Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

Can Hearing About Someone Else’s Problems Fix Your Own?

Would you spend $40 on a meal? A workout class? A new T-shirt? To chat with a stranger about their life experience for half an hour?

The last is the business model behind Fello, a new app that pays people to tell their life stories to others going through the same stuff. Just like Uber and Airbnb let people make cash from their cars and homes, Fello lets you monetize your hard-won wisdom.

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The idea is to provide “a new type of support that you don’t get from going to a generic support group, perusing Reddit or Facebook groups, or meeting with a therapist,” says CEO Alyssa Pollack, a former executive at Uber Eats. The person on the other side of your screen isn’t a mental-health professional, but can speak to “the specific ‘lived experience’ that you’re going through.”

Though the app is new, the idea is not. Fello and other platforms like it are selling something that humans have long gotten for free: peer support. “It’s something that people natura..

What to Do if You Have Sleep Apnea

As a young physician in Sydney, Australia in 1979, Colin Sullivan conceived of an experiment to help people with nighttime breathing issues. After several months of waiting for the right patient, he met a construction worker so tired from disrupted overnight sleep that he habitually dozed off on the scaffolding.

The man had sleep apnea—his airway was obstructed, which interrupted breathing at night, waking him repeatedly. But he refused Sullivan’s recommendation for surgery to create an opening in the neck, the only known treatment back then.

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The day had come for Sullivan to try a contraption he’d invented, a “big swimming pool pipe attached to a blower,” as he describes it. Through a mask, the device delivered air into the man’s nose, creating a slight increase in pressure that kept his airway open. He slept peacefully for the first time in years.

“It was an amazing result,” Sullivan says. At the time, though, he “never imagined” there’d be such ..

Teens Are Stuck on Their Screens. Here’s How to Protect Them

Screens are an integral part of modern teenage life, but there’s little regulation of the types of content teens see and how much they view. Research shows that while online videos can be useful for educating and connecting young people, excessive viewing—and the sneaky ways streaming, social media, and other internet platforms try to attract and engage teens—can negatively affect their emotional and psychological development.

Who’s responsible for making sure that teens use their screens safely: The content creators who build algorithms that target and keep adolescents glued to them? Parents who should establish limits on the amount of time and type of videos their children watch? Policymakers who can hold creators and video platforms more accountable for how they provide their content?

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In a new report released by the American Psychological Association (APA), experts highlight the latest science in understanding how video viewing of all kinds affec..

How Pulmonary Rehab Can Help Improve Asthma Symptoms

Nearly 8% of Americans have asthma. Given that there’s no cure for the condition, it’s important that if you have it, you find ways to manage your breathing symptoms and limit your flare-ups in order to maintain as high a quality of life as possible.

Treatments for asthma include reliever inhalers, long-term inhalers, and pills—and in many cases, these are enough to keep the condition in check. But when a person’s asthma is severe or isn’t managed well by typical protocols, they may be a good candidate for pulmonary rehabilitation.

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What is pulmonary rehab?

You might benefit from pulmonary rehab if your asthma disrupts your ability to perform daily activities, even while you’re taking asthma medications. Pulmonary rehab is a supervised intervention that helps people live—and even thrive—with chronic breathing-related conditions. Many assume that the program mostly involves exercises designed to strengthen the lungs. While physical activity is indeed..

10 Things to Say When Someone Asks Why You’re Still Single

More Americans are remaining single—but hold off on your offers to set up a blind date or introduce them to your ridiculously good-looking cousin. Many freely choose their single status. “Lots of people really like being single and want to stay single, and not because they have issues or have had awful romantic experiences,” says Bella DePaulo, a social scientist and author of Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. “They’re drawn to what single life has to offer, including the freedom to follow your interests and passions and live a psychologically rich life.”

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That, however, does little to dissuade nosy friends and family members from firing off intrusive questions. Here’s exactly what to say the next time someone asks you about your relationship status.

“I’m so glad you asked!”

DePaulo, 71, feels fortunate that she’s been single her entire life. “I’m so proud that I’ve never given in to the pressures to get marri..

The Surprising Benefits of Talking Out Loud to Yourself

When Ellie Shoja goes for a walk, she slips on her headphones and starts talking—but there’s no other voice ricocheting through the speakers. It’s merely a convenient way to disguise the fact that she’s engrossed in a conversation with herself.

“As far back as I can remember, I’ve talked to myself,” says Shoja, 43, who lives in Los Angeles. “If I’m processing something, I’m 100% talking it out with myself. When I put my earbuds in on my walk, that allows me to gesture and be able to talk a little more loudly, instead of whispering.”

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When Shoja wakes up in the morning or hits the gym, that dialogue turns motivational: “You got this. You can do it.” Throughout the day, she talks out ideas for the writing group she runs, as though she were in conversation with another person; when she makes dinner, she chatters away whether someone else is in the kitchen or not. She credits the habit with helping her achieve a state of calmness and confidence. “It slows..

What an HPV Diagnosis Really Means

Being diagnosed with human papillomavirus (HPV) can be upsetting, to say the least. Many people already know about the link between HPV and various forms of cancer. But there’s no reason to freak out, because the diagnosis may not mean what you think it does.

For starters, it does not mean you have cancer—or that you’re destined to develop it.

“The most important thing to know is: HPV is really common—approximately 80% of people are infected with it at some point in their lives,” says Dr. Kathleen Schmeler, a professor of gynecologic oncology and associate vice president of global oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “The majority of people clear it and probably never even know they had it.” Even among those for whom the virus doesn’t go away on its own, “the majority of people don’t go on to get cancer,” Schmeler says.

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More often than not, women discover they have HPV after having an HPV test and a Pap test to screen for c..

There’s an E. Coli Outbreak in Organic Carrots

NEW YORK — An outbreak of E. coli has infected dozens of people who ate bagged organic carrots, and one person died from the infection.

Altogether, 39 people were infected and 15 were hospitalized in 18 states after eating organic whole and baby carrots sold by Grimmway Farms, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday.

Grimmway Farms, based in Bakersfiled, California, has recalled the carrots, which included whole and baby organic carrots sold in bags under multiple brand names including 365, Cal-Organic, Nature’s Promise, O-Organics, Trader Joe’s and Wegmans, among others.

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The carrots are no longer in stores, but the CDC is warning consumers to not eat recalled bag carrots and to check their refrigerators or freezers and throw away any carrots that fit the description. Most of the infected people live in New York, Minnesota and Washington, followed by California and Oregon, although infections have been reported in states t..

Public Health Experts Alarmed at Trump’s Pick of RFK Jr. to Lead HHS

President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who spreads medical disinformation and conspiracy theories, to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) alarmed public health experts who say that Kennedy’s potential confirmation could have dire consequences for the state of health and science in America.

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“I can’t think of a darker day for public health and science itself than the election of Donald Trump and the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health,” says Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

“To say that RFK Jr. is unqualified is a considerable understatement,” he continues. “The minimum qualification for being the head of the Department of Health and Human Services is fidelity to science and scientific evidence, and he spent his entire career fomenting distrust in public health and undermining science at eve..

What to Know About Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Long History of Promoting Anti-Vaccine Views

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was building up a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, and becoming one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines.

Now, President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates vaccines.

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Read More: Here Are the New Members of Trump’s Administration So Far

Kennedy has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. He has also pushed other conspiracy theories, such as that COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, comments he later said were taken out of context. He has repeatedly brought up the Holocaust when discussing vaccines and public health mandates.

No medical intervention is risk-free. But doctors and researchers have proven that risks from disease are generally far greater than t..