All posts tagged: blood pressure

Best blood pressure monitors for at-home use

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Best for: atrial fibrillation monitoring The Omron M7 Intelli IT blood pressure monitor is a game-changer for people who want to keep an eye on undetected atrial fibrillation, as well as their blood pressure. With its near-accurate AFib detection function, you can easily keep an eye on any changes to your heart health.  In AFib mode, the device takes three blood pressure readings and calculates the average, providing a realistic picture of your morning and evening blood pressure trends over time. If irregular heartbeats are detected on multiple occasions, the AFib indicator flashes up, alerting you to a potential finding – though, of course, it’s not a clinical diagnosis, so you’ll need to then consult your doctor.  Like other previous Omron models, the M7 Intelli IT can automatically transfer blood pressure readings to your smartphone via Bluetooth, allowing users to track their progress over time using the Omron Connect app. You can even integrate it with Alexa for easy access to your latest blood pressure readings. Our only gripe with this product is the …

How to Know Your Frenemy

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. There are many different kinds of friends. Aristotle distinguished among friendships based on utility, pleasure, and virtue. Michel de Montaigne wrote about true friendship, which “grows up, is nourished and improved by enjoyment, as being of itself spiritual, and the soul growing still more refined by its practice.” In this column, I have written about the difference between real friends and deal friends. And then there is the frenemy. This portmanteau of friend and enemy first appeared as long ago as the late 19th century. It signifies a discordant relationship in which someone appears to be your friend or has a superficially friendly demeanor toward you but behaves in ways that real friends wouldn’t and shouldn’t. Perhaps the frenemy undermines you, manipulates your feelings, gaslights you, or says mean things about you behind your back. Identifying frenemies isn’t always easy, because the behavior can be designed to go undetected, or perhaps to be so …

The Psychic Toll of a Second Trump Term

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] There were times, during the first two years of the Biden presidency, when I came close to forgetting about it all: the taunts and the provocations; the incitements and the resentments; the disorchestrated reasoning; the verbal incontinence; the press conferences fueled by megalomania, vengeance, and a soupçon of hydroxychloroquine. I forgot, almost, that we’d had a man in the White House who governed by tweet. I forgot that the news cycle had shrunk down to microseconds. I forgot, even, that we’d had a president with a personality so disordered and a mind so dysregulated (this being a central irony, that our nation’s top executive had zero executive function) that the generals around him had to choose between carrying out presidential orders and upholding the Constitution. Explore the January/February 2024 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More I forgot, in short, that I’d spent nearly five years scanning the veldt for threats, indulging in the most neurotic form of magical thinking, convinced that my monitoring of …

Mom Feet Is a Baffling Pregnancy Surprise

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] One night in July, a few weeks after my son was born, I lay awake, desperately scrolling through photos of injured feet. The mounting pain from an ingrown toenail in my right foot had become excruciating, and the internet promised to help. I could no longer deny the fact that the exorbitantly expensive Hoka sneakers I’d bought just months before—to prevent pregnancy-related foot pain—had become too small. To my horror, my feet had grown half a size. Permanently. Pregnancy books had informed me about the less rosy aspects of new motherhood, such as shedding hair (the baby’s and mine) and uncontrollable crying (the baby’s and mine). I was even prepared for my feet to temporarily swell through the trimesters. But no one told me they might stay that way. Unlike the rest of my body, my feet did not revert to their original size 9.5 after birth. Five months later, I am now the disgruntled guardian of a large infant—and even larger feet. Mom Feet is not a niche condition. Studies have found that …

Lessons From 15 Years as a Stay-at-Home Dad

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] When I first became a stay-at-home dad, 15 years ago, people didn’t know how to categorize me: I was called a babysitter, “that guy at story time,” and even a woman a couple of times by shirttail relatives and friends. Their words were patronizing and unnecessarily feminizing, but they didn’t diminish my love of being a father. Over time, I raised three kids while my wife advanced in the advertising world. She negotiated contracts; I negotiated naptime. She worked hard to bring in new clients; I worked hard to raise our children. The division of labor has benefited our individual strengths: We both agree that I’m more patient while she is more business-savvy. Yet, after all this time, many people still can’t compute that I’m my kids’ primary caregiver. Several years ago, as I was fetching my youngest child from preschool, a kid asked the teacher why my son was always picked up by his father; the teacher explained that I was a “daddy-mommy.” As I wrote this article, I learned that I’d missed …

The Obesity-Drug Era Starts Now

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] A wild idea recently circulated about the future of aviation: If passengers lose weight via obesity drugs, airlines could potentially cut down on fuel costs. In September, analysts at Jefferies Bank estimated that in the “slimmer society” obesity drugs will create, United Airlines could save up to $80 million in jet fuel annually. In the past year, as more Americans have learned about semaglutide, which is sold for diabetes under the brand name Ozempic and for obesity under the name Wegovy, hype has become completely divorced from reality. For all the grand predictions, just a fraction of Americans who qualify for obesity drugs are on them. With a list price of roughly $1,350 a month, Wegovy is far too expensive, under-covered by insurance, and in limited supply to be a routine part of health care. But that possibility is beginning to seem very real. The results of a highly anticipated study published on Saturday indicate that Wegovy can have profound effects on heart health, which potentially opens up the drug to even more patients. …