health

raw-milk-recalled-for-containing-bird-flu-virus,-california-reports

Raw milk recalled for containing bird flu virus, California reports

bird flu, California, H5N1, health, Infectious disease, influenza, pasteurization, raw milk, Science / /

Pasteurization

The milk-related risk of H5N1 is only from raw milk; pasteurized milk does not contain live virus and is safe to drink. Pasteurization, which heats milk to a specific temperature for a specified amount of time, kills a variety of bacteria and viruses, including bird flu. Influenza viruses, generally, are considered susceptible to heat treatments because they have an outer layer called an envelope, which can be destabilized by heat. Studies that have specifically looked at the effectiveness of heat-killing treatments against H5N1 have repeatedly found that pasteurization effectively inactivates the virus.

The advent of pasteurization is considered a public health triumph. Its adoption of a safe milk supply contributed to a dramatic reduction in infant deaths in the early 20th century. Before that, milkborne infections—including human and bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, salmonellosis, streptococcal infections, diphtheria, and “summer diarrhea”—were common killers of infants.

As such, public health officials have long advised people against consuming raw milk, which has no evidence-based health benefits. Raw milk consumption, meanwhile, is linked to higher rates of outbreaks from pathogens including Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, toxin-producing E. coli, Brucella, Campylobacter, and many other bacteria.

Risky drinking

Since H5N1 was found spreading among dairy cows in March, health experts have warned about the additional risk of consuming raw milk. Still, consumption of raw milk has continued, and surprisingly increased, as supporters of the dangerous practice have accused health officials of “fearmongering.”

When the retail sampling of Raw Farm’s milk came back positive, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) conducted testing at the company’s locations, which were negative for the virus. The CDFA will now begin testing Raw Farm’s milk for bird flu twice a week.

The recalled milk has lot code 20241109 and a “best by” date of November 27, 2024, printed on the packaging.​

“Drinking or accidentally inhaling raw milk containing bird flu virus may lead to illness,” California’s public health department said. “In addition, touching your eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands after touching raw milk with bird flu virus may also lead to infection.”

Some US dairy workers who contracted the virus from infected cows reported having had milk splash in their eyes and face. A common symptom of H5N1 infections in humans during the dairy outbreak has been conjunctivitis, aka eye inflammation.

Raw milk recalled for containing bird flu virus, California reports Read More »

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Surgeons remove 2.5-inch hairball from teen with rare Rapunzel syndrome

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Hair is resistant to digestion and isn’t easily moved through the digestive system. As such, it often gets lodged in folds of the gastric lining, denatures, and then traps food and gunk to form a mass. Over time, it will continue to collect material, growing into a thick, matted wad.

Of all the bezoars, trichobezoars are the most common. But none of them are particularly easy to spot. On CT scans, bezoars can be indistinguishable from food in the stomach unless there’s an oral contrast material. To look for a possible bezoar in the teen, her doctors ordered an esophagogastroduodenoscopy, in which a scope is put down into the stomach through the mouth. With that, they got a clear shot of the problem: a trichobezoar. (The image is here, but a warning: it’s graphic).

Tangled tail

But this trichobezoar was particularly rare; hair from the mottled mat had dangled down from the stomach and into the small bowel, which is an extremely uncommon condition called Rapunzel syndrome, named after the fairy-tale character who lets down her long hair. It carries a host of complications beyond acute abdominal pain, including perforation of the stomach and intestines, and acute pancreatitis. The only resolution is surgical removal. In the teen’s case, the trichobezoar came out during surgery using a gastrostomy tube. Surgeons recovered a hairball about 2.5 inches wide, along with the dangling hair that reached into the small intestine.

For any patient with a trichobezoar, the most important next step is to address any psychiatric disorders that might underlie hair-eating behavior. Hair eating is often linked to a condition called trichotillomania, a repetitive behavior disorder marked by hair pulling. Sometimes, the disorder can be diagnosed by signs of hair loss—bald patches, irritated scalp areas, or hair at different growth stages. But, for the most part, it’s an extremely difficult condition to diagnose as patients have substantial shame and embarrassment about the condition and will often go to great lengths to hide it.

Another possibility is that the teen had pica, a disorder marked by persistent eating of nonfood, nonnutritive substances. Intriguingly, the teen noted that she had pica as a toddler. But doctors were skeptical that pica could explain her condition given that hair was the only nonfood material in the bezoar.

The teen’s doctors would have liked to get to the bottom of her condition and referred her to a psychiatrist after she successfully recovered from surgery. But unfortunately, she did not return for follow-up care and told her doctors she would instead see a hypnotherapist that her friends recommended.

Surgeons remove 2.5-inch hairball from teen with rare Rapunzel syndrome Read More »

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Trust in scientists hasn’t recovered from COVID. Some humility could help.

Covid, health, humility, intellectual humility, public perception, public perception of science, research, Science, Trust / /

Study 3 essentially replicated study 2, but with the tweak that the articles varied whether the fictional scientist was male or female, in case gendered expectations affected how people perceived humility and trustworthiness. The results from 369 participants indicated that gender didn’t affect the link between IH and trust. Similarly, in study 4, with 371 participants, the researchers varied the race/ethnicity of the scientist, finding again that the link between IH and trust remained.

“Together, these four studies offer compelling evidence that perceptions of scientists’ IH play an important role in both trust in scientists and willingness to follow their research-based recommendations,” the authors concluded.

Next steps

In the final study involving 679 participants, researchers examined different ways that scientists might express IH, including whether the IH was expressed as a personal trait, limitations of research methods, or as limitations of research results. Unexpectedly, the strategies to express IH by highlighting limitations in the methods and results of research both increased perceptions of IH, but shook trust in the research. Only personal IH successfully boosted perceptions of IH without backfiring, the authors report.

The finding suggests that more research is needed to guide scientists on how best to express high IH. But, it’s clear that low IH is not good. “[W]e encourage scientists to be particularly mindful of displaying low IH, such as by expressing overconfidence, being unwilling to course correct or disrespecting others’ views,” the researchers caution.

Overall, Schumann said she was encouraged by the team’s findings. “They suggest that the public understands that science isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about asking the right questions, admitting what we don’t yet understand, and learning as we go. Although we still have much to discover about how scientists can authentically convey intellectual humility, we now know people sense that a lack of intellectual humility undermines the very aspects of science that make it valuable and rigorous. This is a great place to build from.”

Trust in scientists hasn’t recovered from COVID. Some humility could help. Read More »

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Are standing desks good for you? The answer is getting clearer.

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Whatever your office setup, the most important thing is to move.

Without question, inactivity is bad for us. Prolonged sitting is consistently linked to higher risks of cardiovascular disease and death. The obvious response to this frightful fate is to not sit— move. Even a few moments of exercise can have benefits, studies suggest. But in our modern times, sitting is hard to avoid, especially at the office. This has led to a range of strategies to get ourselves up, including the rise of standing desks. If you have to be tethered to a desk, at least you can do it while on your feet, the thinking goes.

However, studies on whether standing desks are beneficial have been sparse and sometimes inconclusive. Further, prolonged standing can have its own risks, and data on work-related sitting has also been mixed. While the final verdict on standing desks is still unclear, two studies out this year offer some of the most nuanced evidence yet about the potential benefits and risks of working on your feet.

Take a seat

For years, studies have pointed to standing desks improving markers for cardiovascular and metabolic health, such as lipid levels, insulin resistance, and arterial flow-mediated dilation (the ability of arteries to widen in response to increased blood flow). But it’s unclear how significant those improvements are to averting bad health outcomes, such as heart attacks. One 2018 analysis suggested the benefits might be minor.

And there are fair reasons to be skeptical about standing desks. For one, standing—like sitting—is not moving. If a lack of movement and exercise is the root problem, standing still wouldn’t be a solution.

Yet, while sitting and standing can arguably be combined into the single category of ‘stationary,’ some researchers have argued that not all sitting is the same. In a 2018 position paper published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, two health experts argued that the link between poor health and sitting could come down to the specific populations being examined and “the special contribution” of “sitting time at home, for example, the ‘couch potato effect.'”

The two researchers—emeritus professors David Rempel, formerly at the University of California, San Francisco, and Niklas Krause, formerly of UC Los Angeles—pointed to several studies looking specifically at occupational sitting time and poor health outcomes, which have arrived at mixed results. For instance, a 2013 analysis did not find a link between sitting at work and cardiovascular disease. Though the study did suggest a link to mortality, the link was only among women. There was also a 2015 study on about 36,500 workers in Japan, who were followed for an average of 10 years. That study found that there was no link between mortality and sitting time among salaried workers, professionals, and people who worked at home businesses. However, there was a link between mortality and sitting among people who worked in farming, forestry, and fishing industries.

Still, despite some murkiness in the specifics, more recent studies continue to turn up a link between total prolonged sitting—wherever that sitting occurs—and poor health outcomes, particularly cardiovascular disease. This has kept up interest in standing desks in offices, where people don’t always have the luxury of frequent movement breaks. And this, in turn, has kept researchers on their toes to try to answer whether there is any benefit to standing desks.

One study published last month in the International Journal of Epidemiology offers a clearer picture of how standing desks may relate to cardiovascular health risks. The authors, an international team of researchers led by Matthew Ahmadi at the University of Sydney in Australia, found that standing desks don’t improve heart health—but they don’t harm it, either, whereas sitting desks do.

Mitigating risks

For the study, the researchers tracked the health data of a little over 83,000 people in the UK over an average of about seven years. During the study, participants wore a wrist-based accelerometer device for at least four days. The devices were calibrated to determine when they were sitting, standing, walking, or running during the waking hours. With that data, the researchers linked their sitting, standing, and stationary (combined sitting and standing) times to health outcomes in their medical records.

The researchers focused on two categories of health outcomes: cardiovascular, covering coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke; and orthostatic circulatory disease events, including orthostatic hypotension (blood pressure drops upon standing or sitting), varicose veins, chronic venous insufficiency (veins in your legs don’t move blood back up to your heart), and venous ulcers. The reasoning for this second category is that prolonged sitting and standing may pose risks for developing circulatory diseases.

The researchers found that when participants’ total stationary time (sitting and standing) went over 12 hours per day, risk of orthostatic circulatory disease increased 22 percent per additional hour, while risk of cardiovascular disease went up 13 percent per hour.

For just sitting, risks increased every hour after 10 hours: for orthostatic circulatory disease, risk went up 26 percent every hour after 10 hours, and cardiovascular disease risk went up 15 percent. For standing, risk of orthostatic circulatory disease went up after just two hours, increasing 11 percent every 30 minutes after two hours of standing. But standing had no impact on cardiovascular disease at any time point.

“Contrary to sitting time, more time spent standing was not associated with a higher CVD [cardiovascular disease] risk. Overall, there was no association for higher or lower CVD risk throughout the range of standing duration,” the authors report.

On the other hand, keeping sitting time under 10 hours and standing time under two hours was linked to a weak protective effect against orthostatic circulatory disease: A day of nine hours of sitting and 1.5 of standing (for a total of 11.5 hours of stationary time) lowered risk of orthostatic circulatory disease by a few percentage points, the study found.

In other words, as long as you can keep your total stationary time under 12 hours, you can use a little standing time help you keep your sitting time under 10 hours and avoid increasing both cardiovascular and orthostatic risks, according to the data.

Consistent finding

It’s a very detailed formula to reduce the health risks of long days at the office, but is it set in stone? Probably not. For one thing, it’s just one study that needs to be replicated in a different population. Also, the study didn’t look at any specifics of occupational versus leisure standing and sitting times, let alone the use of standing desks specifically. The study also based estimates of people’s sitting, standing, and total stationary time on as little as just four days of activity monitoring, which may or may not have been consistent over the nearly seven-year average follow-up period.

Still, the study’s takeaway generally fits with a study published in January in JAMA Network Open. This study looked at the link between occupational sitting time, leisure physical activity, and death rates—both deaths from all causes and those specifically caused by cardiovascular disease. Researchers used a group of over 480,000 workers in Taiwan, who were followed for an average of nearly 13 years.

The workers who reported mostly sitting at work had a 16 percent increased risk of all-cause mortality and a 34 percent higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared with workers who did not sit at work. The workers who reported alternating between sitting and standing, meanwhile, did not have an increased risk of all-cause or cardiovascular disease mortality. The findings held after adjusting for health factors and looking at subgroups, including by sex, age, smokers, never-smokers, and people with chronic conditions.

That said, being highly active in leisure time appeared to offset the mortality risks among those who mostly sit at work. At the highest leisure-time activity levels reported, participants who mostly sit at work had comparable risks of all-cause mortality as those who alternated sitting and standing or were didn’t sit at work. Overall, the data suggested that keeping overall stationary time as low as possible and alternating sitting and standing to some extent at work can reduce risk.

The authors call for incorporating breaks in work settings and even specifically recommend allowing for standing and activity-permissive workstations.

The takeaway

While prolonged standing has its own risks, the use of standing desks at work can, to some extent, help lessen the risks of prolonged sitting. But, overall, it’s important to keep total stationary time as low as possible and exercise whenever possible.

Photo of Beth Mole

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

Are standing desks good for you? The answer is getting clearer. Read More »

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Teen in critical condition with Canada’s first human case of H5 bird flu

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A British Columbia teen who contracted Canada’s first known human case of H5 bird flu has deteriorated swiftly in recent days and is now in critical condition, health officials reported Tuesday.

The teen’s case was announced Saturday by provincial health officials, who noted that the teen had no obvious exposure to animals that could explain an infection with the highly pathogenic avian influenza. The teen tested positive for H5 bird flu at BC’s public health laboratory, and the result is currently being confirmed by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

The teen’s case reportedly began with conjunctivitis, echoing the H5N1 human case reports in the US. The case then progressed to fever and cough, and the teen was admitted to BC’s Children’s hospital late Friday. The teen’s condition varied throughout the weekend but had taken a turn for the worse by Tuesday, according to BC provincial health officer Bonnie Henry.

“This was a healthy teenager prior to this—so, no underlying conditions—and it just reminds us that in young people, this is a virus that can progress and cause quite severe illness,” Bonnie Henry said in a media briefing streamed by Global News on Tuesday.

Health officials in the province have opened an investigation to understand the source of the outbreak. Around three dozen contacts of the teen have been tested, and all have been negative. “The source of exposure is very likely to be an animal or bird and is being investigated by BC’s chief veterinarian and public health teams,” health officials noted in the announcement over the weekend. The teen was reportedly exposed to pets, including dogs, cats, and reptiles, but testing so far has been negative on them.

Teen in critical condition with Canada’s first human case of H5 bird flu Read More »

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Research monkeys still having a ball days after busting out of lab, policy say

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If you need any inspiration for cutting loose and relaxing this weekend, look no further than a free-wheeling troop of monkeys that broke out of their South Carolina research facility Wednesday and, as of noon Friday, were still “playfully exploring” with their newfound freedom.

In an update Friday, the police department of Yemassee, SC said that the 43 young, female rhesus macaque monkeys are still staying around the perimeter of the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Facility. “The primates are exhibiting calm and playful behavior, which is a positive indication,” the department noted.

The fun-loving furballs got free after a caretaker “failed to secure doors” at the facility.

Alpha Genesis staff have been keeping an eye on the escapees, trying to entice them back in with food. But, instead of taking the bait, the primates have been playing on the perimeter fence while still keeping in touch with the monkeys inside by cooing to them.

“They’re just being goofy monkeys jumping back and forth playing with each other,” Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard told CBS News Thursday. “It’s kind of like a playground situation here.”

Yemassee police note that the monkeys are very young and small—only about 6 or 7 pounds each. They have not been used for any testing yet, don’t carry any disease, and pose no health risk to the public. Still, area residents have been advised to keep their doors and windows locked in case the wee primates try to pay a visit.

This isn’t the first time—or even the second time—Alpha Genesis has had trouble keeping its monkeys under control. In 2018, the US Department of Agriculture fined the company $12,600 for violations between 2014 and 2016 that included four monkey breakouts. In those incidents, a total of 30 monkeys escaped. One was never found.

Research monkeys still having a ball days after busting out of lab, policy say Read More »

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After decades, FDA finally moves to pull ineffective decongestant off shelves

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In a long-sought move, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday formally began the process of abandoning oral doses of a common over-the-counter decongestant, which the agency concluded last year is not effective at relieving stuffy noses.

Specifically, the FDA issued a proposed order to remove oral phenylephrine from the list of drugs that drugmakers can include in over-the-counter products—also known as the OTC monograph. Once removed, drug makers will no longer be able to include phenylephrine in products for the temporary relief nasal congestion.

“It is the FDA’s role to ensure that drugs are safe and effective,” Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “Based on our review of available data and consistent with the advice of the advisory committee, we are taking this next step in the process to propose removing oral phenylephrine because it is not effective as a nasal decongestant.”

For now, the order is just a proposal. The FDA will open up a public comment period, and if no comments can sway the FDA’s previous conclusion that the drug is useless, the agency will make the order final. Drugmakers will get a grace period to reformulate their products.

Reviewed reviews

The slow-moving abandonment of phenylephrine is years in the making. The decongestant was originally approved by the FDA back in 1976, but it came to prominence after 2006. That was the year when the “Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005” came into effect, and pseudoephedrine—the main component of Sudafed—moved behind the pharmacy counter to keep it from being used to make methamphetamine. With pseudoephedrine out of easy reach at drugstores, phenylephrine became the leading over-the-counter decongestant. And researchers had questions.

In 2007, an FDA panel reevaluated the drug, which allegedly works by shrinking blood vessels in the nasal passage, opening up the airway. While the panel upheld the drug’s approval, it concluded that more studies were needed for a full assessment. After that, three large, carefully designed studies were conducted—two by Merck for the treatment of seasonal allergies and one by Johnson & Johnson for the treatment of the common cold. All three found no significant difference between phenylephrine and a placebo.

After decades, FDA finally moves to pull ineffective decongestant off shelves Read More »

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For fame or a death wish? Kids’ TikTok challenge injuries stump psychiatrists

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Case dilemma

The researchers give the example of a 10-year-old patient who was found unconscious in her bedroom. The psychiatry team was called in to consult for a suicide attempt by hanging. But when the girl was evaluated, she was tearful, denied past or recent suicide attempts, and said she was only participating in the blackout challenge. Still, she reported being in depressed moods, having feelings of hopelessness, having thoughts of suicide since age 9, being bullied, and having no friends. Family members reported unstable housing, busy or absent parental figures, and a family history of a suicide attempts.

If the girl’s injuries were unintentional, stemming from the poor choice to participate in the life-threatening TikTok challenge, clinicians would discharge the patient home with a recommendation for outpatient mental health care to address underlying psychiatric conditions and stressors. But if the injuries were self-inflicted with an intent to die, the clinicians would recommend inpatient psychiatric treatment for safety, which would allow for further risk assessment, monitoring, and treatment for the suspected suicide attempt.

It’s critical to make the right call here. Children and teens who attempt suicide are at risk of more attempts, both immediately and in the future. But to make matters even more complex, injuries from social media challenges have the potential to spur depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Those, in turn, could increase the risk of suicide attempts.

To keep kids and teens safe, the Ataga and Arnold call for more awareness about the dangers of TikTok challenges, as well as empathetic psychiatric assessments using kid-appropriate measurements. They also call for more research. While there are a handful of case studies on TikTok challenge injuries and deaths among kids and teens, there’s a lack of large-scale data. More research is needed to “demonstrate the role of such challenges as precipitating factors in unintentional and intentional injuries, suicidal behaviors, and deaths among children in the US,” the psychiatrists write.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

For fame or a death wish? Kids’ TikTok challenge injuries stump psychiatrists Read More »

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“Havard”-trained spa owner injected clients with bogus Botox, prosecutors say

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Mounting evidence

Multiple clients and employees told investigators that Fadanelli also said she is a registered nurse, which is false. Though she is a registered aesthetician, aestheticians are not permitted to administer injections or prescription drugs.

Investigators set up an undercover operation where an agent went in for a consultation, and Fadanelli provided a quote for a $450 Botox treatment. Investigators also obtained videos and images of Fadanelli performing injections. And the evidence points to those injections being counterfeit, prosecutors allege. Sales records from the spa indicate that Fadanelli performed 1,631 “Botox” injections, 95 “Sculptra” injections, and 990 injections of unspecified “filler,” all totaling over $933,000. But sales records from the manufacturers of the brand name drugs failed to turn up any record of Fadanelli or anyone else from her spa ever purchasing legitimate versions of the drugs.

Despite the mounting evidence against her, Fadanelli reportedly stuck to her story, denying that she ever told anyone she was a nurse and denying ever administering any injections. “When agents asked Fadanelli if she would like to retract or modify that claim if she knew there was evidence showing that she was in fact administering such products, she reiterated that she does not administer injections.”

Ars has reached to Fadanelli’s spa for comment and will update this story if we get a response. According to the affidavit, clients who received the allegedly bogus injections complained of bumps, tingling, and poor appearances, but no infections or other adverse health outcomes.

In a press release announcing her arrest, Acting United States Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy said: “For years, Ms. Fadanelli allegedly put unsuspecting patients at risk by representing herself to be a nurse and then administering thousands of illegal, counterfeit injections. … The type of deception alleged here is illegal, reckless, and potentially life-threatening.”

For a charge of illegal importation, Fadanelli faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. For each of two charges of knowingly selling or dispensing a counterfeit drug or counterfeit device, she faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

“Havard”-trained spa owner injected clients with bogus Botox, prosecutors say Read More »

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Drugmaker shut down after black schmutz found in injectable weight-loss drug

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It’s unclear how widely the pharmacy’s drugs were distributed. Fullerton Wellness could not be reached for comment.

Bigger battles

This is just the latest warning on weight-loss drugs from the FDA, which has repeatedly cautioned about quality and safety problems related to compounded versions of the drugs. The compounded drugs are intended to be essentially copycat versions of the blockbuster brand-name drugs. Compounding pharmacies can make copycat versions only as long as the drugs are in short supply, acting as a stopgap for patient access. But, with the popularity of the drugs and the high prices of the brand name versions, compounded formulations have become seen as affordable alternatives for many patients.

The situation has become a legal quagmire, with less-than-scrupulous compounding facilities drawing the ire of the FDA, and the big pharmaceutical companies fighting with their compounding competition. Eli Lilly, maker of Zepbound and Mounjaro (tirzepatide), and Novo Nordisk, maker of Wegovy and Ozempic (semaglutide), have both sued multiple compounding pharmacies over copycat versions of their lucrative drugs, which they claim are unsafe and fraudulent.

Meanwhile, in October, a trade organization for large-scale compounding pharmacies sued the FDA after the regulator removed tirzepatide from the drug shortage list, a move that blocks compounders from making copycat versions of the drug. But, the FDA quickly backpedaled in court, saying it would reconsider the removal and would allow compounders to keep producing off-brand versions in the meantime.

Also in October, Novo Nordisk asked the FDA to stop letting compounders make copycat versions of semaglutide, arguing that the drug is too complex for compounders to make and poses too many safety risks to patients. In response, the trade organization for compounders, the Outsourcing Facilities Association, submitted a letter to the FDA asking it to require Novo Nordisk to provide an economic impact statement to assess the cost and price increases that could occur if semaglutide were no longer available through compounding pharmacies.

Drugmaker shut down after black schmutz found in injectable weight-loss drug Read More »

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Here are 3 science-backed strategies to rein in election anxiety

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In this scenario, I encourage my patients to move past that initial thought of how awful it will be and instead consider exactly how they will respond to the inauguration, the next day, week, month, and so on.

Cognitive flexibility allows you to explore how you will cope, even in the face of a negative outcome, helping you feel a bit less out of control. If you’re experiencing a lot of anxiety about the election, try thinking through what you’d do if the undesirable candidate takes office—thoughts like “I’ll donate to causes that are important to me” and “I’ll attend protests.”

Choose your actions with intention

Another tool for managing your anxiety is to consider whether your behaviors are affecting how you feel.

Remember, for instance, the goal of 24-hour news networks is to increase ratings. It’s in their interest to keep you riveted to your screens by making it seem like important announcements are imminent. As a result, it may feel difficult to disconnect and take part in your usual self-care behavior.

Try telling yourself, “If something happens, someone will text me,” and go for a walk or, better yet, to bed. Keeping up with healthy habits can help reduce your vulnerability to uncontrolled anxiety.

Post-Election Day, you may continue to feel drawn to the news and motivated to show up—whether that means donating, volunteering, or protesting—for a variety of causes you think will be affected by the election results. Many people describe feeling guilty if they say no or disengage, leading them to overcommit and wind up overwhelmed.

If this sounds like you, try reminding yourself that taking a break from politics to cook, engage with your family or friends, get some work done, or go to the gym does not mean you don’t care. In fact, keeping up with the activities that fuel you will give you the energy to contribute to important causes more meaningfully.The Conversation

Shannon Sauer-Zavala, Associate Professor of Psychology & Licensed Clinical Psychologist, University of Kentucky. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Here are 3 science-backed strategies to rein in election anxiety Read More »

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As hospitals struggle with IV fluid shortage, NC plant restarts production

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The western North Carolina plant that makes 60 percent of the country’s intravenous fluid supply has restarted its highest-producing manufacturing line after being ravaged by flooding brought by Hurricane Helene last month.

While it’s an encouraging sign of recovery as hospitals nationwide struggle with shortages of fluids, supply is still likely to remain tight for the coming weeks.

IV fluid maker Baxter Inc, which runs the Marion plant inundated by Helene, said Thursday that the restarted production line could produce, at peak, 25 percent of the plant’s total production and about 50 percent of the plant’s production of one-liter IV solutions, the product most commonly used by hospitals and clinics.

“Recovery progress at our North Cove site continues to be very encouraging,” Baxter CEO and President José Almeida said. “In a matter of weeks, our team has advanced from the depths of Hurricane Helene’s impact to restarting our highest-throughput manufacturing line. This is a pivotal milestone, but more hard work remains as we work to return the plant to full production.”

Overall, Baxter said it is ahead of its previously projected timeline for getting the massive plant back up and running. Previously, the company said it had aimed to produce 90–100 percent of some products by the end of the year. Still, the initial batches now under production are expected to start shipping in late November at the earliest.

One of the many challenges to restoring the facility was the lack of access to the site; Helene had damaged an access bridge. In its latest announcement, Baxter said that a temporary bridge—built with support from North Carolina’s Department of Transportation and the federal Administration of Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR)—has allowed the transport of more than 885 truckloads of existing inventory out of the plant since Helene.  A second temporary bridge, expected to be completed in early November, will enable further access of traffic and equipment to the site.

As hospitals struggle with IV fluid shortage, NC plant restarts production Read More »