How does decluttering reduce stress

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hit back at Twitter CEO Elon Musk for criticising his for-profit company which is now owned by Microsoft .

During the ‘ On With Kara Swisher ‘ podcast, Altman said OpenAI is “independent” from Microsoft.

Altman said Musk has been critical of OpenAI on Twitter.

“Elon Musk is obviously attacking us,” he noted.

“To say a positive thing about Elon, I think he really does care about a good future with artificial general intelligence (AGI). I mean, he’s a jerk, whatever else you want to say about him. But he has a style that is not a style that I’d want to have for myself,” Altman was quoted as saying.

“But I think he does really care, and he is feeling very stressed about what the future’s going to look like for humanity,” the OpenAI CEO added.

Musk tried to take control of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in early 2018 but Altman and OpenAI’s other founders rejected Musk’s proposal.

Musk later walked away from the company and reneged on a massive planned donation, according to Semafor .

Musk told Altman that he believed the “venture had fallen fatally behind Google”.

When Musk walked away, he resigned from its board in 2018 citing a conflict of interest with his work at Tesla.

According to the Semafor report, he also reneged on a promise to supply $1 billion in funding, contributing only $100 million before he walked.

In March, 2019, OpenAI announced it was creating a for-profit entity so that it could raise enough money to pay for the compute power.

Less than six months later, Microsoft infused $1 billion in OpenAI, and the rest is history.

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One major consideration for women, specifically women who want a family, is how motherhood will impact their careers. And one question these women often ask themselves is whether it makes sense to delay motherhood in order to realize their full potential.

Motherhood penalizes professional women in several ways. Not only does it negatively affect their income and leadership status, it also influences their ability to get promoted and hired. They are often overlooked when it comes to career-advancing opportunities.

A recent survey of 1,000 U.S. women who chose to delay motherhood after the age of 35 by WIN , a leading family-building benefits provider, revealed motivating factors, challenges, and benefits to women’s decisions and how fertility benefits factor into the journey.

According to the survey, relationships, lifestyle, and finances were major considerations that impacted women’s decisions. By waiting to enter motherhood after 35, 93% of women indicated they accomplished goals related to lifestyle or finances. Forty-four percent identified finances and 36% their career goals as top reasons for waiting until later in life to become a mother.

Recent studies in the United States and Europe show that with motherhood , “women’s earnings plummet and their career trajectories slow. Women who do not have children, by and large, continue to grow their earnings at a similar rate to men.” The fact that the United States does not offer family leave for all workers or public preschool also adds to the financial burden for young parents. That being said, the combination of the cost of raising a child with a potential decrease in income or status, influences more women to wait until they have the financial resources to start a family.

The result of women delaying motherhood is evident in the data that indicates an increased percentage of women at the end of their reproductive years who are having children. “For decades, delaying parenthood was the domain of upper-middle-class Americans, especially in big, coastal cities . Highly educated women put off having a baby until their careers were on track, often until their early 30s. But over the past decade, as more women of all social classes have prioritized education and career, delaying childbearing has become a broad pattern among American women almost everywhere.”

Anna Levikova , chief marketing officer at WIN, delayed motherhood until age 41 due to her career. “Working in advertising, which was primarily male dominated at the time, I felt that I had to prioritize my work and work harder than my male counterparts to ensure I was consistently growing and succeeding,” she said in a recent interview. “As a woman, you often have to run fast just to stay in place, so if your goal is to advance you have to run that much faster. I had a dream of becoming a creative director and knew that if I wanted to reach my goals, motherhood was going to have to wait or potentially, never happen at all. By delaying motherhood, my career reached new heights as I served in several leadership roles in the marketing and fertility industries.”

Colleen McFarlane, a senior client manager in healthcare IT, was two months shy of turning 40 when she had her daughter. “Because I delayed motherhood, I was able to hold several senior leadership and C-Suite executive positions in the technology and healthcare IT industries, both of which gave me the opportunity to grow into the businesswoman I knew I could be. I think that if I had my daughter at a younger age, I wouldn’t have been able to excel as far as I have in my passions and career.

McFarlane added, “by waiting, I was able to emotionally mature and learn more about my parenting style. I felt as though I was at the perfect time in my life to take on the commitment of motherhood. I was making more than a livable wage, my career was thriving, and I had a reliable partner and support system around me which mattered most.”

Delaying motherhood also personally benefited McFarlane. She says she gained wisdom in the years leading up to her pregnancy. “ Knowing a little bit more about life gave me the feeling of wanting to connect and be present with my child. It is a luxury to be able to be present for your child. Being older didn’t make me any less scared of motherhood, I was just able to feel more grounded and learn how to approach situations with a far sager persona than I would have if I were younger.”

Levikova agrees . “ Mental preparedness is a key factor to consider when deciding to have children. I was so focused on my career and reaching my goals that I would not have been ready to balance my career and a child at a younger age. By waiting to have kids, I traveled, explored art, and immersed myself in my passions, which gave me experiences that made me the mother I am today.”

“By delaying motherhood until age forty-one, I feel I was better prepared to balance my career with being a parent,” Levikova added. “I am also more patient with my daughter than I think I would have been at a younger age and have access to more resources now than I did in my twenties and thirties, so I can better provide for my child as she grows up. My current toolbox as a mother is: patience, resilience, kindness and humor, a combo I attribute to my age and life experience.”

Although women over 35 have concerns that by waiting they risk the ability to get pregnant, part of the decision process is weighing the pros and cons and also recognizing there are options. Eighty-one percent of the women in the WIN survey feel that employers should offer fertility benefits and support.

“Often times women are faced with the difficult decision of becoming mothers or accomplishing their goals during their prime fertility years. With increased access to fertility testing, education, preservation services and family building options, women now have more power to enter motherhood when they are ready rather than when they feel like they need to” says Dr. Roger Shedlin M.D., CEO of WIN.

Despite the potential stress involved in this decision-making process, women are becoming more confident in their choice to carve their own path and enter motherhood when they are ready, rather than when they feel it is necessary.

Bonnie Marcus, M.ED , is the author of Not Done Yet! How Women Over 50 Regain Their Confidence and Claim Workplace Power and The Politics of Promotion: How High Achieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead. An executive coach and speaker, Bonnie is also host of the podcast, Badass Women At Any Age.

Strokes often occur with little to no warning signs – but there are some lifestyle changes you can make to help reduce your risk and boost your chances of recovery if you’re unfortunate enough to experience one.

A stroke is where the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off, with common symptoms including your face drooping on one side, not being able to lift your arms and slurred speech.

While many people won’t experience any obvious warning signs, before suffering a stroke, some experience a headache, numbness or tingling several days before. But researchers have found several preventable risk factors for the condition, with one centred on the fact that a great number of stroke patients show up at hospital dehydrated.

Harvard Health says signs of not drinking enough fluids include weakness, low blood pressure , confusion, dizziness, or urine that’s dark in colour. The minimum amount of water a person needs to avoid this is around four to six cups of water each day, according to the health body.

This tallies with research carried out by Loma Linda University, who previously found that drinking at least five glasses of water is necessary for reducing the risk of stroke by 53 per cent. Doing so may not only protect against the condition, but could also improve a person’s outcome in the event of a stroke.

Being hydrated is also vital for cardiovascular health.

Back in 2015, research on patients admitted to the Comprehensive Stroke Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital shed new light on the cardiovascular risks of dehydration. Patients who hadn’t drunk enough fluids were nearly four times more likely to suffer worse outcomes, compared to adequately hydrated patients.

Researchers noted: “dehydration appears to be common in hospitalised stroke patients and is associated with severe stroke and poor outcomes at hospital discharge”.

The report added: “We suggest that focusing on interventions to reduce the frequency and duration of dehydration have the potential to improve patient outcomes after stroke.”

A year later, research by the University of Arkansas made another discovery about the effects of dehydration on cardiovascular health. The findings suggested that hydration levels – even mild dehydration in healthy, young males – could play a role in a person’s cardiovascular risk. The effects of hydration were most evident in the ‘endothelial functions’ – the dilation and constriction of the inner lining – of the blood vessels.

“It plays a critical role in cardiovascular health,” explains Science Daily . The result, published in the European Journal of Nutrition , established that even mild dehydration could “impair vascular functions nearly as much as smoking a cigarette”.

The Michigan Neurology Associated noted that dehydration may also have a thickening effect on the blood, which poses its own set of risks. Viscous blood causes the body to retain more sodium, which in turn increases blood pressure.

Not only does this mean blood clots are more likely to form, but blood flow may also slow down. As a result, blood may back up in blocked or narrowed blood vessels and cause a stroke.

“If you have other heart disease risk factors, such as clogged arteries, dehydration can be especially dangerous,” warns the health body.

It should be noted that though drinking enough fluids is important for vascular health, consuming excessive amounts of water is not recommended either, as this can be especially dangerous for people who have heart and kidney conditions.

Symptoms of a stroke

The main symptoms of stroke can be remembered with the word FAST:

• Face – the face may have dropped on one side, the person may not be able to smile, or their mouth or eye may have dropped.
• Arms – the person with suspected stroke may not be able to lift both arms and keep them there because of weakness or numbness in one arm.
• Speech – their speech may be slurred or garbled, or the person may not be able to talk at all despite appearing to be awake; they may also have problems understanding what you’re saying to them.
• Time – it’s time to dial 999 immediately if you see any of these signs or symptoms.

Preventing a stroke

To limit the chances of suffering a stroke, the NHS advises you to:

• Eat well
• Take regular exercise
• Follow alcohol advice (not drinking more than 14 units a week)
• Quit smoking

If you have a condition that increases your risk of a stroke, it’s important to manage it effectively, says the health body. For example, taking medicine you’ve been prescribed to lower high blood pressure, or cholesterol levels.

If you’ve had a stroke or TIA (transient ischemic attack) in the past, these measures are particularly important because your risk of having another stroke is greatly increased.