Latest news with #Yale School of Medicine
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'Attention rehab videos' are going viral. See why.
Do you find yourself daydreaming during office meetings? Feeling a constant urge to click or scroll? Can't stay still during a conversation? You may need attention span rehab. Los Angeles-based artist Lizi Phoenix is going viral on TikTok for her calming drawing series, where she guides viewers through soothing art exercises as a means of boosting their attention span. On a platform dominated by quick-hit content, Phoenix's videos, which are sometimes upwards of eight minutes, break the mold — and are helping viewers end the cycle of doom scrolling. 'This evening we'll be doing another watercolor Zentangle painting,' Phoenix starts as she flips through a notebook filled with twisting paintings of hearts, stars, swirls and diamonds before settling on a soft turquoise color for her new page. 'This is going to be a nice soothing video for you to chill out to and get lost in the zone for a little bit.' Child psychiatrist and Yale School of Medicine professor Yann Poncin says the videos are resonating because they provide a respite from short-burst content. 'The algorithm is created in a way that it does feed you novel information, and that novelty is what keeps you there,' Poncin says. 'Her TikTok site… is getting away from that and having a slower process.' College kids are swearing off smartphone It's sparking a movement Why our attention spans are shrinking As our lives and workplaces become more tied to digital devices, our attention spans are shrinking. This is most extreme in people under 30, who are the largest demographic of social media users. Nearly half of teens say they're online constantly, according to 2024 data from the Pew Research Center, and 72% of teens say they sometimes or frequently check their notifications as soon as they wake up. Technology allows for constant avenues of distraction and interruption during everyday tasks, whether it's a text message pinging your GPS's bluetooth configuration while driving or getting pulled away by Slack and Microsoft Teams messages during a task. The increasingly common habit of second screening — like texting or browsing social media while watching a TV show — further fragments the attention span. While multitasking might feel beneficial, doing multiple tasks at once can send the brain into cognitive overload. 'I'm someone who has lots of tabs open in my mind all the time, which is helpful, but it can be really, really draining,' Phoenix says. 'I see the zentangles as a moment where I'm able to recharge. Smartphone addiction is heavily tied to social media algorithms that feed curated content to users, but can also be impacted by color saturation, notifications and refresh screens. Over time, technology addiction rewires the brain to expect higher dopamine, depleting the brain's cognitive patience and threshold for tolerating frustration in the process. 'If we over expose ourselves to these sort of easy dopamine hits, cheap dopamine hits when we're younger, then we're resetting our homeostasis where we can only feel good by having access to these items,' Poncin says. Phoenix wants her videos to be a reset that helps people 'snap out of that dopamine chase.' 'I had no idea this was 8 minutes long. I watched the entire thing and thought it was three minutes at most,' one person commented under a video of olive green heart tracings. 'This video was like a nap for my brain,' said another. How to improve focus: Try these 5 tips to increase attention span How to DIY your own attention span rehab Poncin says training the brain to be able to relax is an important part of regulating attention span. He suggests limiting smartphone distraction throughout the day in small interventions, like leaving your phone at your desk instead of bringing it on your bathroom break or watching a full TV episode without checking your notifications. 'I always say that being present is just as beneficial as being productive,' Phoenix says. 'When you're doom scrolling, you're not actually resting, because there's so many emotions that pop up with every single different video.' For those who want to try their own attention span rehab, Phoenix says the first step is carving out intentional time to take a break and setting up a conducive environment. She likes to draw while listening to a podcast or audio book — she's currently fixated on Nora Ephron — with a hot latte nearby. 'I kind of envision a bubble around myself, and while I'm zentangling, this is my safe space to work,' Phoenix says. She says to set an intention, whether that's a thought to focus on or an amount of time to draw for. Then, she hits 'do not disturb' on her phone and concentrates on the methodological nature of the drawings. 'It just does force everything to fall away, because I need to focus on the specific moment, the specific curve I'm making,' Phoenix says. 'Rachel Hale's role covering Youth Mental Health at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Reach her at rhale@ and @rachelleighhale on X. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Her attention span rehab zentangle drawings are going viral on TikTok Solve the daily Crossword
Medscape
14-07-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Are Americans Toking Themselves Sick?
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Welcome to Impact Factor , your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I'm Dr F. Perry Wilson from the Yale School of Medicine. Whenever you see a headline that says something is 'on the rise,' there are basically two possibilities. One, the thing is actually on the rise — like pickleball. The other possibility is that we're capturing the information differently nowadays. Either we are getting better at measuring something that has always been common (autism spectrum disorder may fall in this category, at least for part of the observed increase) or we are measuring something worse with more false positives driving up the observed rate, like UFO sightings. Ubiquitous phone cameras mean every little bit of swamp gas from a weather balloon trapped in a thermal pocket and reflecting the light from Venus gets recorded. It's the job of epidemiologists to figure out what is driving observed changes in our health, and this week I want to share some data that show that the rate of a specific cannabis-associated problem is not just on the rise; it is absolutely skyrocketing. Let's see if we can figure out why. I'm talking about cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), a once-rare condition characterized by cyclic episodes of what can be intractable vomiting. The exact physiology of CHS is still being worked out, but it probably has something to do with chronic exposure downregulating cannabinoid receptors in the gut, leading to decreased gut motility. Regardless of how exactly this works, the numbers suggest it is becoming dramatically more common — at least among adolescents, as highlighted in this research letter appearing in JAMA Network Open. Researchers interrogated the Pediatric Health Information System database which collates data from 52 free-standing children's hospitals around the United States. They were looking for adolescents admitted to the emergency department (ED) with diagnostic codes consistent with CHS, typically a chief complaint of nausea and vomiting, and at least a second diagnostic code indicating a 'cannabis-related concern.' These could be things like cannabis abuse or dependence. The time frame of interest was 2016 to 2023. Let's just take a look at the raw numbers. To give you some perspective, in 2006, there were 6.8 ED visits for CHS per 1 million population. In 2016, the start of this study, that number had jumped to 160.4, a more than 23-fold increase over a decade. These rates increased around 40% per year through 2023. The most recent data showed around 2000 visits for CHS per million population; that's a 30,000% increase in less than 20 years. Crazy numbers. But… are they real? Remember, when we see the rate of anything going up, we need to make sure we're not measuring it differently. And I certainly have some concern here that we are potentially unmasking a problem that has been there all along but not well documented until recently. Adolescents show up in the ED all the time for nausea and vomiting. The AHRQ publishes some of these data. For example, in 2018 there were nearly 800,000 visits for nausea and vomiting among those under age 18 — about 2.5% of all ED visits. The question is, how many of those had CHS? The study we're discussing this week would call it CHS if, in addition to the nausea and vomiting, they had a secondary code for a cannabis-related issue. I have no doubt that we use those codes more frequently now. For one thing, the broad-scale decriminalization and legalization of marijuana has removed much of the stigma that existed in the early 2000s. Doctors might be less worried about 'outing' these kids nowadays. Another possibility is that knowledge about CHS is spreading; with more marijuana use, doctors are getting more sensitive to the diagnosis. So perhaps some of those things we used to call a 'stomach bug' now get appropriately diagnosed as CHS. The converse could also be true. Since we're more comfortable adding cannabis-associated diagnosis codes now than we used to be in the past, we may currently be misclassifying people with nausea from another cause as CHS. Just because someone has cannabis use disorder or cannabis dependence doesn't mean they are not allowed to get norovirus. Of course, the other possibility is that there is a lot more marijuana use going on and with that, more CHS. The authors hypothesized that, if that were the case, we might see a more dramatic rise in states that have legalized recreational marijuana use. This is where the data get a bit weird. Because, yes, states with recreational marijuana legalization had more ED visits for CHS — overall, about 1900 cases per million vs 800 cases per million. But the rate of growth of those visits was more dramatic in states without recreational marijuana legalization. The authors don't opine on what would cause this pattern of observations. That's probably wise since the data are relatively limited. But that has never stopped me before, so here is what I think is going on. I think a lot of this is real. I suspect there is a true increase in the amount of CHS that is commensurate with the broader availability of marijuana in the marketplace. This leads to higher rates in states that have legalized recreational marijuana use. But a significant proportion of the observed increase is due to uncovering CHS in people who would not have received the diagnosis in the past and misclassification of non-CHS syndromes in the setting of people who happen to use marijuana. This occurs in states without legalized marijuana because, let's face it: Even in those states, the stigma about marijuana use is nowhere near what it was 10 or 20 years ago. The times they are a-changin', as one former pothead noted. Is this all a problem? CHS can be bad. In fact, just under half of the kids in this study required a hospital admission; a bit under 1% required the intensive care unit. That said, we should still contextualize these ED visits in the context of other risks adolescents face. I pulled a bit of data comparing ED visits for CHS to those for depression, suicide, gun violence, and drug overdoses. You can see here that CHS rates aren't as high as, say, ED visits for suicidal behavior, but these are all in the same ballpark. Of course, that's assuming the numbers in this study are not inflated. Still, it seems like we can add CHS to the list of real risks adolescents face in the United States today. And, if growth rates of the syndrome continue as they did in this study, rising by 50% per year, well, we can assume that every American adolescent will be in the ER for CHS by 2040. That would be… unlikely. But I suppose we can keep a bloodshot eye on it.
