Field Notes: Managing health anxiety, poop facts, poems when you need more joy, & more

Plus, a ton of facts about poop

Hello, dear friends! Happy week of thanks. I’m grateful you are here!

How are you keeping steady in this busy and distraught time? This might seem counter-intuitive, but I am hosting a Winter Camp session for extra nurturing and connection, which has been a balm for me, too. (It’s not to late to join!) If this time of year is too hectic to even think about one more thing, but January often slows to a halt and leaves you wanting focus and joy, Winter Art Camp might be for you. This session, which starts Jan. 2, focuses on igniting our creative lives. Learn more here. (Pssst, the prices are low for early bird but they will go back up.)

Now onto Field Notes, a weekly collection of 6 interesting things I’ve run across lately related to wellness, illness, and the medical system.

1} How to Manage Health Anxiety (Are You OK? newsletter) — Dr. Lucy McBride shares the gnawing sense of worry that some of her patients have, and what we can do when health anxiety strikes, particularly right now, when our collective distress is so high. “Anxiety hates the absence of control; the internet diagnosis promises us a specific kind of certainty. However, the antidote for health-related anxiety isn’t a date with WebMD. It’s to recognize the anxiety is the first place and to bring the boiling pot of anxiety back to a simmer.” She shares four practical pieces of advice, starting with: “Normalize the cognitive distortions of anxiety.”

2| Three Things That Should Be Required for Weight-Loss Research (Weight and Healthcare newsletter — Researcher Regan Chastain details three recommendations “that, if they were required of all weight loss studies, would instantly create massive improvement in the information that could be gleaned from these studies by healthcare practitioners, the media, and the public at large.” The first recommendation: Five-Year Follow-Up with Required Publication. I found this post illuminating and helpful to think critically about what studies in general actually do tell us — and what they leave out.

3} Tai chi helps boost memory, study finds. One type seems most beneficial (NPR) — I first learned tai chi in high school marching band (yes, really) and find it relaxing and centering. This story details its benefits, which were greatest (I will spoil the clickbait of the headline) after a “rigorous type of tai chi, called Cognitively Enhanced Tai Ji Quan, where they layered on extra challenges. For example, participants were asked to spell a word, backward and forward, as they moved through a series of tai chi moves.”

4} Everything You Need to Know About Poop (ParentData newsletter) — Emily Oster unloads a ton of facts and details about poop, including how often infants, kids, and adults poop, how the Bristol stool scale measures the quality of poop, and much more.

5} An invasive mosquito threatens catastrophe in Africa (New York Times gift link) — This is a story of “anopheles stephensi, a malaria-carrying species of mosquito that arrived in the port city of the tiny East African nation of Djibouti a decade ago and was largely ignored by public health officials. It is resistant to all insecticides and has adapted to thrive in urban environments and survive in dry seasons. It is now breeding in locations across the center of the continent, and entomologists say further spread is inevitable.” The spread to urban areas is causing alarm now. “Africa has expertise and strategies to fight malaria as a rural disease but now faces the threat of urban outbreaks, putting vastly more people at risk and threatening to wipe away recent progress against malaria, which still kills 620,000 people each year, mostly in Africa.”

6} Poems that make you glad to be alive ( For Dear Life newsletter) — Sometimes you need an escape, a reminder, a touchpoint of humanity. Poet Maggie Smith has compiled a list of poems when “I needed more joy, and so did you.” There are even more terrific poems in the comments, which is where I discovered Will You? by Carrie Fountain. It begins “When, at the end, the children wanted / to add glitter to their valentines, I said no.” Here’s her note about the poem:

“Once I believed to remain true to my art I had to keep the world away. I had to cloister. I remained pure. Of what? Who knows. My feeling of myself as an artist has changed. To remain true to my art, I try to be awake in the world. I try to succumb to it—the glitter, the Henrys, the rude things I find coming out of my mouth—and I try to make something of it. I'm hardly ever alone. As you hear in the recording: my cat came in and meowed. I was going to redo it, but no. I'm no longer interested in purity. That's part of my art. It stays.” — Carrie Fountain

It reminds me of reaching a place of peace with the impossibility of perfect health. We’re all human. We’re going to get sick. It’s hard to hold that truth and not feel stricken by worry constantly, but that’s the challenge of being human and aware. (Also, see again no. 1 on managing health anxiety.)

To our journeys,
Brianne

p.s. I’m planning to work on my abstract art and poetry in Winter Art Camp. Here’s a little piece of art to leave you with! What creative practice would you like to focus on?

Odyssey of Illness by Brianne | 2023