolences to his family. They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant. The Weymouth, Massachusetts, man was the first living person to have the procedure. Previously, pig kidneys had been temporarily transplanted into brain-dead donors. Two men received heart transplants from pigs, although both died within months. Slayman had a kidney transplant at the hospital in 2018, but he had to go back on dialysis last year when it showed signs of failure. When dialysis complications arose requiring frequent procedures, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant. In a statement, Slayman’s family thanked his doctors. “Their enormous efforts leading the xenotransplant gave our family seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts,” the statement said. They said Slayman underwent the surgery in part to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive. “Rick accomplished that goal and his hope and optimism will endure forever,” the statement said. Xenotransplantation refers to healing human patients with cells, tissues or organs from animals. Such efforts long failed because the human immune system immediately destroyed foreign animal tissue. Recent attempts have involved pigs that have been modified so their organs are more humanlike. More than 100,000 people are on the national waiting list for a transplant, most of them kidney patients, and thousands die every year before their turn comes. from https://ift.tt/Aktz30C Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Gina Moffa’s fear of flying took off early. When she was 10, her mother—overwhelmed by bad turbulence on a flight to Italy—clambered to the emergency exit and tried to get out of the plane. A fellow passenger offered her Valium, and a nun onboard prayed the Rosary with her. “And then she was OK,” says Moffa, now a grief therapist based in New York City. “But it taught me there was something to be afraid of.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]That hasn’t lessened over the years. Moffa recently returned from a “precarious adventure” to the Portuguese island Madeira that involved flying in a tiny 12-seater plane for nearly three hours over the Atlantic. She almost didn’t board. “They were like, ‘Ma’am, you’re going to make us late—we have to get on before the winds come,’” she recalls. If your heart also takes a nosedive while flying—especially recently—you’re not alone. Research suggests about 25 million adults in the U.S. experience aerophobia, and who can blame them? Door plugs are dropping off of Boeing 737 and small planes alike. Engines are catching on fire midair, and tires are falling off. Read More: How to Be Mindful If You Hate Meditating But the truth remains: Flying is safe. Even now. According to the National Safety Council, the lifetime odds of dying on a plane in the U.S. are “too small to calculate.” That’s part of the reason Moffa hasn’t allowed herself to be grounded. On her recent rickety flight, “I was terrified to the point of palpitations, but I didn’t cause a scene,” she says. “It’s a very common fear, and it can be immobilizing, but you can’t let that fear get in the way of witnessing the beauty in the world.” We asked experts to share the psychological tricks that help them conquer their flight anxiety. Check out pilot TikTokMoffa has learned that she’s able to cope with her fear of flying best if she understands everything about her trip—including what type of plane she’ll be on, the forecast, and expected turbulence. “If I know that I think catastrophic thoughts around flying, which I do, then I can say, ‘OK, so what are the facts?’” That philosophy led her to the aviation corner of TikTok, where pilots post video explainers of how they prepare for take-off and landing, strategies to avoid thunderstorms, and navigating worst-case issues like engine failure. “They’ll show you what they’re doing in the cockpit, and what the noises are,” Moffa says. “That way if you’re sitting near the wing and you see part of it go down, you’re not like, ‘Wow, we’re going to lose our wing.’ It’s actually just part of what it’s supposed to do to keep you in the air.” Knowledge is power, she says—and, in this case, peace. Establish some sense of control over your environmentAfter years of flying without any issues, Los Angeles psychologist Carder Stout developed aerophobia in his 30s. Now, he has an action plan that he shares with his clients and uses himself. Step one: Ensure you feel some sense of control over your environment. That means bringing your own pillow, blanket, and slippers. “I pull down the window shades in my aisle, or ask the other passengers to do so,” he says. (No one has declined the request yet.) During take off, he puts on Pink Floyd, closes his eyes, and visualizes a peaceful, tranquil, and safe place that he’s visited before. That image, he says, helps calm his jittery nerves. Journal positive phrasesOnce the plane levels off and is cruising through the air, Stout starts journaling positive phrases. For example: “I’m going to be fine. I’m safe. Planes aren’t so bad, after all.” They become his mantras for the flight, he says, anchors he can return to whenever he needs to settle back down. If the plane suddenly feels like it’s falling, or turbulence jolts you out of your seat, repeat after him: “I am going to be fine.” Try the Havening TechniqueWhen Dr. Christine Gibson, a family doctor and trauma therapist in Calgary, Canada, treats people with specific anxieties, she focuses on teaching them that they have control over their own body. “We can slow our heart rate down,” she says, and let our sympathetic nervous system know there’s nothing to fear. “We’re not just a giant reflex. We can consciously say to our mind-body system, ‘You’re OK. You’re safe right now, even though your brain is trying to tell you you’re in danger.’” Read More: 7 Ways to Deal With Climate Despair One way to do that is through the Havening Technique, which aims to shift emotions; its name is a nod to finding a safe space, or a “haven.” It involves using one hand to gently brush your palms, shoulders, and face in an up-and-down motion. Start by lightly rubbing your right hand across the palm of your opposite hand, then gently stroking from your shoulder down to your elbow, and across your forehead and cheekbones. You might rub both arms at once, for example, which mimics hugging yourself. After a few repetitions, you should feel calmer, Gibson says. Practice tappingAnother one of Gibson’s favorite ways to calm down is the Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as “tapping.” It derives from traditional Chinese medicine, and she likes to think of it as self-acupuncture. First, you’ll need a “set-up statement,” which Gibson suggests might sound like this: “Even though there is anxiety when I think about flying, and I’m noticing my heart’s pounding right now, I’m actually safe.” Repeat that as you use two fingers to tap on the acupressure points on your body that are associated with stress relief. Among them: the top of your head, the spot between your eyebrows, the middle of the cheekbones, and the spot between the nose and the lip. You can subtly practice tapping while you’re in your airplane seat, Gibson points out. “If you have anxiety and it’s like an eight out of 10, and it’s causing you a lot of distress, you do tapping over and over again until the distress is at a three,” she says. “It’s still there, but it’s shrunk and not really bothering you.” Consider exposure therapyIf you can’t shake your fear of flying, it might be time to enlist a therapist who specializes in treating phobias. Exposure therapy can be highly effective, says psychologist Shmaya Krinsky, founder of Anxiety and Behavioral Health Psychotherapy, which provides telehealth in New York and New Jersey. It involves systematically and gradually “exposing people to the source of their fear in a safe and controlled environment,” he says. With one technique, for example—called imaginal exposure—you might be asked to visualize the process of going to the airport, boarding the plane, and experiencing a bad bout of turbulence. Another technique, in vivo exposure, forces you to directly face the object of your fear; perhaps climbing onto a stationary plane. Virtual reality can also play a helpful role in exposure therapy, Krinsky points out. It might be a bumpy ride, but after a few months, you’ll arrive at the other side—no fear-of-flying baggage in tow. from https://ift.tt/DUfYmQB Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (DES MOINES, Iowa) — As Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin began thinking about ways to prevent starvation and protect the world’s food supply, they came up with what Fowler called “the craziest idea anybody ever had” — a global seed vault built into the side of an Arctic mountain. About 20 years ago, Fowler, now the U.S. special envoy for Global Food Security, and Hawtin, an agricultural scientist from the United Kingdom, envisioned the so-called “doomsday vault” as a backup spot for seeds that could be used to breed new crops if existing seed banks were threatened by wars, climate change or other upheaval. On Thursday, officials in Washington announced that Fowler and Hawtin would be named 2024 World Food Prize laureates for their work. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“To a lot of people today, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It’s a valuable natural resource and you want to offer robust protection for it,” he said in an interview from Saudi Arabia. “Fifteen years ago, shipping a lot of seeds to the closest place to the North Pole that you can fly into, putting them inside a mountain — that’s the craziest idea anybody ever had.” The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Svalbard opened in 2008 and now holds 1.25 million seed samples from nearly every country. The largely concrete structure, built into the side of a mountain, provides genetic protection for over 6,000 varieties of crops and culturally important plants. Fowler and Hawtin were named the winners of the annual prize at the State Department, where Secretary of State Antony Blinken lauded the men for their “critical role in preserving crop diversity.” They will be awarded the annual prize this fall in Des Moines, Iowa, where the food prize foundation is based, and will split a $500,000 award. Hundreds of smaller seed banks have existed in other countries for many decades, but Fowler said he was motivated by a concern that climate change would throw agriculture into turmoil, making a plentiful seed supply even more essential. Hawtin, an executive board member at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said that there were plenty of existing crop threats, such as insects, diseases and land degradation, as well as political upheaval, but that climate change heightened the need for a secure, backup seed vault. In part, that’s because climate change has the potential of making those earlier problems even worse. “You end up with an entirely new spectrum of pests and diseases under different climate regimes,” Hawtin said in an interview from southwest England. “Climate change is putting a whole lot of extra problems on what has always been significant ones.” Fowler and Hawtin said they hope their selection as World Food Prize laureates will enable them push for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding of seed bank endowments around the world. Maintaining those operations is relatively cheap, especially when considering how essential they are to ensuring a plentiful food supply, but the funding needs continue forever. “This is really a chance to get that message out and say, look, this relatively small amount of money is our insurance policy, our insurance policy that we’re going to be able to feed the world in 50 years,” Hawtin said. The World Food Prize was founded by Norman Borlaug, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his part in the Green Revolution, which dramatically increased crop yields and reduced the threat of starvation in many countries. The food prize will be awarded at the annual Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue, held Oct. 29-31 in Des Moines. from https://ift.tt/15Ijxvz Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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