Tuesday, May 7

HEALTH & WELLNESS

There’s A New Wave Of Post-Dobbs Lawsuits On Abortion Pills – Medication Abortion Could Get Harder To Obtain – Or Easier
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR, WOMENS ISSUES

There’s A New Wave Of Post-Dobbs Lawsuits On Abortion Pills – Medication Abortion Could Get Harder To Obtain – Or Easier

Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the United States. Typically, patients take a two different pills: first mifepristone, then misoprostol. Even though this option has been legally available for more than two decades, two recent events have raised legal questions about it. First, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling overturned the constitutional right to abortion recognized in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. Second, in January 2023, the Food and Drug Administration decided that certified U.S. pharmacies could sell mifepristone by prescription. The result is a raft of new legal battles over access to medication abortion.Some congressional lawmakers seek to protect the right to access the pills through pharmacies and telehealth in states wher...
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A Researcher Discusses Recent Trials, Using Psychedelics To Treat PTSD, OCD, Depression And Chronic Pain And Possible Risks
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR

A Researcher Discusses Recent Trials, Using Psychedelics To Treat PTSD, OCD, Depression And Chronic Pain And Possible Risks

New research is exploring whether psychedelic drugs, taken under strict medical supervision, might help in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. SciLine interviewed Dr. Jennifer Mitchell – a professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry & Behavioral Science in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco – to discuss what scientists have found so far about the effectiveness of these drugs in treating these disorders and how they might safely be administered. Dr. Jennifer Mitchell discusses psychedelic medicine. The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, which have been edited for brevity and clarity. What are psychedelic drugs and how do t...
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Here’s What Science Says About CBD’s Real Health Benefits – It Is Not A Cure-All
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, IN OTHER NEWS

Here’s What Science Says About CBD’s Real Health Benefits – It Is Not A Cure-All

Over the last five years, an often forgotten piece of U.S. federal legislation – the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, also known as the 2018 Farm Bill – has ushered in an explosion of interest in the medical potential of cannabis-derived cannabidiol, or CBD. After decades of debate, the bill made it legal for farmers to grow industrial hemp, a plant rich in CBD. Hemp itself has tremendous value as a cash crop; it’s used to produce biofuel, textiles and animal feed. But the CBD extracted from the hemp plant also has numerous medicinal properties, with the potential to benefit millions through the treatment of seizure disorders, pain or anxiety. Prior to the bill’s passage, the resistance to legalizing hemp was due to its association with marijuana, its biological cousin. Though hemp an...
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How To Stay Motivated To Work Out
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, SELF, TOP FOUR

How To Stay Motivated To Work Out

I think 90% of us have been there (I'll leave the other 10% out of this because there are fitness fanatics who seem to NEVER burnout). It's the place where we just dread working out or can't find the motivation to get it in gear and do our daily workout. You push it off till the next day and when the next day comes you find some other excuse to not do it and eventually a whole week has gone by and you haven't done one bit of exercise. I get it. I've been there. I used to spend three hours a night at the gym, everyday, doing the same thing night after night. I was happy with the body I'd sculpted out for myself, but eventually it was too much to sustain. I kept finding excuses not to go the gym, finding ailments or aches to convince my brain that I couldn't get to my exercise. I of cour...
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What Happens If Our Brain Needs Sleep, And We Don’t Get Enough
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, LIFESTYLE, SOCIETY

What Happens If Our Brain Needs Sleep, And We Don’t Get Enough

Many of us have experienced the effects of sleep deprivation: feeling tired and cranky, or finding it hard to concentrate. Sleep is more important for our brains than you may realize. Although it may appear you’re “switching off” when you fall asleep, the brain is far from inactive. What we know from studying patterns of brain electrical activity is that while you sleep, your brain cycles through two main types of patterns: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and slow-wave sleep. Slow-wave sleep, which occurs more at the beginning of the night, is characterized by slow rhythms of electrical activity across large numbers of brain cells (occurring one to four times per second). As the night progresses, we have more and more REM sleep. During REM sleep we often have vivid dreams, and our brains ...
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Improve Your Muscle Strength A Few Minutes A Day – It’s Ok To Aim Lower With Your New Year’s Exercise Resolutions
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism, TOP FOUR

Improve Your Muscle Strength A Few Minutes A Day – It’s Ok To Aim Lower With Your New Year’s Exercise Resolutions

One of the most popular new year’s resolutions is to exercise more. Many of us set ambitious goals requiring a big, regular commitment, but then abandon them because they’re too much to fit in. Plans to exercise more in the new year are often broken within a month. So how can we exercise more regularly in the new year? If the aim is to build long-term fitness and health, the exercise must be sustainable. It may be achievable to resolve to do an extra few minutes of muscle-strengthening exercises every day. Our research suggests even one muscle contraction a day, for five days a week, can improve muscle strength if you keep it up for a month. Why do we need to exercise? Physical activity guidelines recommended we perform 150 minutes of moderately intense exercise a week, as well as at ...
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Masks Are Still A Tried-And-True Way To Help Keep Yourself And Others Safe As Viral Infections Skyrocket
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, IN OTHER NEWS, VIDEO REELS

Masks Are Still A Tried-And-True Way To Help Keep Yourself And Others Safe As Viral Infections Skyrocket

The cold and flu season of 2022 has begun with a vengeance. Viruses that have been unusually scarce over the past three years are reappearing at remarkably high levels, sparking a “tripledemic” of COVID-19, the flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This November’s national hospitalization levels for influenza were the highest in 10 years. We are infectious disease epidemiologists and researchers, and we have spent our careers focused on understanding how viruses spread and how best to stop them. To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we and our public health colleagues have had to quickly revive and apply decades of evidence on respiratory virus transmission to chart a path forward. Over the course of the pandemic, epidemiologists have established with new certainty the fact that ...
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A Hearing Specialist Offers Tips To Turn Down That Annoying Ringing, Buzzing And Hissing In The Ear – Aka Tinnitus
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

A Hearing Specialist Offers Tips To Turn Down That Annoying Ringing, Buzzing And Hissing In The Ear – Aka Tinnitus

Not a week goes by when I don’t see someone in my clinic complaining of a strange and constant phantom sound in one of their ears, or in both ears. The noise is loud, distracting and scary – and it doesn’t go away. The kind of sound varies from patient to patient: buzzing, blowing, hissing, ringing, roaring, rumbling, whooshing or a combination thereof. But whatever the sound, the condition is called tinnitus. And one thing tinnitus patients have in common is that the sound is not an external one. Instead, the noise is literally inside their head. As a neurotologist – that’s an ear specialist – I have seen approximately 2,500 tinnitus patients during my 20-year career. That might sound like a lot, but it shouldn’t be a surprise – up to 15% of the U.S. population experiences tinnitus. Tha...
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Twitter Lifted Its Ban On COVID Misinformation – Research Shows This Is A Grave Risk To Public Health
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

Twitter Lifted Its Ban On COVID Misinformation – Research Shows This Is A Grave Risk To Public Health

Twitter’s decision to no longer enforce its COVID-19 misinformation policy, quietly posted on the site’s rules page and listed as effective Nov. 23, 2022, has researchers and experts in public health seriously concerned about the possible repercussions. Health misinformation is not new. A classic case is the misinformation about a purported but now disproven link between autism and the MMR vaccine based on a discredited study published in 1998. Such misinformation has severe consequences for public health. Countries that had stronger anti-vaccine movements against diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccines faced a higher incidence of pertussis in the late-20th century, for example. As a researcher who studies social media, I believe that reducing content moderation is a significant step...
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5 Steps To Transform To A Morning Person
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR

5 Steps To Transform To A Morning Person

Not A Morning Person? Here Are Some Fruitful Tips For You The Tiring and tough routine has made us lazy and "not a morning person at all". We can put blame on all the technologies and hectic routines. But the fact is we had made ourselves badly addicted to all of these unhealthy activities. A little will power can make you ever young, energetic and productive person. Well! By adopting few simple and healthy activities we can make our morning and whole day active and productive. All we need is some focus and stimulation from the mind. Here are some tips to adopt on daily basis for a productive and healthy routine. 3 or 4 glass water. Yes! Right after getting out of bed one must drink enough water. It is just like washing each and every organ of the body. This is also a fact that it is d...
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