The Cough Doctor
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The Cough Doctor
This is Dr. Peter Small, who worked in epidemiology since the beginning of HIV epidemic. He became a pioneer in the field of molecular epidemiology. As such, his work was a guiding beacon for the public health response to the resurgence of tuberculosis. He’s travelled the world spending years in various institutions studying all manner of respiratory illnesses…. These have ranged from tuberculosis to pneumonia to lung cancer and (back to epidemiology) Covid-19.
He’s now the Chief Medical Officer at…
Hyfe
Hyfe, a medical AI company, was founded in 2020. Its objective: to build acoustic tools for respiratory diagnostics and monitoring.
In other words: it records coughs and collects data about coughing.
❝It’s ironic how much people focus on counting steps while ignoring cough, which is far more consequential. Hyfe is a science-driven company with the technology to make cough count. Particularly now, with increased awareness of cough and the rapid growth of digital health driven by Covid-19, this technology can improve the lives of patients, the care provided by doctors, and the efficiency of health systems.❞
~ Dr. Peter Small, CMO, Hyfe
How does it do it?
Hyfe’s AI monitors the number of times a person coughs and the sound of the cough through any smartphone or other smart device.
This data collected over time provides increasingly more reliable information than a single visit to the doctor! By constantly listening and analyzing, it can detect patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.
How big is this “big data” effort?
Hyfe maintains the largest cough dataset in the world. This means it can compare the sound of a patient’s cough with more than 400 million cough-like sounds from 83 countries across all continents.
The human brain doesn’t handle big numbers well. So, just to illustrate: if the average cough is 1 second long, that means it’d take more than 12 years to listen to them all.
Hyfe, meanwhile, can:
- listen to many things simultaneously
- index them all against user and location,
- use its ever-growing neural net to detect and illustrate patterns.
It’s so attentive, that it can learn to distinguish between different people’s coughs in the same household.
❝Companies like Google Health see even basic information such as getting an accurate count of the number of times a person coughs a day as a useful resource, and part of a larger need to collect and chronicle more health information to refine the way doctors diagnose disease and manage treatments in the future.❞
What are the public health implications?
The most obvious application is to note when there’s a spike in coughing, and see how such spikes grow and spread (if they do), to inform of contagion risks.
Another is to cross-reference it with data about local environmental allergens. Knowing how things like pollution and even pollen affect individuals differently could be helpful in identifying (and managing) chronic conditions like asthma.
What are the private health implications?
❝It’s going to transform the whole clinical approach for this common and chronic symptom. Patients will come in, have the data on how much they are coughing, and the physician can suggest a treatment based on that information to see if it makes the coughs better❞
~ Dr. Peter Small
Dr. Small’s colleague Dr. Cai, speaking for Google Health on this project, sees even more utility for diagnostics:
❝When I was in medical school, never ever did they teach us that we could listen to somebody cough and identify whether that person has TB (tuberculosis), COPD, or a tumor. But I keep seeing more and more studies of people coughing into a microphone, and an algorithm can detect whether somebody has TB with 95% specificity and sensitivity, or if someone has pneumonia or an exacerbation of COPD❞
~ Dr. Lawrence Cai
And the privacy implications?
Perhaps you don’t quite fancy the idea of not being able to cough without Google knowing about it. Hyfe’s software is currently opt-in, but…
If you cough near someone else’s Hyfe app, their app will recognize you’re not the app’s user, and start building a profile for you. Of course, that won’t be linked to your name, email address, or other IDs, as it would if you were the app’s user.
Hyfe will ask to connect to your social media, to collect more information about you and your friends.
Whether you’d like to try this or perhaps you’re just curious to learn more about this fascinating project, you can check out:
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The voice in your head may help you recall and process words. But what if you don’t have one?
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Can you imagine hearing yourself speak? A voice inside your head – perhaps reciting a shopping list or a phone number? What would life be like if you couldn’t?
Some people, including me, cannot have imagined visual experiences. We cannot close our eyes and conjure an experience of seeing a loved one’s face, or imagine our lounge room layout – to consider if a new piece of furniture might fit in it. This is called “aphantasia”, from a Greek phrase where the “a” means without, and “phantasia” refers to an image. Colloquially, people like myself are often referred to as having a “blind mind”.
While most attention has been given to the inability to have imagined visual sensations, aphantasics can lack other imagined experiences. We might be unable to experience imagined tastes or smells. Some people cannot imagine hearing themselves speak.
A recent study has advanced our understanding of people who cannot imagine hearing their own internal monologue. Importantly, the authors have identified some tasks that such people are more likely to find challenging.
fizkes/Shutterstock What the study found
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States recruited 93 volunteers. They included 46 adults who reported low levels of inner speech and 47 who reported high levels.
Both groups were given challenging tasks: judging if the names of objects they had seen would rhyme and recalling words. The group without an inner monologue performed worse. But differences disappeared when everyone could say words aloud.
Importantly, people who reported less inner speech were not worse at all tasks. They could recall similar numbers of words when the words had a different appearance to one another. This negates any suggestion that aphants (people with aphantasia) simply weren’t trying or were less capable.
Hearing our own imagined voice may play an important role in word processing. sutadimages/Shutterstock A welcome validation
The study provides some welcome evidence for the lived experiences of some aphants, who are still often told their experiences are not different, but rather that they cannot describe their imagined experiences. Some people feel anxiety when they realise other people can have imagined experiences that they cannot. These feelings may be deepened when others assert they are merely confused or inarticulate.
In my own aphantasia research I have often quizzed crowds of people on their capacity to have imagined experiences.
Questions about the capacity to have imagined visual or audio sensations tend to be excitedly endorsed by a vast majority, but questions about imagined experiences of taste or smell seem to cause more confusion. Some people are adamant they can do this, including a colleague who says he can imagine what combinations of ingredients will taste like when cooked together. But other responses suggest subtypes of aphantasia may prove to be more common than we realise.
The authors of the recent study suggest the inability to imagine hearing yourself speak should be referred to as “anendophasia”, meaning without inner speech. Other authors had suggested anauralia (meaning without auditory imagery). Still other researchers have referred to all types of imagined sensation as being different types of “imagery”.
Having consistent names is important. It can help scientists “talk” to one another to compare findings. If different authors use different names, important evidence can be missed.
We’re starting to broaden our understanding of the senses and how we imagine them. Napat Chaichanasiri/Shutterstock We have more than 5 senses
Debate continues about how many senses humans have, but some scientists reasonably argue for a number greater than 20.
In addition to the five senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing, lesser known senses include thermoception (our sense of heat) and proprioception (awareness of the positions of our body parts). Thanks to proprioception, most of us can close our eyes and touch the tip of our index finger to our nose. Thanks to our vestibular sense, we typically have a good idea of which way is up and can maintain balance.
It may be tempting to give a new name to each inability to have a given type of imagined sensation. But this could lead to confusion. Another approach would be to adapt phrases that are already widely used. People who are unable to have imagined sensations commonly refer to ourselves as “aphants”. This could be adapted with a prefix, such as “audio aphant”. Time will tell which approach is adopted by most researchers.
Why we should keep investigating
Regardless of the names we use, the study of multiple types of inability to have an imagined sensation is important. These investigations could reveal the essential processes in human brains that bring about a conscious experience of an imagined sensation.
In time, this will not only lead to a better understanding of the diversity of humans, but may help uncover how human brains can create any conscious sensation. This question – how and where our conscious feelings are generated – remains one of the great mysteries of science.
Derek Arnold, Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Self-Compassion In A Relationship (Positives & Pitfalls)
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Practise Self-Compassion In Your Relationship (But Watch Out!)
Let’s make clear up-front: this is not about “…but not too much”.
With that in mind…
Now let’s set the scene: you, a happily-partnered person, have inadvertently erred and upset your partner. They may or may not have already forgiven you, but you are still angry at yourself.
Likely next steps include all or any of:
- continuing to apologise and try to explain
- self-deprecatory diatribes
- self-flagellation, probably not literally but in the sense of “I don’t deserve…” and acting on that feeling
- self-removal, because you don’t want to further inflict your bad self on your partner
As you might guess, these are quite varied in their degree of healthiness:
- apologising is good, as even is explaining, but once it’s done, it’s done; let it go
- self-deprecation is pretty much never useful, let alone healthy
- self-flagellation likewise; it is not only inherently self-destructive, but will likely create an additional problem for your partner too
- self-removal can be good or bad depending on the manner of that removal: there’s a difference between just going cold and distant on your partner, and saying “I’m sorry; this is my fault not yours, I don’t want to take it out on you, so please give me half an hour by myself to regain my composure, and I will come back with love then if that’s ok with you”
About that last: mentioning the specific timeframe e.g. “half an hour” is critical, by the way—don’t leave your partner hanging! And then do also follow through on that; come back with love after the half-hour elapses. We suggest mindfulness meditation in the interim (here’s our guide to how), if you’re not sure what to do to get you there.
To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy (Here’s How To Do It) ← this goes for when the forgiveness in question is for yourself, too—and we do write about that there (and how)!
This is important, by the way; not forgiving yourself can cause more serious issues down the line:
If, by the way, you’re hand-wringing over “but was my apology good enough really, or should I…” then here is how to do it. Basically, do this, and then draw a line under it and consider it done:
The Apology Checklist ← you’ll want to keep a copy of this, perhaps in the notes app on your phone, or a screenshot if you prefer
(the checklist is at the bottom of that page)
The catch
It’s you, you’re the catch 👈👈😎
Ok, that being said, there is actually a catch in the less cheery sense of the word, and it is:
“It is important to be compassionate about one’s occasional failings in a relationship” does not mean “It is healthy to be neglectful of one’s partner’s emotional needs; that’s self-care, looking after #1; let them take care of themself too”
…because that’s simply not being a couple at all.
Think about it this way: the famous airline advice,
“Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs”
…does not mean “Put on your own oxygen mask and then watch those kids suffocate; it’s everyone for themself”
So, the same goes in relationships too. And, as ever, we have science for this. There was a recent (2024) study, involving hundreds of heterosexual couples aged 18–73, which looked at two things, each measured with a scaled questionnaire:
- Subjective levels of self-compassion
- Subjective levels of relationship satisfaction
For example, questions included asking participants to rate, from 1–5 depending on how much they felt the statements described them, e.g:
In my relationship with my partner, I:
- treat myself kindly when I experience sorrow and suffering.
- accept my faults and weaknesses.
- try to see my mistakes as part of human nature.
- see difficulties as part of every relationship that everyone goes through once.
- try to get a balanced view of the situation when something unpleasant happens.
- try to keep my feelings in balance when something upsets me.
Note: that’s not multiple choice! It’s asking participants to rate each response as applicable or not to them, on a scale of 1–5.
And…
❝Women’s self-compassion was also positively linked with men’s total relationship satisfaction. Thus, men seem to experience overall satisfaction with the relationship when their female partner is self-kind and self-caring in difficult situations.
Unexpectedly, however, we found that men’s relationship-specific self-compassion was negatively associated with women’s fulfillment.
Baker and McNulty (2011) reported that, only for men, a Self-Compassion x Conscientiousness interaction explained whether the positive effects of self-compassion on the relationship emerged, but such an interaction was not found for women.
Highly self-compassionate men who were low in conscientiousness were less motivated than others to remedy interpersonal mistakes in their romantic relationships, and this tendency was in turn related to lower relationship satisfaction❞
~ Dr. Astrid Schütz et al. (2024)
And if you’d like to read the cited older paper from 2011, here it is:
Read in full: Self-compassion and relationship maintenance: the moderating roles of conscientiousness and gender
The take-away here is not: “men should not practice self-compassion”
(rather, they absolutely should)
The take-away is: we must each take responsibility for managing our own mood as best we are able; practice self-forgiveness where applicable and forgive our partner where applicable (and communicate that!)…. And then go consciously back to the mutual care on which the relationship is hopefully founded.
Which doesn’t just mean love-bombing, by the way, it also means listening:
The Problem With Active Listening (And How To Do Better)
To close… We say this often, but we mean it every time: take care!
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What’s the difference between vegan and vegetarian?
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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.
Vegan and vegetarian diets are plant-based diets. Both include plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains.
But there are important differences, and knowing what you can and can’t eat when it comes to a vegan and vegetarian diet can be confusing.
So, what’s the main difference?
Creative Cat Studio/Shutterstock What’s a vegan diet?
A vegan diet is an entirely plant-based diet. It doesn’t include any meat and animal products. So, no meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy or honey.
What’s a vegetarian diet?
A vegetarian diet is a plant-based diet that generally excludes meat, poultry, fish and seafood, but can include animal products. So, unlike a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet can include eggs, dairy and honey.
But you may be wondering why you’ve heard of vegetarians who eat fish, vegetarians who don’t eat eggs, vegetarians who don’t eat dairy, and even vegetarians who eat some meat. Well, it’s because there are variations on a vegetarian diet:
- a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet excludes meat, poultry, fish and seafood, but includes eggs, dairy and honey
- an ovo-vegetarian diet excludes meat, poultry, fish, seafood and dairy, but includes eggs and honey
- a lacto-vegetarian diet excludes meat, poultry, fish, seafood and eggs, but includes dairy and honey
- a pescatarian diet excludes meat and poultry, but includes eggs, dairy, honey, fish and seafood
- a flexitarian, or semi-vegetarian diet, includes eggs, dairy and honey and may include small amounts of meat, poultry, fish and seafood.
Are these diets healthy?
A 2023 review looked at the health effects of vegetarian and vegan diets from two types of study.
Observational studies followed people over the years to see how their diets were linked to their health. In these studies, eating a vegetarian diet was associated with a lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease (such as heart disease or a stroke), diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), dementia and cancer.
For example, in a study of 44,561 participants, the risk of heart disease was 32% lower in vegetarians than non-vegetarians after an average follow-up of nearly 12 years.
Further evidence came from randomised controlled trials. These instruct study participants to eat a specific diet for a specific period of time and monitor their health throughout. These studies showed eating a vegetarian or vegan diet led to reductions in weight, blood pressure, and levels of unhealthy cholesterol.
For example, one analysis combined data from seven randomised controlled trials. This so-called meta-analysis included data from 311 participants. It showed eating a vegetarian diet was associated with a systolic blood pressure (the first number in your blood pressure reading) an average 5 mmHg lower compared with non-vegetarian diets.
It seems vegetarian diets are more likely to be healthier, across a number of measures.
For example, a 2022 meta-analysis combined the results of several observational studies. It concluded a vegetarian diet, rather than vegan diet, was recommended to prevent heart disease.
There is also evidence vegans are more likely to have bone fractures than vegetarians. This could be partly due to a lower body-mass index and a lower intake of nutrients such as calcium, vitamin D and protein.
But it can be about more than just food
Many vegans, where possible, do not use products that directly or indirectly involve using animals.
So vegans would not wear leather, wool or silk clothing, for example. And they would not use soaps or candles made from beeswax, or use products tested on animals.
The motivation for following a vegan or vegetarian diet can vary from person to person. Common motivations include health, environmental, ethical, religious or economic reasons.
And for many people who follow a vegan or vegetarian diet, this forms a central part of their identity.
More than a diet: veganism can form part of someone’s identity. Shutterstock So, should I adopt a vegan or vegetarian diet?
If you are thinking about a vegan or vegetarian diet, here are some things to consider:
- eating more plant foods does not automatically mean you are eating a healthier diet. Hot chips, biscuits and soft drinks can all be vegan or vegetarian foods. And many plant-based alternatives, such as plant-based sausages, can be high in added salt
- meeting the nutrient intake targets for vitamin B12, iron, calcium, and iodine requires more careful planning while on a vegan or vegetarian diet. This is because meat, seafood and animal products are good sources of these vitamins and minerals
- eating a plant-based diet doesn’t necessarily mean excluding all meat and animal products. A healthy flexitarian diet prioritises eating more whole plant-foods, such as vegetables and beans, and less processed meat, such as bacon and sausages
- the Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend eating a wide variety of foods from the five food groups (fruit, vegetables, cereals, lean meat and/or their alternatives and reduced-fat dairy products and/or their alternatives). So if you are eating animal products, choose lean, reduced-fat meats and dairy products and limit processed meats.
Katherine Livingstone, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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What’s the difference between ‘man flu’ and flu? Hint: men may not be exaggerating
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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.
The term “man flu” takes a humorous poke at men with minor respiratory infections, such as colds, who supposedly exaggerate their symptoms.
According to the stereotype, a man lies on the sofa with a box of tissues. Meanwhile his female partner, also with a snotty nose, carries on working from home, doing the chores and looking after him.
But is man flu real? Is there a valid biological reason behind men’s symptoms or are men just malingering? And how does man flu differ from flu?
baranq/Shutterstock What are the similarities?
Man flu could refer to a number of respiratory infections – a cold, flu, even a mild case of COVID. So it’s difficult to compare man flu with flu.
But for simplicity, let’s say man flu is actually a cold. If that’s the case, man flu and flu have some similar features.
Both are caused by viruses (but different ones). Both are improved with rest, fluids, and if needed painkillers, throat lozenges or decongestants to manage symptoms.
Both can share similar symptoms. Typically, more severe symptoms such as fever, body aches, violent shivering and headaches are more common in flu (but sometimes occur in colds). Meanwhile sore throats, runny noses, congestion and sneezing are more common in colds. A cough is common in both.
What are the differences?
Flu is a more serious and sometimes fatal respiratory infection caused by the influenza virus. Colds are caused by various viruses such as rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, and common cold coronaviruses, and are rarely serious.
Colds tend to start gradually while flu tends to start abruptly.Flu can be detected with laboratory or at-home tests. Man flu is not an official diagnosis.
Severe flu symptoms may be prevented with a vaccine, while cold symptoms cannot.
Serious flu infections may also be prevented or treated with antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu. There are no antivirals for colds.
OK, but is man flu real?
Again, let’s assume man flu is a cold. Do men really have worse colds than women? The picture is complicated.
One study, with the title “Man flu is not a thing”, did in fact show there were differences in men’s and women’s symptoms.
This study looked at symptoms of acute rhinosinusitis. That’s inflammation of the nasal passages and sinuses, which would explain a runny or stuffy nose, a sinus headache or face pain.
When researchers assessed participants at the start of the study, men and women had similar symptoms. But by days five and eight of the study, women had fewer or less-severe symptoms. In other words, women had recovered faster.
But when participants rated their own symptoms, we saw a somewhat different picture. Women rated their symptoms worse than how the researchers rated them at the start, but said they recovered more quickly.
All this suggests men were not exaggerating their symptoms and did indeed recover more slowly. It also suggests women feel their symptoms more strongly at the start.
Why is this happening?
It’s not straightforward to tease out what’s going on biologically.
There are differences in immune responses between men and women that provide a plausible reason for worse symptoms in men.
For instance, women generally produce antibodies more efficiently, so they respond more effectively to vaccination. Other aspects of women’s immune system also appear to work more strongly.
So why do women tend to have stronger immune responses overall? That’s probably partly because women have two X chromosomes while men have one. X chromosomes carry important immune function genes. This gives women the benefit of immune-related genes from two different chromosomes.
X chromosomes carry important immune function genes. Rost9/Shutterstock Oestrogen (the female sex hormone) also seems to strengthen the immune response, and as levels vary throughout the lifespan, so does the strength of women’s immune systems.
Men are certainly more likely to die from some infectious diseases, such as COVID. But the picture is less clear with other infections such as the flu, where the incidence and mortality between men and women varies widely between countries and particular flu subtypes and outbreaks.
Infection rates and outcomes in men and women can also depend on the way a virus is transmitted, the person’s age, and social and behavioural factors.
For instance, women seem to be more likely to practice protective behaviours such as washing their hands, wearing masks or avoiding crowded indoor spaces. Women are also more likely to seek medical care when ill.
So men aren’t faking it?
Some evidence suggests men are not over-reporting symptoms, and may take longer to clear an infection. So they may experience man flu more harshly than women with a cold.
So cut the men in your life some slack. If they are sick, gender stereotyping is unhelpful, and may discourage men from seeking medical advice.
Thea van de Mortel, Professor, Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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War in Ukraine affected wellbeing worldwide, but people’s speed of recovery depended on their personality
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The war in Ukraine has had impacts around the world. Supply chains have been disrupted, the cost of living has soared and we’ve seen the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II. All of these are in addition to the devastating humanitarian and economic impacts within Ukraine.
Our international team was conducting a global study on wellbeing in the lead up to and after the Russian invasion. This provided a unique opportunity to examine the psychological impact of the outbreak of war.
As we explain in a new study published in Nature Communications, we learned the toll on people’s wellbeing was evident across nations, not just in Ukraine. These effects appear to have been temporary – at least for the average person.
But people with certain psychological vulnerabilities struggled to recover from the shock of the war.
Tracking wellbeing during the outbreak of war
People who took part in our study completed a rigorous “experience-sampling” protocol. Specifically, we asked them to report their momentary wellbeing four times per day for a whole month.
Data collection began in October 2021 and continued throughout 2022. So we had been tracking wellbeing around the world during the weeks surrounding the outbreak of war in February 2022.
We also collected measures of personality, along with various sociodemographic variables (including age, gender, political views). This enabled us to assess whether different people responded differently to the crisis. We could also compare these effects across countries.
Our analyses focused primarily on 1,341 participants living in 17 European countries, excluding Ukraine itself (44,894 experience-sampling reports in total). We also expanded these analyses to capture the experiences of 1,735 people living in 43 countries around the world (54,851 experience-sampling reports) – including in Australia.
A global dip in wellbeing
On February 24 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a sharp decline in wellbeing around the world. There was no decline in the month leading up to the outbreak of war, suggesting the change in wellbeing was not already occurring for some other reason.
However, there was a gradual increase in wellbeing during the month after the Russian invasion, suggestive of a “return to baseline” effect. Such effects are commonly reported in psychological research: situations and events that impact our wellbeing often (though not always) do so temporarily.
Unsurprisingly, people in Europe experienced a sharper dip in wellbeing compared to people living elsewhere around the world. Presumably the war was much more salient for those closest to the conflict, compared to those living on an entirely different continent.
Interestingly, day-to-day fluctuations in wellbeing mirrored the salience of the war on social media as events unfolded. Specifically, wellbeing was lower on days when there were more tweets mentioning Ukraine on Twitter/X.
Our results indicate that, on average, it took around two months for people to return to their baseline levels of wellbeing after the invasion.
Different people, different recoveries
There are strong links between our wellbeing and our individual personalities.
However, the dip in wellbeing following the Russian invasion was fairly uniform across individuals. None of the individual factors assessed in our study, including personality and sociodemographic factors, predicted people’s response to the outbreak of war.
On the other hand, personality did play a role in how quickly people recovered. Individual differences in people’s recovery were linked to a personality trait called “stability”. Stability is a broad dimension of personality that combines low neuroticism with high agreeableness and conscientiousness (three traits from the Big Five personality framework).
Stability is so named because it reflects the stability of one’s overall psychological functioning. This can be illustrated by breaking stability down into its three components:
- low neuroticism describes emotional stability. People low in this trait experience less intense negative emotions such as anxiety, fear or anger, in response to negative events
- high agreeableness describes social stability. People high in this trait are generally more cooperative, kind, and motivated to maintain social harmony
- high conscientiousness describes motivational stability. People high in this trait show more effective patterns of goal-directed self-regulation.
So, our data show that people with less stable personalities fared worse in terms of recovering from the impact the war in Ukraine had on wellbeing.
In a supplementary analysis, we found the effect of stability was driven specifically by neuroticism and agreeableness. The fact that people higher in neuroticism recovered more slowly accords with a wealth of research linking this trait with coping difficulties and poor mental health.
These effects of personality on recovery were stronger than those of sociodemographic factors, such as age, gender or political views, which were not statistically significant.
Overall, our findings suggest that people with certain psychological vulnerabilities will often struggle to recover from the shock of global events such as the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
Luke Smillie, Professor in Personality Psychology, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Progesterone Menopausal HRT: When, Why, And How To Benefit
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Progesterone doesn’t get talked about as much as other sex hormones, so what’s its deal? Dr. Heather Hirsch explains:
Menopausal progesterone
Dr. Hirsch considers progesterone essential for menopausal women who are taking estrogen and have an intact uterus, to keep conditions at bay such as endometriosis or even uterine cancer.
However, she advises it is not critical in those without a uterus, unless there was a previous case of one of the above conditions.
10almonds addition: on the other hand, progesterone can still be beneficial from a metabolic and body composition standpoint, so do speak with your endocrinologist about it.
As an extra bonus: while not soporific (it won’t make you sleepy), taking progesterone at night will improve the quality of your sleep once you do sleep, so that’s a worthwhile thing for many!
Dr. Hirsch also discusses the merits of continuous vs cyclic use; continuous maintains the above sleep benefits, for example, while cyclic use can help stabilize menstrual patterns in late perimenopause and early menopause.
For more on these things, plus discussion of different types of progesterone, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
- What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
- HRT: Bioidentical vs Animal – A Tale Of Two Approaches
Take care!
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