Nausea sucks. It’s painful and all-consuming, and there’s almost nothing to be done once it hits. Little things can help—get some fresh air, sip a ginger ale, nibble on crackers—but nausea is on its own timeline. It sticks around until it’s ready to leave.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve held on so tightly to a bit of wisdom that my mom gave me when I was a kid plagued by stomachaches. It was something I could do that maybe, maybe, would help bring an end to the pain. And it didn’t require much effort. The trick, my mom told me, was to simply lie down on my left side.
The way I imagined it as a kid was that the hole in my stomach that led to my intestines was on the left side, so lying positioned that way would help it drain faster and make it stop hurting sooner. (Turns out this is not what is happening, but it’s what I believed at the time.) I’d lie on my side and envision the painful stuff inside me swirling out of my stomach. These days, whether it be the flu, a hangover, or stop-and-go traffic, I still find myself lying on my left side, urging the nausea away. It helps—a bit!
I’ve only recently begun to wonder if the trick is more than just a piece of mom wisdom. Turns out the whole concept of resting on your left side stems from the tradition of ayurveda, a system of medicine that originated in India more than 3,000 years ago. More recently, scientists have studied how body position can affect digestion, focusing on acid reflux. The evidence suggests that lying on the left side indeed reduces heartburn. For instance, in a small study from 2000, those who lay on their left side experienced fewer and shorter reflux episodes in the four hours after eating a fatty meal than did those who lay on their right side
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Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.
Diana Henriques was first stricken in late 1996. A business reporter for The New York Times, she was in the midst of a punishing effort to bring a reporting project to fruition. Then one morning she awoke to find herself incapable of pinching her contact lens between her thumb and forefinger.
Henriques’s hands were soon cursed with numbness, frailty, and a gnawing ache she found similar to menstrual cramps. These maladies destroyed her ability to type—the lifeblood of her profession—without experiencing debilitating pain.
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Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: Millennium Images / GalleryStock.
While you can’t necessarily eliminate the laundry list of stressors going on in the world right now, you can implement strategies to help manage your own emotions to decrease your anxiety. And there’s something you already do all day, every day, that is an excellent tool to tap into: your breath. Yep, breathing exercises for anxiety went mainstream during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as many people have found after trying them out, these stress-busting techniques can really come in handy whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed.
ICYMI, anxiety is pretty normal. It’s the most common mental illness in the United States, and it impacts nearly 40 million adults in the country each year, per the Anxiety & Depression Association of America. (That’s just over 18 percent of the population!)
So, how exactly does breathing help? Turns out how you breathe can affect your heart rate, blood pressure, and nervous system, all of which play a role in your body’s anxiety and stress levels, explains Rachel L. Goldman, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice who is also a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
For example, shallow breathing typically involves drawing just a bit of air into your lungs, and taking shorter and faster breaths through your mouth (think: using only your upper chest to breathe). Engaging in this type of breathing can typically cause stress, panic, anxiety, tension, and pain, as it signals to your body that it’s in its “flight” response, Goldman explains.
Deep breathing, on the other hand, usually draws air deep into your lungs through your nose, and uses your chest to bring air into your diaphragm. The result? You’re able to get more oxygen into your brain and reduce your blood pressure and heart rate. Plus, it signals to your body that you can relax, that you’re safe, which is what makes it great for relieving anxiety, says Goldman.
Several years ago, a British man named Harry picked his nose. A hidden camera recorded him in this private moment, then someone uploaded the video to the internet, and soon Harry’s pratfall exploded into a worldwide meme. Millions of people—most of them in the United States—became obsessed with the video. Everywhere Harry went, strangers shot significant looks at him and touched their nostrils, as if to say, “Hey, you’re that nose-picking guy!”
Harry loved the attention—he described his fame as a “safety blanket” and said he felt as if everyone on the street had become his friend. But there was a problem with Harry’s internet stardom: No one else could perceive it.
In a parallel reality where most of us live, Harry had been diagnosed with psychotic delusions, many of them seemingly borrowed from the YouTube videos he obsessively watched.
His family convinced him to visit a mental health clinic affiliated with the University of Birmingham. There, he enthused to his clinician—Rosa Ritunnano—that he was “the happiest man in the world.” Harry told Ritunnano that he could read and control other people’s thoughts; he deployed his telepathy to battle the lizard-humans and the Illuminati at the center of a web of power. These enemies, for their part, surveilled him through hidden cameras and telepathic spies.
As nightmarish as that all might sound, Harry relished the attention from the imaginary conspirators who monitored him. “If I found out that they [were] not watching me and reading my mind, I would feel alone and crazy,” he explained to Ritunnano.
Though he was engaged in an apocalyptic psi war, Harry was also a remarkably pleasant fellow who seemed to pose no threat to anyone. He did refuse his prescribed antipsychotic medications, but when Ritunnano and her colleagues asked him whether he would submit to a battery of pencil-and-paper tests, he cheerfully agreed. And so the doctors administered some whimsically named tools that are used to measure self-worth, including the Purpose in Life Test, the Life Regard Index and the Existential Meaning Scale. Harry aced them all.
The benefits of friendship go far beyond having someone to confide in or spend time with – it can also protect you from physical and mental health problems. For example, people with good friends recover more quickly from illnesses and surgeries. They report higher well-being and feel like they live up to their full potential. Additionally, people with good friends report being less lonely across many life stages, including adolescence, becoming a parent and old age.
In fact, friendships are so powerful that the social pain of rejection activates the same neural pathways that physical pain does.
Behavioral scientists like me have tended to focus our research about friendships on their benefits. How to cultivate these powerful relationships hasn’t been as deeply researched yet. Understanding more about what people look for in a friend and how to make and sustain good friendships could help fight the loneliness epidemic.
Traditional conceptions of friendship
Previous generations of behavioral scientists traditionally focused on the notion that people form friendships with those who are similar, familiar and in close proximity to them.
When you look at all the friendships you’ve had over your life, these three factors probably make intuitive sense. You’re more likely to have things in common with your friends than not. You feel an increased sense of familiarity with friends the longer you know them – what psychologists call the mere exposure effect. And your friends are more likely to live or work near you.
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Despite stereotypes to the contrary, men can prefer close, one-on-one friendships. Westend61 via Getty Images
Pumpkins are synonymous with Halloween; propped up on doorsteps and peering through front windows, their flesh carved into ghoulish smiles, eyes glowing with flickering flames. But their value goes far beyond the Halloween accessory they’ve become known for. They stick around until Thanksgiving, and then peter off the shelves, to make way for the Christmas fare.
In the West, pumpkins may be the main ingredient in a traditional holiday pie, but their true potential lies in their nutritional and medicinal benefits. Rich in various essential nutrients and relatively easy to grow, this hardy, drought-tolerant crop is underrated. Pumpkins offer great promise as farmers battle with water scarcity and increasingly harsh climates, local communities struggle with economic insecurity, and the world’s population is increasingly undernourished.
In Bangladesh, mini deserts – known as sand bars – are formed due to climate change-caused flooding during the torrential rains of the five-month-long monsoon. The sediments deposited contain highly toxic elements due to river pollution, and they render the land infertile. However, these river-eroded, silt-covered lands are now being harnessed to grow pumpkins to help tackle food insecurity, unemployment, and malnourishment.
What started in 2005 a project called “Pumpkins against Poverty”, formed by the non-profit Practical Action, has now turned into a profitable enterprise called Pumpkin Plus. “We are working with over 1,000 agri-entrepreneurs, exporting pumpkins to Qatar, Malaysia, Singapore, and other countries, and building the capacity of the local communities to diversify to commercial agriculture,” says Nazmul Islam Chowdhury, chief executive of the company. “On average, [these communities] earn around £6,000 ($7,340) in a span of five months.”
Pumpkins are an ideal plant for water-insecure regions due to their tolerance of drought. Given their ability to withstand less water and salinity, as well as the fact that Bangladesh farmers can make a good profit compared to other produce, they are the preferred crop to be grown in the sand bars. Researchers from Selcuk University, Turkey, are trying to develop novel varieties of pumpkins based on certain cultivars that will result in a more drought-tolerant crop.
Spotting a tick on your body can be borderline terrifying. After all, not only can the insect suck your blood, it can also carry a range of potentially serious diseases like Lyme disease and babesiosis. Fear not: If you forgot your repellent on your last outdoor trek, here’s how to remove a tick head the right way, according to experts.
Naturally, you’ll want to remove the tick ASAP, but sometimes the bug can break, leaving you with the tick’s mouth-parts embedded in your skin. Not only is that gross, it could raise your risk of getting sick. “The more of a tick that’s removed, the less likely it is to be able to spread a pathogen,” says infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Meaning, you really want to try to remove the whole tick—including the head—if you can.
So, how do you remove a tick head after getting a tick bite? Here’s what you need to know.
How to remove a tick
The best way to avoid having to figure out how to remove a tick head is to get the whole tick out in the first place. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends doing the following:
Use clean, fine-tipped tweezers to grab the tick as close to your skin’s surface as possible.
Pull upward with steady, even pressure. (Don’t twist or jerk the tick—that can cause the head and mouth-parts to break off and stay in your the skin.
Get rid of the tick by putting it in alcohol, placing it in a sealed bag or container, wrapping it tightly in tape, or flushing it down the toilet.
A few days before New Year’s Eve, an unfamiliar health insurance card for me arrived in the mail. I assumed there must have been an error and called the human resources department of the medical center where I’m employed as a doctor.
“No,” the representative replied, “it’s not a mistake. You didn’t enroll this year, so you automatically got put on the basic plan.”
“That’s … that’s impossible,” I stammered. “I’ve always signed up my family for the same health plan.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Ofri,” the representative said, rechecking her records, “but you didn’t enroll this year.”
Could that be? Could I have somehow forgotten? Or missed the notification? “But don’t worry,” she said. “We’ve put you on the basic plan.”
“OK,” I said, starting to relax and thinking out loud. “I guess my kids will get to meet some new doctors.”
But the representative did not match my tone. “I’m sorry, but the basic plan is just for the employee,” she said, “not your family.”
That’s when a coil of disbelief clamped my heart to a standstill. My spouse and children would be left without health insurance? The panicked questions quickly percolated: What about their ongoing medical treatments? What about their medications? What if someone got hit by a car, or got cancer? There’s hardly a more devastating feeling for a parent than to realize that you haven’t adequately provided for your family.
Swirling in panic, I hardly heard anything else the representative said. There was something about referring my case to a supervisor, but it was a holiday week, so many employees were on vacation. All I could think about was that in a few days, it would be the new year, and my family would be uncovered. I felt tears creep into the corners of my eyes as I realized that I had jeopardized my family’s health. All, it seemed, from missing the email notifications.
Protein is one of the building blocks of all the cells in your body. From your hair to your muscles to your hormones, it’s necessary to make sure you’re consuming enough protein to fuel all these body processes. But there are times in life when you may need a little more protein, such as when you’re very physically active if you’re following a vegetarian or vegan diet, if you’re older than 65, and if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Not to mention, things like injuries or illness can temporarily increase your protein needs.
But there is another major benefit of protein, and that’s the satiety factor it provides. Protein helps you feel full, which can help if you are trying to lose weight. But research suggests that eating too much protein and avoiding carbohydrates—especially those with fiber—can have a negative effect on your bowels and gut microbiota. In addition to protein, it’s important to consume fiber, especially fiber that comes from whole grains and vegetables. Fiber has several functions in the body, including promoting healthy digestion and healthy weight maintenance, supporting heart health, and reducing the risk of constipation that may come along with eating more protein.
Consuming more anti-inflammatory foods alongside more protein and fiber is a triple whammy when it comes to health benefits. The anti-inflammatory diet is similar to the Mediterranean diet that focuses on nutrient-dense foods that are also often high in protein and fiber. But which ones should you focus on?
In this high-protein, high-fiber anti-inflammatory meal plan, we focus on lean proteins, high-fiber vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts to help you feel full and satisfied. Each day has at least 75 grams of protein, which is higher than the recommended 50 grams per day for a 140-pound person. (Protein needs are typically calculated at 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight.) And for fiber, adults should aim for at least 25 grams, but we boosted this plan up to 30 grams of fiber per day. This meal plan is set at 1,500 calories per day, which is a level at which most people will lose weight, but if you require more or fewer calories, adjustments for 1,200 calories and 2,000 calories are also listed.
What Is the Anti-Inflammatory Diet?
The anti-inflammatory diet limits highly processed foods, added sugars, and excessive red meat consumption and instead focuses on healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. By concentrating on nutrient-dense foods (those that give you a lot of nutrients in a serving) you can help reduce chronic inflammation in the body.
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Photo: Photographer: Jen Causey, Food Stylist: Emily Nabors Hall
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.
Despite stereotypes to the contrary, men can prefer close, one-on-one friendships. 
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Ugh, a tick!
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James' World 2 