The best way to deal with trauma goes through cycles in terms of treatment options. Some folks think we need to just power through it and “toughen up” after seeing story after story of folks on social media discussing how their trauma has impacted their lives. Others turn to talk therapy and psychological techniques to process their trauma, but with many still struggling and dealing with it, looking and not finding the thing that can properly kick it to the curb.
The thing is, the trauma might not just be trapped in your brain, but your body, too. The solution might not be an oral medication or a brain exercise, but a natural process. The key to unlocking this modern problem could come from a doctor in the 1970s. If you’re going through trauma and talk therapy isn’t cutting it, somatic therapy might be what you need.
After stress, animals undergo a natural healing process.
They shake, tremble, or breathe deeply, which helps their bodies recover and calms their nervous systems after intense stress.
If these stress hormones are not processed, they can lead to PTSD, depression, and… pic.twitter.com/oCkxXgKaJW— Brian Maierhofer (@IamProHuman) April 2, 2025
A post on X has been going viral discussing Dr. Peter Levine and somatic therapy. Dr. Levine was studying wild animals and asked: How do wild animals process their trauma? On the surface, one can wonder why no one had looked into this before? After all, humans are animals themselves, and by modern day standards wild creatures tend to experience more threats and trauma than we do. Unless you’re Tarzan, most of us don’t go through day to day risking your life for food or becoming food for some other animal. So how do these animals process a near death experience, moments of high panic, or pain?
Levine noticed that after surviving a traumatic event, mammals in the wild convulsed, literally shaking and shivering in place, then a period of deep breathing before getting up and going about their day. These animals saw their trauma as a physical problem rather than just a mental one. They processed trauma as a part of the mind and the body.
Upon this observation, Levine believed that the stress, anxiety, and trauma built up in the body in the nervous system. This is what causes these animals to literally freeze and humans to “freeze” when experiencing post-traumatic stress. He thought that trauma was best processed and treated from the “bottom-up,” treating the reptilian fight-or-flight-or-freeze survival section of the human brain and the body so that the mammalian and neo-cortex section can follow through. This is how he developed his version of somatic therapy, which he dubbed somatic experiencing.
Breath your way out of trauma. The vagus nerve plays a crucial role in the theory and practice of Somatic Experiencing, a therapeutic approach developed by Dr. Peter Levine for treating trauma. Try this one simple exercise with Peter and Deepak to calm yourself and start healing from the past. BreathWork SomaticExperiencing TraumaRecovery VagusNerve MindBodySpirit HealingJourney PeterLevine DeepakChopra MentalHealthAwareness SelfHealing TraumaTherapy EmotionalWellness HolisticHealth MindfulnessPractice CalmYourMind StressRelief HealFromThePast TherapeuticBreathing MentalHealthMatters InnerPeace ♬ original sound – Peter A. Levine – Peter A. Levine
Current somatic experiencing (SE) practices typically involve a practitioner helping a patient allow their body to tremble to let the pent up stress and energy go when recalling a traumatic event. Many people who commit to this practice allows people to address their past trauma and literally “shake it off” then recenter themselves to the safe, comfortable present. This holistic approach has been used to aid people suffering from trauma, anxiety, grief, chronic pain, and even sexual dysfunction.
If you’re dealing with trauma, it’s best to seek professional counsel. If you don’t believe talk therapy is working, ask your treatment team to see if somatic experiencing could help you. Skepticism is understandable, but if your trauma has become a recurring stumbling block in your life, it might be worth exploring options to attack the issue through mind, body, and spirit to achieve relief and move forward.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest person lived to the ripe age of 122 years old. Such a lifespan is an incredible feat, but what if the average person could beat that record by 34 years? Recent research done in Russia has led scientists to believe that the average human lifespan could be up to 156 years.
The researchers at Skoltech Biomed Technologies Center developed a mathematical model that allowed them to “switch on” a variety of aging mechanisms. This allowed them to calculate a human’s lifespan where mortality risk never increased with age. After experimenting with different scenarios and conditions, they found the biggest barriers to longevity were caused by non-renewable tissues and somatic mutations.
What are these barriers against longer life?
Somatic mutations are DNA changes within a cell. They accumulate over time during a human’s life and cannot be reversed with any existing therapy. These DNA errors that pile up in our cells contribute to the aging process.
Many human organs like the liver and skin continually replace cells and regrow damaged portions of themselves. However, there are two organs that can’t do this: the brain and the heart. Brain tissue (neurons) and heart tissue (cardiomyocytes) cannot regenerate. This proves to be the most prominent biological limit that shortens our lifespans. This explains why issues like dementia and heart disease are prominent causes of death and morbidity later in life. Since those organs’ tissues don’t replace damaged cells, they’re prone to irrevocably decline over time.
“The key finding of the study is the discovery of substantial differences between tissue types. Neurons and cardiomyocytes, which lack the ability to divide, turned out to be the main limiting factors: when all other causes of aging are eliminated, somatic mutations alone reduce the theoretical median lifespan from 1,759 years (for a hypothetical non-aging human organism) to 156 years,” said Evgeny Efimov, a research intern at the Skoltech Biomed Technologies Center, researcher at AIRI, and one of the key authors of the study.
This suggests that somatic mutations and DNA damage is what ultimately prevents humans from living indefinitely, even if our brains and hearts regenerated cells like other organs.
So what’s next?
Now knowing these biological limitations, the researchers hope to study other areas of aging impacting the human lifespan that could plausibly be reversed. This includes mitochondrial dysfunction, telomere shortening, epigenetic drift, and loss of proteostasis.
The hope is to have a clearer priority list of issues for future therapies to tackle. This is not just to possibly extend life, but to improve lives in general. By developing a fully comprehensive theory of aging, Skoltech hopes to pinpoint which aspects of aging are within our scope to address. After all, thoroughly studying each puzzle piece that makes up human life gives us a better understanding of the whole.
Of course, other impactful factors in a person’s lifespan can be addressed today. As most know, things like diet, sleep, and exercise are among them. A person’s living environment can also negatively impact their lifespan if it doesn’t have clean air, access to clean water, and so on.
For now, the best method for living long is to follow instructions from your physician. Whether you make it to 156 years or not, living well is best for whatever time you’re given.
In the U.S., as of mid-2026, more than 30 states have passed laws banning or restricting cellphones in K–12 classrooms; in 2023, the U.S. surgeon general issued a formal advisory on social media and children’s and adolescents’ mental health; and bestselling books tell parents that smartphones are “rewiring” their children’s brains.
These concerns and policies are part of a quickly changing national and international conversation around how young people spend time on screens and its relationship to their overall health and development. My reading of the mounting research on this issue across disciplines is that the popular narrative blaming screens and smartphones for an adolescent mental health crisis runs well ahead of the current evidence.
I study adolescent digital media use and its influence on social, emotional and academic outcomes. A growing body of research suggests that one-size-fits-all solutions are not the answer and that managing appropriate use of digital media needs to take into account a child’s developmental milestones, how parents and adults around them use media, and the ways kids use it to connect and learn with friends and family.
Screen time: From monolith to multifaceted
Wide adoption of digital media and the internet broadened the range of experiences young people could have online. At the same time, the digital age introduced newfound uncertainties. As with the advent of radio, comic books and arcades, adults worried about how children might interact with or be affected by internet use.
Policies introduced by the academy in 2013 and 2016 continued to advise that school-age kids and adolescents – those ages 5 to 18 – be restricted to no more than two hours of “entertainment” screen time a day. The goal was to curb risks associated with heavy media use, among them disrupted sleep, online safety, cyberbullying and physical inactivity.
Originally created for young people’s engagement with stationary media that tend to be confined to one room or context – for example, watching television – these hourly limits became outdated with the integration of smartphones and other digital devices into everyday life. Compared with watching television, online media was far more difficult to track and define, and more nuanced in its use.
In January 2026, the American Academy of Pediatrics retired its decade-old framework that had largely organized its advice around hourly screen limits. The new policy statement on children, adolescents and digital media diverges from this blanket approach. Instead, it suggests parents consider the larger picture in which this media use exists rather than lumping all screen use together.
Both the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics also recommend that when children under 24 months use screens, they should be limited to content and devices that encourage children and caregivers to interact. For ages 2 to 5, screen time – including TV and interactive apps on devices – may be extended to more solo use, provided it’s high-quality digital media designed around learning goals in mathematics and reading. But recreational use should be limited to roughly an hour per day.
For school-age children and teens, the newest guidance has begun to step away from fixed screen time limits and asks families to weigh online activity in the context of everyday life.
Doing so recognizes that a child’s digital experiences are shaped by diverse factors rather than the hours spent online. Current guidelines call on caregivers to distinguish among types of media, from television and social media to video games and interacting with artificial intelligence chatbots. They also call for taking into account a child’s individual characteristics, such as their interests and personality, family members’ own use of screens, and the type of content children are spending time on.
Rethinking screen time
Moving beyond strict screen time limits includes questioning the kind of digital activities kids and adolescents participate in. Do the activities encourage time spent interacting with others online, which can help young people develop important skills and competencies?
Scrolling an algorithm-based, auto-playing video feed likely does not equate to the same opportunities as video-chatting with friends, creating digital art or working with teammates in a multiplayer game. Research suggests these different uses relate to development in different ways and can help kids develop varying skill sets pertaining to everyday life and schooling.
Indeed, a large review of current research found that young people who take part in a range of digital activities, such as browsing the web, online gaming or interacting on social media, show positive associations with social connection, identity exploration, civic participation and learning.
The current evidence suggests parents and caregivers are best positioned to be digital instructors. Cutting children off altogether can carry its own risks for social and emotional development. Caregiver mediation of children’s screen time can produce widely different outcomes and effects, depending on whether the guidance is supportive or controlling.
Considering your own digital media use is the first step: Are family members engaging in problematic or heavy media use that children in the household might emulate? What applications and uses are most common in the family, and what positive or negative effects might they have, depending on the child’s age? How could these digital activities be safely integrated with other everyday experiences to increase their benefit for children? Conversely, what online time might be better spent on face-to-face experiences?
The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Family Media Plan tool turns these ideas into concrete questions. For example, it recommends working out what each child needs from digital technology, what activities screens might be crowding out, and where their family or household can build in screen-free time. The recommendation is to talk with each child about why they are drawn to particular apps or online activities, what they encounter while browsing, and what might be lost when kids bring phones to gatherings such as mealtimes.
The debate over young people’s screen time is not going away. But the most up-to-date guidelines, and the growing body of research behind them, make a strong case for a more holistic approach. The guidelines treat digital media as a complex, diverse and evolving environment that children need to learn to navigate in the digital age. The risks and rewards depend, as with any developmental setting, on the child, the content and what online time might be crowding out.
An emergency room doctor and fellow mom has been noticing a troubling trend: Many parents are giving their kids something more powerful than bicycles to get around the neighborhood. As a result, she’s seeing more children come into the ER with injuries sustained in e-bike and e-scooter crashes. She recently went online with a plea to parents and young riders.
Dr. Meghan Elizabeth Beach Martin, known online as Dr. Beachgem, posted a video in her scrubs discussing her concerns after seeing so many children come into the hospital with e-bike injuries during the summer months. She’s worried that too many kids and parents don’t understand the proper safety precautions. As a mother herself, she even questions why children are allowed to ride these devices at all.
In the video, the doctor explains that some e-bikes can reach speeds of up to 28 mph. She says that if an e-bike goes any faster than that, it’s technically classified as a motorcycle. At those speeds, she regularly sees children with traumatic injuries and broken bones after hitting bumps, cracks in the road, or other vehicles. Many of them aren’t wearing helmets or protective pads, and some are even riding barefoot, making their injuries even more severe. Martin’s video has gained traction on Reddit and elsewhere online.
E-bikes and e-scooters, examined
Martin isn’t the only professional seeing a growing problem. The American College of Surgeons reports that there are more than 20,000 e-bike-related injuries each year. Meanwhile, a University of California, San Francisco study found that e-bike injuries doubled annually from 2017 to 2022. The same study found that e-scooter injuries increased by 45% each year during the same period.
Before riding an e-bike, it’s important to follow proper safety procedures. Make sure you and your child understand your area’s laws regarding e-bikes, including any minimum age requirements. Always wear a helmet and other protective gear when riding. Consider choosing an e-bike with safety features such as motor-interrupt brake levers and disc brakes. These are just a few of the many safety tips experts recommend.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has similar safety tips for e-scooter riders. Wearing a helmet is one of its top recommendations, along with taking other basic precautions. The agency also recommends checking the brakes before riding and slowing down for bumps, cracks, and other road hazards.
The vast majority of e-scooters and e-bikes are designed for only one rider, so avoid doubling up. Although laws vary by state and locality, wearing more protective gear is always the safer choice. Riders should also review local e-bike and e-scooter laws to make sure they are operating the vehicles safely and legally.
A little research goes a long way toward making sure you and your children can ride safely. It’s also important for parents to understand that many e-bikes and e-scooters can travel at speeds that make them very different from a traditional bicycle. The last thing you want is for you or your child to become another emergency room statistic.
