physical health

Climate Change Is Harming Physical and Mental Health

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Laken Brooks, a 27-year-old PhD student at the University of Florida, has dealt with the skin condition psoriasis since she was a preteen. It’s always been a painful and difficult condition to manage, but over the past several years, Brooks has struggled even more. She suspects her psoriasis is worse thanks to climate change.

 “Each year, the summer seems to last a bit longer,” Brooks says. “When I first moved to Florida (5 years ago), I noticed that sunburn and sweat made my skin feel even itchier than normal. I tried to alleviate some of the symptoms by wearing hats and head scarves, and I expected that I would acclimate to the new climate. But it’s difficult to acclimate when each year, the temperatures continue going up and my skin can never really get accustomed to the Florida climate.”

Brooks is onto something — climate change is having increasingly bigger impacts on health. The seventh annual The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, released this fall, confirms that. The report, authored by nearly 100 experts from over 50 academic institutions and agencies, tracks the impact of climate change on global health. The 2022 version revealed that every year, in every region of the globe, climate change is undermining health.  Slideshow

The Lancet report this year identified four major harms from climate change: air quality, heat-related illness, infectious disease, and mental health.

Renee Salas, MD, of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is one of the report’s authors. She’s regularly sees how climate change is harming her patients’ health — especially those who cannot afford to mitigate its impacts. 

“We had a patient present to the emergency room last summer with a core temperature of 106,” she explains. “He met the criteria for heat stroke. He and his wife lived in an upper story apartment with no access to A/C.”

Salas sees it as part of her responsibility to her patients to make the connections between climate change and health effects. Heat, in particular, is a palpable way for people to understand that connection, she says. 

The impacts go beyond heat, however. “I have concerns about all of them,” says Salas. “And how climate change impacts a person will be impacted by how they live and the resources they have.” 

Climate’s Impact on Mental Health 

While heat might be the most obvious of harms people recognize from climate change, the mental health piece of the equation is likely the least. Susan Clayton, PhD, is a professor of psychology and environmental studies at the College of Wooster in Ohio. She’s been studying the link between the two for several years and has written three papers on the subject, the first in 2014. 

“We’re reaching a point where people express that they’re anxious about climate change, but they don’t recognize that as a mental health threat,” she says. 

In her work on the subject, Clayton has identified four categories where climate change impacts mental health: 

  • Increasingly severe weather events: As more people experience devastating weather events, more people are also experiencing PTSD, clinical anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.
  • Slower changes: It doesn’t take a category 5 hurricane to dole out mental health harm. As temperatures rise higher than normal for longer periods of time, so too do the rates of suicide and psychiatric hospitalizations.
  • Involuntary displacement: Many people love and are rooted to where they live. As coastal flooding, wildfires, and other weather events displace them, they suffer deteriorating mental health. 
  • Awareness of climate change: As everyone bears witness to climate change and become increasingly aware of its impacts, collective anxiety levels rise. For most people this is manageable, but it’s still harmful.

While talking about climate change and how it harms mental health can sometimes increase feelings of anxiety and other conditions, it’s an essential conversation to have, says Clayton. “When you’re overwhelmed and disempowered, it can be too much to cope with,” she explains. “But it can also encourage you to attend to the issue.” 

Mitigation in the Meantime 

As the data continues to pour out and demonstrate the link between climate change and health, it remains difficult for people to understand. For Salas, this can often be frustrating. 

“I often have to walk upstream to understand what’s causing patients’ issues in the first place,” she says. “That’s why I do the work I do — I cannot just treat patients in the ER and call it good. That’s like putting a band aid on a bullet wound.” 

Recognizing and pointing out that those in the line of fire are often those with fewer resources to change how climate is impacting their health is a starting point. 

“We recognize that policy and higher-level decisions have drive these situations,” Salas says. “So I try to find the risks, educate patients, and then give them recommendations to protect themselves.”

This might look like suggesting a patient add an air filtration system in their home, or ensuring they have a back-up plan for using a nebulizer if the electricity is knocked out. The biggest message to get across, says Salas, is that health is harmed by what is happening “upstream.” “We need political and social will to change,” she says. “We’re beginning to see this — the health community is rising up and recognizing it as fundamental to the mission of medicine.” 

For people like Brooks, who are not able to relocate now, the temporary fix is trying to minimize how climate change exacerbates existing conditions. “I have been able to mitigate some flare-ups by taking cool showers,” she says. “I don’t plan to live in Florida forever, but right now I don’t have the resources to transplant my life and move somewhere else.”

Let Go of Negative Emotions: Guided Meditation

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Let Go of Negative Emotions: Guided Meditation

When you let go of negative emotions, you communicate to yourself and the whole world that you are serious about creating a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life and that you no longer want to settle for less than you are worth. And that’s when all kind of wonderful and miraculous things start to happen To you, because of you!

Let Go of Negative Emotions

If you are willing and ready to go of negative emotions and take the first step in creating a life that is filled with joy, purpose, clarity, love, and fulfillment, this powerful guided meditation will be a great place to start.

Use this guided meditation to let go of any negative emotions you might be holding onto and transform them into feelings of love, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, health, and well-being,

Before you begin, remember to first, find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for the next 12 minutes. Second, find a comfortable position to sit – it can be in a chair, crossed legged or on your knees, or lay down and when you’re ready, press play. Once the meditation session is over, you can share your experience with all of us by commenting below.

Enjoy 🙂

Let Go of Negative Emotions: Guided Meditation

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P.S. “If you don’t think your anxiety, depression, sadness, and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system. Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days.”

What Does It Mean to Be Healthy With Diabetes?

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Being healthy, and being healthy with diabetes, means different things to different people!

Because there’s no single answer when it comes to what constitutes being “healthy,” this post won’t be about how I think you should live your life in order to be healthy, but rather the different components of being healthy with diabetes and how I think about them.

Then it’s up to you to make your own definition of what health looks like to you.

Why is it important to think through what health is and how you would define it, you might ask? Well, it’s important because:

  1. It can help you evaluate what health aspects of your life you need to focus on,
  2. It can help you set tangible goals for what you want for your health and can make goal setting easier, and
  3. It can remove some of the emotional noise surrounding the word “health,” making it less important how others define it and only truly important how you define it.

When identifying the components of health, I lean towards the definition that health includes physical, mental, and social balance rather than simply the absence of illness.

What I like about that definition is that it recognizes that those of us living with a chronic condition can still be healthy. And I truly believe that we can be!

I have diabetes, but I still consider myself quite healthy.

Physical Health

When it comes to physical health, I think of it as a body that is well nourished, exercised, rested, in general balance, and with well-managed blood sugars. That’s a tall order and it could be even taller, for as mentioned, the exact definition will be up to you.

If I were to evaluate my physical health, I would ask myself:

  • Am I eating the right amount of calories and macronutrients to fuel my activity level and fitness goals?
  • Am I drinking enough water?
  • Is my exercise routine (volume and intensity) giving me energy and building stamina and strength or is it taking energy, making me feel drained or bored?
  • Am I getting enough quality sleep?
  • How do I feel? Is my digestion working as it should, am I energized, etc.?
  • Is my diabetes affecting my physical well-being, and if it is, am I spending the energy needed to manage my diabetes according to my diabetes management goals?

An assessment like this is, of course, subjective, but I think it’s a good starting point for identifying what’s important to us individually when it comes to physical health and help make an improvement plan if needed.

Mental Health

There is a lot of overlap between our physical and mental health, especially when it comes to living with diabetes. Mental health, of course, encompasses so much more than what’s related to diabetes, but I will focus on diabetes in this post.

My top 3 list for a mental health self-check would be:

  • Am I at risk of any degree of diabetes burnout and what are some of the preventive measures I can take?
  • Am I being kind to myself by building myself up and not talking myself down? Am I accepting that I can’t control everything about my diabetes and therefore never will be in complete “control?”
  • Do I prioritize my happiness and continue to have a positive outlook on life and my diabetes management?

I find that just thinking through these three points can help address unhealthy mental behavior and be a cornerstone for making positive changes if needed.

Social Health

Finally, we have social health. This one took me a little longer to define since I tend to bundle it in with mental health checks. However, the more I think about it, the more I think that it needs to stand on its own.

When I think of social health in a diabetes context, I think of how we as people living with diabetes allow others to interact with our condition. It’s how we react when people ask about it, how we interact with other people living with diabetes, and how we tackle food choices when “in the wild.”

The things I’ve found useful to work on when it comes to my social (diabetes) health are:

  • How do I handle times when I’m not comfortable sharing my diabetes with others? I think it’s okay to not want to talk diabetes with others sometimes, but I also acknowledge that people don’t necessarily know or understand that, so I need strategies to handle those situations.
  • Acknowledging that my diabetes management is “mine” because only I can define what success is. It may differ significantly from other people’s definitions of success when it comes to blood sugar control and food choices. And that’s okay.
  • Learning how to say no to food pushers or people implying (or telling me directly) that there are certain things I can’t eat.
  • Developing strategies for dealing with food (carb counting) uncertainty when I am eating out or in social settings.

As mentioned, this is how I think about the three health categories and what’s important to me when it comes to my physical, mental, and social balance.

I encourage you to think of minimally three things for each category that are important to you and then make them a priority. Sometimes all it takes to see a significant improvement in one’s health is to focus and make a few small adjustments.

Suicidal? These 5 Types Of People Are At Increased Risk Of Considering Suicide.

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While Robin Williams’ suicide came as an unfortunate surprise for family, friends, and members of the general public, certain aspects of Williams’ personality may have served as the writing on the wall for his untimely death. Aside from his history ofdepression and addiction, some experts agree that Williams’ comedic abilities were tell-tale signs of depression and bipolar behaviors, keeping up with the “sad clown” façade. There are some other personality traits people exhibit that can indicate their risk for attempting suicide.

Suicide

1. Smokers

It seems as though smoking cannot only deteriorate our physical health, but also ourmental health. Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine noticed that a rise in cigarette taxes coincided with a drop in suicide rates, so they decided to examine the possible relation to these statistics. Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the research team first decided how many suicides were committed by people who identified as smokers. The second part of their analysis focused on the number of suicides in states with aggressive anti-smoking policies. For each dollar increase on cigarette taxes each year, the suicide rate for that state dropped by 10 percent.

“We really need to look more closely at the effects of smoking and nicotine, not only on physical health but on mental health, too,” said lead researcher Dr. Richard A. Grucza. “It could be that [smoking] affects depression or increases addiction to other substances. We don’t know how smoking exerts these effects, but the numbers show it clearly does something. Nicotine is a plausible candidate for explaining the link between smoking and suicide risk. As with other drugs … chronic use can contribute to depression or anxiety, and that could help to explain the link to suicide.”

2. Teens Who Suffer A Concussion

Suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI) can damage a teenager’s neurological health as they grow up, but could that also relate to a weakened psychological and emotional state? A recent study conducted at St. Michael’s Hospital in Ontario found that teenagers who experience a TBI such as a concussion are at an increased risk to premature death, most notably due to suicide. Teens who suffered a concussion were three times more likely to attempt suicide, twice as likely to be bullied at school, and more likely to call a crisis help-line or to be prescribed drugs to treat anxiety/depression compared to those who did not suffer a concussion.

“These results show that preventable brain injuries and mental health and behavioural problems among teens continue to remain a blind spot in our culture,” said lead author of the study Dr. Gabriela Ilie. “These kids are falling through the cracks.”

3. Musicians

Kurt Cobain’s personal history of drug abuse and family history of suicide were both indicated as risk factors for his eventual suicide, but not many psychology experts were quick to suggest his career as a musician was a red flag. Steve Sack, director of the Center for Suicide Research and a professor at Wayne State University,explains that suicide rates among musicians are three times higher than the current national average. While many studies on suicide agree that other artistic professionals such as writers, actors, and painters are prone to depression and suicidal thoughts, musicians tend to go unnoticed. Yet their work is of a similar nature.

4. Adults With Asperger’s

Falling under the umbrella of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), Asperger’s syndrome is a condition that causes people to suffer from social impairment, communication difficulties, and restrictive/repetitive behaviors. The recent study of the UK population revealed that people with Asperger’s are nine times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and many even attempt suicide at some point in their life. The inability to socialize or connect with other people exhibited by those with Asperger’s was deemed a contributing factor to suicidal thoughts.

“Adults with Asperger Syndrome often suffer with secondary depression due to social isolation, loneliness, social exclusion, lack of community services, under-achievement, and unemployment. Their depression and risk of suicide are preventable with the appropriate support,” Simon Baron-Cohen, professor from the Autism Researcher Center at Cambridge University, and the CLASS clinic in the Cambridgeshire, said in a statement. “This study should be a wake-up call for the urgent need for high quality services, to prevent the tragic waste of even a single life.”

5. Adopted Teens

As a result of detachment and placement in an institutional setting at an early age, many adopted teens can display signs of various psychiatric disorders as well as substance abuse. A recent study including over 1,200 teens living in Minnesota revealed that 47 out of the 56 suicidal attempts were carried out by those who were adopted. Sixteen of the adopted teens who attempted suicide were boys and 31 were girls. Among the 692 adopted teens included in the study, the majority suffered from a range of behavioral issues such as a family discord, academic disengagement, externalizing behavior, and a negative mood. Surprisingly, the research team associated suicidal thoughts with psychological traits inherited form their biological parents, including psychiatric disorders and substance abuse rather than problems with their adopted home.

“Adolescence, in general, is a period of higher risk [for suicide attempt],” Dr. Victor Fornari, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at North Shore-LIJ Health System, told HealthDay. “And now there’s evidence that the risk may be relatively higher for adopted adolescents.”