What’s the difference between Alzheimer’s and dementia?
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What’s the difference? is a new editorial product that explains the similarities and differences between commonly confused health and medical terms, and why they matter.
Changes in thinking and memory as we age can occur for a variety of reasons. These changes are not always cause for concern. But when they begin to disrupt daily life, it could indicate the first signs of dementia.
Another term that can crop up when we’re talking about dementia is Alzheimer’s disease, or Alzheimer’s for short.
So what’s the difference?
What is dementia?
Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe a range of syndromes that result in changes in memory, thinking and/or behaviour due to degeneration in the brain.
To meet the criteria for dementia these changes must be sufficiently pronounced to interfere with usual activities and are present in at least two different aspects of thinking or memory.
For example, someone might have trouble remembering to pay bills and become lost in previously familiar areas.
It’s less-well known that dementia can also occur in children. This is due to progressive brain damage associated with more than 100 rare genetic disorders. This can result in similar cognitive changes as we see in adults.
So what’s Alzheimer’s then?
Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia, accounting for about 60-80% of cases.
So it’s not surprising many people use the terms dementia and Alzheimer’s interchangeably.
Changes in memory are the most common sign of Alzheimer’s and it’s what the public most often associates with it. For instance, someone with Alzheimer’s may have trouble recalling recent events or keeping track of what day or month it is.
We still don’t know exactly what causes Alzheimer’s. However, we do know it is associated with a build-up in the brain of two types of protein called amyloid-β and tau.
While we all have some amyloid-β, when too much builds up in the brain it clumps together, forming plaques in the spaces between cells. These plaques cause damage (inflammation) to surrounding brain cells and leads to disruption in tau. Tau forms part of the structure of brain cells but in Alzheimer’s tau proteins become “tangled”. This is toxic to the cells, causing them to die. A feedback loop is then thought to occur, triggering production of more amyloid-β and more abnormal tau, perpetuating damage to brain cells.
Alzheimer’s can also occur with other forms of dementia, such as vascular dementia. This combination is the most common example of a mixed dementia.
Vascular dementia
The second most common type of dementia is vascular dementia. This results from disrupted blood flow to the brain.
Because the changes in blood flow can occur throughout the brain, signs of vascular dementia can be more varied than the memory changes typically seen in Alzheimer’s.
For example, vascular dementia may present as general confusion, slowed thinking, or difficulty organising thoughts and actions.
Your risk of vascular dementia is greater if you have heart disease or high blood pressure.
Frontotemporal dementia
Some people may not realise that dementia can also affect behaviour and/or language. We see this in different forms of frontotemporal dementia.
The behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia is the second most common form (after Alzheimer’s disease) of younger onset dementia (dementia in people under 65).
People living with this may have difficulties in interpreting and appropriately responding to social situations. For example, they may make uncharacteristically rude or offensive comments or invade people’s personal space.
Semantic dementia is also a type of frontotemporal dementia and results in difficulty with understanding the meaning of words and naming everyday objects.
Dementia with Lewy bodies
Dementia with Lewy bodies results from dysregulation of a different type of protein known as α-synuclein. We often see this in people with Parkinson’s disease.
So people with this type of dementia may have altered movement, such as a stooped posture, shuffling walk, and changes in handwriting. Other symptoms include changes in alertness, visual hallucinations and significant disruption to sleep.
Do I have dementia and if so, which type?
If you or someone close to you is concerned, the first thing to do is to speak to your GP. They will likely ask you some questions about your medical history and what changes you have noticed.
Sometimes it might not be clear if you have dementia when you first speak to your doctor. They may suggest you watch for changes or they may refer you to a specialist for further tests.
There is no single test to clearly show if you have dementia, or the type of dementia. A diagnosis comes after multiple tests, including brain scans, tests of memory and thinking, and consideration of how these changes impact your daily life.
Not knowing what is happening can be a challenging time so it is important to speak to someone about how you are feeling or to reach out to support services.
Dementia is diverse
As well as the different forms of dementia, everyone experiences dementia in different ways. For example, the speed dementia progresses varies a lot from person to person. Some people will continue to live well with dementia for some time while others may decline more quickly.
There is still significant stigma surrounding dementia. So by learning more about the various types of dementia and understanding differences in how dementia progresses we can all do our part to create a more dementia-friendly community.
The National Dementia Helpline (1800 100 500) provides information and support for people living with dementia and their carers. To learn more about dementia, you can take this free online course.
Nikki-Anne Wilson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Navigating the health-care system is not easy, but you’re not alone.
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Hello, dear reader!
This is my first column for Healthy Debate as a Patient Navigator. This column will be devoted to providing patients with information to help them through their journey with the health-care system and answering your questions.
Here’s a bit about me: I have been a patient partner at The Ottawa Hospital and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute since 2017, and have joined a variety of governance boards that work on patient and caregiver engagement such as the Patient Advisors Network, the Ontario Health East Region Patient and Family Advisory Council and the Equity in Health Systems Lab.
My journey as a patient partner started much before 2017 though. When I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with a cholesteatoma, a rare and chronic disease that causes the development of fatty tumors in the middle ear. I have had multiple surgeries to try to fix it but will need regular follow-ups to monitor whether the tumor returns. Because of this, I also live with an invisible disability since I have essentially become functionally deaf in one ear and often rely on a hearing aid when I navigate the world.
Having undergone three surgeries in my adolescent years, it was my experience undergoing surgery for an acute hand and wrist injury following a jet ski accident as an adult that was the catalyst for my decision to become a patient partner. There was an intriguing contrast between how I was cared for at two different health-care institutions, my age being the deciding factor at which hospital I went to (a children’s hospital or an adult one).
The most memorable example was how, as a teenager or child, you were never left alone before surgery, and nurses and staff took all the time necessary to comfort me and answer my (and my family’s) questions. I also remember how right before putting me to sleep, the whole staff initiated a surgical pause and introduced themselves and explained to me what their role was during my surgery.
None of that happened as an adult. I was left in a hallway while the operating theater was prepared, anxious and alone with staff walking by not even batting an eye. My questions felt like an annoyance to the care team; as soon as I was wheeled onto the operating room table, the anesthetist quickly put me to sleep. I didn’t even have the time to see who else was there.
Now don’t get me wrong: I am incredibly appreciative with the quality of care I received, but it was the everyday interactions with the care teams that I felt could be improved. And so, while I was recovering from that surgery, I looked for a way to help other patients and the hospital improve its care. I discovered the hospital’s patient engagement program, applied, and the rest is history!
Since then, I have worked on a host of patient-centered policy and research projects and fervently advocate that surgical teams adopt a more compassionate approach with patients before and after surgery.
I’d be happy to talk a bit more about my journey if you ask, but with that out of the way … Welcome to our first patient navigator column about patient engagement.
Conceptualizing the continuum of Patient Engagement
In the context of Canadian health care, patient engagement is a multifaceted concept that involves active collaboration between patients, caregivers, health-care providers and researchers. It involves patients and caregivers as active contributors in decision-making processes, health-care services and medical research. Though the concept is not new, the paradigm shift toward patient engagement in Canada started around 2010.
I like to conceptualize the different levels of patient engagement as a measure of the strength of the relationship between patients and their interlocutors – whether it’s a healthcare provider, administrator or researcher – charted against the duration of the engagement or the scope of input required from the patient.
Defining different levels of Patient Engagement
Following the continuum, let’s begin by defining different levels of patient engagement. Bear in mind that these definitions can vary from one organization to another but are useful in generally labelling the level of patient engagement a project has achieved (or wishes to achieve).
Patient involvement: If the strength of the relationship between patients and their interlocutors is minimal and not time consuming or too onerous, then perhaps it can be categorized as patient involvement. This applies to many instances of transactional engagement.
Patient advisory/consulting: Right in the middle of our continuum, patients can find themselves engaging in patient advisory or consulting work, where projects are limited in scope and duration or complexity, and the relationship is not as profound as a partnership.
Patient partnership: The stronger the relationship is between the patient and their interlocutor, and the longer the engagement activity lasts or how much input the patient is providing, the more this situation can be categorized as patient partnership. It is the inverse of patient involvement.
Examples of the different levels of Patient Engagement
Let’s pretend you are accompanying a loved one to an appointment to manage a kidney disease, requiring them to undergo dialysis treatment. We’ll use this scenario to exemplify what label could be used to describe the level of engagement.
Patient involvement: In our case, if your loved one – or you – fills out a satisfaction or feedback survey about your experience in the waiting room and all that needed to be done was to hand it back to the clerk or care team, then, at a basic level, you could likely label this interaction as a form of patient involvement. It can also involve open consultations around a design of a new look and feel for a hospital, or the understandability of a survey or communications product. Interactions with the care team, administrators or researchers are minimal and often transactional.
Patient advisory/consulting: If your loved one was asked for more detailed information about survey results over the course of a few meetings, this could represent patient advisory/consulting. This could mean that patients meet with program administrators and care providers and share their insights on how things can be improved. It essentially involves patients providing advice to health-care institutions from the perspective of patients, their family members and caregivers.
Patient advisors or consultants are often appointed by hospitals or academic institutions to offer insights at multiple stages of health-care delivery and research. They can help pilot an initiative based on that feedback or evaluate whether the new solutions are working. Often patient advisors are engaged in smaller-term individual projects and meet with the project team as regularly as required.
Patient partnership: Going above and beyond patient advisory, if patients have built a trusting relationship with their care team or administrators, they could feel comfortable enough to partner with them and initiate a project of their own. This could be for a project in which they study a different form of treatment to improve patient-centered outcomes (like the time it takes to feel “normal” following a session); it could be working together to identify and remove barriers for other patients that need to access that type of care. These projects are not fulfilled overnight, but require a collaborative, longstanding and trusting relationship between patients and health-care providers, administrators or researchers. It ensures that patients, regardless of severity or chronicity of their illness, can meaningfully contribute their experiences to aid in improving patient care, or develop or implement policies, pilots or research projects from start to finish.
It is leveraging that lived and living experience to its full extent and having the patient partner involved as an equal voice in the decision-making process for a project – over many months, usually – that the engagement could be labeled a partnership.
Last words
The point of this column will be to answer or explore issues or questions related to patient engagement, health communications or even provide some thoughts on how to handle a particular situation.
I would be happy to collect your questions and feedback at any time, which will help inform future columns. Just email me at [email protected] or connect with me on social media (Linked In, X / Twitter).
It’s not easy to navigate our health-care systems, but you are not alone.
This article is republished from healthydebate under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Early Detection May Help Kentucky Tamp Down Its Lung Cancer Crisis
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Anthony Stumbo’s heart sank after the doctor shared his mother’s chest X-ray.
“I remember that drive home, bringing her back home, and we basically cried,” said the internal medicine physician, who had started practicing in eastern Kentucky near his childhood home shortly before his mother began feeling ill. “Nobody wants to get told they’ve got inoperable lung cancer. I cried because I knew what this meant for her.”
Now Stumbo, whose mother died the following year, in 1997, is among a group of Kentucky clinicians and researchers determined to rewrite the script for other families by promoting training and boosting awareness about early detection in the state with the highest lung cancer death rate. For the past decade, Kentucky researchers have promoted lung cancer screening, first recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in 2013. These days the Bluegrass State screens more residents who are at high risk of developing lung cancer than any state except Massachusetts — 10.6% of eligible residents in 2022, more than double the national rate of 4.5% — according to the most recent American Lung Association analysis.
The effort has been driven by a research initiative called the Kentucky LEADS (Lung Cancer Education, Awareness, Detection, and Survivorship) Collaborative, which in 2014 launched to improve screening and prevention, to identify more tumors earlier, when survival odds are far better. The group has worked with clinicians and hospital administrators statewide to boost screening rates both in urban areas and regions far removed from academic medical centers, such as rural Appalachia. But, a decade into the program, the researchers face an ongoing challenge as they encourage more people to get tested, namely the fear and stigma that swirl around smoking and lung cancer.
Lung cancer kills more Americans than any other malignancy, and the death rates are worst in a swath of states including Kentucky and its neighbors Tennessee and West Virginia, and stretching south to Mississippi and Louisiana, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s a bit early to see the impact on lung cancer deaths because people may still live for years with a malignancy, LEADS researchers said. Plus, treatment improvements and other factors may also help reduce death rates along with increased screening. Still, data already shows that more cancers in Kentucky are being detected before they become advanced, and thus more difficult to treat, they said. Of total lung cancer cases statewide, the percentage of advanced cases — defined as cancers that had spread to the lymph nodes or beyond — hovered near 81% between 2000 and 2014, according to Kentucky Cancer Registry data. By 2020, that number had declined to 72%, according to the most recent data available.
“We are changing the story of families. And there is hope where there has not been hope before,” said Jennifer Knight, a LEADS principal investigator.
Older adults in their 60s and 70s can hold a particularly bleak view of their mortality odds, given what their loved ones experienced before screening became available, said Ashley Shemwell, a nurse navigator for the lung cancer screening program at Owensboro Health, a nonprofit health system that serves Kentucky and Indiana.
“A lot of them will say, ‘It doesn’t matter if I get lung cancer or not because it’s going to kill me. So I don’t want to know,’” said Shemwell. “With that generation, they saw a lot of lung cancers and a lot of deaths. And it was terrible deaths because they were stage 4 lung cancers.” But she reminds them that lung cancer is much more treatable if caught before it spreads.
The collaborative works with several partners, including the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, and GO2 for Lung Cancer, and has received grant funding from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation. Leaders have provided training and other support to 10 hospital-based screening programs, including a stipend to pay for resources such as educational materials or a nurse navigator, Knight said. In 2022, state lawmakers established a statewide lung cancer screening program based in part on the group’s work.
Jacob Sands, a lung cancer physician at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, credits the LEADS collaborative with encouraging patients to return for annual screening and follow-up testing for any suspicious nodules. “What the Kentucky LEADS program is doing is fantastic, and that is how you really move the needle in implementing lung screening on a larger scale,” said Sands, who isn’t affiliated with the Kentucky program and serves as a volunteer spokesperson for the American Lung Association.
In 2014, Kentucky expanded Medicaid, increasing the number of lower-income people who qualified for lung cancer screening and any related treatment. Adults 50 to 80 years old are advised to get a CT scan every year if they have accumulated at least 20 pack years and still smoke or have quit within the past 15 years, according to the latest task force recommendation, which widened the pool of eligible adults. (To calculate pack years, multiply the packs of cigarettes smoked daily by years of smoking.) The lung association offers an online quiz, called “Saved By The Scan,” to figure out likely eligibility for insurance coverage.
Half of U.S. patients aren’t diagnosed until their cancer has spread beyond the lungs and lymph nodes to elsewhere in the body. By then, the five-year survival rate is 8.2%.
But regular screening boosts those odds. When a CT scan detects lung cancer early, patients have an 81% chance of living at least 20 years, according to data published in November in the journal Radiology.
Some adults, like Lisa Ayers, didn’t realize lung cancer screening was an option. Her family doctor recommended a CT scan last year after she reported breathing difficulties. Ayers, who lives in Ohio near the Kentucky border, got screened at UK King’s Daughters, a hospital in far eastern Kentucky. The scan didn’t take much time, and she didn’t have to undress, the 57-year-old said. “It took me longer to park,” she quipped.
She was diagnosed with a lung carcinoid tumor, a type of neuroendocrine cancer that can grow in various parts of the body. Her cancer was considered too risky for surgery, Ayers said. A biopsy showed the cancer was slow-growing, and her doctors said they would monitor it closely.
Ayers, a lifelong smoker, recalled her doctor said that her type of cancer isn’t typically linked to smoking. But she quit anyway, feeling like she’d been given a second chance to avoid developing a smoking-related cancer. “It was a big wake-up call for me.”
Adults with a smoking history often report being treated poorly by medical professionals, said Jamie Studts, a health psychologist and a LEADS principal investigator, who has been involved with the research from the start. The goal is to avoid stigmatizing people and instead to build rapport, meeting them where they are that day, he said.
“If someone tells us that they’re not ready to quit smoking but they want to have lung cancer screening, awesome; we’d love to help,” Studts said. “You know what? You actually develop a relationship with an individual by accepting, ‘No.’”
Nationally, screening rates vary widely. Massachusetts reaches 11.9% of eligible residents, while California ranks last, screening just 0.7%, according to the lung association analysis.
That data likely doesn’t capture all California screenings, as it may not include CT scans done through large managed care organizations, said Raquel Arias, a Los Angeles-based associate director of state partnerships at the American Cancer Society. She cited other 2022 data for California, looking at lung cancer screening for eligible Medicare fee-for-service patients, which found a screening rate of 1%-2% in that population.
But, Arias said, the state’s effort is “nowhere near what it needs to be.”
The low smoking rate in California, along with its image as a healthy state, “seems to have come with the unintended consequence of further stigmatizing people who smoke,” said Arias, citing one of the findings from a 2022 report looking at lung cancer screening barriers. For instance, eligible patients may be reluctant to share prior smoking habits with their health provider, she said.
Meanwhile, Kentucky screening efforts progress, scan by scan.
At Appalachian Regional Healthcare, 3,071 patients were screened in 2023, compared with 372 in 2017. “We’re just scratching the surface of the potential lives that we can have an effect on,” said Stumbo, a lung cancer screening champion at the health system, which includes 14 hospitals, most located in eastern Kentucky.
The doctor hasn’t shed his own grief about what his family missed after his mother died at age 51, long before annual screening was recommended. “Knowing that my children were born, and never knowing their grandmother,” he said, “just how sad is that?”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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What’s the difference between period pain and endometriosis pain?
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Menstruation, or a period, is the bleeding that occurs about monthly in healthy people born with a uterus, from puberty to menopause. This happens when the endometrium, the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus, is shed.
Endometriosis is a condition that occurs when endometrium-like tissue is found outside the uterus, usually within the pelvic cavity. It is often considered a major cause of pelvic pain.
Pelvic pain significantly impacts quality of life. But how can you tell the difference between period pain and endometriosis?
Polina Zimmerman/Pexels Periods and period pain
Periods involve shedding the 4-6 millimetre-thick endometrial lining from the inside of the uterus.
As the lining detaches from the wall of the uterus, the blood vessels which previously supplied the lining bleed. The uterine muscles contract, expelling the blood and crumbled endometrium.
The crumbled endometrium and blood mostly pass through the cervix and vagina. But almost everyone back-bleeds via their fallopian tubes into their pelvic cavity. This is known as “retrograde menstruation”.
Most of the lining is shed through the vagina. Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock The process of menstrual shedding is caused by inflammatory substances, which also cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, aches, pains, dizziness, feeling faint, as well as stimulating pain receptors.
These inflammatory substances are responsible for the pain and symptoms in the week before a period and the first few days.
For women with heavy periods, their worst days of pain are usually the heaviest days of their period, coinciding with more cramps to expel clots and more retrograde bleeding.
Many women also have pain when they are releasing an egg from their ovary at the time of ovulation. Ovulation or mid-cycle pain can be worse in those who bleed more, as those women are more likely to bleed into the ovulation follicle.
Around 90% of adolescents experience period pain. Among these adolescents, 20% will experience such severe period pain they need time off from school and miss activities. These symptoms are too often normalised, without validation or acknowledgement.
What about endometriosis?
Many symptoms have been attributed to endometriosis, including painful periods, pain with sex, bladder and bowel-related pain, low back pain and thigh pain.
Other pain-related conditions such migraines and chronic fatigue have also been linked to endometriosis. But these other pain-related symptoms occur equally often in people with pelvic pain who don’t have endometriosis.
One in five adolescents who menstrate experience severe symptoms. CGN089/Shutterstock Repeated, significant period and ovulation pain can eventually lead some people to develop persistent or chronic pelvic pain, which lasts longer than six months. This appears to occur through a process known as central sensitisation, where the brain becomes more sensitive to pain and other sensory stimuli.
Central sensitisation can occur in people with persistent pain, independent of the presence or absence of endometriosis.
Eventually, many people with period and/or persistent pelvic pain will have an operation called a laparoscopy, which allows surgeons to examine organs in the pelvis and abdomen, and diagnose and treat endometriosis.
Yet only 50% of those with identical pain symptoms who undergo a laparoscopy will end up having endometriosis.
Endometriosis is also found in pain-free women. So we cannot predict who does and doesn’t have endometriosis from symptoms alone.
How is this pain managed?
Endometriosis surgery usually involves removing lesions and adhesions. But at least 30% of people return to pre-surgery pain levels within six months or have more pain than before.
After surgery, emergency department presentations for pain are unchanged and 50% have repeat surgery within a few years.
Suppressing periods using hormonal therapies (such as continuous oral contraceptive pills or progesterone-only approaches) can suppress endometriosis and reduce or eliminate pain, independent of the presence or absence of endometriosis.
Not every type or dose of hormonal medications suits everyone, so medications need to be individualised.
The current gold-standard approach to manage persistent pelvic pain involves a multidisciplinary team approach, with the aim of achieving sustained remission and improving quality of life. This may include:
- physiotherapy for pelvic floor and other musculoskeletal problems
- management of bladder and bowel symptoms
- support for self-managing pain
- lifestyle changes including diet and exercise
- psychological or group therapy, as our moods, stress levels and childhood events can affect how we feel and experience pain.
Whether you have period pain, chronic pelvic pain or pain you think is associated with endometriosis, if you feel pain, it’s real. If it’s disrupting your life, you deserve to be taken seriously and treated as the whole person you are.
Sonia R. Grover, Senior Research Fellow, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; Clinical Professor of Gynaecology, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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6 Ways To Look After Your Back
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Back To Back
When people think about looking after their back, often thought does not go much further than sitting with good posture, and perhaps even standing with good posture. And those things are important, but:
1) People’s efforts to have good posture often result in overcorrecting creating an anterior pelvic tilt that causes lower back problems.
Quick tip: if you’re sticking your butt out, you’re doing it wrong (no matter how great your butt is). Instead, to find the correct posture, go up on your tip-toes for a moment, then imagine a plumb-line down the center of your body, thus perpendicular to the floor, going all the way down to the ground. Now, slowly return your heels to the ground, but as you do so, keep your spine aligned to the plumb-line, so you’re not moving backwards as you drop, just directly down. This will land you in perfect posture.
Unless you have scoliosis. In which case, it’ll get you as close to good posture as is likely attainable from any quick tip.
2) There’s a lot more to looking after our back than just good posture!
Here are 5 other important things to do:
Be strong
Do strength-training for your back. How to do that is beyond the scope of today’s feature, but there are many good guides and also personal trainers that can be found.
Start off easy and work up, but do start. The stronger your back is, the less likely a momentary lapse in concentration is to throw out your back because you picked something up with imperfect form.
See also: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Stretch intentionally
Many back injuries occur as a result of stretching and/or twisting awkwardly, so if you ensure your basic mobility and range of motion is good, the less likely it is that unthinkingly twisting around 270° to see where that wasp was going will slip a disk.
The more you stretch intentionally (carefully, please), the more you will be able to stretch unintentionally without injury.
See also: Building & Maintaining Mobility
Stand when you can, walk when you can
We humans have outrun our evolution in a lot of ways, and/but one thing our bodies are definitely not well-adapted for is sitting. Unless we are sitting in a low squat the way you might often see an orang-utan sitting, sitting is not a good way of being for us. Even sitting seiza-style or cross-legged is passable for a short while, not for too long.
So, while there sure are times we need to sit (especially if you’re driving!) minimizing those times is ideal. There are a lot of activities that are traditionally done sitting, where there’s no need for it to be so. For example, your writer here sits for the day’s main meal, but takes any smaller meal standing (and when guests visit for a coffee or such, I’ll offer them the couch while I myself prop up the fireplace). Standing desks are also great if you spend a lot of time at the computer for any reason.
See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
Rest when you need to
You can’t stand all the time! But know this: if you want to rest your legs, lying down is a lot better for your back (and internal organs) than sitting.
Taking a 5 minute break lying on your couch, or bed, or floor, is a perfectly good option and only social convention says otherwise.
If you want a compromise option, though? A recliner chair, in the reclined position, is a better for your back than being scrunched up in the Economy Class Flight position.
PS: About that bed situation…
What Mattress Is Best, By Science?
Kill pain before it kills you
Painkillers aren’t great for the health per se, but pain (or rather, our bodily responses to such) can be worse. Half the time, when it comes to musculoskeletal problems, things get a lot worse a lot more quickly because of how we overcompensate due to the pain. So, take your pain seriously, and remember, the right amount of pain is zero.
If you’re thinking “but pain relief option xyz isn’t good for me”, we strongly recommend checking out:
The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
Take care!
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Nori vs Wakame – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing nori to wakame, we picked the nori.
Why?
It was close, and both of these seaweed options are great!
In terms of macros, nori has more protein while wakame has more carbs; they’re about equal on fiber. While the difference in protein and carbs isn’t big, out of the two we’ll prioritize protein, and thus say nori gets a notional win here—but as it’s so close, one could just as easily call it a tie.
In the category of vitamins both are very rich in many minerals, but nori has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12*, and C, while wakame has more of vitamins B5, B9, K, and choline. Thus, a 6:4 victory for nori.
*Yes, nori is one of those rare vegan foods that naturally contain vitamin B12; it’s because of the composition of the algae that this seaweed is made of, which includes some beneficial B12-making bacteria. Meanwhile, wakame is “just” a kelp, so it doesn’t have B12.
When it comes to minerals, nori has more potassium and zinc, while wakame has more calcium and magnesium. They’re equal on other minerals, except: it’s worth noting that wakame is moderately high in sodium, while nori has very little sodium. So, either a tie-breaking win for nori, or just a tie.
Adding up the sections gives nori the overall win; it’s only the margin of the win that’s reasonably debatable. Still, enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- A Deeper Dive Into Seaweed
- Spirulina vs Nori – Which is Healthier? ← guess which won!
- 21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, It’s Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!) ← nori and wakame both feature (very favorably) in this case study
Enjoy!
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What does it mean to be transgender?
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Transgender media coverage has surged in recent years for a wide range of reasons. While there are more transgender television characters than ever before, hundreds of bills are targeting transgender people’s access to medical care, sports teams, gender-specific public spaces, and other institutions.
Despite the increase in conversation about the transgender community, public confusion around transgender identity remains.
Read on to learn more about what it means to be transgender and understand challenges transgender people may face.
What does it mean to be transgender?
Transgender—or “trans”—is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to their sex assigned at birth. People can discover they are trans at any age.
Gender identity refers to a person’s inner sense of being a woman, a man, neither, both, or something else entirely. Trans people who don’t feel like women or men might describe themselves as nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, or two-spirit, among other terms.
Gender expression describes the way a person communicates their gender through their appearance—such as their clothing or hairstyle—and behavior.
A person whose gender expression doesn’t conform to the expectations of their assigned sex may not identify as trans. The only way to know for sure if someone is trans is if they tell you.
Cisgender—or “cis”—describes people whose gender identities match the sex they were assigned at birth.
How long have transgender people existed?
Being trans isn’t new. Although the word “transgender” only dates back to the 1960s, people whose identities defy traditional gender expectations have existed across cultures throughout recorded history.
How many people are transgender?
A 2022 Williams Institute study estimates that 1.6 million people over the age of 13 identify as transgender in the United States.
Is being transgender a mental health condition?
No. Conveying and communicating about your gender in a way that feels authentic to you is a normal and necessary part of self-expression.
Social and legal stigma, bullying, discrimination, harassment, negative media messages, and barriers to gender-affirming medical care can cause psychological distress for trans people. This is especially true for trans people of color, who face significantly higher rates of violence, poverty, housing instability, and incarceration—but trans identity itself is not a mental health condition.
What is gender dysphoria?
Gender dysphoria describes a feeling of unease that some trans people experience when their perceived gender doesn’t match their gender identity, or their internal sense of gender. A 2021 study of trans adults pursuing gender-affirming medical care found that most participants started experiencing gender dysphoria by the time they were 7.
When trans people don’t receive the support they need to manage gender dysphoria, they may experience depression, anxiety, social isolation, suicidal ideation, substance use disorder, eating disorders, and self-injury.
How do trans people manage gender dysphoria?
Every trans person’s experience with gender dysphoria is unique. Some trans people may alleviate dysphoria by wearing gender-affirming clothing or by asking others to refer to them by a new name and use pronouns that accurately reflect their gender identity. The 2022 U.S. Trans Survey found that nearly all trans participants who lived as a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth reported that they were more satisfied with their lives.
Some trans people may also manage dysphoria by pursuing medical transition, which may involve taking hormones and getting gender-affirming surgery.
Access to gender-affirming medical care has been shown to reduce the risk of depression and suicide among trans youth and adults.
To learn more about the trans community, visit resources from the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Trevor Project, PFLAG, and Planned Parenthood.
If you or anyone you know is considering suicide or self-harm or is anxious, depressed, upset, or needs to talk, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. For international resources, here is a good place to begin.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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