Unwell Women – by Dr. Elinor Cleghorn
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For a demographic that makes up a little over half of the world’s population, women are paradoxically marginalized in healthcare. And in other ways too, but this book is about health.
Dr. Cleghorn had to fight for seven (!) years to get her own lupus condition recognized as such, and continues to have to fight for it to be taken seriously on an ongoing basis. And yet, 95% of the book is not about her and her experiences, but rather, the bigger picture.
The book is divided into sections, by period in history. From Hippocrates to the modern day, Dr. Cleghorn gives us a well-researched, incredibly well-referenced overview of the marginalization of women’s health. Far from being a dry history book in the early parts though, it’s fascinating and engaging throughout.
The modern day sections are part shining a light into dark areas, part practical information-and-advice “did you know this happens, and you can do this about it”, and part emphatic call-to-action to demand better.
Bottom line: this book is in this reviewer’s “top 5 books read this year”, and we highly recommend it to you.
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Tourette’s Syndrome Treatment Options
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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
❝Is there anything special that might help someone with Tourette’s syndrome?❞
There are of course a lot of different manifestations of Tourette’s syndrome, and some people’s tics may be far more problematic to themselves and/or others, while some may be quite mild and just something to work around.
It’s an interesting topic for sure, so we’ll perhaps do a main feature (probably also covering the related-and-sometimes-overlapping OCD umbrella rather than making it hyperspecific to Tourette’s), but meanwhile, you might consider some of these options:
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Spirulina vs Nori – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing spirulina to nori, we picked the nori.
Why?
In the battle of the seaweeds, if spirulina is a superfood (and it is), then nori is a super-dooperfood. So today is one of those “a very nutritious food making another very nutritious food look bad by standing next to it” days. With that in mind…
In terms of macros, they’re close to identical. They’re both mostly water with protein, carbs, and fiber. Technically nori is higher in carbs, but we’re talking about 2.5g/100g difference.
In the category of vitamins, spirulina has more vitamin B1, while nori has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline.
When it comes to minerals, it’s a little closer but still a clear win for nori; spirulina has more copper, iron, and magnesium, while nori has more calcium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc.
Want to try some nori? Here’s an example product on Amazon 😎
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, It’s Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!) ← nori was an important part of the diet enjoyed here
Take care!
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Castor Oil: All-Purpose Life-Changer, Or Snake Oil?
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.
As “trending” health products go, castor oil is enjoying a lot of popularity presently, lauded as a life-changing miracle-worker, and social media is abuzz with advice to put it everywhere from your eyes to your vagina.
But:
- what things does science actually say it’s good for,
- what things lack evidence, and
- what things go into the category of “wow definitely do not do that”?
We don’t have the space to go into all of its proposed uses (there are simply far too many), but we’ll examine some common ones:
To heal/improve the skin barrier
Like most oils, it’s functional as a moisturizer. In particular, its high (90%!) ricinoleic fatty acid content does indeed make it good at that, and furthermore, has properties that can help reduce skin inflammation and promote wound healing:
Bioactive polymeric formulations for wound healing ← there isn’t a conveniently quotable summary we can just grab here, but you can see the data and results, from which we can conclude:
- formulations with ricinoleic acid (such as with castor oil) performed very well for topical anti-inflammatory purposes
- they avoided the unwanted side effects associated with some other contenders
- they consistently beat other preparations in the category of wound-healing
To support hair growth and scalp health
There is no evidence that it helps. We’d love to provide a citation for this, but it’s simply not there. There’s also no evidence that it doesn’t help. For whatever reason, despite its popularity, peer-reviewed science has simply not been done for this, or if it has, it wasn’t anywhere publicly accessible.
It’s possible that if a person is suffering hair loss specifically as a result of prostaglandin D2 levels, that ricinoleic acid will inhibit the PGD2, reversing the hair loss, but even this is hypothetical so far, as the science is currently only at the step before that:
However, due to some interesting chemistry, the combination of castor oil and warm water can result in acute (and irreversible) hair felting, in other words, the strands of hair suddenly glue together to become one mass which then has to be cut off:
“Castor Oil” – The Culprit of Acute Hair Felting
👆 this is a case study, which is generally considered a low standard of evidence (compared to high-quality Randomized Controlled Trials as the highest standard of evidence), but let’s just say, this writer (hi, it’s me) isn’t risking her butt-length hair on the off-chance, and doesn’t advise you to, either. There are other hair-oils out there; argan oil is great, coconut oil is totally fine too.
As a laxative
This time, there’s a lot of evidence, and it’s even approved for this purpose by the FDA, but it can be a bit too good, insofar as taking too much can result in diarrhea and uncomfortable cramping (the cramps are a feature not a bug; the mechanism of action is stimulatory, i.e. it gets the intestines squeezing, but again, it can result in doing that too much for comfort):
Castor Oil: FDA-Approved Indications
To soothe dry eyes
While putting oil in your eyes may seem dubious, this is another one where it actually works:
❝Castor oil is deemed safe and tolerable, with strong anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory, anti-nociceptive, analgesic, antioxidant, wound healing and vasoconstrictive properties.
These can supplement deficient physiological tear film lipids, enabling enhanced lipid spreading characteristics and reducing aqueous tear evaporation.
Studies reveal that castor oil applied topically to the ocular surface has a prolonged residence time, facilitating increased tear film lipid layer thickness, stability, improved ocular surface staining and symptoms.❞
Source: Therapeutic potential of castor oil in managing blepharitis, meibomian gland dysfunction and dry eye
Against candidiasis (thrush)
We couldn’t find science for (or against) castor oil’s use against vaginal candidiasis, but here’s a study that investigated its use against oral candidiasis:
…in which castor oil was the only preparation that didn’t work against the yeast.
Summary
We left a lot unsaid today (so many proposed uses, it feels like a shame to skip them), but in few words: it’s good for skin (including wound healing) and eyes; but we’d give it a miss for hair, candidiasis, and digestive disorders.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Take care!
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Shoulders Range – by Elia Bartolini
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.
Shoulder flexibility and mobility can be a big deal, especially when it starts to decline—more so than other kinds of flexibility. Most seniors can get through the day without doing the splits against a wall, for example, but shoulder tightness can be more of a problem if you can’t easily get into or out of your clothes.
If you think it couldn’t happen to you: the great Jane Fonda has a now-famous photoset of her looking glamorous in a dress at a red carpet event, and then looking frazzled making breakfast in the same dress in her kitchen the next morning, because, as she wrote, “I couldn’t get my dress unzipped so I slept in it”.
Now, “to avoid ending up like Jane Fonda” is not a series of words that usually precedes advice, but in this case: this book delves into the science of one of the most quirky joints of the human body, and how to leverage this to maximize shoulder mobility, while maintaining adequate strength (because flexibility without strength is just asking for a dislocation) without doing anything that would actually bulk up our shoulders, because it’s just about progressing through passive, active, and tensed stretching, static, dynamic, and loaded stretching, as well as PNF stretching and antagonist stretching.
If that seems like a lot of stretching, don’t worry; the author presents a series of workouts that will take us through these stretches in a very small amount of time each day.
The style is instructional like a textbook, with clear diagrams where appropriate, and lots of callout boxes, bullet points, emboldening for key points, etc. It all makes for every easy learning.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve and maintain your shoulder mobility, this is an excellent book for that.
Click here to check out Shoulders Range, and perfect your shoulders and upper body flexibility!
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Aging Well: Exercise, Diet, Relationships
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Questions and Answers 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!
This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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 am interested in the following: Aging, Exercise, Diet, Relationships, Purpose, Lowering Stress
You’re going to love our Psychology Sunday editions of 10almonds!
You may particularly like some of these:
- Seriously Useful Communication Skills! ← this is about relationship stuff
- Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How) ← about “the stress hormone”
- How To Set Your Anxiety Aside ← these methods work for stress too
(This coming Psychology Sunday will have a feature specifically on stress, so do make sure to read that when it comes out!)
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An Important Way That Love Gets Eroded
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It is unusual for a honeymoon period to last forever, but some relationships fair a lot better than others. Not just in terms of staying together vs separating, but in terms of happiness and satisfaction in the relationship. What’s the secret? There are many, but here’s one of them…
Communication
In this video, the case is made for a specific aspect of communication: airing grievances.
Superficially, this doesn’t seem like a recipe for happiness, but it is one important ingredient—that it’s dangerously easy to let small grievances add up and eat away at one’s love and patience, until one day resentment outweighs attachment, and at that point, it often becomes a case of “checking out before you leave”, remaining in the relationship more due to inertia than volition.
Which, in turn, will likely start to cause resentment on the other side, and eventually things will crumble and/or explode.
In contrast, if we make sure to speak our feelings clearly (10almonds note, not in the video: we think that doing so compassionately is also important), the bad as well as the good, then it means that:
- things don’t stack up and fester (there will less likely be a “final straw” if we are regularly removing straws)
- there is an opportunity for change (in contrast, our partner would be unlikely to adjust anything to correct a problem they don’t know about)
- all but the most inclined-to-anxiety partners can rest easy, because they know that if we had a problem, we’d tell them
This is definitely only one critical aspect of communication; this video for example says nothing about actually being affectionate with one’s partner, or making sure to accept emotional bids for connection (per that story that goes “I knew my marriage was over when he wouldn’t come look at the tomatoes I grew”), but it is one worth considering—even if we at 10almonds would advise being gentle yet honest, and where possible balancing, in aggregate if not in the moment, with positive things (per Gottman’s ratio of 5:1 good moments to bad, being the magic number for marriages that “work”).
For more on why it’s so important to be able to safely air grievances, see:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Seriously Useful Communication Skills! ← this deals with some of the important gaps left by the video
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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