Field Notes: It's April. "Be Gentle With Yourself." 🌷
Plus, new data on prostate cancer screening, yoga and meditation videos, and a favorite quote on hope
Hello, dear friends. What an April it’s been, and we’re only 10 days in.
Last week, we traveled to Washington, D.C., for spring break, to spectacular and crowded museums, packed with germs. (Cue foreboding music…)
Here’s a glimpse of our trip. The National Building Museum has a charming exhibit about children’s stories right now, and I always love visiting the U.S. Botanic Garden and National Gallery of Art. We got to see friends and family (not pictured), whom I miss terribly. It felt like coming home.
When we did get back home, 300-ish miles away, I had a terrible night of sweats and chills.
The next morning, I dug out a Covid test. Two lines appeared, quick as lightning.
It was my first time with Covid, and my friends, it knocked me for a loop. I slept and slept and slept.
The next day was the incredible solar eclipse. In New York, we could see about 90% coverage of the sun from the backyard, a tiny burning crescent in the sky.
It was eerie, magical, intriguing.
So many ups and downs.
I’m feeling better today and emerging from my Covid cave, typing to you, and hoping for a quiet rest of the month.
Does it ever seem to you like a whirlwind comes out of nowhere? How is your April so far?
Now onto today’s newsletter … Field Notes!
(To new readers, welcome! Field Notes is a collection of 3 interesting things related to health I’ve run across lately. It comes out on occasional Wednesdays.)
1 interesting thing: Screening for prostate cancer may have no benefit
This post from Dr. Jeremy Faust at Inside Medicine describes recent research on the impact of prostate cancer screening on how long someone lives. Basically, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.
He writes:
“Prostate cancer screening should work better than it does. By measuring prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels in the blood, doctors should be able to detect prostate cancers before symptoms appear and get them treated before they become dangerous or deadly. That is the cornerstone notion of prostate cancer screening.
“For reasons that I can’t entirely understand, PSA testing just does not save many lives, if any.”
He points to a JAMA study that came out this weekend as the latest example.
“In the United Kingdom, researchers randomized men to either get an invitation to do prostate cancer screening or not. Then, they followed outcomes for 15 years. If prostate cancer screening made a difference, the mortality curves should have daylight between them. They basically didn’t.”
Dr. Faust goes into much more detail and notes that screenings did detect more cancer, but over the long run, screenings didn’t appear to affect how long someone lived.
“Screening meant more diagnoses, which led to more treatment, which in turn, always leads to complication; more time spent as patients in hospitals, as opposed to people living their lives anywhere but.”
This is not to say that screenings aren’t valuable or life-saving in some cases with some diseases. It’s just interesting to ponder the data in this case…
Read the post: New research: Razor thin margins at best on prostate cancer screening benefits.
1 thing you can do today: Meditate and breathe with Regina
My lovely friend Regina Beach has started posting meditations and slow chair yoga exercises on YouTube. These 20-minute sessions are nice to do anytime and accessible to many types of bodies. The one above includes alternate nostril breathing, my favorite breathing exercise.
Regina has taught in my Winter Camp, so some of you may know her already.
Enjoy!
Visit Regina’s YouTube channel.
1 thing to reread
“Hope is not happiness or confidence or inner peace; it’s a commitment to search for possibilities.” — Rebecca Solnit, writing in The Guardian
She’s writing about climate change, but I think she could be talking about health with all its uncertainties, too.
A possibility could be a new doctor or medication or treatment. A possibility could be resting more, changing the rhythm of your day, or adding more laughter. A possibility could be looking for what is there instead of what is missing.
Hope comes in all kinds of forms.
To our journeys,
Brianne
p.s. If you are in the Chicago area, check out a new special event happening this weekend: the Evanston Conscious Movement Festival. It includes a labyrinth walk, a dance party, yoga, and DANCEmandala. I wish I could go!