People born in the 1960s and 70s stand out as the generation most likely to die by suicide or drug poisoning, data shows.
Deaths by suicide and drugs highest among Generation X
Reply
Category Archives: Mind Building
Israeli flight attendant dies from measles
The woman fell ill during an El Al flight in April, amid a worldwide rise in cases of the disease.
Jameela Jamil Just Zoomed In on Her ‘Back Fat’ to Make a Big Point About Photoshopping
Jameela Jamil is known for not taking any BS and calling other celebrities out for airbrushing their photos. Now, it turns out, her voice really has made a difference.
On Sunday, Jamil shared a promotional photo from the final season of The Good Place, which showed her posing in a strapless yellow dress alongside her cast mates—in all her unairbrushed glory.
“Finally able to INSIST my image, even on billboards isn’t ever airbrushed,” she wrote in a Tweet. “I get backfat in Every. Single. Bra. And I used to hide/bin so many photos because of 'muffin tops.' Double chins/ 'imperfections' because I never saw them on people on TV.”
RELATED: Jameela Jamil Responds to Man Who Body Shamed Her at the Gym: 'I Don't Need Your Advice'
She also shared the post on Instagram, adding a lengthier caption to her original message, and addressing any issues anyone might have with her previous post. "I’m aware this may not seem that deep, or 'brave' but it’s a win for teenage and twenty something me who suffered with such obsessive body dysmorphia and fixation on anything society deemed a flaw," she wrote. "So it’s a little win for teenage anorexic me. Tag someone who needs to see this. We can break out of this prison of self hate together."
(Just a quick FYI: Body dysmorphia, or BDD, is a mental health condition that involves an unhealthy and excessive preoccupation with one’s physical appearance. It's also pretty common; an estimated 10 million people in the U.S. struggle with BDD, according to the International OCD Foundation.)
Jamil also went on to say how she believes her unairbrushed photo a step in the right direction for Hollywood in general. "I love to expose all the shit that happens in this industry, to make us all feel sad, so you can see that it’s not you who is the problem, it’s THEM," she wrote. "To any other actors, influencers or models that follow me, please join me in this and fight back against the use of airbrushing that makes others try to reach standards that we #ourselves can’t meet."
Her message received tons of support from fans, with dozens of followers commenting on how uplifting her post was.
“This is going to sound silly, but this kind of took my breath away,” one user responded. “Like. It was a mental gasp, and ‘Wait, but my bra fits me that way too!’ And then I teared up. Thank you @jameelajamil. You really are making a difference.”
RELATED: Jameela Jamil Slams Diet Culture and Quick-Fix Weight Loss on Social Media
But again, Jamil's no stranger to the world of body positivity. She has publicly called out the Kardashians for promoting diet teas and photoshopping their images. In February, she posted a photo to Instagram promoting a petition to remove weight loss products from social media.
"Please sign and share this petition wherever you can so we can get these bullshit diet/detox products off social media, where they are being peddled to unsuspecting young people who genuinely believe they will look like their idols if they take that shit," she wrote in her caption. "They don’t know about photoshop, surgeons, personal trainers and chefs and starvation diets all of which are how you achieve the aesthetic you are being sold."
We are so here for Jamil's message—and she just gave us yet another reason to be excited for the The Good Place finale.
To get more stories like this delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Real Wellness WomenIRL newsletter
Health24.com | How could red meat raise the risk of breast cancer?
Skipping that grilled T-bone and having chicken instead could reduce a woman’s risk of breast cancer, a new study suggests.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared red meat a probable carcinogen, and this new study adds breast cancer to a list of cancers linked to red meat, including beef, veal, pork, lamb and some game.
Breast cancer is the number one cancer among women worldwide.
While this study doesn’t prove that red meat causes breast cancer or that chicken prevents it, its lead author suggests the switch is worth considering.
A simple change
“Substituting poultry for red meat may be a simple change that can help reduce the cases of breast cancer,” said lead researcher Dale Sandler, of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Sandler’s team looked at cooking and consumption of meat among more than 42 000 women in the continental US and Puerto Rico.
Of that group, more than 1 500 women developed breast cancer during the average 7.5-year follow-up.
Women who ate the most red meat had a 23% higher risk of developing breast cancer, compared with those who ate the least, the study found. And women who ate the most poultry had a 15% lower risk of breast cancer compared with those who ate the least.
Link remained
The researchers also found that women who switched from red meat to poultry lowered their risk – but they do not know why.
“Our study does, however, provide evidence that substituting poultry for red meat may help reduce the incidence of breast cancer,” Sandler said.
The link between red meat and breast cancer remained even when researchers took into account other factors associated with the disease. Those factors included race, economic status, obesity, physical activity, alcohol consumption and other dietary issues.
Though previous research has found that eating grilled meats may increase cancer risk, Sandler’s team found no association with cancer based on the chemicals released when meats were cooked over high heat.
She said it would be hard to prove definitively that red meat causes breast cancer, though dietary intervention studies such as randomised trials could help.
“They would need to have very long follow-up to study breast cancer,” Sandler added.
The report was published in the International Journal of Cancer.
Optimal health
Samantha Heller, a senior clinical nutritionist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, reviewed the new findings.
“Research has found that eating less red meat decreases the risk of several diseases including colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and overall mortality,” Heller said. Adding breast cancer to the list makes sense, she noted.
“When we eat a more plant-based diet, exercise regularly, shun tobacco – in any form – and get enough sleep, we are arming our body with the nutrients it needs to fight disease, protect cells and maintain optimal health,” Heller said.
Image credit: iStock
Ebola drugs show ‘90% survival rate’ in breakthrough trial
Scientists say the breakthrough trial suggests the disease may soon be “preventable and treatable”.
Health24.com | Taking care of your heart means you’re taking care of your brain too
Want to reduce your risk of dementia? Take care of your heart.
That’s the takeaway from a new study that suggests good heart health in middle age could lower your odds for problems with thinking and memory later in life.
Lower risk later in life
The study included nearly 7 900 British adults who did not have heart disease or dementia at age 50. Over an average 25-year follow-up, 347 cases of dementia were diagnosed among participants. Average age at diagnosis: 75.
After taking other factors into account, researchers linked a higher score at age 50 on seven healthy habits outlined in the American Heart Association’s “Life Simple 7” with a lower risk of dementia later in life.
The Life Simple 7 assesses smoking, diet, physical activity, fasting blood sugar, blood cholesterol, blood pressure and body mass index (a measure of body fat based on height and weight).
Dementia rates were 1.3 per 1 000 person years among participants who had high scores on heart healthy habits, compared to 3.2 per 1 000 for low-scorers, according to the study published in the BMJ.
A progressive disease
A better score at age 50 was also associated with higher overall brain and grey matter volumes in MRI scans 20 years later.
Though the study could not prove that heart-healthy living actually caused dementia risk to drop, the researchers said their findings support public policies to improve heart health in middle age. They pointed out that dementia is a progressive disease that can start 15 to 20 years before symptoms appear.
“Our findings suggest that the Life’s Simple 7, which comprises the cardiovascular health score, at age 50 may shape the risk of dementia in a synergistic manner,” the study team wrote. “Cardiovascular risk factors are modifiable, making them strategically important prevention targets.”
The lead author is Severine Sabia of the French National Institute of Health in Paris and University College London.
Image credit: iStock
Health24.com | Is your boss a bully? Workplace safety could worsen under their leadership
Healthy workplaces don’t simply entail a workplace that is physically safe and without risk to health. A new Portland State University study has found that employees’ safety behaviour can become compromised when they’re treated in ways that weaken their bonds within a work group.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, was carried out by Liu-Qin Yang, an associate professor of industrial-organisational psychology in PSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and her co-authors, and surveyed airline pilots and manufacturing technicians.
Uncertainty within a group
Yang explained that while a boss’s behaviour can strengthen an employee’s sense of belonging to a work group by supporting their status within the group, undermining them can have the exact opposite effect and weaken their sense of well-being.
Read: Toxic employers face jail as South Korea tackles workplace bullying
The study also found that poor treatment from a boss can lead to employees becoming more self-centred, causing them to occasionally forget to comply with safety rules or overlook opportunities to promote a safer work environment. This was especially true among employees who were more uncertain about their social standing within the group.
“When people are less sure about their status within a group, they become more sensitive,” she said. “They will be more likely to respond negatively to their boss’ bullying behaviours.”
Fewer negative consequences
Yang added that workplace safety is a critical issue, and more so in an environment where one employee’s failure to behave safely can create circumstances where other people are likely to be injured.
Read: Office horror stories: Workers tell of trauma at the hands of office psychopaths and bullies
“Organisations need to understand how important it is to curb leaders’ bad behaviour and to create positive team dynamics, so that there will be fewer negative safety consequences for employees or customers,” she said.
“It’s really critical to manage such leader behaviour, support victimised employees and prevent such issues.”
The study also recommends ways to create a positive workplace space by implementing training programmes that can improve leaders’ skills in interacting with their employees, and transparent performance evaluation processes so employees have more certainty about their social status in the workplace.
Image: iStock
Chlamydia sex infection vaccine passes safety test
The first human trial of a jab to tackle the sexually transmitted disease shows promise, say experts.
Ancient natural history of antibiotic production and resistance revealed
A study from McMaster University has unearthed new details about the evolutionary history of both antibiotic production and resistance and dates their co-emergence as far back as 350 to 500 million years.
The study is the first to put antibiotic biosynthesis and resistance into an evolutionary context. The findings will help to guide the future discovery of new antibiotics and antibiotic alternatives which are medicines that are vitally needed given the current global threat of antimicrobial resistance.
The study was published in Nature Microbiology.
“Our findings are of significant interest,” said Gerry Wright, senior author and professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster. He is also director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research and the newly established David Braley Centre for Antibiotic Discovery.
“Our study reveals several implications in how we could potentially manage antibiotic use and find new drugs for antimicrobial infections.”
The team extracted this history by first identifying the genome sequences encoding all of the necessary genetic programs for the production of glycopeptide antibiotics within a group of bacteria called Actinobacteria. Glycopeptides include vancomycin and teicoplanin, essential medicines for treating bacterial infections.
Researchers then plotted the changes in these genetic programs over time, revealing that while the precursors for genes responsible for antibiotic production date back to over one billion years, resistance is contemporary with the production of the first ancestors of vancomycin-like drugs, dating back to 350 to 500 million years.
“The results we uncovered in this study offers a valuable lens through which to consider the current antibiotic crisis,” said Nicholas Waglechner, first author and PhD candidate in the Gerry Wright lab. “These compounds have been useful to bacteria on the planet even before dinosaurs appeared, and resistance co-evolved with production as a means of self-protection for producing bacteria. The use of vancomycin in modern times in medicine and agriculture has resulted in the movement of resistance from these innocuous producers to disease-causing bacteria over a few short decades.”
The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Cisco Systems Canada Inc.
Story Source:
Materials provided by McMaster University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Impact of largescale tree death on carbon storage
Largescale ‘disturbances’, including fires, harvesting, windstorms and insect outbreaks, which kill large patches of forest, are responsible for more than a tenth of tree death worldwide, according to new research at the University of Birmingham.
The research, published in Nature Geoscience, also showed wide regional variation, with parts of Scandinavia, the USA, Canada and Russia having a particularly high frequency of these disturbances.
Mapping the causes of tree death is important because it helps scientists understand how the world’s carbon stocks — stored in forests — are affected by these disturbances and the frequency with which they occur.
Researchers in the Institute for Forest Research (BIFoR) at the University of Birmingham studied satellite-based observations of forest lost between 2000 and 2014, and assessed the typical time interval between large disturbance events across the world’s forests.
The team then used a computational model to calculate the impact of these events on tree deaths — measured as the amount of carbon stored in the wood of dead trees — and found that they accounted for 12 per cent of tree death overall. Their simulations showed how even small changes to the frequency of large-scale disturbances can have a significant effect on forest carbon stocks in 44 per cent of the world’s dense forests.
The model will enable scientists to better understand the context of events such as the recent wildfires which devastated parts of the Arctic.
Lead author, Dr Thomas Pugh, of the Institute for Forest Research at the University of Birmingham, said: “Large patches of dead forest make a dramatic impact on the landscape, be they caused by fires, harvesting, windstorms or insect outbreaks. But despite having been able to observe these events from space for many years, the contribution that they make to tree mortality and impact on forest carbon storage across the world has been unknown.”
“Now we can see much more clearly where large disturbances play major roles and where forest carbon stocks are sensitive to changes in disturbance frequency.”
He added: “This year’s large fires across the Arctic may just be an anomaly, or they could be a sign that disturbances in that region are becoming more frequent relative to the historical norm. If that’s the case, we can expect large amounts of carbon to be released from these forests over the coming century and perhaps wholesale changes in the mix of vegetation that make up the forests.”
More work is now needed to study the reasons behind the remaining 88 per cent of the world’s tree death to calculate the contributions of factors such as competition, drought, and older trees dying off.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Birmingham. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
