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Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a sexually transmitted virus that can affect men and women. It is the most common sexually transmitted disease — currently, more than 20 million Americans are infected with HPV and another 6 million become newly infected each year. Most of the time, HPV is harmless and goes away on its own. But it can cause genital warts and several types of cancer, including cervical and head and neck cancers. That’s why it’s important to protect yourself against HPV transmission with these eight strategies.

Studies have found that meditation helps prevent the recurrence of depression, perhaps by producing changes in parts of the brain associated with learning and anxiety. A new study suggests that meditation may modulate brain waves called alpha rhythms, which help regulate the transmission of sensory input from the surrounding environment.

After eight weeks, the brain scans showed that alpha rhythms changed more quickly and in a more pronounced way in participants who had been meditating. “If you’re reading something in a noisy environment and you want to be in a bubble, you might use your alpha rhythms like a volume knob, to turn down the volume on neurons that represent sound from the outside world,

Studies have found that meditation helps prevent the recurrence of depression, perhaps by producing changes in parts of the brain associated with learning and anxiety. A new study suggests that meditation may modulate brain waves called alpha rhythms, which help regulate the transmission of sensory input from the surrounding environment.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) garnered news headlines recently when researchers from Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., revealed that as many as 50 percent of U.S. men are infected with HPV. Last February, Ohio State University researchers said that HPV causes more than 60 percent of oropharynx cancers (a type of throat cancer), making the virus a bigger risk factor for that kind of throat cancer than tobacco. No wonder HPV is a hotbed of medical research right now: It’s extremely common, partly vaccine-preventable, and plays a significant role in multiple kinds of cancer, including cervical cancer in women. But for all the buzz about HPV in the scientific community, experts worry that many people are still fuzzy on details about the virus — including how it’s transmitted, who’s most at risk, and how to protect yourself from infection. “There’s so much people don’t know or misunderstand about HPV,” says William Robinson, MD, a professor of gynecologic oncology at Tulane University in New Orleans. Everyday Health asked him and other leading experts to shed light on the most common HPV knowledge gaps.

Addiction, says Maté, is nothing more than an attempt to self-medicate emotional pain.

The only difference between the identified addict and the rest of us is a matter of degrees.

Maté points to a host of studies that clearly show how neural circuitry is developed in early childhood. Human babies, more than any other mammals, do most of their maturing outside the womb, which means that their environment plays a larger role in brain development than in any other species. Factor in an abusive, or  at least  stressful, childhood environment and you’ve produced impaired brain circuitry – a brain that seeks the feel-good endorphins  and stimulating dopamine that it is unable or poorly able to produce on its own. A brain that experiences the first rush of heroin as a “warm, soft hug,” as a 27-year-old sex trade worker described it to Maté.

Back on the East Coast, it was much the same, as His Majesty King Michael Bloomberg issued a decree stating that as a benevolent despot, he would “allow” his Manhattan subjects to occupy Wall Street (as if the mayor has the power to grant — or withhold — democratic rights). But then King Mike quickly sent his police force in for mass arrests, standing down only after a wave of outrage from the larger serfdom watching on television.

Alas, it’s a predictable situation. Horrifying economic inequality has prompted the bottom 99 percent of income earners to finally exercise their constitutional rights to protest. In response, the nobles in the top 1 percent are demanding their political puppets make clear that such dissent will not be tolerated — and they expect their demands to be followed. This country’s landed gentry, after all, spent a lot on campaign contributions to make sure their hand-picked autocrats were installed in governors’ and mayors’ offices, and now they’re having those autocrats engineer a whole new kind of bailout.

As opposed to merely cutting a check to the bankers, this bailout is all about resource allocation. It has the kings preventing law enforcement from being deployed on financial criminals who destroyed the American economy. Instead, those finite law enforcement resources are being funneled into arresting more than 1,000 protesters and abrogating the vassals’ First Amendment rights to “peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”