I’m not sure what was more distressing about non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Finding out that I had it?
Discovering that it led steadily from fatty liver to fibrosis to cirrhosis and then to liver failure, a possible transplant or potential liver cancer?
Or was it the unexpected – and shocking – realization that, in fact, there’s no medical cure for fatty liver disease?
That there are no ‘anti-fatty liver’ meds?
No treatments? No procedures?
That doctors can’t help was certainly the last straw.
Instead, they advise ‘eat more healthily’. Whatever that means.
And, ‘get more exercise’.
And, ‘drink less alcohol’.
Basically, the advice they give every patient for every disease…
I worried constantly about how bad my fatty liver might become. How it might slowly progress into something far more serious.
Because whatever caused my fatty liver was only going to make it worse if I didn’t do something about it.
Given the lack of help from the medical profession, the question is, do what about it?
It’s here. Take a look in the short video below:
Of all the memories I have about non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) two stand out most clearly:
I have to admit, the journey between having NAFLD and no longer having NAFLD wasn’t an overnight one.
And, a couple of times, I was worried sick about what the condition might turn in to. Because as I quickly learnt, it often doesn’t just remain as it is. If you don’t address it quickly it can lead to far worse – and potentially deadly – conditions.
But there is a way to reliably deal with NAFLD.
When I eventually found out about it, well… That made all the difference, not only to my liver health but also to everything else.
Now my liver is fat-free – and it’s going to stay that way. Although when I first went to my doctor I didn’t realize this at all.
I’d gone to her complaining of feeling tired and fatigued.
I thought anaemia or something similar might be the cause for my tiredness. The truth turned out to be considerably more concerning.
My doctor told me she suspected I had fatty liver disease. I was sent for tests and, a long story cut short, the ultrasound confirmed it. I had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And everything that was likely to go with it.
I’d gone to the doctor feeling tired. I came out with a serious disease. However, the bad news kept coming…
Your liver is one of the body’s unsung heroes. The work it does is essential to our very existence. It transforms food into usable nutrients, stores these nutrients, and provides them to cells as and when they’re needed.
It also neutralizes toxins – ‘toxins’ is a medical term for ‘poisons’ – either by converting them into harmless substances, or by making sure they are eliminated directly from the body.
24 hours a day our liver takes in unclean blood, filters it, refreshes it and then releases clean blood back into your body. We never think about our liver. Thankfully, our liver is always thinking about us.
But if it suddenly can’t clean your blood properly… then what?
You can’t go to the supermarket for some fresh stuff. If our livers are struggling to do what they are there to do… then those toxins start to build up
So if you suffer from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease you have my deepest sympathy. Because that’s exactly what is happening to you.
It’s what I went through too: a liver becoming steadily more fatty… its ability to keep me healthy becoming steadily more difficult.
Fatty liver doesn’t just get better on its own. Much more worryingly, if we don’t address it there’s every chance that it just carries on getting worse.
And when I say it gets worse I mean it gets really, seriously worse. You know what I’m referring to, don’t you?
Well, if you haven’t seen this before then perhaps first you ought to be sitting down.
There are four recognized stages that your fatty liver can move through:
a build-up of excess fat in the liver that, initially, can be relatively harmless – but only if it stays like this. But if you don’t address the problem… it has little reason to stay harmless.
Nonalcoholic steato hepatitis (NASH)
A more serious form of fatty liver where there is inflammation in the liver. This is caused by not properly addressing your fatty liver when it first started being fatty.
The persistent inflammation at the NASH stage leads to scarring of the liver tissue.
Ongoing scarring of the liver has caused it to shrink and become lumpy. The damage is permanent, irreversible and can will lead to liver failure and liver cancer.
So the insight here is clear – and it hit me like a lead weight:
I don’t actually have some static, unchanging condition called fatty liver disease.
What’s really happening is that as a sufferer of fatty liver you’re moving through this disease, slowly transitioning from one stage… to a worse one.
In other words, the disease we’ve currently got is only today’s snapshot of a process that’s underway in our bodies. It’s the disease we could end up with that’s the real cause for alarm.
And this isn’t an exaggeration. Liver disease is taking an increasingly worsening toll on our society. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of deaths caused by liver disease and cirrhosis has risen every year since 2007.
Worse, fatty liver is associated with an increased risk of other serious health problems – including kidney disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.
So I suddenly found myself with a disease that is now among the top 15 causes of deaths for Americans.
When I first saw all this I panicked a bit. I felt this was starting to look like some sort of death sentence. LIke I was on a conveyor belt being carried to a horrible future.
Then I calmed down. I took some deep breaths and engaged my brain.
I knew what I was going to do.
I was going to find out which were the most effective meds and then speak to my doctor about them.
I would examine my options for treatments in case my fatty liver became even fattier.
And I’d see who the best surgeons were if, goodness forbid, things went really bad and, perhaps, I’d need surgery to trim off the fat.
All good plans, I thought.
Now I had to let that sink in for a few moments.
My doctor looked quite grim when she told me that the only safe way to reduce the fat in my liver was to change my lifestyle.
Lifestyle had caused the damage. Lifestyle would have to fix it. There are no drugs for this.
No medicine to drink. No tablet to take. No pill to pop.
I couldn’t accept that. There’s a pill for everything – if only to relieve some of the symptoms.
She told me vitamin E had been used in some of the more serious fatty liver cases.
But it has to be used in doses that are 40 times greater than the recommended safe level.
Scientists are still trying to work out what such excessive doses are likely to do to the rest of your body.
Even worse, vitamin E isn’t tackling the cause of your fatty liver, only its symptoms. So if it is effective at all it only last while you’re basically over-dosing on it.
So my choices were pretty stark:
I could take lifestyle measures to reduce the fat.
Or I could just let it progress – and so work its way through the 4 stages I just described. With a possible terminal condition at the end of it.
My doctor told me I would have to lose weight, eat more healthily, exercise… and so on.
That’s good advice generally but… what does it actually mean?
What is healthy eating? To me it usually means eating salads and going hungry.
I went online to nail this down this healthy eating business – and I found such contradictory information that after an afternoon of searching and reading all I really learned was ‘eat less sugar, eat more vegetables’. That’s about all anyone could agree on.
On top of that, I have to admit: I’m an average cook. I don’t want super complicated recipes and meal plans that have me in the kitchen for hours on end.
And I’m not an exercise sort of person either. I lead a busy life and I want to spend my spare time relaxing – not lifting heavy weights at the gym or running endless hours around the park.
I don’t want liver disease. I don’t want liver cancer. I don’t want to die.
So I knew that doing nothing was pretty dumb. And, if nothing else… I’m not dumb.
But what’s the best thing to do to get rid of fatty liver disease? In my opinion, the doctors were drawing a blank. ‘Eat healthily’. ‘Lose weight.’ ‘Don’t drink’. And so on.
There was an old health forum on the internet that I used to browse some time back when I had a back problem. There was occasionally some good advice there.
So I went back to it and searched for NAFLD. There was a small fatty liver discussion group there… not that active but I decided to post a question anyway.
‘What’s the best thing to do to get rid of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease?’
I got a few generic ‘lose weight!’ replies.
But then one day somebody posted a short but simple message that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
They had cleared their fatty liver problem completely – as in, no fat left at all – by following a lifestyle program created by someone called Julissa Clay.
It was called The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution and they said they no longer have fatty liver because they followed that program.
They didn’t say much more. A few comments about how you make gentle adjustments to your lifestyle until you were doing everything necessary for that fat to disappear….
I didn’t really need to read any more. The program arrived in my email inbox about 6 minutes later.
And that’s really the first lesson to this whole fatty liver thing.
It’s not a virus. It’s not an injury. It wasn’t caused by some external event.
It was me who did it. And Julissa Clay’s program helped me realize it would have to be me who resolved it.
Her program, The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution, was my only ally in the effort to get back to health. And it worked.
By the time I had read a quarter of Julissa Clay’s strategy I already knew so much useful stuff about my condition that I was just itching to put it into action. My improvement started that day.
Instead of ‘eat more healthily’ or ‘stop drinking alcohol’ Julissa takes a practical and straightforward approach to restore liver health for good.
In The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution she describes the ‘3 pillars of liver health’. These are the fundamentals of restoring your liver to its fully healthy state.
The 3 pillars do their work quickly and – if you stick to them – for good.
But what I loved about all this – being a complete beginner – was not just that Julissa gave me a thorough education in liver health.
Her 3 pillars described exactly what was necessary to put it right… and then she gave me a step-by-step plan to follow so I could actually do it.
Now, I don’t know about you but when I first saw those three words alarm bells rang!
I don’t like diets – I’ve never managed to keep to one and, to be honest, I never intended to try one again.
And movement… I’m not lazy but I am very busy. I don’t have time to spend an hour in the gym or run endless circles around the park.
And detox? I’m not into fads at all. It just isn’t me.
Turns out I was wrong on each count. Check this out and you’ll see why I was able to handle all this – and why I still do it today, even a year after my liver all-clear.
In the first place, Julissa’s solution is made for people like me.
People who aren’t stupid but who might not be on board with all this self development stuff.
People smart enough to know they have to act if they want to be healthy… but who need guidance to know how to act.
So here’s some detail about each of the three pillars – you’ll hopefully see the sense in this and, perhaps, realize why following it means I no longer have a fatty liver.
Let me run through Julia’s three pillars for you now.
Now detoxing conjures up lots of strange images – weird foods, odd potions, strange diets…
Actually, done properly, you barely notice you’re doing it.
We detox for one important reason: modern living puts into our bodies more chemicals than our bodies can sometimes handle.
There’s a cocktail of nastiness hidden in foods, toiletries and common household products that you and I wouldn’t even consider.
Because our liver can’t get rid of that mess at the rate we create it we have to store some of these poisons in our bodies instead.
If we don’t detox then those stored toxins build up and create potentially serious health problems. Only a healthy liver can get rid of them… but my liver then – like your liver now – wasn’t healthy. It was diseased.
So detoxing simply means giving your body – especially your liver – the time and space it needs to start getting rid of all that nasty stuff.
So this is proper, non-faddy detox that does just that. It’s straightforward, it doesn’t require any pills or potions and it makes perfect sense.
There are 4 simple steps to flushing out the toxins in your body:
Which leads us to pillar 2…
These 4 steps of detoxifying lead you naturally to creating a lifestyle plan that will last you for… life.
But Julissa understands completely that a time-consuming, restrictive, complicated plan is going to be a miserable experience for most people. We have lives. We have commitments, families, work… We want ease, not more problems.
So her solution is designed to be one that quickly becomes habit. It’s based on the kinds of lives that normal people live.
In truth, there are many, many foods we can eat to support our livers. There’s lots of choice – and it’s all available at your local supermarket.
However, there are some foods – called trigger foods – that actively work against our health. These include foods we might think of as being healthy but which we should either limit or stay well away from.
Julissa shows us that we can eat many things so long as we avoid a few things.
She shows us what the intelligent, healthful choices are when we go shopping – informed choices that will do the vital job of shrinking that fat right out of our livers.
Get your diet right and you can enjoy wholesome, easily prepared food that melts liver fat, melts body fat and helps ensure optimum health for life.
This pillar sets us up for…
I can’t pretend I was looking forward to this bit. I feel like my entire life is spent running around from here to there. What I least need is to have to find time – and energy – for more movement!
However, here are two things I can tell you for a fact:
First, I felt lighter and more energetic after just a week of eating according to Julissa’s plan. It’s incredible how much difference improving your eating can make to energy, mood and motivation.
Now, I won’t pretend that made me eager to exercise. But for the first time in my life I actually didn’t mind the prospect because I already felt better physically.
Second, Julissa’s movement plan is like no other I’ve ever seen. Instead of complex workouts that last for hours her exercise plan does two simple things really, really well:
I mean, I’m sitting there anyway… I may as well do something during the ads that saves my liver!
But Julissa is clear about one thing: to melt fat and improve our internal health we have to move more.
Remember those 4 stages from fatty liver to liver failure? The price of doing nothing is to move more quickly through those stages.
Julissa’s food and movement plan was the least disruptive – and easiest to implement – that I’ve ever seen.
I still follow her advice today – partly because I don’t want liver disease again, partly because I actually enjoy what it does for me.
But it’s natural to wonder how we make use of all this great information. Knowing things is fine; knowing how to use that knowledge is a different matter.
Julissa fully understands this. So rather than throw all this information out at you and then expect you to just get on with it…. she instead steps you through it over 28 days.
She divides her plan up into 4 individual weeks.
Each week builds on the previous one. So it starts small and easy. And it pretty much stays easy because you’re just adding to what you’ve already done.
So I wasn’t a physically active person and I wasn’t a great cook either. But at the end of 28 days, I felt like a natural at all of it!
And that’s because I didn’t have to take on a whole life change in one hit. I adjusted a bit at a time until it just felt right.
It was an uplifting feeling knowing that these small changes were actively unclogging the fat from my liver.
Today it’s all instinctive. I don’t give it a moment’s thought. I eat very well, look really good, feel fantastic – and, of course, fatty liver is now just a distant memory.
Remember: fatty liver disease is a disease that is in motion. As a sufferer you’re moving through stages of the disease, each stage being significantly more dangerous than the previous one.
So this plan isn’t just treating the stage of the disease you’ve currently got, it’s treating the stage you’re heading towards next.
A single line of attack on liver disease can have some positive effects.
Julissa takes absolutely no chances though.
Her program is taking a multi-pronged approach to reducing the fat around your liver. Each one tackles the disease from a different direction ensuring that no stone is left unturned.
And each direction of attack is super-effective.
For example, scientists at the University of California carried out a short 9-days study that applied just one of the approaches contained in this program. The result was reduced blood cholesterol, reduced insulin resistance, and reduced blood pressure – plus a 7% reduction in liver fat.
That’s just one of this program’s approaches – and measured over just nine days.
Put all the program’s different factors together over a month… and you can start to see why The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution is so well acclaimed by people who have followed it.
Having a copy of The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution in my hands gave me one other unexpected bonus.
Ever since I had realized that my disease wasn’t just fixed… that there were 4 stages it could go through – and that one of them was pretty deadly… I have to confess: I was scared.
Fatty liver… very fatty liver…Fibrosis… Cirrhosis…
Then the possibility of liver failure or liver cancer.
All this and our doctors have no remedy for this disease… until it’s so bad that they have to remove the old liver and put in a new one in. The complications associated with a liver transplant don’t bear thinking about…
Both the seriousness of the disease and the fact that I really had no confidence in these inadequate ‘eat healthy’, ‘get more exercise’ orders from my doctor had me feeling very vulnerable.
But now I knew what to do.
Now I not only had a comprehensive plan to melt away the fat that was clogging up my liver – I actually understood how the plan worked.
So for the first time since my diagnosis, I felt empowered, knowledgeable – and supremely confident that I could reverse treat this disease once and for all.
And that, of course, is exactly what I did.
My next bloodwork showed a hugely reduced fat content in my liver. And my final bloodwork confirmed the inevitable: there was no more fat there and I no longer suffered from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
I didn’t want to get liver disease. You didn’t either. I found out that about a third of westerners have fatty livers – most of whom don’t actually know it. The really unlucky ones never find out about their condition until it’s too late.
But if the mix of genetics, lifestyle, environment are such that fat is slowly but consistently being added to your liver then you’re on a path that takes you through the four stages I mentioned earlier. I sure as heck did not want to end up going down that path.
I felt that final stage – cirrhosis – was there, a little way down the line, just waiting for me. That’s where things can go horribly and irreversibly wrong. That, more than anything else, is what made me take this matter into my own hands.
Despite my reluctance to spend time in the kitchen or do much exercise The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution’s step-by-step approach to helping me gradually improve my life was an absolute life-saver.
I didn’t stop following the program’s instructions – even once my liver was fat-free. Why on earth would I?
Julissa’s plan is no longer a ‘plan’ to me. It’s just my way of life. Everything about it is just habit. I don’t have to think about it.
And I don’t remember ever feeling this good. I absolutely love it.
I’m not a person who buys programs from the internet. When I’m ill I trust my doctors to make me better.
My view is that if they don’t know… then nobody knows.
This experience shows me that perhaps that isn’t always the case. This time they didn’t know. But somebody else did.
I needed effective, accurate advice. And I need someone to show me how to save my health in a way that was straightforward and easy to follow. Julissa did that for me.
Because I was so panicked by the knowledge that my fatty liver was on a path towards liver cirrhosis – and, maybe, worse – I had regular blood tests for fatty liver from almost the same week that I started Julissa’s program.
I’ve not had fat in my liver for over a year now.
I might be paranoid. But I want to always be sure. And I am sure. My liver is lean and healthy. And so am I.
Imagine… from today onwards and every single day, a tiny bit of the fat that’s squeezing the life out of your liver is now being melted away. There’s less scarring and your liver gradually starts to regain its natural flexibility.
Doing exactly what the liver needs for optimum health means there’s now an end-date for the disease.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, most or all of that fat is gone.
That’s how it worked out for me. And, it should be said, for hundreds of men and women who were in the same position I was… who were in the same position that you’re in now.
We made some small but powerful lifestyle changes. We made a few different choices at the supermarket. And we melted away our liver problem forever.
Address fatty liver quickly. Don’t let it reach a stage where the damage is critical and the consequences are irreversible.
Julissa’s Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution tells you what to do to melt away that liver fat. The program addresses a disease that your doctor simply cannot help you with.
And, for me, the side-effects of this program are less belly fat, better sleep, lower stress, more energy and the end of food cravings.
Julissa takes all the risk off your shoulders. She wants to make sure that The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution will melt away that liver fat until your blood works show you’re all clear. If your liver fat hasn’t gone within 60 days of buying this program, or if you’re not 100% happy with the program for any reason, you can have your money back. Just email her anytime within 60 days of ordering
That sounds like a generous guarantee. It’s not really. Because Julissa already knows this program works. There are literally hundreds of fat-free people like me who are living, walking proof of it. But the guarantee is there for you anyway. If you think this program didn’t save your liver then you can have your money back.
Get your copy of Julissa’s program right now. Order by clicking here and it’ll be with you in a few minutes…
My fatty liver wasn’t going to become unfatty unless I did something to make it unfatty.
So I did do something. I followed a step-by-step plan that not only melted fat from my liver but from other parts of my body too.
I caught my liver disease in time and prevented it from developing into something life-threatening and irreversible.
My blood works consistently confirm my liver is healthy.
While my upbeat, positive mood, better sleep, increased energy, and reduced weight confirm the rest of me is in excellent condition too.
What we do to our bodies determines what our bodies do back to us. We can heal ourselves.
Reclaim your health once and for all – Julissa Clay’s Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Solution will start your own healing process today. You can get it right here…
My biggest incentive to follow Julissa’s solution was, to put it bluntly, to save my life.
If my fatty liver progressed through the stages then it ends with cirrhosis and possible liver failure. And that’s irreversible.
I knew that if I avoided making some changes to my lifestyle now I could end up needing a liver transplant later.
My choice was: tackle the problem while it was just fatty liver disease… or tackle it when it became irreversible and possibly fatal liver cirrhosis.
I don’t know how my own version of fatty liver disease was going to progress. But why would it simply improve on its own? If everything I did to cause it was still happening… then it’s going to get worse, isn’t it?
Again, no thanks. I’m not a fool and I’m not taking that risk.
I got Julissa’s program instead. It was guaranteed to work or I get my money back. So no risks.
I did what she told me to do. It worked. I am well, happy, healthy.
If you value your own health and wellbeing I honestly recommend you do the same. The program that saved me can be in your inbox in about 3 minutes.
Testimonial / Case Study Legal Disclaimer: The story, testimonials, and case studies discussed on this page may be unique. You may or may not enjoy similar results from using the methods discussed. We neither make any claims nor offer any guarantees regarding the health improvements or specific results you may enjoy from following our guidance. Always consult your doctor before taking any actions regarding your health.
Skinstitut Holiday Gift Kits take the stress out of gifting
Toronto, October 31, 2024 – Beauty gifts are at the top of holiday wish lists this year, and Laser Clinics Canada, a leader in advanced beauty treatments and skincare, is taking the pressure out of seasonal shopping. Today, Laser Clincs Canada announces the arrival of its 2024 Holiday Gift Kits, courtesy of Skinstitut, the exclusive skincare line of Laser Clinics Group.
In time for the busy shopping season, the limited-edition Holiday Gifts Kits are available in Laser Clinics locations in the GTA and Ottawa. Clinics are conveniently located in popular shopping centers, including Hillcrest Mall, Square One, CF Sherway Gardens, Scarborough Town Centre, Rideau Centre, Union Station and CF Markville. These limited-edition Kits are available on a first come, first served basis.
“These kits combine our best-selling products, bundled to address the most relevant skin concerns we’re seeing among our clients,” says Christina Ho, Senior Brand & LAM Manager at Laser Clinics Canada. “With several price points available, the kits offer excellent value and suit a variety of gift-giving needs, from those new to cosmeceuticals to those looking to level up their skincare routine. What’s more, these kits are priced with a savings of up to 33 per cent so gift givers can save during the holiday season.
There are two kits to select from, each designed to address key skin concerns and each with a unique theme — Brightening Basics and Hydration Heroes.
Brightening Basics is a mix of everyday essentials for glowing skin for all skin types. The bundle comes in a sleek pink, reusable case and includes three full-sized products: 200ml gentle cleanser, 50ml Moisture Defence (normal skin) and 30ml1% Hyaluronic Complex Serum. The Brightening Basics kit is available at $129, a saving of 33 per cent.
Hydration Heroes is a mix of hydration essentials and active heroes that cater to a wide variety of clients. A perfect stocking stuffer, this bundle includes four deluxe products: Moisture 15 15 ml Defence for normal skin, 10 ml 1% Hyaluronic Complex Serum, 10 ml Retinol Serum and 50 ml Expert Squalane Cleansing Oil. The kit retails at $59.
In addition to the 2024 Holiday Gifts Kits, gift givers can easily add a Laser Clinic Canada gift card to the mix. Offering flexibility, recipients can choose from a wide range of treatments offered by Laser Clinics Canada, or they can expand their collection of exclusive Skinstitut products.
Brightening Basics 2024 Holiday Gift Kit by Skinstitut, available exclusively at Laser Clincs Canada clinics and online at skinstitut.ca.
Hydration Heroes 2024 Holiday Gift Kit by Skinstitut – available exclusively at Laser Clincs Canada clinics and online at skinstitut.ca.
LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.
The Canadian Paediatric Society says doctors should regularly screen children for reading difficulties and dyslexia, calling low literacy a “serious public health concern” that can increase the risk of other problems including anxiety, low self-esteem and behavioural issues, with lifelong consequences.
New guidance issued Wednesday says family doctors, nurses, pediatricians and other medical professionals who care for school-aged kids are in a unique position to help struggling readers access educational and specialty supports, noting that identifying problems early couldhelp kids sooner — when it’s more effective — as well as reveal other possible learning or developmental issues.
The 10 recommendations include regular screening for kids aged four to seven, especially if they belong to groups at higher risk of low literacy, including newcomers to Canada, racialized Canadians and Indigenous Peoples. The society says this can be done in a two-to-three-minute office-based assessment.
Other tips encourage doctors to look for conditions often seen among poor readers such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; to advocate for early literacy training for pediatric and family medicine residents; to liaise with schools on behalf of families seeking help; and to push provincial and territorial education ministries to integrate evidence-based phonics instruction into curriculums, starting in kindergarten.
Dr. Scott McLeod, one of the authors and chair of the society’s mental health and developmental disabilities committee, said a key goal is to catch kids who may be falling through the cracks and to better connect families to resources, including quicker targeted help from schools.
“Collaboration in this area is so key because we need to move away from the silos of: everything educational must exist within the educational portfolio,” McLeod said in an interview from Calgary, where he is a developmental pediatrician at Alberta Children’s Hospital.
“Reading, yes, it’s education, but it’s also health because we know that literacy impacts health. So I think that a statement like this opens the window to say: Yes, parents can come to their health-care provider to get advice, get recommendations, hopefully start a collaboration with school teachers.”
McLeod noted that pediatricians already look for signs of low literacy in young children by way of a commonly used tool known as the Rourke Baby Record, which offers a checklist of key topics, such as nutrition and developmental benchmarks, to cover in a well-child appointment.
But he said questions about reading could be “a standing item” in checkups and he hoped the society’s statement to medical professionals who care for children “enhances their confidence in being a strong advocate for the child” while spurring partnerships with others involved in a child’s life such as teachers and psychologists.
The guidance said pediatricians also play a key role in detecting and monitoring conditions that often coexist with difficulty reading such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but McLeod noted that getting such specific diagnoses typically involves a referral to a specialist, during which time a child continues to struggle.
He also acknowledged that some schools can be slow to act without a specific diagnosis from a specialist, and even then a child may end up on a wait list for school interventions.
“Evidence-based reading instruction shouldn’t have to wait for some of that access to specialized assessments to occur,” he said.
“My hope is that (by) having an existing statement or document written by the Canadian Paediatric Society … we’re able to skip a few steps or have some of the early interventions present,” he said.
McLeod added that obtaining specific assessments from medical specialists is “definitely beneficial and advantageous” to know where a child is at, “but having that sort of clear, thorough assessment shouldn’t be a barrier to intervention starting.”
McLeod said the society was partly spurred to act by 2022’s “Right to Read Inquiry Report” from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which made 157 recommendations to address inequities related to reading instruction in that province.
He called the new guidelines “a big reminder” to pediatric providers, family doctors, school teachers and psychologists of the importance of literacy.
“Early identification of reading difficulty can truly change the trajectory of a child’s life.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.