Leslie Glass's Blog, page 394
February 17, 2018
Too Many Catastrophes Can Lead To Change
If you’re feeling discouraged, frightened, and hurt right now, you’re not alone. Catastrophe after catastrophe in our nation have resulted in greater, not less, chaos. Greater incompetence, not more efficiency and caring solutions have been the sad result. The onslaught of tragedies like deadly hurricanes and fires, addiction/opioid deaths, and school shootings is negatively impacting every single one of us. The cutting of desperately needed resources is negatively impacting every single one of us. The demonization of a wide variety of people we love and need to make us a powerful nation is impacting every single one of us. It takes a lot to make me cry. I’m crying now. There’s an analogy coming. Tears have never worked.
We’re Exactly Like A Family Caught In Addiction
In addiction little by little families are influenced by to mention but a few: gaslighting, manipulation, character changes, and secrets that confuse reality. This is also happening nationally right now with political hypocrisy, fake news and denial. As a nation, we are operating with the dysfunction of a family caught up in addiction. Make no mistake about that. The Russians have influenced our elections and beliefs, affairs and cover-ups at the highest level are accepted. We have come to accept what was formerly unacceptable. This is exactly the way addiction takes families down. Call it gaslighting. Call it Denial. Call it Narcissism. The end result is unimaginable suffering for millions and millions of people.
Denial Breeds Dysfunction
The family in addiction is manipulated by promises, lies, threats, one crisis after another. People long for just one single day of peace, and peace doesn’t come. Confusion about right and wrong, denial that behavior or actions or policies are wrong, blaming others and taking no responsibility are all symptoms of addiction. As politicians keep doing and saying the same things over and over, as citizens we can’t expect different results. Like families caught up in untreated addiction with no place to go for help, our country is unable to cope on any level.
How Do We Recover
How do we address dysfunction wherever it is? In families, we stop keeping secrets. We stop thinking things are going to get better by themselves. We stop enabling the people who lie to us or hurt us. We get the facts and act on the facts. We don’t accept blame for things we didn’t do. We make others take responsibility for the things they’ve done wrong. We examine our own motives and see what part we’re playing in the dysfunction. We don’t accept the unacceptable. Period. We end the hypocrisy. The people have the power to stop wars, demand equality, and get help for AIDS and Breast Cancer. We have the power to fix many different kinds of issues when we want to.
Transformational Change Occurs When People Unconditionally Demand It
For decades we’ve been sending addicts to prison. We haven’t treated addicts either in prison or in our communities. We haven’t taught families how to cope with addiction. We haven’t given accessible resources to those looking for help. Addiction treatment protocols are outdated, and don’t work. People get out of prison and do the same things all over again. Kids in high school aren’t taught anything useful about substances, colleges don’t seem to care about the safety of their undergraduates. All of these components and many more have allowed addiction to worsen.
Are we ready to address what’s wrong in government? When we’re ready to do that, we’ll be ready to address real solutions for addiction, as well.
The post Too Many Catastrophes Can Lead To Change appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
Rebuilding Character In Recovery
The devastating effects of addiction on physical/emotional health and social functioning have been meticulously catalogued, but far less attention has been given to its toll on character and the role character reconstruction plays in the recovery process. A recent rereading of David Brook’s The Road to Character has spurred this reflection on character and addiction recovery.
All diseases have the potential to distort character—particularly in shrinking one’s world to a state of near-complete self-absorption (as observed by Samuel Johnson in 1783). But addiction is unique within the annals of medical disorders in the extremes to which one’s unique essence is distorted as the disorder progresses. By radically reordering personal priorities, addiction ultimately sacrifices all other personal commitments and aspirations to serve this higher need. It shrinks one’s world and hollows one out, leaving only this insatiable need and the painful consequences of serving it as the center of one’s self.
Addiction medicine—actually all medicine—is ill-equipped to address such pathologies of character and to fill the void once drugs are removed from the center of an addicted patient’s life. The person seeking addiction recovery is left with this same challenge: How does one escape such chemically-induced narcissism within a culture that, not just worships the self, but has itself become a “selfie culture.”
This dilemma is well-illustrated by distinctions between the terms remission and recovery. The former term is used in medicine and clinical research to depict the amelioration of addiction. In short, it says the patient once met, but no longer meets, the diagnostic criteria for a substance use disorder. Remission is further specified by duration of symptom suppression, e.g., early remission (3 months not meeting diagnostic criteria) or sustained remission (more than a year not meeting such criteria).
Remission does not necessarily mean that alcohol or other drug (AOD) use has ceased or that all related problems have disappeared, only that any remaining use or problems are now below the threshold of diagnosis. Remission eliminates or reduces AOD problems to subclinical levels but may leave the remitted patient with an overwhelming sense of emptiness and disconnection.
In contrast, the term recovery, used more frequently by those with lived experience of having survived addiction, is often used to suggest a process of change far beyond the removal of alcohol and other drugs from an otherwise unchanged life. It depicts the process of moving through and beyond remission to refill oneself, develop depth of character, and propel one towards relationships and contributions that reach beyond the self. In some recovery circles, remission without “recovery” is even castigated as a shallow level of achievement (e.g. a “dry drunk” lacking “emotional sobriety”). In such circles, remission is viewed as the temporary suppression of symptoms (a process of subtraction) where recovery is viewed as the process through which the surviving person is transformed (processes of addition and multiplication).
Remission can be an act of self-assertion; but recovery, this larger achievement of global health and functioning, often comes through an embrace of one’s limitations and transcendence of self. It involves the acceptance of one’s brokenness (discovering in Kurtz and Ketcham’s language, the spirituality of imperfection); the practice of restraint and moderation in our thoughts, feelings, and actions; and finding a purpose for one’s survival. Recovery in this view requires replacing the “I” language of alienation with the “we” language of human connection—shedding the “selfie culture” and embracing a culture of humility, tolerance, interdependence, and community. It involves, as David Brooks suggests, shifting the focus from the exclusive needs of self to needs of the world, e.g., reframing the question, “What do I want from life?” to “What does life want from me?”
Awareness of imperfection and limitation allows us, through becoming “strong in the weak places,” to use adversities of character to build depth of character. Such depth is about far more than character reconstruction as a monument to self-fulfillment; it is about character in service to the larger needs of the world. To achieve this shift, Brooks suggests the need for “redemptive assistance”—resources beyond the self. The courage to face one’s empty self and the humility to reach out to others are the first steps in seeing ourselves not as the center of the universe and instead discovering how our small story fits into a much larger story. To recognize our brokenness and to heal in this way turns adversity and suffering into a transcendent purpose or sacred calling—finding our place within the arch of history and committing ourselves to “tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime” (p. 264).
Such a process requires something quite different than getting “into ourselves” through therapies rife with intrapersonal self-exploration and whose aims are to increase self-knowledge, self-esteem, and self-expression. It may instead require two quite different processes: 1) cultivating self-skepticism, humility, and tolerance; and 2) getting out of ourselves, e.g. seeking resources, relationships, and service activities beyond the self. The former strategy requires recognizing our flawed nature and quieting the roar of our own ego to the extent that we can actually listen to and experience other people—what at its best Brooks calls a “ministry of presence.” The latter strategy involves transforming recovery into a heroic journey that serves a larger purpose, while maintaining distrust of self and avoiding turning even the most righteous cause into a vehicle for self-adulation.
Extreme narcissism, self-will run riot in language of Alcoholics Anonymous, is the essence of addiction regardless of whether one sees this trait as a cause or consequence of addiction, regardless of whether that entrapment in self is manifested in grandiosity and acts of exploitation or in self-hatred and self-harm. It is a paradoxical entrapment that combines self-absorption and self-inflation on the one hand with self-hatred and deteriorating self-care on the other. Escaping these Janus faces of addiction may require the shift from getting deeper into oneself to finally getting out of oneself. That journey from the abyss to the world is what builds character. That journey is the essence of recovery and what distinguishes recovery from remission. We are learning a lot about the prevalence and pathways of remission through advances in addiction research; the processes of recovery have yet to fully arrive as a subject of scientific investigation.
Many of our addiction treatments, including an expanding menu of medications, can facilitate remission; few of those treatments offer hope for the long-term process of character reconstruction to achieve recovery. Men and women seeking the latter must look to other contexts for such support.
William (“Bill”) White
Emeritus Senior Research Consultant at Chestnut Health System
Recovery Historian
The post Rebuilding Character In Recovery appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
February 16, 2018
Medical Marijuana Benefits Overstated
In a packed room at the ASAM conference last year, doctors heard that there was not enough evidence to support medical marijuana except for a few illnesses. Now studies in Canada have come to the same conclusion.
Published in Canadian Family Physician, “Simplified Guideline for Prescribing Medical Cannabinoids in Primary Care states.
There is limited evidence to support the reputed benefits of medical marijuana for many conditions, and what benefits do exist may be balanced out or even outweighed by the harms.
“While enthusiasm for medical marijuana is very strong among some people, good-quality research has not caught up,”said Mike Allan, director of evidence-based medicine at the University of Alberta and project lead for the guideline.
The guideline was created after an in-depth review of clinical trials involving medical cannabis and will be distributed to roughly 30,000 clinicians across Canada. It was overseen by a committee of 10 individuals, supported by 10 other contributors, and peer reviewed by 40 others, each a mixture of doctors, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, nurses and patients. The review examined cannabinoids for the treatment of pain, spasticity, nausea and vomiting, as well as their side-effects and harms.
Researchers found that in most cases the number of randomized studies involving medical cannabis is extremely limited or entirely absent. The size and duration of the studies that do exist are also very narrow in scope.
“In general we’re talking about one study, and often very poorly done,” said Allan. “For example, there are no studies for the treatment of depression. For anxiety, there is one study of 24 patients with social anxiety in which half received a single dose of cannabis derivative and scored their anxiety doing a simulated presentation. This is hardly adequate to determine if lifelong treatment of conditions like general anxiety disorders is reasonable.”
According to the guideline, there is acceptable research for the use of medical cannabinoids to treat a handful of very specific medical conditions. They include chronic neuropathic (nerve) pain, palliative cancer pain, spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis or spinal cord injury, and nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. Even in those specific cases, the benefits were found to be generally minor.
For nerve pain, 30 per cent of patients given a placebo saw a moderate improvement in their pain while 39 per cent experienced the same effect while on medical cannabinoids. In patients with muscle spasticity, 25 per cent of those taking a placebo saw a moderate improvement compared to 35 per cent on medical cannabis. The use of medical cannabis was best supported in its use for chemotherapy patients experiencing nausea and vomiting. Just under half of patients using cannabinoids for their symptoms had an absence of nausea and vomiting compared to 13 per cent on placebo.
“Medical cannabinoids should normally only be considered in the small handful of conditions with adequate evidence and only after a patient has tried of number of standard therapies,” said Allan. “Given the inconsistent nature of medical marijuana dosing and possible risks of smoking, we also recommend that pharmaceutical cannabinoids be tried first before smoked medical marijuana.”
While the researchers found evidence supporting the use of medical cannabinoids to be limited, side-effects were both common and consistent. About 11 per cent of patients were not able to tolerate medical cannabinoids, versus three per cent of those taking placebo. Common effects included sedation (50 per cent versus 30 per cent), dizziness (32 per cent versus 11 per cent) and confusion (nine per cent versus two per cent).
“This guideline may be unsatisfactory for some, particularly those with polarized views regarding medical cannabinoids,” said Allan.
He added that those who oppose the use of cannabinoids for medical therapy may be disappointed that the guideline considers medical cannabinoids in specific cases. Others, who feel cannabinoids are highly effective and don’t pose any risk, may be frustrated that the guideline doesn’t advocate their use sooner or for a broader range of conditions.
“Better research is definitely needed — randomized control trials that follow a large number of patients for longer periods of time. If we had that, it could change how we approach this issue and help guide our recommendations.”
Content originally published by Science Daily
The post Medical Marijuana Benefits Overstated appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
Stop Blaming School Shootings on Mental Illness
American Psychological Association President Jessica Henderson Daniel has a message for those blaming Wednesday’s deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., on mental illness: Think twice.
“While law enforcement is still piecing together the shooter’s motives, some public figures and news reports are focusing on his mental health,” Daniel said in a statement Friday. “It is important to remember that only a very small percentage of violent acts are committed by people who are diagnosed with, or in treatment for, mental illness.”
Many were quick to scrutinize the alleged shooter’s mental health in the wake of Wednesday’s tragedy, particularly in light of reports that he may have sought treatment for mental health issues in the past. President Donald Trump, for one, called the suspect “mentally disturbed” in a tweet, and in his remarks to the nation Thursday promised to “tackle the difficult issue of mental health.”
Such rhetoric has become common following violent acts. A similar conversation emerged following a shooting in a Texas church last year, and after a school shooting in Kentucky last month. Aside from the ethical concerns associated with diagnosing any medical condition from afar, doing so may both oversimplify the issue of mass violence and stigmatize those struggling with mental health issues, Daniel said in her statement.
“Framing the conversation about gun violence in the context of mental illness does a disservice both to the victims of violence and unfairly stigmatizes the many others with mental illness,” she said. “More important, it does not direct us to appropriate solutions to this public health crisis.”
Content originally published by Time
The post Stop Blaming School Shootings on Mental Illness appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
Do You Play The Blame Game WIth Loved Ones
There are two parties in the addiction blame game. Those suffering from Substance Use Disorder (SUD) or Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), and their friends, family, and loved ones. Family and friends can be verbally brutal during periods of active addiction. They want their loved one to stop so badly, they do or say hurtful things trying to effect a positive change. They also may have selective memory and focus on the pain loved ones caused rather than the positive results that recovery had brought. Those with substance use disorders may remember harsh words and actions for the rest of their lives even if their family members actually supported them, paid for their treatment, and acted in honorable ways beyond what they said.
Here are 2 True-Life Examples Of Stopping The Blame Game.
Jennie was a heroin addict who drained her mother, Alice’s, resources over a decade and eventually stole her laptop and jewelry. Jennie has forgotten her own actions and the hurt they caused because it was addiction and not her. Unfortunately, she continues to verbally strike out at her mother of not loving or caring for her enough while she was using. Jennie specifically won’t forgive her mother for not traveling 100 miles every week to bring her soft toilet paper when she was in jail on drug charges. Alice feels guilty enough about Jennie’s drug journey, and Jennie anger about the past keeps her nervous and worried about what she should be doing better now. Resolution Alice goes to Al-Anon to learn not to engage with Alice when she complains. While Jennie is not in emotional recovery, Alice is taking care of herself.
Dan is a well-meaning father who constantly reminded his son, Peter, a recovering addict of 13 years, that he has not fulfilled his potential and could be doing so much better in life. This constant rebuke was like opening old wounds for Dan every time they talked or met. In fact, Peter started a small business, is busy and engaged in his community, and leads a successful life that he enjoys to the fullest. Resolution. Dan saw a therapist to ease the tension in their relationship. Dan began to understand that his expectations for his son were the problem. Peter is happy and successful on his own terms even if he isn’t doing what his father planned for him. When Dan stopped talking about his own feelings and accepted reality, they became close friends.
The blame game whatever form it takes is juicy and gets you going. But engaging in it is keeps the conflict, tension and unhappiness going. If you don’t blame others or react when others blame you. There’s nothing to fight about. Game Over.
Quiz: When You’re Triggered What Do You Do?
You’re Dan’s girlfriend and see Dan smoking at a party when he promised not to smoke. You remember that he is a recovering addict and panic thinking crack is next.
1. Do you remind him that he’s an addict and this is the slippery slope to relapse? 2. Do you tell him smoking is bad for him? 3. Do you ask what’s up with the smoking? Just a neutral question.
You’re Gretchen’s mother. You see Gretchen eying your purse. You’ve just been to the bank and have some cash for errands. Gretchen used to steal this cash for drugs years ago. Gretchen knows you and that you are about to say something. 1. Do you panic and yell at her to get away from your purse as you have done many times in the past? 2. Do you ask her if she needs anything? 3. Do you make a point of getting up to move your purse?
You’re Adam’s sister. You hear that Adam is telling everyone he knows that you are to blame for much of what he suffered while an addict. You have that heart-stopping desire to strike back with stories about what he did to you. 1. You tell the world that he’s a lying jerk. 2. You heap some hurt onto him via his girlfriend and Facebook. 3. You know the blame game is a waste of time, shrug it off. You have your own life to live.
If you picked 3. 2. 3., you know how to stop the blame game. If you picked some other answers, you’re still playing the game, and probably still getting into some fights.
In the Blame Game there are no winners and everyone ends up hurt. Finding ways to stop playing is the best game of all.
The post Do You Play The Blame Game WIth Loved Ones appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
February 15, 2018
Does Social Media Displace Human Contact
Echoing concerns that grew with the World Wide Web itself a decade earlier, the rise of social media has stoked fears of ‘social displacement’ — the alienation of people from friends and family in favor of Facebook and Twitter. A new study goes a fair distance toward debunking that notion.
A new study co-authored by a University of Kansas professor goes a fair distance toward debunking that notion.
Associate Professor of Communication Studies Jeffrey Hall says his new study, published in the journal Information, Communication & Society, shows no evidence for the proposition that social media crowd out face-to-face communication with those who ought to matter most — our close friends and family members. On the contrary.
“I’m trying to push back on the popular conception of how this works,” Hall said. “That’s not to say overuse of social media is good, but it’s not bad in the way people think it is.”
In their paper “Two tests of social displacement through social media use,” Hall and then-KU doctoral students Michael W. Kearney and Chong Xing performed two unique studies.
In the first, they compared data sets from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth from 2009 and 2011, to see whether there was any decrease in interpersonal contact that could be correlated with increased use of social media Spoiler alert: There was no such relationship.
Hall said the young adults — chosen to be representative of Americans of their age as a whole — tracked in the LSAY “are squarely in the middle of Generation X. What was really convenient was the questions about social media use were asked right when Facebook was hitting its inflection point of adoption, and the main adopters in that period were Gen Xers.”
However, Hall said, “It was not the case at all that social media adoption or use had a consistent effect on their direct social interactions with people.” Direct interactions were defined as getting out of one’s house, visiting friends, talking on the phone and attending meetings of groups and organizations (apart from religious groups).
“What was interesting was that, during a time of really rapid adoption of social media, and really powerful changes in use, you didn’t see sudden declines in people’s direct social contact,” Hall said. “If the social-displacement theory is correct, people should get out less and make fewer of those phone calls, and that just wasn’t the case.”
The second study was one the authors designed and executed themselves in 2015. They recruited 116 people, half adults and half college students, and texted them five times a day for five consecutive days, querying them each time about their use of social media and direct social contacts in the previous 10 minutes.
“What we found was that people’s use of social media had no relationship to who they were talking to later that day and what medium they were using to talk to people later that day,” Hall said. “Social media users were not experiencing social displacement. If they used social media earlier in the day, they were not more likely to be alone later. It’s also not the case that because they were using social media now, they were not interacting face to face later. … It doesn’t seem that, either within the same time period or projecting the future, that social media use indicates people not having close relationship partners in face-to-face or telephone conversation.”
Hall notes that several studies have questioned the displacement effect — both back in the early days of internet adoption and now — and yet the theory seems stubbornly resistant to debunking. Hall suspects that time spent pursuing social media has displaced older forms of media, e.g., reading the newspaper, browsing the internet or watching television. But pinning that down is a matter for a different study. For now, Hall is pleased to be able to challenge conventional wisdom using an old theory applied to new media.
Content Originally Published in Science Daily
The post Does Social Media Displace Human Contact appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
How to Make Friends as an Adult — and Why It’s Important
But modern life can become so busy that people forget to keep choosing each other. That’s when friendships fade, and there’s reason to believe it’s happening more than ever. Loneliness is on the rise, and feeling lonely has been found to increase a person’s risk of dying early by 26%–and to be even worse for the body than obesity and air pollution. Loneliness wreaks health havoc in many ways, particularly because it removes the safety net of social support. “When we perceive our world as threatening, that can be associated with an increase in heart rate and blood pressure,” says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University and author of the recent study linking loneliness to mortality. Over time, she says, these effects can lead to hypertension, which increases risk for cardiovascular disease.
The antidote is simple: friendship. It helps protect the brain and body from stress, anxiety and depression. “Being around trusted others, in essence, signals safety and security,” says Holt-Lunstad. A study last year found that friendships are especially beneficial later in life. Having supportive friends in old age was a stronger predictor of well-being than family ties–suggesting that the friends you pick may be at least as important as the family you’re born into.
Easy as the fix may sound, it can be difficult to keep and make friends as an adult. But research suggests that you only need between four and five close pals. If you’ve ever had a good one, you know what you’re looking for. “The expectations of friends, once you have a mature understanding of friendship, don’t really change across the life course,” Rawlins says. “People want their close friends to be someone they can talk to, someone they can depend upon and someone they enjoy.”
If you’re trying to replenish a dried-up friendship pool, start by looking inward. Think back to how you met some of your very favorite friends. Volunteering on a political campaign or in a favorite spin class? Playing in a band? “Friendships are always about something,” says Rawlins. Common passions help people bond at a personal level, and they bridge people of different ages and life experiences.
Whatever you’re into, someone else is too. Let your passion guide you toward people. Volunteer, for example, take a new course or join a committee at your local religious center. If you like yoga, start going to classes regularly. Fellow dog lovers tend to congregate at dog runs. Using apps and social media–like Facebook to find a local book club–is also a good way to find simpatico folks.
Once you meet a potential future friend, then comes the scary part: inviting them to do something. “You do have to put yourself out there,” says Janice McCabe, associate professor of sociology at Dartmouth College and a friendship researcher. “There’s a chance that the person will say no. But there’s also the chance they’ll say yes, and something really great could happen.”
The process takes time, and you may experience false starts. Not everyone will want to put in the effort necessary to be a good friend.
Which is reason enough to nurture the friendships you already have–even those than span many miles. Start by scheduling a weekly phone call. “It seems kind of funny to do that, because we often think about scheduling as tasks or work,” says McCabe. “But it’s easy, especially as an adult, to lose track of making time for a phone call.” When a friend reaches out to you, don’t forget to tell them how much it means to you.
It’s never too late to start being a better pal. The work you put into friendships–both new and old–will be well worth it for your health and happiness.
This appears in the February 26, 2018 issue of TIME.
The post How to Make Friends as an Adult — and Why It’s Important appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
Flu Shot Glass I/3 Full Could Have Been Worse
This year’s flu shot is far from perfect, but it’s certainly better than nothing, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Preliminary data from five sites around the country suggest that people who got vaccinated this flu season reduced their risk of getting a serious case of influenza by 36%.
That figure covers all types of flu viruses circulating in the United States.
About two-thirds of the viruses going around this year are of the H3N2 variety — the one that’s associated with more hospitalizations and deaths. Those who got a flu shot reduced their risk of being laid low by an H3N2 strain by 25%.
If that seems modest, consider this: Australia’s flu shot reduced the risk of getting H3N2 by 10%, and Canada’s vaccine reduced that risk by 17%, according to preliminary estimates. Neither of those amounts was large enough to be considered statistically significant.
The 25% decline in the U.S., on the other hand, was too big to be due to chance, the CDC report said.
The vaccine did a better job of protecting people against H1N1 flu strains — it reduced that risk by 67%. The flu shot also made serious infections with influenza B strains 42% less likely.
The effectiveness of the American flu shot appears to vary with age. For instance, it reduced the risk of getting a serious case of any type of flu by 59% among children ages 6 months through 8 years. (The vaccine isn’t recommended for infants younger than 6 months of age.) For adults between the ages of 18 and 49, it reduced the risk of a serious flu by 33%.
Other age groups saw more modest degrees of vaccine effectiveness, ranging from 5% to 18%. But these risk reductions were too small for researchers to be sure they were more than a statistical fluke.
All these calculations were based on 4,562 children and adults who contracted an “acute respiratory illness” that was bad enough to send them to a doctor between Nov. 2, 2017, and Feb. 3, 2018. These patients were seen at the five universities and hospitals that make up the U.S. Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Network (Kaiser Permanente in Seattle, the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Wisconsin, the University of Michigan School in Ann Arbor, the University of Pittsburgh and Texas A&M University).
Respiratory specimens for all of these patients were sent to laboratories, and 38% of them came back positive for influenza.
Among the patients with influenza, 43% had gotten the 2017-2018 seasonal flu shot. Among the patients who didn’t have influenza, 53% received the vaccine.
The calculations of vaccine effectiveness— that is, how much the flu shot reduced one’s risk of getting the flu — take into account the age, sex, race, ethnicity and geographic location of patients, as well as their general health and how long they had a respiratory infection before they went to see a doctor.
With February halfway over and springtime nearly in sight, procrastinators might be feeling that it’s too late to get a flu shot. The CDC has two words for these people: It’s not.
“Several more weeks of influenza activity are likely,” the report authors warned. “Vaccination will still prevent influenza illness, including thousands of hospitalizations and deaths.”
During the 2014-2015 influenza season, the flu shot reduced the risk of serious illnesses by less than 20%. Even so, researchers estimated that the vaccine prevented somewhere between 11,000 and 144,000 flu-related hospitalizations and 300 to 4,000 flu-related deaths.
A final accounting of vaccine effectiveness will come out after the end of the flu season, which might occur as late as May.
The new study was published Thursday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The post Flu Shot Glass I/3 Full Could Have Been Worse appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
Why People Are Swimming in Freezing Water
Welcome to the fun and frigid world of cold-water swimming. The hobby is nothing new. It’s been around for centuries in chilly climes such as Russia and Finland, and people have been crossing the notoriously frosty, 21-mile-long English Channel without wet suits since at least the 1800s. The Coney Island Polar Bear Club hosted its first U.S. ocean dip in 1903. And while polar plunges have become relatively common, some of these swims are not for the faint of heart. Only 11 people in recorded history, for example, have completed the so-called Ice Zero: a mile-long swim in freezing water, held in places such as Antarctica, Russia and Northern Europe.
Communal cold-water plunges are a great way to build camaraderie–and chase better health. Jitka Tauferova, 76, belongs to a swimming club in the Czech Republic (as does everyone photographed on these pages). She says she has not gotten sick since she began cold-water swimming. “The last time I had flu was 25 years ago,” she says. “My back pain disappeared. Better blood circulation improves healing broken bones, and my heart is like a hammer. I feel great.”
She and like-minded swimmers may be onto something. Research has shown that swimming–the kind done in normal-temperature water, at least–is one of the best full-body workouts. It’s also ideal for older people and those with pain; swimming is not a weight-bearing activity, but it still delivers all the benefits of traditional aerobics, from strengthening the heart to brightening mood.
Scant research has explored the practice of swimming in cold water, but there is some evidence that it invigorates the body in unique ways. In a February case report published in the BMJ, a young man desperate for relief from chronic nerve pain went for a minute-long swim in chilly 51°F water. His pain immediately vanished–and didn’t return. “When I came out of the water, I realized the neuropathic pain had gone away,” he told researchers, who believe the shock of cold water could have somehow disrupted pain patterns in his body. “I couldn’t believe it.” Another study, in 2008, suggested that taking cold showers could ease depression symptoms and pain, possibly by raising levels of mood-regulating and painkilling chemicals in the blood and brain. A small 2011 study also found that when soccer players immersed themselves in cold water for five minutes after a game, they reported less fatigue and recovered better in the following days than athletes who didn’t take a cold plunge.
Of course, diving into frosty water comes with some real health risks too. When you enter very cold water, stress-hormone production increases and blood pressure rises, says Dr. Philip Green, a cardiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. In healthy people, these stress responses rarely pose a threat, and they’re responsible for the punchy thrill you get when you take a cold plunge. But in people who have a diagnosed or underlying heart condition, they can lead to dangerous cardiovascular problems, Green says.
Even for healthy people, extreme cold can be treacherous, says Robert Coker, a professor of biology, clinical nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a faculty member at the Institute of Arctic Biology. “It really has a dramatic physiological impact on you, if you’re not used to it,” Coker says. “When you fall in the water and it’s freezing, the first thing you do is kind of take a big gasp of air, and that causes you to hyperventilate. Your heart rate goes up.”
There’s also the risk of hypothermia, which can set in after 15 to 30 minutes in freezing water, Coker says. Loss of consciousness, disorientation and a drop in muscle function of up to 25% can occur even before that. “That could be the difference in being able to get yourself back up over the ice or not,” Coker says.
For these reasons, cold-water swimmers typically acclimate to the extreme temperatures by training in progressively chillier waters. Ice-swimming competitions are also often time-limited to protect against hypothermia.
The dangers aren’t enough to scare away people who love the adrenaline rush–including Ram Barkai, 60, who in 2009 co-founded the International Ice Swimming Association and is campaigning to get the sport into the Olympics.”It’s a sea of paradox: you dive into the ice, and it feels like you’re jumping into fire,” Barkai says. “It is beautiful, but deadly. It is hard and debilitating, but invigorating.”
Although Barkai must travel to places like Russia and Antarctica to swim in ice–his native South Africa is too temperate–he swims in cold water regularly. The high, he says, is enough to make him endure hazards like biting his frozen tongue or losing finger sensation for months at a time.
“You feel alive,” Barkai says. “Everything feels great. You feel healthy. And you didn’t have to take any drugs or drink a bottle of whiskey.”
–JAMIE DUCHARME, with reporting by Kate Samuelson
For more photos, visit time.com/coldwater
This appears in the February 26, 2018 issue of TIME.
The post Why People Are Swimming in Freezing Water appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
5 Ways Food Can Make You Feel Good
Food recovery turns out to be as important as sobriety. After two years of sobriety, I found myself 150 pounds overweight and miserable. I wasn’t eating to recover. I was eating the way I used to use substances. I’ve had food issues all my life. Now, without my trusted drugs of choice to ease my pain, the only solace I found was in food. I was sober, but binging my way into an early grave.
Bingeing Is A Food Addiction
I couldn’t understand why I was binging on copious amounts of highly processed foods: cakes, pastries, chocolate, breads, cheese. I’d spend time in meetings fantasizing about what I was going to get to eat on the way home. Sometimes, I’d leave the meeting early because I couldn’t wait to get to the store.
Food Recovery Means Addressing The Food Addiction
When I got help with food, and trained as a nutrition coach myself, I fully understood that bingeing behavior—just like addiction—was out of my control. It was my brain’s way of saying that I had a chemical imbalance, and it overrode the rational part of my brain rendering me somewhat powerless over my actions. Sound familiar? It is just the same as substance use disorder.
Certain foods can release the same chemicals as drugs. When we get sober, we simply transfer the addiction—but it is so subtle, that we don’t always realize that we’re doing it. And what makes matters worse is that we punish ourselves for it, and even label it as gluttony—a defect of character.
But, as I’ve explained, the brain is far more sophisticated than that. It has nothing to do with character defects, and everything to do with healing our whole selves by eating well. Food recovery for me has to be a holistic approach. I need to fuel my body in order to be well, and feel well. That is what gives me a lust for life; it is what helps me jump out of bed in the morning and seize the day—well, most days.
5 Ways To Eat For Food Recovery
Eat Fruits and vegetables: Foods high in nutrients–whole fruits and vegetables in a range of colors– can help speed up the healing process from the damage caused by substance use disorder.
Don’t Eat processed foods: Processed foods are anything that is packaged. Boxed or frozen meals: macaroni cheese, TV dinners, cookies, candy, sodas, pre-made sauces and dressings are all processed foods. By not eating them, you can avoid the energy spikes and crashes—which only create a craving for more. These foods are high in salt, sugar and trans fats which are not great for overall health. In fact, this food (also referred to as highly palatable) has been manipulated by scientists that much that they can override the rational part of your brain–this is why you look down and wonder how you’ve even a whole pack of cookies. Ditch cookies and TV dinners, in favor of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Eat These Good Mood Foods: Turkey, chicken, pumpkin seeds, nuts, oats, cottage cheese—contain tryptophan. This is used by the body to produce serotonin—a chemical which helps produce healthy sleep and a stable mood.
Amp Up Your Immunity: Fruits and vegetables in particular can improve immunity, thus warding off colds and viruses—or if you do get them, it can reduce the illness duration.
Eat whole, natural and unprocessed foods: They will reduce your risk of relapse due to depression and fatigue. Eating whole, natural, and unprocessed foods, your body is more likely to get both the nutrients and energy it needs to function optimally.
Need help with addiction? Recovery Guidance is a safe listing site that’s free for patients. Find treatment centers, physicians, and counselors near you without pressure.
The post 5 Ways Food Can Make You Feel Good appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.
