Author: John Kelly

The Psychology Of Proposals: Why We Say "I Do"

Post author By John Kelly
Post date January 31, 2018

When the big news came in, we all swooned. Even the cynics and curmudgeons among us couldn’t help getting just a little bit swept up by the magic and romance of it all.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—the pond-crossing power couple of British royalty and American celebrity–got engaged. Engaged!
And once we heard, there was one question spilling from our collective lips: How’d he pop the question? Even the BBC jumped right to the query in its exclusive post-engagement interview with the couple: “Can we start with the proposal and the actual moment of your engagement? When did it happen? How did it happen?”

It’s not just that we’re starstruck by #Harkle, as some are Brangelina-ing the two, or are The Crown-addicted, corgi-obsessed Anglophiles.
It’s that we, as a culture, are absolutely fascinated with marriage proposals. Proposees daydream their ideal engagements, from beachside sunsets to skydive surprises. Proposers scheme their knee-dropping, including ever elaborate—and ever public—songs and dances.
But why?
Of course, the marriage proposal is a significant and singular moment in one’s relationship, if not life, marking the passage into that greater commitment of marriage (unless the partner says no, that is).
That’s an incredibly intimate moment. So why do we care how Prince Harry asked Meghan Markle to marry him? Why do some partners orchestrate flash-mobs? Why is the marriage proposal, well, such a thing?

The marriage proposal is an important ritual.

For Lisa Hoplock, PhD, it all comes down to ritual.
Currently working at the University of Manitoba, Hoplock dedicated her dissertation to the psychology of the marriage proposal and is an expert on this under-researched area. “Marriage proposals give us a sense of control and predictability,” she tells HealthyWay. “They provide a script for important life events.”

And we all know the script thanks to its consistent appearance in popular media. As Hoplock outlines the steps, the proposer:

Asks for the blessing of the proposee’s parents
Makes the proposal a surprise
Gets down on one knee
Presents a ring
And asks the proposee, “Will you marry me?”

Even Prince Harry followed the same formula, though his script had some additional elements—him being, oh, fifth in line to the Throne of England and all. We talked to the orchestrater of one of the most romantic proposals we’ve heard of, and guess what? He followed it, too—though, as you’ll see at the end of this piece, it was anything but easy.
Harry asked for the blessing of Markle’s parents. He also asked for the blessing of his grandmother, the Queen, as required under law by the UK’s Succession to the Crown Act 2013. He dropped to one knee and presented a ring—which he designed with diamonds from the collection of his late mother, Princess Diana—that jewelers have valued at up to $350,000. And before he could even finish asking the question, Markle blurted out her “Yes!”
Royalty: They’re just like us!

Monarchy aside, they kind of are, actually. Their proposal itself was a simple and private affair, as we’d imagine a high-profile pair would want for an engagement announcement that made international headlines and sparked its own hashtag. Markle told the BBC that Harry proposed on a “cozy night” at their cottage. “We were roasting chicken. It was just an amazing surprise. It was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got down on one knee.”

The proposal script provides guidance and communicates values.

Now, the origins of the proposal ritual as such aren’t exactly clear, but Hoplock notes that many of the individual elements are very old.
The parental blessing may have grown out of the ancient practice of the dowry, when a bride’s father gave the husband money or property upon marriage. We can find evidence for engagement rings in ancient Rome, with future brides brandishing a gold ring in the forum and a less expensive iron counterpart around the villa. The diamond ring as the go-to band, meanwhile, was the marketing brainchild of De Beers, the jewelry giant, during the Great Depression. And evoking chivalry and supplication, the genuflection expresses “subservience,” as Hoplock puts it, with the question conveying “intention.”

But while each particular component of the marriage proposal has its meaning and symbolism, the power of the ritual is as a whole.
First, as we’ve seen, the ritual offers guidance through the proposal, a momentous, but stressful, situation “where someone might get accepted or rejected,” Hoplock says. Both actors know the scene and their parts, to continue the script metaphor—though a rejection is a plot twist, not the dramatic climax the individuals may have rehearsed. And on a broader level, Hoplock also supposes the marriage proposal ritual provides a larger sense of social continuity and stability in the “tumultuous world” we inhabit.

Second, rituals “communicate one’s values and one’s bonds,” Hoplock explains. “They are a way to connect to other people, a way to demonstrate to others that we share these values.”
For Hoplock, the marriage proposal expresses the traditional “marriage ideal” of a committed, stable partnership founded on love and fidelity—you know, all that squishy-squashy feel-good stuff. We can even understand a proposal rejection as upholding that ideal, declined because of an unreadiness or unwillingness to make the more serious commitment marriage demands.

A good engagement story can be vital to the relationship.

We also value the engagement story itself—so much so that we actually judge the strength of a couple’s relationship based on it. A 2007 study found that “relationships were evaluated as stronger when they conformed to a traditional proposal script,” like the one described above.

Based on the details of the proposal, friends and families deem the couple a good match with a healthy relationship when their engagement follows the traditional steps, and are more likely to support their upcoming union. “If any of the elements are lacking,” says Hoplock of the study’s results, “especially if there’s no ring, [others] might see the proposal as illegitimate. They might think that the relationship isn’t as strong, that it’s a weaker relationship, and it might not last as long or be not as sincere or they don’t actually mean it.”
The marriage proposal, then, isn’t just the performance of a ritual for a hoped-for spouse-to-be: It’s also a performance to our social network to help us secure their investment in our marriage.

Despite the stereotype and media messages, many may be relieved to learn that the size of the ring didn’t matter for the traditional script. The study found ring size made no difference to its participants’ perceptions of the quality of the marriage proposal. It did matter, however, who was asking the question.

We still think of proposing as the guy’s job.

We may be living in a time of greater, if still insufficient, gender equality, but when it comes to marriage proposals, we’re still very conservative. With heterosexual couples, we by and large still expect the man to the do the proposing.
A 2012 study of nearly 300 undergraduate students found that about two-thirds of both women and men said they would “definitely” want the man to propose—zero percent of women said they would definitely want to propose, and zero percent of men said they would definitely want their partner to propose to them. “Given the prevalence of liberal attitudes among students at the university where data collection took place,” the authors discuss, “it is striking that so many participants held traditional preferences.”

Striking, indeed. Over 41 percent of women and over 57 percent of men largely cited traditional gender roles for why they want the man to propose. They wanted men to propose because men are the ones who are supposed to propose—because that’s just the way it’s always been. The authors refer to this as “benevolent sexism” or the “belief that men should protect, cherish, and provide for women,” also manifested in everyday behaviors like the expectation that men should pay for dinner.
There may also be so not-so benevolent forces at play, too. Writer Miranda Popkey thinks heterosexual women face an insidious catch-22: “We’re supposed to want to get married,” she wrote, “but if we advertise that desire too loudly, we become unmarriageable.”
A quick search around the web yields countless articles for how to get him to “put a ring on it,” as Beyoncé would sing: 15 Psychological Tricks To Make Him Propose, 10 Steps to Get An Immediate Marriage Proposal From Your Boyfriend, Get a Guy to Propose Naturally Without Being Obvious. There’s even the myth of the engagement chicken, a dish so delicious, it will make a boyfriend drop down straight to one knee—much humorous speculation arose after we learned Harry proposed to Markle over such a dish.

But if a woman dares to ask the question herself? She risks coming across as too desperate or assertive. She breaks the mold, Hoplock says of the lady-in-waiting. “It’s a minority of women who are the ones who propose,” she says. “In my studies, the women were more likely to be rejected. … It is really looked down upon … They think it would be more comfortable if the man is the one to propose.”

The Myths, Media, and Manipulations of Public Proposals

So, for better or worse, we favor traditional proposals. We also like those proposals to be private—another point for Harry. In a 2015 survey she conducted, Hoplock found that 69 percent of respondents said their ideal proposal would involve just the two of them. “Most people want a private proposal, and if they could change it, they would change it to be more private,” she tells HealthyWay.
And yet it seems we’re continually seeing bigger, showier productions of marriage proposals. On YouTube—and yes, we’ve all fallen down this rabbit-hole on YouTube—there are countless flash-mob proposals with millions of views. They’re staged in squares in Barcelona. They’re staged in Times Square, at airport arrivals from LAX to LHR. They’re staged during half-time at sports games, broadcast to cheering fans on the Jumbotron. They’re even staged at the checkout lines at IKEAs.
As flash-mobs, many of them develop in the same way. Music unexpectedly comes on—in the video above, Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)”—and dancers follow. Amused and intrigued by the incongruous event, a crowd forms. Seemingly out of nowhere, more and more participants join in until the proposer emerges on one knee, asking for the proposee’s hand in marriage before dozens, hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people.
The audience claps, cheers, shouts “Say yes, say yes!” The proposee dips her head. She covers her mouth. “Say yes, say yes!” It’s part of the typical proposal script, after all, for her to say yes. The crowd wants her to say yes.
We want the man to be rewarded for the grand, romantic gesture, declaring his love so widely and openly, even exposing himself to humiliation for it. We’re rooting for love.
And public proposers could be manipulating that very expectation, some think. As psychologist Glenn Wilson told the BBC of the phenomenon: “It’s possible that some men think that this will pile pressure upon her and increase the likelihood of getting a positive response, that she must think that he really loves her if he goes to this extent of trouble and trickery.”
Hoplock, for her part, thinks various media may also be contributing to the trend. “Technology allows for sharing and recording proposals” like never before, she notes, perhaps compelling some proposers and proposees to feel a viral proposal is a more memorable one.

Proposers might also feel expected to put on an elaborate public proposal because of how they’re romanticized and celebrated in film and television—often as a daring, last-ditch effort to demonstrate to the proposee that, despite previous mistakes and shortcomings, the proposer is truly prepared to take the relationship to the next level.
But this thinking is just the stuff of fiction, says Hoplock. “People think that the proposal will save the relationship.”

Why and How Women Reject Proposals

In a sweeping review Hoplock carried out of written descriptions of proposals on online forums like Reddit, she found that the second most common reason women rejected the proposal was that the couple had broken up. “There’s a big fight, and he goes back to the ring.”
The most common reason? Women said they were too young: “They were 18 and not even thinking about marriage yet.”
Also, Hoplock has a word to the wise: Avoid proposing at malls or food courts. She’s found that they usually result in a no.

And speaking of rejections, Hoplock had to weed out a lot of videos of proposal rejections for her research, as she discovered a number of them are actually staged for sociological research—or sometimes, incredibly, for the sheer entertainment of it.
But in the real ones, the pain and humiliation—for both parties—is very real. One aspect of Hoplock’s research focused on how women behave when rejecting a proposal from men in public. She’s found a pattern: Cortisol, the hormone released by the adrenal gland when we’re under stress, spikes during a proposal.
“The women seem to freeze in surprise at first,” Hoplock says. “But then the women would try to halt the ritual or pace in distress. The fight-or-flight response seems to occur, where they start arguing or maybe slap the partner or maybe back away from the partner before running away.”

This guy will show you how a proposal is done.

Nobody wants their marriage proposal culminating in consolation from a mascot. So what makes for the ideal proposal? “The ideal is one where the couple talks in advance,” advises Hoplock, emphasizing the importance of discussing a timeline and general expectations for what the proposal should be like. “If in doubt, propose in private with a ring and make the other person feel valued.”
That doesn’t mean it still can’t be magical, though. Take a page from Jim Fisk, director of wellness at an assisted living community in Cincinnati. “I’m a big storybook person,” he shares, recalling his Summer 2017 proposal story. “I wanted it to have meaning.”
Fisk began by observing Hoplock’s golden rule the year prior. “We had talked about it for sure,” he says. The talk gave him assurance that he and his girlfriend were on the same page, relationally speaking. It gave him a timeline: She was interested in getting engaged in 2017 but didn’t want to know when it was exactly coming. It also gave him a sense of what she wanted out of a proposal, which he was able to respect but also use to heighten the all-important surprise.
So Fisk started planning.
The blessing: He took her father out for a drink in Cincinnati and called her mother, who lives not far from where Fisk was planning to propose. That fact would help provide Fisk some cover for the surprise.

The ring: After talking to his girlfriend about her taste in bands, Fisk asked his mother for further guidance in this department—“I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he admits. He discovered his late grandmother had left him a band studded with diamonds, which he took to a small family jeweler for some further modifications.
The setting: Longboat Key, Florida, where the two took their first vacation together. (Hoplock has found that the number one ideal proposal spot is by the water, usually on the beach, so points to Fisk.)
“[The trip] set the stage for the relationship … it got serious from then on … . It would be meaningful to come back around to where we started it all,” Fisk says. He called her boss, shared his plan, and secured a week vacation. The couple took a private sailboat tour that first trip, so he also called the operators to set up the literal vehicle for his “Will you marry me?” Guests could bring food and drink, and the drivers made for excellent photographers.

But as the day drew near, things, as they do, happened.

His girlfriend got jury duty. He had to convince her not to file another postponement in case she was called up around the time of trip, planned for mid-August. Her grandfather was ill, and her family wanted everyone to gather together out of state before he passed away—in mid-August. He talked to her sister about his plans, and the family gladly helped him reschedule the visit with the grandfather.
Then, on the Sunday just two days before they were flying off for the surprise vacation, Fisk says his girlfriend tells him she wants to take a few personal days. Beset by yet another snag, he pulls off some artful maneuvering, convincing her that they will take a proper vacation soon and that when they get back, they’ll do some earnest engagement ring shopping. He threw her off the trail.
The proposal: The following Tuesday, Fitzs reveals, to her elation, that they’re headed to Florida. His birthday is coming up, he says, and they’re overdue for a visit with her mother down there.
“My shoulders were up to my ears. She was totally relaxed.”
They arrive, get settled in, and head out to a restaurant near the dock, where the special sailboat is waiting. But Fisk has one last obstacle.
“We get there, we walk into the restaurant. She’s starving.”
“‘Oh, honey, look over there—is that the boat we took?'” he recounts to us, playing out the drama. “‘I don’t care, I’m starving. Why do you want to go over there?’ She’s kind of perturbed that I’m taking a detour from the food.”
Again, Fisk persuades her. He pretends it was a chance encounter. On cue, the boat operator fakes a cancellation and invites the couple aboard—let us photograph you for our new website, they say, and we’ll give you a free ride and even throw in some food and drink. Soon, the couple’s aboard.
They make it out into the Gulf when the photographer asks, as planned, to photograph Fitz’s girlfriend at the brow of the boat. The photographer has her do her best Titanic pose so her back is to Fisk.
“That’s when I was suppose to come up behind her on one knee. I’m standing midship, I kid you not, and it all hit me at that point. The sun is coming down, there was some music playing. It all hit me. Holy s***. It’s here. I froze up,” he remembers. “It wasn’t until the captain … took a hand and put in on my shoulder, just a nudge. I walked up and was down one knee,” her back still to him. He took her hand and explained how being in this boat with her was like coming full circle. He popped the question.
She said yes.

“I felt so relieved,” Fisk says—not just that she said yes, but that he’d overcome all the hectic hitches leading up to the big moment. “If I did this in another lifetime, a lot less moving parts would help me!” he jokes.
But we’re not so sure Fisk would actually change anything were he to do it over. He told his fiancée all the hurdles he had to jump over as they basked in the post-engagement glow—and for Fisk, the relief. When people ask them how they got engaged, they have quite the story to tell.
Roast chicken? Pshaw, Prince Harry.

Tags 50037441, balance, hemingway, social

Motherhood

Demystifying Adoption: 5 Common Misconceptions Put To Bed

Post author By John Kelly
Post date January 29, 2018

Based on the most recent data available, the United States Children’s Bureau reported in 2016 that nearly 120,000 children were adopted in the U.S. in 2012. And according to the last U.S. census in 2010, almost 2.5 percent of all children in U.S. households were adopted—or about 1.5 million out of 65 million total children.
We adopt infants. We adopt adults. We adopt children from the foster care system. We adopt babies from scores of countries all around the world.
As the facts, figures, and the multifarious forms of adoption suggest, adoption—a process in which “children become full and permanent legal members of another family,” as the USCB defines it—is incredibly widespread in the U.S.

And yet some common myths about adoption still hang on. Some are naive, stemming from confusion about who is allowed to adopt or how much adoptions cost. Others are more nefarious, involving judgments we make about mothers who relinquish their children for adoption or stigmas adoptees unwillingly bear.
Let’s debunk some of these stubborn and insidious myths for a clearer picture about the process of—and, more importantly, the people involved in—adoptions.

Myth 1: Only married, heterosexual homeowners can adopt children.

A slew of misconceptions surround who is allowed to adopt in the US, with many people thinking only traditional families are eligible. As the USCB explains of domestic adoptions: “Most people are eligible to adopt, regardless of whether they are married or single, their age, income, or sexual orientation.”
What’s more, single-parent households accounted for one-third of all adoptions in 2011. Prospective adoptive parents also don’t have to own their own homes, nor does having a disability necessarily disqualify them from adoption.

The legality of same-sex adoption is a more recent phenomenon, the culmination of decades of legal battles finally recognizing the rights of same-sex couples to adopt. Yet in some ways, the battle continues. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right protected by the constitution in 2015, a federal district court struck down a ban on same-sex adoption in Mississippi in 2016, making same-sex adoption legal in all 50 states. Ironically enough, UCLA’s Williams Institute found in 2013 that it was Mississippi which had the highest proportions of LGBTQ parenting in all of the U.S., with 26 percent of its LGBTQ couples raising biological, adopted, or stepchildren.
However, some states—most recently Alabama—have passed laws allowing faith-based adoption agencies to turn away LGBTQ couples on the basis of their religious beliefs.
For domestic adoptions in the U.S., eligibility comes down to an assessment called a home study. Basically, adoption agencies are looking for a loving household that will care for the adoptee—and yes, research shows that adoptive parents love their adopted children just like their biological ones.
International adoptions—commonly called intercountry adoptions—can come with a different set of restrictions. To adopt from China, for example, a parent has to be 30 years old, among other criteria. Many countries don’t permit adoptions by LGBTQ parents. A few countries, like Russia, currently don’t allow for adoptions to the U.S.

Megan Caporicci, a teacher in Tustin, California, had already had was originally interested in adopting from China when she adopted her daughter over 12 years ago. As she tells HealthyWay, she and her husband already had two sons and were interested in a baby girl. Their research pointed them to China—whose former one-child policy and cultural favoritism of boys indeed led to the international adoption of tens of thousands of infant girls from the country over recent decades.
“I wasn’t 30 yet. I was 28, maybe 29, and you had to be 30 to adopt [in China],” Caporicci says. “Every country has specific rules: how long you are married, whether you are married, ethnicity, how much money you make.” The Caporiccis went with South Korea instead, where they were eligible.
If you’re interested in adoption from a specific country, first heed Caporicci’s example and consult each country’s policies.

Myth 2: Adoption always costs a fortune and takes forever.

Assumptions about the expense and length of the process may deter some prospective parents from adopting. Again, we have to distinguish between domestic and intercountry adoption. We also have to distinguish between the means of adoption, i.e., through an adoption agency or through an independent adoption attorney, as well as differentiate the age of the adoptee.

Each year, the Adoptive Families magazine conducts a cost and timing survey. According to their 2016 report, the average cost of adoption from foster care—which happens when “children in out-of-home care cannot be safely reunited with their birth families,” explains the USCB—was approximately $2,800 in 2014–15. This included the home study fee, documentation, and paperwork processing costs, attorney fees, and travel expenses.
Many families, though, actually reported ultimately paying $0 for adoption from foster care and were receiving an average of about $850 in monthly subsidies from the government. By adopting from foster care, families can claim the adoption tax credit, receive health coverage through Medicaid, and even get support with college tuition in some states. Timewise, nearly 50 percent of respondents said it took zero to six months for the adoption placement to take place.
The average age of a child adopted from foster care is 7.7 years old, according to the Adoption Network Law Center. But a great many parents want to adopt a child from birth or infancy—which does become significantly more expensive. The 2016 Adoptive Families survey finds that for newborn adoption in the U.S. in 2014–15:

Adoption through an agency cost an average of just over $41,500, with 62 percent of families matched with a child within one year of application. Nearly $17,000 of the total costs went to agency fees.
Adoption through an attorney cost an average of just over $35, 500, with 67 percent of families matched with a child within one year. About $13,000 went to attorney fees.

Cost and timing for intercountry adoption varies. Adoptive Families provided a breakdown for three of the top countries American families adopt from in 2014–2015:

China: average cost of about $36,000, with 75 percent of families matched within six months for its “Waiting Child” program, which supports children with special needs. Adoption of a “Traditional Child” has a considerably longer wait. About 70 percent of families adopt a child younger than five.
Ethiopia: average cost of just over $38,500. Fifty six percent percent matched within one year, and 78 percent adopted a child younger than six.
South Korea: average cost of about $46,000. Fifty six percent matched within one year, and 100 percent of families adopted a child younger than five.

Remember, these costs are averages, and the adoption process is complex—plus, we’re dealing with human beings here, who want nothing more than a good home.
For the Caporiccis, the “total cost was about $17,000, including travel,” Megan shares. “From application to actually finalizing, it was almost two years. But from application to baby in arms was one-and-half years.”

They also elected for adoption from South Korea not only because their age and martial status met the country’s requirements, but the total travel time was less. South Korea was closer than other places they considered, and the agency only required one trip that lasted only about four or five days. “For us, having young kids, it wasn’t easy imagining leaving them for months at time,” says Caporicci.

Myth 3: The biological mother can come back at anytime and take her baby.

While we appreciate the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty that can surround the adoption experience, a biological mother can’t simply change her mind and reclaim her child.
Before a child goes up for adoption, the birthparent has to consent to terminate all parental rights in a court of law. Only in very limited circumstances—usually in cases of fraud or duress—can a birthparent revoke that consent. After the child has been placed into a new household for a period of about six months, a judge issues an adoption decree at the end of what’s called the finalization process. The decree makes the adoptee the permanent, legal child of the adoptive parent(s). In other words, the adoptee is their child under law.

Contact between adoptive families, adoptees, and birthparents is a complex matter, involving issues of birthparent privacy and adoptees’ right to certain information, like their medical history. In closed adoptions, there is no contact between the two households, and no identifying information is shared, whereas open adoptions, which are increasingly common in the U.S., allow for various degrees of contact and identification between the birth and adoptive families.
The Caporiccis, for example, went through a closed adoption with their daughter, as is common for intercountry adoptions. She says there was some information required for each family to report to the adoption file, while other information was completely optional to share, such as birth name and family interests.
As we’d expect, views vary on the pros and cons of contact, as they do on the risks and benefits of an adoptee reuniting with their birthparent. One thing is for sure, though: It’s normal for adoptees to be curious about meeting their birthparents—and it doesn’t mean they love their adoptive parents any less. It’s also a very personal choice for whether or not an adoptee seeks out a reunion.

Thomas Kelly, now an attorney in Cleveland, was adopted after birth in 1948 from the Father Baker Home in Lackawanna, New York. He was very open about the subject of reunion. His thoughts reveal just how unique each adoptee’s experience is, and are worth quoting at length:

I am certain that at some time or another, every person who is adopted has some level of desire to find the biological parents, to see what they look like, to discover why they chose to place the child for adoption. It’s easy for … an adopted child … to fall into the trap of, “Was I not good or not good enough?” or “I must be less valuable because my parents didn’t want me.” Self-pity clouds judgment, and it’s a minor form of selfishness. But we are all prone to it. … I am forever grateful to them for their decision to choose me and their lifelong love and concern for me. I had also decided long ago that the decision made by my natural mother (most likely without the involvement of the father) to place me for adoption was also a great gift and a great sacrifice that I should honor and that I should not disturb her life, which I hope was happy and fulfilling.

Megan Caporicci says her daughter, now 12, hasn’t expressed any interest in reuniting yet. But as for talking about adoption with daughter, she says, “All families are different.”
“The message in this day and age is you talk about it from day one. It was known as long since we could talk … don’t need to put a magic cover on it.”
In addition to her birthday each year, the family celebrates her Adoption Day, marking the date when she officially joined their family.

Myth 4: Foster children are broken, and adopted children are doomed to attachment issues.

Aggressive, troubled, damaged: These are some of the toxic labels cast on foster children, perhaps due to stereotypes of such youth being “shuttled from home to home” or because of some notion that they are delinquents or runaways.

Truth is, most foster children enter into special care because of abuse, neglect, abandonment, and death. Like all of us, foster children want love, care, and stability. Being in foster care is no doubt disruptive, confusing, and challenging, so let’s dispel the myths that foster children are broken.
Casual jokes and everyday remarks, meanwhile, shame adopted children as “looking different from their family” or “being unloved by the parents.” Some of us may assume that adoptees are destined to struggle with forming trusting, meaningful relationships for all their days. The experience of adoption entails seriously grappling with identity—something we all do. But that doesn’t mean adoptees don’t go on to live happy and fulfilling lives.
Kelly writes of his experience: “I was about five or six years old when I first heard the word ‘adopted.’ Some kid had told me I was adopted; how he knew, I never discovered, but it seemed from how he had said it that it was not something to be proud of or happy about.” His parents later explained his adoption to him at home, but in a manner that has always made him feel “chosen” and “special,” he shares.
Fortunately, thanks to the “grace and dignity” his parents always brought to the topic, Kelly writes “being adopted did not come with any stigmas” or “cause me any setbacks as I grew.”

Society has become indeed more open about adoption in the intervening decades. For her part, Caporicci says that her daughter “knows it’s a button she can use”—that she’s not her birthmother. When upset, her daughter will voice complaints like “Well, you’re not my real mom!” or “I wish I had my real mom!” Caporicci doesn’t react and instead acknowledges the reality that she’s her adoptive mother who does everything she can to love and support her.
And yet, “she’s so strong that she blurts it out there,” Caporicci continues. Her daughter will announce when she starts a new school, “I’m adopted.”
“It took her longer to realize she had a birth dad—the mom and the belly is such a permanent figure.” She recounts with a laugh when her daughter declared her discovery to her father: “‘Did you know I had a birth dad, dad?'”
Caporicci is quick to add, though, on a more somber note: “I feel like it would be not fair for me to say she doesn’t struggle … I think that there’s more details that I don’t know that she struggles with … that she probably can’t even verbalize.”

Before adopting her daughter, the Caporiccis lost a son and learned they were carrying a genetic disease. “I do know a huge loss on my end. I do know she went through a loss, too.”

Myth 5: Birthparents give up their children because they don’t love them.

Which leads us to the final area of adoptions myth: What kind of a mother bears a child and then gives it up for adoption? Some have pictured such a mother as an irresponsible teen, a promiscuous woman, or a selfish person who just doesn’t love their child.
But mothers do not take the decision to relinquish their child for adoption lightly or easily, and the reasons that motivate them are often very serious and painful.
They include age, with some underage mothers and their parents wanting the child to grow up with parents who are ready, prepared, and able for childrearing. Inconsistent employment, challenges to stable housing, and single parenthood compel other mothers to relinquish their child, according to Cosmopolitan.

Some mothers choose adoption because their child has severe disabilities they are unable to properly care for. Other mothers choose adoption because their child was conceived as the result of sexual violence. And in some countries around the world, poverty or other extreme hardships lead to adoption.
The decision is ultimately driven by an intense desire for their child to have a better, happier life in the care of an adoptive family.
The adoption process has enough challenges and trials. We don’t need any myths piling on guilt, shame, or other bogus judgments.
And we don’t need any myths obscuring the joys, the opportunities, the beauties, the blessings of adoptions—how “amazing and wonderful” it can be, as Caporicci puts it.
Or as Kelly concludes: “For many years I have said that I am the most fortunate man I have ever known. And much of my good fortune is the direct result of adoption. I am grateful to the woman who bore me, the good people at Father Baker’s who cared for me, and forever grateful to [my parents] for my life.”

Tags 50037461, hemingway, parenting, social

Lifestyle

Christmas Music Can Be Bad For You, And Other Ways The Holidays Affect Your Health

Post author By John Kelly
Post date December 14, 2017

Ahh, Christmas.

The lights, the parties, the music, the cheer—it’s the most wonderful time of the year! Oh, sorry. Do you have that song stuck in your head now?

Or maybe it already was, what with the radio, TV ads, and mall muzak drowning us with decked halls, hollied boughs, and fa-la-la-la-las every December—if not as soon as the Halloween decorations are boxed up.

It’s a reminder that we have to buy presents, cater for people, organize celebrations.

It can be draining, this annual onslaught of Yuletide tunes. In fact, some experts think too much Christmas music is actually bad for our mental health. Clinical psychologist Linda Blair told Sky News that Christmas music makes it particularly hard for retail workers to concentrate, bombarded as they are with “Jingle Bells” as they restock shelves.

What’s more, these ring-ring-ring-a-ling earworms can wriggle their way into our very brains, affecting how we feel and act. Christmas music “might make us feel that we’re trapped,” Blair said. “It’s a reminder that we have to buy presents, cater for people, organize celebrations.”

It might also drive us to make more impulse purchases, as Blair noted the effect music can have on consumer behavior.

For many people, though, it’s not just the merry melodies that are maddening. All of the Christmas season’s reds and greens give them a bad case of the holiday blues.

Under Pressure

The holiday blues isn’t a technical term—nor is it a simple case of the bah humbugs. But the phrase is colloquially used for the very real anxiety and depression some people experience from Thanksgiving through New Year’s.

I don’t even know what we’re celebrating anymore.

Laurel Jernigan, a retired school librarian, knows exactly what Linda Blair means by “trapped.” “Pressure,” she immediately answers when HealthyWay asked her how Christmas makes her feel.

“Pressure to perform,” Jernigan continues. “To be perfect. To have to do stuff like—have to be jolly, have to want to listen to Christmas, have to want to go shopping for all these gifts. It feels like there’s expectation to be happy and in this,” she pauses, “spirit.”

“I don’t even know what we’re celebrating anymore. Consumerism? I feel like it’s imposed on us, on society,” she says.

And also like Blair, Jernigan locates much of this pressure in reminders, lamenting how she can’t flip on the news or walk into the store for a simple gallon of milk without being reminded to “buy buy buy,” she says.

But other sources of pressure for Jernigan reach far back into her past. She spent her childhood Christmases in Cleveland, rushing around to see relatives. “The whole family had to go to each other’s houses because everybody decorated, and you had to look at their houses. Everybody had to go over—and everybody got mad at each other and talked about each other,” she says.

“There was pressure,” she refrains. That pressure made for friction and tension in family relationships. Christmas didn’t mean goodwill towards all and peace on earth. It meant “sitting in the back of a car and hearing my mom complain about everybody.”

Years later, when she was a mother of three and practicing Catholic, she felt pressure to keep the materialism of Christmas at bay: “I had a boundary that I was not going to step over the threshold into the glitz and unholy glamor” of the holidays.

Then she suffered a surprise divorce. “The loneliness,” Jernigan opens up. “The family unit that I believed in was shattered.” Each year, Christmastime reminds her of that pain—not to mention the guilt she bore as her sons shuttled back and forth between two households, the guilt she bore because she couldn’t afford as many presents as her ex-husband could.

Have you been naughty or nice—to yourself?

Jernigan’s pain, fortunately, has greatly subsided since her divorce. She’s long been happily remarried, and husband teases her that she isn’t a Scrooge but has “hyperholiphobia”—his clever coinage for an irrational fear of the holiday season.

But Jernigan does thoughtfully pinpoint some major triggers of a blue Christmas: negative childhood experiences, traumatic episodes, and, yes, societal pressure.

For his part, Robert Hales, MD, Chair of the University of California–Davis Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, identifies some more immediate—and perhaps more easily overlooked—causes of our yuletide woes.

During the holidays, we drink more, eat more, and sleep less. Excessive drinking commonly co-occurs with depression, overeating can hurt our body image, and lack of sleep contributes to lethargy. And don’t forget to exercise, which keeps our bodies and minds happy and healthy—something easy to slough off when we’re flying around like Rudolph.

Moderation and rest during the season’s convivial congregations can boost our energy and buoy our self-esteem. So, too, can making sure we don’t over-schedule ourselves with festivities, which can raise our stress levels. If we do have a busy calendar, plan for it ahead of time, as all that last-minute shopping and mad-dash cookie-baking can rocket our blood pressure to the North Pole.

Time, indeed. In a sweeping 2006 survey of holiday stress by researchers at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, 67 percent of participants reported lack of time caused them stress during the Christmas season. This was followed closely behind at 62 percent by lack of money, given the great demands the holidays place on the pocketbook. Setting a budget—and holding yourself to it—can help manage the financial challenges of all the yearend events.

The survey also found that women were more likely than men to report increases in stress during Christmas. “Holiday stress has a particular impact on women, who take charge of many of the holiday celebrations, particularly the tasks related to preparing meals and decorating the home,” it concluded as its first key finding. So, be sure to make Christmas preparations a shared responsibility in your life.

And the third leading stressor? Commercialism or hype, with 53 percent of respondents indicating it caused them stress often or sometimes.

Hales reminds us, though, that some of the hype we experience during the holidays isn’t exterior—or “all that tinsel and crap,” as Jernigan bluntly sums it to HealthyWay with a laugh.

It’s also the interior hype of the unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves and on our families to have the perfect, gingerbread-cookie-cutter holiday. To decorate the perfect tree. To cook the perfect holiday meal. To get along angelically with family. To look divine in your dress as you throw the perfect holiday party. To make the most lasting, magical, and Instagrammable memories.

Remember that perfection is make-believe—just like those sparkling, tear-jerking, wrapped-up-in-a-bow denouements of It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

Learn to distinguish the holiday blues from more serious depression.

Another contributor to seasonal sadness is, well, simply that: seasonal. The days are shorter and, for those living in more northerly climes, wetter and colder—all compounded by daylight savings time screwing with our biological clocks. The time and weather changes can indeed sap our spirits, but does that mean our holiday blues is full-fledged Seasonal Affective Disorder?

SAD is much bandied about this time of year, but it’s much more serious than our occasional run-ins with Charlie Brown. Mental health professionals consider SAD a form of major depressive disorder that coincides with specific seasons, typically winter though sometimes summer.

Just getting a bit down during Christmas—which can be normal—doesn’t mean you’re presenting with SAD. SAD, as with depression in general, has to significantly interfere with people’s daily functioning and relationships. Many of us gain weight and sleep more around the holidays, but people with SAD experience those symptoms more intensely along with chronic feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, loss of interest and focus, and even thoughts of taking their own lives.

The severity of these symptoms, though, are also why SAD is much rarer: Norman Rosenthal, MD, notes only 6 percent of the U.S. population suffers from full-fledged SAD, with another 14 percent dealing with lesser seasonal mood changes.

As always, seek out a doctor if you’re concerned your holiday blues is more than a temporary funk. And in the spirit of the season, encourage your loved ones to do the same.

Christmas Fact and Fiction

Now, one of the more severe symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, as we saw, are thoughts of ending it all—and there is a story that makes the media rounds, as predictably as Black Friday sales, that rates of it always rise during the holidays.

But this is a myth. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has found that the number of people killing themselves is the lowest in December. Rates actually rise in spring and summer. Christine Moutier, MD, told NPR that the kind of stress we experience during the holidays, despite common assumptions, aren’t major risk factors for taking one’s life. Genetics, trauma, mental illness, and access to lethal means are, though, Moutier said.

It’s important not to perpetuate the myth, the CDC urges, because the misinformation can hamper efforts to help people struggling with mental health challenges.

The holidays are associated, however, with increased heart attacks and other emergency room visits. A major 2004 national study found a 5 percent increase in heart-related deaths during the holidays. Some cardiologists link the jump to various stressors that exacerbate conditions for people with existing risk to heart disease: cold weather further constricting arteries, more physical labor like shoveling snow or putting up lights, increased intake of salts and fats, and delaying care due to a busy holiday schedule.

And it’s not just the eggnog that’s spiked around the holidays. So, too, are visits to the emergency room due to excessive drinking, especially on New Year’s Eve. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has documented 50 percent mor
e drinking-related emergency room visits on New Year’s Eve compared to New Year’s Day.

A good rule of thumb? Don’t overdo it. Food, drink, exertion—and take it easy on the tinsel while you’re at it, for Laurel Jernigan’s sake.

All millennials want for Christmas is you.

Another “grinch” more and more people are watching out for is SDD. It sounds scary, but it won’t be sending you to the doctor’s office. Maybe the therapist’s, though.

SDD is Seasonal Dating Disorder, a term some are using for the tendency of some, often twenty- and thirty-year-old singles to pair up during the holiday season. It also popularly goes by cuffing season, so named because singles are handcuffing themselves to their new-found beau(x) for wintertime.

We all want someone to snuggle with around the fireplace with cups of hot cocoa and a Netflix binge of Christmas movies, don’t we? That’s at least what cuffers, as these seasonal daters are sometimes dubbed, say.

And indeed, that’s what Market Watch found in January 2016, when eHarmony jumped 21 percent in mobile registrations since Christmas and OKCupid 30 percent. Zoosk expected a 20 percent jump heading into the New Yea, and Grindr a 30 to 50 percent increase over the holidays. Match.com anticipated 60 percent between Christmas Day and Valentine’s Day. And on the day after Christmas alone, Tinder told Market Watch it typically sees a 5 to 7 percent rise.

More recently, according to Vogue, the dating app Hinge polled its users and found men were 15 percent more likely to look for a relationship in winter—and 11 percent were less likely in spring and summer. Women reported being 5 percent more interested during winter, and 5 percent less in spring and summer.

Ask Santa for a little reflection this year.

Relationship psychologists and counselors, though, don’t exactly recommend jumping into the one-horse open sleigh with your latest seasonal sweetheart. Dating out of fear of being alone during the holidays can lead to settling, conflating convenience for love, or harm your ability to form lasting relationships.

Cuffers are right on one thing, though: Relationships are key to holiday happiness.

That was clear as silver bells when Amanda and Sue O’Connell spoke to HealthyWay about their experience of the holidays. Amanda lives and works in Ireland, but there is no question she flies the 11-hour-flight home to Southern California for Christmas every year to spend time with her family—including Sue, her mother.

Amanda is always swept up by Christmas: “It makes me feel euphoric, like my spirits are being lifted. It makes me feel sentimental and teary-eyed most of the time, because it reminds me of my family and of the wonderful Christmases that we’ve always had, not only as a child, but even now.”

Sue echoes her sentiments “It makes me very excited. It’s, for me, all about the family coming together. And because we all feel that same excitement, it’s contagious.”

“None of the magic is gone” from their Christmas celebrations, Amanda says, “because for the most part, we all buy into the premise of Christmas.”

As they described it, much of that premise rests on their traditions. For many families, Christmas traditions can feel rote, obligatory, and performative, causing friction instead of cohesion year after year.

… I wanted it to be a bigger day, not just focused on gifts but about being together.

But for the O’Connells, traditions are like glue. “It’s never up for debate that we put up a tree, if we’re going to have stockings, if we’re going to have a meal,” Amanda explains. “Knowing that these things are always in place—and even as our family gets bigger, people are just added into that.”

Sue describes how they open gifts, one by one, explaining to each other why they thought the present was right for them or how it reminded them of a fond memory.

The O’Connells are quick to validate Jernigan’s experience: that Christmas can’t be forced on anyone, that one’s childhood experiences of Christmas shape whether they become Ebenezer Scrooge or Will Ferrell’s Buddy in Elf. Sue, in fact, grew up in a divorced household, remembering Christmas as just going over to a relatives to open gifts. “When I had my kids, I wanted it to be a bigger day, not just focused on gifts but about being together,” she says.

But the real secret to the O’Connell Christmas magic isn’t looking ahead—which can stress, like Christmas music does, a lot of people out by reminding them of all the shopping they have to do, all the cookies they have to bake, all the Christmas cards they have to send out, all the parties they have to get ready for.

Instead, it’s looking back.

“Because it comes at the end of the year, you reflect back on your year,” Amanda O’Connell says. “For instance, I have had a stressful year at work and with buying a house and making big life changes, and yet, when I reflect back on the year, I’m very proud at how much stuff I’ve accomplished.”

And it’s these family-filled moments of pause and gratitude that help make their Christmas, well, “the most wonderful time of the year,” as Amanda puts it.

Ahh, Christmas.

Tags 50037206, care, hemingway

Conscious Beauty Lifestyle

Clean Up Your Skin…With Bacteria?

Post author By John Kelly
Post date December 6, 2017

Just a few years back, health-conscious women would think twice about leaving the house unless they were armed with a little bottle of hand sanitizer in their handbags, ready to take on the big bad germs out in the world with just a squirt. Now, more and more of people are intentionally spraying bacteria directly onto their skin.

Bacteria does not necessarily equal “bad.”

The skin is the largest organ of the human body, covering a surface area of about 22 square feet. And while that measurement is impressive, it might be even more helpful to think of your skin as its own ecosystem, for all across the creases, folds, and pores of your elastic epidermis live millions and millions of microorganisms. Yes, your skin is home to massive colonies of bacteria, fungi, viruses, mites—the very sorts of tiny biota we usually think we want to wipe out.
Not all bacteria are made equal, though. As many of us reaching for another serving of kefir and kale know, the presence of certain bacteria in our guts promotes digestion, metabolism, and nutrient uptake. These bacteria can also defend against disease. Similarly, scientists have been finding that many of the microorganisms on our skin—or skin flora, as they’re called—aren’t just harmless. They’re actually keeping us healthy.
Some cutting-edge research suggests, for example, that the cutaneous bacterium Staphylococcus epidermidis helps boost our immune response to dangerous pathogens. Overuse of antibacterial soaps and sanitizers can kill off too many S. epidermidis, making it easier for harmful microorganisms to colonize our skin and harder for our body to fight off infection.

Mother Dirt is rethinking what it means to have clean skin.

Such findings have been compelling some to rethink their entire approach to skincare, which supports the sustainability of product lines that are compatible with our skin flora. Enter Mother Dirt.
Mother Dirt is a line of “biome-friendly” products for the skin developed by the biotechnologists and probiotic evangelists at AOBiome. According to the company, modern hygiene—from synthetic deodorants and moisturizers to over-showering and shampooing—have annihilated the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) our bodies need. AOB abound in soil and water and once naturally populated human skin. They break down ammonia, a major component in our sweat, and yield nitrogen-rich byproducts that may improve skin health.
As a response to the hypothesized deficit, AOBiome developed AO+ Mist, a patented and clinically tested spray containing those perspiration-hungry little AOBs.
Now, some hardcore AO+ Mist users have tried foregoing bathing altogether. AOBiome’s founder, David Whitlock, famously—or infamously—hasn’t showered since he was inspired to create his company after seeing some horses roll in the dirt well over a decade ago.
But don’t fear any BO bogeyman or greasy-hair gremlins: AOBiome recommends users spritz the product as a daily part of their hygiene routine, targeting the scalps, pits, feet, hands, and groin—you know, our sweatier crevices. And many misters have reported some seriously positive results: clearer, less oily and better-moisturized skin alongside reduced use of skincare products, which can be toxic to the environment in addition to having a harsh impact on our bodies.
The AO+ Mist runs around $50.00 and lasts about four weeks. It’s best kept in the fridge. Other Mother Dirt offerings include a face and body cleanser and shampoo.

For healthy skin, look to your lifestyle, too.

The science behind skin-based probiotics is young but promising. And more and more probiotic-enriched products are making it to market. Gallinée’s creams seek to return the skin to its natural pH levels, Tula’s serums and moisturizers incorporate superfoods like blueberries and turmeric, and the all-natural Crude hopes you’ll say sayonara to soap—and your acne, eczema, and rosacea—altogether.
Yet as with any new health trend, proceed with caution. In the last few decades, just think of the revolving cast of villains in our dietary drama: fat, carbs, gluten, sugar. Just as Mother Dirt wants to balance out your biome, aim for a balanced, holistic approach to your skincare. To help your skin flora thrive, you don’t need to rip out your shower and roll around in the dirt with Whitlock’s horses.
Revisit your diet and reach for skin-nourishing foods like strawberries, tomatoes, almonds, and fish. Rearrange your schedule to spend more time outdoors rather than being cooped up inside with sterilized surfaces and recycled air. Review your skincare products, including your makeups, for artificial ingredients and replace with natural alternatives where possible.
And reestablish your skincare reflexes. Yes, clean your hands thoroughly, especially after using the bathroom, while cooking, between dirty jobs, or when visiting a hospital, but consider washing up with a little soap and warm water—not immediately opening your palm for that bacteria-busting squirt.

Tags organic

Nutrition x Advice

5 Ways To Use Turmeric (That You Probably Haven’t Considered)

Post author By John Kelly
Post date November 30, 2017

Turmeric is the new golden child of the food world. Traditionally used to season the curries of South and Southeast Asia, this luxuriously hued and scented spice has started to enrich menus—and healthcare regimens—in the West.
A relative of ginger, turmeric is loaded with curcumin, an antioxidant with promising anti-inflammatory powers. An especially popular application of late has been in golden milk, a warming, turmeric-infused drink long known by Ayurvedic healers and more recently embraced by Instagramming baristas.
But savory curries and gilded lattes are only the beginning of this super-spice’s diverse applications. Here are some “bright” ideas to inspire more turmeric use in your life.

1. Spice up your morning scramble with a pinch of turmeric.

It may seem exotic, but that doesn’t mean turmeric can’t be easy. The next time you’re scrambling some eggs, add a little turmeric to your oil (a half teaspoon should do) and finish them off with an extra pinch on top. Consider cracking some fresh pepper, too, as it helps your body absorb turmeric’s star chemical, curcumin.
Sprinkle a little turmeric on fresh avocado for a simple but sophisticated snack—or double down on your superfoods by slathering on some delicious turmeric-topped mash to make delicious avo toast.
Turmeric also likes roasted veggies. The spice will add depth—and color—to cauliflower and potatoes. Toss in some Brussels sprouts and make a clean, healthy dinner out of it. A tablespoon of the spice usually suits a batch, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice will zest up the turmeric’s earthy undertones.

2. Mix up your gin and tonic with a splash of turmeric syrup.

Move over, cucumber and pepper. Up your G&T game with a few ounces of turmeric syrup.
The mixology mavens at Stir and Strain suggest the Southall Tonic—and it ain’t your grandma’s cocktail. This concoction involves a tea tincture, orange flower water, and turmeric syrup for a vivid twist on the classic. For the turmeric syrup, you’ll cook down one cup of water and one cup of sugar with a half cup of chopped turmeric root, which you can pick up at an organic food market or international grocer.
The turmeric brings a savory warmth, making the more summery G&T an exciting and unexpected treat in the winter. It’ll also bring the conversation—and compliments—at your next cocktail party. Even if you skip out on the tea tincture and orange flower water, you’ll still wow your guests. I mean, how can you not sound impressive when you say, “Oh, this? It’s just a little turmeric syrup I put together.”

3. Turmeric can soup up your broth.

Okay, so maybe you overdid it on the turmeric cocktails last night. Well, turmeric has a solution for that, too.
Wellness Mama offers a quick, comforting turmeric broth to help you detox. She combines four cups of broth with garlic, apple cider vinegar, ginger, cumin, salt and pepper, and, yes, turmeric. You can use turmeric powder, but since you probably have some left over from your cocktails, consider grating fresh turmeric root for a more potent elixir.
Not wholesome enough for you? Strengthen your joints by making a turmeric bone broth instead. Gather up some beef knuckles and neck bones—you have those handy, right?—and let them simmer in a bath of turmeric-spiced carrots, onions, and celery. You can drink it straight or use it a base for soups and stews.

4. Brighten up your skin and teeth with turmeric.

Nothing quite says “spa day” like turmeric, now does it? Turmeric is beneficial not only in your body but also on it.
Whip together some yogurt and honey with a bit of turmeric (try not to eat it all of it—you need some for the treatment!) and make your own turmeric face mask. Thanks to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, the turmeric can rejuvenate your skin and maybe even help reduce acne.
You don’t need all that much of any ingredient to create a paste. One tablespoon or so of yogurt and about a half teaspoon of turmeric powder and honey should do. Slather it on and let it sit for about 15 minutes—you might even pretend to be your favorite emoji or Simpsons character while it’s on. Don’t worry: It won’t stain your face, though it may take a few rinses to wash off the yellow. Do be mindful of your clothes, towels, and linens, as the turmeric will leave its mark on them.
Turmeric is also a natural alternative to teeth whiteners. Dip a moist toothbrush in an eighth of a teaspoon of turmeric and leave it on your teeth for up to five minutes. Yes, the taste will be intense and your yellowed mouth might be a little scary looking, but the turmeric will help brighten up your smile. Use turmeric on your teeth in moderation, though—and make that toothbrush your designated turmeric application device.
And if you want to get really creative, try making your own turmeric soap. The marigold-colored bars will perfume your bathroom and pamper your skin. The Soap Queen provides an easy melt-and-pour recipe. The soap could even make for a very original gift idea.

5. Turmeric is the new black.

Turmeric can leave a big mess behind, but crafts can turn turmeric-stained items into real things of beauty. The most prominent feature of turmeric, after all, is its rich yellow–orange color. Turmeric has long been used in foods and medicine, but it has also been used as dye. Buddhists monks, in fact, dyed their vibrant robes with turmeric—which might just give you some DIY inspiration.
Harness turmeric to dye your own tablecloth or pillow cases. Remodelista shows how easily you can turn plain, natural cloth into very elegant decor. Consider wearing your turmeric, too, by dyeing a scarf. You’ll need a fair amount of turmeric powder—up to half a cup—for these projects. But you should have plenty of the stuff around, considering how much you’ll be eating, drinking, and lathering all over your body.

Tags organic

Favorite Finds Sweat

Here They Are: This Year’s 10 Best Fitness Trackers for Women

Post author By John Kelly
Post date November 30, 2017

Dozens of features, hundreds of brands, thousands of models, tens of billions of dollars—we’re talking about the booming business of fitness trackers, whose wearable biometrics are transforming the way we eat, dress, work, sleep, and play. But with so many options out there, it’s hard to know which fitness tracker is best. HealthyWay is here to help.

From DaVinci to Smartwatches

First, let’s take stock of just how far we’ve come with fitness trackers. In his famed notebooks, Leonardo DaVinci sketched his vision of a mechanical pedometer for Renaissance soldiers, though it wasn’t until 1780 that Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Perrelet actually constructed the first one. And Thomas Jefferson gets the credit for bringing an early pedometer—his, a French design—to the New World.
Fast forward to the 1960s, when the Japanese developed the manpo-kei, literally the “10,000 steps meter,” which set the now-popular benchmark for activity today. In 1982, a Finnish professor invented the first wireless wearable heart-rate monitor: the Polar Sport Tester PE2000, designed for professional athletes.
The 2000s marked some of the biggest breakthroughs in fitness trackers, with tech titans like Garmin, Apple, and Samsung packing accelerometers, altimeters, barometers, Bluetooth technology, gyroscopes, GPS, and magnetometers into ever smaller, sleeker, and more sophisticated devices, like the Nike+iPod. This 2006 collaboration embedded a wireless sensor in a special Nike sneaker, providing runners with distance, pace, and calorie data on their iPod Nano all while getting a power boost from their favorite tunes. The technology now may seem a little quaint, but the Nike+iPod was a visionary application of technology for personal fitness.
Then along came a little startup called Fitbit, which helped take fitness trackers further into the mainstream in the 2010s with its ever-expanding line of fun, user-friendly, and affordable wristbands and smartwatches for the everyday exerciser.
Today, we have fitness trackers that not even the genius of DaVinci could have dreamed up. Take Fitbit’s latest release, the Fitbit Ionic. It tracks your sleeping cycles and withstands water to dozens of meters deep. It offers personal training tips and analyzes long-term health data trends on its related app. It can also store hundreds of songs and push a range of alerts and notifications. It features a touchscreen and even allows for touch-pay.

Remember: Fitness trackers are still tools, not cure-alls.

The bells and whistles of today’s fitness trackers are impressive, but do they work?
If you’re hoping that fastening on a fitness tracker will get you shedding those extra pounds and never skipping a workout, think again. A September 2016 study concluded that wearables did not improve weight loss over traditional methods. The following month, another study questioned the effectiveness of fitness trackers in even motivating long-term increases in physical activity.
Still, researchers are finding an uptick, if modest, in activity thanks to the self-monitoring and goal-setting fitness trackers afford—and that matters. Changing behavior begins, after all, one step at a time.
And the behaviors fitness trackers are helping to change aren’t just about clothing sizes. As one working mom, Felicia Bolton, has previously told HealthyWay, her Fitbit helped her overcome her postpartum depression. The fitness tracker sent her reminders to get up and move when she was stuck in a Netflix binge. It also connected her to distant friends and family, inspiring her to take more and more steps through friendly competitions the device supports.
For Bolton, the psychological and social benefits have spilled over into her physical well-being. In a follow-up message to HealthyWay, Bolton writes: “The Fitbit helped me keep track of my overall fitness, down to sleep as well as diet. It helped me monitor all those with the ease of a button, I really didn’t think much of it once I got used to tracking my everyday progress and seeing how far I’d come.”
She continues: “I suffer from severe insomnia, as well as an eating disorder, so keeping track of my sleep and caloric intake really helped me get on a better track with the help of the Fitbit. I didn’t realize how low I really was in every department until I started tracking everything using the Fitbit. It helped me take on a vegan diet and lifestyle.”
As Bolton suggests, it’s best not to think of our fitness trackers as magic wands or silver bullets. Instead, we should approach them as tools—albeit extremely high-tech ones—for our health and personal goals, whether they be taking one small step or running 26.2 miles.
So, what are the best fitness trackers for women right now?

The Fitbit Charge 2 is smart overall choice.

The Charge 2 ($149.95) is Fitbit’s top-selling fitness tracker—and it consistently earns some of the top reviews. TechRadar, for instance, touts it as “the best Fitbit tracker you can buy right now.”
The core of the Charge 2 is its PurePulse technology; its all-day activity tracking automatically and continuously monitors the wearer’s heart rate whether you are running, hiking, biking, lifting weights, or simply going about a normal day. Thanks to its SmartTrack functionality, the Charge 2 will sense and record workouts even if you forget to hit start. It will also vibrate and flash a reminder to move if you’ve been idle too long.
The Charge 2 features a high-res, tap-enabled screen that displays real-time calorie burn and exercise intensity along with basic call, text, and other alerts if your smartphone is nearby. You can access a more detailed breakdown of your cardio fitness (as measured by VO2 Max) and much more on the robust Fitbit app. The app also analyzes the quality, duration, and consistency of your sleep thanks to the device’s automatic sleep tracking.
In Relax mode, the Charge 2 will guide you through a short deep-breathing session to help reduce stress and anxiety.
The Charge 2 does not come with built-in GPS—an important feature for runners, as GPS provides pace, distance, and route data. However, you can easily pair your Charge 2 to your smartphone’s GPS if you don’t mind hitting the trails with an extra device.
Its info-rich screen does make the Charge 2 a bit bulkier than other models (it’s 0.84 inches wide, although it comes in just a few ounces, depending on band choice) like the Fitbit Alta HR. Its battery last up to five days, and it can withstand rain, sweat, and splash.
The Charge 2 comes in a range of colors and interchangeable bands, including a breathable sport band for workouts and a classy leather option if you want to dress it up for work.

The TomTom Spark 3 will fire up runners.

While the Fitbit Charge 2 makes for a great general-purpose fitness tracker, the TomTom Spark 3 GPS Fitness Watch is an exciting choice for the avid exerciser. Wareable, a leading website for all things in wearable technology, picks the Spark 3 as its No. 1 fitness trackers for runners. And a major reason why is its built-in GPS.
The Spark 3 ups the GPS game with its Route Exploration feature. Not only can you leave your smartphone at home, but you can just get out there and run or cycle. Route Exploration shows the route you are running, and, thanks to its compass sensor, helps you find your way back home with a digital “breadcrumb trail.” If you do fancy a pre-planned trail, Route Exploration also lets you upload routes from websites like MapMyRun, serving up some adventure alongside your workout.
Swimmers will also love the Spark 3. It’s waterproof up to 40 meters deep, and the watch’s swimming mode tracks metrics like laps, stroke pace, and more.
Like other fitness trackers, the Spark 3 tracks sleep, supports phone notifications, and provides insights into your workouts on the TomTom app.
It starts at $129.00, but you can make some nifty upgrades: the Spark 3 Music + Headphones ($169.00), which stores up to 500 songs that you can listen to on its workout-tailored Bluetooth headphones; the Spark 3 Cardio ($189.00), which adds a heart monitor to the base model; and the Spark 3 Cardio + Music + Headphones ($249.00), which bundles all the goodies into one. A software update will offer personalized workouts on the watch soon.
The Spark 3 packs in all these feature at a lightweight 1.62 ounces and less than 1 square inch display. The battery lasts up to three weeks if you’re not using its GPS, which otherwise will require a recharge in 11 hours. (Ever wonder why your phone dies when you’re heavy on the Google Maps?) Individualize your Spark 3 look with its interchangeable bands.

The Opter Pose will rejuvenate your lifestyle.

On the other end of the spectrum is Opter, whose Pose health tracker sees physical fitness as just one part of a broader healthy lifestyle.
As Opter’s co-founder Chalisa Prarasri tells HealthyWay: “What sets Opter apart is our behavioral approach to health tracking. We don’t focus on gathering data so much as what we can do with the data to help people live healthier lives.”
She continues: “A lot of people track loads of data about their lives but don’t have a doctor or personal trainer looking at it to really give them good insights from the data. But what if you could have a personal health assistant in your pocket to teach you all of the little tricks associated with better living? That’s what Opter does. We don’t just track; we guide in real time. And all of our suggestions come from the accomplished doctors and specialists we work with, so we’re giving you some of the best information out there.”
Like most fitness trackers, the Pose logs steps, calories, and sleep. It doesn’t come with a heart-rate monitor, but it will vibrate if you are slouching, helping to improve your posture. And it will sense if you’re at risk of too much sun, prompting you to apply more sunscreen. It also tracks your exposure to blue light, the high-energy light that our smartphone and laptop screens emit.
“No sleep tracker that’s been done is tracking your daily light exposure,” which “affects your biological clock,” Prarasri explained in a previous interview. “If we can track that as well as your sleep schedule, we can recommend times to sleep so that your sleep is higher quality and more efficient. Light is the thing that is shifting a lot of people’s schedules and giving them insomnia.”
To help rectify this, the Pose will monitor your blue light exposure throughout the day and direct you to turn off the lights at night.
“If you’re just looking for tracking, you could go for any tracker (though we do track more metrics than most). If you’re looking to learn how to perfect your everyday habits, Opter might be right for you,” Prarasi writes. “The Opter app analyzes your habits and figures out what daily behaviors you can change to sleep better, work better, and just feel better.”
The Pose comes in a beautiful, 5.2-gram “modern organic” design that can be worn as a clip or as a pendant on any chain. Get yours on pre-order now. It will retail for $129.00 to $139.00.
Still not sold? Prarasri closes the deal: “We’re especially good for busy people who don’t want to worry about charging or taking off their device too often, since we have a 7+ day battery life and are water resistant.”

Go for great GPS with the Garmin Vivosport.

Garmin is a trusted name in GPS and is fast becoming a trusted name in fitness trackers. The Garmin Vivosport ($199.00) is the latest member of its Vivo family.
Like other fitness trackers, the Vivosport connects to your email, calendar, and social media while counting everything from your footsteps to heartbeats through its wrist-based sensors. But it packages Garmin’s top-notch GPS tech, which is lacking in many fitness trackers, into an incredibly slim body and a touch-activated color display.
Although the Vivosport doesn’t feature any sleep tracking, it does track your stress levels by monitoring changes in your heart rate.
The Vivosport comes in four color choices but no interchangeable bands. Screen: 0.38 inches. Weight: 24-27 grams. Battery: seven days in smartwatch mode, eight hours when using GPS. It’s accompanied by an app and, with Garmin Connect, can communicate with your—and others’—Garmin devices.

Get a dazzling display with Samsung Gear Fit 2.

If you’re looking for amazing display in your fitness wearables, look no further than the Gear Fit 2 Pro ($199.99), the latest offering from Samsung.
The centerpiece of the Gear Fit 2 is its curved screen and pixel-packed (432 x 128) display, giving it some of the best fitness-tracking optics out there. The usual internet connectivity and activity-monitoring apply (steps, calories, heart rate, sleep), but the Gear Fit 2 throws in GPS and up-to-50-meter waterproofing. Samsung bills it as a smart “watch for fitness,” because of the many apps you can download on the device.
Speaking of downloads, the Gear Fit 2 Pro is a friend of Spotify, letting you save up to 500 songs that you can listen to offline. It’s also partnered with Under Armour, giving you access to the sport company’s quality fitness apps.
Style choices are limited, as it only comes in black or red, but you’ll probably want to customize its fancy 1.84-inch display anyway. It’s a hair on the heavier side, as far as these things go, at 34 grams (.07 pounds).
Gym rats quibble with the accuracy of some of its activity tracking, but the Gear Fit 2 Pro still makes for a high-performing option for the tech-forward weekend warrior.

The Mi Band 2 wins big on budget.

Looking for something much more streamlined in terms of function and cost? Consider the Mi Band 2 from major Chinese consumer electronics player Xiaomi.
The app-synching, splash-resistant, 20-day-long-battery, light-as-air (7 grams) Mi Band 2 counts steps, monitors heart rate, tracks sleep, supports basic message notification, and gives you a nudge if you’ve been sitting still for too long—all for $29.99, if you don’t find it for less.
The Mi Band 2 is a no-nonsense no-brainer for the budget-conscious newbie to fitness trackers.

Class it up with Misfit Ray.

Misfit proves that fitness trackers don’t have to sacrifice style for substance. This wearables brand brandishes a clever name—and gorgeous products, like the Misfit Ray.
The Ray (~$85 to $100) tracks the fundamentals—activity and sleep—in an elegant band that comes in 23 sporty and classy metallic-finish options such as a striking rose gold. The Ray is discreet but distinct, looking more like a smart bracelet that accessorizes your activity tracking rather than announcing it. That’s because the Ray features no screen. Its minimalist look pairs well, too, with a wristwatch or smartwatch. Misfit offers lots of band options and even a special lariat, should you want to sport your Ray as a necklace.
You can monitor your performance in the Misfit app, which offers a Speedo-powered upgrade so this water-resister can track your swimming. The free Misfit Link app lets you turn your Ray into a smart button for, say, taking a selfie or changing songs on your smartphone.
And there’s no need to charge the Ray. It lasts for four months before you have to replace its battery. The device itself runs under 1.5 inches long and weighs a mere 8 grams.

Each Bellabeat Leaf is unique—and includes period tracking.

The Bellabeat Leaf styles itself as smart jewelry, and indeed, this elegantly crafted device is designed to be worn as a pendant, bracelet, or brooch-like clip. “No buttons. No screen. Simply wear it and sync it to the app,” as the Bellabeat website puts it.
The Leaf isn’t intended for hardcore marathoners who need to track pace and distance in real time, but it’s perfect for the modern woman who cares about health, technology, and fashion. The Leaf tracks sleep, activity, stress, and menstrual cycles—which the tracker logs and learns from, and it even provides advice tailored for each woman’s period.
As Bellabeat’s social media and content manager Katja Peric explains to HealthyWay, the Leaf is “the perfect companion in health for any woman—it looks beautiful and can suit any occasion or lifestyle. The features are optimized for women (reproductive health tracking) and serve as a reminder that their overall well-being matters by providing insight into stress levels and having meditation exercises available.”
It comes in four main styles, combining a silver or rose gold clip with a wood- or stone-styled tracking device. But each actual Leaf is unique, which underlies the core philosophy of Bellabeat.
Peric elaborates: “[In] nature each leaf might be a part of a tree, but not one single leaf is the same shape or color. It is unique in its existence and beauty—just like every person in the world is as well. Our Leaf trackers are created from materials that ensure each model [is] a slightly different shade or pigment, to show that every woman who wears our product is unique and beautiful in her own way.”
Its flagship device weighs 0.64 ounces and measure 1.9 x 1.2 x 0.5 inches. The Leaf is splash resistant and runs for six months on a coin cell battery. Cost ranges from $119.00 to $139.00. For an extra $50 to $60, you can purchase Leaf bundles to interchange your device with different clips, among other accessories.
“[W]e don’t just want our users to focus on numbers, competitions, or unrealistic fitness goals,” Peric adds, “but instead learn to love themselves and appreciate the capabilities of their own bodies as unique individuals that should not be compared to others.”

The Moov Now will get you moving. Now.

There’s a lot of buzz about the Moov Now—and it’s well deserved.
As much a fitness tracker as a personal trainer, the Moov Now is a small, screen-less disk you insert into a workout-optimized strap you can wear on your wrist or ankle. Pair it with your smartphone, where with the Moov app you can download workouts for swimming, running, cycling, and even boxing—all started with the click of its button.
Thanks to its special motion sensors, the Moov Now’s AI personal trainer will tell you in real time if you’re striking your feet too hard on the ground, if you need to push a little bit harder riding up a hill, if you’re clenching your fists while jogging, or when to hook and jab-cross during a boxing routine.
You’ll need to keep your smartphone on you and wear headphones to use the Moov Now, except for Moov Swim, where the device will record your stroke/lap data for up to 120 minutes. For up to 30 days the Moov Now will store Active Minute + Sleep Tracking, which monitors your daily activity and sleep quality.
The Moov Now doesn’t have a heart monitor, although it will connect to Moov’s latest product: the Moov HR, a headband-based heart monitor that measures pulse on the temple.
It weighs 6 grams and is powered by a coin battery that lasts for 100 hours in active coaching mode and six months when doing simple activity tracking.
This is one hot deal for only $59.95.

The Apple Watch Series 3 will wow your workout.

Finally, many Apple users are surely wondering: Should I buy a separate fitness tracker or just shell out for the Apple Watch Series 3, which starts at a whopping $329?
Consider these features: The Series 3 offers daily tracking with its native Activity app. It offers exercise tracking with its Workout app. It has GPS. It has an altimeter for stair climbing. It holds playlists. It’s swim-proof. It displays in-depth, real-time data on your heart health with its advanced Heart Rate app—which some have credited with saving their lives. Get relaxed and centered with its Breath app. And access countless other health and fitness options with third-party apps targeting everything from sleeping and skiing to hydration and yoga.
Oh, and you can do lots of others things with this approximately 30-gram device, as the Series 3 practically doubles as a smartphone. Yes, you can make phone calls on this fitness tracker if you’re connected to your iPhone. Apple reports the battery lasts up to 18 hours if the watch is used moderately as an all-day general fitness tracker.
With the Series 3, Apple is pushing the envelope not just for what smartwatches can do for fitness tracking but for treating illness and managing disease as well. As part of its so-called HealthKit, Apple has partnered with major universities to create special apps monitoring melanoma, epilepsy, autism, Parkinson’s disease, and more.
Plus, the Apple Watch has a seriously sharp display and design. Apple-loving health enthusiasts will get a lot out of it.

From Wristbands to Waistbands

Fitbit, Misfit, Moov, Mi Band 2: These are among the best, most innovative, and most cutting-edge fitness trackers. But even as they revolutionize health and fitness, the future of fitness tracking may not be on our wrists—but in our clothes.
The technology is only just emerging, so you can definitely enjoy your new fitness tracker for some time. But tech giants like Google and startups like SUPA are developing “smart threads,” e-textiles that track biometrics like smartwatches do but can be washed and worn in denim jackets, sports bras, and even yoga pants—like the Nadi X, which vibrates to help coach your yoga practice. How about that, DaVinci?

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Sweat

How The Apple Watch And Other Tech Are Treating Illness And Saving Lives

Post author By John Kelly
Post date November 3, 2017

Want to check snow conditions on the mountain, how many calories are in your lunch, or where you parked your car? “There’s an app for that,” as Apple memorably advertised its iPhone in 2009. In the years since, developers have introduced apps for more than 2 million other things.

But what about…saving lives? Yes, apparently there’s an app for that, too.

In fall 2015, ABC News reported the viral story of Massachusetts teen Paul Houle, Jr., who was experiencing some back and chest pain after football practice. He thought to check his Apple Watch; its sensors registered his heart was beating at twice its normal rate. Houle alerted his family and health professionals, who then discovered he had rhabdomyolysis, a very serious condition in which muscle fibers break down and enter the bloodstream, potentially damaging major organs.

After his diagnosis, Houle spent a few days recovering in the hospital, which is much preferable to what could have happened if he’d suffered from kidney failure on the football field, which may well have happened had he gone to the next practice.

Parents are constantly struggling to get their kids (not to mention themselves) to put down the technology. In Houle’s case, it’s a good thing he didn’t. And Apple Watch’s heart-rate monitor is just the beginning of the many ways smart devices are improving our health—and even saving lives.

First Aid Kit 2.0

When a tech giant like Apple unveils its latest products, we tend to geek out over all the shiny new bells and whistles. This year, for instance, the company showcased its amusing Animoji and flashy Face ID. Garnering less attention, however, are its ambitious—if less glamorous—health initiatives.

In a project it calls ResearchKit, Apple has been teaming up with some top U.S. university medical centers and institutes, including Duke and Johns Hopkins, to develop apps for Apple products that target a battery of illnesses and disorders: Parkinson’s disease, autism, concussions, and melanoma, to name just a few.

EpiWatch, for instance, is an Apple Watch app that helps track seizures, which is particularly useful for people with epilepsy, hence the name.

Although the app can’t currently detect seizures outright, it uses Apple Watch technology to collect real-time data before and during a seizure event, including the option for the wearer to send an alert to a family member or caregiver. Johns Hopkins is analyzing the data to get a better understanding of epilepsy and improve its treatment, with an eye toward device detection and automatic notification of seizures in the future.

At Apple’s 2017 event, it debuted a new partnership with Stanford University to harness the Apple Watch for the detection of atrial fibrillation, an irregular and rapid heart rate associated with a variety of cardiac diseases.

What’s key to these efforts isn’t just Apple’s whiz-bang hardware—the sensors, gyroscopes, GPS, and accelerometers it packs into a wrist-sized bundle. It’s the data.

Big Data

While we may take it for granted, internet-based technologies have already transformed our health and lives by bringing previously unavailable or inaccessible data right to our fingertips.

Consider how we can learn more about our symptoms if we are feeling sick with a search on WebMD, how we can consult with our doctor across the globe thanks to Skype, or how we can navigate the world like never before using mapping programs like BlindSquare if we have a visual impairment.

But with wearable devices like Apple Watch, we—our very bodies—are the data. And we are lots and lots of data.

With Apple’s ResearchKit, for example, app users agree to essentially become study participants, allowing researchers to collect a volume and depth of data previously unavailable in traditional, in-person studies. These data will provide a potentially massive database no one laboratory could ever summon
, given that Apple had sold over a billion devices by 2016.

In its new study with Apple, Stanford aims to analyze all the heart data from its participating Apple Watch users to fashion an algorithm that spots heart arrhythmia with the flick of wrist, so to speak.

Now that’s not your grandma’s country doctor.

One Step at a Time

Fancy stuff, Apple. But sometimes it’s the simpler features of our technology that prove transformative.

“Those little notifications just reminded me I needed to move,” says Felicia Bolton of her Fitbit, a wireless health and fitness tracker worn on the wrist. The device had over 22 million active users in 2016.

A disabilities support worker in British Columbia, Bolton sank into a deep postpartum depression following the birth of her third child. On top of that, she was still recovering from a very difficult pregnancy and surviving the trauma of an earlier abusive relationship. “I didn’t think there was a way out,” she says of the time right after her daughter was born.

Then she turned to her Fitbit, which her boyfriend had given her for Christmas. The device can be programmed to give reminders for such activities as moving regularly.

“After [the] baby was born, I would basically sleep all day in bed, barely get up to eat. Getting those notifications made me get up to get something eat and walk around with her,” Bolton says, adding that this activity helped keep her mind “off all the bad stuff.”

Bolton’s Fitbit didn’t just nudge her to get out of bed. “The app kept me connected,” she says. Around this time, she was new to her town and her boyfriend was working long hours. She felt isolated in addition to her tendency to isolate herself post-trauma. “I didn’t realize how many of my friends and family have them.”

Fitbit allows fellow trackers to engage in encouraging challenges, such as the “Daily Showdown,” or “Who can get the most steps today?” These friendly competitions helped prevent from Bolton disappearing further into isolation with her newborn.

“The more steps I took, I got braver,” Bolton continues. “I would walk around the neighborhood. That was a big thing. [My former partner] was so controlling I couldn’t leave the house without him knowing.”

As Bolton later noted in a message, Fitbit’s sleep and calorie trackers also helped her with her struggles with insomnia and an eating disorder. But its greatest impact was clearly psychological. “It got me thinking. I have my baby to care for. I have myself to care for,” she says.

“There’s still a long way to go, but I’m so grateful my partner got me that Fitbit. I don’t know where I’d be today, but I’d probably still be in bed crying.”

Opter-ing for a Better Lifestyle

Chalisa Prarasri knows the importance of changing behaviors one step at a time.

After Prarasri studied neuroscience and biomedicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, she and her CalTech-trained physicist husband have just launched Opter Pose. Opter Pose is a unisex smart necklace/clip that tracks posture, sleep, and exposure to ultraviolet (UV) and blue light, which Prarasri says no other wearable is currently monitoring.

Blue light, a high-energy wavelength of light emitted from the many screens we use throughout the day, has a major effect on our biological clock and overall health.

Unlike other popular wearables, Opter Pose is taking a “more behavioral approach,” Prarasri says. “It’s about how can you change your behavior to change your health as opposed to how can we give you numbers and graphs and you can figure it out on your own.”

“We will track when you sleep and tell you these are the more efficient hours you could sleep,” Prarasri continues. “We will track your posture and that’s sort of real-time information about what you could be changing. Or will we track UV exposure,” prompting users to apply more sunscreen.

With Opter Pose, Prarasr
i wants to build a “smart lifestyle.” As with smart, lifestyle is a bit of a buzzword in today’s health and wellness zeitgeist, but Prarasri has very clear, science-backed vision for it.

“There are all these tiny choices we make every single day that have an impact on our health because we do it every single day. Slouching for one hour is probably not going to give you chronic back pain,” she says. “But if you are in an awkward position every day… If you get sun burnt once? Probably not a big deal, but if you are exposed all the time,” then you can develop serious problems.

The technology that makes a product like Opter Pose work is quite complicated. But Prarasri’s underlying theory for it is pretty simple: “Slight behavior change can really impact our health.”

And it’s all packaged in a sleek, stylish accessory designed to seamlessly integrate into your look—and lifestyle.

Brave New Wearables

Bolton’s story and Prarasri’s vision are nothing short of inspiring. But what if you have have diabetes, are at risk of breast cancer, or—well, you name it? There’s probably a wearable for that.

In recent years, the so-called “internet of things” has been booming in health and medicine; in the case of Clarius’ handheld, wireless ultrasound machine, for instance, doctors can use smartphones to display ultrasound images.

As the number of products is wide and the array of technologies broad—not to mention advances in medical technology itself—let’s stick with wearables to highlight a few compelling examples.

Slated for mass introduction in 2018, K’Watch Glucose is a specialized watch that allows people with diabetes to measure glucose levels with just the touch of a finger. Since 2014, Google has been testing prototypes of a smart contact lens that will continuously monitor glucose levels in tears.

iTBra can help take the time, costs, and pain out of breast examinations with its “intelligent breast patches,” which detect changes in breast tissue temperature, instantly sending off the data for clinical analysis.

And while iTBra may not be an actual everyday brassiere, smart clothing—yes, full-fledged wearable wearables—are taking off. Much of this technology is targeted at athletes, but the Owlet Smart Sock is a veritable baby monitor 2.0: Strap this soft half-bootie onto your infant, and it will notify you if there are any concerning changes in your baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels.

They’re smart, but are they safe and secure?

This all sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Wearables and other personal smart technologies are profoundly changing—or disrupting, to use the buzzword—our fitness, health education, symptom tracking, and health communication and management. But it has its limitations.

Lukasz Piwek, MA, MSc, PhD, led a 2016 study, published in the Public Library of Science Medicine, assessing the state of consumer health wearables. He and his team found that wearables hold great and exciting promises in “providing patients with personalized health data, which could assist with self-diagnosis and behaviour change interventions.” They also raised serious concerns about its barriers, including:

Safety

Users can become overly dependent on their devices, leading to a false sense of security, self-misdiagnosis, or using their device as a substitute for doctor visits. Plus, the constant availability of data can compel some to check their devices compulsively, causing needless anxiety. And people can widely differ in how faithfully or accurately they use a device, which could cause harm.

Reliability and Validity

Walk the same distances using Fitbit’s pedometer and Apple Watch’s pedometer and you may well get different results. Such margins of error raise red flags about product effectiveness. And some products don’t work 100 percent of the time, such as a melanoma app that was found to fail up to 30 percent of the time.

Security

And then there’s all that data. In many instances, users own the device—but not their own data. That becomes the property of the manufacturer, which they might sell at the risk of exposing your personal information, as even anonymous data can potentially reveal identifying information.

Finally, as devices, they can be hacked, which can compromise the very health data that makes wearables and other smart technologies so attractive in the first place.

And none of this is to mention cost. The Smart Sock costs $300, and most of the newest Apple Watches come in at $400. Not that we aren’t shelling out; the overall wearables market is forecasted to crack $6 billion in 2018.

A computer is only as smart as the person using it.

In the meantime, as doctors and engineers work out the challenges to smart tech—and as they forge ever smarter devices that we willingly integrate into our lives—maybe we can take a cue from our conscientious football player, Paul Houle.

He patiently saved up for his expensive Apple Watch, for one thing. And he used it just as that: technology. Not as healthcare and not as a substitute for seeing a physician, but as a tool that helped him get to a doctor when he needed it most.

Now that’s pretty smart.

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Lifestyle

Cyberchondria: How The Internet Can Fuel Our Health Worries

Post author By John Kelly
Post date October 31, 2017

You get a bad headache. You pop a few aspirin, down a big glass of water. A few hours later, your head’s still throbbing, so you take a few more. But the pain just won’t go away. I’ve had headaches before, you think. No biggie. I’ll just lie down for a little while.

When you wake? It’s still there.

Now you’re concerned. Naturally, you go online. “Bad headache won’t go away” you type into Google, and before you know it, you’ve completely forgotten about your headache—because, after falling down a rabbit hole of WebMD, Healthline, obscure Reddit threads, and medical horror story blogs, you’re sweating. You’re biting your nails. Your heart is racing. You’re convinced you have a brain tumor.

Then you make the mistake of clicking on Google Images.

But you shouldn’t be worried about your headache or any brain tumor, for you’ve come down with something altogether different: cyberchondria.

From the Four Humors to Health Anxiety

Cyberchondria sounds like something straight out of science fiction, but it’s a very real problem. As the Collins Dictionary defines it, cyberchondria is the “unfounded anxiety concerning the state of one’s health brought on by visiting health and medical websites”; as the Mayo Clinic explains, “searching the internet because of illness anxiety…only makes that anxiety worse.”

First, a little medical, and lexical, history. The coinage first appeared in British newspapers around 2000 and is a blend of cyberspace and hypochondria—the latter of which has been for centuries. Though the concept reaches back to antiquity, the word hypochondria in English dates to the 1560s, based on Greek roots literally meaning “below” (hypo-) the “cartilage,” referring to the area right below the ribs once thought to be the seat of melancholy in the body. (Remember the four humors when you read Shakespeare in school?)

In the 1600s, hypochondria shifted to a “causeless sadness,” with doctors seeking earnest explanations in the 18th century. They even gave it a more clinical name: hypochondriasis, originally thought to be a disorder of the nervous system, marked especially by indigestion.

In the ensuing centuries, medical understanding of hypochondriasis evolved to view the condition as a mental disorder, though still grounded in that core sense of the fear that one is suffering from a major disease, often on the basis of misinterpreting minor symptoms. Hypochondriasis was even described in the bible of all things psych, the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—until 2013.

That year, the DSM eliminated the term for its fifth edition. For one, the terms hypochondria, hypochondriac, and hypochondriasis have become pejorative, reduced to punchlines in popular culture and stigmatizing mental health disorders. “That’s it then,” The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper doom-says after accidentally drinking from his friend’s glass of water. “I’m dead.”

For another, mental health professionals didn’t find the term as diagnostically and therapeutically effective. So, the DSM replaced hypochondriasis with two new ones: somatic symptom disorder (SSD) and illness anxiety disorder (IAD).

With SSD, a patient is experiencing some actual symptoms, such as weakness or shortness of breath, which results in “major distress” due to “excessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors relating to the physical symptoms,” the DSM explains. IAD is marked by similar anxieties, but in the absence of any physical symptoms.

Give SSD and IAD your WiFi password—and you’ve got cyberchondria.

“All I had to do was put some lotion on.”

Google, the world’s most popular search engine, kicked off in 1994, and just two years later, the leading health information website, WebMD, launched. That’s not even 10 years before the earliest appearance of the word cyberchondria. In that small window, these powerful resources transformed our everyday knowledge and behavior about health and wellness.

Like never before, the average person can now access information about medicine previously accessible only to highly trained and educated specialists—or, if you’re old enough to remember it, the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, that dense doorstopper that collected dust on your grandparents’ bookshelf. In addition to all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, the internet also opened new lines of communication, from email to chat rooms, between patients and their doctors.

But all this information, ironically, can really leave one in the dark. And that’s especially true during times of great bodily changes and questions.

“I had an itchy belly during my first pregnancy,” says Jessica Douglas, stay-at-home mother of two and part-time marketing manager in Southern California. “I went online and looked up ‘itchy belly during pregnancy’ and it came back as this disorder called PUPPP,” a cute shortening of the frighteningly named pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy. “It’s some crazy skin condition that can cause early labor and is dangerous for the baby.”

“I went to the doctor and all she said it was just dry skin from the belly stretching,” Douglas continues. “Going online freaked me out. All I had to do was put some lotion on.”

It was even worse when her first baby was born, Douglas says, with every cough, sneeze, and gurgle raising a new mother’s alarm. “They send you home with a little human with no instructions. You’re searching for someone to tell you this weird noise your baby is making normal. So, you go online and the next thing you know your baby has some horrible disease or is missing a chromosome.”

And she’s far from alone. Douglas shared a scare her friend recently experienced when her son was unusually quiet and unresponsive. “She was concerned that he wasn’t developing normally. She went online and plugged in some of his symptoms and, lo and behold, WebMD said he had personality disorder and autism,” she says. Panicked, she took her son to the doctor.

“Turned out he just had a bunch of wax buildup in his ear.” The wax was making it hard for him to hear.

Don’t jump—or click—to conclusions.

Douglas—and her many peers—are smart, conscientious people. And indeed, according to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Student Medical Journal, occasional illness anxiety is a frequent occurrence in healthy populations. Full-fledged hypochondriasis affects only between 4 to 9 percent of people.

But in a fall 2017 study, some researchers, led by professors at the Imperial College London and King’s College London, found that one in five patients at British health clinics were experiencing health anxiety—fueled in large part by internet searches, they reasoned.

What’s up with the internet?

Judgment biases, as a landmark 2008 study on cyberchondria by Ryen White and Eric Horvitz at Microsoft concluded. As our teachers admonished us time and time again, don’t just click on the first link Google gives you.

White and Horvitz found that web searches for a symptom like a headache yielded as many results linking it brain tumors as it did for caffeine withdrawal. To be sure, a headache can portend a brain tumor—this is what feeds hypochondriasis after all—but brain tumors are exceedingly rate. Caffeine withdrawal, meanwhile, is common and mundane. And searches for chest pain, as another example, pointed participants more frequently to heart attacks than indigestion.

These skewed results “escalate” medical concerns, White and Horvitz found, compelling people to look up more serious illnesses than in all likelihood they really had.

We humans like to jump to conclusions—often catastrophic ones. And it doesn’t help that the internet overwhelms us with so much information at once, making it even harder to filter out the signal from the noise.

This escalation, this constant checking, only further spikes one’s anxiety. In a 2016 study, New York State Psychiatric Institute’s Emily Doherty-Torstrick and colleagues indeed found that when people go online to seek reassurance for anxiety they are feeling about a symptom, they report feeling even more anxious during and after their searches. The internet backfires.

Cyberchondria is vicious circle: You are worried about a symptom, so you go online. Your search results take your symptoms out of proportion and you get more nervous. You want learn out more, hoping to get some other information that will relieve your concerns, but you’re finding out only makes you more troubled, so you keep searching, spiraling ever faster in the vortex of anxiety.

With 90 percent of Americans—40 million of whom have anxiety disorders—checking symptoms online, this is a cycle that’s all too hard to break out of.

“There is a lot, too, besides WebMD,” Douglas says. She feels like social media and “mommy forums” are “almost just as dangerous. People [kind of] bandwagon…There’s so much noise, so many opinions being thrown out.”

And not even medical professionals are immune to all that noise.

The internet really adds fuel to the fire.

Brittany Raulino, an oncology nurse in Oregon who previously worked in a primary care clinic, recounts a number of colleagues—yes, fellow nurses—ironically succumbing to cyberchondria.

“One nurse,” she says, “had issues waking up with night sweats. So she googled her symptoms and it was the number one thing that came up.” Lymphoma—a cancer of the lymph nodes.

“It was late at night and she was thinking about the [worst-case] scenario,” Raulino says. “‘Oh my god, I have night sweats. Oh my god, do I have lymphoma?’ When she googled it, she spent the rest of the night panicking.”

Fortunately, Raulino continues, “the next day she called her doctor and her friends and talked her out of it.”

But unfortunately, many of Raulino’s patients, who are battling cancer and don’t have friends who are medical professionals, try to talk themselves out of certain treatments as a result of cyberchondria.

“People hear ‘cancer’ and they hear these crazy horror stories about treatment-related side effects. They start fantasizing that they will develop them and it makes them paranoid and not want to get treatment.”

Anxiety often persists during treatment, too, says Raulino. “When people have funky side of effects of chemo, they google and feel like they have something a lot worse than it is. They will google the drug related to the side effect and think they have that weird side effect that affects only one percent. ‘I don’t want this drug.’”

“The internet really adds fuel to the fire,” she says.

Raulino, for her part, thinks a twofold behavior is behind cyberchondria. “I wonder if people automatically go to Google first as that easy method to discern that there symptoms are instead of actually turning to somebody and having to talk to somebody on the phone,” she says. “The internet is that first instinct…We don’t have to have to deal with people in real time. We want that quick-fix answer.”

So, what are we supposed to do?

On the one hand, that hunger for the “quick-fix answer” can needlessly drive us to the doctors—like the one in five found in the 2017 British assessment. That costs patients and healthcare systems money. It also costs doctors, many of whom are already overworked, time and energy. Plus, those extra visits can lead to unnecessary drugs, tests, screenings, further stressing the system.

On the other hand, as Raulino’s experience shows, cyberchondria can also compel people to withdraw from care they actually need owing to fear—or seek inappropriate, even dangerous, treatment as a result of self-misdiagnosis or misinformation. According to the 2008 Microsoft report, a lot of content on medical websites, to say nothing of personal blogs and community forums, can be unreliable or incomplete.

With cyberchondria, it seems like we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. And either way we go, we’re dealing with anxiety, which, if it gets severe enough, needs treatment in its own right. What are we supposed to do?

First off, you might not want to go googling if you think have cyberchondria. Remember that a low level of illness anxiety is normal and that nearly all of us use the internet to look up our symptoms—the key to cyberchondria is excessive checking, after all.

Then, use a trusted self-diagnostic tool to help you determine whether or not your symptom-checking is a problem. Based on the Doherty-Torstrick study, Susan Krauss Whitbourne, PhD and professor emerita of psychology and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, provides a handy five-point guide on Psychology Today. One of the signs you may have a problem, Whitbourne says, is if “you check online for symptom information from up to 1 to 3 hours a day.”

If you do think you may be experiencing cyberchondria, stop checking, as it will likely only increase your anxiety, and consult a doctor. Psychological methods like cognitive behavioral therapy have proven incredibly effective for managing health anxiety.

If you are concerned you are at risk or want to be mindful of it, Joni Johnston, PsyD, also for Psychology Today, offers three helpful guidelines: 1) self-screen but don’t self-diagnose, as trusted health questionnaires can be useful starting places for further consultation; 2) check your sources, as not all websites are of equal quality and vetting; and 3) consider the context—health anxiety can spike when a loved one is ill or has passed away.

Brittany Raulino would especially agree the second guideline. “The most important thing is to ask your healthcare provider what websites they can go on if they want to research the symptoms,” she says, highlighting federal websites and the Mayo Clinic online.

Paging Dr. Context

Jessica Douglas is a living example of Johnston’s third guideline: context. With her second child, “it was way easier because all those rashes and weird coughing sounds I knew were fine because I had asked my [pediatrician] the first time,” she says. “I didn’t even bother going online this time because I didn’t want to freak myself out.”

Just because the internet says it does not mean it’s true.

Instead, she swears by her healthcare provider’s nurse hotline. “If they have any trepidation [about a symptom], they will tell me to schedule an appointment. Most of the times they’ve seen it a million times and there’s nothing to be afraid of,” she says.

“I think it’s just important for people to remember that when they type in that search box, an algorithm is picking out things for them,” Douglas says.
“It’s ones and zeroes. It’s impersonal. Just because the internet says it does not mean it’s true.”

So, the next you get that lingering headache, use the internet cautiously and remember the wise words of Douglas—and Arnold Schwarzenegger, for in all probability, “It’s not a tumor.”

Tags 50036501, care, hemingway

Wellbeing

The Downsides Of Recycling (And What We Can Do About Them)

Post author By John Kelly
Post date October 11, 2017

We finish off the can of sparkling water, scoop out the last of the Greek yogurt, fork up the final greens from our salad box, and toss our trash straight into the…recycling bin. It feels good, doing our part for the environment. For a great many of us, recycling has become as second nature as, well, throwing our rubbish into the garbage.

But what happens from there to our cans and cardboard? How much good are we really doing when we sort out our plastics? As much as the thought can feel like an oil spill in our hearts and minds, is recycling actually helping?

Well, everything, as they say, comes with a cost. Even recycling.

Not all recyclables are equal.

Ten percent. Just 10 percent.

“Society’s best recycling rate is only 10%,” wrote Thomas Kinnaman, professor of economics at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, in an article for The Conversation. Kinnaman led an eye-opening 2014 study that examined the overall “social cost” of recycling in Japan, the country with the most comprehensive data available. Social costs, for Kinnaman, encompassed everything from city expenses to environmental impact to the moral satisfaction people feel from the act of recycling. And on balance, he concluded, it is most beneficial for both the environment and the economy—there’s no such thing as a free recycled lunch—to recycle only 10 percent of our waste.

That number will strike many as shockingly small. We are instructed to recycle as soon as we start school. PBS alone, for instance, offers parents and educators 15 interdisciplinary, interactive lesson plans, following kids from kindergarten through the fourth grade, to teach recycling and other related eco-friendly behaviors.

And we are shamed for not recycling as adults. SodaStream, which makes a machine that allows people to make their own sparkling water, released an ad in 2016 called “Shame or Glory.” It featured Game of Thrones characters—yes, the Mountain and Septa Unella—chastening a shopper for buying water packaged in single-serve, plastic containers.

For after all, when we recycle, we send less waste to landfills and incinerators, which can lead to water and air pollution. We conserve energy and natural resources, which would otherwise be extracted to create new goods, using fewer fossil fuels and emitting fewer greenhouse gases in the process. Plus, if Big Bird and Jon Snow do it, then well, recycling’s just gotta be good.

But as Kinnaman’s study found, it’s more complicated than that, and that’s because not all materials are equally recyclable.

We may think otherwise, though, due to the very way we recycle. Today, many of us are used to casting our major recyclables—glass, plastic, paper, and metal—into the big, all-in-one bins we wheel out to the curb every week. These bins were developed, in part, because the time and effort it takes to sort materials deter many people from recycling, not to mention that multiple-stream recycling puts additional energy-sucking, gas-coughing trucks on the road to handle different pickup schedules. Yet these very pro-recycling, all-in-one bins can give us the false impression that are recyclables are equivalent.

“Although the optimal overall recycling rate may be only 10%, the composition of that 10% should contain primarily aluminum, other metals and some forms of paper, notably cardboard and other source of fiber,” Kinnaman wrote. “Optimal recycling rates for these materials may be near 100% while optimal rates of recycling plastic and glass might be zero.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) backs up Kinnaman. It found that, in 2014, the U.S. recycled and composted 89 million tons of municipal solid waste, the technical term for what we throw out. But 90 percent of those savings come from just aluminum and paper. Everything else, from plastic and glass to food, yard trimmings, and textiles, amount to a mere 0.2 percent in savings—virtually zero, as Kinnaman observes.

Don’t despair too much: recycling absolutely does lower greenhouse gases, an unadulterated good. The aforementioned recycling efforts reduced over 181 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Having difficulty sizing up that number? The EPA likens the reduction to taking over 38 million cars off the road.

But the disparity in savings between metal/paper and plastic/glass is alarming—think about how often you recycle bottles as opposed to aluminum cans. What gives? Let’s sort it out:

Metal deserves a medal.

Tin, iron, and steel are winners, but aluminum is a recycling champion. According to environmental scientists, it’s 100 percent recyclable, and even after multiple rounds of reuse, the quality of its metal doesn’t degrade. This makes aluminum highly valuable to manufacturers who purchase the recycled material for reuse.

What’s more, recycling aluminum requires only about 5 percent of the energy it takes to mine and develop new, or “virgin,” aluminum, a very expensive and energy-intensive process.

Paper, Paper Everywhere

Recycling paper, whether newsprint or corrugated cardboard, is estimated to save only 40 percent of the energy required to make new supplies. And unlike aluminum, paper has diminishing returns; it deteriorates in quality each time it’s processed, making the value it can fetch on the market quite variable. Plus, a byproduct of recycling paper is a nasty sludge, which can be hazardous and is often landfilled.

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But we just consume so many paper products. In 2014, the EPA tallied that we recycled 44.4 million tons of paper and paperboard—nearly 50 percent of everything we recycled. That alone, calculates the EPA, took the equivalent of 29 million cars off the road that year.

A Glass Ceiling?

Twenty-nine million cars—compared to glass, which the EPA says removed only 175,000 cars. That’s definitely better than nothing, but when it comes to glass, we have to start weighing the costs against the benefits. Glass recycling, as with aluminum, is a closed-loop process; we get glass from recycling glass. But it’s very bulky and heavy, for one, which means more carbon emissions due to additional fuel and transportation. It also breaks, and broken glass can contaminate other recyclables, especially paper, sending whole loads of otherwise recyclable material to the landfill. Broken glass can also cause signifiant damage to recycling machinery—and workers.

Many broken glass contaminations result from single-stream recycling—those same all-in-one bins meant to encourage our recycling. Single-stream systems also invite straight up trash, as many consumers will “recycle” extra garbage they’ve run out of room for in their trash bins, contaminating batches at high costs for municipal facilities and redirecting recyclables to landfills. Single-stream systems also invite so-called “wishful recycling,” where people think or hope things are recyclable but they aren’t, like lightbulbs or batteries.

The Problem With Plastic

One of the biggest contaminators is plastic bags, the very kind that many cities are banning from supermarkets to be greener—and save money. Recycling, which is largely carried out on the municipal level, is expensive, sometimes costing cities hundreds of dollars more per ton to process than landfilling. Plastic bags can get stuck in machines, increasing labor, maintenance, and, ultimately, costs. (Be sure to take your bags back to the grocery store, which ships them off to special recycling facilities.)

Plastic containers, like we enjoy our Greek yogurt out of, have a short life-cycle. They undergo something called “downcycling,” or a loss in their quality, and thus value, upon each subsequent recycling.

Plastics are also highly subject to the whims of commodity markets, particularly given the swings in the price of oil, from which they are made. Remember, yesterday’s newspaper doesn’t magically become tomorrow’s coffee filter. Recycled products have to be bought and sold for that transformation to take place, and, depending on market fluctuations, it can often be cheaper for businesses to pay for virgin materials than acquire recycled ones. The economics of recycling is its own ecosystem, so to speak.

“It’s a whole process,” says John McGrane, Managing Director one of Ireland’s largest skip hire—or commercial and residential dumpster rental—companies. “You don’t think about it,” he says of the fate of the materials the average homeowner tosses into the the dumpster. “But I think about it.”

McGrane’s business—which operates in a country that heavily levies landfilling due to space constraints—is positioned at just one node in the larger web of the recycling industry. He helps us glimpse how complex it is. “I separate it,” he says of the stone, soil, timber, and other materials his customers are discarding. “All my timber would go to a recycling facility … They would shred it and turn it into a product. That’s just one element. I’d send all my metal to a facility in Wicklow,” which is south of Dublin. “They would then go ahead and sort it even more. They would compound it and send it on to China, to Holland. Holland would take the material and put it in the big iron refineries, which would go on into what’s in your dishwasher.”

“It’s indeed a business,” he says. “We all have to make money out of it.”

Plastic containers also come in all shapes and sizes—and numbers. You know, the ones in that little triangle of arrows hidden away on your soda bottle? These are Resin Identification Codes, and, generally speaking, they identify what kind of plastic the container is made from. There are seven different plastic resins, each containing different chemicals and requiring different temperatures to be melted down. Municipal curbside recycling programs widely vary in their capacities to handle different plastics, and a low capacity can lead to contamination of recycling steams. When the batch gets broken down, dangerous toxins can leach into our food, air, water, and subsequent materials made from the recycled plastic.

Take Cincinnati, Ohio. “Number 5 plastic, for example, is the famous one,” says Matthew Bauman, a university instructor in the city, whose recycling program often flummoxes him. “It’s the yogurt container and the city doesn’t [recycle] them. You just have to throw them away unless you take them to Whole Foods,” which sends them off for special treatment. “I should take them to Whole Foods, but I don’t want a bunch of mouldering yogurt containers until I have them time to go there.”

He reads, with a mix of confusion and exasperation, the guidance Cincinnati provides on the recycling page of its its city website: “If you crush the jug/bottle, you can screw the lid back on for recycling. Labels ok. To be considered a bottle or a jug, the mouth (top) of the container must be smaller than the bottom.”

“There’s a lot of mental effort partly because of this partial program the city has. There are these other contingencies about what you can recycle and criteria about them, and every time you go to recycle you’re looking at it and wondering.” And wondering, as we’ve seen, can lead to a lot of wishful recycling, sending good, clean recyclables right back to the dump.

Our brains aren’t helping.

Bauman’s experiences highlight just how psychological recycling is.

“Recycling is a classic example of ‘lessening the contradictions’,” he says. “You recycle and so you feel good. ‘I’m doing things for the environment. Everything’s fine.’ But the effect that is has on your sense of well-being about the environment and what you’re doing to avert global catastrophe is way out of proportion to the effect that it actually has on the environment.”

Recycling, as Bauman points out, is fraught with cognitive dissonance. We hold one belief, i.e., recycling helps the environment, in direct contradiction to other facts, i.e., whether or not our one measly yogurt container gets rubbished or recycled does vanishingly little to conserve our planet in the grand scheme of things. What’s more, our brains-on-recycling can ironically create even more waste.

Professor Remi Trudell and some colleagues conducted several social experiments in 2016 to better understand how our thinking affects our recycling—and it turns out recycling can have quite the effect on our thinking. In one study, they told participants that they could use as much of a product as they wanted when tasked with wrapping gifts or solving math problems on scrap paper. Half of the people were told they could recycle the materials they used; the other half, they’d be thrown away.

Their findings? People in the recycling group consumed far more resources than their counterparts. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Trudell explains: “Conserving resources in one domain may lead you to waste resources in another—in effect, giving yourself a pass because of your prior good behavior—a phenomenon known in social science as ‘moral licensing.’”

(Moral licensing also helps explain why dieting can backfire. We eat healthily one day and reward ourselves the next, gobbling down a bunch of calories that undo all our previous day’s efforts.)

And so when we go to the grocery store, if we see goods that come in recyclable packaging, we might license ourselves to buy more than we otherwise would have. This simply puts more refuse into the stream, which requires more energy to process and repurpose. Our minds themselves are a hidden cost of recycling.

We need to go back to the source.

If our very brains are part of the recycling problem, what are we supposed to do? First and foremost, we should push for changes upstream. Many environmental and economic experts urge what’s called extended producer responsibility (EPR). EPR laws would require manufacturers to recollect the plastic, paper, and other materials they package their goods in, ideally incentivizing them to recycle them right back into production. Such laws would cut back on waste overall and and ease the burden—and costs—of recycling on cities.

We should also continue innovating recycling technologies. McGrane, for his part, has had his facility’s machines “purpose-built” to improve the sorting of materials. The better sorted his waste, the more he can send off for recycling—and the more he can save on the steep levies Ireland places on landfill. Irish landfills, McGrane says, are private entities. They charge 45 euro (over $50) for each ton that crosses their gates. The Irish government then tacks on 75 euro (about $88) more per ton for the dumper. “If you’re doing 50,000 tons a year … That’s why it’s so important to extract every bit out of the skip” for recycling.

Kinnaman would presumably agree with Ireland’s system. For the U.S., he’s proposed up to a tax $15 per ton of waste to help mitigate the costs our waste management has on nature and society.

McGrane is also extensively looking into SRF, or solid recovered fuel, which converts landfill waste into fuel. “It’s pretty cutting edge. It’s going to be a big investment, but in the long run, it’s the only way for [our] company” to stay profitable.

Scientists are also making breakthroughs not just with new technology, but with nature itself. In 2016, Japanese researchers identified bacteria that can eat plastic, which holds true, eco-friendly promise for the future of the recycling.

Reduce, reuse, and reconnect with nature.

Finally, we can all make changes at the ultimate source: ourselves. Rather than recycling wishfully, we need to recycle intelligently. This means taking the time to properly sort our waste and ensuring we faithfully recycle high-yield items like aluminum and paper. But it also means remembering those other two R’s we are taught about alongside recycling in primary school: reducing and reusing. We may not all turn our old yogurt containers into storage for our craft supplies, but we can reconsider purchasing so many single-serve packages in the first place.

And Emer Sheahan, a psychologist, has just the way to help us jumpstart this process: ecopsychology. “Ecopsychology is really about the relationship between people and their emotions and using nature as a way of helping them,” she says. “We’ve lost touch because of the use of technology. A disconnect’s been created, therefore we don’t care as much about environment.”

Sheahan continues: “How we relate to others is a reflection of how we relate to ourselves. It’s the same with the environment. The more conscious we become of our own selves—we act that way towards nature. That’s what’s going to genuinely create the values” that make us not just effective recyclers, but more responsible consumers in the first place.

So, recycle. But the next time you’re at the store, don’t just ask yourself, “Is this product recyclable?” Think of the hidden costs of recycling and ask yourself: “Do I need this product? Is there a way for me to get around its packaging?” Less can really do more—both for you and the environment.

Tags 50035971, balance, hemingway

Sweat

Here's Why Following Up With Vasectomies Is Important

Post author By John Kelly
Post date October 6, 2017

But how could this happen? Vasectomies are often touted as virtually foolproof forms of contraception. One word, ever so important in doctor dealings: follow-up.

Tim, for his part, did his due diligence: He visited the Florida clinic that performed his vasectomy five months afterwards for a routine follow-up. The clinic, apparently, didn’t send back the results. After noticing his wife was displaying signs of pregnancy, Tim contacted the clinic, suspecting his procedure failed. The clinic later confirmed that one of his vas deferens was “unsuccessfully clipped,” as he told People.

Though it doesn’t happen often, vasectomies can indeed fail. Based on its 2004 research study, the Center for Disease Control found that only about 1 percent of procedures failed (i.e., pregnancy occurred). A faulty procedure, in the Brummels’ case, also can happen, but is exceedingly rare.

The greater risk—and broader takeaway from the Brummels’ story—is that sperm can still be active and viable in the immediate months following a vasectomy, making follow-up visits to a doctor absolute must-do’s for a successful procedure.

Some sperm are still viable immediately after a vasectomy.

A vasectomy, says Dr. Tara O’Connell, who practices medicine in Orange County, California, “is not stopping the production of sperm, but stopping the highway [the] sperm takes to get out in the world.” Hence the very term vasectomy: an –ectomy, or “cutting,” of the vas (deferens).

But we shouldn’t take “cutting” too literally. O’Connell explains that urologists—who, along with some family practitioners, primarily perform this reversible, outpatient procedure—also block sperm passage by tying off or cauterizing the vasa deferentia.

Following a vasectomy, though, sperm that’s already been produced and transported out of the testes can survive—and can lead to precisely what the procedure is designed to prevent: pregnancy.

“You have to make sure you have zero sperm in the system,” O’Connell says.

Urologist Knows Best

O’Connell underscores the importance of what urologists call the post-vasectomy semen analysis (PVSA).

Urologists, here, are specifically looking for sperm that is immotile, or incapable of motion and thus effectively dead.

Based on decades of research, the AUA has issued a comprehensive set of guidelines for vasectomies. Key takeaways for the patient, translated into layperson’s terms, include:

A man can still get a woman pregnant in the months after a vasectomy.
Couples should use some form of contraception until the doctor confirms the sperm count is clear.
The man should get tested approximately three months after the procedure; the AUA recommends a range of eight to 16 weeks, with the specific timing at the doctor’s discretion.
If the test identifies motile sperm, he should have additional testing, about a month or two later, until the count is clear .
If the test still doesn’t come back clear six months after the vasectomy, the doctor may recommend a repeat procedure.

Seems simple enough, right?

Post-vasectomy compliance isn’t always easy.

“I had to go back three times to get cleared,” says Chris Caporicci, husband, father of four, and business owner in Orange County, of his vasectomy. “If there were any signs [of sperm], you had to give it another two months. Any more signs, two more months. It took me six months to clear—quite a while.”

As noted, only 1 percent of vasectomies fail, as determined by unintended pregnancies, or “vasectomy babies,” that happen after the procedure. And although unsuccessful clippings like Tim Brummels’ do occur and vasa deferentia can occasionally grow back, noncompliance with post-vasectomy testing appears to be a significant cause.

Research in 2006 concluded that fewer than a quarter of men fully complied with the recommended PVSA—stack that up against findings in 2003 that attributed 51 percent of vasectomy babies “to unprotected intercourse during the immediate post-vasectomy period” when sperm can still be active.

Caporicci highlights some of the barriers to post-vasectomy compliance: work, time, and comfort. Patients are instructed to flush their system, so to speak, dozens of times before submitting a sample for analysis. The British Andrology Society, for instance, has recommended at least 24 times in 16 weeks.

The length of the post-operative protocol also deters compliance, with a 2006 vasectomy study finding that only half of its participants submitted samples for analysis 12 weeks after the procedure—AUA’s PVSA sweet spot. Then there’s the awkwardness, with some men feeling uncomfortable providing and hand-delivering a sample in a doctor’s office or laboratory.

On the issue of compliance—and on vasectomies more generally—O’Connell insightfully drills down into deeper issues of identity.

“Women are used to their bodies changing” throughout their lives, she says. “Women have practiced how to go through menstrual cycles and birthing children and seeing themselves change.”

It’s daunting for a man to have this manly function taken away.

O’Connell cites personal experience. When her husband, also a doctor, had a vasectomy, she wryly observed that he was very concerned about soreness and swelling he experienced, a normal and short-term side effect of the procedure. “I kinda had to suspend my judgment and remind myself of the newness that it was for him,” she says, contrasting, with a loving laugh, his experience to the far more dramatic changes she experienced when birthing their four children.

Men certainly become more aware of their bodies during puberty, but it’s not until they are much older that they typically confront prostate, colonic, erectile, and contraceptive concerns. Women, on the other hand, deal with soreness and swelling, to name only two symptoms, during periods, on birth control, and throughout pregnancies from young adulthood and into older age. And these changes tend to make women far more conscious of their reproductive system, how it shapes what they feel and look like, and how its affects everyday choices and behavior.

When it comes to vasectomies, O’Connell says, “It’s often men’s first experience in thinking about who they thought they were in their bodies.” For the first time, some men are directly thinking about their own fertility—their masculinity—which they’ve long taken for granted given the relative stability of their reproductive system throughout adulthood.

“It’s a big deal,” O’Connell adds. “It’s daunting for a man to have this manly function taken away.”

But women’s permanent contraception options are even more complicated.

The female equivalent of a vasectomy, tubal ligation, is even more daunting—and invasive and expensive. Tubal ligation, colloquially known as “getting one’s tubes tied,” functions just like a vasectomy and, with a 99 percent success rate, is considered equally effective. This operation closes off the fallopian tubes, where eggs travel from the ovaries for fertilization.

But operation is a key word here. Unlike vasectomies, traditional tubal ligation requires surgery, which spikes risks and costs. Hysterectomies, which prevent pregnancies by virtue of the removal of a woman’s uterus, are even more fraught; Dr. O’Connell notes no one undergoes them for the purposes of birth control. “The vasectomy is an easier, more accessible, quicker procedure,” she says.

Still, in the U.S., tubal ligations have outnumbered vasectomies. A 2010 report estimated there were about 175,000 to 350,000 vasectomies performed between 1998 and 2002 compared to about 550,000 to 790,000 tubal ligations in the same period. In countries like Canada and New Zealand, however, those rates are flipped. What gives?

For one, the U.S. has a comparatively high rate of caesarean sections at nearly a third of all births, and many mothers are increasingly electing for them in order to schedule birth—and also getting tubal ligations while the doctor is already performing the surgery in the area.

For another, new, non-surgical forms of tubal ligation, called hysteroscopic sterilization, have become available. Debuting in 2002, Essure is a proprietary method which inserts a coil in the fallopian tubes, and, if and only if properly placed, has been found “the most effective of all female or male sterilization techniques” at 99.74 percent, based on the result of a 2009 study.

Despite the quickness of the procedure and its efficacy, Essure has since been suffering some serious blowback. As medical and pharmaceutical watchdog Drugwatcher writes, starting in 2009 Essure patients “were beginning to come forward and reveal their issues, such as fallopian tube perforation, persistent pain and bleeding, unwanted pregnancies and other complications,” thanks especially to the deterioration of and adverse reactions to the device’s signature nickel coil. What’s more, to remove the device, doctors have to perform hysterectomies. Thousands of lawsuits have since been filed against its manufacturer, Bayer.

“It’s Almost Like a Rite of Passage”

New technologies may promise an improvement over traditional tubal ligations—but perhaps not necessarily over traditional male attitudes towards vasectomies. Aside from squeamishness about the process, some men mistakenly fear vasectomies will lower their testosterone and sex drive, while others may hold on to beliefs that contraception is a woman’s responsibility.

It’s almost like a rite of passage among your buds. ‘Yeah, I had the bag of frozen peas on my crotch.’

But such men should take it from Chris Caporicci. “The vasectomy itself went very easily. It was quick,” he says. “If you don’t want to have more children, it’s the most sensible way to do it. If you don’t, your spouse has to get her tubes tied or be on medication. For the guy, basically they just go in with this little device and cauterize the tube that the sperm come in and that’s the end. You still produce sperm it’s just that it can’t go where it needs to go.

Caporicci gets men’s concerns, though, and offers: “It’s almost like a rite of passage among your buds. ‘Yeah, I had the bag of frozen peas on my crotch,’” he mimics a conversation with the guys. “It’s a no brainer.”

Just make sure, post-vasectomy, to remember the Brummels. And make sure to heed the doctor’s advice; as O’Connell says, “Like all areas of medicine, you have to follow the steps through as a patient.”

Tags 50036616, body, hemingway