16 Overlooked Autistic Traits In Women
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We hear a lot about “autism moms”, but Taylor Heaton is an autistic mom, diagnosed as an adult, and she has insights to share about overlooked autistic traits in women.
The Traits
- Difficulty navigating romantic relationships: often due to misreading signs
- Difficulty understanding things: including the above, but mostly: difficulty understanding subtext, when people leave things as “surely obvious”. Autistic women are likely to be aware of the possible meanings, but unsure which it might be, and may well guess wrongly.
- Masking: one of the reasons for the gender disparity in diagnosis is that autistic women are often better at “masking”, that is to say, making a conscious effort to blend in to allistic society—often as a result of being more societally pressured to do so.
- Honesty: often to a fault
- Copy and paste: related to masking, this is about consciously mirroring others in an effort to put them at ease and be accepted
- Being labelled sensitive and/or gifted: usually this comes at a young age, but the resultant different treatment can have a lifetime effect
- Secret stims: again related to masking, and again for the same reasons that displaying autistic symptoms is often treated worse in women, autistic women’s stims tend to be more subtle.
- Written communication: autistic women are often more comfortable with the written word than the spoken
- Leadership: autistic women will often gravitate to leadership roles, partly as a survival mechanism
- Gaslighting: oneself, e.g. “If this person did this without that, then I can to” (without taking into account that maybe the circumstances are different, or maybe they actually did lean on crutches that you didn’t know were there, etc).
- Inner dialogue: rich inner dialogue, but unable to express it outwardly—often because of the sheer volume of thoughts per second.
- Fewer female friends: often few friends overall, for that matter, but there’s often a gender imbalance towards male friends, or where there isn’t, towards more masculine friends at least.
- Feeling different: often a matter of feeling one does not meet standard expectations in some fashion
- School: autistic women are often academically successful
- Special interests: often more “socially accepted” interests than autistic men’s.
- Flirting: autistic women are often unsure how to flirt or what to do about it, which can result in simple directness instead
For more details on all of these, enjoy:
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Related reading:
You might like a main feature of ours from not long back:
Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women
Take care!
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The Intelligence Trap – by David Robson
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We’re including this one under the umbrella of “general wellness”, because it happens that a lot of very intelligent people make stunningly unfortunate choices sometimes, for reasons that may baffle others.
The author outlines for us the various reasons that this happens, and how. From the famous trope of “specialized intelligence in one area”, to the tendency of people who are better at acquiring knowledge and understanding to also be better at acquiring biases along the way, to the hubris of “I am intelligent and therefore right as a matter of principle” thinking, and many other reasons.
Perhaps the greatest value of the book is the focus on how we can avoid these traps, narrow our bias blind spots, and play to our strengths while paying full attention to our weaknesses.
The style is very readable, despite having a lot of complex ideas discussed along the way. This is entirely to be expected of this author, an award-winning science writer.
Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand the array of traps that disproportionately catch out the most intelligent people (and how to spot such), then this is a great book for you.
Click here to check out The Intelligence Trap, and be more wary!
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White Noise vs Pink Noise
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I live in a large city and even late at night there is always a bit of background noise. While I am pretty used to it by now, I find I don’t sleep nearly as well in the city as I do in the country. I have seen some stuff about “white noise” generators. I was wondering whether you have any thoughts about the science behind these, and whether it is something I should try out – or maybe I should be trying something completly different.❞
The science says…
❝Our data show that white noise significantly improved sleep based on subjective and objective measurements in subjects complaining of difficulty sleeping due to high levels of environmental noise. This suggests that the application of white noise may be an effective tool in helping to improve sleep in those settings.❞
That said, you might also consider “pink noise”, which is very similar to white noise (having all frequencies normally audible to the human ear), but has greater intensity of lower frequencies, creating a more deep and even sound. While white noise and pink noise are both great at “muting” external sounds like those that have been disturbing your sleep, pink noise may have an advantage in helping to stimulate deep and restful sleep:
❝This study demonstrates that steady pink noise has significant effect on reducing brain wave complexity and inducing more stable sleep time to improve sleep quality of individuals.❞
Source: Pink noise: effect on complexity synchronization of brain activity and sleep consolidation
There may be extra benefits to pink noise, too:
Acoustic Enhancement of Sleep Slow Oscillations and Concomitant Memory Improvement in Older Adults
Rest well!
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Blood-Sugar Balancing Beetroot Cutlets
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These beetroot cutlets are meaty and proteinous and fibrous and even have a healthy collection of fats, making these much better for your heart and blood than an animal-based equivalent.
You will need
- 1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed (or 1 cup same, cooked, drained, and rinsed)
- ½ cup chopped roasted or steamed beetroot, blotted dry
- ½ cup chopped walnuts (if allergic, substitute with ¼ cup pumpkin seeds)
- ½ cup cooked (ideally: mixed) grains of your choice (if you need gluten-free, there are plenty of gluten-free grains and pseudocereals)
- ¼ cup finely chopped onion
- ¼ bulb garlic, minced or crushed
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tbsp ground flaxseeds
- 2 tbsp ground chia seeds
- 2 tsp tomato purée
- 1 tsp black pepper
- ½ tsp white miso paste
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine the beetroot, beans, walnuts, grains, and onion in a food processor, and process until a coarse even mixture.
2) Add the remaining ingredients and process to mix thoroughly.
3) Transfer the mixture to a clean work surface and divide into six balls. If the structural integrity is not good (i.e. too soft), add a little more of any or all of these ingredients: chopped walnuts, ground flax, ground chia, nutritional yeast.
4) Press the balls firmly into cutlets, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, but longer is even better if you have the time. Alternatively, if you’d like to freeze them for later use, then this is the point at which to do that.
5) Preheat the oven to 375℉ / 190℃.
6) Roast the cutlets on a baking tray lined with baking paper, for about 30 minutes, turning over carefully with a spatula halfway through. They should be firm when done; if they’re not, give them a little longer.
7) Serve hot, for example on a bed of greens and with a drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Beetroot’s Many Benefits
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us
- Three Daily Servings of Beans?
- If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out
Take care!
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When And Why Do We Pick Up Our Phones?
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The School of Life’s Alain de Botton makes the argument that—if we pay attention, if we keep track—there’s an understory to why we pick up our phones:
It’s not about information
Yes, our phones (or rather, the apps therein) are designed to addict us, to draw us back, to keep us scrolling and never let us go. We indeed seek out information like our ancestors once sought out berries; searching, encouraged by a small discovery, looking for more. The neurochemistry is similar.
But when we look at the “when” of picking up our phones, de Botton says, it tells a different story:
We pick them up not to find out what’s going on with the world, but rather specifically to not find out what’s going with ourselves. We pick them up to white out some anxiety we don’t want to examine, a line of thought we don’t want to go down, memories we don’t want to consider, futures we do not want to have to worry about.
And of course, phones do have a great educational potential, are an immensely powerful tool for accessing knowledge of many kinds—if only we can remain truly conscious while using them, and not take them as the new “opiate of the masses”.
De Botton bids us, when next we pick up our phone. ask a brave question:
“If I weren’t allowed to consult my phone right now, what might I need to think about?”
As for where from there? There’s more in the video:
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Further reading
Making Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
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Rebuilding Milo – by Dr. Aaron Horschig
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The author, a doctor of physical therapy, also wrote another book that we reviewed a while ago, “The Squat Bible” (which is also excellent, by the way). This time, it’s all about resistance training in the context of fixing a damaged body.
Resistance training is, of course, very important for general health, especially as we get older. However, it’s easy to do it wrongly and injure oneself, and indeed, if one is carrying some injury and/or chronic pain, it becomes necessary to know how to fix that before continuing—without just giving up on training, because that would be a road to ruin in terms of muscle and bone maintenance.
The book explains all the necessary anatomy, with clear illustrations too. He talks equipment, keeping things simple and practical, letting the reader know which things actually matter in terms of quality, and what things are just unnecessary fanciness and/or counterproductive.
Most of the book is divided into chapters per body part, e.g. back pain, shoulder pain, ankle pain, hip pain, knee pain, etc; what’s going on, and how to fix it to rebuild it stronger.
The style is straightforward and simple, neither overly clinical nor embellished with overly casual fluff. Just, clear simple explanations and instructions.
Bottom line: if you’d like to get stronger and/or level up your resistance training, but are worried about an injury or chronic condition, this book can set you in good order.
Click here to check out Rebuilding Milo, and rebuild yourself!
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Get Better Sleep: Beyond The Basics
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First though, for the sake of being methodical, let’s quickly note the basics:
- Aim for 7–9 hours per night
- Set a regular bedtime and (equally important!) regular getting-up time
- Have a 2-hour wind-down period before bed, to decompress from any stresses of the day
- Minimal device/screen usage before bed
- Abstain from stimulants for as long before bed as reasonably possible (caffeine elimination halflife is 4–8 hours depending on your genes, call it 6 hours average to eliminate half (not the whole lot), and you’ll see it’s probably best to put a cap on it earlier rather than later).
- Abstain from alcohol, ideally entirely, but allow at least 1hr/unit before bed. So for example, 1hr for a 1oz single shot of spirits, or 2–3 hours for a glass of wine (depending on size), or 3–4 hours for a martini (depending on recipe). Not that that is not the elimination time, nor even the elimination halflife of alcohol, it’s just a “give your body a chance at least” calculation. If you like to have a drink to relax before bed, then well, only you can decide what you like more: that or actually getting restorative sleep.
- Consider a warm bath/shower before bed, if that suits your schedule.
- Wash and change your bedsheets more often than seems necessary. Or if that’s too onerous, at least change the pillowcases more often, which makes quite a difference already.
- Lower the temperature of your bedroom shortly before bedtime; this will help cue the body to produce melatonin
- Make your bedroom as dark as reasonably possible. Invest in blackout blinds/curtains, and remove any pesky electronics, or at least cover their little LEDs if it’s something that reasonably needs to remain on.
Ok, now, onwards…
Those 7–9 hours? Yes, it goes for you too.
A lot of people mistake getting 6 hours sleep per night for only needing 6 hours sleep per night. Sure, you may still be alive after regularly getting 6 hours, but (unless you have a rare mutation of the ADRB1 gene) it will be causing harm, and yes, that includes later in life; we don’t stop needing so much sleep, even stop getting it:
Why You Probably Need More Sleep
With this in mind, it becomes important to…
Prioritize your sleep—which means planning for it!
When does your bedtime routine start? According to sleep scientist Dr. Lisa Matricciani, it starts before breakfast. This is because the things we do earlier in the day can greatly affect the amount (and quality) of sleep we get later. For example, a morning moderate-to-intense exercise session greatly improves sleep at night:
Planning Ahead For Better Sleep
As for quality, that is as important as quantity, and it’s not just about “soundness” of sleep:
The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
“What gets measured, gets done” goes for sleep too
Sleep-deprived people usually underestimate how sleep-deprived they are. This is for the same reason as why drunk people usually underestimate how drunk they are—to put it in words that go for both situations: a cognitively impaired person lacks the cognitive function to realize how cognitively impaired they are.
Here’s the science on that, by the way:
How Sleep-Deprived Are You, Really?
For that reason, we recommend using sleep-tracking software (there are many apps for that) on your phone or, ideally, a wearable device (such as a smartwatch or similar).
A benefit of doing so is that we don’t think “well, I slept from 10pm to 6am, so that’s 8 hours”, if our device tells us we slept between 10:43pm and 5:56 am with 74% sleep efficiency because we woke up many times.
As an aside, sleep efficiency should be about 85%, by the way. Why not 100%, you ask? It’s because if your body is truly out like a light for the entire night, something is wrong (either you were very sleep-deprived, or you have been drugged, that kind of thing). See also:
An unbroken night’s sleep is a myth. Here’s what good sleep looks like.
So waking up during the night is normal, and nothing to worry about per se. If you do find trouble getting back to sleep, though:
How to Fall Back Asleep After Waking Up in the Middle of the Night
Be careful about how you try to supplement sleep
This goes both for taking substances of various kinds, and napping. Some sleep aids can help, but many are harmful and/or do not really work as such; here’s a rundown of examples of those:
Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors?
And when it comes to napping, timing is everything:
How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
Want to know a lot more?
This is the book on sleep:
Why We Sleep – by Dr. Matthew Walker
Enjoy!
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