Although a new language is considered a great addition to a person’s skillset in an increasingly connected world, going for one that isn’t very popular can be tricky. But a polyglot named Ari Smith aced the language of the people in the Maasai Mara region of Kenya. Smith, who already has conversational capabilities in 62 languages, took it as a challenge to take a trip to a region in Kenya where the Maasai people dwell.
Representative Image Source: Maasai tribe men jumping during a ceremony | Eric Lafforgue – Getty Images
The tribal community speaks a language that is not known by the majority of polyglots either. Smith documented his interaction with the people from the Maasai tribe on his YouTube channel Xiaomanyc. In the YouTube video, Smith enters the Maasai village area with a translator from the Maasai tribe. The spear and stick welding men welcome Smith with open arms and smiles on their faces. Smith witnesses a bunch of rituals of the Maasai people that he had never seen before. It all starts with the Maasai warriors dancing and jumping high, pulling in Smith to join the fun. “The warriors prove their manhood by how high they can jump and as you can see I was clearly not up to the task,” Smith says in his voiceover as he tries to keep up with them. “But one thing I am good at is languages and finally I decided it was time to say something in Maasai.”
Representative Image Source: Maasai warriors, known as Morani, in the Malambo district of Ngorongoro. | Tom Stoddart – Getty Images
As soon as Smith started speaking their language, the men of the tribe looked at him with warm smiles on their faces, thrilled to see a foreigner conversing with them in their native tongue. They kept pulling Smith in for handshakes and hugs as he conversed with them further. He revealed to his hosts that he had arrived in Kenya a day before filming the video and he was leaving the country the very next day. Smith also revealed how he had assistance from a Maasai friend who helped him learn the language over the phone. The translator who shows Smith around the village also informs that although many houses do not have running water or electricity, the Maasai people have smartphones.
Representative Image Source: Sonyanga Ole Ng'ais captain of the Maasai Cricket Warriors poses for a portrait at Endana on August 25, 2017 in Laikipia, Kenya. | Francois Nell – Getty Images
Soon after this, Smith is taken on an interesting tour around the Maasai community’s village where he finds livestock and huts made of mud. He also briefly interacts with the women of the village and meets the elders of the community. One elder stuns Smith by claiming that he had killed a lion once and has five wives with whom he has 30 children. The next part proves to be a bit too much for Smith and his cameraman where the Maasai warriors drink raw blood drained from a goat since it is treated as a delicacy in the community. They later skin the goat and roast it for a meal. Smith also gets to witness a bonfire and naming ceremony before departing.
In a separate post that Smith shared on his Instagram account, he posed with the Maasai warriors, wearing their traditional garb and jewelry for a picture. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience surprising Kenya’s hardcore Maasai people by speaking their language and then becoming an honorary member of their tribe. These are some of the most fearless but also the nicest people on the planet and I will remember my time with them always,” he wrote in the caption of the post.
Photo credit: LPETTET/E+/Getty Images –
End-of-life decisions can be complicated, and ethics consultants may help families and care teams navigate them.
A surgeon prepares to amputate a patient’s foot to save his life, but the patient refuses the procedure. His decline in thinking and memory raises doubts about his ability to consent, and he has no family or friends to help with the decision.
A 17-year-old declines a liver transplant, while her mother insists on going forward with the lifesaving surgery.
Siblings stand divided at the bedside of their 85-year-old mother with dementia, one rejecting a feeding tube, the other calling it a basic human necessity.
I am a hospital ethics consultant, and these are the kinds of situations my colleagues and I regularly encounter. Yet many people are unaware that hospital ethics consultants even exist – or that they can ask for one.
Who are hospital ethics consultants?
Healthcare ethics consultants are trained to help patients, families and clinicians navigate difficult medical decisions.
They could be called in situations where healthcare staff struggles with providing procedures such as cardiac resuscitation that are unlikely to benefit the patient and might even cause more pain and suffering. They could also be called when it is unclear who has authority to consent for a patient’s care, or when end-of-life decisions are complicated and resources are limited – such as ICU beds and ventilators during COVID-19.
Ethics consultants come from a range of disciplines: physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, lawyers and philosophers who have specialized training and experience in clinical ethics. Since 2018, ethics consultants are increasingly pursuing formal certification through the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
What is their origin?
The modern field of bioethics emerged from the 1947 Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, where Nazi physicians were prosecuted for conducting brutal medical experiments on imprisoned people.
This led to the 1947 framework outlining ethically acceptable human research called the Nuremberg Code, written by a panel of American judges. The 1979 Ethical Principles and Guidelines for Protections of Human Subjects of Research, called the Belmont Report, followed the Nuremberg Code. The Belmont Report turned the ethical ideals of respect for persons, beneficence – to do good – and justice into a regulatory framework to protect vulnerable and marginalized medical research participants in the U.S.
In the 1980s, many of these ethics protections moved from the research lab to the patient bedside. During this time, lifesaving technologies such as the ventilator, dialysis machine and organ transplantation created new, difficult ethical questions: When should life support end? Who decides? And what happens when there aren’t enough resources?
A series of court cases and laws expanded patients’ rights, with the Patient Self-Determination Act, a 1990 law which upheld patient rights to refuse or accept medical treatment, marking the key turning point.
Lifesaving technologies have revolutionized medicine, but they also raise ethical questions about who receives care when resources are scarce. Jackyenjoyphotography/Moment via Getty Images
High-profile court cases exposed the ethical dilemmas around end-of-life care and patient self-determination. The 1976 case, In re Quinlan, involved Karen Ann Quinlan, a young woman in a persistent vegetative state whose family sought permission from the court to withdraw her ventilator.
Following In re Quinlan was the 1990 case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, which affirmed that adults have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment.
Both cases became touchstones for how ethics consultants and care teams navigate the life‑and‑death decisions that have become routine in an era of life‑sustaining technology.
A member of the healthcare team usually requests an ethics consult when they face conflict or uncertainty about the care of a patient. Patients and families can also request an ethics consultation, but in reality, few know this option exists or feel empowered to use it.
The ethics consultant’s first task is to gather as much information as possible from everyone involved to understand the full context of the case. Importantly, ethics consultants do not make treatment decisions; they assist the people who do.
Imagine a loved one with advanced dementia who is in the intensive care unit with respiratory failure and is on a ventilator. The physician believes further treatment will prolong suffering; the family is not willing to let him go.
An ethics consultant would be called by the family or healthcare team to slow things down, provide space to reflect, and help navigate the situation. The ethics consultant will often meet with everyone involved to ensure that all voices are heard and that the patient’s wishes remain central to the discussion.
As part of the ethics review, the ethics consultant would draw on their knowledge of policies, laws and ethical precedent about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment to provide some guardrails for the situation. In this case, a legal guardrail might be that the physician cannot remove the ventilator without the family’s consent.
Rather than making a decision, the ethics consultant would then outline the ethical options available from which the patient, family, and healthcare team can choose.
Why are ethics consultants a valuable resource?
Ethics consultants are trained to help people work through not just the medical facts, but the deeply human questions beneath them: What counts as an acceptable quality of life? How do we weigh hope against suffering? How can we know what a patient would want if they cannot speak for themselves?
In these moments, decisions can feel urgent and heavy, and communication can easily break down. Ethics consultants don’t take decisions away from patients or families, and they don’t replace the role of clinicians. Instead, they help ensure that everyone understands the situation, that different perspectives are heard and that the conversation stays grounded in the values and goals of the patient.
They also bring something that families often don’t realize they need until tensions rise: a calm, measured presence. By clarifying misunderstandings, naming sources of conflict and guiding difficult conversations, they help families and care teams find a way forward together.
The choices may still be painful – and there may be no perfect answer – but with the right support, those decisions can feel more thoughtful, more shared and more aligned with what matters most.
As the economy is in flux, the price of everything is increasing, including dating. According to some reports, an average night out has risen to nearly $200. For this reason and others, a new trend is forming for Millennials and Gen Z that’s been dubbed “solo-maxxing.” While these solo-maxxers are doing activities without a partner, they’re not lonely. In fact, they’re thriving.
Solo-maxxing is one of several “maxxing trends” that have become popular points of discussion on social media. In short, “maxxing” is slang for maximizing and optimizing a specific part of life to its fullest potential. For example, “looksmaxxing” is trying to enhance a person’s physical appearance through beauty routines, exercise, and the like. A person who takes melatonin, puts on a white noise machine, has full blackout curtains in their bedroom, etc. could be “sleepmaxxing.”
In this case, solo-maxxing is a similar maxxing self-care trend that has people reframing singlehood. While the higher price tags for dates and dating apps are a motivator, these solo-maxxers’ main motivation is to achieve contentment through independence without a partner. It’s making living the single life one that is desirable and by choice. Whether it’s burnout from dating or the expense, a survey of 14,380 adults aged 18 to 34 found that life was “more peaceful” when not in a relationship.
The appeal of solo-maxxing is multi-faceted. There is a sense of stability and independence in that you’re on your own. While a person still has to worry about their own finances, goals, happiness, etc., there is no pressure or distraction to shift focus onto another person’s situation as well. Eyes on their own paper. Many of these solo-maxxers are using their non-dating time to learn a new skill, try a new hobby, and/or pursue a passion. They are dedicating their time and resources to make themselves a complete person without needing another half.
Solo-maxxing vs. loneliness
While this is all well and good, it can be easy to just adopt the term solo-maxxing to hide a loneliness issue. The high cost of dating also contributes to the high loneliness epidemic among Gen Z. Other reasons for this loneliness include less physical third-spaces, overall expenses, and social media.
This loneliness shouldn’t be confused with solo-maxxing. After all, maximizing yourself as an unattached person doesn’t mean you’re physically by yourself, you’re just self-focused. Solo-maxxing can look like going to cooking classes so you don’t have to rely on anyone for delicious meals. It can mean signing up at a dojo to learn a martial art. If what you are doing is helping build confidence and isn’t just avoiding people, it is likely a positive solo-maxxing activity.
It is important to fully analyze and be honest with yourself when participating in this trend. If you’re masking loneliness and depression with a solo-maxxing label, you may want to reconsider and seek help. However, solo-maxxing is an option if you are burnt out by the dating scene, don’t want to waste money on potential dates that go nowhere, and have goals that a relationship might hinder.
Who knows? Maybe during a solo-maxxing activity you meet a fellow solo-maxxer and later decide to become duo-maxxers. Even if not, you can still feel confident and complete in life just on your own.
Meditation has been a practice for thousands of years, as early as 5,000 to 3,500 BCE. While typically a spiritual practice, meditation has since become a method to enhance mental and physical wellness. Many use meditation to lower stress and anxiety to feel more calm and grounded. Some practitioners meditate for hours at a time to achieve this, but, according to recent scientific research, they may only need seven minutes.
My brain 🧠 after meditating!! 🧘♀️ did you know that just as little as 5 minutes of meditation can help to boost your mood, destress you and calm your nervous system! 😲 how do you meditate? #meditation#meditate#calm#peaceful
A study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bengaluru, India found that while meditation can alter and change the brain over multiple sessions, it only takes around seven minutes for that mental change to peak per session.
“Meditation research has traditionally compared broad states such as ‘rest’ versus ‘meditation,’ but we still know surprisingly little about when changes in the brain actually emerge after meditation begins,” said researcher Malipeddi Saketh to PsyPost. “Many people assume meditation effects require long sessions, yet little work has examined the moment-to-moment temporal dynamics of brain activity during meditation.”
Studying the brain while it’s meditating
For the study, Saketh and his colleagues separated 103 participants into three groups. The groups were separated by their meditation experience, from novices to regular practitioners. In a sound-proof room, they had the participants individually engage in a 15-minute breath-watching meditation. During these sessions, the researchers analyzed their brain activity at a rate of 1,000 measurements per second. They did this using a specialized net of 128 electrodes placed across the scalp.
The researchers also looked at a transitional band called theta-alpha, which ranges from 6 to 10 hertz. This band is said to reflect a calm, focused state when both alertness and relaxation overlap. This is in contrast to 8 to 12 hertz alpha waves, a state of relaxation in which a person is wide awake with their eyes closed.
To track changes in brain activity over time, the researchers compared the data collected during successive one-minute segments against the baseline, which was the first 30 seconds of the meditation session. They also ran a separate analysis comparing a period of eyes-closed rest to the participant’s meditative state.
The results were promising, especially for newbies to meditation. The researchers found that brain changes during meditation were found within the first two to three minutes. They also found that regardless of experience, these brain changes peaked in intensity within the first seven to ten minutes. This means someone could get the benefits of meditation in less time than it takes to watch a YouTube video.
Effective meditation requires less time than previously thought
“From a mental well-being perspective, this is encouraging because many people feel they lack sufficient time to meditate or believe they need to practice for very long durations to experience benefits,” Saketh noted. “Our findings suggest that even brief periods of intentional mental training may begin engaging brain processes related to attention and internal awareness.”
This study means that even if you have little time in your schedule, you can benefit from meditation. According to the Mayo Clinic, meditation can help a person manage symptoms of a wide assortment of ailments. This can range from IBS to high blood pressure. In general, meditation is seen as a good practice for stress management.
While there are several videos online and various venues for professional meditation sessions, beginners don’t necessarily need those at the start. They may not even need them at all.
Meditation tips for newbies
Experts have a few tips to get begin meditating regularly. Set some time aside for meditation, either in the morning to get your day off to a good start or later in the evening to let go of the day’s tension. Meditate in a relaxing, distraction-free spot while seated in a comfortable, upright position. Then, with your eyes closed, focus on the words “breathe in” and “breathe out” as you do so. While you might peak at seven minutes like in the study, you might want to have a full 20-minute meditation session.
If your mind wanders during your session, just acknowledge that it wandered and continue focused breathing. You may want to initially practice mindfulness as you begin your session. Notice what you are feeling, smelling, and what your other senses are engaged with.
This practice can take time to master. Some professionals highlight best practices to help you find what’s most effective for you. It should also be noted that meditation is not a replacement for medical treatment. It’s best to consult your doctor and/or psychiatrist to see if meditation can help you with specific needs.
Meditation may or may not work for you. However, based on this study, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try for at least seven minutes.
