COVID vs Flu: Which Is Riskier For Kids?

Healing From PTSD

View this email online Shots Jordan Beal/EyeEm/Getty Images/EyeEm How Lifting Weights Helped Lift One Writer Through Her PTSD When Laura Khoudari, a personal trainer and former competitive weightlifter, experienced a traumatic incident, she went back to the gym and trained as hard as possible, often twice a day. "When I was living with trauma, I was using [training] as a coping skill but in a non-healthy way. I was training all the time like I was preparing for battle because I wanted to be invincible against an invisible threat," Khoudari says. The intense training led to injury, and she started researching how to use weight lifting to help heal trauma instead of avoid it, which she writes about in her book, Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time. The key is how you approach weight training, she says -- uniting your mind and body in the reps, rather than trying to zone out. Read on for more on how mindful movement can help heal trauma. ​​​​​​​ BONUS:  COMIC: How To Intervene If You Witness An Attack Newsletter continues after sponsor message Michele Abercrombie for NPR How COVID Medical Jargon Makes Health Disparities Worse People with limited English skills have long had trouble understanding health information in the U.S. Add a global pandemic with rapidly-changing public health recommendations to the mix, and you have a recipe for confusion and misunderstanding. Often those at highest risk -- immigrant communities, older adults, and others who have cognitive challenges -- are the ones least likely to understand what they need to do to protect themselves. Enter Pooja Chandrashekar, who as a first year student at Harvard Medical School recruited more than 175 multilingual health profession students from around the country to start the COVID-19 Health Literacy Project. It aims to create clear, understandable information about the virus in more than 40 languages. Read on to find out what efforts are underway to clarify public health messages and cut out jargon. BONUS: Hang On. The Painless Vaccine Patch Is Coming d3sign/Getty Images Are Kids More Likely To Get Seriously Ill From COVID Or The Flu? If you’re a parent, you worry. And this year, there’s been a lot to worry about. But when it comes to COVID-19 and young children, it turns out their risk of getting seriously ill is extremely low. For children, the risk of serious consequences from COVID-19 is the same magnitude as the risk they face from serious illness from the flu, experts say, although parents seem more worried about COVID, especially since the latest federal guidelines allow more adults to go maskless.   While the risks are not zero, "If you stop going into stores because you're terrified you'll run into an unmasked person, that's probably overreacting," says Gretchen Chapman, a psychology professor who studies health conundrums like this at Carnegie Mellon University. Read on for more perspective on COVID risk and kids. BONUS: Is it safe to date again if you're vaccinated? Many are still hesitant. More of this week's health stories from NPR Sleepless Man Gets A $10,000 Bill For Apnea Test How Do You Prove You Got Your Shots So You Can Travel Again? Employers Can (Mostly) Mandate COVID Vaccines For Employees Returning To Work We hope you enjoyed these stories. Find more of NPR's health journalism on Shots and follow us on Twitter at @NPRHealth. All best, Your Shots editors Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WBEZ (edit station). What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: shots@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Goats & Soda, Daily News, Best of NPR and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Health emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy