5 Self-Care Trends That Are Actually Ruining Your Mental Health

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Ok, some of these are trends; some are more perennial to human nature. For example, while asceticism is not a new idea, the “dopamine detox” is, and “bed rotting” is not a trend that this writer has seen recommended anywhere, but on the other hand, there are medieval illustrations of it—there was no Netflix in sight in the medieval illustrations, but perhaps a label diagnosing it as “melancholy”, for example.

So without further ado, here are five things to not do…

Don’t fall into these traps

The 5 things to watch out for are:

  1. Toxic positivity: constantly promoting positivity regardless of the reality of a situation can shame or invalidate genuine emotions, preventing people from processing their real feelings and leading to negative mental health outcomes—especially if it involves a “head in sand” approach to external problems as well as internal ones (because then those problems will never actually get dealt with).
  2. Self-indulgence: excessive focus on personal desires can make you more self-centered, less disciplined, and ultimately dissatisfied, which hinders personal growth and mental wellness.
  3. Bed rotting: spending prolonged time in bed for relaxation or entertainment can decrease motivation, productivity, and lead to (or worsen) depression rather than promoting genuine rest and rejuvenation.
  4. Dopamine detox: abstaining from pleasurable activities to “reset” the brain simply does not work and can lead to loneliness, boredom, and worsen mental health, especially when done excessively.
  5. Over-reliance on self-help: consuming too much self-help content or relying on material possessions for well-being can lead to information overload, unrealistic expectations, and the constant need for self-fixing, rather than fostering self-acceptance and authentic growth. Useful self-help can be like taking your car in for maintenance—counterproductive self-help is more like having your car always in for maintenance and never actually on the road.

For more on all of these, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read, and yes these are pretty much one-for-one with the 5 items above, doing a deeper dive into each in turn,

  1. How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
  2. Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence
  3. The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
  4. The Dopamine Myth
  5. Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

Take care!

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  • Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    There Will Be Blood

    Are you counting steps? Counting calories? Monitoring your sleep? Heart rate zones? These all have their merits:

    About calories: this writer (it’s me, hi) opines that intermittent fasting has the same benefits as caloric restriction, without the hassle of counting, and is therefore superior. I also personally find fasting psychologically more pleasant. However, our goal here is to be informative, not prescriptive, and some people may have reasons to prefer CR to IF!

    Examples that come to mind include ease of adherence in the case of diabetes management, especially Type 1, or if one’s schedule (and/or one’s “medications that need to be taken with food” schedule) does not suit IF.

    And now for the blood…

    A rising trend in health enthusiasts presently is the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), which do exactly what is sounds like they do: they continually monitor glucose. Specifically, the amount of it in your blood.

    Of course, these have been in use in diabetes management for years; the technology is not new, but the application of the technology is.

    A good example of what benefits a non-diabetic person can gain from the use of a CGM is Jessie Inchauspé, the food scientist of “Glucose Revolution” and “The Glucose Goddess Method” fame.

    By wearing a CGM, she was able to notice what things did and didn’t spike her blood sugars, and found that a lot of the things were not stuff that people knew/advised about!

    For example, much of diabetes management (including avoiding diabetes in the first place) is based around paying attention to carbs and little else, but she found that it made a huge difference what she ate (or didn’t) with the carbs. By taking many notes over the course of her daily life, she was eventually able to isolate these patterns, showed her working-out in The Glucose Revolution (there’s a lot of science in that book), and distilled that information into bite-size (heh) advice such as:

    10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars

    That’s great, but since people like Inchauspé have done the work, I don’t have to, right?

    You indeed don’t have to! But you can still benefit from it. For example, fastidious as her work was, it’s a sample size of one. If you’re not a slim white 32-year-old French woman, there may be some factors that are different for you.

    All this to say: glucose responses, much like nutrition in general, are not a one-size-fits-all affair.

    With a CGM, you can start building up your own picture of what your responses to various foods are like, rather than merely what they “should” be like.

    This, by the way, is also one of the main aims of personalized health company ZOE, which crowdsourced a lot of scientific data about personalized metabolic responses to standardized meals:

    ZOE: Gut Health 2.0

    Not knowing these things can be dangerous

    We don’t like to scaremonger here, but we do like to point out potential dangers, and in this case, blindly following standardized diet advice, if your physiology is not standard, can have harmful effects, see for example:

    Diabetic-level glucose spikes seen in non-diabetic people

    Where can I get a CGM?

    We don’t sell them, and neither does Amazon, but you can check out some options here:

    The 4 Best CGM Devices For Measuring Blood Sugar in 2024

    …and if your doctor is not obliging with a prescription, note that the device that came out top in the above comparisons, will be available OTC soon:

    The First OTC Continuous Glucose Monitor Will Be Available Summer 2024

    Take care!

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  • Sesame Chocolate Fudge

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    If you’d like a sweet treat without skyrocketing your blood sugars with, well, rocket fuel… Today’s recipe can help you enjoy a taste of decadence that’s not bad for your blood sugars, and good for your heart and brain.

    You will need

    • ½ cup sesame seeds
    • ¼ cup cocoa powder
    • 3 tbsp maple syrup
    • 1 tbsp coconut oil (plus a little extra for the pan)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Lightly toast the sesame seeds in a pan until golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

    2) Put them in a food processor, and blend on full speed until they start to form a dough-like mixture. This may take a few minutes, so be patient. We recommend doing it in 30-second sessions with a 30-second rest between them, to avoiding overheating the motor.

    3) Add the rest of the ingredients and blend to combine thoroughly—this should go easily now and only take 10 seconds or so, but judge it by eye.

    4) Grease an 8″ square baking tin with a little coconut oil, and add the mixture, patting it down to fill the tin, making sure it is well-compressed.

    5) Allow to chill in the fridge for 6 hours, until firm.

    6) Turn the fudge out onto a chopping board, and cut into the size squares you want. Serve, or store in the fridge until ready to serve.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Senior Meetup Groups Combating Loneliness

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    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 would like to read more on loneliness, meetup group’s for seniors. Thank you”

    Well, 10almonds is an international newsletter, so it’s hard for us to advise about (necessarily: local) meetup groups!

    But a very popular resource for connecting to your local community is Nextdoor, which operates throughout the US, Canada, Australia, and large parts of Europe including the UK.

    In their own words:

    Get the most out of your neighborhood with Nextdoor

    It’s where communities come together to greet newcomers, exchange recommendations, and read the latest local news. Where neighbors support local businesses and get updates from public agencies. Where neighbors borrow tools and sell couches. It’s how to get the most out of everything nearby. Welcome, neighbor.

    Curious? Click here to check it out and see if it’s of interest to you

    Share This Post

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  • The Mental Health Dangers Of Oversharing
  • Body by Science – by Dr. Doug McGuff & John Little

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The idea that you’ll get a re-sculpted body at 12 minutes per week is a bold claim, isn’t it? Medical Doctor Doug McGuff and bodybuilder John Little team up to lay out their case. So, how does it stand up to scrutiny?

    First, is it “backed by rigorous research” as claimed? Yes… with caveats.

    The book uses a large body of scientific literature as its foundation, and that weight of evidence does support this general approach:

    • Endurance cardio isn’t very good at burning fat
    • Muscle, even just having it without using it much, burns fat to maintain it
    • To that end, muscle can be viewed as a fat-burning asset
    • Muscle can be grown quickly with short bursts of intense exercise once per week

    Why once per week? The most relevant muscle fibers take about that long to recover, so doing it more often will undercut gains.

    So, what are the caveats?

    The authors argue for slow reps of maximally heavy resistance work sufficient to cause failure in about 90 seconds. However, most of the studies cited for the benefits of “brief intense exercise” are for High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT involves “sprints” of exercise. It doesn’t have to be literally running, but for example maxing out on an exercise bike for 30 seconds, slowing for 60, maxing out for 30, etc. Or in the case of resistance work, explosive (fast!) concentric movements and slow eccentric movements, to work fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers, respectively.

    What does this mean for the usefulness of the book?

    • Will it sculpt your body as described in the blurb? Yes, this will indeed grow your muscles with a minimal expenditure of time
    • Will it improve your body’s fat-burning metabolism? Yes, this will indeed turn your body into a fat-burning machine
    • Will it improve your “complete fitness”? No, if you want to be an all-rounder athlete, you will still need HIIT, as otherwise anything taxing your under-worked fast-twitch muscle fibers will exhaust you quickly.

    Bottom line: read this book if you want to build muscle efficiently, and make your body more efficient at burning fat. Best supplemented with at least some cardio, though!

    Click here to check out Body by Science, and get re-sculpting yours!

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  • Having an x-ray to diagnose knee arthritis might make you more likely to consider potentially unnecessary surgery

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Osteoarthritis is a leading cause of chronic pain and disability, affecting more than two million Australians.

    Routine x-rays aren’t recommended to diagnose the condition. Instead, GPs can make a diagnosis based on symptoms and medical history.

    Yet nearly half of new patients with knee osteoarthritis who visit a GP in Australia are referred for imaging. Osteoarthritis imaging costs the health system A$104.7 million each year.

    Our new study shows using x-rays to diagnose knee osteoarthritis can affect how a person thinks about their knee pain – and can prompt them to consider potentially unnecessary knee replacement surgery.

    pikselstock/Shutterstock

    What happens when you get osteoarthritis?

    Osteoarthritis arises from joint changes and the joint working extra hard to repair itself. It affects the entire joint, including the bones, cartilage, ligaments and muscles.

    It is most common in older adults, people with a high body weight and those with a history of knee injury.

    Many people with knee osteoarthritis experience persistent pain and have difficulties with everyday activities such as walking and climbing stairs.

    How is it treated?

    In 2021–22, more than 53,000 Australians had knee replacement surgery for osteoarthritis.

    Hospital services for osteoarthritis, primarily driven by joint replacement surgery, cost $3.7 billion in 2020–21.

    While joint replacement surgery is often viewed as inevitable for osteoarthritis, it should only be considered for those with severe symptoms who have already tried appropriate non-surgical treatments. Surgery carries the risk of serious adverse events, such as blood clot or infection, and not everyone makes a full recovery.

    Most people with knee osteoarthritis can manage it effectively with:

    • education and self-management
    • exercise and physical activity
    • weight management (if necessary)
    • medicines for pain relief (such as paracetamol and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs).

    Debunking a common misconception

    A common misconception is that osteoarthritis is caused by “wear and tear”.

    However, research shows the extent of structural changes seen in a joint on an x-ray does not reflect the level of pain or disability a person experiences, nor does it predict how symptoms will change.

    Some people with minimal joint changes have very bad symptoms, while others with more joint changes have only mild symptoms. This is why routine x-rays aren’t recommended for diagnosing knee osteoarthritis or guiding treatment decisions.

    Instead, guidelines recommend a “clinical diagnosis” based on a person’s age (being 45 years or over) and symptoms: experiencing joint pain with activity and, in the morning, having no joint-stiffness or stiffness that lasts less than 30 minutes.

    Despite this, many health professionals in Australia continue to use x-rays to diagnose knee osteoarthritis. And many people with osteoarthritis still expect or want them.

    What did our study investigate?

    Our study aimed to find out if using x-rays to diagnose knee osteoarthritis affects a person’s beliefs about osteoarthritis management, compared to a getting a clinical diagnosis without x-rays.

    We recruited 617 people from across Australia and randomly assigned them to watch one of three videos. Each video showed a hypothetical consultation with a general practitioner about knee pain.

    Woman descends steps
    People with knee osteoarthritis can have difficulties getting down stairs. beeboys/Shutterstock

    One group received a clinical diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis based on age and symptoms, without being sent for an x-ray.

    The other two groups had x-rays to determine their diagnosis (the doctor showed one group their x-ray images and not the other).

    After watching their assigned video, participants completed a survey about their beliefs about osteoarthritis management.

    What did we find?

    People who received an x-ray-based diagnosis and were shown their x-ray images had a 36% higher perceived need for knee replacement surgery than those who received a clinical diagnosis (without x-ray).

    They also believed exercise and physical activity could be more harmful to their joint, were more worried about their condition worsening, and were more fearful of movement.

    Interestingly, people were slightly more satisfied with an x-ray-based diagnosis than a clinical diagnosis.

    This may reflect the common misconception that osteoarthritis is caused by “wear and tear” and an assumption that the “damage” inside the joint needs to be seen to guide treatment.

    What does this mean for people with osteoarthritis?

    Our findings show why it’s important to avoid unnecessary x-rays when diagnosing knee osteoarthritis.

    While changing clinical practice can be challenging, reducing unnecessary x-rays could help ease patient anxiety, prevent unnecessary concern about joint damage, and reduce demand for costly and potentially unnecessary joint replacement surgery.

    It could also help reduce exposure to medical radiation and lower health-care costs.

    Previous research in osteoarthritis, as well as back and shoulder pain, similarly shows that when health professionals focus on joint “wear and tear” it can make patients more anxious about their condition and concerned about damaging their joints.

    If you have knee osteoarthritis, know that routine x-rays aren’t needed for diagnosis or to determine the best treatment for you. Getting an x-ray can make you more concerned and more open to surgery. But there are a range of non-surgical options that could reduce pain, improve mobility and are less invasive.

    Belinda Lawford, Senior Research Fellow in Physiotherapy, The University of Melbourne; Kim Bennell, Professor of Physiotherapy, The University of Melbourne; Rana Hinman, Professor in Physiotherapy, The University of Melbourne, and Travis Haber, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Physiotherapy, The University of Melbourne

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Almond Butter vs Cashew Butter – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing almond butter to cashew butter, we picked the almond.

    Why?

    They’re both good! But, our inherent pro-almond bias notwithstanding, the almond butter does have a slightly better spread of nutrients.

    In terms of macros, almond butter has more protein while cashew butter has more carbs, and of their fats, they’re broadly healthy in both cases, but almond butter does have less saturated fat.

    In the category of vitamins, both are good sources of vitamin E, but almond butter has about 4x more. The rest of the vitamins they both contain aren’t too dissimilar, aside from some different weightings of various different B-vitamins, that pretty much balance out across the two nut butters. The only noteworthy point in cashew butter’s favor here is that it is a good source of vitamin K, which almond butter doesn’t have.

    When it comes to minerals, both are good sources of lots of minerals, but most significantly, almond butter has a lot more calcium and quite a bit more potassium. In contrast, cashew butter has more selenium.

    In short, they’re both great, but almond butter has more relative points in its favor than cashew butter.

    Here are the two we depicted today, by the way, in case you’d like to try them:

    Almond Butter | Cashew Butter

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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