Why Is Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease Spreading at Florida State University?

A viral infection known as hand, foot, and mouth disease is sickening students at Florida State University and other schools around the country. The illness—which spreads through contact with bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces—can cause a rash, fever, blisters in and around the mouth, and painful sores on the hands, feet, and buttocks.

Hand, foot, and mouth disease is usually seen in young children, and outbreaks are often linked to daycare centers. But in the last month, it’s been reported at high schools in Indiana, Vermont, and New Jersey.

The University of Colorado at Boulder also experienced several cases on campus in August. And NBC News reports Florida State University (FSU) has seen 22 cases so far this semester.

While hand, foot, and mouth disease can sound—and look—scary, it’s not usually dangerous, says Nadia Qureshi, MD, pediatric infectious disease specialist at Loyola Medicine in Maywood, Illinois. It can be quite uncomfortable, though, and usually lasts five to seven days. There’s no cure and no vaccine to prevent it, so the best treatment is staying hydrated and taking over-the-counter medicine for pain and fever.

The most common cause of hand, foot, and mouth disease is the coxsackievirus, which spreads just like the common cold or flu. Dr. Qureshi says that outbreaks among older children and adults are rare, but not entirely surprising.

“In the past couple of years we’ve seen a new strain of the virus that causes a more severe and more atypical presentation of symptoms, and it does affect children as well as adults,” she says. “And a college dorm is the perfect place for it to spread: People are touching doorknobs, sharing things, living in close proximity to each other, and it’s easy to pass the infection back and forth.”

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The new strain, a natural evolution of the virus, tends to cause a more widespread rash and more painful blisters. But even this form rarely requires medical intervention, except in the case of very young children who have trouble swallowing because of painful blisters in their mouths. In very rare cases, says Dr. Qureshi, the coxsackievirus has been linked to serious brain or heart complications.

According to WCTU TV, FSU administration has speculated that the outbreak may be due to a sewage spill during the recent Hurricane Hermine, or to a related electricity outage that prohibited laundry from being done and allowed germs to spread. 

To help prevent new cases, FSU is sanitizing all public spaces on campus, and has advised all living facilities on campus to sanitize their residences, as well. They’ve also encouraged frequent hand washing and the use of hand sanitizers. (CU Boulder also warned students working in science labs that the coxsackievirus can be especially harmful to rodents, and urges them to take “extra care not to spread the disease.”)

Those are smart steps, says Dr. Qureshi. “If you want to avoid it, the most important thing to do is to wash your hands frequently with soap and water, avoid touching your face and your mouth as much as possible, and avoid close contact with someone who has it,” she says. People who’ve had hand, foot, and mouth disease as children don’t seem to have much immunity to the virus, she adds, especially to this relatively new strain.

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People can continue to transmit the virus for several weeks after their symptoms are gone, she says, but only through saliva or fecal matter. “If you practice basic good hygiene and you no longer have a fever, you should be fine,” she says. “Just stay away from kissing and sharing cups for a while.”

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How Posting on Facebook Affects Your Memory

Posting about personal experiences on social media makes them easier to remember in the future, finds a new study—and no, it’s not just because Facebook reminds you of them every year.

Scientists have long known that writing down, talking about, or otherwise reflecting on events can help people recall them later. And one might assume that posting about them on social media sites—such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or a personal blog—could have similar, positive effects, the study authors wrote in the journal Memory.

But social media posts could have an opposite effect, as well: Research has also shown that when we become used to having information digitally available at all times, we tend to become reliant on the Internet and forget details more easily. “Accordingly, many of our life details may no longer need to be internally stored and retrieved if we know that we can later refer to our online journals to locate the information,” they wrote.

So the researchers set out to see which of these theories was true, in the first study to look at the effects of social media on memory.

First, they asked 66 Cornell undergraduates to keep a daily diary for a week. In the diary, they briefly described the events that happened to them each day outside of their normal routines. They were also asked to record whether they had posted about each of these events on social media, and to rate their personal importance and emotional intensity.

At the end of the week and again a week later, the students were given a surprise quiz to see how many events they could recall. During both quizzes, events the students had posted about online were easier for them to remember. This was true even when the researchers controlled for importance or intensity of the event; in other words, people weren’t simply posting about significant events they’d be more likely to remember anyway.

“If people want to remember personal experiences, the best way is to put them online,” said lead author Qi Wang, PhD, professor of human development in Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology, in a press release. All types of social media provide an important outlet for sharing experiences with others, she added, which can be an important part of the memory-building process.

“The process of writing about one’s experiences in the public sphere, often sustained by subsequent social feedback, may allow people to reflect on the experiences and their personal relevance,” the authors wrote.

The study also noted that sharing personal perspectives of recent events on social media also helps people create and shape their “sense of self.”

“That’s happening when we use social media, without us even noticing it,” Wang explained. “We just think, ‘Oh, I’m sharing my experience with my friends.’ But by shaping the way we remember our experiences, it’s also shaping who we are.” Features that allow you to look back at memories from the past—like Facebook’s On this Day feature or the third-party Timehop app—can help reinforce that sense of self, she said.

“Memory is often selective,” Wang said. “But in this case, the selection is not done by our own mind; it’s done by an outside resource. So interactive functions on social networking sites can also shape how we view our experiences, how we view ourselves.”

In fact, the authors write, the “virtual externalization of personal memories has become commonplace” in this technology-driven age. And their study, they say, is “the first step toward a better understanding of the autobiographical self in the Internet era.”

This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.

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5 Things Everyone Should Know About Brain Tumors

Earlier this summer, retired U.S. soccer player Lauren Holiday was sailing through her first pregnancy when suddenly, she began experiencing painful headaches. An MRI revealed a tumor on the right side of the 28-year-old’s brain near her orbital socket, the Times-Picayunereports. 

Fortunately, the two-time Olympic gold medalist's growth is benign, operable, and not a risk to Holiday’s unborn daughter. She’s scheduled to have the tumor removed about six weeks after her delivery.

Though Holiday has a positive prognosis, her story is still scary because she’s young and otherwise healthy—elite-athlete-level healthy. But next time you get a piercing headache, don’t jump to any conclusions. The ones brought on by brain tumors aren't aren’t your average headaches, says John G. Golfinos, MD, chair of the department of neurosurgery and co-director of the Brain Tumor Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. They're persistent, and tend to be worse in the morning and improve throughout the day. “That’s because when people are lying flat, the pressure in the skull and brain goes up, and during the day some of the pressure starts to go away,” he explains. What’s more, brain tumor headaches are often associated with nausea and vomiting.

More good news: brain tumors are pretty rare. You have just a 1% chance of developing a malignant brain tumor in your lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society. 

Here, Dr. Golfinos reveals more facts to know about brain tumors: 

Not all brain tumors are cancerous

“There’s a whole spectrum and range of outcomes for brain tumors,” says Dr. Golfinos. As in Holiday’s case, some are benign, “which means they grow very slowly in the brain or just outside the brain,” he explains. Others are malignant, grow very quickly, and are incurable.

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Even benign tumors can cause major issues

The reason brain tumors can be so risky is that the skull is a thick, confined space: “So anything that grows inside or just outside the brain can take up a lot of room and press on important parts of the brain, causing a lot of problems,” he says. “That’s why we say with brain tumors, it’s not just what type of tumor is it, but where is it.”

The problems can include loss of vision, difficulties with speech, issues understanding language, or weakness on one side of the body. Symptoms can be subtle in the beginning, especially if they’re caused by a benign, slow-growing tumor, says Dr. Golfinos. But if you notice any of those changes, it’s a good idea to see your doctor.

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Brain tumors can’t escape your skull

Brain tumors are unique in that they can’t spread to other organs, since they don’t have the same access to the blood stream that tumors in other parts of the body do, says Dr. Golfinos. “The brain itself is a very privileged part of the body,” he notes. “It’s good at keeping things out, but also good at keeping things in.”

Your phone won’t cause a tumor

You may have heard the myth that constantly talking on your cell causes cancer. According to Dr. Golfinos, you have nothing to worry about, since there’s no good evidence to suggest this is true. The reality, he says, is that “[w]e really don’t understand what causes brain tumors.”

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You can’t prevent tumors from developing

“Many people ask me if there’s anything they can do to avoid brain tumors,” says Dr. Golfinos. “And right now the answer to that is ‘no.’” That said, to play it safe, Dr. Golfinos recommends avoiding exposure to excess radiation whenever possible (by opting for an MRI over a CT scan for example), especially for anyone under the age of 18. 

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Health Apps Really Do Help People Exercise More, Eat Better, Study Finds

If you’re in the habit of checking your phone regularly, take note: It could actually improve your health, if you start using the right apps.

A new review of research on technology, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that people who take advantage of support and programs on smartphones or the internet are more likely to eat better, exercise more, and engage in other behaviors linked to health and longevity.

“Here we have the convenience of all these apps so you can exercise or you can eat healthier or quit smoking,” says Martha Daviglus, MD, PhD, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association, who was not involved in the study. And even if the change isn’t pronounced, “it’s better to lose a few pounds than to lose none or to even increase your weight,” Dr. Daviglus adds.

The authors of the new review paper evaluated more than 200 studies that had looked at the effect of different technologies on diet, exercise, weight, and tobacco and alcohol consumption. All of these factors play an enormous role in our risk for many diseases, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, conditions which are almost as widespread today as cell phones. 

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In the new review study, the most common types of technology were apps, text, or voice messages and automated voice response systems. The review included research done over the past 23 years (so many of these technologies are now outdated). Overall, technology—new or old—had a positive effect on behaviors that influence health.

The quality of the studies varied, however, as did the magnitude of the effects. For instance, tech interventions could add as little as 1.5 minutes to your weekly exercise routine, or as much as 153 minutes. Only two of seven studies looking at quitting smoking found benefits. 

Programs that proved most effective were those that incorporated goal setting and self-monitoring (such as recording how much you ate or weighed), and those that involved multiple forms of communication (like personal counseling and texts) and which carried individualized messages. The program which increased weekly physical activity by 153 minutes a week, for instance, sent customized motivational messages. 

The technology was also more effective when paired with good old patient-doctor or patient-healthcare provider communication. 

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Most of the studies were very short-term, making it hard to know if they would be effective over the long time periods usually needed to make serious lifestyle changes. "They couldn’t demonstrate if this really could work more than one year or only because it’s the novelty, that people decide to try it and they get bored,“ says Dr. Daviglus, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

The participants in the 224 studies also tended to be high on the motivation scale, one of many different factors likely to play into the success of any app or text or voice messaging system. "You can tell a 45-year-old who is otherwise healthy and is a smoker that smoking is bad for you and he will continue smoking,” says Jeffrey Goldberger, MD chief of the cardiovascular division at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “That 45-year-old comes into the hospital with a heart attack and all of a sudden their motivation to stop smoking changes.”

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These days, though, there’s likely to be an app to motivate you whoever you are. "With the new technology today, you cannot believe the things that we can do,“ says Dr. Daviglus. 

Look for programs that urge you to set goals, are tailored to who you are, and which make you accountable for your behavior by recording what you eat or how many steps you take. It’s worth asking your doctor for recommendations, too. She may be able to suggest apps that work best for your health needs.

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The Secret to Happiness, According to Yoga

“How is yoga meaningful beyond its poses? How can we practice yoga beyond the physical experience?” asks yoga teacher and blogger Rebecca Pacheco in her new book, Do Your Om Thing: Bending Yoga Tradition to Fit Your Modern Life ($17; amazon.com). “What do we need to know to get the most out of our yoga, and by extension, our lives?” In this excerpt, she explains the yogic approach to happiness, and how to make it work for you.

I’m not sure who said, “Happiness is an inside job,” but it’s a great thing to remember as a yogi. According to yoga philosophy, santosha, which means contentment, is a form of self-discipline. In other words, happiness is a skill and practice. Happier people do not have easier lives, with less hard work, grief, divorce, or financial strain than the rest of us. They’re simply more grateful for what they have and choose to be conscious of their contentment more often.

Modern yogis view yoga as a process of self-improvement. We do yoga so that we can get better at it. Gain greater flexibility. Become a kinder or more patient person. Excel at sports. Look better naked. The list goes on. In all the years I’ve practiced and taught yoga, I have never heard someone walk into a class and pronounce, “I’m here because I’m totally content with my life, body, and world view. There’s nothing I seek to change or improve. I just want to learn how to do yoga, for fun.” Never.

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It’s not that seeking self-improvement is bad. It’s fantastic. The trick is to remember to enjoy the process. If we continually seek betterment, without a genuine appreciation for the present and “whatever fate may bring,” we run the risk of missing the entire essence of yoga and, quite frankly, life. There is no fancy pose, enlightened style of yoga, venerable guru, or brilliant book that can manufacture or deliver your happiness. It comes from within you, and finding it is a different process for everyone.

When I demonstrate challenging yoga poses for my students, I often joke that no matter how impressive, graceful, or fun a yoga pose looks, it cannot change the quality of their lives in any major way. Performing a headstand won’t save someone from getting a parking ticket, losing a job, or getting dumped. Meanwhile, the learning process, attention level, and attitude of the pose can have a positive compounding effect on the rest of our lives. Whenever you catch yourself hungry for the look and flash of an elaborate posture, remember your higher mission. Ask yourself if you’re enjoying the process, not just flinging yourself toward an idealized destination.

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When we forget that happiness is an inside job and look for validation externally—the house, car, or outfit—we will always end up disappointed. The house will never be big enough, car new enough, outfit in season enough. We’ll lose the bigger picture of the process and fixate on the small stuff. Selfish stuff. Ego stuff. Want to know the shortest, most direct route out of ego? The opposite of the obnoxious voice in your head that says: what about me? It’s santosha. It’s gratitude. It’s the skill of taking yourself out of the tailspin of scarcity and reconnecting to contentment. Because as soon as you put yourself in a state of gratitude (for anything, however small) you can no longer operate from ego. The two are polar opposites. The practice of santosha removes us from the rat race and rests us in a gentle hammock of gratitude for a little while. Ahhhh. Doesn’t that feel better?

Do Your Om Thing: Notice Contentment

• Keep a gratitude journal in which you write one to three things each day for which you are grateful. They can be incredibly small and ordinary: a warm house, someone who held the door, an email that made you LOL. Review the list before bed. Notice how this makes you feel.
• Think of someone in your life who seems to be deeply content. What do you think they might do to achieve that contentment?
• To unhook from a feeling of discontentment or ego, a funk or feeling of scarcity, Judith Lasater, cofounder of Yoga Journal and author of Living Your Yoga, recommends using the mantra: How should it be? Notice how your response to this question is an expectation. Not reality. If we are discontented with reality every time it does not go as planned, we lose the skill and gift of santosha.

Excerpted from the book DO YOUR OM THING: Bending Yoga Tradition to Fit Your Modern Life by Rebecca Pacheco. Copyright 2016 by Rebecca Pacheco. Reprinted with permission of Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

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A New Cancer Immunotherapy Leads to Remissions

In a small new study published inScience Translational Medicine, researchers who are pioneering an immune-based treatment for cancer report encouraging results among people with otherwise untreatable non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer.

Led by Dr. Cameron Turtle from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the scientists gave a group of 32 people different chemotherapy regimens and then introduced immune cells specifically designed to target and destroy cancer cells. All of the patients had been given at least one traditional treatment, including some who had had stem cell transplants, but none had good responses to these approaches. After the immunotherapy, however, seven people in one treatment group went into complete remission, while another four saw their disease progress more slowly.

The treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, is targeted toward blood cancers, where doctors can eliminate cancer cells and replace them with healthy blood and immune cells. The strategy hinges on two important steps. First, doctors need to remove as much of a patient’s cancer-ridden blood cells as possible — they do that with chemotherapy — in order to make room for a new population of healthy blood and immune cells. If too many of the cancer cells remain, then they could outcompete the new cells and simply destroy them. To ensure that doesn’t happen, Turtle and his team tested a two-drug chemotherapy regimen and compared it to a single drug chemo strategy. Those getting the combination showed the best results, amounting to a 64% complete remission rate; by comparison, only one of the people getting the single chemotherapy agent went into complete remission (an 8% rate).

Next, the researchers need to re-introduce the right amount of the right immune cells that can fight cancer. Known as T cells, these contain specific receptors that allow some of them to recognize and bind to cancer cells and others to destroy them. To enhance the potency of the therapy, the scientists coaxed these cells to grow in the lab and genetically engineered them to express the tumor-specific receptor. The idea is to then reintroduce these cells back into patients and give them new, healthy blood cells that are cancer-free.

The results mirror those that the same researchers found among patients with other types of blood cell, or B-cell cancers, but are particularly encouraging since previous immunotherapy strategies haven’t been as robust when applied to non Hodgkin lymphoma. The trial provides additional support for the idea that immune cells can be properly trained to recognize and destroy cancer — in this case, with the help of genetically manipulated T cells. The results show that doctors can indeed tip the scales in favor of having the body fight cancer in much the same way it tackles pathogens like bacteria and viruses.

The results also provide much-needed information on how to optimize the strategy for different types of cancer. These findings suggest, for example, that for harder to treat non Hodgkin lymphoma, a combination chemotherapy to eliminate as much of the existing cancer as possible, before the immune cells are re-introduced, might be the key to helping more patients with the condition to slow the progression of their disease or even achieve remission.

While effective, the therapy also comes with a down side. Because the T cells are agents of destruction, they can trigger adverse effects such as fever and inflammation as they tackle the cancerous cells. Twenty of the 32 people in the trial developed signs of inflammation and low blood pressure, with four people getting severe enough symptoms that they required time in the intensive care unit and treatment with steroids. Two people also developed toxic effects from the treatment that resulted in tremor or language problems, but these were reversible. Two people given the highest dose of the T cell therapy died; one of bleeding and another from bleeding due to an intestinal mass.

The scientists are hopeful. however, that more studies will help them figure out the right chemotherapy regimen and the right dose of T cells to achieve the best results with the least adverse effects. “We’re very encouraged by these responses,” says Dr. Stanley Riddell, one of the co-authors from Fred Hutchinson. “These patients all failed conventional therapies; we were treating patients who didn’t have very many options for treatments. Obviously it’s still early days, and we need longer follow up and need to understand more about when in the patient’s disease course is the best time to use this kind of therapy, but we certainly think it’s encouraging.”

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Toxic Air Pollution Can Penetrate the Brain: Study

A toxic particle found in polluted urban areas can infiltrate the brain, potentially contributing to degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, according to new research.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to growing evidence showing how even low levels of air pollution harm human health. Many previous studies have shown how pollution adversely affects the cardiovascular system, causing lung and heart disease. But scientists are increasingly realizing that the effects could extend to other areas like the brain and pregnancy.

Researchers behind the study found that the pollutant magnetite enters the brain through the olfactory nerve, the same fiber that connects the nose with the brain and allows for smell. Magnetite is one pollutant found in particulate matter, a mix of different of a variety of different tiny particles that make up pollution, that pervades many urban areas.

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Air pollution remains a top global health threat despite decades of efforts to stop it. Recent research from the World Health Organization (WHO) found that more than 80% of the world’s urban population lives in areas where air quality regularly fails health standards. Several studies have shown that air pollution contributes to millions of premature deaths annually.

The problem has been particularly acute in developing countries like China and India where cities are often coated in a layer of smog. But recent research has shown how air pollution even in comparatively clean cities in the United States and Europe continues to cause health problems—largely due to the prevalence of diesel vehicles—despite government initiatives to address it. Nearly 6,500 people die early each year in the U.S. due to air pollution. In the United Kingdom, that number totals around 40,000.

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The study’s researchers found high levels of magnetite in tissue from the brains of 37 people who had lived in two polluted urban areas—Mexico City and Manchester. The particles appeared in a different shape than naturally occurring magnetite and were coupled to other similar metals.

Previous research has shown a strong correlation between the rates of exposure to particulate matter. The new research suggests a potential mechanism to explain how the pollution could cause the disease, but determine the precise nature of potential link will require further study.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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