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Angry Moms Who Want Ellen DeGeneres Fired Are Bad For Our Mental Health

Deborah Dunham — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:46:38 +0000

Remember the angry moms who demanded that Ben & Jerry’s pull their “Schweddy Balls” ice cream from store shelves because it was considered sooo offensive to their little darlings? Well, they’re at it again. This time though, they want our beloved Ellen DeGeneres fired from being the spokesperson for JC Penney because she’s “openly gay”. If you ask me, these moms and their open negativity and hatred are just bad for our mental health.

The group known as OneMillionMoms.com, a division of the American Family Association, is pushing their supporters to speak out against Ellen being named the new spokesmodel for the chain store. In addition, they are demanding that she be replaced by someone who is not a lesbian. On their site, they wrote:

Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families.

The uptight homophobic group went on to say:

Degeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there.

Offended, really? Ellen is anything but offensive. She inspires millions of people every single day with her positive, larger-than-life attitude, generosity and enthusiasm. She is someone who just makes people smile, laugh and feel good. And with so many unhappy people in this world (ahem, moms), people could probably use a little more of Ellen in their lives. She’s just good for our mental health.

Luckily, not everyone agrees with these pissed-off moms. Herndon Graddick, Senior Director of Programs and Communications at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation told Radaronline:

While designated hate groups try to start ‘culture wars,’ it’s clear that a vast majority of Americans today support Ellen as well as their LGBT friends and family members. Selecting an out performer who has inspired and entertained millions, is not only a smart business practice, but a reflection of how LGBT Americans today are an integral and valued part of the fabric of our culture.

And JC Penney’s CEO, Ron Johnson, said he thinks DeGeneres is a great role model:

I think Ellen is someone we all trust. She’s lovable, likable, honest and funny, but at her soul, we trust her.

Yep, maybe these one million moms could use a little more of those qualities in their lives.Are they really that unhappy? And what exactly are they teaching their children by being so angry, hateful and judgmental? They are certainly not being good role models and instilling open-hearts and open-minds in their kids.

Moms, life is not yours to control. Wake up and realize that there are gay people in this world–just like there are schweddy balls in this world.

Photo: blog.northjersey.com

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Ketamine Nation? Special K Works Better Than Prozac At Treating Depression

Elizabeth Nolan Brown — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:48:18 +0000

The war on depression is getting mighty weird these days. Last week, scientists said psilocybin, the active ingredient in ‘magic’ mushrooms, could be useful in treating depression. This week? Beat the blues with ketamine! The drug—also known as ‘Special K’—can lift even suicidal depression in just a few hours, researchers say.

Ketamine is approved by the FDA as an anesthetic. It’s mainly used as a horse tranquilizer, though it can be used to sedate both people and other animals. It’s also used by people recreationally, and is capable of producing hallucinations. I had friends who got really into its use in college (between this study and the mushrooms business, my college friends should have been the least depressed people ever …). Mostly, the high seemed to invoke a lot of sitting around in a silent, dazed stupor and occasionally falling into ‘K-holes.’ It didn’t look like much fun.

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But ketamine could be really beneficial for treating major depression, according to some doctors. It works much quicker than typical antidepressants, which take weeks or months to really make a difference. And it could work for people whom typical antidepressants haven’t helped. Why? Carlos Zarate, a brain researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health who is studying ketamine, told NPR that depression is like a leaky faucet in the brain.

There are different ways to stop the leak, he says. “You can go straight to the faucet and you can fix it,” he says. “Or you can go to the water plant and shut down the water plant. The end result will be the same.”

The current antidepressants act in a way that is like shutting down the water plant, Zarate says. It takes a long time for the water to stop flowing through the miles of pipes that eventually lead to the leaky faucet.

He thinks the reason is that these drugs act primarily on the brain chemicals serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. Ketamine acts on a chemical called glutamate, which is much closer to the problem, Zarate says.

That’s nice, but ketamine can come with side effects that make antidepressants look like aspirin. These include urinary tract problems, hypertension, nausea, nightmares, memory problems and hallucinations. Zarate said because of troubling side effects, ketamine is unlikely to become a common depression treatment in and of itself. But understanding how ketamine works at treating depression could allow scientists to develop safer drugs that work in the same way.

A few of these drugs—scopolamine, which is used to prevent seasickness; a pill called riluzole—are already being tested on depression patients. Both of these drugs also affect the glutamate system, though researchers aren’t quite sure how. But one patient who took part in an NIH trial of scopolamine said:

“There’s no doubt in my mind [that] however it works or whatever receptors in the brain it works on, absolutely it has nailed exactly where my imbalance is.”

While it’s unlikely you’ll be filling a Special K or ‘shroom prescription any time soon (darn!), it’s pretty cool that researchers are using studies of these drugs to find new, safer and more effective ways to treat depression.

Photo: Taking Drugs Tumblr

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96% Of Us Are More Stressed Than Our Moms Were; Cut Yourself Some Slack

Deborah Dunham — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:40:07 +0000

On the Today show this morning, they reported that a whopping 70% of moms in the U.S. say mothering is “incredibly stressful.” On top of that, 96% feel we are far more stressed than our own mothers were. While I can certainly relate (I am a working mom with two kids), I always find reports like that interesting, because I think they can paint a picture of us as martyrs, when in fact, we’re the ones who typically bring this stress upon ourselves. And if we would just cut ourselves some slack, we could probably alleviate a lot of this angst.

Yes, things like the economy, financial insecurities, job losses, family illnesses and caring for aging parents are stressful. There’s no doubt about that. And sometimes those situations leave us little choice in how harried our lives are–at least temporarily. But then there are other stressors that we do choose, like a more intense parenting style, packing too much into our daily agendas, higher expectations for the type of lifestyle we lead and striving for a life of bigger and better that Americans are famous for.

All of this can not only lead to us walking around like over-stressed zombies, but it can be responsible for a decline in our overall health, wellness and happiness–not just for ourselves, but for our spouse and children as well. Chronically stressed moms tend to be more insensitive to their kids (we’re probably all guilty of not looking up from our iPhone on occasion when our kids are trying to tell us something important). Studies also show that a parent’s ability to manage stress is a strong predictor of the quality of her relationship with her children and how happy they are.

To combat this, Today show contributor and psychologist, Michele Borba, prescribed various “mom de-stressors” like giving ourselves a 5-minute “time out”, learning deep breathing techniques, dancing with our kids in the living room, taking time to be spontaneous like baking the dog a birthday cake, and finding a “mommy coach” in a mom chat room. All of which sounds a little, well, ridiculous if you ask me. Not because I don’t think those things could help relieve a little stress (except for baking the dog a cake–isn’t that just adding more to-do’s to our already crazy list?), but because those tactics don’t really get to the heart of the issue. They just give us so-called coping techniques, when what we really need are solve-the-problem techniques.

Which brings me to my point: Outside experts, coaches and even friends are not going to make our stress go away. The only person who can do that is us. It boils down to personal responsibility, in my mind. Meaning, no one is making us live a life of chronic stress. No one is making us work so much just so we can afford a bigger house than we really need. No one says we have to be the class mom, the soccer mom, the PTA chair or the lead volunteer on every community project. No one says we have to spend 24/7 with our kids. In short, no one, except us, is forcing us to be the supermom. The same supermom who is chronically stressed-out, irritable and tired, according to this report.

Ladies, isn’t it time we cut ourselves a bit of slack?

It’s high time we say, screw-it to feeling like we have to do it all and be it all. We don’t have to work so much just so we can buy more things we don’t need. We don’t have to be the go-to volunteer for every school and community project. We don’t have to get all of the chores done every day. And we don’t have to drive our kids here and there and everywhere. We don’t have to be perfect. You get my drift.

Like I said, yes, sometimes there are unfortunate circumstances in our lives that leave us no choice but to pick up a second job or dealing with a family illness, and those are certainly not fun. But what I’m talking about is the rest of our lives, beyond those situations. We are the only ones who can cut down on our stress–not by using some silly coping techniques, but more so by lowering the bars we set for ourselves.

Because, really, we are the only ones who set it so high to begin with.

Photo: thinkstock.com

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Demi Moore Reportedly Hospitalized Over ‘Whip-Its’; Couldn’t She Have Just Had Some Wine?

Deborah Dunham — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:07:22 +0000

After days of rumors, reports now indicate that “whip-its” could have been the drug of choice for Demi Moore and the reason she was rushed to the hospital earlier this week. And here I thought sucking the air out of whipped cream bottles was just for teenagers to do as a cheap and stupid way of getting high when working at Ground Round or Ben & Jerry’s.

Media outlets are now claiming the actress reportedly had a seizure after inhaling nitrous oxide at her home. Known commonly as doing “whip-its,” the activity generally involves inhaling the gas from a whipped cream dispenser for a cheap, quick high, which can produce effect similar to alcohol.

But not all the side-effects from “whip-its” are as simple as that. Adverse reactions can include nausea, dizziness, fainting–and in the case of Moore, a seizure due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. Other reactions can happen over time, such as vitamin B12 deficiencies and negative impacts on DNA and cell growth.

“Whip-its” are usually reserved as a stupid thing that teens do–not someone of Demi’s age and social status. If she was really that stressed-out over her failed marriage with Ashton Kutcher, couldn’t she have just had a few glasses of wine? Surely that would have been a more respectable way to handle things.

Meanwhile, her soon-to-be ex is reportedly partying in Brazil and Demi remains in the hospital.

Photo: nydailynews.com

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At 62, Vera Wang Looks Healthy And Awesome In Harper’s Bazaar

Hanna Brooks Olsen — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:49:36 +0000

Fashion and healthy bodies don’t always get along, but in a gorgeous spread for the February edition of Harper’s Bazaar, Vera Wang is doing her darndest to merge the two. Images from the shoot displaying the 62-year-old fashion icon’s healthy, awesome-looking body have just been released, and all I can say “Damn, Vera.”

The point of the spread wasn’t to show off Wang’s muscular gams and enviable arms–it was to give the world a tour of her epic new Beverly Hills mansion. In fact, she says, she didn’t even mean to end up in the swimsuit–she’d initially envisioned a corsted top with a boyshort or something less revealing. But the swimsuit makes sense–Wang says that she, unlike many celebs, actually uses her pool regularly, which explains her athletic body.

Wang, who is also photographed in a smart dress and a pantsuit, admits in the magazine that the idea of a swimsuit shot making it into the magazine made her a little nervous, stating that usually, she’s so modest at the beach, she usually looks “like Lawrence of Arabia.” And, to be fair, the swimsuit is by no means revealing–though, for a woman who’s made her life behind the seams (sorry, I couldn’t resist that pun), being photographed as the model must seem a little strange. And, despite the amazing images, she’s still modest. From the article:

Asked if she’s impressed with the results, as someone even half her age should be, she sighs. “No, honey, I’m a little horrified. But I still love that bustier.”

Sure, Wang has always been thin, and yes, these photos have clearly been touched up a little. But it’s pretty inspiring to see a woman who’s not only honest about her age, but about what her body looks like, in the pages of a fashion magazine.

You can see the rest of the images here.

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Demi Moore Called Paramedics To Treat Her Exhaustion; Why Didn’t Anyone See This Coming?

Briana Rognlin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:55:35 +0000

Demi Moore was taken to a hospital by paramedics on Monday night after an emergency call, and today her rep issued a statement saying she’s being treated for exhaustion due to the stresses in her life. But after her strange interview in Harper’s Bazaar at the beginning of the year, and her ever-diminishing frame in the two months since her divorce from Ashton Kutcher, wasn’t it obvious she needed some help?

According to New York Daily News, the Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed that she’d called for help on Monday night. This afternoon, Moore’s rep issued the following explanation:

Because of the stresses in her life right now, Demi has chosen to seek professional assistance to treat her exhaustion and improve her overall health. She looks forward to getting well and is grateful for the support of her family and friends.

Headlines are already speculating about the cause of Moore’s “exhaustion”–some are citing drug abuse. But it’s been obvious for some time that she wasn’t coping well with her divorce; in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar earlier this month, she openly admits that her weight has become dangerously low, explaining that she struggles to accept her body as it ages and even “…now experiencing my body as extremely thin — thin in a way that I never imagined somebody would be saying to me, “You’re too thin, and you don’t look good.”

In the same interview, she also made disconcerting statements about her emotional insecurities:

I would say what scares me is that I’m going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I’m really not lovable, that I’m not worthy of being loved. That there’s something fundamentally wrong with me.

Which, it should be said, all sounded like a woman being totally honest about her body image and emotions in the interview, but given her dramatic weight loss and sudden absence from Twitter (where she was formerly active), it’s not altogether shocking that she’s now hitting a wall.

Reports say that Moore might be in a rehab facility; after her emergency call on Monday, she was rushed to an unknown hospital in the L.A. area. We hope she gets better, and hope that the people around her are able to come to her rescue so that paramedics don’t have to.

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Psychedelic Mushrooms Reduce Brain Activity (And That’s A Good Thing)

Elizabeth Nolan Brown — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:03:22 +0000

In my college days, I was no stranger to the odd hit of acid or bag of ‘shrooms, and I’ve long believed in the power of drugs like these to be therapeutic under the right circumstances. I’m reading a book right now, in fact, by Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert), a Harvard psychology professor turned yogi and spiritual leader who was part of that whole 1960s scholarly cohort (including Timothy Leary) studying psychedelics. But although serious scholars (and lay people like myself and my college friends) have been studying psychedelics for decades, no one has been quite sure just what affect they have on the brain—until now.

It turns out, serious academic study of psychedelics is back in vogue, only with less mysticism and more neuroscience this time around. And neuroscience is opening up whole new realms of possibilities for the study of psychedelic drugs. In a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, British researchers used brain scans to measure what physically went on in people’s brains when they took psilocybin, the drug contained in ‘magic mushrooms.’ Their results were surprising—but could potentially lead to some novel treatments for depression.

Contrary to what the researchers expected, the psilocybin didn’t lead to an increase in subjects’ brain activity. Instead, reduced it. I’ll let Time’s Maia Szalivitz explain:

Under the influence of mushrooms, overall brain activity drops, particularly in certain regions that are densely connected to sensory areas of the brain. When functioning normally, these connective “hubs” appear to help constrain the way we see, hear and experience the world, grounding us in reality. They are also the key nodes of a brain network linked to self-consciousness and depression. Psilocybin cuts activity in these nodes and severs their connection to other brain areas, allowing the senses to run free.

“The results seem to imply that a lot of brain activity is actually dedicated to keeping the world very stable and ordinary and familiar and unsurprising,” says Robin Carhart-Harris, a postdoctoral student at Imperial College London and lead author of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That’s generally a good thing—if your brain took in all the stimuli in your environment, you would never be able to focus on anything. But psychedelic drugs—and practices like meditation—allow us to tune into all the things our brain would normally tune out.

Interestingly, the two brain regions that showed the most reduced activity on psilocybin were the medial prefontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). An overactive mPFC is linked with rumination, obsessive thinking and depression. All of the depression treatments that have proved effective—from Prozac to electroconvulsive therapy to talk therapy—reduce activity in the mPFC.

Neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, who gave a briefing about the study, said the results shouldn’t encourage you to “go out there and eat magic mushrooms. But…this drug has such a fundamental impact on the brain that it’s got to be meaningful — it’s got to be telling us something about how the brain works. So we should be studying it and optimizing it if there’s a therapeutic benefit.”

I hope they do. And I hope findings like these encourage folks in the U.S. Department of Justice to reconsider its classification of psilocybin as an illegal, Schedule 1 drug, a class of substances considered to “serve no legitimate medical purpose in the United States” which sets up all sorts of restrictions on their scientific study. Considering marijuana is also a Schedule 1 drug here, though, I won’t hold my breath about psilocybin. But maybe, just maybe, neuroscience will have the power to legitimize the study of psychedelics in a way Leary and his gang of merry mystics never could?

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Can’t Stand Your Co-Worker’s Perfume? There’s A Reason For That.

Deborah Dunham — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:48:53 +0000

You know that co-worker whose perfume smells really bad? Or that friend’s house that reeks of dirty socks? If you can’t stand these smells and they give you headaches, you may not just be overly-sensitive to bad odors, you may actually suffer from a chemical intolerance.

According to a new study from psychology researcher, Linus Andersson, at Umeå University, normally our smell perceptions diminish pretty quickly after we first get a whiff of a friend’s scent of her apartment. Most people tend to notice a smell as soon as we enter the door, but then the smell goes away. For the lucky people with a chemical intolerance though, that smell persists. And in some cases, we perceive that it’s getting stronger.

This hypersensitivity is due to our brain activity. People without a chemical intolerance showed a reduction in brain activity to certain smells over a period of time, while those with an intolerance did not. The inability to grow accustomed to certain smells was seen by heightened reactions in the brain, leading researchers to believe that it’s not all in our heads–or noses, as the case may be. Being intolerant to certain smells is something we are hard-wired for.

The study also showed that sensitivity to smell impacts the entire body, including the nose and mouth. Chemically intolerant people react stronger to substances that irritate the mucous linings of their nose and mouth, and they cough more when they inhale something like capsaicin, the hot compound in chili peppers. Interestingly enough, the researchers also report that up to 10% of the Swedish population are bothered by everyday smells, whereas roughly 2% experience severe symptoms.

I’ve always thought I had a smell disorder. Certain perfumes and colognes, in particular, really bother me. I get headaches and am just generally grossed-out by their strong smells. My husband usually doesn’t notice the smells I do, leading him to believe that I smell things that aren’t really there–sort of a phantom smeller, I guess. But, I was the first to detect a dead squirrel in our attic once. I am able to determine that certain foods have gone bad in our refrigerator the minute I walk in the door. And I can be downstairs and tell if our kids have dirty laundry upstairs that hasn’t made its way to the washer yet.

Of course, this hypersensitivity also comes with certain downfalls. I must confess that I once threw out my mother’s “God-awful” perfume and claimed I didn’t know what happened to it, simply because I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve also changed seats at the movie theater more than once to get away from “old lady” or “old man” smells. And one time I even had to ask an employee to stop wearing her perfume to work. I mean, it trailed behind her like Pigpen.

But, at least now, thanks to science, I can say I have a medical explanation for my “rude”behavior.

Photo: perfumeshrine.blogspot.com

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Gossiping May Be Malicious, But Here’s Why It’s Good For Our Health

Deborah Dunham — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:23:47 +0000

As much as we don’t like to admit it, most of us probably gossip from time to time. Learning that so-and-so just broke up with so-and-so can be too juicy to keep to ourselves, right? It’s malicious, back-stabbing and reputation-ruining, but that doesn’t stop us. And according to a new study, it might not have to. Researchers are now saying that this so-called “information sharing” can actually be good for our social and psychological health. Here’s why.

Published in this month’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists tested “prosocial” gossip, which is essentially warning others about untrustworthy or dishonest people.

For the study, researchers conducted four experiments. First, they observed 51 volunteers playing a game. When one player did not play by the rules and hoarded points, the observers’ heart rates increased, and most seized the opportunity to slip a “gossip note” to warn new players which helped to alleviate their negative feelings and frustration.

The second experiment had 111 participants fill out a questionnaire about their levels of altruism and cooperativeness. When they noticed that one player had cheated, observers reported feelings of frustration, and once again felt better after passing a gossip note to others.

In the third experiment (the most interesting of all), participants were asked to pay money if they wanted to send a gossip note. And a large majority of them agreed and forked over the cash to gossip.

And in the last experiment, 300 participants from around the country were recruited via Craigslist to play several trust games online. When players were told that others could potentially gossip about them, most became more generous in the game. It seems that the threat of being gossiped changed their behavior to be a better person.

C-author of the study, Robb Willer, said:

Gossip gets a bad rap, but we’re finding evidence that it plays a critical role in the maintenance of social order.

Oh yeah, maintaining social order…that’s why we gossip. Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that sometimes it just feels good to know how messed-up someone else’s life is compared to our own.

Photo: Thinkstock

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Yes, Even Mentally Ill Women Have Reproductive Rights

Elizabeth Nolan Brown — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:02:49 +0000

File this in the really, they can do that? category: A judge in Massachusetts tried to order a mentally ill pregnant woman to have an abortion, and thereafter be sterilized. Thankfully, an appeals court intervened.

According to the Boston Globe, the 32-year-old pregnant woman, identified by the pseudonym Mary Moe, was schizophrenic, bipolar and had been hospitalized several times. Earlier this month, judge Christina Harms declared her incompetent, and ordered her to have an abortion, even though she was Catholic and opposed it. The judge said she could be “coaxed, bribed, or even enticed” into hospital for the surgery. He also directed that she be sterilized “to avoid this painful situation from recurring in the future.”

Whoa, right? Even if the woman was incompetent or unable to care for a child, the judge could certainly have ruled that, instead of having an abortion against her wishes, she give the baby up for adoption. I’m not one of those abortions-are-bad-because-all-babies-could-be-adopted! types, but it does seem like a pretty good option when a woman doesn’t want an abortion but can’t care for a child. And I’m pretty sure forced sterilization is never okay.

The state’s appeals court struck down the decision, writing:

“The personal decision whether to bear or beget a child is a right so fundamental that it must be extended to all persons, including those who are incompetent.’’

It also balked at the sterilization order, “a directive that several legal specialists said they had not heard of in recent memory,” according to the Globe.

“No party requested this measure, none of the attendant procedural requirements has been met, and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air.”

Of course in situations like these there needs to be balance between respecting the reproductive and bodily autonomy rights of mentally ill women, and the interests of any children they might conceive. And there is the health of unborn baby in utero to consider—Moe apparently refuses to even acknowledge she is pregnant or get obstetrical care. But if we started policing how much care or testing every pregnant woman receives … well, as Jezebel’s Anna North notes, that’s a slippery slope:

Abortion politics get complicated when the pregnant person is mentally ill or very young — but when we start taking away the right to choose based on our own view of mental competence, we go down a very slippery slope. A fourteen-year-old girl needs the right to carry her pregnancy to term, even if her family doesn’t like it — and similarly, we can’t start stripping away women’s reproductive rights because they have schizophrenia. [...] Sadly, this country has a long history of forcibly sterilizing those the government deems “feeble-minded” or otherwise defective. Part of atoning for that crime is to make sure that we stay out of the business of deciding who’s worthy of having a kid.

Besides which, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are not untreatable. Even severely mentally ill women can get better. Sometimes mental illness is even triggered or compounded by pregnancy.

I don’t know much about the laws (or ethical thinking) on making women in situations like these get an IUD, but that seems like a potential solution—IUDs are safe, long-lasting and reversible. And women who are truly a danger to themselves or their fetuses while pregnant could be placed under supervised care. At any rate, there are less extreme ways than abortion and sterilization to look out for the health of even the most severely mentally ill women and their unborn children.

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