Hasta La Gadget!

Liberals talk about circumstances; conservatives talk about character.

Your mom and dad were onto something when they strapped on a helmet, took off your training wheels and sent you teetering along on your new ride. Despite recent rumors that helmets don’t do that much good, the facts remain firm that protecting your dome while you bike makes the sport safer. And ditching the helmet for even just one ride opens up a world of unnecessary risk.

The History Of Bike Helmets
According to Bicycling Magazine, head protection standars first came about in the 1950s when car racer William “Pete” Snell died in a crash. His friends created the Snell Memorial Foundation, dedicated to helmet safety research. The first bike helmet was sold in 1975, and when their popularity grew in the 1980s, doctors began to notice that cyclists in the emergency room after a helmeted crash fared better overall than those who rode with naked noggins. By the late 90s, all helmets sold had to meet strict standards in accordance with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The Helmet-Hard Facts

What started in the 70s remains true today: wearing a helmet makes riding safer. That may be why half of riders now wear helmets — an 18 percent increase in just eight years — and 98 percent of bike commuters own one. While there is one small study in the UK, that says that wearing a helmet actually puts a rider at greater risk, many experts aren’t on board with its findings. “No safety scientist we have met believes this study to be valid, and it has not been repeated,” Thom Parks, vice president of corporate affairs at Bell and Giro, tells The Huffington Post.

And almost all other research sides with Parks.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in the late 1980s claimed that helmets lowered the risk of head injury by 85 percent and protected the brain nearly 90 percent of the time, but a follow-up study showed that their findings may have been a bit optomistic. That said, the 1996 study still found helmets as an effective way of reducing, or even altogether preventing, head injuries in bicycle crashes.

But even with these convincing stats, not everyone wears head protection when they ride. Of those who do not wear helmets, 26 percent say it’s because they only ride a short distance, 25 percent say they forget and 20 percent find the gear uncomfortable. These reckless riders could very well end up a part of the 800 cyclists who are killed each year or one of the 500,000 who wind up in the ER in the U.S. Of those, about 65 percent of the deaths and 30 percent of the injuries involve the head and face.

Luckily, the future of helmets is bright. Even characters in children’s movies are wearing helmets more often. Now, 25 percent of them do, which is up 10 percent from 2002.

Why More Money Doesn’t Necessarily Mean More Safety
When it comes to investing in a helmet, there’s an overwhelming range of styles, sizes and safety claims. The truth is that the $100 version is a fancier, flashier, potentially comfier version, with a similar skeletal base to the $20 one. All helmets made or imported to the U.S. for use after 1999 must comply with a mandatory safety standards issued by the CPSC.

The bottom line? When talking strictly safety, as long as it fits correctly and sports the CPSC safety label, each helmet should be just as safe as its shelf neighbors.

How We Can Make Cycling Even Safer

For all of the good that they do, helmets aren’t perfect. In fact, as more people convert to helmet wearers, the rate of bike-related head injuries is also rising. Part of this could be our present focus on the dangers of concussions, meaning that they are simply diagnosed more often than they once were. But the other part is that helmets are primarily designed to protect the skull from high-impact blows — and they do a great job of that. But the low impact hits that may very well cause concussions aren’t easily absorbed into the helmets. The problem is that catering to the smaller hits could mean less protection from the larger, life-threatening ones, so helmet designers continue to hunt for the perfect protection. “Yes, all helmets have limits, and serious injury or death can occur even when you wear one, and even at low speeds. But the odds are clearly more in your favor when you wear a certified helmet which fits you well and is well adjusted,” Parks tells The Huffington Post.

Helmets aren’t the only form of protection that factor into bike safety. Protected bike lanes give cyclists a place to pedal outside of the flow of traffic and can greatly reduce accidents. The protected bike lane on 9th Avenue in New York City lowered the injury rate of all street users by 56 percent. These lanes have the potential to decrease cyclists’ injury risk by as much as 90 percent.

But even with the addition of protected bike lanes in cyclist friendly cities, donning a helmet is key. Parks and many other helmet enthusiasts hold strong to their belief in the safety of helmets. “As light and well ventilated as helmets are, as inexpensive as many models are, there is no good reason to ride without,” he says.

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By Melissa Pandika for OZY

While psychiatric nurse Arjen van Dijk was working in patient admissions at the Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway about 10 years ago, he often saw police bringing in one patient after another — often handcuffed, even pepper sprayed. Police were responding to roughly 2,000 “psychiatric missions” each year, from public nudity to suicide attempts, and were concerned that the mentally ill individuals were posing a threat to themselves and others.

Van Dijk worried that the police’s involvement had only worsened the existing stigma against mental illness. “When a psychiatric person is sitting in a police car outside your neighbor’s house, you think, ‘Wow, this is criminal.’ ‘How about my safety?'” he said. But with an ambulance, the patient inside “could have a broken leg, anything.” What’s more, police officers — and even regular ambulance staff — have little to no experience with psychiatric patients.

So in 2005, van Dijk co-launched a separate, state-funded ambulance for these patients, which looks exactly like Norway’s regular yellow-and-green ambulances. But unlike a typical ambulance staffed with only two paramedics, the psychiatric ambulance houses two trained psychiatric nurses in addition to a paramedic.

For now, one ambulance serves the town of 250,000, running from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., making at least seven trips a day. When residents call 911, the emergency dispatcher decides whether to send a regular or psychiatric ambulance.

Unlike police officers or regular paramedics who focus mainly on rushing patients to the hospital, the nurses take time to interview family members or anyone else living with the patient. On board the ambulance, the patient sits in a chair instead of lying on a stretcher. “Most patients don’t have to be in a lying position, and they don’t like it,” van Dijk explained. Nurses also conduct patient interviews en route to the hospital. All this additional information can then help psychiatrists at the hospital make more accurate diagnoses sooner.

Today, the Bergen police department responds to fewer mental illness-related complaints, deferring instead to the psychiatric ambulance. Sometimes they’ll accompany the ambulance, “but their involvement is much shorter,” van Dijk said. For particularly disturbed patients, “they spend five minutes on forced entry, and then we take care of the rest.”

The psychiatric ambulance has also rolled into European cities beyond Bergen, hitting the road in nearby Stavanger in 2009. Amsterdam began a yearlong pilot test in April, to be followed by Stockholm in September. Each city is served by only one psychiatric ambulance.

Amsterdam has faced similar problems with police officers addressing mental health-related calls. “They tend to use more force and coercion than strictly necessary,” said Jeroen Zoeteman, a psychiatrist at Amsterdam’s Psychiatric Emergency Room (PER), which had launched its own psychiatric ambulance initiative in 2012 before learning about van Dijk’s. “Based on his experiences, we could further develop the project in Amsterdam,” Zoeteman said. Today, the police assist PER in only 0.6 percent of cases, compared to 17 percent before Psycholance, he added.

As for van Dijk, he hopes his idea catches on in other countries, so families can see their loved ones with trained mental health professionals on an ambulance — not handcuffed by police on their doorstep.

More from OZY:
Why Your Doctor May Ask You To Take a Breathalyzer Test
How Sleeping In Could Save a Life
How You Can Get Your Exercise and Ice Cream At the Same Time

In case no one has told you today, you’re awesome.

No, really.

You may not realize it, but some of your natural behaviors could be making a world of difference, to others and to yourself. It’s easy to dismiss certain actions — like providing a listening ear, or making someone laugh — because we don’t really think of them as a big deal in the first place. But the truth is, these small acts can have a huge impact.

If you need a little pick-me-up, let us remind you of the times you brought some happiness and well-being into the world:

That night you brought your friend some post-breakup ice cream.

Dropping everything when your friend is in distress doesn’t just make you a good BFF, it has some psychological benefits for the both of you as well. Research suggests that spending time with your close friends can reduce tension, and really helping people — like being a good support system to someone in need — can also boost happiness. That shoulder to cry on is more valuable than you think.

The one Monday morning when you made your co-workers laugh hysterically.

The beginning of the workweek is always a drag, so bringing a little light to the day is probably appreciated more than you realize. Not only that, studies have shown that laughing lifts the mood — something that is much needed when sorting through 300 emails from the weekend. Plus, happier employees mean a lower risk of burnout. So on behalf of all of your co-workers, thank you.

The afternoon you listened to your roommate vent for an exceptionally long time.

With so many digital distractions around today, having someone’s full attention during a conversation has sadly become more of a cherished quality than an automatic given. And your friends and family appreciate your good listening skills more than you know.

“People who are good listeners validate other people’s feelings,” listening expert Paul Sacco, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, previously told HuffPost Healthy Living. “It shows that what they’re saying makes sense.” Making others feel good just by lending your ear? Props on being an awesome person!

The hard conversation where you shared your honest opinion.

When you’re an authentic person, you’re not afraid to have those gently honest talks with people you truly care about — and that characteristic helps you build genuine friendships. “[A] real friend — someone you truly trust — they know they can tell you exactly what’s on their mind. People who are open and straightforward are some of the most important types of friends to have,” Robert Rowney, D.O., a certified psychiatrist and the director of the Cleveland Clinic mood disorder unit, previously told HuffPost Healthy Living.

Plus, passive aggression is no healthy way to deal with a conflict. Pat yourself on the back for having the bravery to speak your mind in a constructive way. It’s appreciated.

The one time when you fell short of your goal.

It’s no secret that we’re our own worst critics — and that doesn’t ring more true than when we fail at something. But as writer Mike Liguori explains in a HuffPost blog, our shortcomings are actually vital to finding success. Here’s why:

Not everything we attempt will result in success. Every time we take a chance or risk to step out of our comfort zone, we learn something which helps us grow and become more successful in future ventures. When Thomas Edison finally invented the lightbulb, he said “I didn’t fail a thousand times. I just found a thousand different ways it didn’t work.”

Failures also provide us clarity. Initially, when something doesn’t work out, we tend to sulk on how bad the situation is and how we completely screwed up. When the dust settles and we can shift our focus to the pros and cons of the experience, clarity brings perspective. It allows us to view what went wrong and instantaneously we look to the next venture aware of past mistakes or reflecting back on the previous experience.

That lazy Sunday afternoon you spent parked on the couch.

You may feel unproductive or like the biggest bump on a log, but here’s a secret: that’s OK. In fact, our crazy lives have us using the word “busy” so much, it’s starting to burn us out. Our well-being depends on embracing some idleness — otherwise we could be harming how we connect and how well we perform at work.

So give yourself some credit for not being busy for once. As author Agapi Stassinopoulos writes in her HuffPost blog, we need to end the “glorification for our culture’s busyness, getting things done on little sleep, and feeling like we have to catch up with the race — because ultimately there is no race except for the one we assign ourselves to.”

This GPS Guide is part of a series of posts designed to bring you back to balance when you’re feeling off course.

GPS Guides are our way of showing you what has relieved others’ stress in the hopes that you will be able to identify solutions that work for you. We all have de-stressing “secret weapons” that we pull out in times of tension or anxiety, whether they be photos that relax us or make us smile, songs that bring us back to our heart, quotes or poems that create a feeling of harmony or meditative exercises that help us find a sense of silence and calm. We encourage you to visit our other GPS Guides here, and share with us your own personal tips for finding peace, balance and tranquility.

It’s the little things, people.

Yesterday, before she left to soccer on a 95-degree day, Sweet P (who is not always, uh hmm, sweet) came in to thank me for filling her water bottle.

Little thing.

Then a friend texted to say she was thinking about me. I found a five in the pocket of the capris I hadn’t worn in awhile. And my cat came and laid on my lap and purred like a little engine.

Little thing. Little thing. Little thing. Sure. It’s not like Oprah called saying she wanted to be besties, it’s not that I won a gazillion dollars or created world peace. I didn’t run into Justin Timberlake at the market, but all these so-called little things made for one-big-fat good feeling night.

Living Well in the Moment

Don’t bother worrying about the little things — or anything really, because worry rarely translates into actions that make a difference. “Don’t,” as Richard Carlson said, “sweat the small stuff.”

But do focus on making the little, quiet, routine moments better.

Do focus on filling them with gratitude and compassion and joy and love, because one thing is sure: When we give attention to living well in this moment, we make the next moment a little better, a little easier to bear. That helps us make the moment beyond that a bit better and all the moments to come easier until we’ve strung together a whole big awesome life of little sweet moments.

Life is in the little things. The brief moments when we say I love you or walk away, when we give a hug or keep our distance. The moments when we choose kale over chocolate or chocolate over kale. These little moments shape the quality of our lives and the way we contribute to the world. Life is all about the little things.

You can sit at home and make a five-year plan — and I have. You can have long and short term goals — and I do. But, my primary focus now is to give attention to the moment that I have now. Right now. It’s all I know for sure and the only way to complete anything five years out is to make sure that I’m making the most of this moment right now.

Joy in the So-Called Boring, Mundane Moments

My graduation from college was Awesome. My wedding? Meaningful, lovely, a total blast. The first time I held my daughter? Breathtaking. All big days to be sure.

But, so was the first day I sat alone at my desk, in my office as a self-employed writer. And the moment my grandfather let me drive his car and morning my daughter made her own breakfast and a conversation I had with a girlfriend over margaritas. And the snuggle from my husband after a hard day.

We like to celebrate the biggies of life — and they should be celebrated — but we also need to notice, and honor, and enjoy the little moments. These mundane moments that show up in the daily routine are the things that will add meaning and joy to our lives, say researchers.

“What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future — and more extraordinary than we might expect,” says Ting Zhang, a researcher at Harvard Business School who found that when we document the routine moments of our lives to read later we actually experience greater pleasure and joy when remembering a “typical” day rather than a big-time event.

Things that did not seem meaningful in the moment, a favorite song or playlist, a conversation with a friend, are the types of things the meant a great deal when remembered later, Zhang says.

“The studies highlight the importance of not taking the present for granted and of documenting the mundane moments of daily life to give our future selves the joy of rediscovering them,” he says.

Notice the Now

Before you can start documenting the moments of your life, you must notice them. Start by pausing at least three times a day and during every transition — before you brush your teeth, or start the car, or get up to leave — to notice what is around. Use all five senses to soak up your environment then pause to become aware of what you are thinking and feeling. Sit with it. Don’t act on these thoughts, just become aware.

Then savor those moments.

Notice the amazing in the familiar. The complexity of a spider’s web, the way the sun comes through the trees, a child’s laugh. And, here’s the key: Soak it up. Identify the good feelings that emerge from this noticing and pause to fully absorb them. Spend 15 or 20 seconds soaking up the good feeling.

Also, journal, or use a gratitude practice (or combine the two) to connect to the amazing in the mundane.

Do this several times a day and not only will you line the future with joy and meaning, but you will fill the little moments right now with gratitude, appreciation, and good feeling.