NEW: A Dozen Deep Dives on Health & Wellness
Wise & Well Weekly: The newsletter helping you make tomorrow a little better than today
Welcome back to your weekly dose of wisdom and wellness. This week, several Wise & Well writers with clinical expertise — including a physician, a dermatologist and a psychologist — offer sound and actionable advice for surviving the one-two punch of winter’s spike in diseases coupled with holiday stress. Scroll down to find these new stories and more.
BUT FIRST: We’ve just formally launched 12 Topic Pages that offer incredible depth and breadth on key Wise & Well coverage areas. On each page, you’ll find actionable science-backed news, feature stories and personal tales, all highly curated and professionally edited.
- Aging and Longevity
- Anxiety
- Chronic Pain
- Depression
- Exercise and Fitness
- Happiness
- Nutrition, Diet and Healthy Eating
- Mental Health
- Relationships
- Sleep
- Stress
- Wisdom
Think of these pages as mini-publications you can save or bookmark and return to periodically or share with friends or loved ones who share your interests.
Now, onto this week’s top stories…
HEALTHY READING
A selection of recent informative and insightful Wise & Well articles:
How Worried Should You be About RSV Season?
This writer and physician watches over infants struggling to breathe in their hospital cribs, wracked by this nasty viral lung infection. “These babies are often in considerable distress as they struggle to breathe, requiring medical support ranging from nasal cannulas to ventilators.” Here he explains how RSV packs a punch at both ends of the age spectrum, then lays out what you can do to mitigate the risks for yourselves and any loved ones around you. (This piece links back to Kort’s big Vax Fax story we published yesterday — all part of a plan.)
— By Eric J. Kort MD
Dr. Kort also wrote this related but more general (and expansive) piece…
Vax Fax: Your Vaccination Questions Answered
The flu, Covid-19 and RSV all spike during winter. No surprise, Dr. Kort is often asked about these infectious diseases and others, and how to prevent them. Here he tackles all the important questions (and we mean all of them!) about vaccines and how they relate to immunization (similar but not the same).
— By Eric J. Kort MD
Protect Your Skin’s Glow Amid the Ravages of Winter Weather and Holiday Stress
Cold, dry weather is rough on skin. But common skin problems are often caused by our habits and behaviors that tend to go south during the holidays. This retired dermatologist offers several simple science-backed steps to optimize skin health, including some you never thought of.
— By Annie Foley
What My Rescue Dog Taught Me About Anxiety
Josie struggles with anxiety, but you wouldn’t realize it at first. She never exhibits the classic symptoms of sweaty paws or stammering speech. Josie is a dog, after all. Her owner is a psychologist, who knows that anxiety can be fueled by a slew of real and imagined stressors that can manifest in myriad ways, sometimes simmering beneath the surface until something triggers aggression. What works for Josie, well … if anxiety dogs you, you’ve just got to read this story.
— By Gail Post, PhD
A New Gene Editing Technique Has Treated Its First Human Disease
Doctors have overcome the previously untouchable aspect of genes, using a technique called CRISPR to take a first step toward curing sickle cell anemia by repairing patients’ DNA. It’s like using scissors and other tiny tools to cut and fix a broken gene. The technique has tremendous promise for eventually treating or curing other intractable diseases.
— By Sam Westreich, PhD
What Inmates Can Teach Us About Overcoming Our Greatest Challenges
While helping prisoners improve their well-being, this author learned that none of us need be chained to our circumstances. “If a man can see opportunities while in prison, surely, you can create the life you desire regardless of your current situation,” she writes. Need evidence? Read what the prisoners have said and done.
— By JB Hollows
Our Mental Health Care Fails Inmates
Ignoring ADHD, depression, and other conditions behind bars kills thousands. This psychiatrist has heartbreaking first-hand knowledge of what goes wrong, and ideas for how to fix the problem.
—By John Kruse MD, PhD
The Pandemic May Be Over, But the Ableism Isn’t
More than three years after Covid-19 infected all aspects of our lives, much of the world has moved on to prioritize other crises. But ableism — discrimination against disabled people — and threats to vulnerable populations continue to spread, notes this deaf and autistic writer who cites lack of closed captioning on Zoom calls, the myth that vaccines cause autism, and resistance to masks and other disease-mitigation measures.
— By Annika Hotta
Am I an Introvert? An Extrovert? Or Something Else Entirely?
You’d think I know this about my very own self, yet I’ve long been puzzled by the question, and it turns out introversion and extroversion are commonly misunderstood. Now finally, after a good amount of research, a lot of years under my belt, and some serious introspection, I’ve come up with some illuminating answers. Perhaps what follows will resonate with you, too.
— By Robert Roy Britt
RANDOM BIT OF WISDOM
“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.”
— Etty Hillesum, the late Dutch author
Like what you see? Please follow Wise & Well and/or subscribe to this newsletter. — Rob
