Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The New York Times: How Loneliness Is Damaging Our Health
For two years you didn’t see friends like you used to. You missed your colleagues from work, even the barista on the way there. You were lonely. We all were. Here’s what neuroscientists think was happening in your brain. (Leland, 4/20)
The New York Times: Why Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Gets Overlooked
Nancy Méndez-Booth was diagnosed with PTSD after she delivered a stillborn baby in the winter of 2008. Within an hour after she rushed to the hospital, in labor and exhilarated, a doctor told her that the baby she had spent years planning for had no heartbeat. When she returned home from the hospital, Ms. Méndez-Booth said she felt as though she had “arrived from Mars”; she got lost in her own apartment building. She oscillated between numbness, vivid paranoia — she worried the police would arrest her for her son’s death — and bursts of anger. (Blum, 4/7)
The Hill: Psilocybin, The Active Ingredient In ‘Magic Mushrooms,’ Makes Scientific Gains
Research on the use of psychedelic drugs as potential treatment for psychiatric disorders has gained momentum in the U.S. in recent years, with compounds like psilocybin — the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — shifting from the fringes of medicine toward the mainstream. (Guzman, 4/19)
The Washington Post: Synthetic Blood Substitute Research Advances Rapidly
Although donor blood is our best option, it has several limitations. Each unit can be stored for up to only six weeks at cool temperatures, causing logistical challenges for use in emergency situations. Blood cells also have a mosaic of proteins on its surface that elicit strong immune responses if mismatched during a transfusion and can harbor infectious pathogens. The ideal prototype of a blood substitute aims to overcome these limitations. (Das, 4/16)
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The Washington Post: The Right Kind Of Data From Wearable Gadgets Could Help You Sleep Better
After one fitful night last week, the chunky fitness watch I’ve been wearing for a few months delivered some bad news: I had only spent five minutes in rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep. The rest of the numbers didn’t seem much better. 24 minutes of “deep” sleep. Close to six hours of lighter sleep. More than an hour and a half awake and an average of about 15 breaths per minute. (Velazco, 4/20)
The Wall Street Journal: Social Media Offers A Trove Of Information For Medical Researchers
Medical researchers are turning to social-media posts to improve patient care. Using machine-learning algorithms to sift through social-media posts, researchers can get insights into patients’ experiences that are often overlooked or difficult to attain when relying mainly on data from medical reports and doctors’ charts. It also provides data more quickly than traditional epidemiological or medical studies, which can take years to complete. (Ward, 4/10)
The Washington Post: For Divers With Disabilities, Scuba Has Therapeutic Power
Tracy Schmitt spent years trying to find a scuba instructor. She is a competitive sailor, skier and mountaineer, but each dive shop she approached refused to entertain the idea that she could be a capable student. “I had all of these conversations trying to be persuasive,” Schmitt says. “Not even to get accepted but just to — pardon the expression — get a foot in the door.” Schmitt was born a quadruple amputee. Her disability eclipsed her many achievements, such as captaining 110-foot ships in the eastern Atlantic, and the instructors assumed teaching her to dive would be impossible. (Compton, 4/11)
NBC News: How Abercrombie & Fitch’s Image Of Masculinity Affected Asian Men
Anthony Ocampo remembers how difficult it was to come of age as a queer, Filipino American man in the early 2000s, an era defined by rigid standards of beauty. One of the companies that set those very standards was Abercrombie & Fitch, the subject of the new Netflix documentary “White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch.” With the heavy aroma of its cologne wafting from stores and its highly stylized wall-to-ceiling ads featuring muscular, shirtless, white male models, the brand set the bar for what was considered attractive for men at the time, said Ocampo, a 40-year-old former store employee featured in the documentary. At one point, he bought into it, too. (Yam, 4/20)
The Wall Street Journal: ‘No Father Wants To Sell His Son’s Kidney.’ Afghans Pushed To Desperate Measures To Survive
When Taliban fighters surrounded Herat in August, Gul Mohammad was besieged by people who had lent him money for food and medicine, and who demanded he pay up before the city fell. He and his wife agreed they had only one option. They didn’t tell their 15-year-old son Khalil Ahmad why he was brought from their shantytown mud house to a nearby hospital. “If we had told him, he might not have agreed,” Mr. Mohammad said. At the hospital, doctors put the child under anesthesia. Then they removed his kidney. His parents sold it for $4,500, just enough to cover what they owed. (Rasmussen, 4/19)
