Picking This Seat on a Flight Means You’re Selfish, Psychologists Say

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“Window or aisle?” is the question. The answer could reveal something about your personality.

While some passengers prefer the window — for the views and the relative privacy of a cabin wall to lean against, others prioritize the freedom (again, relative) of the aisle, being able to get up and stretch or head to the lavatory without disturbing any seatmates.

But according to two psychologists interviewed by The Telegraph, there could be more to it: Passengers who prefer the window seat may be more selfish, while those who prefer the aisle may be more reserved.

RELATED: The Best Seat on the Airplane, According to Anthony Bourdain

“Passengers who favor the window seat like to be in control, tend to take an ‘every man for themselves’ attitude towards life, and are often more easily irritable,” Dr. Becky Spelman, chief psychologist at Harley Street’s Private Therapy Clinic, told The Telegraph. “They also like to ‘nest’ and prefer to exist in their own bubble.”

Behavioral psychologist Jo Hemmings agreed.

“Aisle passengers are often more sociable and definitely more amenable as people; they are also more likely to be restless fliers and less adept at sleeping on planes,” Hemmings added.

Of course, seat selection has to do with more than just one factor.

According to a survey by Quartz in 2014, the more people fly, the more they prefer the aisle. Preference for the window also decreased as household income increased.

Overall, however, a majority of fliers prefer the window.

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Why You Should Never Feel Bad for Daydreaming During a Boring Work Meeting

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We’ve all been there: You’re at a dull work meeting or presentation, and your mind keeps wandering—to what to eat for lunch, your weekend plans, or what’s going on with the new season of Stranger Things.

Don’t feel so bad about all your daydreaming. Mind-wandering may be a sign of intelligence and creativity, according to a new study in the journal Neuropsychologia. And as long as your performance at work or wherever you are doesn’t suffer when your mind drifts, daydreaming may not be such a bad thing after all, the study authors say.

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology wanted to study what happens to people’s brain patterns when they’re told to lie still and do nothing—a prime opportunity for mind-wandering. So they asked 112 study participants to do just that: lie in an MRI machine while starting at a fixed point for five minutes.

RELATED: 8 Ways Sex Affects Your Brain

The research team used those readings to identify which parts of the brain worked together during this type of awake but resting state, and they also compared the readings to tests the participants took to measure their creative and intellectual abilities. In addition, the participants filled out a questionnaire about how much their mind wandered in daily life.

The researchers made several interesting connections. People who reported more frequent daydreaming during the day scored higher on creative and intellectual tests. Their MRIs also showed they had more efficient brain systems—meaning different regions of the brain were more in sync with each other—compared to people who reported less frequent mind-wandering.

The finding that mind-wandering is associated with intelligence was somewhat surprising, says lead author Christine Godwin, a psychology PhD candidate. That’s because previous research has linked mind-wandering to poorer performance on memory and reading-comprehension tests, lower SAT scores, negative mood, and mental-health disorders.

RELATED: How to Trick Your Brain Into Eating Less

“But when you think about the possibility that mind-wandering can potentially be helpful at times for cognitive through processes—or at least not directly harmful—it makes sense,” Godwin tells Health. Other research has also suggested that daydreaming (along with night dreaming) may help people become better problem-solvers, and that daydreaming about the future “can be particularly beneficial in preparing individuals to obtain their upcoming goals,” the authors wrote in their paper.

The study didn’t measure whether people with more efficient brain processes—and more mind-wandering tendencies—required less brainpower to complete certain tasks. But, Godwin says, “it’s an inference we can start to make, especially since mind-wandering was correlated with intelligence, as well.”

“Some other research indicates that people who have high cognitive abilities are able to mind wander during easy tasks simply because they can—because they have extra brain capacity so to speak, and may be more efficient in their cognitive processes,” she adds. (If you can zone out of conversation or tasks and tune back in for the important parts, then congrats: That’s a sign of efficiency, the authors say.)

“The popular perception is that mind-wandering is bad and it’s harmful and you want to try to avoid it,” says Godwin. “And that’s certainly the case oftentimes; if you’re not paying attention to a complex task, your performance is probably going to suffer.”

RELATED: Bipolar Celebrities: Does It Make Them More Creative?

One example may be driving a car: While driving should require one’s full attention, it’s common for people to drift off in thought, especially if they follow the same route every day or find themselves on a long, monotonous stretch of road. Distracted drivers are a major source of traffic accidents and deaths, studies report, although some researchers say it’s still unclear how dangerous it is to daydream while driving.

There can be times, however, that mind-wandering does not impair performance— like when a person is completing a simple and low-risk task that’s done largely from memory, like folding laundry. “In those cases, it’s okay to embrace mind-wandering,” she says, “and the research suggests there may be some benefits to creativity and working memory and intelligence, as well.”

Godwin still recommends that people try to be mindful of tasks that require a lot of brainpower, and to be cognizant of whether their performance slips when their attention starts to drift elsewhere. “If you notice that’s happening, you may need to address that by taking a break or having something to eat—anything to help you get back on track, so you can stay focused now and let your mind wander later.”

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Olympians Jordyn Wieber & Nastia Liukin Open Up About Pressure to Stay Thin After Gymnastics Careers

You Asked: Is Watching Scary Movies Good for You?

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This article originally appeared on Time.com.

The heart-pounding thrills of a scary movie may come with some health-related benefits, including a calorie burn and a happier mood. But how much you stand to gain from a scary movie seems to depend on how scary you find the film you’re watching—and how much you want to be scared in the first place.

In a 2012 study, funded by the former video subscription service Lovefilm, researchers from the University of Westminster in the UK asked 10 people to watch 10 different scary movies as they monitored heart rate, oxygen intake and output of carbon dioxide. The 1980’s film The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson, topped the list of the calorie-scorching horror films. The person who viewed it jumped and shrieked themselves rid of 184 calories: roughly the number of calories a 140-pound adult would burn after 40 minutes of walking, according to the American Council on Exercise’s physical activity calorie counter. Jaws and The Exorcist took the second and third spots on the list, burning 161 and 158 calories, respectively.

A stressful stimulus—in this case, a scary movie—causes the release of the hormone adrenaline, which cranks up the nervous system’s fight-or-flight response, says Richard Mackenzie, author of the study, who is now at the University of Roehampton in London. Along with getting your heart racing, this response also draws energy from your body’s reserves so that you’re ready to fight or flee as the need arises.

The study was very small, and the findings were not published in a peer-reviewed journal. But there is other research that frightening flicks may proffer benefits. A 2003 study from Coventry University in the UK, published in the journal Stress, found that watching a horror film significantly increased people’s circulating levels of disease- and infection-fighting white blood cells. Again, the study team credits the movie’s ability to fire up the viewer’s fight-or-flight response, which includes a short-term increase in immune function.

It might be simpler to think of horror movies as a form of “good stress.” While stress gets a bad rap—and long-term stress is associated with everything from depression to heart attacks—brief bouts of stress have often been linked to improved immune function and activation, says Firdaus Dhabhar, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.

A good scare can also elevate your mood. “The research my colleagues and I have done show a high-arousal negative stimuli improves mood significantly,” says Margee Kerr, a sociologist and fear researcher and author of Scream: Chilling Adventures In the Science of Fear. These can be activities like watching a scary movie, or visiting a pop-up haunted house or Halloween-season attraction.

Kerr says that after a scary experience, people feel less anxious, less frustrated and happier. “The different neurotransmitters and hormones released during the experience could explain that,” she says. Or, by voluntarily choosing to endure a scary or stressful activity—whether it’s watching a freaky movie or bungee jumping—you’re likely to experience a feel-good sense of accomplishment afterward.

But—and this is a big caveat—Kerr says her research only included people who wanted to partake in the scary experience. For those who don’t get a thrill out of a horror movie or who don’t enjoy being scared, there may not be any mood or anxiety benefits.

Some frightening movies or experiences may be too much for kids in particular. An older study from the University of Michigan found that 26% of college students who had experienced a media-based scare during childhood still had “residual anxiety” from the experience.

So wait until the kids are in bed before firing up the next horror flick in your Netflix queue. Based on the existing science, you may burn some calories and boost your mood.

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3 Strange Treatments Doctors Used to Think Were Good for You

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This article originally appeared on Time.com.

The quest for a health is a natural human response to illness, but medical history provides plenty of reason to think twice before you try that miracle cure.

Case in point: medieval doctors would press a sacrificed puppy, kitten, rabbit or lamb on top of a tumor because they thought that cancer was like a “ravenous wolf” that would rather “feed off the sacrificed animal rather than the human patient,” as Dr. Lydia Kang and her co-writer Nate Pedersen put it in their new book Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything.

Sure, some of the stranger examples of old-time medicine would turn out to be useful; while cautery—heating an iron stick on hot coals and then pressing it onto a person’s body—didn’t end up curing broken hearts when the rod was pressed against the patient’s chest, the practice was a forerunner to electric surgical instruments. And while doctors were misguided in prescribing the poison arsenic to treat syphilis and skin conditions, a form of the chemical has been used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia.

But plenty of other techniques were downright useless, if not dangerous. Early women’s health recommendations included everything from naturalist Pliny the Elder’s insistence that consuming powdered sow’s dung relieved labor pains, to the medieval Italian advice that keeping weasel testicles near one’s bosom was an effective form of contraception. And in American history, misguided medicine ran rampant, especially before steps such as the 1906 Food and Drugs Act, the first major consumer protection law to crack down on misleading food and drug labels, and the formation of the Food and Drug Administration in the ’30s. Even today, despite increased consumer protection, misleading medical claims are still out there.

“We have to be really careful when we’re looking for an easy cure,” Kang tells TIME. “Generally things aren’t that easy, so that should make you a little bit suspicious.”

TIME spoke to Kang about some of the practices once touted as good medicine that are well known to be harmful today.

Tobacco

During a 1665 plague outbreak in London, schoolchildren were told to smoke cigarettes, which at the time were thought to be disinfectants. In addition, “tobacco smoke enemas”—the source of a common idiom about blowing smoke—were developed as a sort of 18th-century version of CPR by members of The Institution for Affording Immediate Relief to Persons Apparently Dead from Drowning. They would drag the victim out of the River Thames, strip him or her down, and use an enema to literally blow smoke into the person, either manually or with bellows. (Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was invented in the ’50s.)

In 1964, a U.S. Surgeon General report would label cigarettes deadly and urge people to stop smoking.

Cannibalism

The phrase “you are what you eat” can apply to this school of thought. Ancient Romans clamored for gladiator blood for strength and vitality, but it was also thought to be a cure for epilepsy. That rationale appeared to be maintained for centuries, based on Englishman Edward Browne’s 1668 observation that people attended executions to collect the blood of the victims. In the early 1600s, one German physician’s suggested cure for a range of conditions was making a jerky of sorts out of the corpses of 24-year-old redheads, chopping up their bodies and mashing the bits in wine, myrrh and aloe, before dry-curing them.

Now that it’s known that blood can carry disease, the risks of drinking it are obvious — but the use of other people’s body parts for medicine would be legitimized through the development of organ donation and transplantation in the mid-20th century.

Radium

In the early 1900s, when people walked into the spa by in Joachimsthal, Czech Republic, they immediately breathed in irradiated air circulating in the lobby. The source of the radiation was a hot spring that emanated radon. Patients soaked in irradiated water and inhaled radon directly through tubes. A few early studies had claimed that radium placed near tumors could shrink the tumors, so doctors at the time thought more was better. “It’s like the difference between treating something with a bomb and treating something with a scalpel,” says Kang.

Radon exposure is now known to be a leading cause of lung cancer. The invention of the Geiger counter in 1928 would help physicians better measure doses of the chemical, paving the way for medical breakthroughs that would enable radiation to be used for cancer treatments today.

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Why It's Time to Stop Casually Calling People 'Schizophrenic' and 'Bipolar'

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There has been no shortage of insults during the first nine months of the Trump presidency—both those directed at members of the administration, and those dished out by the commander-in-chief and his staff. But one specific insult recently caught the attention of two psychiatrists, who blogged about it on the BMJ website.

In July, in a now-infamous phone call to reporter Ryan Lizza, then-Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci referred to then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus as a “paranoid schizophrenic”—using the name of a legitimate mental health condition as an insult directed at someone who, as far as we know, has no such diagnosis. And while this was a highly publicized event, it’s just one example of a larger problem, says Arash Javanbakht, MD, director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research and Clinical Program at Wayne State University and one of the article’s authors.

It’s a problem that’s evident even without leaving the world of politics. On one side of the aisle, Trump himself has called people “crazy” and “psycho” in recent months. On the other side, psychiatrists have debated whether it’s appropriate to question the President’s own mental health. At least one psychiatrist says terms like dementia and narcissism are being thrown around without evidence, and are unfair to people who are truly ill. 

RELATED: 10 Signs of Narcissism

Javanbakht, and his co-author Aislinn Williams, MD, weren’t the only people to take issue with what Scaramucci said in July, or the way it was reported in the media. In their post, they reference a Teen Vogue op-ed that also points out “the profound problems” with how news organizations reported the phone call, with most never mentioning “how unacceptable and stigmatizing such a phrase is.”

About 1% of the world population actually has schizophrenia, Javanbakht and Williams note, and the disease affects several million Americans and their families and friends. “They are worthy of respect and should be met with support, but many of our profession’s top journals and the news media at large, remained silent in the face of this onslaught.”

Javanbakht spoke with Health about his blog, and about the larger problem of mental-health illnesses being used in such derogatory ways. “Anytime a medical diagnosis is used as an insult, it is basically an insult to an entire group of people that are not responsible for their condition,” he says. “You wouldn’t insult someone by saying they have diabetes, so why would you insult them by saying the have schizophrenia?”

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Using mental illnesses as insults can be directly harmful to people living with these conditions, and they can also spread inaccurate perceptions of what they really are, says Steven Meyers, PhD, professor of psychology at Roosevelt University.

For example, people may use the word schizophrenic to describe how someone can alternate between two different states, while the actual symptoms of schizophrenia involve poor reality perception, hallucinations, and confused thinking.

“Accurate information about the symptoms of a disorder can lead people towards diagnosis and treatment,” say Meyers, “while misinformation is more likely to promote stigma or cause us to dismiss or marginalize people.”

RELATED: 12 Signs You May Have an Anxiety Disorder

Javanbakht and Williams note that in recent years, it’s become socially unacceptable to make fun of people with illnesses like cancer, and that a public-relations campaign started by Special Olympics in 2008 has even had success reducing use of the “R-word.”

“As psychiatrists, we need to speak up alongside our patients and help people understand that using mental illness as a pejorative is equally hurtful and unacceptable,” they wrote.

“I’m a neurobiological researcher, and to me there’s no difference between a disease of the brain or a disease of the gut or any other area of the body,” Javanbakht says. “We need to help people see diseases like anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder the same way they see diabetes, high blood pressure, or Crohn’s disease.”

RELATED: 8 Celebrities on Their Struggle With Mental Illness

That starts with education, he says. “We know that 30% of the general population deals with some form of anxiety and 20% deal with depression, so chances are you have a family member or friend dealing with a mental health condition,” he says. “If we can talk openly and learn about those conditions, we’ll be able to develop empathy and see them for what they really are.”

Meyers says there’s no widespread agreement about what is an offensive use of a mental health term, and that it always depends on context. “Saying that someone has a ‘crazy’ idea isn’t the same as labeling a person as a paranoid schizophrenic,” he says. But when in doubt, he says, people should think about how their casual use of certain terms could impact others—and if they hear those terms being used incorrectly, they should call it out.

“Derogatory words that were commonly used one or two generations ago in conversation don’t appear as often because they have been challenged by friends, family members, professional communities, and the media,” he says. “Slang and joking will continue to occur, but the goal is incremental progress stemming from greater awareness and the elimination of the most insulting or serious misuses of these terms.”

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Kim Kardashian Says She Has Body Dysmorphia, but What Does That Really Mean?

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Kim Kardashian is all about a perfectly posed selfie and expertly contoured face. But even she experiences a self-esteem plunge when she hears negative comments about her body. On the most recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kim opened up about the toll being in the public eye has had on her body image.

In the episode, unretouched bikini photos of Kardashian went viral online. While dealing with the fallout, she admitted that her body insecurity has increased over the years. “You take pictures and people just body shame you,“ Kardashian said. "It’s like literally giving me body dysmorphia,” she also commented.

RELATED: Kim Kardashian Swears By This $500 Moisturizing Cream. Here’s Why a Dermatologist Says It’s Not Worth It

The term “body dysmorphia" has a buzz to it these days, and it's often thrown around by people who feel a little self-conscious about their appearance. But it’s actually a true mental health condition—and nothing to take lightly. Body dysmorphia is "the preoccupation of imagined defects in one’s appearance,” says Tom Hildebrandt, PsyD, chief of the Division of Eating and Weight Disorders at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. 

A person with body dysmorphia typically sees a specific body part or a group of body parts and thinks, my calves look weak or my face is so ugly and out of proportion. They become obsessed with these thoughts and let them take over their lives. “Obsessed” is not an exaggeration. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD, is a type of obsessive compulsive disorder. The International OCD Foundation says BDD affects 1 in 50 people, or between 5 and 7.5 million people in the United States alone.

Based on one episode of her show, it's hard to know if Kardashian has BDD or just doesn’t always like the way she looks. What signs can tell you that your body obsession truly is BDD? It’s more than being critical of your appearance from time to time. Says Hildebrandt: "For someone with BDD, their entire life’s balance hangs on whether they look okay or whether they’ve camouflaged their perceived flaw appropriately.“

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When a person believes she has body issues and is hyper-aware of them, she may avoid social situations to not draw attention to her so-called flaws. She might also go to extremes to hide the perceived flaw, say by walking around with her hair covering her face or going under the knife. "People with the resources may get plastic surgery and go back repeatedly for more, because it only provides a temporary release from the anxiety about their appearance,” explains Hildebrandt.

In KUWTK, Kim says that her body dysmorphia comes from all the body-shaming comments she receives from haters, trolls, and others in the general public. While negative remarks can make BDD worse, they aren’t typically the cause of the disorder, says Hildebrandt. 

RELATED: 10 Signs You May Have OCD

The actual cause of BDD isn’t known, but it may be similar to what triggers OCD. Hildebrandt says people with certain temperaments and ways of thinking are predisposed to BDD and may show OCD tendencies in other areas of their life. For example, a person who obsesses over her legs may also be obsessed with keeping a spotless home. “[It’s] a cognitive style that causes you to prioritize things that are out of place rather than the big picture,” says Hildebrandt.

Worried about a friend who displays BDD behavior? Take note of how often she tries to conceal parts of her face or body, or if she constantly seeks reassurance about a specific body region. If you or a loved one think you’re suffering from it, talking to a therapist or counselor is a smart option. Treatment includes antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy.

BDD shouldn’t be used carelessly as a slang term for someone who isn’t 100% pleased with her body. We all have moments when we wished we were slimmer, had more muscle tone, or were taller or shorter. But when a person’s entire life is dedicated to hiding and obsessing over perceived flaws, it’s a serious mental health issue that needs to be addressed.

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What Does It Mean to Have OCD? These Are 5 Common Symptoms

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This article originally appeared on Time.com.

Having obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) isn’t easy. The condition, marked by uncontrollable thoughts and behaviors, strikes about 2% of the general population—a figure that in the U.S. alone means nearly 6.5 million people. If you’ve made it past young adulthood without developing any symptoms, you’re likely in the clear.

You wouldn’t know that to hear people talk, however. In recent years, OCD has become the psychological equivalent of hypoglycemia or gluten sensitivity: a condition untold numbers of people casually—almost flippantly—claim they’ve got, but in most cases don’t. Folks who hate a messy desk but could live with one for a day do not necessarily have OCD. Nor do those who wash their hands before eating but would still have lunch if there was no soap and water nearby. Yet the almost sing-songy declaration “I’m so OCD!” seems to be everywhere.

Some of the confusion is understandable. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)—the field guide to psychological conditions—lists OCD among the anxiety disorders, and nearly everyone has experienced anxiety. The thing is, though, you’ve experienced headaches, too, but that doesn’t mean you know what a migraine feels like unless you’ve had one. Same with the pain of OCD, which can interfere with work, relationships and more.

“The brain is conditioned to alert us to anything that threatens our survival, but this system is malfunctioning in OCD,” says psychologist Steven Phillipson, clinical director of the Center for Cognitive-Behavioral Psychotherapy in New York City. “That can result in a tsunami of emotional distress that keeps your attention absolutely focused.”

No single fear defines the condition. There are familiar obsessions like washing your hands or checking the stove. But there’s also hoarding, hypochondria or a terrible fear you’re going to harm somebody. People with a common type of OCD can even have paralyzing anxiety over their own sexual orientation.

As with any mental illness, only a trained clinician can offer a reliable diagnosis. But here are a few behaviors that experts say can be genuine symptoms of OCD.

Bargaining

It’s common for people with OCD to believe that if they check the stove just once more, or Google just one more symptom of a disease they’re convinced they’ve got, then their mind will be clear. But OCD typically reneges on the deal. “The brain becomes biochemically associated with the thing you fear,” says Phillipson. “Performing the ritual just convinces it that the danger is real and that only perpetuates the cycle.”

Feeling compelled to perform certain rituals

Could someone pay you $10—or $100, or whatever is a relevant sum of money to you—not to do a ritual like checking the front door twenty times before leaving for work? If your anxiety can be bought on the relative cheap like that, you may have an idiosyncrasy—you worry about burglary a little too much, perhaps—but you probably don’t have a disorder, Phillipson says. For the person with OCD, he explains, the brain is signaling what feels like a life and death risk, and it’s hard to put a price on survival.

Being tough to reassure

For people with OCD, the phrase “yes, but” may be a familiar one. (Yes, your last three blood tests for this or that disease were negative, but how do you know they didn’t mix up the samples?) Since absolute certainty is rarely possible, almost no reassurance clears the yes, but hurdle, and that keeps the anxiety wheels spinning.

Remembering when it started

Not all people with OCD can point to the exact instant the disorder first struck, but many can, says Phillipson. OCD is a sort of free-floating anxiety before the initial symptoms strike, but then it alights on a particular idea—the fear you’re going to lash out at somebody with a knife when you’re making dinner, for example. These experiences tend to roll off of most people. But for someone with OCD, the bottom falls out, Phillipson says. “It’s the moment when a panic marries a concept,” he says. Like most bad marriages, it’s hard to end.

Feeling consumed with anxiety

OCD is a matter of degree, especially since there are real-world risks associated with nearly all obsessive-compulsive triggers. Houses do burn down, and hands do carry germs. If you can live with the uncertainty those dangers can cause—even if they make you uncomfortable—you likely don’t have OCD, or at least not a very serious case of it. If the anxiety is so great it consumes your thoughts and disrupts your day, you may have a problem. “The D stands for disorder, remember,” Phillipson says. “OCD causes your life to become disordered.”

There are proven treatments available for OCD. Medications, including certain antidepressants, are often a big part of the solution, but psychotherapy—especially cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)—can be just as effective. One potent type of CBT is a protocol known as exposure and response prevention (ERP). As the name suggests, ERP involves gradual exposure to increasingly provocative situations—under the guidance of a therapist—while avoiding any rituals to undo the anxiety. Begin by touching a doorknob without washing your hands, for example, progress up the ladder of perceived danger—a handrail on a bus, a faucet in a public bathroom—and slowly the brain unlearns the fear.

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Hugh Hefner Had a Drug-Resistant E. Coli Infection. Here’s What You Should Know

7 Things to Know Before You Donate Blood

In the Las Vegas shooting on Sunday night, at least 58 people were killed, and more than 400 others were transported to hospitals. Early this morning, the Las Vegas Police Department tweeted about the need for local blood donors, reminding us that in the wake of this tragedy—as well as the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Maria, Irma, and Harvey—helping out can be as simple as rolling up a sleeve. Last summer, Health spoke with Justin Kreuter, MD, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Blood Donor Center in Rochester, Minnesota. Here’s what he wants potential donors to know:

Eligibility is always changing

The Red Cross maintains an alphabetical list of eligibility criteria for potential donors—from acupuncture (thumbs up) to Zika (thumbs down)—and can give you the latest information on whether or not you’re good to give.

RELATED: 4 Unexpected Benefits of Donating Blood

The FDA regulates donor blood just as aggressively as it regulates drugs

“It takes a lot of money to do the infectious-disease testing that we do [on donor blood], and when we create blood products out of the donation, that’s done to the same standards as any drug manufactured in this country. The FDA holds us to those same standards, so it’s a very high level of quality and also resources that are invested,” Dr. Kreuter explains. “These tests and high standards are what’s keeping the blood supply safe, so that if my wife or one of my daughters needs a blood transfusion, I can feel assured that I can just sit at their bedside and hold their hand rather than worry about what that might result [in] for them later down the road.”  

You’ll get a mini-physical before you donate

The flip side of donor blood screening (which ensures that it’s safe for the eventual recipient) is confirming the donor’s health (which ensures that the blood draw won’t have a negative effect on them). “We check blood pressure and pulse, we do a pinprick to check red blood cells to make sure they’re safe—we don’t want to make our donors iron deficient,” Dr. Kreuter says. He makes no specific suggestions about what you eat and drink prior to donation; just be sure you have breakfast and lunch under your belt, and take it easy on caffeine. “We all live on our daily espressos and whatnot, but we see donors who show up and haven’t eaten [meals] and they’ve only been drinking coffee, and they’re quite dehydrated. When you donate you’re losing circulating fluid, so the water that you drink before and after your donation is important.”

RELATED: 15 Signs You May Have an Iron Deficiency

You’ll hardly feel a thing—seriously

The needles used to collect blood are a bit larger than those you’d encounter when, say, receiving a flu shot, but the so-called ‘small pinch’ you feel at insertion is, truly, no big deal. “What we feel [at the start of a blood draw] is just on the surface of our skin. These needles have silicone on them, they’re made to glide and be quite comfortable. After that initial stick, you’re not going to feel anything,” Dr. Kreuter says. If needles give you the shivers, look away for the quarter-second in which yours is placed; then ask a staffer to cover up the insertion site for you. Since the “tough” part is already over, you can lie back and spend the next eight to 10 minutes zoning out.

It’s okay to have a cookie after you donate

“What’s healthy is to keep a balanced diet as you go forward in the day [after your donation],” Dr. Kreuter says. “We tend to stock our canteen area with things like water and juice and then salty snacks, because salt helps you retain a little more of the [water] volume that you’ve lost through donation. The cookies are there because [they’re] something the donor culture has grown up in—maybe not the healthiest option, but certainly an expectation. Believe it or not, I have meetings about cookies. I’ve seen shirts before that say ‘I donate for the cookies.’” Bottom line: Rewarding yourself with a treat isn’t going to do any harm, provided that you indulge in moderation.

Your blood could save patients who haven’t even entered the world yet

Though many of us are reminded of the importance of blood donation when tragedies happen, much of what we give does the quiet work of saving people who’ll never show up on the news. Since the need for blood doesn’t go away, the best way to save lives is to contribute regularly. “At Mayo, about 15% to 20% of our blood is going to trauma patients and being used in our ER; a lot of our blood gets used supporting patients through life-saving cardiac or cancer surgeries. Cancer patients [also need blood]—chemotherapy knocks down their ability to make their own red blood cells and platelets—and folks who have medical conditions like autoimmune diseases also need transfusions.”

Donations flow to delivery rooms, too: “If anemia is significant enough in utero we transfuse during pregnancy and sometimes immediately after delivery,” Dr. Kreuter explains. “A lot of kids need blood in the first couple of minutes of life. Sometimes with newborn babies an emergency platelet transfusion in the first few moments of life is absolutely necessary; in their situation the newborn brain is so delicate and fragile that having these platelets immediately available is the name of the game in order to prevent bleeding into their brains, which results in long-term disabilities.”

Note that platelets have a shelf life of just five days, while whole blood can be stored for up to six weeks. The immediate need for platelets—and platelet donors—is constant.

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Donating your voice is vital, too

Those “Be nice to me, I gave blood today!" stickers aren’t merely a cute (and justified) humblebrag: They’re also a benevolent form of peer pressure, not unlike the "I voted” stickers we earn and wear on election days. “Hearing about blood donation from a friend or colleague is very motivating in getting [potential first-timers] to think about taking that next step,” Dr. Kreuter says. “Our donor population [in Rochester] has an older average age, and we’re trying to reach out to the younger generation to start having the same blood donation habits.”

Think about it this way: Taking your kids to see you strengthen your community’s heartbeat at a blood center is just as important as bringing them with you to the voting booth. Donate visibly, donate vocally, and donate as often as you can.

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