In Crisis, She Went to an Illinois Facility. Two Years Later, She Still Isn’t Able to Leave.

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Series: Culture of Cruelty:Inside Illinois’ Mental Health System

State-run facilities in Illinois are supposed to care for people with mental and developmental disabilities. But patients have been subjected to abuse, neglect and staff misconduct for decades, despite calls for change.

Kaleigh Rogers was in crisis when she checked into a state-run institution on Illinois’ northern border two years ago. Rogers, who has cerebral palsy, had a mental health breakdown during the pandemic and was acting aggressively toward herself and others.

Before COVID-19, she had been living in a small group home; she had been taking college classes online and enjoyed going out with friends, volunteering and going to church. But when her aggression escalated, she needed more medical help than her community setting could provide.

With few viable options for intervention, she moved into Kiley Developmental Center in Waukegan, a much larger facility. There, she says she has fewer freedoms and almost nothing to do, and was placed in a unit with six other residents, all of whom are unable to speak. Although the stay was meant to be short term, she’s been there for two years.

The predicament facing Rogers and others like her is proof, advocates say, that the state is failing to live up to the promise it made in a 13-year-old federal consent decree to serve people in the community.

Rogers, 26, said she has lost so much at Kiley: her privacy, her autonomy and her purpose. During dark times, she cries on the phone to her mom, who has reduced the frequency of her visits because it is so upsetting for Rogers when her mom has to leave.

The 220-bed developmental center about an hour north of Chicago is one of seven in the state that have been plagued by allegations of abuse and other staff misconduct. The facilities have been the subject of a monthslong investigation by Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica about the state’s failures to correct poor conditions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The news organizations uncovered instances of staff who had beaten, choked, thrown, dragged and humiliated residents inside the state-run facilities.

Advocates hoped the state would become less reliant on large institutions like these when they filed a lawsuit in 2005, alleging that Illinois’ failure to adequately fund community living options ended up segregating people with intellectual and developmental disabilities from society by forcing them to live in institutions. The suit claimed Illinois was in direct violation of a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision in another case, which found that states had to serve people in the most integrated setting of their choosing.

Negotiations resulted in a consent decree, a court-supervised improvement plan. The state agreed to find and fund community placements and services for individuals covered by the consent decree, thousands of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities across Illinois who have put their names on waiting lists to receive them.

Now, the state has asked a judge to consider ending the consent decree, citing significant increases in the number of people receiving community-based services. In a court filing in December, Illinois argued that while its system is “not and never will be perfect,” it is “much more than legally adequate.”

But advocates say the consent decree should not be considered fulfilled as long as people with disabilities continue to live without the services and choices that the state promised.

Across the country, states have significantly downsized or closed their large-scale institutions for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities in favor of smaller, more integrated and more homelike settings.

But in Illinois, a national outlier, such efforts have foundered. Efforts to close state-operated developmental centers have been met with strong opposition from labor unions, the communities where the centers are located, local politicians and some parents.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman in Chicago is scheduled in late summer to decide whether the state has made enough progress in building up community supports to end the court’s oversight.

For some individuals like Rogers, who are in crisis or have higher medical or behavioral challenges, the state itself acknowledges that it has struggled to serve them in community settings. Rogers said she’d like to send this message on behalf of those in state-operated developmental centers: “Please, please get us out once and for all.”

“Living Inside a Box”

Without a robust system of community-based resources and living arrangements to intervene during a crisis, state-operated developmental centers become a last resort for people with disabilities. But under the consent decree agreement, the state, Equip for Equality argues, is expected to offer sufficient alternative crisis supports to keep people who want them out of these institutions.

In a written response to questions, Rachel Otwell, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Human Services, said the state has sought to expand the menu of services it offers people experiencing a crisis, in an effort to keep them from going into institutions. But Andrea Rizor, a lawyer with Equip for Equality, said, “They just don’t have enough to meet the demand.”

For example, the state offers stabilization homes where people can live for 90 days while they receive more intensive support from staff serving the homes, including medication reviews and behavioral interventions. But there are only 32 placements available — only four of them for women — and the beds are always full, Rizor said.

Too many people, she said, enter a state-run institution for short-term treatment and end up stuck there for years for various reasons, including shortcomings with the state’s discharge planning and concerns from providers who may assume those residents to be disruptive or difficult to serve without adequate resources.

That’s what happened to Rogers. Interruptions to her routine and isolation during the pandemic sent her anxiety and aggressive behaviors into overdrive. The staff at her community group home in Machesney Park, unsure of what to do when she acted out, had called the police on several occasions.

Doctors also tried to intervene, but the cocktail of medications she was prescribed turned her into a “zombie,” Rogers said. Stacey Rogers, her mom and legal guardian, said she didn’t know where else to turn for help. Kiley, she said, “was pretty much the last resort for us,” but she never intended for her daughter to be there for this long. She’s helped her daughter apply to dozens of group homes over the past year. A few put her on waitlists; most have turned her down.

“Right now, all she’s doing is living inside a box,” Stacey Rogers said.

Although Rogers gave the news organizations permission to ask about her situation, IDHS declined to comment, citing privacy restrictions. In general, the IDHS spokesperson said that timelines for leaving institutions are “specific to each individual” and their unique preferences, such as where they want to live and speciality services they may require in a group home.

Equip for Equality points to people like Rogers to argue that the consent decree has not been sufficiently fulfilled. She’s one of several hundred in that predicament, the organization said.

“If the state doesn’t have capacity to serve folks in the community, then the time is not right to terminate this consent decree, which requires community capacity,” Rizor said.

Equip for Equality has said that ongoing safety issues in these facilities make it even more important that people covered by the consent decree not be placed in state-run institutions. In an October court brief, citing the news organizations’ reporting, Equip for Equality said that individuals with disabilities who were transferred from community to institutional care in crisis have “died, been raped, and been physically and mentally abused.”

Over the summer, an independent court monitor assigned to provide expert opinions in the consent decree, in a memo to the court, asked a judge to bar the state from admitting those individuals into its institutions.

In its December court filing, the state acknowledged that there are some safety concerns inside its state-run centers, “which the state is diligently working on,” as well as conditions inside privately operated facilities and group homes “that need to be addressed.” But it also argued that conditions inside its facilities are outside the scope of the consent decree. The lawsuit and consent decree specifically aimed to help people who wanted to move out of large private institutions, but plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that the consent decree prohibits the state from using state-run institutions as backup crisis centers.

In arguing to end the consent decree, the state pointed to significant increases in the number of people served since it went into effect. There were about 13,500 people receiving home- and community-based services in 2011 compared with more than 23,000 in 2023, it told the court.

The state also said it has significantly increased funding that is earmarked to pay front-line direct support professionals who assist individuals with daily living needs in the community, such as eating and grooming.

In a statement to reporters, the human services department called these and other improvements to the system “extraordinary.”

Lawyers for the state argued that those improvements are enough to end court oversight.

“The systemic barriers that were in place in 2011 no longer exist,” the state’s court filing said.

Among those who were able to find homes in the community is Stanley Ligas, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that led to the consent decree. When it was filed in 2005, he was living in a roughly 100-bed private facility but wanted to move into a community home closer to his sister. The state refused to fund his move.

Today, the 56-year-old lives in Oswego with three roommates in a house they rent. All of them receive services to help their daily living needs through a nonprofit, and Ligas has held jobs in the community: He previously worked in a bowling alley and is now paid to make public appearances to advocate for others with disabilities. He lives near his sister, says he goes on family beach vacations and enjoys watching professional wrestling with friends. During an interview with reporters, Ligas hugged his caregiver and said he’s “very happy” and hopes others can receive the same opportunities he’s been given.

While much of that progress has come only in recent years, under Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration, it has proven to be vulnerable to political and economic changes. After a prolonged budget stalemate, the court in 2017 found Illinois out of compliance with the Ligas consent decree.

At the time, late and insufficient payments from the state had resulted in a staffing crisis inside community group homes, leading to escalating claims of abuse and neglect and failures to provide routine services that residents relied on, such as help getting to work, social engagements and medical appointments in the community. Advocates worry about what could happen under a different administration, or this one, if Illinois’ finances continue to decline as projected.

“I acknowledge the commitments that this administration has made. However, because we had so far to come, we still have far to go,” said Kathy Carmody, chief executive of The Institute on Public Policy for People with Disabilities, which represents providers.

While the wait for services is significantly shorter than it was when the consent decree went into effect in 2011, there are still more than 5,000 adults who have told the state they want community services but have yet to receive them, most of them in a family home. Most people spend about five years waiting to get the services they request. And Illinois continues to rank near the bottom in terms of the investment it makes in community-based services, according to a University of Kansas analysis of states’ spending on services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Advocates who believe the consent decree has not been fulfilled contend that Illinois’ continued reliance on congregate settings has tied up funds that could go into building up more community living options. Each year, Illinois spends about $347,000 per person to care for those in state-run institutions compared with roughly $91,000 per person spent to support those living in the community.

For Rogers, the days inside Kiley are long, tedious and sometimes chaotic. It can be stressful, but Rogers told reporters that she uses soothing self-talk to calm herself when she feels sad or anxious.

“I tell myself: ‘You are doing good. You are doing great. You have people outside of here that care about you and cherish you.’”

This article is republished from ProPublica under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Cardiac Failure Explained – by Dr. Warrick Bishop

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The cover of this book makes it look like it’ll be a flashy semi-celebrity doctor keen to sell his personalized protocol, along with eleventy-three other books, but actually, what’s inside this one is very different:

    We (hopefully) all know the basics of heart health, but this book takes it a lot further. Starting with the basics, then the things that it’s easy to feel like you should know but actually most people don’t, then into much more depth.

    The format is much more like a university textbook than most pop-science books, and everything about the way it’s written is geared for maximum learning. The one thing it does keep in common with pop-science books as a genre is heavy use of anecdotes to illustrate points—but he’s just as likely to use tables, diagrams, callout boxes, emboldening of key points, recap sections, and so forth. And for the most part, this book is very information-dense.

    Dr. Bishop also doesn’t just stick to what’s average, and talks a lot about aberrations from the norm, what they mean and what they do and yes, what to do about them.

    On the one hand, it’s more information dense than the average reader can reasonably expect to need… On the other hand, isn’t it great to finish reading a book feeling like you just did a semester at medical school? No longer will you be baffled by what is going on in your (or perhaps a loved one’s) cardiac health.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to know cardiac health inside out, this book is an excellent place to start.

    Click here to check out Cardiac Failure Explained, and get to the heart of things!

    Share This Post

  • Walking can prevent low back pain, a new study shows

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Do you suffer from low back pain that recurs regularly? If you do, you’re not alone. Roughly 70% of people who recover from an episode of low back pain will experience a new episode in the following year.

    The recurrent nature of low back pain is a major contributor to the enormous burden low back pain places on individuals and the health-care system.

    In our new study, published today in The Lancet, we found that a program combining walking and education can effectively reduce the recurrence of low back pain.

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    The WalkBack trial

    We randomly assigned 701 adults who had recently recovered from an episode of low back pain to receive an individualised walking program and education (intervention), or to a no treatment group (control).

    Participants in the intervention group were guided by physiotherapists across six sessions, over a six-month period. In the first, third and fifth sessions, the physiotherapist helped each participant to develop a personalised and progressive walking program that was realistic and tailored to their specific needs and preferences.

    The remaining sessions were short check-ins (typically less than 15 minutes) to monitor progress and troubleshoot any potential barriers to engagement with the walking program. Due to the COVID pandemic, most participants received the entire intervention via telehealth, using video consultations and phone calls.

    A health-care professional examines a woman's back.
    Low back pain can be debilitating. Karolina Kaboompics/Pexels

    The program was designed to be manageable, with a target of five walks per week of roughly 30 minutes daily by the end of the six-month program. Participants were also encouraged to continue walking independently after the program.

    Importantly, the walking program was combined with education provided by the physiotherapists during the six sessions. This education aimed to give people a better understanding of pain, reduce fear associated with exercise and movement, and give people the confidence to self-manage any minor recurrences if they occurred.

    People in the control group received no preventative treatment or education. This reflects what typically occurs after people recover from an episode of low back pain and are discharged from care.

    What the results showed

    We monitored the participants monthly from the time they were enrolled in the study, for up to three years, to collect information about any new recurrences of low back pain they may have experienced. We also asked participants to report on any costs related to their back pain, including time off work and the use of health-care services.

    The intervention reduced the risk of a recurrence of low back pain that limited daily activity by 28%, while the recurrence of low back pain leading participants to seek care from a health professional decreased by 43%.

    Participants who received the intervention had a longer average period before they had a recurrence, with a median of 208 days pain-free, compared to 112 days in the control group.

    Two men walking and talking in a park.
    In our study, regular walking appeared to help with low back pain. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Overall, we also found this intervention to be cost-effective. The biggest savings came from less work absenteeism and less health service use (such as physiotherapy and massage) among the intervention group.

    This trial, like all studies, had some limitations to consider. Although we tried to recruit a wide sample, we found that most participants were female, aged between 43 and 66, and were generally well educated. This may limit the extent to which we can generalise our findings.

    Also, in this trial, we used physiotherapists who were up-skilled in health coaching. So we don’t know whether the intervention would achieve the same impact if it were to be delivered by other clinicians.

    Walking has multiple benefits

    We’ve all heard the saying that “prevention is better than a cure” – and it’s true. But this approach has been largely neglected when it comes to low back pain. Almost all previous studies have focused on treating episodes of pain, not preventing future back pain.

    A limited number of small studies have shown that exercise and education can help prevent low back pain. However, most of these studies focused on exercises that are not accessible to everyone due to factors such as high cost, complexity, and the need for supervision from health-care or fitness professionals.

    On the other hand, walking is a free, accessible way to exercise, including for people in rural and remote areas with limited access to health care.

    Two feet and lower legs in athletic gear walking alongside the water.
    Walking has a variety of advantages. Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock

    Walking also delivers many other health benefits, including better heart health, improved mood and sleep quality, and reduced risk of several chronic diseases.

    While walking is not everyone’s favourite form of exercise, the intervention was well-received by most people in our study. Participants reported that the additional general health benefits contributed to their ongoing motivation to continue the walking program independently.

    Why is walking helpful for low back pain?

    We don’t know exactly why walking is effective for preventing back pain, but possible reasons could include the combination of gentle movements, loading and strengthening of the spinal structures and muscles. It also could be related to relaxation and stress relief, and the release of “feel-good” endorphins, which block pain signals between your body and brain – essentially turning down the dial on pain.

    It’s possible that other accessible and low-cost forms of exercise, such as swimming, may also be effective in preventing back pain, but surprisingly, no studies have investigated this.

    Preventing low back pain is not easy. But these findings give us hope that we are getting closer to a solution, one step at a time.

    Tash Pocovi, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Health Sciences, Macquarie University; Christine Lin, Professor, Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney; Mark Hancock, Professor of Physiotherapy, Macquarie University; Petra Graham, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, and Simon French, Professor of Musculoskeletal Disorders, Macquarie University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • New Year, New Health Habits?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s that time of the year, and many of us hope to make this our healthiest year yet—or at least significantly improve it in some particular area that’s important to us! So, what news from the health world?

    The rise of GLP-1 agonists continues

    GLP-1 agonists have surged in popularity in the past year, and it looks like that trend is set to continue in the new one. The title of the below-linked pop-science article is slightly misleading, it’s not “almost three quarters of UK women”, but rather, “72% of the women using the digital weight loss platform Juniper”, which means the sample is confined to people interested in weight loss. Still, of those interested in weight loss, 72% is a lot, and the sample size was over 1000:

    Read in full: New Year, new approach to weight loss: Almost three quarters of UK women are considering using GLP-1s in 2025

    Related: 5 ways to naturally boost the “Ozempic Effect” ← these natural methods “hack” the same metabolic pathways as GLP-1 agonists do (it has to do with incretin levels), causing similar results

    The lesser of two evils

    Smoking is terrible, for everything. Vaping is… Not great, honestly, but as the below-discussed study shows, at the very least it results in much less severe respiratory symptoms than actual smoking. For many, vaping is a halfway-house to actually quitting; for some, it’s just harm reduction, and that too can be worthwhile.

    We imagine that probably very few 10almonds readers smoke cigarettes, but we know quite a few use cannabis, which is discussed also:

    Read in full: Switching to e-cigarettes may ease respiratory symptoms, offering hope for smokers

    Related: Vaping: A Lot Of Hot Air? ← we look at the pros, cons, and popular beliefs that were true a little while ago but now they’re largely not (because of regulatory changes re what’s allowed in vapes)

    Sometimes, more is more

    The below-linked pop-science article has a potentially confusingly-worded title that makes it sound like increased exercise duration results in decreasing marginal returns (i.e., after a certain point, you’re getting very limited extra benefits), but in fact the study says the opposite.

    Rather, increased moderate exercise (so, walking etc) results in a commensurately decreasing weight and a decreasing waistline.

    In short: walk more, lose more (pounds and inches). The study examined those who moved their bodies for 150–300 minutes per week:

    Read in full: Increased exercise duration linked to decreasing results in weight and waistline

    Related: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

    Take care!

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  • Navigating the health-care system is not easy, but you’re not alone.
  • ‘Free birthing’ and planned home births might sound similar but the risks are very different

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The death of premature twins in Byron Bay in an apparent “wild birth”, or free birth, last week has prompted fresh concerns about giving birth without a midwife or medical assistance.

    This follows another case from Victoria this year, where a baby was born in a critical condition following a reported free birth.

    It’s unclear how common free birthing is, as data is not collected, but there is some evidence free births increased during the COVID pandemic.

    Planned home births also became more popular during the pandemic, as women preferred to stay away from hospitals and wanted their support people with them.

    But while free births and home births might sound similar, they are a very different practice, with free births much riskier. So what’s the difference, and why might people opt for a free birth?

    What are home births?

    Planned home births involve care from midwives, who are registered experts in childbirth, in a woman’s home.

    These registered midwives work privately, or are part of around 20 publicly funded home birth programs nationally that are attached to hospitals.

    They provide care during the pregnancy, labour and birth, and in the first six weeks following the birth.

    The research shows that for women with low risk pregnancies, planned home births attended by competent midwives (with links to a responsive mainstream maternity system) are safe.

    Home births result in less intervention than hospital births and women perceive their experience more positively.

    What are free births?

    A free birth is when a woman chooses to have a baby, usually at home, without a registered health professional such as a midwife or doctor in attendance.

    Different terms such as unassisted birth or wild pregnancy or birth are also used to refer to free birth.

    The parents may hire an unregulated birth worker or doula to be a support at the birth but they do not have the training or medical equipment needed to manage emergencies.

    Women may have limited or no health care antenatally, meaning risk factors such as twins and breech presentations (the baby coming bottom first) are not detected beforehand and given the right kind of specialist care.

    Why do some people choose to free birth?

    We have been studying the reasons women and their partners choose to free birth for more than a decade. We found a previous traumatic birth and/or feeling coerced into choices that are not what the woman wants were the main drivers for avoiding mainstream maternity care.

    Australia’s childbirth intervention rates – for induction or augmentation of labour, episiotomy (cutting the tissue between the vaginal opening and the anus) and caesarean section – are comparatively high.

    One in ten women report disrespectful or abusive care in childbirth and some decide to make different choices for future births.

    Lack of options for a natural birth and birth choices such as home birth or birth centre birth also played a major role in women’s decision to free birth.

    Publicly funded home birth programs have very strict criteria around who can be accepted into the program, excluding many women.

    In other countries such as the United Kingdom, Netherlands and New Zealand, publicly funded home births are easier to access.

    Newborn baby holds their parent's finger
    It can be difficult to access home birth services in Australia.
    Ink Drop/Shutterstock

    Only around 200 midwives provide private midwifery services for home births nationally. Private midwives are yet to obtain insurance for home births, which means they are risking their livelihoods if something goes wrong and they are sued.

    The cost of a home birth with a private midwife is not covered by Medicare and only some health funds rebate some of the cost. This means women can be out of pocket A$6-8,000.

    Access to home birth is an even greater issue in rural and remote Australia.

    How to make mainstream care more inclusive

    Many women feel constrained by their birth choices in Australia. After years of research and listening to thousands of women, it’s clear more can be done to reduce the desire to free birth.

    As my co-authors and I outline in our book, Birthing Outside the System: The Canary in the Coal Mine, this can be achieved by:

    • making respectful care a reality so women aren’t traumatised and alienated by maternity care and want to engage with it
    • supporting midwifery care. Women are seeking more physiological and social ways of birthing, minimising birth interventions, and midwives are the experts in this space
    • supporting women’s access to their chosen place of birth and model of care and not limiting choice with high out-of-pocket expenses
    • providing more flexible, acceptable options for women experiencing risk factors during pregnancy and/or birth, such as having a previous caesarean birth, having twins or having a baby in breech position. Women experiencing these complications experience pressure to have a caesarean section
    • getting the framework right with policies, guidelines, education, research, regulation and professional leadership.

    Ensuring women’s rights and choices are informed and respected means they’re less likely to feel they’re left with no other option.The Conversation

    Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Hack Your Hunger

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    When it comes to dealing with hunger, a common-sense way of dealing with it is “eat something”. However, many people find that they then eat the wrong things, in the wrong quantities, and end up in a cycle of overeating and being hungry.

    If this gets to the extreme, it can turn into a full-blown eating disorder:

    Eating Disorders: More Varied (And Prevalent) Than People Think

    …and even in more moderate presentations, the cycle of hunger and overeating is not great for the health. So, how to avoid that?

    Listen to your body (but: actually listen)

    Your body says: we’re running a little low on glycogen reserves so our energy’s going to start suffering in a few hours if we don’t eat some fruit, kill something and eat its fatty organs, or perhaps find some oily nuts.

    You hear: eat something bright and sugary, shout at the dog, eat some fried food, got it!

    Your body says: our water balance is a little off, we could do with some sodium, potassium, and perhaps some phosphorus to correct it.

    You hear: eat something salty, got it, potato chips coming right up!

    …and so on. Now, we know 10almonds readers are quite a health-conscious readership, so perhaps your responses are not quite like that. But the take-away point is still important: we need to listen to the whole message, and give the body what it actually needs, not what will just shut the message off the most quickly.

    Here’s how: Intuitive Eating Might Not Be What You Think

    Bonus: Interoception: Improving Our Awareness Of Body Cues

    About those cravings…

    As illustrated a little above, a lot of cravings might not be what they first appear, and in evolutionary terms, our body is centuries behind industrialization, in terms of adaptations, which means that even if we try to take the above into account, our responses can sometimes be inappropriate in the age of supermarkets.

    See also: The Science of Hunger, And How To Sate Cravings

    Natural appetite suppressants

    Eating more is not always the answer, not even if it’s more healthy food. And hunger pangs can be especially inconvenient if, for example, we are fasting at present, which is by the way a very healthful thing for most people:

    Learn more: Intermittent Fasting: What’s the truth?

    One way to suppress hunger is simply to trigger the stomach into sending “full” signals, which involves filling it. Since you do not want to overeat, the trick here is imply to use high-volume food.

    Consider for example: 30 grapes and 30 raisins have approximately the same calorie count (what with raisins being dried grapes, and the calories didn’t evaporate), but the bowl of fresh fruit is going to physically fill your stomach a lot more quickly than the tiny amount of dried fruit.

    More on this: Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety

    Protein is of course also an appetite suppressant, but it takes about 20 minutes for the signal to kick in. So a “hack” here is to snack on something proteinous at least 15 minutes before your main meal (for example, a portion of nuts while cooking, unless you’re allergic, or some dried fish unless you’re vegetarian/vegan; you get it, pick something high in protein and good for snacking, and have a small portion before your main meal).

    Nor is protein the only option!

    See also: 3 Natural Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic

    Scale it down

    Related to the above, there is a feedback loop that occurs here. The more you eat, the more your stomach slowly grows to accommodate it; the less you eat, the more your stomach slowly shrinks because the body tries hard to be an efficient organism, and will not maintain something that isn’t being used.

    So, there’s a bit of a catch-22; sate your hunger by filling your stomach with high volume foods, but filling it will cause it to grow?

    The trick is: do the “eat until 80% full” thing. That’s full enough that you have had a nice meal and are not suffering, without stretching the stomach.

    Enjoy your food

    Seriously! Actually enjoy it. Which means paying full attention to it. Eating can and should be a wonderful experience, so it’s best savored rather than inhaling a bowl of something in 30 seconds.

    Have you seen those dog bowls that have obstructions to slow down how quickly a dog eats? We can leverage that kind of trick too! While you might not want to eat from a dog bowl, how about having a little bowl of pistachio nuts rather than ready-to-eat peanuts? Or any shelled nuts that we must shell as we go. If you’re allergic to nuts, there are plenty of other foods with a high work-to-food ratio. Take some time and enjoy that pomegranate, for instance!

    Not that we necessarily have to make things difficult for ourselves either; we can just take appropriate care to ensure a good dining experience. Life is for living, so why not enjoy it?

    See also: Mindful Eating: How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate

    Enjoy!

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  • Aging Is Inevitable… Or is it?

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    Aging is inevitable… Or is it?

    We’ve talked before about how and why aging happens. We’ve also talked about the work to tackle aging as basically an engineering problem, with the premise that our bodies are biological machines, and machines can be repaired. We also recommended a great book about this, by the way. But that’s about interfering with the biological process of aging. What about if the damage is already done?

    “When the damage is done, it’s done”

    We can do a lot to try to protect ourselves from aging, and we might be able to slow down the clock, but we can’t stop it, and we certainly can’t reverse it… right?

    Wrong! Or at least, so we currently understand, in some respects. Supplementation with phosphatidylserine, for example, has shown promise for not just preventing, but treating, neurodegeneration (such as that caused by Alzheimer’s disease). It’s not a magic bullet and so far the science is at “probably” and “this shows great promise for…” and “this appears to…”

    Phosphatidylserene does help slow neurodegeneration

    …because of its role in allowing your cells to know whether they have permission to die.

    This may seem a flippant way of putting it, but it’s basically how cell death works. Cells do need to die (if they don’t, that’s called cancer) and be replaced with new copies, and those copies need to be made before too much damage is accumulated (otherwise the damage is compounded with each new iteration). So an early cell death-and-replacement is generally better for your overall health than a later one.

    However, neurons are tricky to replace, so phosphatidylserine effectively says “not you, hold on” to keep the rate of neuronal cell death nearer to the (slow) rate at which they can be replaced.

    One more myth to bust…

    For the longest time we thought that adults, especially older adults, couldn’t make new brain cells at all, that we grew a certain number, then had to hang onto them until we died… suffering diminished cognitive ability with age, on account of losing brain cells along the way.

    It’s partly true: it’s definitely easier to kill brain cells than to grow them… Mind you, that’s technically true of people, too, yet the population continues to boom!

    Anyway, new research showing that adults do, in fact, grow new braincells was briefly challenged by a 2018 study that declared: Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults after all, never mind, go back to your business.

    So was adult neurogenesis just a myth to be busted after all? Nope.

    It turned out, the 2018 study had a methodological flaw!

    To put it in lay terms: they had accidentally melted the evidence.

    A 2019 study overcame this flaw by using a shorter fixation time for the cell samples they wanted to look at, and found that there were tens of thousands of “baby neurons” (again with the lay terms), newly-made brain cells, in samples from adults ranging from 43 to 87.

    Now, there was still a difference: the samples from the youngest adult had 30% more newly-made braincells than the 87-year-old, but given that previous science thought brain cell generation stopped in childhood, the fact that an 87-year-old was generating new brain cells 30% less quickly than a 43-year-old is hardly much of a criticism!

    As an aside: samples from patients with Alzheimer’s also had a 30% reduction in new braincell generation, compared to samples from patients of the same age without Alzheimer’s. But again… Even patients with Alzheimer’s were still growing some new brain cells.

    Read it for yourself: Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is abundant in neurologically healthy subjects and drops sharply in patients with Alzheimer’s disease

    In a nutshell…

    • We can’t fully hit pause on aging just yet, but we can definitely genuinely slow it
    • We can also, in some very specific ways, reverse it
    • We can slow the loss of brain cells
    • We can grow new brain cells
    • We can reduce our risk of Alzheimer’s, and at least somewhat mitigate it if it appears
    • We know that phosphatidylserine supplementation may help with most (if not all) of the above
    • We don’t sell that (or anything else) but for your convenience, here it is on Amazon if you’re interested

    Don’t Forget…

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