Health Journal Online

Tag: Bad

  • Anti-Vaxx Mom Whose Daughter Died From Measles Says Disease ‘Wasn’t That Bad’

    Anti-Vaxx Mom Whose Daughter Died From Measles Says Disease ‘Wasn’t That Bad’

    The parents of an unvaccinated Texas child who died from measles appeared in a video formulated by an anti-vaccine advocacy group where they railed against vaccines, even saying the disease “wasn’t that bad.’

    A 6-year-old Texan died after contracting measles last month, marking the first death of a child in the U.S. caused by the highly contagious illness in nearly a decade.

    Following her death, the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense met with the child’s parents, whose four other children also suffered from milder cases of the same illness, as reported by Mother Jones.

    During the interview, the young couple doubled down on their decision not to vaccinate their child even after her death. Hailing from the Mennonite community, they argued that if measles patients had access to untested treatments, the MMR vaccines would be entirely unnecessary.

    “We spent the morning at Dr. Ben Edwards’ clinic, and the parents are all still sitting there saying they would rather have this than the MMR vaccination because they’ve seen so much injury, which we have as well,” journalist Polly Tommey said while interviewing the couple. “Do you still feel the same way about the MMR vaccine versus measles and the proper treatment with Dr. Ben Edwards?”

    “Absolutely [do] not take the MMR [vaccine],” said the mother. “The measles wasn’t that bad. [The other children] got over it pretty quickly. And Dr. Edwards was there for us.”

    The parents described the symptoms of the illness their child exhibited, beginning with a fever, respiratory symptoms and the notorious rash that often accompanies it. However, days after contracting the illness, the child’s fever continued and respiratory symptoms worsened as she began struggling to breathe.

    The girl’s parents took her to a hospital emergency room where she was admitted and diagnosed with pneumonia. After being placed on a ventilator in the Intensive Care Unit, the child passed away.

    The measles outbreak in Texas has spurred many public and political figures to take to their platforms and encourage residents to get vaccinated and vaccinate their children. This includes Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who previously promoted anti-vaccine views.

    RFK Jr. published an op-ed in Fox Digital earlier this month acknowledging that the decision to vaccinate is a “personal one”, but encouraging people to vaccinate to mitigate the spread of the disease regardless.

    “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” he wrote earlier this month.

    Originally published by Latin Times.

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  • Want To Dismiss Bad Memories? Never Skip A Good Night’s Sleep

    Want To Dismiss Bad Memories? Never Skip A Good Night’s Sleep

    Do you struggle to keep bad memories from resurfacing, no matter how hard you try to push them away? Well, a simple solution could be to get enough sleep.

    Sleep deprivation could be the culprit behind your mind’s inability to lock away unwanted memories, according to a recent study published in the journal Psychology and Cognitive Sciences.

    “Sleep problems and intrusive memories play an important role in the onset and maintenance of many mental health disorders. Here, we show that depriving healthy participants of sleep disrupts their ability to keep intrusive memories at bay,” the researchers wrote in the study.

    The researchers examined how sleep affects the ability to control bad memories by monitoring the brain activity of 85 healthy participants who either got a full night of sleep or stayed awake. During the trial, participants were shown faces linked to emotionally charged images, like car crashes or fights, and asked to either recall or suppress the memories connected to them.

    The results revealed that those who were well-rested showed more brain activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for managing thoughts and emotions when trying to suppress negative memories. On the other hand, the sleep-deprived participants had less brain activity in this area, making it harder for them to control intrusive thoughts. The well-rested group also had reduced activity in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, suggesting they were better at shutting down unwanted memories.

    “These findings offer fresh insight into our understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the link between poor sleep and mental illness and could support the development of novel treatment and prevention strategies,” the researchers wrote.

    Here are some tips to have good sleep:

    Have a Sleep Schedule: Make a regular sleep routine by going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, even on weekends. Having a consistent sleep schedule helps synchronize your body’s natural sleep-wake cycle, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up feeling refreshed.

    Watch What You Eat and Drink: What you consume can impact your sleep. Avoid heavy meals late at night, and limit caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine, especially in the hours before bed, as they can disrupt your sleep.

    Have a Healthy Lifestyle: Keeping stress in check and staying active throughout the day can work wonders for your sleep. A regular exercise routine as well as minimizing long naps during the day, can help you get the quality rest you need each night.

    Make a Restful Environment: Your surroundings play a huge role in how well you sleep. Control the light, noise, and temperature in your bedroom to create a peaceful atmosphere. Also, try cutting back on screen time, particularly before bed can help you improve sleep.

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  • Pregnant Woman And Baby Saved After Doctors Identify Her Bad Cough, Breathlessness Was Rare Tumor In Chest

    Pregnant Woman And Baby Saved After Doctors Identify Her Bad Cough, Breathlessness Was Rare Tumor In Chest

    MaKenna Lauterbach from Illinois was 36 weeks pregnant when she received the shocking diagnosis of a large tumor in her chest, revealing the real cause of the persistent cough and breathlessness during her pregnancy. The 26-year-old, who was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma, is now stable and recovering, along with her healthy baby, thanks to the timely intervention and coordinated efforts of a dedicated team of doctors.

    When Lauterbach experienced a bad cough while she was expecting, she knew something was wrong. Simple tasks, like walking to the barn to feed her horses, left her unusually winded, as if she had just run two miles. However, doctors were initially hesitant to perform chest scans due to concerns about radiation exposure.

    When Lauterbach was almost due, the cough worsened to the extent that she started throwing up and had to be hospitalized for shortness of breath. The scans then revealed a grapefruit-sized tumor in her chest, blocking the artery to her right lung.

    By the time Lauterbach received the diagnosis, she was in respiratory distress, the tumor obstructing her airway, putting both her life and her baby’s at risk.

    After being airlifted to the intensive care unit at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, her condition worsened, she went into labor, her blood pressure spiked, and the baby began showing signs of distress during contractions.

    “Lauterbach was in real trouble, and we had to act quickly – this wasn’t something that could wait for Monday morning. When you’re pregnant with a baby that’s nearly full-term, your lungs already aren’t functioning at full capacity, and when you add a huge tumor on top of it, you run the risk of having respiratory collapse and cardiac arrest,” said Dr. Lynn Yee, maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine in a news release.

    Doctors quickly prepared Lauterbach for extracorporeal life support (ECMO) and performed an emergency C-section, successfully delivering a healthy baby boy.

    “Because of the tumor, the delivery happened so quickly. I was grieving the birth plan I had spent months preparing for, while also dealing with the news of my unexpected diagnosis,” Lauterbach said.

    While her newborn remained in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, doctors performed an advanced bronchoscopy on Lauterbach. The procedure revealed that her tumor was stage 3 melanoma, prompting the medical team to immediately begin developing a treatment plan.

    “Lauterbach’s diagnosis was difficult to make because we weren’t sure if the melanoma started in the chest or somewhere else, and there isn’t much literature or published cases on how to best treat tumors like these, so we had to rely on the expertise that we’ve developed here at Northwestern Medicine,” said Dr. Kalvin Lung, a thoracic surgeon with the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute.

    The medical team decided on surgery to remove the tumor. Before the procedure, Lauterbach was given three cycles of immunotherapy which helped shrink the tumor from 13 centimeters to nine centimeters.

    “We think at some point, Lauterbach had a melanoma on her skin and her own immune system took care of it, but not before a cell or two may have escaped and eventually started growing inside her body,” explained Dr. Sunandana Chandra, medical oncologist with the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

    During the surgery, doctors had to remove her right lung parts of the main pulmonary artery, and lymph nodes. “The tumor was sitting on top of Lauterbach’s heart and extended into the right lung, impacting all three lobes and the entire main trunk of the pulmonary artery, which is why we had to remove the right lung,” said Dr. Lung who conducted the surgery along with Dr. Chris Mehta, a cardiac surgeon with the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute.

    “It’s extremely rare to see this type of tumor invading into the major blood vessels of the heart. We may see something like this once every few years,” Dr. Mehta added.

    Lauterbach’s latest scans show no evidence of metastatic melanoma, and while her cancer remains stable with no new tumors, she will continue immunotherapy treatments for the next year.

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