Category: Lifestyle

Nobody likes seeing a new wrinkle.

Unfortunately, wrinkles are a part of aging—up to a point. Your habits can make your skin age prematurely, and the right approach can dramatically reduce the appearance of new wrinkles.

Here are a few things many of us are doing every day that can cause our skin to age more rapidly.

1. Not Using Sunscreen

If you only use sunscreen when you’re sitting in direct sunlight at the pool, you’re setting yourself up for some serious skin damage. Even just a few minutes of sun exposure leads to the breakdown of collagen within your skin. Collagen is the protein that gives your skin its strength and elasticity, so when that is damaged, wrinkles start to appear.

“We now have the scientific evidence to back the long-held assumption about the cosmetic value of sunscreen,” said Dr. Adele Green, lead author of a recent study that examined the effects of sunscreen on aging. “Regular sunscreen use by young and mid-aged adults under 55 brings cosmetic benefits and also decreases the risk of skin cancer.”

It’s a good idea to use sunscreen regularly, even on cloudy days, as UV rays simply aren’t great for your skin’s collagen. If you wear makeup, you can even look for brands with built-in SPF protection.

2. Picking at Your Skin

When you start to pick at a zit or ingrown hair, you’re going to do some damage. That’s especially true when you use your fingernails, which often introduce bacteria into the opening in your skin.

“When performed properly, extractions can clear certain types of pimples. However, bad techniques combined with attempts to pick non-pickable pimples can be a recipe for disaster,” said Joshua Zeichner, MD, director of cosmetic and clinical research in dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, to Allure.

If you need to pick at something, try only using thin tweezers or safety pins, sanitized carefully before and after each use. Better yet, use a product with salicylic acid to treat pimples properly—and if you have a recurring skin issue, see a dermatologist.

3. A High-Sugar Diet

Eating a high sugar diet is terrible for your overall health and especially bad for your skin. The saying “you are what you eat” is actually somewhat true on a molecular level.

When you consume a lot of sugar, a process called glycation occurs; sugar molecules attach themselves to proteins in your skin, causing them to become rigid and disfigured. Collagen is one such protein.

A high-sugar diet can also cause inflammation, which is another cause of collagen breakdown. All of these factors can have a serious impact on the appearance of your skin.

4. Sleeping in Makeup

“During the day you accumulate a lot of oxidative stress,” New York dermatologist Dr. Erin Gilbert told HuffPost. “When you sleep in your makeup you are not giving your skin a chance to recover from those insults, which can lead to premature aging.”

Thicker products are often more problematic, but there’s no “safe” makeup to wear to bed. Don’t be lazy—if you’re headed for the bedroom, wash off your makeup before your head hits the pillow.

Caly Bevier was just 15 years old when she developed a strange set of symptoms. She felt bloated and nauseated. At first, she just dismissed the illness. Then the discomfort came to a head at the end of a family vacation in Orlando, Florida. Caly could tell that something just wasn’t right.

In the end, the treatments were worth any amount of discomfort. Caly was in remission.

During her months-long battle with ovarian cancer, Caly lost her hair, but not her fighting spirit. She met another young patient battling cancer in the hospital, and the aspiring entertainer sang a benefit concert for him.

Her dad filmed her singing “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten and the video went viral.
Next thing she knew, Caly was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and America’s Got Talent, in which she proceeded all the way to the semi-final round. In a roundabout way, Caly’s cancer introduced her to her dream.

Caly is using her new platform as an entertainer to spread the word about the dangers of ovarian cancer.

Hers was a rare form of the illness, but she wants everyone to know that the disease can strike anywhere. If it can happen to a 15-year-old competitive cheerleader from the Midwest, it can happen to anyone.
“I had a lump growing in my stomach for a year and I just ignored it,” she said. “I didn’t really think anything of it because it wasn’t a problem.”

To that end, she recently performed at a fundraising event called Catwalk for a Cause.

NASCAR driver Martin Truex sponsored the event through his charitable organization, the Martin Truex Junior Foundation. Truex organized the first Catwalk for a Cause in 2009 with the goal of raising funds to combat pediatric cancer.

If you have a family history of ovarian cancer, ask your doctor if there’s anything you can do to decrease the risk.

Your doctor might prescribe birth control pills, which can reduce the risk of ovarian cancer by 50 percent after five years of treatment. As with any health care decision, start by talking to your doctor about the risks.

Be on the lookout for symptoms. They’re subtle, but if you have abdominal discomfort, changes in appetite or bowel movements, bloating, unexplained weight loss, or nausea, it’s a good idea to tell your doctor.
To support the Martin Truex Junior Foundation in their mission to fund research on childhood and ovarian cancer, as well as family support programs, visit their website here.

My brother once spent a month in the intensive care unit (ICU) after a car accident. During that time, his doctors would breeze in the room, look at his chart, and spend a few moments discussing his care before popping back out.

His nurses, however, were there 24 hours a day. They changed his bandages, washed his hair when he started to smell, and didn’t flinch when he made some very inappropriate comments after a bad interaction with some of his medication.

The women and men who care for others as nurses are professionals. Never “just a nurse.” Nurses are equal parts healthcare providers, patient advocates, therapists, and superheroes. Most of us though, don’t realize just how vital nurses are in day-to-day hospital operations.

We asked nurses to weigh in on what they wish patients knew about their job. What they shared with us just might surprise you.

1. “One of the things that annoy nurses the most is when people say, ‘I think I have this diagnosis because I looked it up on Google.'”

Thanks to Dr. Google, people can look up aches and pains online. In moderation, googling symptoms isn’t so bad, but it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of cyberchondria. It starts by looking up that niggling pain in your stomach.

Before you know it, you’ve diagnosed yourself with one of the rarest incurable diseases in the world.

Among people who used online symptom checkers, 67 percent later sought unnecessary medical treatment. Excessive visits to the emergency room or doctor’s office place a greater strain on nurses who already have a full patient load.

Because people seek unnecessary treatment as a result of online research, nurses have less time to spend caring for patients who are in need of medical treatment.

What’s more, nurses and doctors say, is that cyberchondria often leads patients to try to treat their symptoms on their own, which can land you in the emergency room even if you were perfectly fine before.

Instead, nurses and doctors recommend that if you feel sick or are in pain, it’s always best to simply call your healthcare provider to see if you need to come in to be seen.

2. “In the ICU, it’s frustrating when patients say we’re neglecting or ignoring them…when in reality if I’m not sitting outside my patient’s room then I’m in another room helping with a patient who is crashing or coding.”

In critical care units, nurses are trained to deal with life-threatening medical conditions.

Although ICU nurses often have a much smaller patient load—typically one to two patients at a time, emergency patient situations often arise that demand a nurse’s full attention until a patient is stabilized.

According to one ICU nurse, “It took me a few years to not hate my job, and that was when I realized you’re not going to have a quick fix with all of your patients.”

3. “We need lunch breaks and bathroom breaks too!”

Although restroom and lunch breaks are figured into the salaries of many nursing professionals, most rarely get to take a break during shifts that can be as long as 12 to 24 hours.

That’s because most nurses are supposed to take breaks using a buddy system, in which a nurse covers the patients of a nurse who’s on break.

However, according to research done by NPR, one “nurse says she rarely stops. Not for 12 hours. She’s an emergency room nurse in a busy urban hospital. The ideal, she says, would be one nurse for every three patients in her ER. But she typically cares for five patients or more—often eight, if she’s covering for a colleague taking a lunch break. She says there are times when she can’t leave patients’ bedsides.”

The inability to take a break is one of the biggest reasons for nurse burnout on the job. In fact, the majority of nurses feel “stressed, overworked, underappreciated, and underutilized.”

Ultimately, this affects a nurse’s ability to provide the best patient care. In some states, nurses have taken action, winning legal battles to take appropriate breaks. When they get those breaks, nurses are happier, and patients receive better care.

4. “Could you please stop talking while I am trying to listen to your heart/lungs?”

While you’re busy explaining your symptoms in great detail, your nurse is busy trying to assess your vital signs. A patient’s blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiratory rate determine the next steps in their care, which is why it’s extremely important to stay silent during this examination.

Vital signs ought to be the most reliable pieces of information in a patient’s file, but when a nurse is distracted at the time of examination, the results are often incorrect. This can have serious consequences for a patient’s health.

For example, a patient might receive an inaccurate diagnosis based on the vital signs that were recorded.

So don’t take it personally if a nurse cuts your conversation short. Although chatting with your nurse might make you feel more at ease, your nurse is simply trying to stay focused on providing the best medical care.

5. “I understand you are sick, and I am here to care for you. But I am not your maid, and this is not a hotel, it is a hospital.”

Hospitals have started offering more amenities to patients, in part because insurance reimbursements are now directly tied to patient satisfaction. In one survey, patients were asked to rate how quickly they received help after pressing the nurse call button without indicating if the help requested was medical in nature.

“Patients have complained on the survey…about everything from ‘My roommate was dying all night and his breathing was very noisy’ to ‘The hospital doesn’t have Splenda.’ A nurse at the New Jersey hospital lacking Splenda said, ‘This somehow became the fault of the nurse and ended up being placed in her personnel file. …Many patients have unrealistic expectations for their care and their outcomes,’ the nurse said.”

Both hospitals and hotels often have cable television, but that’s really where the similarities end.

A nurse’s main focus is on overall patient care. If an immobile patient asks for more water, a nurse is more than happy to accommodate that request. However, if you’re perfectly capable of fluffing your own pillow or changing your television station, think twice before pressing the call button.

6. “You know that you are having surgery, that we are operating on you, and that you are going to be naked on an operating table. Please, for the love of all things, wash yourself and clean your belly button!”

Nurses, like most people, appreciate general good hygiene in others.

Bathing immobile patients is part of the job, but most nurses draw the line at patients who show up for scheduled surgery smelling less than fresh.

It’s not just because nurses have delicate noses. Bathing before scheduled surgery is recommended in most medical offices to help prevent post-op infections.

Please note that although nurses want you to be clean for surgery, they do advise skipping perfumes, deodorants, and lotions that could contaminate the surgical site.

Nurses have touched millions of lives and looked after countless numbers of people in need. Let’s do our best to show them the same care they’ve shown all of us.

If you could see my room right now, you would judge me.

It’s almost 10 p.m., and I’m sitting on an unmade bed surrounded by four notebooks, two cups, chocolate truffles, various paper scraps (why?), and a package of smoked sausages.

On every surface or corner, there are clothes: clean clothes drying on a rack, dirty clothes that I hope(d) to re-wear thrown on the floor and over chairs, clothes that are still sandy from the beach hanging limp from wooden knobs, clothes piled on other clothes so I’m not sure what they are.

There’s an ironing board, boxes, a trash bag full of clothes I meant to give away when I started (but never finished) spring cleaning in May. There are boxes of unopened toothpaste, books, some old posters I got for free at a museum exhibit maybe a year ago, bags, binders, makeup, lotions, all of the dust. Crumbs. Tiny insects.

And the receipts. Oh sweet Lord, the receipts. How are there so many?

Imagine taking the contents of a big wooden office desk (the kind filled with file folders and little trinkets like paper clips, erasers from the 1990s, and sticky tack) and just dumping it all out into a pile. There. That’s my room.

Maybe this sounds romantic to you, as you read this from far away, perhaps in an organized space that seems to you predictable and anesthetized. I assure you that it is not.

It’s true that there is some evidence suggesting

“Put a little soap and water into your blender and with the lid on, turn the blender on,” she says. 

“You will see the blender clean in front of your eyes. Now rinse and let your blender pieces dry. No cuts!”

Use your morning tea to make your bathroom mirror sparkle.

The problem: Your bathroom mirror looks like it’s had tiny particles of food and spit hurled its way on the regular. Because it has.

The solution: Let the last couple swallows of your English Breakfast do some shining action.

“Black tea and the tannin acid in it are your best friends when it comes to cleaning your bathroom mirror,” Go Cleaners London housekeeper Harriet Jones tells Glamour.

“Brew a pot and use a clean cloth to wipe it over mirror and you are done.”

Hide dust with books.

The problem: Dusting, like life, can be boring and hard and often feel pointless.

The solution: Don’t do it (dusting, that is)!

Certified professional organizer Amy Trager tells Glamour that putting books on the edge of your shelves will cut down on the amount of dusting you have to do.

“Not only does it look great, but this style doesn’t allow dust to accumulate on the shelves in front of the books,” she says. “It settles behind the books, but no one ever sees that. Less dusting!”

Clean your toilet bowl with denture tablets.

The problem: Toilet bowls are friggin’ disgusting.

The solution: Denture tablets (!!!) Who knew? (Apparently a lot of people, but whatever.) There are a couple of variations on this trick.

Option one is that you take a single denture tablet, plop it in the bowl, and let it do its fizzy thing before you flush the toilet. No scrubbing necessary.

Option two requires you to hold your bladder through the night. Before going to bed, put a denture tablet and one cup of white vinegar in the toilet bowl, allowing the mixture to sit overnight before you scrub and flush.

Which option you choose will likely depend a lot on how dirty your toilet bowl is. Maybe you can have a cleaning kickoff with option two, then maintenance with option one.

We’re ready to get it together with these simple tips. How about you?

“The entire atmosphere [of the wedding] felt moving. So moving in fact that John stopped midceremony to propose to his longtime girlfriend, ‘Jane,’ and reveal her pregnancy.”
If this sounds like a situation straight out of a wedding nightmare, it gets worse—because it actually did happen to one woman who shared her experience in a letter to the advice column “Dear Prudence.”

Was this as rude as it sounds?

Almost all wedding etiquette experts agree universally that upstaging the marrying couple on their wedding day is never okay. Proposals and other big announcements, like a pregnancy, should be avoided at weddings.

There is one small exception to this rule: If you are determined to propose during a wedding, you must have the couple’s express blessing to proceed, as was the case when bride Jess Nakrayko helped plan a surprise proposal during her wedding.
When you ask the couple for their blessing to propose at their own nuptials, look for forced smiles and barely suppressed rage that you would even suggest such a thing.

If you see genuine enthusiasm, feel free to go ahead with the proposal, but do so in the most low-key way possible. Even if the couple gives their blessing, you should still respect that the wedding is their day, and the focus should ultimately be on them.
Viral wedding reception proposals are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to defining modern wedding etiquette.

Wondering what other traditional wedding etiquette may have changed? Experts weigh in on some of the top wedding etiquette questions to keep you faux-pas free this wedding season.

Dress Code Etiquette for Newlyweds and Guests

Nontraditional wedding dress codes are becoming the norm as couples look to make their wedding stand out, but this can be confusing, especially for older guests who may wonder if their traditional blue suit is appropriate for a “fancy ranch” wedding.

Ariel Stallings, a writer for Offbeat Bride, recommends that couples who want their dress code to stand out give guests as much specific information about the dress code as they can so there is no confusion.
You can put this information directly on your invitation, but since space might be limited, Stallings suggests using your wedding website to elaborate on dress code instead.

If you have a very specific dress code in mind, include pictures or links to outfits that would be appropriate.
As for guests, traditional wedding etiquette still holds true: You should always abide by the dress code.

But what does “steampunk chic” even mean?

If you’re not quite sure what the dress code is, check the wedding website for more information, or do some google research.

If you still don’t have a clear idea of what to wear, don’t hesitate to reach out to a member of the wedding party for clarification. When the couple has a specific wedding theme in mind, they’ll be happy to share examples of appropriate clothing that fits the dress code.

Répondez s’il vous plaît.

RSVPs are almost universally guaranteed to give the wedding couple stress-induced ulcers before their big day. Much to the couple’s chagrin, however, most RSVPs end up tossed aside on kitchen counters for weeks before being returned right before the deadline.

Don’t be that wedding guest.
Wedding etiquette expert Tessa Brand says wedding guests should follow a few cardinal rules when sending back an RSVP.

First, make sure you only RSVP for guests included on the invitation. If you were not given a plus one, under no circumstances are you to include a guest in your RSVP.
But it shouldn’t matter if I just want to bring one person along, right?
Wrong.
The couple has budgeted for a specific number of guests. You may think, “It’s just one person, what’s the big deal?” But those costs do add up and can leave newlyweds scrambling to accommodate your wedding crasher instead of focusing on their big day.

Second, actually write your name on the RSVP card. If there is a meal option and you are including more than one guest in your RSVP, always make sure to specify which guest gets which meal.
Third, send the RSVP back in a timely manner. It doesn’t matter if you are the maid of honor and are obviously attending the wedding. The moment couples send out invitations, they start anxiously awaiting RSVPs. They’re usually pre-stamped, so there should be no reason to delay responding quickly.

Don’t just text the bride or groom to let them know you are attending—unless of course, that is what the invitation says to do.

Giving and Receiving Gifts: What’s the Protocol?

Many couples feel uncomfortable with the idea of having a traditional wedding registry but have been told that registries are a wedding must.

Although nothing about a wedding is an absolute must, it is a nice idea to have a registry, says wedding guru Liz Moorhead of A Practical Wedding. Even if you have everything you need, wedding guests will still want to give you gifts.
What if we want to do a nontraditional registry, like a honeyfund?
That’s totally fine, but just be aware that while many guests will contribute, some consider cash-based registries a little crass.

Creating a small registry of physical gift items will help ensure you get items you’ll actually use. (But it’s inevitable that some guests will go rogue and gift you something totally bizarre.)
As for guests: No longer do you have to abide by the traditional “pay for your plate” rule, say the wedding experts over at the Knot. If you’re unfamiliar with this piece of wedding etiquette, the usual rule has been that guests should purchase a gift of roughly the same monetary value as the wedding meal.

Naturally, this can lead to some awkward conversations. Of course, it’s in poor taste for a couple to reveal how much is being spent on the wedding—and it’s equally uncouth for guests to reveal how much they are willing to spend for a gift.
Guests can avoid the confusion altogether by simply consulting the gift registry, which should have a range of items in every budget. Not sure how much to spend? For close family and friends, you should expect to spend between $100 and $150. For coworkers and casual friends, between $50 and $100 is an appropriate amount.
What if I can’t afford a gift in that price range?
If you can’t afford a gift in the suggested price range, don’t worry. Choose an inexpensive item on the registry that you can afford, and consider pairing it with a thoughtful handmade gift.

The newlyweds will appreciate that you both stuck to the registry and gifted them something unique.

When in doubt, just ask.

Although it’s almost universally acknowledged that there are some things you should just never do at weddings, there are exceptions to every rule.

Whether you’re newly engaged or you just received (another) save-the-date in the mail, when in doubt about wedding etiquette, never be afraid to ask for clarification. When you nail that “steampunk chic” dress code, you’ll be glad you did.