The opioid crisis in America has become an epidemic, with drug overdose a leading cause of death. The two most popular opioid prescriptions written in the U.S. are for oxycodone and hydrocodone (typically Vicodin); the effects of both drugs apparently “indistinguishable from the effects of heroin” on the brain.
In the last 20 years, prescriptions for opioids have increased, as have drug addictions and drug-related deaths. Opioids aren’t just prescribed for surgery recovery anymore. They’re also distributed for more routine ailments, like chronic pain, which is just one reason the circulation of opioids has increased.
Yet according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, opioids don’t do much more for pain than ibuprofen or acetaminophen. In a clinical trial, 411 emergency department patients with extreme pain were randomly treated with opioids versus non-opioids. Ibuprofen and acetaminophen reduced pain scores by 4.3. The only patients who saw a greater decrease in their pain were those treated with oxycodone — and their pain was only reduced by 4.4.
Some patients treated with opioids, or a combination of opioids and non-opioids, found their pain a lot worse than those treated with ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Patients treated with a combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen only found their pain decreased by 3.5.
The conclusion here is that these emergency department patients did not feel significantly more relief when treated with an opioid. If the drug crisis increase is running parallel to the increase in opioid prescriptions, then this is a valuable finding. The choice to opt for an opioid over a non-opioid for acute emergency pain doesn’t seem to be backed by much. And, in fact, now there’s evidence that suggests we should opt for the non-opioid treatment. In most cases, why not prescribe the less addictive option for pain relief?
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside created a new gel that oxygenates and regenerates damaged tissue. By attaching a tiny battery about the size of a hearing aid, the gel becomes an electrochemical device capable of healing previously unhealable wounds. This breakthrough oxygenating hydrogel could reshape tissue restoration and address challenges across multiple conditions.
Some injuries develop complications and never fully heal. Without sufficient oxygen reaching the deeper layers of the skin, these wounds remain inflamed and never receive the medication needed to heal.
A medical provider treats a wound. Photo credit: Canva
Researchers create oxygenating hydrogel
People suffering from chronic wounds—injuries that haven’t healed for over a month—face the risk of potential amputation. In the absence of oxygen, bacteria continue to flourish and the deepest layers of tissue worsen instead of rebuilding—a condition known as hypoxia.
The 2026 UC Riverside study described a soft, flexible gel containing a nontoxic, antibacterial liquid and water. When an electric current travels through the hydrogel, the water molecules split, releasing a steady trickle of healing oxygen. By placing the gel-and-battery system into an absorbent patch, the hydrogel can be replaced as needed.
Iman Noshadi, an associate professor at UC Riverside who led the research team, described the problem this way:
“There are four stages to healing chronic wounds: inflammation, vascularization where tissue starts making blood vessels, remodeling, and regeneration or healing. In any of these stages, lack of a stable, consistent oxygen supply is a big problem.”
Hypoxia is a medical term that means low oxygen levels in the body’s tissues. Photo credit: Canva
A steady flow of healing oxygen
A 2024 study published in Oxford Academic revealed that hypoxia is a natural part of the healing process. In the early stages, it helps wounds form and promotes cell migration. However, chronic hypoxia in long-term wounds harms immune function and limits tissue regeneration.
There are significant benefits to using the oxygenating hydrogel. First, the gel adapts to a wound’s specific shape. By seeping into small gaps, it reaches areas where oxygen levels drop and infection risk is highest. Second, it delivers a continuous flow of oxygen that can last up to a month. Because tissue regrowth can take weeks, brief oxygen spikes don’t solve hypoxia. With controlled oxygen release, cells that were once unstable can begin to regrow.
One of the major challenges in organ-growing research has been oxygen supply.
A 2025 study by researchers at Stanford University revealed that a lack of internal blood vessels limits oxygen delivery to growing cells. As a result, engineered tissues have restricted growth and never reach full maturity. Another 2025 study by a team at the University of Tokyo attempted to mimic the placenta to enhance liver growth, again aiming to counter the challenges posed by hypoxic conditions.
Noshadi believes the gel could be a “bridge to creating and sustaining larger organs for people in need of them.”
Whether scientists are trying to heal chronic wounds or grow fully functional organs, the challenge often comes down to oxygen. Innovations like oxygenating hydrogel aim to solve this problem. By delivering oxygen exactly where it’s needed, the technology could become a turning point—transforming stalled healing and organ engineering into life-changing medical breakthroughs.
He thought he was just tired from a busy schedule. His wife needed to be up by 6:30 a.m. His own alarm didn’t go off until 7:45. The gap seemed manageable. Then he looked at her phone.
Under the username u/Cautious-Extreme-208, the man posted to social media on February 11, 2026, explaining what he found: not one alarm, but a chain of them, programmed at five-minute intervals from 6 a.m. to 6:45 a.m. Nine separate alarms. Each one nudging him slightly further from sleep before he had any reason to be awake. He called the screenshot he shared the “dark truth” behind his wife’s morning routine. The post has since been deleted, but not before Newsweek picked it up and the comment section filled with people saying some version of the same thing: same. Same house, same problem.
A 2025 study from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, published in Nature, analyzed more than 3 million nights of sleep data from users of a sleep monitoring app and found that more than half of all sleep sessions, 55.6%, ended with a snooze alarm. The average snoozer hit the button 2.4 times per morning, for a total of about 11 minutes of fragmented half-sleep. The researchers described frequent snooze alarm use as a potential marker of poor sleep health overall, and recommended that people set their alarm for the latest realistic wake time rather than building in a buffer of repeated alerts.
A frustrated man suffers from insomnia. Photo credit: Canva
The logic makes sense once you understand what the alarm is actually interrupting. Sleep in the final hour or two before waking tends to include some of the most important rest your brain gets, the kind that consolidates memory, processes emotion, and leaves you feeling human. Every alarm that fires before you need to be up pulls you partially out of that state. Not enough to wake you, but enough to disrupt it. Multiply that by nine alarms over 45 minutes and you have a pretty efficient system for making two people feel worse than they should.
That said, the science isn’t entirely one-sided. A 2024 study published in the Journal of Sleep Research found that for habitual late sleepers, a brief snooze period of around 30 minutes actually improved cognitive performance on rising compared to an abrupt awakening, and helped prevent being jolted out of the deepest stages of sleep. The key word there is brief. A single snooze as a gentle transition is a different thing from a 45-minute chain of beeps every five minutes.
Back on Reddit, the responses ranged from sympathetic to practical. u/One_Anything_2279 related immediately, joking about his own earlier-rising wife: “I hope she doesn’t find this and think this is my post.” u/Tempyteacup was blunt about the habit: “genuinely really bad for your sleep,” they wrote, recommending one alarm set for the time you actually need to get up. u/RefuseMysterious513 mentioned using apps that require solving a math problem before the alarm stops, a trick that forces full wakefulness. u/MJR-WaffleCat kept it simple: phone across the room.
None of those solutions address the underlying issue, which is that two people sharing a bed with an hour-plus difference in their wake times are always going to need some negotiation. The alarms are almost beside the point. What the post really captured is the small, daily math of living with another person’s schedule, and how much it costs you in sleep before you even realize it’s happening.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
Tackling a new business venture as a budding entrepreneur requires persistence and perseverance. Most entrepreneurs and start-ups fail, so it makes sense to think encouragement from friends, family, and peers would help morale. However, research suggests that what may be even more helpful is a baseless critic telling them they’ll fail.
A team at North Carolina State University gathered research from three studies involving a combined 1,400 participants. They found evidence that the majority of those who defined themselves as entrepreneurs were more driven when told they would fail. In fact, the less credible the critic, the more persistence the entrepreneur displayed to prove them wrong.
The researchers explained this “underdog effect” as part of Psychological Reactance Theory. The theory suggests that when a person’s freedom is challenged, they tend to push back harder and stronger than before. In this case, when someone tells an entrepreneur they’ll fail, the response tends to be, “Watch me!”
Entrepreneurs offer their thoughts
Entrepreneurs and business leaders spoke to GOOD to weigh in on this discovery. Many related to the entrepreneurs who felt more motivated after being disregarded by critics. However, they also urged caution against basing decisions and motivation solely on proving others wrong.
“This resonates with me to a degree. I think someone should be able to intuit when their persistence has become too much,” said Nathan Silvernail, co-founder and CEO of Plantd. “Often, folks are unwilling to pivot when a pivot is required. They’re afraid of change or hesitant to course-correct even when all of their signals are telling them to. Stubbornness paired with ignorance is a dangerous combination in any regard. A truly successful person will understand what this means.”
“Being told you might fail can absolutely strengthen someone’s resolve. But entrepreneurship isn’t just about endurance,” said Samyr Laine, co-founder and managing partner at Freedom Trail Capital. “If you ignore every piece of criticism because you’re trying to prove people wrong, you damage relationships and miss useful signals. Business is relational. Investors, customers, employees, they’re all giving you feedback in some form…You need resilience, but you also need self-awareness.”
“Proving others wrong might push you to short-term wins, but it’s consistency over time that drives championship-level results,” said Christina Reckard, president of the Pat Summitt Leadership Group. “The entrepreneurs that make it the distance can’t wait for a critic to give them the fire inside they need to motivate them, they need to have a great product or service, with the customer at the center, and the self-discipline to pursue excellence regardless of the obstacles.”
“For those of us who don’t have unlimited personal resources, entrepreneurship takes against-the-odds tenacity…If you’re deterred by a dismissive word, you’re not an entrepreneur for very long,” said Matt Graber, co-owner of Cool Hand Movers. “When acute adversity hits, or is even implied, the urge to swim upstream naturally kicks into high gear. Is this a healthy dynamic? Probably not. The results aren’t surprising but I wouldn’t go searching for negative reinforcement in place of traditional coaching and productivity tools.”
Psychology experts weigh in
Psychiatrists and therapists who spoke to GOOD explained why entrepreneurs can get a boost from such negativity. However, they also warned that persistence can turn into stubbornness, causing entrepreneurs to miss opportunities to learn and improve.
“When a person feels as though their competence is being challenged, they may become more motivated to prove themselves,” said Krista Walker, a therapist and clinical director at The Ohana. “This may be especially true for entrepreneurs, in particular. That is because their identity may be tied to their business or performance. It can feel like a personal challenge.”
“When we cling too tightly to an idea, an approach, or a specific outcome, we lose flexibility,” said psychiatrist Dr. MaryEllen Eller. “It can become easy to confuse commitment with rigidity and stubbornness for strength.”
Balance is key
“Being told ‘you’ll fail’ or ‘you can’t’ can actually make us want it more. It fuels a drive to self discover autonomy and prove your abilities,” said psychiatrist Dr. Sam Zand. “However when this fuel is from resentment, it can become unhealthy if it takes over who you truly are. Some of the biggest entrepreneurs use stories and experiences of doubt as fuel, but stay open to constructive criticism and learning.”
Based on the thoughts of these professionals, it seems best to pay attention to any data that conflicts with your vision in case changes need to be made.
