Author: Alerts CC

A mild flu season is leading many people to forego their annual vaccination shot, but public health officials are still urging people all over the world to protect themselves.

According to the Calgary Herald, influenza experts are taking advantage of the flu season’s slow start to remind people that transmission of the disease usually peaks in mid-January.

“We’re reminding people now to get their flu shots because it takes about two weeks for immunity to build to the flu shot when you do get it,” said Jason Chan-Remillard, manager of a Canadian pharmacy.

“So we kind of want to be ahead of the game, getting our flu shots just before that spike in the flu season hits,” he continued.

Only 99 cases of the flu were reported in Calgary from Aug. 30 to Dec. 26. This marks a drastic decrease from last year, when 1,400 cases were reported during that same period of time.

The Provincial Laboratory for Public Health noted that the number of flu cases typically reaches its peak during the third week of January each year. Despite the unseasonably mild weather, experts still expect this trend to hold strong.

“You don’t really think of the flu when it’s warm outside, and I think that’s led people into thinking they don’t need a flu shot this year,” Chan-Remillard added.

About one in three people still go to work after falling ill, and protecting employees during flu season is a major point of emphasis for many employers.

This year’s slow start may have some feeling safe, but American health officials are joining Canadian experts in their effort to convince more people to get a flu shot.

According to the San Diego Tribune, San Diego has experienced a 37% drop in confirmed flu cases this season compared to last year. However, with three influenza-related deaths already tallied, health officials aren’t taking any chances.

“You can feel that this year’s season is more mild than last year’s, but it’s still early. We just don’t know yet how it’s going to go next month and the month after that. People should realize that the flu is very unpredictable from season to season,” said Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer.

Health officials are also taking this time to dispel the myth that vaccines can actually give recipients influenza.

While no vaccine is 100% effective, numerous studies have shown that the severity of an illness can be reduced with immunization.

Air travel is an already infamously unpleasant experience, and some airlines will soon offer an even more terrible way to fly. American Airlines and Delta Airlines are now offering what USA Today describes as a “fourth class of service.”

In 2016, American Airlines will begin selling “no frills” tickets, an equivalent of the “basic” tickets Delta already offers. The name for this new airborne experience is “last class.”

Both operate similarly to the way low-cost airlines like Spirit and Frontier do, offering “no changes, refunds, upgrades, or advance seat reservations,” so if something goes wrong with your travel plans, customer service isn’t going to be much help.

“The airlines used to brag about flying the friendly skies,” consumer advocacy group FlyersRights.org’s Kendall Creighton told USA Today. “But that happy slogan has been corrupted into flying the abusive skies.”

Perhaps worst of all, these last class flyers are also placed in seats that have even less space in between them than ever before, an age old problem that’s been made even worse.

Previous research has found that 41% of airline passengers said adding more legroom would be the biggest improvement that airlines could make. A TripAdvisor poll from earlier this year found that uncomfortable seats and limited legroom were the most hated parts of traveling, as 77% of poll participants stated.

In other words, rather than improving, airlines have made things worse in an effort to compete with low-cost airlines.

“Last class exists because the airlines are a business,” Phil Derner, Jr., founder of the industry news site NYCAviation, told USA Today. “The airlines that really need to meet their bottom line in a big way are going to push the limits of what they can get away with, and those particular airlines do so because their passengers allow it by patronizing them.”

New York City is undergoing an affordable housing crisis, and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recently announced plan to alleviate that crisis is being condemned by residents on all sides of the political divide.

The affordable housing program, if approved, would go into effect over the next decade. In total, the mayor wants to create and maintain 200,000 affordable housing units for working class residents already being pushed out of a gentrifying city.

Critics, however, say that the plan offers too little, too late to address the city’s rapidly rising rents and housing prices, while offering too many concessions to developers interested in developing luxury housing.

To reach the 200,000-unit goal, the city is easing some restrictions on developers under the condition that they set aside a portion of their units for affordable housing, according to Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development and the mayor’s point person on the housing project.

“We are in a true housing crisis, and we can’t just sit by and do nothing as market pressures change the city,” she said.

Of course, most critics agree that the de Blasio administration is about 10 years too late. While the recession and mortgage crisis rocked real estate prices nationwide, New York City was immune to this effect, instead seeing some of the highest prices in the country.

Most experts define affordable rental housing as housing that costs 30% of less of a household’s income. For families looking to buy, Ellie Mae data reveals that successful mortgage borrowers have a debt-to-income ratio of about 24%, on average.

In 2016, New Yorkers are expected to pay up to 65.4% of their income just to afford the median rent, and that’s up from 58.7% in 2015. For the vast majority of New York residents, the median home price is completely out of reach.

Meanwhile, de Blasio also announced a new effort to address the city’s growing homeless population by creating Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement Street Action Teams. Homeless researchers agree that a scarcity of affordable and low-income housing creates homeless populations, and the city has thousands of homeless residents on the streets, not counting the thousands more living in shelters.

The homeless action teams will track the chronically homeless and perform outreach; the mayor hopes to have the teams active by next March.

A new headline from Vice News shouts, “Biodegradable Plastic Is Bullsh*t.”

Biodegradable plastics have been around for decades, and they were originally hailed as a breakthrough development for nascent recycling and marine environmental movements.

But almost as soon as biodegradable plastic came on the market, it became a source of controversy. In one 16-month period in the early 1990s, more than 48 legal actions were taken for false advertising related to biodegradeable plastics, which weren’t so much biodegradable as they were compostable — sort of.

The American Society for Testing and Materials developed new standards for advertising these materials more honestly. In 2011, even those standards were withdrawn after certain manufacturers took advantage of the new rules.

A new report from the United Nations Environmental Programme explains why biodegradable plastics have failed to live up to their name. Many of these so-called green plastics can be broken down, but only if they are placed in a composter that is then heated to 122 degrees Fahrenheit for a prolonged period of time. The UN report looked at how biodegradable and compostable plastics react in the ocean, and determined those compostable conditions are “rarely if ever met in the marine environment.”

Even worse, biodegradable plastics cause problems for recycling programs that have been proven to work. Plastic containers and packaging make up 39.9% of the material recycled by consumers, the largest category of recycled goods. But consumers are ironically less likely to recycle biodegradable plastics, and even if they do, those materials can cause major problems for recycling plants.

“The real bottom line is that biodegradable plastics aren’t going to be a solution for reducing the impact of marine litter,” said Peter Kershaw, the report’s author. “When you see ‘biodegradable’ on a plastic bag, for example, does that mean if you drop it in the streets, it’s just going to disappear? No, it doesn’t.”

Ultimately, the UN report concluded that biodegradable plastics could do more harm than good. For consumers looking to keep plastics out of the ocean, the prescription remains the same as it ever was: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Have you ever had a brilliant idea for an app? Now, it’s as easy as sending your blueprints over to Gigster and receiving the completed app. No coding is necessary, nor is seeking out a team of software developers.

This is big news for the software development industry. So big, that Andreessen Horowitz, the $4 billion venture capital firm, is investing $10 million Series A for the company, despite its relatively recent launch.

Andreessen Horowitz was astounded by the 18-week-old company’s AI engine, which converts clients’ application proposals into a plan that includes the price of development based on the product proposal. From there, the artificial intelligence engine sends the plan to Gigster’s team of remote engineers and software developers, providing them with pre-made code blocks that will help them build the applications.

In the perspective of Andreessen Horowitz, Gigster’s capabilities are a prime example of the current state of software development, how “software is eating the world,” and fitting Marc Andreessen’s partner Chris Dixon’s thoughts regarding “software eating software development.”

So far, Gigster has over 50 projects in the works, including a dating app for Muslim millennials and an app that helps individuals in the developing world buy electricity.

“The turn-key service model — no one is doing it exactly like we are. Gigster democratizes software development,” said co-founder and CEO Roger Dickey in an interview with Tech Crunch.

Gigster was founded in 2014 by Dickey and co-founder and CTO Debo Olaosebikan. After leaving Zynga and trying to prototype his own apps, he realized how difficult it was to recruit software developing freelancers.

Software developers are coding professionals who create web functionality tools, operating systems, video games, and more.

As a developer himself, Dickey sought to create a solution that would help to take the difficulties out of app innovation. From there, Gigster was born.

After the first 18 weeks of running, Gigster already has $1 million in sales booked, and now seeks to expand its business from smaller clients to larger enterprises.

While many people look forward to the holidays for spending time with family and the overall festive fun it brings, it is also one of the most stressful times of year overall. Dr. Nancy Babbitt from the Creekside Medical Clinic says that tension and stress may be best relieved with a nice massage.

“Massage is generally considered to be part of the world of complementary and alternative medicine, but more and more there are studies showing many medical benefits to massage therapy,” Babbitt told Rapid City, SD, Fox affiliate KEVN. “Especially in the area of reducing stress, reducing musculoskeletal pain, and reducing muscle tension. One of the most common reasons why I refer patients for massage therapy is for tension headaches.”

Babbitt says those tension headaches usually start in the shoulder or neck and work their way up until they sit right behind the eyes to cause the headache. While they can be caused due to poor neck posture at night, they are also caused when someone is stressed for long periods of time, causing them to hunch up their shoulders.

About 92% of consumers responding to a survey agreed that massages are effective in reducing pain, which Babbitt concurred.

“Massage therapy works very well and a good massage therapist will know how to find and use the right amount of pressure treating the area of the neck and shoulder strain,” she said. “They do have to go through special licensing and be certified. And it’s important to make sure that your massage therapist is certified.”

Massages usually last for 30 to 60 minutes, usually following a medical questionnaire with a licensed massage therapist. They feature quiet and relaxing environments, and many aspects of a massage can be tailored to fit the consumer’s comfort level.

Recent studies have found that massage therapy is useful beyond just typical relaxation as well. In fact, it is often used as a preventative treatment for ailments or a rehabilitative treatment for injury.

Reliance on painkillers for back pain, for example, is proven to be reduced by 36% of more, and massages are more effective than both spinal modification and acupuncture. The therapy may also be used to manage headaches, promote better sleep, decrease instances of depression and anxiety, and decrease swelling in problem areas.

Overall, studies in recent years have proven the efficacy of massage therapy in those suffering from chronic pain, and those who simply lead an active lifestyle.

It’s a common belief that if a woman has had a miscarriage and is trying to conceive again, the hormone progesterone may assist. However, new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that progesterone may actually have the opposite effect.

Progesterone is essential for achieving and maintaining a pregnancy and is naturally found in the ovaries and placenta, so researchers had always assumed that increasing the levels of progesterone in a woman’s body would boost her chances of becoming pregnant.

As reported by Latinos Health and Live Science, researchers from the University of Birmingham in England conducted a study on 826 women to see if progesterone had any effect on their ability to conceive.

The researchers tested women ages 18 through 39, all of whom had experienced at least one unexplained miscarriage in the past and who were actively trying to conceive again. The researchers provided the women with either a 400 mg vaginal progesterone supplement, or with a placebo supplement. If a subject was able to conceive, the supplement was still provided up until the 12th week of pregnancy.

When the study concluded, researchers found that 65.8% of women with the progesterone supplement had successfully given birth, and 63.3% of women who had been given the placebo had successfully given birth as well.

In other words, there was only a very slight difference in the likelihood of maintaining a healthy pregnancy with extra progesterone, and this small discrepancy is not enough to conclude that progesterone possesses a significant advantage for women who are trying to conceive.

While extra progesterone can’t hurt a woman, it seems that this may not be a worthwhile investment for any women who are hoping to get pregnant.

In the U.S. today, it’s estimated that around 6.7 million women have an impaired ability to become pregnant or to maintain a healthy pregnancy, and only two in every five women who are hoping to have a baby will have been able to do so by age 40.

Insomnia and sleep deprivation can be serious conditions that affect a great deal of people. In the U.K. about a third of the population has trouble sleeping, according to Huffingtonpost.co.uk.

But sleep deprivation is more than just missing out on a couple extra hours of beauty sleep. A recent TED-Ed video made by Claudia Aguirre delves into just what happens when the human body doesn’t get any sleep at all, as reported by The Huffington Post as well as Motherboard.vice.com.

Aguirre’s video tells the tale of a 17-year-old high school student named Randy Gardner. In 1964, in an event that actually happened, Gardner stayed awake for 264.4 hours (about 11 days) as an experiment for a science fair project. The experiment was even observed by Dr. William Dement, a Stanford sleep researcher.

The results after the first couple of days were what most would expect: inability to focus, identify objects by touch, poor motor skills, short term memory loss, and irritability. At the end of the experiment, Gardner reported having hallucinations, feelings of paranoia, and an overall lack of concentration to perform simple tasks.

Gardner eventually recovered from the experiment, but the long-term effects sleep deprivation can have to the body don’t stop there. Sleep deprivation can cause hormonal imbalance, illness, high blood pressure, and in some extreme cases even death, according to the TED-Ed video.

The body is able to repair DNA, relax muscles, and stabilize metabolic processes during sleep. One of the most important unseen functions that occurs is the lymphatic system’s clean up of metabolic byproducts like adenosine, which tell the brain to sleep and are partly to blame for the resulting symptoms of sleep deprivation. Sleeping is like the brain’s reset button to get rid of all the clutter.

Sleep apnea is one condition that can greatly inhibit a person’s ability to get restful sleep, and untreated sleep apnea sufferers are three times as likely to have heart disease. Other negative consequences can include an increased risk of obesity and diabetes.

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, an average adult should get between seven and eight hours of sleep every night. Do yourself and your brain a favor — don’t be like Randy Gardner and get adequate sleep tonight and henceforth.

You may have some regrettable memories from your high school Senior Skip Day, but on Oct. 8, senior citizens will be skipping their way to better health in national parks across the country, and there’s nothing regrettable about that.

According to Time, health insurance company Humana has extended an open invitation to seniors ages 62 and up to enter any national park of their choice on Oct. 8, free of charge, in an effort to promote a more active lifestyle among those in their golden years.

Humana decided to sponsor “Senior (Citizen) Skip Day” to celebrate the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary, though it’s also part of a larger campaign to encourage more people to enjoy the many benefits of their local national park.

National Park Foundation President and CEO Will Shafroth said in a statement that the campaign is “creating opportunities for people to see how parks and healthy living go hand in hand, underscoring how parks are relevant to their lives.”

The program is particularly beneficial for seniors, who often don’t get as much exercise as health professionals recommend.

According to the National Institute on Aging, just over half of adults ages 65 and older are inactive. They know exercise is important, but have a hard time staying on track with a regular workout schedule.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that you should get at least two hours and thirty minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity per week if you’re 65 or older. They also recommend muscle training twice per week.

In addition to Senior Skip Day, Humana is also offering senior citizens a free app called Charity Miles. The health insurance company will track distance walked by senior citizens using the app and donate 25 cents to the National Park Foundation for every mile completed.

A lifetime pass to all national parks is only $10, but using the Charity Miles app and taking advantage of Senior (Citizen) Skip Day is helping more people to get involved with their local park.