A soak in a hot tub could be just the thing to relax you after a long day. The warm, bubbly water also eases aches and pains from conditions like arthritis, low back pain, and fibromyalgia.
But hot tubs might not be safe for some people, including pregnant women and those with heart disease. And when they aren’t cleaned well, they pose risks to even healthy people.
Before you buy a hot tub for your backyard or step into those warm waters at the spa or gym, make sure you know a bit about their safety.
Health Benefits
Warm water soothes your body for a few reasons. The heat widens blood vessels, which sends nutrient-rich blood throughout your body. Warm water also brings down swelling and loosens tight muscles. And the water’s buoyancy takes weight off painful joints.
A dip in the hot tub might also help your mental state. Research shows they can promote relaxation and ease stress.
Hot Tub Risks
These warm water whirlpools can pose some risks if you’re not careful.
Infections
Between 2000 and 2014, outbreaks from treated pools and hot tubs were linked to more than 27,000 infections and eight deaths in the United States. When hot tubs aren’t cleaned well, their moist environment is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria.
Pseudomonas, one type of bacteria that thrives in hot tubs, causes infections of the hair follicles and skin. Symptoms include red, itchy bumps on the belly and areas covered by your bathing suit. These bumps can pop up anywhere from a few hours to a few days after you take a dip. The same bacteria cause an infection known as swimmer’s ear.
Other germs that live in hot tubs can also make you sick. Cryptosporidium causes GI infections with diarrhea. Legionella causes a severe type of pneumonia, or lung disease.
Hot Tub Use in Pregnancy
Hot tubs might not be safe for pregnant women because they increase body temperature. Research finds that pregnant women who use a hot tub more than once or for long periods of time are more likely to have babies with neural tube birth defects like spina bifida or anencephaly.
Avoid hot tubs if you can during those 9 months. If you do use a hot tub, turn down the temperature and limit your time in the water to less than 10 minutes.
Be cautious when using a hot tub if you have heart disease. When you soak in hot water, your body can’t sweat. Your blood vessels instead need to widen to cool you off. This makes your blood pressure drop. In response to falling blood pressure, your heart rate speeds up.
This isn’t a problem for healthy people, but if you have heart disease, it can strain your heart.
Hot Tub Safety Tips
To stay safe, follow these tips:
Ask your doctor. If you’re pregnant or you have a health condition like heart disease, ask your doctor if it’s safe for you to get into a hot tub.
Check the cleanliness. Ask the hotel or gym how often they clean their hot tub, and whether they keep the pH and chlorine concentrations at levels the CDC recommends (a pH of 7.2-7.8, and a free chlorine concentration of at least 3 parts per million). If the water looks murky or slimy, don’t get in.
Avoid crowds. Stay away when a hot tub is full. More people equals more germs. About half of people say they don’t shower before they swim.
Turn down the heat. A temperature of 100 F should be safe for healthy adults. Anything over 104 could be dangerous. Turn it down another couple of degrees if you have a medical condition.
Limit your time. Don’t stay in the hot tub for longer than 10 minutes. If you feel dizzy, overheated, or unwell, get out right away.
Watch where you sit. Don’t sit too close to the heat source. Keep your head, arms, and upper chest out of the water to avoid overheating, especially if you’re pregnant.
Stay hydrated. Drink water while in the hot tub to cool off your body. Avoid alcohol, which can dehydrate you.
Don’t go from hot to cold. Don’t jump straight from the hot tub into the pool to cool off. The cold water could shock your system and spike your blood pressure.
Wash off afterward. Take off your bathing suit and shower with warm water and soap as soon as you finish.
Sitting in water above normal body temperatures can cause drowsiness which may lead to unconsciousness and subsequently result in drowning. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recommends that water temperatures never exceed 40 degrees Celsius. A temperature of 37 degrees is considered safe for a healthy adult. Soaking in water above 39 degrees Celsius can cause fetal damage during the first three months of pregnancy.
It is also recommended to install residual-current devices for protection against electrocution. The greater danger associated with electrical shock in the water is that the person may be rendered immobile and unable to rescue themselves or to call for help and then drown.
Hot tubs and spas are equipped with drains that can create powerful suction and between 1980 and 1996, the CPSC had reports of more than 700 deaths in spas and hot tubs, about one-third of which were drownings to children under age five. In the same period 18 incidents were reported to the CPSC involving body part entrapment.
To reduce the risk of entrapment, US safety standards require that each spa have two drains for each pump, reducing the amount of suction. From 1999 to 2007 there were 26 reports to the CPSC concerning circulation entrapments hot tubs and spas, including three deaths.
Schadewalt H. The history of Roman bathing culture [in Dutch]. Integraal1989;4:25–35
Jackson R. Waters and spas in the classical world. Med Hist Suppl1990;10:1–13.
Braunstein, Philippe, “Toward Intimacy: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in A History of Private Life: Volume 2: Revelations of the Medieval World. Georges Duby, ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1988), p. 535-632.
The first global study of its kind showed 745,000 people died in 2016 from stroke and heart disease due to long hours.The report found that people living in South East Asia and the Western Pacific region were the most affected.
The WHO also said the trend may worsen due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours.
Often, the deaths occurred much later in life, sometimes decades later, than the long hours were worked.Five weeks ago, a post on LinkedIn from 45-year-old Jonathan Frostick gained widespread publicity as he described how he’d had a wake-up call over long working hours.
The regulatory program manager working for HSBC had just sat down on a Sunday afternoon to prepare for the working week ahead when he felt a tightness in his chest, a throbbing in his throat, jawline and arm, and difficulty breathing.
“I got to the bedroom so I could lie down, and got the attention of my wife who phoned 999,” he said.While recovering from his heart-attack, Mr Frostick decided to restructure his approach to work. “I’m not spending all day on Zoom anymore,” he said.
His post struck a chord with hundreds of readers, who shared their experiences of overwork and the impact on their health.Mr Frostick doesn’t blame his employer for the long hours he was putting in, but one respondent said: “Companies continue to push people to their limits without concern for your personal well-being.”
HSBC said everyone at the bank wished Mr Frostick a full and speedy recovery.”We also recognise the importance of personal health and wellbeing and a good work-life balance. Over the last year we have redoubled our efforts on health and wellbeing.
“The response to this topic shows how much this is on people’s minds and we are encouraging everyone to make their health and wellbeing a top priority.”
While the WHO study did not cover the period of the pandemic, WHO officials said the recent jump in remote working and the economic slowdown may have increased the risks associated with long working hours.
“We have some evidence that shows that when countries go into national lockdown, the number of hours worked increase by about 10%,” WHO technical officer Frank Pega said.
The report said working long hours was estimated to be responsible for about a third of all work-related disease, making it the largest occupational disease burden.
The researchers said that there were two ways longer working hours led to poor health outcomes: firstly through direct physiological responses to stress, and secondly because longer hours meant workers were more likely to adopt health-harming behaviours such as tobacco and alcohol use, less sleep and exercise, and an unhealthy diet.
Andrew Falls, 32, a service engineer based in Leeds, says the long hours at his previous employer took a toll on his mental and physical health.”Fifty to 55 hour weeks were the norm. I was also away from home for weeks on end.”
“Stress, depression, anxiety, it was a cauldron of bad feedback loops,” he says. “I was in a constant state of being run down.”After five years he left the job to retrain as a software engineer. The number of people working long hours was increasing before the pandemic struck, according to the WHO, and was around 9% of the total global population.
In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that people working from home during the pandemic were putting in an average of six hours of unpaid overtime a week. People who did not work from home put in an average of 3.6 hours a week overtime, the ONS said.
The WHO suggests that employers should now take this into account when assessing the occupational health risks of their workers. Capping hours would be beneficial for employers as that had been shown to increase productivity, Mr Pega said. “It’s really a smart choice to not increase long working hours in an economic crisis.”
Cohen, Yehudi (1974). Man in Adaptation: the cultural present. Aldine Transaction. pp. 94–95. ISBN0-202-01109-7. In all, the adults of the Dobe camp worked about two and a half days a week. Because the average working day was about six hours long, the fact emerges that !Kung Bushmen of Dobe, despite their harsh environment, devote from twelve to nineteen hours a week to getting food. Even the hardest working individual in the camp, a man named =oma who went out hunting on sixteen of the 28 days, spent a maximum of 32 hours a week in the food quest.
Ginès i Fabrellas, Anna; Luque Parra, Manuel (January 2016). “WORKING TIME AND FLEXIBILITY IN SPAIN”(PDF) (IUSLabor 1/2016): 54–65. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
This is the one piece of bad news you shouldn’t sit down for: Sitting for hours on end, every day, is bad for your health. Sitting at work is bad for you. Sitting after work is bad for you. Sitting is the new smoking, except that the furniture lobby probably isn’t as powerful as the tobacco one.According to Harvard Health Publications, too much sitting has been linked to everything from osteoporosis to heart disease to diabetes.
So if you feel like you’re wasting away in your chair all day, you probably are. It might be time to invest in a standing desk or make time for periodic walking breaks. A lot of research has appeared in the last few years as a testament to all that is unholy about our love of office chairs, La-Z Boys, couches and cushions. What’s worse: Even a healthy amount of exercise can’t save you.
If you work in an office setting, sitting is hard to avoid, unless you’re an early adopter of the treadmill desk. You might laze around the house on your days off, but one study found that people spend more time sitting–and do less standing or walking–on work days compared to their leisure days. You may have lost track of all of the ways that your office job can turn deadly. So as I sit hunched over in my rolling chair in a position that screams “live fast, die young,” let’s talk about what kind of damage all we, the over-sitters, are in for.
Here are 11 health issues linked to excessive sitting:https://i.insider.com/57855b5788e4a7dd488b6c1d":{"contentType":"image/png","aspectRatioW":2,"aspectRatioH":1}}” />
Leg problems
The Daily Mail noted that a study published in the British Medical Journal found that excessive sitting causes blood to pool in your legs, leading to dangerous blood clots.
Insulin spikes
University of Colorado at Denver human physiologist Audrey Bergouignan explained that sitting too much can mess with your insulin production, reports the Washington Post. This can put you at greater risk for diabetes. Double whammy: Sitting could be bad for your mind, too. An April 2012 study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine analyzed the association between sedentary behavior and mental well-being using Well@Work, a workplace health promotion project in the UK.
According to self-reported survey data from almost 3,500 people of non-occupational sitting time — watching TV, using a computer, driving, etc. — sitting time outside of work was negatively associated with mental health for women. Again, men got off comparatively easy — only sitting time at the computer negatively impacted their mental well-being.
Slowed brain function
Newcastle University professor of movement and metabolism Mike Trenell told the Daily Mail that without movement, muscles pump less fresh blood and oxygen through your brain. By reducing “excessive sitting” to less than three hours a day, the U.S. life expectancy could increase by two years, according to a July 2012 study in BMJ Open. Reducing TV time to less than two hours a day would bump it up by 1.4 years.
(By comparison, smoking knocks off 2.5 years of life expectancy for men and 1.8 years for women.) The study estimated that the average adult spends 55 percent of his or her day doing something sedentary, but also notes that even high levels of self-reported sitting could be conservative. It’s not easy to remember all the time you’ve spent sitting during the day, since it’s not necessarily a domain-specific behavior like watching TV.
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Weak bones
PreventDisease.com explained that excessive sitting can lead to osteoporosis, citing a 2010 study published in The National Center for Biotechnology Information. Obese individuals sit 2.5 more hours a day than lean individuals, according to a November 2009 Obesity study. In turn, sitting more is associated with Metabolic Syndrome, a combination of factors — like abdominal obesity, low levels of “good cholesterol,” high blood pressure, high triglyceride levels or hyperglycemia — that together put you at a higher risk for serious medical issues like heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
A review study in PLOS ONE last year confirmed that people who spent more time being sedentary were 73 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome. In 2005, a group of researchers theorized that reducing TV and computer use to less than one hour a day outside of work could reduce the prevalence of adult metabolic syndrome in the U.S. by 30 to 35 percent.
Aches and pains
Inactivity might be the cause of your sore back. The Financial Times reports that when you slump in your seat, you can strain your back muscles. Even if you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, sitting could still be what kills you. A January 2013 study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that both before and after being diagnosed with colorectal cancer, more leisure time spent sitting down meant a higher risk of death.
The study tracked the self-reported habits of more than 2,000 patients with colorectal cancer for up to 16 years after their diagnosis. The most physically active had a 28 percent lower chance of dying than those who exercised less. Those who spent at least six leisure hours a day sitting had a 36 percent greater risk of dying than those who sat less than three hours a day.
Stiff spines
When you sit for too long, your soft discs between vertebrae become squashed, leading to inflexibility, according to a group of scientists interviewed by the Washington Post. A March 2012 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine tracking more than 200,000 Australian individuals 45 years and older found that regardless of sex, age and body mass, sitting puts you at a higher risk for mortality from all causes. People who sat more than 11 hours a day had a 40 percent higher risk of dying within three years. The risk of death was much lower for people who exercised five hours a week or more, but it didn’t negate the sitting death-trap. Time to shell out for a standing desk.
Heart disease
Mercola.com reported that women who sit for 10 more hours a day have a higher risk of heart disease, according to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. An October 2012 analysis of a self-reported survey — 6,379 people between the ages of 40 and 75 — found that even controlling for physical activity and body mass index, those who sat less had lower risk of having chronic kidney disease. The effect was especially profound in women: When they cut down their sitting time from a full workday to only three hours, their risk fell by more than 30 percent. For men, the risk decreased by 15 percent.
Decreased hip mobility
Livestrong.com explains that sitting too much causes your hip muscles to shorten and tighten, limiting your range of motion.
Higher rates of cancer
Harvard Health Publications explained that separate studies have linked excessive sitting to higher rates of cancer and cancer-related deaths.
Feeble glutes
Unsurprisingly, sitting on your butt all day is bad for your butt.
More and more people are getting vaccinated, and some are even traveling. Which has led to a debate over whether countries should require COVID-19 vaccination passports or IDs. The European Union is proposing a so-called Digital Green Pass so vaccinated people can move more freely.
Family vacation in Italy? Business trip to China? No problem. Just show me your COVID-19 vaccine certificate. This might be the future. “I think it would certainly speed up the recovery of those sectors that have been slowed down or shut down because of risk of exposure to COVID,” said Glenn Melnick, a health economist at the University of Southern California.
Many worry about creating an underclass of unvaccinated people who also can’t travel. Dr. Wafaa el-Sadr at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health said the U.S. still has a lot of work to do.
“I’m hopeful that if there’s a true commitment in this country to equity that we would be able to reach a point where we have been able to overcome the very real barriers that people are facing now in accessing vaccination,” she said.
NBC News medical contributor Dr. Vin Gupta and CNBC’s senior health and science reporter Meg Tirrell join TODAY to discuss the latest news surrounding coronavirus vaccine candidates. They discuss the possibility of a vaccine passport required by businesses and events to ensure the safety of customers and employees. » Subscribe to TODAY: http://on.today.com/SubscribeToTODAY » Watch the latest from TODAY: http://bit.ly/LatestTODAY
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And if it’s going to happen, Jennifer Nuzzo at Johns Hopkins University said, universal verification systems will be needed. “You are requiring countries to show proof of having provided something that is very hard to get, that can create incentives for perhaps not being completely transparent about what’s actually going on,” she said.
As other countries start to experiment with vaccine credentials, Americans who want to travel may have to participate.
Even as more people are logging onto popular video chat platforms to connect with colleagues, family and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford researchers have a warning for you: Those video calls are likely tiring you out.
Prompted by the recent boom in videoconferencing, communication Professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on these platforms. Just as “Googling” is something akin to any web search, the term “Zooming” has become ubiquitous and a generic verb to replace videoconferencing. Virtual meetings have skyrocketed, with hundreds of millions happening daily, as social distancing protocols have kept people apart physically.
In the first peer-reviewed article that systematically deconstructs Zoom fatigue from a psychological perspective, published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior on Feb. 23, Bailenson has taken the medium apart and assessed Zoom on its individual technical aspects. He has identified four consequences of prolonged video chats that he says contribute to the feeling commonly known as “Zoom fatigue.”
Bailenson stressed that his goal is not to vilify any particular videoconferencing platform – he appreciates and uses tools like Zoom regularly – but to highlight how current implementations of videoconferencing technologies are exhausting and to suggest interface changes, many of which are simple to implement. Moreover, he provides suggestions for consumers and organizations on how to leverage the current features on videoconferences to decrease fatigue.
Covid Fatigue: how our brain affects our motivation to follow safety precautions — the strain of following safety precautions for the past six months to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is getting to many of us. Some people are becoming lax and even resistant to wearing masks or practicing physical distancing. Why do we lose the motivation to follow safety guidelines, even when the threat of danger is still there? Experts say our brain is part of the problem – and the solution. Dr. Joe Bienvenu explains how our brain causes us to be desensitized and how we can train ourselves to develop safe habits to continue protecting ourselves and others. #JohnsHopkins#CovidFatigue
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“Videoconferencing is a good thing for remote communication, but just think about the medium – just because you can use video doesn’t mean you have to,” Bailenson said.
Below are four primary reasons why video chats fatigue humans, according to the study. Readers are also invited to participate in a research study aimed at developing a Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale (ZEF) Scale.
Four reasons why
1) Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact is highly intense.
Both the amount of eye contact we engage in on video chats, as well as the size of faces on screens is unnatural.
In a normal meeting, people will variously be looking at the speaker, taking notes or looking elsewhere. But on Zoom calls, everyone is looking at everyone, all the time. A listener is treated nonverbally like a speaker, so even if you don’t speak once in a meeting, you are still looking at faces staring at you. The amount of eye contact is dramatically increased. “Social anxiety of public speaking is one of the biggest phobias that exists in our population,” Bailenson said. “When you’re standing up there and everybody’s staring at you, that’s a stressful experience.”
Another source of stress is that, depending on your monitor size and whether you’re using an external monitor, faces on videoconferencing calls can appear too large for comfort. “In general, for most setups, if it’s a one-on-one conversation when you’re with coworkers or even strangers on video, you’re seeing their face at a size which simulates a personal space that you normally experience when you’re with somebody intimately,” Bailenson said.
When someone’s face is that close to ours in real life, our brains interpret it as an intense situation that is either going to lead to mating or to conflict. “What’s happening, in effect, when you’re using Zoom for many, many hours is you’re in this hyper-aroused state,” Bailenson said.
Solution: Until the platforms change their interface, Bailenson recommends taking Zoom out of the full-screen option and reducing the size of the Zoom window relative to the monitor to minimize face size, and to use an external keyboard to allow an increase in the personal space bubble between oneself and the grid.
2)Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real-time is fatiguing.
Most video platforms show a square of what you look like on camera during a chat. But that’s unnatural, Bailenson said. “In the real world, if somebody was following you around with a mirror constantly – so that while you were talking to people, making decisions, giving feedback, getting feedback – you were seeing yourself in a mirror, that would just be crazy. No one would ever consider that,” he added.
Bailenson cited studies showing that when you see a reflection of yourself, you are more critical of yourself. Many of us are now seeing ourselves on video chats for many hours every day. “It’s taxing on us. It’s stressful. And there’s lots of research showing that there are negative emotional consequences to seeing yourself in a mirror.”
Solution: Bailenson recommends that platforms change the default practice of beaming the video to both self and others, when it only needs to be sent to others. In the meantime, users should use the “hide self-view” button, which one can access by right-clicking their own photo, once they see their face is framed properly in the video.
In-person and audio phone conversations allow humans to walk around and move. But with videoconferencing, most cameras have a set field of view, meaning a person has to generally stay in the same spot. Movement is limited in ways that are not natural. “There’s a growing research now that says when people are moving, they’re performing better cognitively,” Bailenson said.
Solution: Bailenson recommends people think more about the room they’re videoconferencing in, where the camera is positioned and whether things like an external keyboard can help create distance or flexibility. For example, an external camera farther away from the screen will allow you to pace and doodle in virtual meetings just like we do in real ones. And of course, turning one’s video off periodically during meetings is a good ground rule to set for groups, just to give oneself a brief nonverbal rest.
4)The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.
Bailenson notes that in regular face-to-face interaction, nonverbal communication is quite natural and each of us naturally makes and interprets gestures and nonverbal cues subconsciously. But in video chats, we have to work harder to send and receive signals.
In effect, Bailenson said, humans have taken one of the most natural things in the world – an in-person conversation – and transformed it into something that involves a lot of thought: “You’ve got to make sure that your head is framed within the center of the video. If you want to show someone that you are agreeing with them, you have to do an exaggerated nod or put your thumbs up. That adds cognitive load as you’re using mental calories in order to communicate.”
Gestures could also mean different things in a video meeting context. A sidelong glance to someone during an in-person meeting means something very different than a person on a video chat grid looking off-screen to their child who just walked into their home office.
Solution: During long stretches of meetings, give yourself an “audio only” break. “This is not simply you turning off your camera to take a break from having to be nonverbally active, but also turning your body away from the screen,” Bailenson said, “so that for a few minutes you are not smothered with gestures that are perceptually realistic but socially meaningless.”
ZEF Scale
Many organizations – including schools, large companies and government entities – have reached out to Stanford communication researchers to better understand how to create best practices for their particular videoconferencing setup and how to come up with institutional guidelines. Bailenson – along with Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab; Géraldine Fauville, former postdoctoral researcher at the VHIL; Mufan Luo; graduate student at Stanford; and Anna Queiroz, postdoc at VHIL – responded by devising the Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale, or ZEF Scale, to help measure how much fatigue people are experiencing in the workplace from videoconferencing.
The scale, detailed in a recent, not yet peer-reviewed paper published on the preprint website SSRN, advances research on how to measure fatigue from interpersonal technology, as well as what causes the fatigue. The scale is a 15-item questionnaire, which is freely available, and has been tested now across five separate studies over the past year with over 500 participants. It asks questions about a person’s general fatigue, physical fatigue, social fatigue, emotional fatigue and motivational fatigue. Some sample questions include:
How exhausted do you feel after videoconferencing?
How irritated do your eyes feel after videoconferencing?
How much do you tend to avoid social situations after videoconferencing?
How emotionally drained do you feel after videoconferencing?
How often do you feel too tired to do other things after videoconferencing?
Hancock said results from the scale can help change the technology so the stressors are reduced.
He notes that humans have been here before. “When we first had elevators, we didn’t know whether we should stare at each other or not in that space. More recently, ridesharing has brought up questions about whether you talk to the driver or not, or whether to get in the back seat or the passenger seat,” Hancock explained. “We had to evolve ways to make it work for us. We’re in that era now with videoconferencing, and understanding the mechanisms will help us understand the optimal way to do things for different settings, different organizations and different kinds of meetings.”
“Hopefully, our work will contribute to uncovering the roots of this problem and help people adapt their videoconference practices to alleviate ‘Zoom fatigue,’” added Fauville, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “This could also inform videoconference platform designers to challenge and rethink some of the paradigm videoconferences have been built on.”
If you are interested in measuring your own Zoom fatigue, you can take the survey here and participate in the research project.
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Although video communication is sometimes effective as an alternative to face-to-face, it is rarely satisfying and fatiguing in large doses. What have we learned?
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I’m freezing,” has to be my most used phrase. I’m not even talking about during winter, when everyone’s cold, but all year round. You can find me complaining about the fact that I can’t feel my fingers in mild March or that I need a jacket during July’s heatwave evenings. I won’t even begin to tell you how many layers I wear when I go skiing.
The Stylist team’s morning call is also a never-ending chorus of complaints about temperature (yes, our editor was wrapped up in a puffer jacket this morning). Yet, my housemate can walk down the street in shorts in December, and others sweat the second they put a coat on.
So why do some people just seem to feel the cold more than others – and what does it mean?
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Finding out what is ‘normal’ when it comes to our temperature is pretty tricky though, explains Dr Clare Eglin from the Extreme Environments Laboratory in the Health and Exercise Science department at the University of Portsmouth. While our core temperature should ideally not change, “our perception of whether we find somewhere warm or cool is very individual and usually down to our skin temperature,” Dr Eglin says. “This is what gives our body feedback, and lots of things can affect that from the clothes that we are wearing to the activities we are doing – and also the wind and dampness of the environment.”
However, there are genetic and personal factors that can mean that two people, wearing the same thing, in the same environment feel different temperatures.
Why do some people feel colder than others?
There are many factors to this, including:
Overall body size can impact how cold you feel, as smaller people have less cells in their body that produce heat
People with higher levels of body fat and/or muscle mass have more insulation and a higher resting metabolic rate so burn energy faster
Being active not only warms the body immediately but can have a long-term effect on temperature regulation
Older people also tend to have a slower resting metabolic rate, so may feel the cold more
These factors do mean that gender is a big divider, as women are generally smaller than men and carry less muscle mass. We’ve all fought over the thermostat in the office (or central heating while at home) but the fact is that “the temperature deemed comfortable for most people is meant to be about 21 degrees. Actually, that’s ideal for a man in a suit, but women generally do better with a higher temperature,” says Dr Eglin.
Interestingly, we feel this disparity internally too. “Estrogen and progesterone, which change throughout the menstrual cycle, affect how quickly our blood vessels constrict to the cold. So depending what part of the menstrual cycle you’re in, you might find your hands and feet get colder, affecting your overall temperature perception,” says Dr Eglin.
Plus, your temperature perception can change throughout the day. “For instance, at six o’clock in the morning your core temperature is at its lowest, and from midday to mid-afternoon, it’s at its highest,” she adds.
Why do my hands feel cold?
Don’t panic if, like me, you have hands like ice cubes on a summer’s day. “It is a very typical thing, particularly for women, as our hands are really good for regulation,” says Dr Eglin. Our hands have a large surface area but a small volume and are filled with lots of blood vessels very close to the surface of the skin. “They’re very good for losing heat and so therefore, when you’re slightly cool, the blood flow shuts down,” she says.
While “peripheral temperature is generally nothing to worry about”, it can be a sign of Raynaud’s syndrome, an extreme response to cold or stress where arteries narrow to the point that fingers and toes turn white or blue and feel cold and numb – but circulation returns to normal when warm again.
Is it bad to be cold all the time?
Generally, being cold is simply down to our body type, and as long as we take precautions it’s not a bad thing. But if constant coldness is mixed with other symptoms it could be a sign of something more serious. For example, coldness paired with tiredness or dizziness could be a symptom of an iron or B12 deficiency, or even anaemia. Constantly being cold coupled with hair loss, a change in your digestive system and weight gain could also be a sign of a low thyroid – when the gland stops producing enough thyroxine (a hormone which regulates your metabolism).
Ultimately, your body is pretty good at regulating itself, so trust what it’s telling you. “Our behaviour is the most important thing when it comes to keeping warm. I think quite often we underestimate the weather in the UK. You always hear people say ‘It’s not that bad, it’s not like we’re in the Arctic!’, but with the windchill and dampness it can be very cold. We don’t pay enough attention to that,” says Dr Eglin. So, bundle up when you’re feeling the chill.
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I’ve said before the first 3 hours of your day can dictate how your life turns out. And this often begins with the very first thing that you decide to put in your brain. You can either start you day with junk food for the brain (the internet, distracting apps, etc) or you can start the day with healthy food for the brain (reading, meditation, journaling, exercising, etc). When you start the day with junk food for the brain, you put yourself at a self imposed handicap that inhibits your ability to get into flow and prevents you from doing deep work. When you start the day with health food for your brain, the exact opposite happens.
Anytime I start my day with junk food for the brain, the quality of the day goes down. I’m less happy, focused, and productive. I spend a ton of time on the internet and don’t get any real work done. But if I start my day with health food for the brain, I find that my mood is better, I’m happier, more focused and productive.
Why Junk Food for the Brain is Toxic
If you woke up in the morning, smoked a cigarette, ate 2 donuts, and washed it down with 2 cups of coffee, it wouldn’t be surprising that your physical performance is subpar. You’re probably not going to go out and run 2 miles or win a prize fight after that kind of breakfast.
But when it comes to our brain, we’re not nearly as mindful about the idea that we should treat the information we consume like the food we eat.
“When you wake up you’re in this theta alpha state and you’re highly suggestible. Every like, comment, share, you get this dopamine fix and it’s literally rewiring your brain. What you’re smart device is doing especially if that’s the first thing you grab when you wake up and you’re in this alpha theta state, is rewiring your brain to be distracted.” — @Jim Kwik
If we start our days by checking email, instagram, or the internet, we keep reinforcing the behavior of distraction until it becomes our new habit. Some of the smartest behavioral scientist and designers in the world have worked really hard to make sure that their products are addictive, habit forming, and only provide you with a temporary sense of fulfillment so the you are always jonesing for your next fix. As Mark Manson so brilliantly said, cell phones are the new cigarettes, And a significant amount of what’s on the internet is nothing more than junk food for the brain.
Why Healthy Food for the Brain is So Powerful
If you woke up in the morning and had a really healthy breakfast, that revitalized and energized you, you’d likely hit the gym or a morning run expecting to be at your peak. The same goes for our brains.
When we start the day with health food for the brain, instead of a self imposed handicap, we give ourselves a massive competitive advantage. On the days when I religiously follow through on the 8-step daily routine that allowed me to write multiple books and 100’s of articles, my productivity goes through the roof, flow happens effortlessly, and I end up doing a lot of deep work. The idea for this article was actually the result of giving my brain some health food to start the day.
I did 20 minutes of meditation
I did almost an hour of reading
I wrote in my journal for 30 minutes
When I turned on my computer, I blocked distractions and started writing.
When you start the day with health food for your brain, you don’t end up depleting your willpower, and as a result you get more done in far less time.
So how exactly do you start the day with health food for your brain? To wean ourselves off of junk food for the brain, we have to actually replace it with something else.
Don’t use your devices in the morning
Smartphones distract us whether they are on, off, in our pockets, or on a table, and they command our attention even when they are not our own. The best solution for preventing smartphone distraction is to remove it from the picture altogether — Steve Magness
If your refrigerator or pantry is filled with junk food, you’re going to be much more likely to eat it. Same goes for your devices. If you turn them on first thing in the morning, you’re going to be much more likely to give into the sources of distraction that they make accessible. The only thing that I use my phone for in the morning is a 20 minute meditation with the Calm app. After that, I take it out of the room I’m working in.
Set aside 20 minutes to meditate
Reality as we know it occurs in the space between stimulus and response. An event happens and we make it mean something. But this happens so fast that we don’t question the validity of the meaning we’ve assigned to an event, situation or circumstance. The way to take control of the meaning is to slow that process down, and the way to slow that process down is with meditation.
I have a natural tendency to overreact or make situations more stressful than they really are. But as my meditation practice has deepened, I’ve noticed a profound energetic shift. Many of the things that would have previously rattled me don’t. On the mornings that I follow through with my 20 minutes of meditation, I’m able to focus more easily, and I don’t crave sources of distraction nearly as much
The most successful people I’ve interviewed on Unmistakable Creative, all of the peak performance books I’ve read, spiritual teachings, and many billionaires all reference the role that a daily meditation habit is played in their life. That was convincing enough evidence for me to make it a daily habit.
Read books, not the internet
When we read on the internet, we tend to scan more than we read. How often do you sit around at a dinner party discussing the amazing article you read on the internet? Almost all of my ideas for what I want to write about have come from books. Almost none of them have come from reading articles on the internet. I’ve even found in my cases that when I read a physical book that I previously read on Kindle, I tend to get far more value out of it.
Years ago when I interviewed Julien Smith, he said “I don’t read blogs. I read books.” And he had one of the most popular blogs on the internet. I stopped reading blogs, started reading books, and as a result became a more prolific writer. After watching the prolific career that Ryan Holiday has built, and observing his reading habits, I decided to follow his lead. Believe me the irony that you’re reading this on the internet is not lost on me.
Do 1 hour of Deep Work
One hour of deep work is a form of self care. It’s incredibly fulfilling. It’s an affirmation to yourself and to the universe that you value yourself and your time. You can accomplish extraordinary things in just one focused hour a day of uninterrupted creation time. With deep work, you get disproportionate results from your efforts. It’s the 80–20 rule at work. 80% of your output will come from 20 percent of your effort.
Just some food for thought. When I started writing this article I set my distraction blocker for 45 minutes. As I wrote this sentence I decided to do a check on my word count and realized I’d written over 1200 words in about 35 minutes. That’s what happens when you combine flow and deep work together
One last thing to consider. What are you really getting out of checking Facebook, instagram, or anything on your phone when you wake up in the morning? Is it making you happier or more successful in any way at all? If you added up all the time you possibly waste over the course of a year on this behavior, it’s likely you could write a book, build a business, or learn an instrument, all of which are going to do far more for the quality of your life than the temporary dopamine fix your phone provides.
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When she found a lump in her left breast during a routine self-check, Boston primary care physician Dr. Devon Quasha knew exactly what to do. She immediately scheduled a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound at Massachusetts General Hospital for early January.
Quasha didn’t notice much of a reaction to the vaccine at first, but a couple of days before her appointment her left arm began to hurt.
Tender, swollen lumps developed under her left armpit, along with a large swelling above her collarbone — all areas where there are lymph nodes, the body’s filters for germs.
“You have lymph nodes above and below your collarbone,” Quasha said. “You don’t want to feel those. It was scary when I felt it.”
Lymph nodes contain immune cells that help fight invaders. That’s why it made sense to Quasha that the nodes were reacting to the vaccine, building antibodies as they were designed to do. But she couldn’t be sure.
The swelling was only on the left side where she had gotten the shot — the same side as the worrisome lump. Was it a reaction to the vaccine or another sign of breast cancer?
‘It was like a wildfire’
After the ultrasound, Quasha’s radiologist was concerned. She told Quasha she considered the lump she had felt in her breast to be of little significance, but the lymph nodes that showed up as white blobs on her mammogram were another matter. In non-pandemic times, that finding would set off alarm bells, requiring the need for further investigation, even an immediate biopsy.
Yet Quasha had just had the vaccine. After talking it over with her, Quasha said her doctor decided not to do a biopsy at that time. Instead she told Quasha to come back for a follow-up ultrasound in six weeks.
This mammogram, taken after a patient got the Covid-19 vaccine, shows a swollen lymph node. Similar scenarios had been happening in mammogram centers around the country. As radiologists compared notes with colleagues, word began to spread. “We all started talking about it, and it was like a wildfire,” said Dr. Connie Lehman, chief of breast imaging in Massachusetts General’s department of radiology.
“I cannot tell you how many women are showing nodes on mammograms and people thought it was going to be not that common,” said Lehman, who is also a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School.
Tales of unnecessary biopsies spurred the patient care committee of the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI) to put out an advisory in January: Ask your patients about their Covid-19 status, and record the date and which arm received the vaccine. Consider that before automatically scheduling a biopsy.
“We wanted to advocate that women don’t always need to have a biopsy,” said Dr. Lars Grimm, associate professor of radiology at Duke University School of Medicine and one of the authors of the SBI advisory. “Because oftentimes the default if you see swollen lymph nodes in a patient would actually be to recommend doing a biopsy.”
Mass General’s Lehman agreed. “When you hear hoofbeats, don’t think zebra,” she said. “If a woman had a vaccine in the arm on the same side, and the lymph nodes are swollen, this is a normal biological response. It’s totally expected. It just doesn’t make sense to start imaging.”
That does not mean that women who wish to be sure about their cancer status cannot have a biopsy, Grimm stressed. “You actually have some women who want to biopsy,” he said. “You might tell them, ‘Hey, I think this is due to your Covid vaccine, and I’m sure that it’s going to resolve in a few weeks on its own and you’re going to be fine.’ But that patient tells you, ‘I’m not going to be comfortable waiting, I want to know now.’ “
Focus on screening to save lives
For Quasha, the knowledge that many women were experiencing the same type of reaction to the vaccine was a welcome relief from worry. After a discussion with her doctor, she said she no longer needs the follow-up screening. “I was very reassured,” Quasha said. “The point here is that there are a number of side effects from the vaccine which are not dangerous but can sometimes increase patient anxiety.”
Instead of bringing women back in for an unnecessary ultrasound, radiology centers should be focused on scheduling women who have missed or are overdue on their mammogram, Lehman said.
“We need to take care of the large percentage of women who didn’t get screened because of the shutdowns during Covid,” she said. “At Mass General alone, we failed to screen 15,000 women because of Covid, and we’re still trying to get them back in.
“This isn’t where I need to start doing axillary ultrasounds, because someone had a vaccine and the node swelled. It’s just not being practical or pragmatic or putting our patient’s needs first,” she said. It’s not just breast cancer, Lehman stressed. Lymph nodes in other parts of the body are also reacting to the Covid-19 vaccines, causing people with other forms of cancer to undergo unnecessary procedures.
“There have been some false scares and some unnecessary biopsies because people didn’t think to ask, and they assume that the node was the cancer coming back,” she said.
What to do?
To avoid unnecessary worry, SBI recommends women schedule any routine, annual breast screening before getting the Covid-19 vaccine. If a woman has already had the vaccine, or is soon scheduled to do so, the society suggests waiting at least four to six weeks after the second dose before scheduling your appointment.
At Mass General, Lehman and her team have gone a step further. They are screening all women regardless of vaccine status, but telling those with no history of cancer that any swelling in the lymph nodes that might be connected to a Covid-19 vaccine is benign — meaning not cancerous.
“If their concern is a swelling or tenderness after the vaccine in their armpit, we suggest that they wait four to six weeks, talk to their doctor, and if it persists, then we have them come in to do an evaluation of it,” she said.
Whatever you do, experts stress, don’t skip getting your breast cancer screening when it is recommended. A study published Tuesday in the journal Radiology that followed over half a million women made the point clearly: Women who skip even one scheduled mammography screening before they are diagnosed with breast cancer have a significantly higher risk of dying. In fact, the risk of having a fatal breast cancer within 10 years of diagnosis was 50% lower for women who had regular breast screenings, the study said.
[…] National Cancer Institute and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommend regular mammograms for woman and regular MR imaging for women in specified high-risk categories […]
[…] “As radiologists, we see this on mammograms after people have had the flu vaccine, the shingles vaccine, the pneumococcal vaccine so this isn’t […]
[…] When seen on mammograms, these vaccine-swollen nodes can be mistaken for those enlarged because of cancer […] ” During the pandemic, screening mammograms and breast cancer diagnoses have declined sharply in many health care institutions, Lehman said […]
[…] What You Need To Know An RV in the Louisville area is performing mammograms of women 40 and up UofL’s Brown Cancer Center and the Kentucky Cancer Program partner to operat […] Cancer Center and the Kentucky Cancer Program partner to operate the screening center each year The mammograms are free for those who don’t have insurance and are income qualified Funds are available to cove […] Insurance will pay for it, and the reason for that is mammograms can detect a breast cancer long before it can be felt, and so the sooner that breast cancer i […]
Critical Help: Mammograms, Treatment, & Support These needs are key to surviving breast cancer. Mammograms help show the existence and extent of the cancer […] Mammograms, treatment, & support […]
Radiologist accused of misreading 18 patient mammograms hands over medical license Matt O’Connor | March 05, 2021 | Practice Management The owner and sol […] medical license recently after the state board of medicine charged him with misreading a number of mammograms […] labeled Bigg as “incompetent to practice medicine and surgery” due to his pattern of misreading mammograms […]
[…] These leaflets include relevant information about mammograms to aid with decision making […] The leaflet included information about breast cancer, mammograms, benefits/risks of screening, and the breast cancer mortality and survival rates in relation t […] The leaflet was viewed as a decision‐aid, although further information was requested on mammograms, the need for complementary tests and the risks and symptoms of breast cancer […]
Screening mammograms and COVID-19 vaccines are both very important for your health […] Regular screening mammograms ensure that breast cancer can be detected as early as possible […]
[…] cancer Women ages 40 to 44 should have the choice to start annual breast cancer screening with mammograms if they wish to do so […] Women age 45 to 54 should get mammograms every year. Women age 55 or older should switch to mammograms every two years, or have the choice to continue yearly screening […] Each location follows the same gold standard protocols, and all mammograms are sent electronically to the Suzanne H […]
[…] example, HEDIS scores reflect compliance with prevention measures, such as scheduling flu shots, mammograms and annual physicals—all important elements of population health […]
[…] should “prepare to see large volumes” of imaging exams — including chest CTs, PET scans and mammograms — that show swollen lymph nodes, according to similar recommendations in the Journal of th […]
[…] What causes the confusion during mammograms is that breast cancer causes lymph nodes under the armpit to swell too […] Due to the similarities, some patients got false-positive results in their mammograms […] Texas, told KHOU in an interview that they had witnessed at least 10 false-positive results in mammograms this week alone […]
[…] distracted and anxious about a pandemic, but it’s also important not to forget about things like mammograms, like skin checks, like every other normal health check you would worry about […]
[…] who were awake for less than two hours demonstrated much lower sensitivity at spotting lesions on mammograms compared to those awake 8-10 hours […] Bottom line: They did not for experienced radiologists who read more than 2,000 mammograms per year […]
[…] of dealing with the cause of this problem (vaccines), the doctors are now telling women not to get mammograms after vaccination […] The doctors now advise all women patients to reschedule their yearly mammograms, either before the first dose or four weeks after the second dose […]
[…] Shana this week discussing various medical appointments, my tooth that broke while eating a bagel, mammograms, LED light therapy wrinkle reducing devices, and facial exercises to decrease the effects o […]
[…] is now following recommendations from the Society of Breast Imaging, which issued guidelines for mammograms after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination […]
[…] ” What else should people know? Early on, the pandemic caused countless patients to miss mammograms, pap smears, colonoscopies, other cancer screenings and annual doctor visits […]
Wondering how to lower resting heart rate but not sure where to start? We’ve got the expert answers you’re looking for. Heart rate is a great key indicator of overall health and fitness levels. The heart is one of the hardest working muscles in the body so making sure it’s functioning properly is key.
Your heart rate will naturally spike throughout the day depending on how much you move and other factors such as stress levels and stimulants such as coffee, but it’s your resting heart rate that’s most important.
Resting heart rate simply refers to how many times your heart beats per minute whilst in a rested state. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends taking your resting heart rate when you wake after a good night’s sleep.
You can check your resting heart rate by holding two fingers against one of your pulse points for a minute and counting the number of beats. However, technology can help provide a more accurate reading. The best heart rate monitors can be used in a resting state as well as during physical activity to help you monitor your heart rate zones, whilst today’s best fitness trackers (which include the best Fitbits) also provide heart-rate stats.
Generally speaking, the lower resting heart rate you have, the healthier your heart is and the fitter you are – although factors such as age can play a role. The AHA advises that for most people, a normal resting heart rate should be between 60 – 100. However, for those who are particularly active – professional athletes, for example – it’s okay for it to be between 50 and 60.
Studies have shown that elevated resting heart rates are linked with higher body weight and blood pressure, along with lower levels of physical fitness. If yours is above the recommended range, then there are steps you can take to reduce your resting heart rate. Here are five practical ways to make a start…
Increase your activity levels
There’s a reason that professional athletes have a very low resting heart rate – exercise strengthens the heart muscle. So just like when we get stronger if we increase other muscles, when the heart muscle gets stronger it means it works more efficiently – pumping blood quicker around the body.
Dr Zoe Williams, an NHS GP and wellness ambassador for Garminagrees: “There are a variety of ways you can lower your resting HR, but fitness is a great way to start. “While it might seem counterintuitive to exercise, as this usually brings your heart rate up, the more frequently you exercise the more your heart will learn to be stronger and be more efficient at pumping blood. Then, when you’re in rest mode, your heart is more easily able to maintain a lower heart rate.”
If you are new to exercise, start slow. You could try walking to lose weight, download one of the best fitness apps, or try the Couch to 5k beginner’s running plan. Alternatively, work with a personal trainer to build a workout routine that is tailored to you. The key is to find something you enjoy doing to ensure you stick with it.
Eat a balanced diet
Of course, one of the main benefits that people talk about when cleaning up their diet is weight loss – but when you start to eat healthily, it has a major effect on how your heart performs too.
Brad Emmott, a personal trainer and Head of Recovery at Manor London explains: “If you’re someone who carries excess weight, your heart is having to work harder to pump blood through it. If you lose that excess weight, it won’t need to work as hard.”
Rather than drastically changing your diet overnight and restricting entire food groups (which is never usually a good idea), take it one step at a time. Try to see it as a lifestyle change, rather than a diet.Start small by increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables you eat every day – five is the recommended daily intake. This will naturally decrease your consumption of processed foods, which are typically high in salt and saturated fat.
From here, start to ‘balance’ your plate at every meal, roughly aiming for half vegetables, a quarter protein and a quarter carbohydrates – the perfect mix for feeling full and fueled. See our portion size guide for more information.
Decrease alcohol and sugar consumption
Most of us like to enjoy the odd glass of wine or gin and tonic with friends. But the effects of regular drinking – especially above the recommended guidelines (14 units a week for Brits, two drinks a day for US men and one drink a day for US women) – can result in an elevated heart rate, high blood pressure and the weakening of the heart muscle over time.
Williams says that too much sugar can have similar effects: “For some, eating sugar in excess can mean the body interprets this significant rise in sugar and energy as the result of stress, and releases cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones cause the heart rate to increase, which will in turn cause blood pressure to rise.”
The guidance in the UK is that adults should have no more than 30g of free sugars a day. In the US, the recommended daily limit is 10 teaspoons.
Get more sleep
Williams says creating better sleeping habits is key to lowering your resting heart rate. “One of the best ways to promote consistent sleep is having a healthy sleep routine. By following a standard schedule, the mind and body become accustomed to a healthy sleep pattern.”Many of the best fitness watches now also have sleep monitoring, which can be a useful tool in understanding your existing sleep patterns.
“By monitoring your sleep you can track improvements and adjust your bedtime accordingly to ensure you are getting between seven- and nine-hours sleep, which should ultimately help lower your resting heart rate overtime,” advises Williams. The best sunrise alarm clocks can also help to establish healthy and regular sleep patterns.
Manage your stress levels
Whether it’s down to your job, home life or personal issues, stress will take its toll on your health. Emmott believes we need to learn to manage it so it doesn’t negatively impact our resting heart rate and overall health.“Stress of any kind, physical or emotional does increase heart rate and can have long-term adverse effects on your health,” he says.
“There is no way to eliminate stress in daily life, but managing it is important to keeping a healthy heart.”In addition to the action points outlined above, he recommends that meditation, social interaction (virtual included) and being in nature can help manage stress levels.
Once again, using a fitness tracker to help assess your stress levels is also a good idea. “Knowing your stress level can help you identify stressful moments throughout your day and could help identify triggers of your stress, so you can begin to eliminate and manage stressful situations,” Williams says.
“For example, if your stress scores were high, it would be a great time to take five minutes away from what you were doing to do some deep breathing. This doesn’t have to impact your day, you can do it while boiling the kettle, but breaking the chronic stress cycle is so important for your long-term health and short-term mental wellbeing.”
Everyone experiences headaches. From dull throbbing dehydration headaches to incapacitating migraines, a sore head is an extremely common complaint. This is perhaps especially true at the moment. COVID-19 can cause them, as can sitting at desks for too long and not getting out of the house enough.
When headaches strike, many people’s reaction is to reach for a painkiller. And these can do the job. But a better solution is often to probe the reasons behind the pain – especially if you get similar types of headaches a lot.
Even though they all entail pain, where the pain is can clue us into what type of headache we are experiencing. Pain in the face and forehead are markers of sinus-related headache whilst the sensation of a pneumatic drill somewhere in our cranium is often migraine.
But ultimately, all headaches are caused by vasodilation in the head – the widening of blood vessels near the brain. This stretches sensory receptors in the vessel wall and we feel that sensation as pain.
To understand why we need to think about the constraints the contents of our head are working under. Blood is toxic to brain tissue and so is kept separate through the blood-brain barrier. If a blood vessel leaks or breaks, this results in a haemorrhage and the death of the brain tissue the blood seeps into. So, if our blood vessels dilate beyond comfortable limits, the sensory receptors will fire off signals to the brain, which we interpret as pain.
Headaches are an early warning system. The best way to counteract them is to work out what they are warning us about.
1. Think beyond your head
This means thinking beyond your head. Yes, headache pain is generated somewhere in our head and we feel it in our head and that is why it is called headache. But headache is so much more than that – which is why I’m fascinated by them, have studied them for the past 20 years and recently published a book on the subject.
It’s a two-way street. The cause of our headache can sometimes come from our body or our behaviour. And of course headaches affect both our body and our behaviour. If we see headache as something isolated to our cranium then we will never truly understand its cause, our experience of it, or how we can best mitigate it.
Frequent migraine sufferers intimately understand this and often religiously track their food intake and their activities as well as the weather in order to work out what triggers them. But the normal headache sufferer is often less in tune with the causes of their pain.
Tension headache is a really good example of how this works. It feels like a tight band squeezing around your head with a tonne weight sitting on top for good measure. We are all aware of their occurrence at times of great emotional stress (lockdown homeschooling anyone?) but they can equally be caused by the stress we put on our body, with bad posture for example, or recovery from injury.
Both entail over-activity of the musculature around the head and neck, which sets up an inflammatory response involving prostaglandins and nitric oxide, both of which are chemicals that act to widen blood vessels. Inflammatory chemicals also directly activate the trigeminal nerve – the most complex of the cranial nerves and the one responsible for sensation and movement in the face.
Taking too many things on, rushing around trying to get things done in negative time, and trying to be all things to all people are common behavioural markers that will predict a tension headache. That and the actions we take when the pain begins.
2. Listen to the pain
If you have a pain in your leg, it might stop you from playing in that tennis match or turning up for five-a-side football. You know that if you play on it, you might do more damage and your recovery will take longer. But we don’t tend to do that with headache. We take a painkiller or an anti-inflammatory and carry on as normal even though our pain receptors are screaming at us that there is something wrong.
Taking paracetamol or ibuprofen will act to avert the danger, reducing the inflammation, the dilation and the perception of pain, but the headache will reoccur unless we can address the cause. Sometimes it’s obvious – if you have a sinus headache you’re just going to have to wait for your sinuses to clear, so taking a painkiller or a decongestant may be a good approach – but sometimes our coping strategy can make things worse.
We may decide a bottle of wine and a takeaway is just the kind of treat we need to relax and de-stress. But both lead to dehydration, another ubiquitous cause of headache. With your brain made of more than 70% water, if your kidneys need borrow some to dilute alcohol or salts and spices, it usually comes from this oasis. The brain loses water such that it literally shrinks in volume, tugging on the membranes covering the brain and triggering pain.
3. Use the brain’s natural painkillers
So what else can we do? One way is to lean into the brain’s natural painkiller system and to boost neurochemicals associated with happiness (such as serotonin and oxytocin) and reward (dopamine). Having a laugh at a comedy, enjoying a good friend’s company or indulging in some intimacy with a partner will all boost these hormones to various degrees.
Each block pain signals coming from the body, not only helping you get a handle on your headache but also redressing the balance of neurochemicals that were the mechanism of your upset emotional state.
The knowledge that we can leverage our behaviour and our body to keep our brain’s neurochemicals in balance gives us a way to break the headache cycle. So next time you have a headache for which the causes aren’t glaringly obvious – you’re not otherwise sick and you’ve been keeping hydrated – take a look at your life and see what you can change there. The pain, after all, is trying to tell you something.
By: Amanda Ellison Professor of Neuroscience, Durham University
“Famous” Physical Therapists Bob Schrupp and Brad Heineck discuss an approach to stopping your headaches using a new neuroscience approach. Adriaan Louw Headache Book available at https://bobandbrad.com/favorite-books and on our Amazon list. Make sure to like Bob and Brad on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/BobandBrad/
[…] light or noise painful you get other symptoms – for example, your arms or legs feel numb or weak How to get rid of headaches The NHS suggest different ways to treat a headache, including: drink plenty of water get plenty o […]
Transcript The question I would like to discuss with you today is “How to get rid of headaches?” Okay, I will be completely honest with you before we start […]
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HOW TO get rid of headaches: Whether it’s a dull ache, throbbing pain or a piercing feeling, natural remedies can help to eas […] Want to know more on How to get rid of headaches: Three natural remedies to relieve the tension click here go to health tips source […] Author: … Want to know more on How to get rid of headaches: Three natural remedies to relieve the tension click here go to health tips source […]
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All of us get headaches and the vastmajority of them and nothing to worry about on this video i’m going to coach you the best way to eliminate them and whilst you must seek medical awareness ……
Headaches may occur due to various reasons and almost everyone experiences headaches at some point.Luckily, there are ways of stop and soothe the pain with…
