Health | 100 Tips

Is Facebook Messing With Your Self-Esteem? Ask Yourself These 3 Questions

Photo: Getty Images

The great social media and mental health debate continues, thanks to a new study out this week that looked at young women’s use of Facebook and their risk for risky dieting. Turns out, it may have less to do with how much time one spends online, and more to do with how a woman uses social media.

After surveying 128 college-aged women, the researchers, writing in the August issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that highly active Facebook users were more likely to engage in unhealthy weight-loss behaviors—like binging and purging or using weight-loss pills— but only if they used Facebook to physically compare themselves to others.

As long as women were not using Facebook for comparisons, being more emotionally invested in the site was actually associated with less concern about body image and fewer risky dieting behaviors.

“It’s sort of this double-edged sword,” lead study author Stephanie Zerwas, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, explained to Health. “If you’re using [Facebook] as a measuring stick to compare your body to everyone else’s bodies online, that’s really risky and also associated with a lot of disordered eating. But if you’re only using it to build a social network with the people around you, that can actually be productive by decreasing loneliness and creating relationships.”

Confusing things, however, is that you may not pick up on how your own habits of scrutinizing photos of yourself and your pals are harmful, Zerwas says.

“Girls in the study described feeling appearance-related concerns after being tagged in other peoples’ photos and they didn’t always feel like they wanted certain pictures out there,” she says. “They admitted to untagging themselves or asking a friend to take a picture down, or instead commenting with things like, ‘I look so fat in that picture.'”

So how exactly do you know if your web habits could be costing you confidence? Zerwas recommends giving yourself a reality check with the following questions.

Am I posting this photo to share or compare?

Showing off a well-lit, nicely angled bikini photo in the hopes of collecting positive comments may come with different expectations than, say, posting a moment from your little sister’s graduation, she says.

“Really think carefully about what sorts of pictures you’re posting online,” Zerwas adds. “Are you just posting selfies or are you sharing special moments in your life? Those things can be very different.”

What motivates me to like someone else’s picture?

“One of the things that I encourage students to do is to really consider why they like a photograph. Do you like a photo because your friend looks skinny in it? Or, do you like it just because it’s an expression of affection for your friend?” Zerwas says. “Understanding your own behavior may help put into perspective and interpret the online behavior of others.”

Do I walk away from Facebook feeling sad, anxious, or jealous?

“It can be easy to get sort of sucked into that feeling of, ‘Oh my gosh, look at all these other people who have perfect lives and look great all of the time,'” she says. “I think sometimes people forget that’s just a carefully curated part of someone’s life—and anyone can pick and choose to share in that way.”

What to do with your answers

If you notice your habits are leading to way too much negativity, try a digital detox.

“I think that’s one strategy if you find that you really can’t restructure how you’re thinking about or engaging with social media,” Zerwas says. “It’s okay to stop and walk away from it.”

And if you’re worried about someone close to you, talk to them. Zerwas’ advice: “You can ask if there is anything going on that is making them fixate on comparisons and body image. Getting to the emotional issues that are under the surface of asking for reassurance can help short-circuit that negative talk.”

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Kids’ Hemophilia Drugs a Big Part of State Medicaid Spending

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Treatment costs for one childhood illness, hemophilia, may use up a big chunk of a state’s Medicaid budget, a new study out of California shows.

The researchers found that treatments for hemophilia — a rare, inherited disorder in which blood does not clot normally — accounted for the largest share of spending on outpatient drugs among publicly insured children in California with serious chronic illnesses.

The study “underscores the potential effect of new, expensive but [effective] pharmaceuticals on public insurance programs for children with chronic illness,” wrote a group led by Sonja Swenson of Stanford University.

Her team published the findings July 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers tracked 2010-2012 data from more than 34,300 publicly insured children and young adults under the age of 21 in California with serious chronic health problems.

Overall, outpatient pharmacy costs totaled almost $476 million, or 20 percent of total health care costs.

Costs per child for the study period varied widely: From just 16 cents for one patient to nearly a whopping $57 million for drugs for another, unnamed patient. Swenson said her team was “shocked” by the latter amount.

Hemophilia treatment took a big share of outpatient drug costs: 42 percent of spending, according to the study.

One type of therapy, called antihemophilic factor, accounted for 98 percent of spending on children with hemophilia, or 41 percent of total pharmacy spending — even though children treated with antihemophilic factor accounted for just 0.4 percent of all the children in the study.

Antihemophilic factor is a protein that is essential to normal blood clotting and is lacking or deficient in persons having hemophilia A, the authors explained.

The average per-child cost for antihemophilic factor was about $1.3 million over the time span covered by the study.

The next largest percentage of spending was just over 9 percent for central nervous system drugs, with an average amount of $1,869 per child, the researchers reported.

Swenson’s group believes that “antihemophilic factor is highly [effective] and essential in caring for children with hemophilia, putting pressure on public programs” to figure out ways to bring costs down.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about hemophilia.

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Experimental Treatment Uses Nitric Oxide for Acne

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — There’s no shortage of products out there that claim to treat the pimples that so often plague teen skin, but your body may already be making an effective treatment that just needs a little tweaking from science, a new study suggests.

The treatment is nitric oxide, a substance produced and used throughout the human body. But, nitric oxide’s benefits are usually short-lived, researchers explained.

And, that’s where science comes in. By slowing the release of nitric oxide using tiny substances (nanoparticles), researchers were able to kill the bacteria associated with acne. The nanoparticles also inhibited the inflammation that causes the large, painful pimples associated with inflammatory acne.

The study was published recently in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

“Our understanding of acne has changed dramatically in the last 15-20 years,” study co-author Dr. Adam Friedman, an associate professor of dermatology at George Washington University in Washington D.C., said in a university news release.

“Inflammation is really the driving force behind all types of acne. In this paper, we provide an effective a way to kill the bacterium that serves as a stimulus for acne without using an antibiotic, and demonstrate the means by which nitric oxide inhibits newly recognized pathways central to the formation of a pimple, present in the skin even before you can see the acne,” he explained.

This study focused on a pathway, involving what is called an inflammasome, responsible for activating the inflammatory process in acne.

“Many current medications focus only on one or two part of this process,” Friedman said. “By killing the bacterium and blocking multiple components of the inflammasome, this approach may lead to better treatment options for acne sufferers, and possibly treatments for other inflammatory skin conditions.”

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about acne.

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Many Older Americans Feel Prepared for Aging

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Most older Americans feel they are prepared for the process of aging, but many have concerns about maintaining their physical and mental health as they get older, a new survey finds.

The 2015 United States of Aging Survey of 1,000 adults 60 and older found that 86 percent felt prepared overall for the process of aging, and 42 percent said they are “very prepared” to age.

Forty percent said they are most concerned about maintaining their physical health, while more than one-third were concerned about maintaining their mental health and their memory as they get older.

More than two-thirds of respondents said the keys to good health include a healthy diet, having a good attitude and getting enough sleep. Fifty-eight percent said they had not changed residences in more than 20 years, and three-quarters said they intend to live in their current home for the rest of their lives.

The survey also included 150 professionals who support seniors, such as doctors, pharmacists, senior care specialists and credit union managers. They were less sure that older adults could maintain their quality of life.

While 43 percent of older respondents felt very confident they would be able to afford health care costs as they age, 62 percent of professionals were not confident that older adults can afford these costs.

Only 47 percent of older adults and 37 percent of professionals felt their communities were doing enough to prepare for the needs of retiring baby boomers.

The top aging-related concerns cited by the professionals included protecting seniors from financial scams, providing them with affordable housing, and memory loss.

“Both older adults and the professionals who support them offered strong but conflicting opinions on the top challenges older Americans face as they age,” Dr. Rhonda Randall, chief medical officer of UnitedHealthcare Retiree Solutions, said in a news release from the company.

“The findings remind us of how valuable these different perspectives are and the importance of addressing many concerns simultaneously to ensure we all fully support the rapidly growing senior population,” she added.

Each day, more than 10,000 American baby boomers turn 65, according to the news release.

The survey was conducted by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, the National Council on Aging, and UnitedHealthcare.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers advice about healthy aging.

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The Surprising Facts About Tonight’s Blue Moon

Photo: Getty Images

Tonight, if you look up in the sky, you’ll find a rare sight—one that occurs “once in a blue moon.”

As in, you’ll see an actual blue moon, which is (colloquially at least) when a second full moon occurs within the same calendar month. This occurs roughly every 2.7 years, according to Space.com—hence the famous phrase. The last time we earthlings got to witness what’s known as a blue moon was August 2012, and the next time won’t be until January 2018.

Despite what the name suggests, the moon won’t be changing color. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the color of the moon will likely appear to be pale grey and white, just like the one you’re used to seeing on any other night.

It used to be that a “blue moon” meant “the third full moon in a season that contained four of them,” Space.com reports. The reason the definition changed to our current understanding of the term was all the result of a misunderstanding, according to NASA. In the 1940s a magazine called Sky & Telescope misunderstood the definition, printing an article that stated the “second [full moon] in a month, so I interpret it, is called Blue Moon.”

Further complicating things, a moon that appears blue in color does actually happen. NASA explains that the moon can look blue to us if say, a major volcanic eruption occurs and blasts a ton of particles in the air. Forest fires can cause it, too. Who knew?

Today’s blue moon actually rose this morning at 6:43 EDT, but let’s face it, most of us missed it. So make sure to look for it tonight. And if you can’t see it, the Slooh Community Observatory will be streaming it online at 8:30 EDT.

While the moon may not look all that different, you’ll be witnessing an event that only happens…well, once in a blue moon. And on top of that you might even notice a few weird body effects.

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More Progress Needed To Get Stroke Patients Rapid Care

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Stroke victims still aren’t getting treated soon enough, a new study suggests.

Treating strokes quickly is critical, because the more time that elapses, the less effective stroke treatment may be, the researchers explained.

A number of factors have reduced the time it takes stroke patients to get treatment. These include greater public awareness, better emergency dispatch procedures and improvements in hospital stroke units, the researchers said. But, delays in transporting stroke patients from regional hospitals to comprehensive stroke centers are still common, the team found.

“Stroke requires a multi-disciplinary team that engages in a nuanced chain of events leading to treatment, and efficient and prompt patient transport via emergency medical services [EMS] is a significant link in the process,” study author Dr. Michael Froehler, neurointerventionalist at the Cerebrovascular Program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said in a Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery news release.

“Within the broader stroke community, we’ve definitely made progress in our systems of care that ensure an increasing number of patients receive treatment as quickly as possible. But we need to do more,” he added.

In conducting the study, researchers recorded the amount of time it took to transfer 70 patients from hospitals that were not equipped to handle all levels of stroke to major stroke centers. Over the course of one year, they found transfer times ranged between 46 and 133 minutes. Those times were longer than it would have taken to drive the distance between the facilities, the researchers noted.

Stroke is the number one cause of disability and the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, the researchers said. Stroke cost about $54 billion in health care expenses and lost productivity in 2010 alone. Disability-related health care expenses resulting from strokes also cost $74 billion each year, they noted.

The findings were presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery in San Francisco. Findings from meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The American Stroke Association provides more information on stroke treatment.

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Mountain Biker Survives After Neck Impaled by Tree Branch

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A day out mountain biking went terribly wrong for one middle-aged man in New Mexico: He ended up with a tree branch impaled in his neck.

Fortunately for the unnamed man, he had the good sense to leave the branch where it was and quickly seek help, according to a new case study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The 40-year-old, who was in good health, initially set off on his mountain bike to ride an off-road trail in New Mexico.

At some point during the ride, he fell from the bike onto a tree branch, which got lodged in his neck. The tree branch — roughly three-quarters of an inch in diameter — lodged more than half an inch deep into the left side of his neck, his doctors said.

Attending physician Dr. Lev Deriy, an assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, believes the “patient was definitely lucky considering the location of injury.”

“The neck has quite a few vital organs, like the trachea, carotid artery, jugular vein and nerves just a few millimeters from the skin surface.” Damage to any “could cause a quick death from massive bleeding and/or airway compromise,” Deriy said.

“On the other hand, the patient’s actions played a significant role in the positive outcome in this case,” he noted. “After he fell and the wooden branch stuck deep in his neck, he decided not to take it out, rode his bike to his car, and drove to the nearest hospital, which was 20 miles away.”

Doctors in the ER also left the branch in place. It was removed during surgery, and the man had a full recovery.

Bikers should be aware that mountain bikes and bikes designed for use on paved roads have differing safety concerns. For example, according to a study led by Dr. Derek Roberts of the University of Calgary — and published in the Canadian Journal of Surgery — most street cycling accidents result from being struck by a car.

By contrast, off-road mountain bike accidents involve some sort of loss of control causing a fall off a cliff, a pathway or an embankment, the Canadian authors wrote.

In the case of Deriy and Gerstein’s patient, ER physicians noted that the impaling branch had not caused any vascular damage or injury to the man’s airway passages, and that the patient’s decision to leave the branch in place probably prevented significant blood loss.

“In fact,” noted Deriy, “it was left in place by emergency room doctors and removed only by the surgeon in operating room after general anesthesia was induced and the patient’s airways were secured.”

“I think the patient’s ability to clearly analyze this potentially very dangerous situation and take the best course of actions in order to help himself makes this case especially unique,” he said.

Dr. Rodney Baker, clinical director of the division of emergency medicine at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, agreed, “This type of injury is actually pretty uncommon.”

“In my years in practice I’ve only seen one similar type of incident,” he noted. “So it’s really hard to predict with 100 percent certainty what the best course of action would be in a case as unusual as this.

“But yes, it is true that the trauma literature would support that a patient impaled in this kind of situation should not, if possible, try to remove the impaling object. Not doing so was probably helpful in arriving at a good outcome,” Baker said.

More information

There’s more on mountain bike safety from the U.S. Forest Service.

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What Drives Trophy Hunters Like Walter Palmer?

Photo: Courtesy of Science of Us/Brian Orford

When this week began, chances are high that you’d never heard of Cecil the lion, the beloved big cat of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. But by now, you’ve likely heard of his death. Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist, paid about $55,000 for the (illegal) privilege of lion-hunting — though, after two days of tracking Cecil, it in the end wasn’t much of a hunt: Palmer and his guides reportedly used bait to lure the 13-year-old lion a half-mile outside of the protected park area. There, Palmer shot the animal with a bow and arrow, inflicting a severe wound that would lead to the animal’s death. The New York Times reports that Palmer had planned to mount Cecil’s head upon returning home.

Palmer has since expressed his regret over killing Cecil, claiming in a statement to the Star-Tribune on Tuesday that he did not realize that what he had done was not legal, or that Cecil was a famous and well-loved lion, or that the animal was the subject of an ongoing research project with Oxford University. But his words suggest that if Cecil hadn’t been famous, Palmer would regret nothing. He is, after all, a member of Safari Club International, a nonprofit “hunters’ rights” organization; the Safari Club website has a list of Palmer’s 43 kills, which include, among other things, a polar bear.

The question, then, is why? What motivates Palmer and other trophy hunters, as they’re called, to fly thousands of miles and spend tens of thousands of dollars, all for the sake of killing an animal like Cecil? The answer is complex, but, largely, it can be thought of as a demonstration of power and prestige, says Amy Fitzgerald, a sociologist at the University of Windsor.

In 2003, Fitzgerald and Linda Kalof of Michigan State published research in the sociology journal Visual Studies in which they analyzed 792 “hero shots” — the post-kill photo of hunter and prey — published in 14 popular hunting magazines. Most of the shots, Fitzgerald recalls, seemed to be arranged to show the hunter’s dominance over the animal. “The hunter tended to be pictured above standing or sitting above the animals, which clearly demonstrated the power dynamic that was going on there,” Fitzgerald said. In the vast majority of photos she and Kalof examined, the animal had been cleaned up, blood scrubbed away and wounds carefully hidden from view, making the animal look almost alive — as if the hunter had somehow tamed this giant, wild creature into submission. “It seems like, with the large animals, they were positioning them as though they were alive as a way to confirm the contest that had gone on — that this was a large virile animal that had to be taken down,” Fitzgerald said.

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Photo: Courtesy of Science of Us

A show of power via dominance over the animal kingdom is, of course, nothing new. “This is something that goes back to antiquity, when kings had fake hunts with captured lions released just to be shot from a chariot by the waiting king,” Kalof said in an email to Science of Us. These “hunts” were done in front of an audience, which was a way of publicly declaring and validating the king’s power, Kalof noted, adding that “the trophy hunt of today is similarly a display of power and control by wealthy men.” Indeed, what Kalof describes sounds similar to today’s so-called “canned hunting,” which takes place in an enclosed area in order to increase the likelihood that some rich — and, often, American — tourist will nab a kill. (Noted fans of the canned hunt include Donald Trump’s two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.)

Michael Gurven, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, studies hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon and notes that, both in cultures where hunting is necessary for survival and in those where it is not, the skill certainly attracts attention, though for wildly different reasons. “There’s the element of conspicuous consumption,” Gurven said. “I study people who hunt for food because they have no other choice. And here is someone paying $50,000 — which, as an annual income, that would be well above the poverty line — to have the opportunity to put himself in potential danger in order to kill a lion.”

Another huge part of the draw for trophy hunters, of course, is the thrill, or the element of danger. But in Palmer’s specific case, this, too, ties back to the wealth element, Gurven argued. “When you’re paying $55,000 for something, it’s probably a sign that — if it’s not necessarily illegal, certainly the animal you’re hunting is rare,” Gurven said. “If you think about the danger of the actual hunt — sure, the animal itself is dangerous.” But with Cecil, at least, the lion’s familiarity with humans likely made him an easy target, Louis Muller, chairman of Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association, told the Telegraph. “But the potential illegality of it — I think that makes it dangerous for a different reason,” Gurven said. “How do you smuggle the head or whatever he was going to take back to the U.S.? Getting that animal head on the wall is another signal of strength.” (Of course, there are plenty of trophy hunters who pursue the sport they love legally — he’s not talking about them here, just this one specific case of the lion and the dentist.)

The argument trophy hunters themselves often give is that killing the animals is an unlikely act of charity, and that the massive amounts of money tourists fork over helps to fund conservation efforts. Cecil’s death has reignited debate over that argument, but some major mainstream organizations have previously backed it, including the World Wildlife Fund. In a 2009 profile of Palmer in the New York Times, the curator of a bow-hunting club called Pope and Young explains that, yes, part of the draw is the “personal achievement” factor. But there’s another part to it, Glen Hisey explained. “It is a way of honoring that animal for all time,” he told the Times. Put differently, it’s a way of immersing yourself in nature in a way that modern life doesn’t always allow. As the conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold once noted (as quoted in the magazine Montana Outdoors), “Poets sing and hunters scale the mountains primarily for one and the same reason — the thrill to beauty. Critics write and hunters outwit their game for one and the same reason — to reduce that beauty to possession.”

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I Spent Thousands to Keep My Sick Cat Alive. I Don’t Think I’d Do It Again.

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