4 Mental Blocks That Are Holding You Back from Happiness

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Luminita D. Saviuc is no stranger to hard times. The blogger behind Purpose Fairy.com grew up with an abusive father, spent part of her childhood in a Romanian orphanage, and then struggled in a toxic romantic relationship as an adult. But she refuses to let those difficult experiences define her.

“The story of your past doesn’t have to become the story of your life,” Saviuc says in her new book, 15 Things You Need to Give Up to Be Happy ($12; amazon.com), which is based on one of her blog posts that went viral (1.3 million Facebook shares and counting).

In the book, Saviuc shares many of the lessons she learned during her healing process, as well as insights from ancient Eastern wisdom, contemporary spirituality, and scientific research on positive psychology. While many of the concepts are rooted in complex ideology, the takeaway is simple: To move forward, you need to let go of the things that are holding you back.

We reached out to Saviuc to find out where to start. Below are the four things that she recommends giving up first.

RELATED: 25 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be a Happier Person

Self-defeating self-talk

In her book Saviuc quotes novelist Roderick Thorp: “We have to learn to be our own best friend, because we fall too easily in the trap of being our own worst enemies.”

Sound familiar? By focusing on our shortcomings, we lose sight of what we can do, explains Saviuc: “The quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your beliefs, which then determines how you live your life.”

Try to catch your self-criticisms as they run through your mind, and ask yourself: Are these things true? and Would I talk to a loved one this way? The answer to both questions is likely no.

The more you factcheck your negative thoughts, the less power they will have. In time you will become kinder to yourself, says Saviuc, and more self-assured. When that happens, letting go of all the other things will be much easier to do.

RELATED: 9 Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic

Fear

Apprehension, nerves, anxiety—they’re all in your head, says Saviuc. Unconvinced? Try to visualize your own funeral. “If you take yourself to the very end and imagine your death bed, you realize in that moment all your fears have no power,” she says. What does matter is your sense of regret for all that you did not do because you were scared.

To begin shedding your fears now, try redirecting the unpleasant emotion whenever it crops up, she suggests. The idea is to crowd it out of her mind. When you feel frightened (of rejection, failure, loss), shift your focus to something you love or enjoy (your family, your friends, a run in the park, a day at the beach).

This trick worked for Saviuc. “I immediately started letting go of fear, replacing it with love—love for myself, love for my life, and love for the world around me.”

The past

The first step to giving up your past is accepting it: You can’t change it, but you can learn from it, Saviuc points out. “The painful things I’ve experienced taught me to forgive, look beyond appearances, and know that if people treat me badly, it’s because they’re in a bad place,” says Saviuc.

Once you reframe your past as a learning experience, you start to free yourself from old wounds. Remember that your future is in your hands, she says “There is plenty of happiness waiting for you in your present life.”

RELATED: 22 Ways to Get Happy Now

Attachment

Most people believe that having things (a car, a house, a significant other) leads to happiness. But ironically, Saviuc says, it’s our attachments—or our fear of losing things—that causes so much of our suffering.

“It’s important to explain to yourself that nothing in this life is ours to keep,” she says. “Once you embrace this idea and make peace with it, life becomes so much more beautiful.”

You will notice an improvement in your relationships too. When you give up your fear of rejection and loss, the love that you give becomes selfless and more pure.

As with any mental block, giving up your attachments will take time and practice. Just try to be better today than you were yesterday, says Saviuc. “It all starts with the intention—after that, everything falls into place.”

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Spring a Good Time to Instill Healthy Habits in Kids

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The arrival of warm weather is a perfect time to make family lifestyle changes that can help children achieve and maintain a healthy weight, a doctor says.

In the past 30 years, obesity has more than doubled among children and more than tripled among teens in the United States, said Dr. Rosa Cataldo, director of Healthy Weight and Wellness Center at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital in New York.

“Childhood obesity is a serious — and growing — problem in the United States, so parents should be concerned about their child’s weight,” she said in a hospital news release.

“We are not talking about a few extra pounds, but rather a condition that can have a negative effect on a child’s overall health,” Cataldo added.

Now is the perfect time to get the entire family outside to do activities such as cycling, soccer or having fun on the playground, she advised. One suggestion is to have children wear a pedometer to track their physical activity and to take at least 10,000 steps a day.

Be sure everyone drinks water when they’re physically active. Don’t give children sugary beverages such as sodas, juices or sports drinks, Cataldo said.

Eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and try to buy them at local farmers’ markets where they’re cheaper. Prepare seasonal salads and grill food on the barbeque, she said.

Read food labels carefully and pay attention to the order of ingredients. If sugar is one of the first three ingredients listed, the product is too high in sugar, Cataldo said.

More information

The U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion outlines how to keep children at a healthy weight.

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Surgeons’ Experience Matters With Thyroid Removal

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — If you need your thyroid gland removed, choosing a surgeon who performs more than 25 thyroid removals a year might minimize your risks, a new study suggests.

“This is a very technical operation, and patients should feel empowered to ask their surgeons how many procedures they do each year, on average,” said study senior author Dr. Julie Sosa, chief of endocrine surgery at Duke University, in Durham, N.C.

“Surgeons have an ethical responsibility to report their case numbers. While this is not a guarantee of a positive outcome, choosing a more experienced surgeon certainly can improve the odds that the patient will do well,” Sosa said in a university news release.

The thyroid, located at the base of the throat, produces hormones that regulate your metabolism. Thyroid removal (thyroidectomy) is not uncommon and often done due to cancer or enlargement, Sosa and her colleagues said.

However, 51 percent of surgeons who perform thyroidectomy do this type of surgery just once a year, according to the researchers.

For the study, they looked at data from nearly 17,000 people in the United States who underwent thyroidectomy between 1998 and 2009.

While the researchers only found an association, the risk of complications was 87 percent higher when a surgeon did only one thyroidectomy case a year.

In general, doing fewer procedures was tied to more complications in the study: an 68 percent increased risk of complications was linked with doing two to five thyroidectomies a year; a 22 percent increased risk with 11 to 15 cases a year, and a 10 percent increased risk with 16 to 20 operations a year.

There was no increased risk of complications among surgeons who did more than 25 thyroidectomies a year, according to the study published recently in the Annals of Surgery.

Potential complications include bleeding, parathyroid gland problems, and damage to the laryngeal nerve that can cause speaking, breathing and swallowing difficulties, the researchers said.

More information

The American Thyroid Association has more about thyroid surgery.

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Adults Don’t Need Tetanus Shot Every Decade: Study

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Adults can get tetanus and diphtheria vaccine boosters every 30 years instead of the recommended 10 years, a new study suggests.

“We have always been told to get a tetanus shot every 10 years, but actually, there is very little data to prove or disprove that timeline,” said researcher Mark Slifka. He is a professor at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University.

Revising that vaccination schedule could also save the U.S. health care system hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the researchers added in a university news release.

For the study, the investigators examined immunity levels in over 500 adults. The researchers found that after completing the standard five-dose childhood vaccine series, adults remain protected against tetanus and diphtheria for at least 30 years without the need for further booster shots.

Slifka and his colleagues said a simplified age-based vaccination schedule for adults could involve a single booster vaccination at age 30 and another one at age 60.

“If you ask around, you often find that it is hard for people to remember if they had their last tetanus shot eight years ago or even 11 years ago,” Slifka said. “If we were to use a simple age-based system, people would only have to remember to get their shots when they turn 30 and again when they turn 60.”

The researchers also estimated that changing from a 10-year to a 30-year schedule could save about $280 million in health care costs a year, and about $1 billion over four years.

The study authors noted that the World Health Organization recommends only a single adult booster vaccination during military service or when a woman becomes pregnant for the first time. The United Kingdom and some other countries recommend no adult booster shots at all.

The new study was published online March 21 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tetanus and diphtheria are infections caused by bacteria. Tetanus-causing bacteria can enter the body through cuts, scratches or wounds. Diphtheria can spread from person to person through coughing or sneezing. Both infections are rare in the United States, but can cause severe complications.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on tetanus.

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Brain Stimulation May Help People With Anorexia

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Brain stimulation may ease major symptoms of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, a typically hard-to-treat condition, a new study suggests.

British researchers evaluated anorexia patients before and after they underwent repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS), a treatment approved for depression.

“With rTMS we targeted … an area of the brain thought to be involved in some of the self-regulation difficulties associated with anorexia,” study first author Jessica McClelland, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London, said in a school news release.

The treatment delivers magnetic pulses to specific areas of the brain. It feels like a gentle tapping sensation on the side of the head, McClelland explained. The treatment alters the activity of the nerve cells in the brain, she said.

“We found that one session of [brain stimulation] reduced the urge to restrict food intake, levels of feeling full and levels of feeling fat, as well as encouraging more prudent decision-making. Taken together, these findings suggest that brain stimulation may reduce symptoms of anorexia by improving cognitive control over compulsive features of the disorder,” McClelland said.

The study was published March 23 in the journal PLoS One.

“Anorexia nervosa is thought to affect up to 4 percent of women in their lifetime. With increasing illness duration, anorexia becomes entrenched in the brain and increasingly difficult to treat. Our preliminary findings support the potential of novel brain-directed treatments for anorexia, which are desperately needed,” study senior author Ulrike Schmidt, a professor from Kings College London, said in the news release.

Because of the promising findings, the researchers are testing brain stimulation to see if it offers longer-term benefits for people with anorexia nervosa, Schmidt added.

Up to 20 percent of anorexia patients die prematurely from the condition, the researchers said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about eating disorders.

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Troubled Kids’ Psychiatric Care Often Delayed by Insurance Rules

By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Children with severe psychiatric problems often have lengthy waits before they’re transferred from a hospital emergency department to a psychiatric hospital due to insurance companies’ “prior authorization” requirements, a small study suggests.

Mental health workers at one Rhode Island hospital spent an average of an hour on the telephone seeking insurance companies’ approval, the study authors reported. In one case, the researchers said approval took up to 4.5 hours.

“The majority of these kids are suicidal; a minority of them are homicidal. That’s as dangerous as having a burst appendix,” said study senior author Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, a psychiatrist at Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Mass.

All of the admissions were ultimately approved. This suggests that prior authorization appears to serve “more as an administrative hurdle,” the study authors wrote.

“This is rationing care by hassle factor,” said study lead author Dr. Amy Funkenstein, an assistant professor of medicine at Tufts University in Boston.

The study was scheduled to be published in a letter March 30 in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Rhode Island allows prior authorization for any inpatient admission but prohibits its use for any type of emergency service, said Linda Johnson. She’s the operations director for the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner in Cranston, R.I.

Currently, state regulators are combing hundreds of insurance company records to assess compliance with the state’s mental health parity law, she said. The question is whether a patient needing psychiatric hospitalization meets the definition of emergency, she explained.

Prior authorization assures that a patient is covered under a health plan, the requested service is a covered benefit and the most appropriate level of care is provided, explained Pamela Greenberg, president and CEO of the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness in Washington, D.C.

Patients may be better served in partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient programs, for example, said Greenberg, whose association members are mostly large insurance companies.

“You have to look at costs, too; let’s be honest,” she added.

Dr. Joseph Mawhinney, a San Diego-based child and adolescent psychiatrist, called the prior authorization process “a bureaucratic maze” wrought with wrong phone numbers, dropped calls and people at the other end of the line not having authority to make a decision, requiring a referral to someone else.

“It can go on and on and on. Meanwhile, you don’t have a decision or a placement,” said Mawhinney. He’s also a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing, and chairs the APA’s Access to Care Workgroup.

Between May and October 2014, psychiatric clinicians at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island kept track of the time spent on the phone with insurance companies on behalf of kids in need of psychiatric admission.

Researchers collected paperwork on 203 patients aged 4 to 19. In more than half of the cases, hospital psychiatrists recommended admission due to suicidal thoughts or a suicide attempt. Other common reasons for admission included aggression (22 percent) and homicidal thoughts (10 percent), the study reported.

From initial contact with the insurer to authorization, phone times ranged from 3 minutes to 270 minutes, and the average amount of time spent on the phone was 60 minutes, the study found.

Based on total psychiatric admissions nationwide, that translates into more than 1.5 million hours of “wasted clinician time,” the researchers said in a Cambridge Health Alliance news release. Those hours translate into a staggering amount of wasted health care dollars — about $31 billion a year, the researchers estimated.

The average time cited in the study is actually shorter than the median 79-minute “boarding time” from emergency department to hospital bed, said Clare Krusing. She’s a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, in Washington, D.C.

While not addressed directly in the study, the authors questioned whether prior authorization for psychiatric admissions violates federal mental health parity legislation. Under federal rules, managed care protocols, such as prior authorization, must be applied equally to mental health and medical/surgical care.

“They [health insurers] use the same process for medical necessity review across all services,” Krusing said.

She also noted that the study “completely ignores any details about what information the clinician provided to the insurance company as they were reviewing the request.”

Boyd believes health insurers continue to unfairly single out psychiatric cases for prior authorization.

“Somehow or other, the insurance companies continue to flout the intent behind parity, and I’m not quite sure how they continue to get away with it,” he said.

More information

Learn what questions to ask before your child or teen’s psychiatric admission.

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Distance Matters for Quality Rectal Cancer Care

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Patients who must travel long distances for rectal cancer radiotherapy are less likely to get the potentially lifesaving treatment, a new study shows.

“Travel burden clearly creates a barrier to radiation therapy access for rectal cancer patients,” said study author Chun Chieh Lin, director of health services research at the American Cancer Society.

The findings were published in the March issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics.

In the study, Lin’s teamed tracked data on more than 26,800 Americans with stage II or III rectal cancer. The researchers found that 30 percent did not receive radiation therapy within the recommended time or did not receive the treatment at all.

Overall, more than two-thirds (69 percent) of the patients received radiation therapy within 180 days of their diagnosis, or within 90 days of surgery. The average time elapsed was 38 days from diagnosis and 84 days between surgery and the start of radiation therapy, the study found.

Why the delays? Some patients didn’t get radiation therapy because it was not deemed to be part of the first course of treatment (86 percent), or they received it outside of the specified time frame (7 percent), the patient refused (6 percent), or the doctor refused due to patient risk factors (3 percent).

However, after accounting for a number of other factors, the researchers still found that in certain cases, the distance a patient had to travel to receive radiation therapy affected the likelihood of receiving the treatment.

Among patients diagnosed and treated at the same facility, those who traveled 50 miles or more were less likely to undergo radiation therapy than those who traveled less than 12.5 miles, Lin’s team reported.

In a news release from the journal, Lin said that while travel times may keep some patients from care, “this barrier is far from absolute.” He noted that some patients decide to get radiation at an often closer facility — one different from where they are otherwise diagnosed and treated.

When that happens, the likelihood that they receive radiotherapy remains high, Lin said, suggesting that the determination of the patient to get radiotherapy may counteract “the influence of factors such as travel burden and physician availability.”

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more on rectal cancer.

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Simple Steps Can Ease Care of Loved One With Alzheimer’s

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — As Alzheimer’s disease progresses, patients find that simple tasks become difficult or impossible, but caregivers can help them maintain a sense of independence and dignity, a doctor says.

Create a routine that makes days more predictable and schedule the most challenging tasks — such as bathing or medical appointments — at a time of day when your loved one is typically most calm, advised Dr. Ronald Petersen, a Mayo Clinic neurologist.

Adapt to your loved one’s needs. If he or she insists on wearing the same clothes every day, for instance, consider buying a few identical outfits. Limiting choices will make it easier for the person to decide. Instead of a closet full of clothes, offer a choice of two outfits and do away with belts or accessories that he or she is likely to put on incorrectly.

Expect things to take longer than they once did. This will help you avoid having to rush your loved one.

“Allow your loved one to do as much as possible with the least amount of assistance. For example, perhaps your loved one can dress alone if you lay out the clothes in the order they go on,” Petersen said in a Mayo news release.

Turn off the TV and minimize distractions during meals and conversations so your loved one is better able to focus.

Consider safety. To reduce the risk of falls, remove scatter rugs, extension cords and clutter that could pose a tripping hazard. Install handrails or grab bars in appropriate locations.

“Install locks on cabinets that contain anything potentially dangerous, such as medicine, alcohol, guns, toxic cleaning substances, dangerous utensils and tools,” Peterson said.

Lower the setting on the hot water heater to prevent burns and keep matches and lighters out of reach. If your loved one smokes, make sure he or she is supervised while doing so.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer’s caregiving.

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Mild Appendicitis Complication Rates Similar for Surgery, Antibiotics

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Antibiotics can be used to treat mild appendicitis, but the condition returns in some patients who receive the drugs, researchers report.

Surgical removal of the appendix (appendectomy) has long been the standard treatment for appendicitis, which is when the appendix becomes inflamed and infected.

Millions of appendectomies are performed worldwide each year, including more than 300,000 in the United States, according to the new analysis.

The international team of researchers reviewed five studies that included a total of 1,116 patients with mild appendicitis. They found that rates of complications were similar for those who received antibiotics (5 percent) and those who had an appendectomy (8 percent).

Of the patients who initially received antibiotics, 8 percent had an appendectomy within a month and 23 percent had a recurrence of appendicitis within 12 months.

According to the best evidence available, “using antibiotics as the primary treatment for mild appendicitis does not lead to more complications in the first twelve months of follow-up,” study co-author Dr. Ville Sallinen, a gastrointestinal surgeon at Helsinki University Hospital in Finland, said in a university news release.

“Used as the primary treatment, antibiotics reduced the number of surgeries by 92 percent within the first month of diagnosis,” study co-author Kari Tikkinen, an adjunct professor, said in the news release.

“However, this choice of treatment meant that appendicitis recurred in 23 out of 100 patients within one year. Moreover, no long-term follow-up exists for now,” Tikkinen added.

The researchers also wondered if increased use of antibiotics to treat mild appendicitis would contribute to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

But with no clear-cut evidence for or against antibiotic treatment, they said the decision might come down to personal preference.

“In medicine and surgery, treatment choices are increasingly based on shared decision-making, where patients and care providers make decisions together. I expect that this will also increasing apply to treatment of mild appendicitis,” said Tikkinen.

The study findings were published recently in the British Journal of Surgery.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about appendicitis.

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Caffeine Intake — Even Dad’s — Linked to Miscarriage, Study Says

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A couple’s risk of miscarriage may rise when the woman or man consumes more than two caffeinated drinks a day in the weeks leading up to conception, a new study suggests.

Risk of miscarriage also may increase if the mother-to-be drinks more than two caffeinated beverages daily during the first seven weeks of pregnancy, the researchers found.

Caffeine has been linked to greater risk of miscarriage before, but what is new in this study is that men’s caffeine consumption also appears to play a role, said Janis Biermann, senior vice president for education and health promotion at the March of Dimes. Biermann was not involved with the study.

And the degree of risk was similar for both sexes, the study authors said.

“Behaviors before pregnancy can impact pregnancy,” said Biermann. “When you are planning a pregnancy, it’s a good time to get your body ready — reduce your consumption of caffeine, get to a healthy weight, don’t drink alcohol and see your doctor for a checkup.”

The new research also found that women who took a daily multivitamin before conception and through early pregnancy were less likely to miscarry than women who did not.

The study doesn’t prove that caffeine causes miscarriage, only that there appears to be an association, said lead researcher Katherine Sapra, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “This is an observational study, so we can’t prove cause and effect, but we are confident of these findings,” she said.

If you are trying to get pregnant, and “you are going to drink caffeinated beverages, keep it to fewer than three a day,” said Sapra. Two cups of coffee is a “generous” amount, she added.

A standard cup of coffee is about 8 ounces. The March of Dimes recommends women limit themselves to only 12 ounces of coffee a day, Biermann said. “But caffeine is not only found in coffee,” she added. It’s in tea, colas, chocolate and energy drinks.

The reason caffeine is linked to miscarriage is not known, Sapra said. Caffeine may turn off certain genes in the sperm or egg, but that’s only speculation. It’s possible that caffeine is associated with other factors that were not uncovered in this study, she added.

The report was published online March 24 in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

The researchers used data from a study conducted in Texas and Michigan between 2005 and 2009. That study examined the relationship between fertility, lifestyle and exposure to environmental chemicals.

The investigators compared lifestyle factors such as smoking, caffeinated-beverage consumption and multivitamin use among expectant couples, from the weeks before conception through the seventh week of pregnancy.

Of 344 pregnancies, 28 percent ended in miscarriage, according to the report.

The risk for miscarriage nearly doubled for women 35 and older, the researchers found. Possible explanations for that include the greater age of sperm and egg in older couples or longer exposure to environmental substances, the authors said.

In addition, male and female consumption of more than two caffeinated drinks a day was associated with about a 74 percent greater risk of miscarriage, Sapra said.

As for the protective effect of vitamins, the study showed that women who took multivitamins through early pregnancy had a 79 percent reduced risk of miscarriage.

“If you are trying to get pregnant, women should take a multivitamin every day to reduce the risk of miscarriage,” Sapra said. This is in keeping with the March of Dimes guidelines for a healthy pregnancy.

More information

For more on having a healthy baby, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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