1 . Districts across the US are trying to address the high number of students needing mental health support. What if they could enlist students as part of the solution, too? A rural Ohio high school has done just that.

At Claymont High School in Uhrichsville, Ohio, a group of about 21 high schoolers are trained in mental health first aid. They’ve taken courses to learn how to help their peers who are going through a difficult time.

The students, who are in grades 10 through 12, are part of a larger program called Peers Uplifting Peers, or PUP, which helps to break down the stigma (耻辱) around mental health and wellness and normalize having conversations about both and seeking professional help when necessary.

A key part of their training is to help their friends get in touch with professionals and established resources. “Students are helping out by picking up on early warning signs. They are noticing that maybe someone is having a hard day or is just sitting by themselves,” said Kelsi Barnhart, the school’s assistant principal. “They try to be good friends, and they speak up. It’s not that they are stepping in and providing counseling.”

Despite a national conversation around mental health, the context may be different in rural areas like Uhrichsville where people feel ashamed of discussing mental health. “It’s hard to talk about mental health out loud,” said Bridget Britton, a licensed social worker. Getting to a therapist can also be a challenge since most rural areas do not have the bus and rail systems found in urban communities. There are also financial barriers. “Many rural residents work on farms, which often don’t provide workers with health insurance,” she said.

2 . People who experienced trauma (精神创伤) as a child or adolescent were found to be 48 percent more likely to have serious and repeated headaches as an adult than those who had not experienced trauma in their early years, according to research published in the journal Neurology. The finding came from the analysis of data from 28 studies, involving 154,739 people.

Overall, nearly one-third of the participants reported having experienced a traumatic event at least once before age 18, and 16 percent had been diagnosed as an adult with a primary headache disorder, which means that their headaches are the main problem, rather than a symptom (症状) of an underlying disease or condition.

The researchers categorized traumatic events as either threat-based (such as physical or emotional abuse, witnessing or being threatened by violence, and serious family conflicts) or deprivation-based (including neglect, financial trouble, parents’ separation, divorce or death, and living in a household with mental illness, alcohol or substance abuse). Physical abuse and exposure to family violence were among the most commonly reported traumas.

Of those who had experienced at least one traumatic event as a youth, 26 percent subsequently were diagnosed with primary headaches, compared with 12 percent of those who had not experienced trauma.

As the number of traumatic events experienced by a child or adolescent increased, so did the odds of their having headaches later in life. For example, those who had experienced four or more traumatic events were more than twice as likely to have a head ache disorder. Also, certain traumas — physical abuse and neglect — were linked to greater risk for headaches than other types of trauma.

The study found an association between trauma as a youth and headache disorder as an adult, rather than direct proof that one led to the other. But the researchers wrote that traumas experienced as a child or adolescent “are important risk factors for primary headache disorders in adulthood,” which one of the researchers described in a statement released by the American Academy of Neurology as “a risk factor that we cannot ignore.”

6 . If you could save someone’s life, would you? That question was ______ in the hearts of Julia Harlin’s children. Their mother was at risk of dying without a liver transplant. Julia did not want her children to become living ______ , but the kids had other ideas. Eileen Harlin and two of her siblings (兄弟姐妹) made the ______ to have testing as possible ______ without telling their mom.

After securing a good test result, Eileen phoned her mother, “Hey, don’t get ______ , but I’ve been tested to see if I’m a match. And I am, and I want to do it. How can you be mad when your daughter is going to save her mom’s life?” The news went around and was ______ tears all around.

The transplant surgery went ______ on August 16, 2022, at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Unfortunately, Julia received bad news shortly after getting her new ______ of life. She was experiencing kidney ______ due to her liver disease, so even though the liver was mending, the kidneys had too much damage to ______ .

Without a second thought, Eileen ______ and another transplant was ______ on December 19, 2023, at the same facility.

Daniel G. Maluf, M. D. , the surgeon for both of Julia’s procedures, said, “The mom’s kidney function recovered ______. And both of them were home two or three days after the transplant. Julia is a wonderful patient, very ______ of her kids’ efforts. And obviously, the hero of the story is Eileen, who ______ twice to save her mother.”

8 . “The cure for anything is salt,” says a character in Karen Blixen’s short story The Deluge at Norderney. Everyday life has got a lot saltier since Blixen’s era — and salt is no longer the cure-all it once was. So what should we be doing about it?

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends capping your salt intake at 5g a day, and keeping it even lower if possible. That’s because, according to a large body of evidence, eating a lot of it is linked to high blood pressure, which in turn is a risk factor for heart disease. More recently, extra salt has also been associated with stomach cancer.

So is the answer to put down the shaker? It’s a bit more complicated than that: as the British Heart Foundation notes, 75% of the salt that we eat is added before our food even hits our plates. The UK was a world leader in salt reduction, with the Food Standards Agency enforcing (施行) strict limits on how much could be included in most products.

In 2010, however, as the government introduced “responsibility deals”, the food industry itself took the lead in the process, with limits becoming much more voluntary. Now, even brands that would like to reduce the salt content of their foods are hamstrung by what everyone else is doing: apart from being one of the cheapest forms of flavouring available, salt can also be used to bulk up (增重) foods by increasing their water content.

“As a work partner of mine said, leaving it up to the manufacturers (制造商) is like putting a mosquito in charge of a blood bank,” says Graham MacGregor, a professor of medicine. “Some supermarkets want better enforcement, but it has to come from above.”

The answer, then, is that this is one health concern that we should probably be collectively worrying about. You can take steps like cooking most of your meals and avoiding takeaways and ready meals. But it’s not an option for everyone. “If you really want to lower your salt intake, the best first step might be to write to your MP (国会议员),” says MacGregor.

9 . Following a sustainable diet, also known as a “planetary health diet”, includes whole grains, fruits, nuts, green vegetables, and olive oil, can be a win-win for your health and the planet, according to a new research.

The new research conducted by scientists from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health has revealed that people who eat more environmentally sustainable food have a 25percent lower risk of mortality (死亡) compared to those with a less sustainable diet, like eggs, the red and processed meat. The findings show that the participants with a good planetary health diet had a reduced risk of all causes of death measured in the study.

The study involved over 100,000 participants in the USA, with a 30-year check-up period. According to Linh Bui, the PhD candidate at Harvard, the research team integrated data on the health outcomes of specific foods and their environment al impact, creating a Planetary Health Diet Index (指数), and gave the participants scores based on their diets. Using this, they assessed the relationship between the scores and the participants’ health outcomes. “The results confirmed our previous hypothesis (假设) that a higher Planetary Health Diet score was associated with a lower risk of death,” said Bui. The people with the highest Planetary Health Index scores had a 25per cent lower overall risk of death than those with the lowest scores.

The environmental impact of the foods was evaluated by factors such as water use, land use, package, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers hope that the eco-index can be used as a simple tool for policy makers and public health services to improve human health and tackle the climate crisis.

However, they acknowledge that the index does not take into account certain challenges that people may have in following a sustainable diet, such as health conditions of the subjects and what cultures they come from. They hope that further research will address these barriers,   as well as relationships between foods and diseases tailored to particular countries.