What We Don’t Know About the Health Effects of Wildfire Smoke

We don’t usually think of Canada as a country that needs international aid. But in this wildfire season from hell, communities from Quebec to British Columbia are welcoming hundreds of firefighters from the U.S. and Europe with open arms.

So far this summer, a record 27 million acres in Canada have already burned, and two thirds of the roughly 900 active wildfires are still out of control. On July 18, smoke plumes drifted all the way to Atlanta, GA and 20 states now face air quality alerts. Fueled by record-breaking summer temperatures that are becoming the norm on both sides of the border, the wildfires are likely to continue until fall. For those of us living in areas hundreds of miles from the fires, how should we adapt?
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The health effects of fire have been with us since the first cave men and women. Think of today’s potential harm as something like sitting around a bonfire too long. The resilience of the human body means that for most people, symptoms such as stinging eyes, coughing and minor headaches are quickly alleviated. As long as the smoke lasts no longer than a couple of days, this argues for avoiding school closures or other drastic measures that we only have in mind because of COVID-19.

We’ve met similar challenges before. Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. and other industrialized nations have done a terrific job improving air quality. But they have done so by regulating the source of emissions in power plants and cars. Unfortunately, regulation cannot currently control the amount of smoke produced by wildfires.

The good news is that we’re not currently exposed to wildfires for as long as residents of developing countries are to smog, which makes continued emissions from factories and automobiles the more immediate threat to public health in cities worldwide.

Read More: Wildfire Smoke Is the New Normal

But caution is in order. Right now, too few researchers are studying wildfire smoke from generation to inhalation. We just don’t know enough yet to fashion effective public policy.

While at first glance natural smoke from burning wood would seem less dangerous than industrial pollution, the size and composition of the organic particles make them more likely to enter the bloodstream.

We’re still in the early stages of understanding the consequences of that, especially since these immense plumes of smoke—some of which can be seen from space— vary in content and density, depending on the vegetation they burn. We can’t always predict with total accuracy how high and far the smoke will travel. We simply don’t know what’s in the smoke once it mixes with air and travels to cities with their own sources of pollution. And we’re only beginning to grasp what it’s health effects might be, especially on young children, the elderly, and those with pre-existing lung and eye conditions.

So much about this remains a mystery. The fact that natural fire didn’t kill pre-historic humans is not ultimately very comforting because their life spans were only 30 years or so. What are the long-term effects of exposure to smoke? We know that people who live close to wildfires and suffer from pre-existing lung conditions have higher morbidity rates. But we have little sense of how far from the fire is far enough and how many days of exposure the body can handle. This is especially concerning given how early wildfire season is now starting, thanks to climate change. And we simply don’t know how well air quality standards for industrial pollution apply to wildfire smoke. What happens when the smoke seeps indoors, as it always does after a couple of days? How much should we ventilate? We don’t know that, either.

In an ideal world, we would have prediction models able to forecast the arrival of haze with the same accuracy as hurricanes. But as a result of the cumulative uncertainties in fire modeling, climate prediction, and physiological responses, the answer is not there yet.

The good news is that these more frequent wildfires in Canada, the American West, and other parts of the world have ignited new research that can help us understand the exact composition of the pollutants, the potentially carcinogenic effects, and how our buildings protect us—or don’t. Once we have our arms around the problem scientifically and develop better sensors and atmospheric models, mitigation efforts will proceed more smoothly.

Expanding controlled burns, which were used effectively by Aborigines in Australia, First Nations in Canada, and Native Americans in the U.S. for centuries, will help address this problem. Those burns, if properly supervised, produce smoke plumes of reduced toxicity and lower the risk of mega-fires that more often spread smoke to cities hundreds of miles away.

In the meantime, we can learn something from COVID-19: When in doubt, take reasonable precautions. Which is why weather forecasters who tell us to bring umbrellas when it’s raining might start reminding us not to forget our N-95 masks when it’s smoky outside.

source https://time.com/6295787/wildfires-smoke-questions/

This May Be Why Some People Don’t Get COVID-19 Symptoms

About three-quarters of people in the U.S. have had COVID-19 at least once, according to the latest federal estimates—but, if they were asymptomatic, some of them might not realize it.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, researchers have tried to understand why some people who are infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus never experience telltale symptoms like a cough, sore throat, or fever. A new study, published July 19 in Nature, offers one possible explanation: it’s thanks to a quirk of their genes.

Genes that are part of what’s known as the HLA complex help the body identify proteins made by pathogens, such as viruses, and leap into action when a foreign invader is present. Some people with a common HLA mutation seem to respond to the SARS-CoV-2 virus as if their immune systems already know how to fight it off, even if they’ve never been exposed before, explains study co-author Jill Hollenbach, a professor of neurology, epidemiology, and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. That recognition appears to facilitate an immune response fast and effective enough that people don’t even develop symptoms.
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“Conceptually,” Hollenbach says, “it’s the same as what we’re trying to accomplish with vaccination.”

To reach that finding, Hollenbach and her colleagues analyzed the genetic information of more than 1,400 unvaccinated people who tested positive for COVID-19 in April 2021 or earlier. Out of those people, 136 did not develop symptoms. (Many got tested because they had to for work or came into contact with someone who had COVID-19.)

About 20% of the asymptomatic individuals had a gene mutation called HLA-B*15:01, compared to only 9% of the people who felt sick when they were infected, the researchers found. And the small group of people who had two copies of the gene variant were about eight times more likely to be asymptomatic than those without any copies of it.

The researchers ran similar analyses in two other groups of patients. Both times, they found that the HLA-B*15:01 mutation was disproportionately common among people who had asymptomatic COVID-19, suggesting it played a role in keeping symptoms at bay.

How? In some people who have the HLA-B*15:01 mutation, the immune system’s T cells seem to use their past experiences with similar coronaviruses, including those that cause the common cold, as training to target SARS-CoV-2, taming it before it causes symptoms.

“We know that SARS-CoV-2 has a lot of similarities with some seasonal coronaviruses,” Hollenbach says. “From very early on, [researchers] thought, ‘Maybe there’s some cross-protection there.’” Her research suggests there is—at least, among people with the right genes.

Still, there are plenty of outstanding questions about asymptomatic COVID-19. For example, only 20% of the asymptomatic people in the study had the HLA-B*15:01 mutation, and it’s not clear why the remaining 80% didn’t develop symptoms—or why the 9% of symptomatic people with the mutation did. One theory: Those who had the mutation but still felt sick might not have been exposed to the right seasonal coronaviruses or mounted a strong-enough response to them to achieve lasting immunity, Hollenbach says.

Hollenbach and her colleagues also focused their analysis on white adults, since there weren’t enough people of color enrolled in the study to draw solid conclusions about how their genes affected their COVID-19 symptoms. She says future research should focus on people of other ancestries to see if the same trends apply.

In the meantime, she says, the findings have important implications even for people born without the HLA-B*15:01’s mutation. If researchers could develop a drug or vaccine that mimics its lightning-fast response, they could theoretically stop COVID-19 symptoms before they start. “Should we be thinking about a vaccine that’s aimed not at preventing infection, necessarily, but preventing symptoms?” Hollenbach says.

The research could also hold clues that help answer another long-standing question: Why have some people never been infected by the virus at all, even after years of widespread transmission? Behavioral choices like wearing masks or limiting contact with others may explain it for some people, but others could have their genes to thank. “I would be shocked if there was not a genetic component,” Hollenbach says, and “I would bet money that HLA is involved.”

source https://time.com/6295303/why-covid-19-is-asymptomatic/

How an Innovative Deal Will Give Millions Access to Cheaper Tuberculosis Drugs

The patent on the tuberculosis drug bedaquiline expires today (July 18). But while its manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, intends to use secondary patents to extend its exclusive right to sell the drug, an innovative deal will lower its price and expand access to millions around the globe.

The drug improves the outcomes for patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, reducing the risk of death by approximately 10%, according to a study in BMC Infectious Diseases, a U.K. medical journal. Tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest infectious disease, infecting approximately 10 million people per year and killing 1.5 million people globally. Over the decades, strains of the bacteria that cause TB can no longer be treated with the most common TB medicines and approximately half a million people become infected with multidrug-resistant TB each year, requiring the treatment of bedaquiline.
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Johnson & Johnson initially planned to enforce a secondary patent on a slightly altered version of the drug in more than 30 lower and middle income countries including South Africa, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Secondary patents are awarded to pharmaceutical companies for drugs that are similar to ones it has already patented. By carefully timing the second patent, a pharmaceutical company can effectively maintain its exclusive right to manufacture a drug for years after the expiration of its original patent.

The high cost of a life-saving TB drug

Most patients who need bedaquiline receive it for free through their respective governments. However, because bedaquiline prices are so expensive, many low- and middle-income governments buy fewer courses of bedaquiline and use older, more toxic and less effective drugs to treat tuberculosis because they are cheaper. According to a study by Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) and Stop TB Partnership, at least 11 countries—including Vietnam, Sierra Leone, and Brazil—are not routinely using sufficient bedaquiline to treat children with uncomplicated drug-resistant TB. At least 24 countries place limitations on the routine use of bedaquiline beyond six months.

However, a never-before-seen deal between Johnson & Johnson and Global Drug Facility, a non-profit organization, could dramatically expand access to bedaquiline. The agreement, announced July 13 after a social media campaign spearheaded by author John Green, will allow for the sale and manufacture of generic bedaquiline in most lower and middle income countries, says Brenda Waning, chief of Global Drug Facility.

Read More: Why Does Medicine Cost So Much? Here’s How Drug Prices Are Set

“The license J&J gave us covers all low- and middle-income countries, with the exception of countries where they had a pre-existing agreement with a different generic supplier,” she tells TIME. “J&J has said despite those countries having a patent that remains in effect, we’re giving you permission to supply generics to those countries.”

Founded in 2001, Global Drug Facility is funded primarily by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to promote access to tuberculosis treatments and diagnosis around the world. It negotiates with drug companies to buy tuberculosis drugs at a single, lower price for all lower and middle income countries. As of July, GDF pays $272 for a six month period of treatment of bedaquiline. Other countries are free to negotiate prices with Johnson & Johnson independently, but they are less likely to get a price that low.

A unique collaboration between a pharma company and a nonprofit

“This is the first I’m aware of an innovative company like J&J giving a license to a unique entity like GDF,” says Waning. She says that while deals between pharmaceutical companies and generic suppliers are common, the collaboration with a large negotiating block like GDF is unprecedented.

Johnson & Johnson says its patents are essential so it can continue to develop TB drugs.

“When we introduced bedaquiline in 2012, it was the first TB drug with a novel mechanism of action in more than 40 years,” a Johnson & Johnson spokesperson told TIME. “More and faster innovation is needed, and intellectual property protections make it possible for companies to make the sustained financial commitments to discover and develop new and improved medicines needed to end diseases like TB that primarily affect people in low- and middle-income countries.”

When GDF became aware of the patent expiring and the company’s plans to enforce its secondary patent, the organization began negotiating with Johnson & Johnson to allow for a generic version of bedaquiline.

At the end of the month, GDF will put out a call for bids for companies that wish to supply it with bedaquiline. Johnson & Johnson and two manufacturers of generics are expected to place bids. GDF will then sell the drug to lower and middle income countries at what is expected to be a lower price.

At the same time that GDF was negotiating privately with Johnson & Johnson, activists, doctors, and public health experts were becoming increasingly infuriated by the lack of access to generic bedaquiline in lower and middle income countries.

An appeal from author John Green

“There are lots of small, deeply impoverished countries like Guinea, Malawi, and Zambia where it’s just unconscionable. Johnson & Johnson must know that filing a secondary patent like this in Malawi is going to cost a lot of lives,” Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars, said in an interview before the deal was announced.

Green pleaded with his millions of followers to put pressure on the company, calling for action in his Twitter bio, making a Youtube video about the subject, and writing an op-ed in the Washington Post. The social media push led to the deal being announced early, says Waning.

Other organizations also made significant efforts. MSF Access Campaign published an open letter calling on the company to give up its secondary patents. Activists in India successfully campaigned to get the secondary patent overturned in the country in March.

Tuberculosis is most deadly in lower and middle income countries, but if not controlled properly, it has the potential to become a pandemic threat that could impact the entire globe, according to David Bishai, clinical professor and director of the school of public health at the University of Hong Kong.

So long as tuberculosis goes untreated, the disease can spread from person to person, increasing the chance that it eventually mutates to become an even greater threat to humanity. Thus, making sure bedaquiline and TB diagnosis tools are easily accessible to those in low and middle income countries could benefit rich countries too in the long run, says Bishai.

 

source https://time.com/6295511/how-an-innovative-deal-will-give-millions-access-to-cheaper-tuberculosis-drugs/

Our Fascination With the Serial Killer Next Door

Rex Heuermann, the man arrested and charged with three Long Island murders that had gone unsolved for 13 years, is a familiar figure. He is a 59-year-old man who worked as an architect in New York City. In a professional photo that now appears to have been removed from his firm’s website, but which has appeared in plenty of news articles, he is a white, middle-aged man in a suit and tie, hands crossed in an understated display of professionalism. According to early media reports, he is married and has two children. If convicted of the charges against him, Heuermann—who has pleaded not guilty—will also be accurately described as a serial killer.
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Statistically, this is a rare story; serial murderers do not commit the vast majority of violent crimes in the U.S. According to a 2005 FBI symposium on serial murder, serial killers accounted for “less than one percent of all murders committed in any given year,” and the number of active serial killers is estimated to have decreased since. But it is also a familiar story. It’s the same story we’ve seen unfold since Ted Bundy was first arrested in 1975, when the nice law student who had made early forays into politics and built a multi-year relationship with his live-in partner Elizabeth Kloepfer turned out to have murdered at least 30 women and girls across seven states.

It’s the same story we revisited when Joseph DeAngelo, a veteran, former police officer, and retired truck mechanic, was arrested and revealed to have been the Golden State Killer, who in 2020 admitted to murdering 13 victims and raping 50 between the 1970s and 80s. DeAngelo had a family, too. After his arrest, his eldest daughter told the court in a letter: “I could never tell you all the things my father did for me … there are far too many. He made my bed, my daughter’s bed, cleaned, cooked, and did [our] laundry up until the day of his arrest at age 72. He is the best father I could have had.”

It happened again, when, in 2012, police officers in Lufkin, Texas, pulled over a man called Israel Keyes, who was wanted in connection with the recent disappearance of 18-year-old barista Samantha Koenig in Anchorage, Alaska, where Keyes resided. Within days, the FBI got involved: Keyes, it turned out, had murdered Koenig and multiple other people throughout his life, including a couple whose disappearance the previous year from Vermont had stumped investigators.

There is a chasm in the way we think of serial killers and many violent criminals: we like to describe them as inhuman monsters, almost a separate species, cunning and unfeeling and incapable of accessing the same emotions the rest of us do. And that may be true for many. Yet, we’re never as fascinated as when they have lived a double life, one side of which looked a lot like ours. Bundy, DeAngelo, Keyes, and others are oddly suited canvases on which to project our ideas of normality—and what it looks like when that concept of normality is utterly betrayed.

I say “project” because DeAngelo et al only adhered to this normative ideal to a degree. After Keyes was arrested, a coworker told the true-crime channel Oxygen that he’d been just a regular guy, “a loving dad, a doting father” who would “come in to work and brag about” his child. But listen, for example, to the True Crime Bullsh** podcast, and you’ll encounter moments when Keyes did or said some off-color thing—innocuous enough to write off prior to his arrest, but that much more sinister in hindsight. After Heuermann’s arrest, a neighbor told CBS News: “We’ve been here for about 30 years, and the guy’s been quiet, never really bothers anybody. We were kind of shocked, to tell you the truth.” Yet, another neighbor told The New York Times he “wasn’t surprised at all—because of all the creepiness.” His house, according to the newspaper, was not a popular stop on the trick-or-treating route on Halloween.

Despite those insights, Heuermann has overwhelmingly been perceived as—in the words of his former high school classmate actor Billy Baldwin—an “average guy… quiet, family man.” Perhaps that is because the familiar elements of Heuermann’s life (the house in Massapequa Park, the family) stand out so starkly against the allegations he is now facing. Beyond that, stories like those prompt us to reflect on the limits of humanity. The monster next door is not a monster—he is, as difficult as it might be to wrap our brains around the idea, a person like us. We look to those markers of normality and see shades of ourselves in them.

It is almost impossible to hold in our brains the idea of Keyes, the regular coworker who would come into work and talk about his kid, and that of a person who would kill multiple people. (The exact number of Keyes’s victims is unknown; three have been confirmed, and authorities have linked him to eight to 11 murders in total). It is a similarly maddening mental exercise to reconcile the idea of Heuermann, a familiar neighbor, and that of the infamous string of crimes he now stands accused of.

This is something I came up against when working on my novel The Quiet Tenant, the story of a seemingly perfect man who is a serial killer, told through three female voices: a captive victim, his teenage daughter, and a love interest who doesn’t know about his crimes. The killer in my story, much like the serial killers of our real lives, is the guy next door, but he also displays a kind of cruelty that eludes most of us. He isn’t a flamboyantly imagined killer like Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter in his—truly excellent—The Silence of the Lambs. He is the guy next door, and he murders women. I couldn’t make sense of the Bundys of the world, the DeAngelos, the Keyeses. The book was an attempt to capture that entire picture in my mind. For the book to be successful, I had to think of serial killers in all the ways they inhabit the world: the lives they take, the loved ones they dupe, the jobs they hold, and the reputations they acquire.

Because the monster next door is a neighbor, so are his victims. In Rex Heuermann’s case, those alleged victims are Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Amber Costello. Heuermann is considered a prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. Together, Waterman, Barthelemy, Costello, and Brainard-Barnes are known as the Gilgo Four. Barthelemy and Costello, like their alleged killer, were from New York State; Waterman had traveled from Maine.

If a killer is the man next door, then the people he is killing are the friends next door, the mothers next door, the daughters next door. Of course, I can’t help but think of Rex Heuermann, and try to make sense of the “life of chaos and control” (as one New York Times headline put it) he seems to have lived. But in my heart, I hold the Gilgo Four.

source https://time.com/6295556/gilgo-beach-serial-killers/

Modern Gender Equality Must Include Men

Gender equality can only happen when women and men are advancing toward that goal together. We call this conscious leadership. Here’s the thing: most men are ready, willing, and already enabling ways to change the equation and close the gender gap. We have seen it in action and we now have the data to prove it.

According to our recent M.A.L.E. (Men’s Attitudes and Learnings on Equality) Report, an online research survey conducted in partnership with Ipsos of more than 500 men in May, 2023:

69% of men say they actively champion women in their day-to-day work.
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64% of men say they believe men and women are equally willing to talk about gender equality.

53% of men believe workplaces across the U.S. should be doing more to eliminate biases in the workplace.

While this is a small sample, it suggests that to create a modern equality guide that works for all, we must be intentional about bringing men and women to the table.

When we make the invisible visible, it becomes clear that gender parity isn’t just a “women’s issue.” It’s a human one. Not only do men care, but they want to be part of the solution. Our research also showed us only 38% of men say they regularly have conversations related to gender equality. So, we decided to get men more engaged.

We recently brought together a diverse group of C-suite men to speak on a range of topics that women don’t often hear executive men talking about – from sharing the care at home to raising the next generation of conscious leaders and even reproductive rights.

We gave them a safe, inclusive space amongst peers where all are welcome, vulnerability is the norm and our mantra is “a woman alone has power and together, we have impact” to discuss what’s on their minds as it relates to gender equality, how their views/attitudes have changed, and what drives them to action. In line with our research findings, these men didn’t hold back. They unpacked each topic – no matter how seemingly taboo – with vulnerability, humility, and an eagerness to shift the narrative. Here’s what we learned:

Fatherhood Makes Men Vulnerable

It’s not just girl dads who care about equality. Despite a certain logic that might have you believe that being a father of daughters would be a critical component for men leaning more into gender equality, our research bore out that becoming a father overall is responsible for this shift.

The executive men discussed how fatherhood unlocked a caregiving spirit within themselves. Kids, they agreed, made them more vulnerable to feeling, to listening, and to caring in ways that they didn’t have as much lived experience with before children. In fact, many of the men agreed that they were taught growing up that these weren’t traditionally “masculine” qualities. This realignment at home, they agreed, often results in a shift in how they lead at work.

The Pandemic Altered Attitudes Toward Care

When it comes to sharing the care at home, the pandemic was the social experiment that no one saw coming, and it had a profound impact on fathers. One CEO shared, “Pre-pandemic I felt I had to be the first one in the office. I missed the first five years of walking my kids to school every day. Post-pandemic there’s no chance I’m not taking them to school. As leaders we have to make it ok and give people the flexibility to do that. You don’t get that time back.”

This was a resounding theme. Although their individual circumstances varied, the men agreed that the pandemic showed them they could – and should – take a more active role in sharing household and caretaking responsibilities.

Showing Up Vs. Speaking Out for Reproductive Rights

Our survey found that 73% of men supported reproductive healthcare as a human right and that jumped up to 83% for fathers. We aren’t suggesting that this one survey is the be all end all on these topics, but perhaps we are on to something as we saw similar outcomes in our live discussions. Which begs the question: where are all the men in the fight for the right to abortion?

Many of the men admitted that their way of showing support was being strong support systems for women in their lives – wives, family members and daughters – who were faced with unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies. Several men admitted they weren’t sure where their place was in the discussion.

Yet, when asked, all the men were eager to be more active, use their platforms to take actions at the polls and advocated that “reproductive rights are human rights.”

Moving forward, it’s important for workplaces to take steps to add more men into the conversation and help men move from good intentions to intentional actions. This could mean creating policies and efforts that grant men equal opportunities to share the care at home (including parental leave and/or more flexibility), normalizing sharing experiences and conversations about gender equality within leadership (especially among men), and encouraging all leaders to start their meetings with a statement of care (whether that’s about care at home, reproductive rights, or their own personal vulnerabilities).

When we have open conversations in the workplace, we bring people closer together. That is what creates a culture of safety, security and belonging. One male leader felt so comfortable that for the first time in a work setting, he shared his invisible disability for the first time. He felt so “liberated” that he committed to leading with vulnerability moving forward.

This is important for everyone – for our daughters, our sons, our partners and our co-workers. Why do we want our children to grow up thinking that only one type of person can be a leader? We can change the culture by tackling seemingly intractable issues like closing the gender gap; when men and women are invited to the table and do it together.

source https://time.com/6295453/modern-gender-equality-must-include-men/

6 Healthy Ways to Deal With Anger

One of the easiest things about experiencing anger is finding a colorful word or phrase to describe it: Steaming. Fuming and fired up and furious. Pissed off. Ready to flip your lid. Livid.

Such an extensive lexicon speaks to the universality of anger, one of the most primitive emotions humans experience—and in some ways one of the most complex. “People don’t like to feel angry, and most people who do feel angry want to get rid of the anger,” says Brad Bushman, a professor of communication at Ohio State University who studies the causes, consequences, and solutions to human aggression and violence. “But it also makes people feel powerful.”
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That can be channeled into a positive force; consider that anger has fueled many social and political movements, Bushman says, from women’s suffrage to Black Lives Matter. The feeling can signal that something we’re experiencing or observing is misaligned with our values or how we want others to treat us or our fellow humans.

Unfortunately, experts say, most of us don’t know how to deal with anger in a healthy way. “It’s the negative emotion that people have the most difficulty regulating,” Bushman notes. “This isn’t something that comes easy. That’s why courts send people to anger-management classes—if it were easy, they wouldn’t have to do that.”

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Anger drives numerous societal problems, Bushman says: It’s one of the largest risk factors for aggressive and violent behavior, including road-rage incidents, domestic violence, and murders. Plus, it can lead to short- and long-term health effects, including heightened inflammation and risk of chronic illness; reduced lung function; chronic pain; digestive problems; and increased depression and anxiety. Anger spikes both blood pressure and heart rate, inflaming heart problems: Research suggests that, in the two hours after feeling angry, a person’s risk of a heart attack jumps nearly fivefold.

We asked Bushman and other experts to share the healthiest ways to cope with—and express—anger.

1. Focus on relaxing instead of venting

There’s a common analogy for anger: It’s like steam accumulating in a pressure cooker. To avoid an explosion, the theory goes, you should blow off some of that steam. But “that’s actually the worst thing you can do,” Bushman says.

When we’re angry, he explains, we’re highly aroused. And “when you vent your anger or blow off steam, you’re just yelling, screaming, kicking, hitting, whatever it is, and it keeps arousal levels high. It’s like using gasoline to put out a fire—it feeds the flame.”

Instead, you should reduce that arousal level. Often, people assume it’s a good idea to go running or work out when they’re angry, but just like yelling, that would heighten arousal. Bushman suggests turning down the heat by practicing deep breathing, meditating, yoga, or progressive muscle relaxation.

2. Take a time out

Tony Fiore has been teaching anger management—with a focus on repairing relationships—for decades. One of the first tips he imparts to his clients: It’s OK to get away from each other. “If you prevent somebody from leaving, they can become like a wild animal,” says Fiore, a psychologist who’s the author of books including Anger Management for the 21st Century. “Sometimes getting away for 10 minutes—or an hour or a couple hours—drastically changes things when you come back.” Use the break to figure out how you’d like to calmly respond, instead of blindly reacting while riled up.

3. Try the 30-30-30 intervention

When you’re particularly fired up, it can be difficult to take a step back and consider how you want to proceed, says Laura Beth Moss, a supervisor with the National Anger Management Association. She suggests employing “the 30-30-30 intervention,” an exercise she co-created years ago. First, she says, take 30 seconds to extract yourself from the situation, perhaps by leaving the room or stepping outside. Then, spend 30 seconds doing something else, like a set of breathing exercises or even planning what you’ll have for dinner; the activity will help take your mind off whatever upset you.

After that, use the final 30 seconds to create a coping statement that will help de-escalate your emotions. Say you’re fuming about how much of a jerk your boss is. “That’s a very escalatory, confrontational thought,” Moss says. “A reframe would be something like, ‘I don’t prefer it when my boss talks to me in a condescending tone. But deep down I know I’m not a product of that relationship.’” You might not like the situation, but with the right perspective, you’ll be able to tolerate it.

4. Keep an anger log

It’s a simple but effective way for those interested in better controlling their emotions to analyze how, when, and why they get ticked off.

Typically, Moss instructs clients to track one anger situation a week—which means writing down what happened and when, how it made them feel, and how they responded. It could be something simple, she notes, like having to wait forever in the grocery-store checkout line, or as serious as personally experiencing some type of discrimination. “We get an opportunity to really look at how anger works in our lives,” Moss says. That presents an opportunity to strategize ways to think about and respond to triggering situations.

5. Use assertive communication

One of the healthiest ways to express anger is to use assertive communication. That means being respectful of yourself and the person you’re talking to, says Julia Baum, a licensed therapist who practices in New York and California. “You’re trying to take care of both of you in this conversation,” she says. “You’re not out for yourself, but you’re also not diminishing your feelings or thoughts and putting the other person ahead of you.”

The goal of assertive communication is to share your feelings, explain to the other person why you feel that way, and let them know what you hope to get out of talking about it together. While you’ve probably heard this advice countless times, it’s helpful to use “I” statements instead of “you” statements, Baum notes: “I felt angry when you said XYZ to me because it felt like you weren’t acknowledging my experience.”

Make it a point to check in with the person you’re talking to about how they’re feeling. Ask them if there’s anything they’re feeling upset with you about, Baum suggests—they might have been rude because they were angry about some earlier encounter that you didn’t clock.

It’s also important to carefully consider the timing of the conversation: You probably aren’t going to be at your communicating best if you’re boiling inside. Hold off until you feel like you can speak clearly and respectfully, Baum advises.

6. Seek professional help

Sometimes, it will be clear that you need help getting your anger under control, Fiore says: A close friend or family member will tell you, or your self-help efforts simply won’t pay off. If you’re deep in the throes of an anger issue, however, it might be harder to assess yourself accurately. Ask yourself these questions: Do you get angry frequently and for hours on end? Do you experience rage that’s disproportionate to the situation? Do you resort to physical responses, like punching the wall?

Anger-management programs—which typically last at least eight weeks—utilize an array of cognitive-behavioral techniques and other exercises to teach people how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way. Fiore’s classes, for example, include lessons on how to increase empathy; the difference between responding and reacting; communication tactics; conflict-resolution skills; and setting reasonable expectations.

Over the past 20 years, Fiore’s students have ranged in age from 18 to 73. “The 73-year-old was one of my best students,” he recalls. “He looked at the 18-year-olds in there and he said, ‘I applaud you for taking anger management. If I had learned it at your age, my life would be different.’”

source https://time.com/6295413/healthy-ways-to-deal-with-anger/

Congress Is Grappling With the Wrong Questions on Ukraine

Last week, Members of Congress took two votes on U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine, and the outcomes were radically different. These votes illustrated something peculiar about the politics of war: while there is considerable room to challenge how humanely war is conducted, it remains politically fraught to work towards ending war itself.

The first vote was a quite tepid proposal led by Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) that would have required the Biden administration to submit a strategy to Congress that included potential diplomatic pathways to facilitate a negotiated settlement to the war. As a mild enforcement mechanism, this proposal conditioned a relatively small percentage of Ukraine aid in the NDAA (amounting to about $300 million) on the administration’s production of such a report. This proposal was soundly rejected, with only 129 Members — all of them Republicans — voting in support.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

By contrast, a separate proposal to restrict the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine secured a surprisingly solid bipartisan vote count. This outcome was particularly notable given last-minute maneuvering from House leadership late Wednesday night that appeared as a blatant attempt to sabotage the proposal’s success. A broad bipartisan proposal to ban cluster munitions anywhere was replaced by a Republican-only measure that banned only transfers to Ukraine and was led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Despite the eleventh hour switcheroo, which almost certainly diminished some support, 49 Democrats and 98 Republicans still joined to support, although the measure fell short of passage.

Opposition to transferring cluster munitions is not a radical position. Those weapons, which are banned in a treaty ratified by over a hundred nations, are notoriously inhumane, not just in the immediate damage they inflict by spewing grenades in a large blast radius. They also leave some percentage of unexploded ordnance for years, for civilians to trip over unawares. The Defense Department initially offered assurances that America’s are new and improved, before its own statements proved how frequently the very grenades we are sending fail to explode immediately.

To be sure, constraining how war is fought is important work and not a diversion. But our political leaders must scrutinize and challenge not just the means and methods of killing, but also the killing itself. When states banned explosive bullets in the nineteenth century, pacifist Russian Leo Tolstoy asked: “Why are a wound and death from an explosive bullet any worse than a wound caused by the simplest kind?”

Many Americans and their elected representatives seem to think reducing brutality in war excuses them from asking more fundamental questions about it. This politics came into its own during America’s war on terror, when the biggest controversies tended to concern not why, where, and for how long our wars were fought, but how detainees were treated or whether drones and missiles killed too many civilians.

This legacy continues in the current era even for those members of Congress who, to their credit, did mobilize during Trump’s presidency to withdraw American support from Saudi Arabia’s bloody war in Yemen. Back then, legislators were not just opposed to this or that weapon, but American connivance with an immoral war itself. They spearheaded a resolution to declare that involvement in violation of our War Powers Resolution of 1973 — one of the last remnants of the Vietnam concern with war itself that has been reduced to tatters. Yet this week, many of those same legislators only went as far as calling for a bit more humanity in the Ukraine war.

Perhaps they are right to do so, of course: unequivocally, Ukraine is not Yemen and the U.S. is neither aiding the aggressor in this case nor capable of unilaterally ending the conflict. As Matt Duss argued at the beginning of the conflict, there is a moral case for assisting Ukraine in its struggle. But it is also clearer than ever that the war increasingly resembles a proxy war. A year later, there is also a moral case for recognizing that the war is as stalemated now as it has been nearly from its earliest days. It is increasingly obvious that a negotiated peace is the only answer, something the humanization of the war does nothing to bring nearer. Indeed, it may function to postpone that peace. President Biden commented the other day that the Ukraine war is likely to be long, assuming current policy continues.

In this perspective, while cluster munitions are vile, the debate around them is highly misleading. The side in favor of using them insists they will radically transform a quagmire into a Ukrainian victory. Those against insist that no calculus should permit certain tactics, even if they might advance a military cause. Neither side is prioritizing a negotiated settlement, and another endless war — however humane — is likely to be the result.

source https://time.com/6295292/u-s-congress-ukraine-cluster-munitions/