8 Signs Of High Cortisol & How To Reverse “Cortisol Face”

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Dr. Shereene Idriss has insights about the facial features that might indicate chronically elevated cortisol levels, and what to do about same:

At face value

Dr. Idriss notes that for most people, this should not be cause for undue concern, although hypercortisolism can also be associated with genetic disorders such as Cushing’s syndrome, as well as prolonged use of certain medication, or the presence of certain tumors. As well as facial swelling, hypercortisolism can also result in other physical changes like acne, weight gain, skin thinning, stretch marks, infections, and hair loss.

As for what to do about it, she recommends addressing lifestyle factors like poor sleep, unhealthy diet, alcohol consumption, and lack of hydration to reduce facial puffiness related to stress. Diet suggestions include incorporating foods rich in magnesium, vitamin C, and omega-3s, such as leafy greens, fatty fish, nuts and seeds, and berries.

She also suggests some supplements to consider, such as ashwagandha, magnesium, omega-3s, and/or l-theanine, but you might want to speak to your doctor/pharmacist to check in case of contraindications per any other conditions you may have, or medications you may be on.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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  • Banana vs Goji Berries – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing banana to goji berries, we picked the goji berries.

    Why?

    Both are great! But…

    In terms of macros, goji berries have much more fiber, carbs, and protein, thus making it the most nutrient-dense option, as we might expect from a dried fruit being compared to a non-dried fruit—since the non-dried fruit has water weight that the dried fruit doesn’t, its percentages of other things will be proportionally lower, because the percentages must still add up to 100%, and if 75% is water (as is the case for bananas, compared to goji berries’ 7.5% water), then that only leaves 25% to work with, while goji berries have 92.5% to work with. In short, an easy and expected win for goji berries.

    In the category of vitamins, bananas have more of vitamin B6, while goji berries have more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B5, B9, C, E, and K. A clear win for goji berries.

    When it comes to minerals, bananas are not higher in any minerals, while goji berries have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another easy win for goji berries.

    As for polyphenols, you may well imagine that the brightly-colored bitter-tasting berries have more, and you’d be right; you can read more about the exciting phytochemical properties of goji berries in the links below.

    Meanwhile, adding up the sections show a clear overall win for goji berries, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like:

    Enjoy!

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  • Bushfire smoke affects children differently. Here’s how to protect them

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    Bushfires are currently burning in Australian states including Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. In some areas, fire authorities have warned residents about the presence of smoke.

    Bushfire smoke is harmful to our health. Tiny particles of ash can lodge deep in the lungs.

    Exposure to this type of smoke may worsen existing conditions such as asthma, and induce a range of health effects from irritation of the eyes, nose and throat to changes in the cardiovascular system.

    Public health recommendations during smoke events tend to provide general advice, and don’t often include advice specifically geared at children. But children are not just little adults. They are uniquely vulnerable to environmental hazards such as bushfire smoke for a number of reasons.

    Different physiology, different behaviour

    Children’s lungs are still developing and maturing.

    Airways are smaller in children, especially young children, which is associated with greater rates of particle deposition – when particles settle on the surfaces of the airways.

    Children also breathe more air per kilogram of body weight compared with adults, and therefore inhale more polluted air relative to their size.

    Further, children’s detoxification systems are still developing, so environmental toxins take longer to effectively clear from their bodies.

    Meanwhile, children’s behaviour and habits may expose them to more environmental toxins than adults. For example, they tend to do more physical activity and spend more time outdoors. Higher levels of physical activity lead to more air inhaled per kilogram of body weight.

    Also, a normal and important part of children’s early play is exploring their environment, including by putting things in their mouth. This can result in kids ingesting soil, dust and dirt, which often contain environmental contaminants.

    For these reasons, it’s important to consider the specific needs of children when providing advice on what to do when there’s smoke in the air.

    Keeping our environments healthy

    The Australian government offers recommendations for minimising the health risks from exposure to bushfire smoke. The main advice includes staying indoors and keeping doors and windows closed.

    This is great advice when the smoke is thick outside, but air pollutants may still accumulate inside the home. So it’s important to air your home once the smoke outside starts to clear. Take advantage of wind changes to open up and get air moving out of the house with a cross breeze.

    Kids are natural scientists, so get them involved. For example, you and your child can “rate” the air each hour by looking at a landmark outside your home and rating how clearly you can see it. When you notice the haze is reducing, open up the house and clear the air.

    Because air pollutants settle onto surfaces in our home and into household dust, an easy way to protect kids during smoky periods is to do a daily dust with a wet cloth and vacuum regularly. This will remove pollutants and reduce ingestion by children as they play. Frequent hand washing helps too.

    Healthy bodies and minds

    Research exploring the effects of bushfire smoke exposure on children’s health is sparse. However, during smoke events, we do see an increase in hospital visits for asthma, as well as children reporting irritation to their eyes, nose and throat.

    If your child has asthma or another medical condition, ensure they take any prescribed medications on a regular schedule to keep their condition well controlled. This will minimise the risk of a sudden worsening of their symptoms with bushfire smoke exposure.

    Make sure any action plans for symptom flare-ups are up to date, and ensure you have an adequate supply of in-date medication somewhere easy to locate and access.

    A mother talks to her child who is sitting on a bed.
    Children may be anxious during a bushfire.
    Media_Photos/Shutterstock

    Kids can get worried during bushfires, and fire emergencies have been linked with a reduction in children’s mental health. Stories such as the Birdie’s Tree books can help children understand these events do pass and people help one another in times of difficulty.

    Learning more about air pollution can help too. Our group has a children’s story explaining how air pollution affects our bodies and what can help.

    It’s also important for parents and caregivers not to get too stressed, as children cope better when their parents manage their own anxiety and help their children do the same. Try to strike a balance between being vigilant and staying calm.

    What about masks?

    N95 masks can protect the wearer from fine particles in bushfire smoke, but their use is a bit complicated when it comes to kids. Most young children won’t be able to fit properly into an N95 mask, or won’t tolerate the tight fit for long periods. Also, their smaller airways make it harder for young children to breathe through a mask.

    If you choose to use an N95 mask for your children, it’s best to save them for instances when high-level outdoor exposure is unavoidable, such as if you’re going outside when the smoke is very thick.

    N95 masks should be replaced after around four hours or when they become damp.

    If your child has an existing heart or lung condition, consult their doctor before having them wear an N95 mask.

    Our team is currently recruiting for a study exploring the effects of bushfire smoke in children. If you live in south east Queensland and are interested in participating in the event of a bushfire or hazard reduction burn near your home, please express your interest here.The Conversation

    Dwan Vilcins, Group leader, Environmental Epidemiology, Children’s Health Environment Program, The University of Queensland; Nicholas Osborne, Associate Professor, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, and Paul D. Robinson, Conjoint Professor in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine, Child Health Research Centre, The University of Queensland

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

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  • Women take more antidepressants after divorce than men but that doesn’t mean they’re more depressed

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    Research out today from Finland suggests women may find it harder to adjust to later-life divorce and break-ups than men.

    The study used population data from 229,000 Finns aged 50 to 70 who had undergone divorce, relationship break-up or bereavement and tracked their use of antidepressants before and after their relationship ended.

    They found antidepressant use increased in the four years leading to the relationship dissolution in both genders, with women experiencing a more significant increase.

    But it’s too simplistic to say women experience poorer mental health or tend to be less happy after divorce than men.

    Remind me, how common is divorce?

    Just under 50,000 divorces are granted each year in Australia. This has slowly declined since the 1990s.

    More couple are choosing to co-habitate, instead of marry, and the majority of couples live together prior to marriage. Divorce statistics don’t include separations of cohabiting couples, even though they are more likely than married couples to separate.

    Those who divorce are doing so later in life, often after their children grow up. The median age of divorce increased from 45.9 in 2021 to 46.7 in 2022 for men and from 43.0 to 43.7 for women.

    The trend of late divorces also reflects people deciding to marry later in life. The median duration from marriage to divorce in 2022 was around 12.8 years and has remained fairly constant over the past decade.

    Why do couples get divorced?

    Changes in social attitudes towards marriage and relationships mean divorce is now more accepted. People are opting not to be in unhappy marriages, even if there are children involved.

    Instead, they’re turning the focus on marriage quality. This is particularly true for women who have established a career and are financially autonomous.

    Similarly, my research shows it’s particularly important for people to feel their relationship expectations can be fulfilled long term. In addition to relationship quality, participants reported needing trust, open communication, safety and acceptance from their partners.

    Grey divorce” (divorce at age 50 and older) is becoming increasingly common in Western countries, particularly among high-income populations. While factors such as an empty nest, retirement, or poor health are commonly cited predictors of later-in-life divorce, research shows older couples divorce for the same reasons as younger couples.

    What did the new study find?

    The study tracked antidepressant use in Finns aged 50 to 70 for four years before their relationship breakdown and four years after.

    They found antidepressant use increased in the four years leading to the relationship break-up in both genders. The proportion of women taking antidepressants in the lead up to divorce increased by 7%, compared with 5% for men. For de facto separation antidepressant use increased by 6% for women and 3.2% for men.

    Within a year of the break-up, antidepressant use fell back to the level it was 12 months before the break-up. It subsequently remained at that level among the men.

    But it was a different story for women. Their use tailed off only slightly immediately after the relationship breakdown but increased again from the first year onwards.

    Woman sits at the beach
    Women’s antidepressant use increased again.
    sk/Unsplash

    The researchers also looked at antidepressant use after re-partnering. There was a decline in the use of antidepressants for men and women after starting a new relationship. But this decline was short-lived for women.

    But there’s more to the story

    Although this data alone suggest women may find it harder to adjust to later-life divorce and break-ups than men, it’s important to note some nuances in the interpretation of this data.

    For instance, data suggesting women experience depression more often than men is generally based on the rate of diagnoses and antidepressant use, which does not account for undiagnosed and unmedicated people.

    Women are generally more likely to access medical services and thus receive treatment. This is also the case in Australia, where in 2020–2022, 21.6% of women saw a health professional for their mental health, compared with only 12.9% of men.

    Why women might struggle more after separating

    Nevertheless, relationship dissolution can have a significant impact on people’s mental health. This is particularly the case for women with young children and older women.

    So what factors might explain why women might experience greater difficulties after divorce later in life?

    Research investigating the financial consequences of grey divorce in men and women showed women experienced a 45% decline in their standard of living (measured by an income-to-needs ratio), whereas men’s dropped by just 21%. These declines persisted over time for men, and only reversed for women following re-partnering.

    Another qualitative study investigating the lived experiences of heterosexual couples post-grey divorce identified financial worries as a common theme between female participants.

    A female research participant (age 68) said:

    [I am most worried about] the money, [and] what I’m going to do when the little bit of money I have runs out […] I have just enough money to live. And, that’s it, [and if] anything happens I’m up a creek. And Medicare is incredibly expensive […] My biggest expense is medicine.

    Another factor was loneliness. One male research participant (age 54) described he preferred living with his ex-wife, despite not getting along with her, than being by himself:

    It was still [good] knowing that [the] person was there, and now that’s gone.

    Other major complications of later-life divorce are possible issues with inheritance rights and next-of-kin relationships for medical decision-making.

    Separation can be positive

    For some people, divorce or separation can lead to increased happiness and feeling more independent.

    And the mental health impact and emotional distress of a relationship dissolution is something that can be counterattacked with resilience. Resilience to dramatic events built from life experience means older adults often do respond better to emotional distress and might be able to adjust better to divorce than their younger counterparts.The Conversation

    Raquel Peel, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland and Senior Lecturer, RMIT University

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

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    The author, a social psychologist, sets out to not only bust ageist expectations, but also boost life expectancy by 7.5 years.

    How? By examining the extent to which how we think about our age affects our actual aging. Lest this sound wishy-washy, there are 52 pages of scientific references at the back.

    We’ve written about this before at 10almonds, for example about the famous “Counterclockwise” study that saw reversals in biological markers of aging after a one-week intervention that consisted only of a (albeit rather intensive) mental reframe with regard to their age.

    This book goes into such ideas much more than we can in a single article here, and in more ways, both on the personal level and the societal level.

    The style is (despite its heavy leanings on hundreds of scientific studies) quite conversational in tone, with many personal anecdotes padding the pages a little, but it does get the message across and helps to illustrate things.

    Bottom line: if you’d like a fresh take on aging, to make a big difference to yours, this book tackles that.

    Click here to check out Breaking The Age Code, and break the age code!

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  • Next-Level Headache Hacks

    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.

    A Muscle With A Lot Of Therapeutic Value

    First, a quick anatomy primer, so that the rest makes sense. We’re going to be talking about your sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle today.

    To find it, there are two easy ways:

    • look in a mirror, turn your head to one side and it’ll stick out on the opposite side of your neck
    • look at this diagram

    (we’re going to talk about it in the singular, but you have one on each side)

    This muscle is interesting for very many reasons, but what we’re going to focus on today is that massaging/stretching it (correctly!) can benefit several things that are right next to it and/or behind it, namely:

    • The tenth cranial nerve
    • The eleventh cranial nerve
    • The carotid artery

    Why do we care about these?

    Well, we would die quickly without the first and last of those. However, more practically, massaging each has benefits:

    The tenth cranial nerve

    This one is also known by its superhero alter-ego name:

    The Vagus Nerve (And How You Can Make Use Of It)

    The eleventh cranial nerve

    This one’s not nearly so critical to life, but it does facilitate most of the motor functions in that general part of the body—including some mechanics of speech production, and maintaining posture of the shoulders/neck/head (which in turn strongly affects presence/absence of certain kinds of headaches).

    The carotid artery

    We suspect you know what this one does already; it supplies the brain (and the rest of your head, for that matter) with oxygenated blood.

    What is useful to know today, is that it can be massaged, via the SCM, in a way that brings about a gentler version of this “one weird trick” to cure a lot of kinds of headaches:

    Curing Headaches At Home With Actual Science

    How (And Why) To Massage Your SCM

    …to relieve many kinds of headache, migraine, eye-ache, and tension or pain the jaw. It’s not a magical cure all so this comes with no promises, but it can and will help with a lot of things.

    In few words: turn your ahead away from the side where it hurts (if both, just pick one and then repeat for the other side), and slightly downwards. When your SCM sticks out a bit on the other side, gently pinch and rub it, working from the bottom to the top.

    If you prefer videos, here is a demonstration:

    !

    How (And Why) To Stretch Your SCM

    The above already includes a little stretch, but you can stretch it in a way that specifically stimulates your vagus nerve (this is good for many things).

    In few words: stand (or sit) up straight, and interlace your fingers together. Put your hands on the back of your neck, thumbs-downwards, and (keeping your face forward) look to one side with your eyes only, and hold that until you feel the urge to yawn (it’ll probably take between about 3 seconds and 30 seconds). Then repeat on the other side.

    If you prefer videos, this one is a very slight variation of what we just described but works the same way:

    !

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  • Planning Ahead For Better Sleep

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    Sleep: 6 Dimensions And 24 Hours!

    A woman with dark hair, planning ahead for better sleep, against a white background.

    This is Dr. Lisa Matricciani, a sleep specialist from the University of South Australia, where she teaches in the School of Health Sciences.

    What does she want us to know?

    Healthy sleep begins before breakfast

    The perfect bedtime routine is all well and good, but we need to begin much earlier in the day, Dr. Matricciani advises.

    Specifically, moderate to vigorous activity early in the day plays a big part.

    Before breakfast is best, but even midday/afternoon exercise is associated with better sleep at night.

    Read more: Daytime Physical Activity is Key to Unlocking Better Sleep

    Plan your time well to sleep—but watch out!

    Dr. Matricciani’s research has also found that while it’s important to plan around getting a good night’s sleep (including planning when this will happen), allocating too much time for sleep results in more restless sleep:

    ❝Allocating more time to sleep was associated with earlier sleep onsets, later sleep offsets, less efficient and more consistent sleep patterns for both children and adults.❞

    ~ Dr. Lisa Matricciani et al.

    Read more: Time use and dimensions of healthy sleep: A cross-sectional study of Australian children and adults

    (this was very large study involving 1,168 children and 1.360 adults, mostly women)

    What counts as good sleep quality? Is it just efficiency?

    It is not! Although that’s one part of it. You may remember our previous main feature:

    The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)

    Dr. Matricciani agrees:

    ❝Everyone knows that sleep is important. But when we think about sleep, we mainly focus on how many hours of sleep we get, when we should also be looking at our sleep experience as a whole❞

    ~ Dr. Lisa Matricciani

    Read more: Trouble sleeping? You could be at risk of type 2 diabetes

    That’s not a cheery headline, but here’s her paper about it:

    Multidimensional Sleep and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes: Examining Self-Report and Objective Dimensions of Sleep

    And no, we don’t get a free pass on getting less sleep / less good quality sleep as we get older (alas):

    Why You Probably Need More Sleep

    So, time to get planning for the best sleep!

    Enjoy videos?

    Here’s how 7News Australia broke the news of Dr. Matricciani’s more recent work:

    !

    Rest well!

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