The Web That Has No Weaver – by Ted Kaptchuk
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At 10almonds we have a strong “stick with the science” policy, and that means peer-reviewed studies and (where such exists) scientific consensus.
However, in the spirit of open-minded skepticism (i.e., acknowledging what we don’t necessarily know), it can be worth looking at alternatives to popular Western medicine. Indeed, many things have made their way from Traditional Chinese Medicine (or Ayurveda, or other systems) into Western medicine in any case.
“The Web That Has No Weaver” sounds like quite a mystical title, but the content is presented in the cold light of day, with constant “in Western terms, this works by…” notes.
The author walks a fine line of on the one hand, looking at where TCM and Western medicine may start and end up at the same place, by a different route; and on the other hand, noting that (in a very Daoist fashion), the route is where TCM places more of the focus, in contrast to Western medicine’s focus on the start and end.
He makes the case for TCM being more holistic, and it is, though Western medicine has been catching up in this regard since this book’s publication more than 20 years ago.
The style of the writing is very easy to follow, and is not esoteric in either mysticism or scientific jargon. There are diagrams and other illustrations, for ease of comprehension, and chapter endnotes make sure we didn’t miss important things.
Bottom line: if you’re curious about Traditional Chinese Medicine, this book is the US’s most popular introduction to such, and as such, is quite a seminal text.
Click here to check out The Web That Has No Weaver, and enjoy learning about something new!
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Darwin’s Bed Rest: Worthwhile Idea?
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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 recall that Charles Darwin (of Evolution fame) used to spend a day a month in bed in order to maintain his physical and psychological equilibrium. Do you see merit in the idea?❞
Well, it certainly sounds wonderful! Granted, it may depend on what you do in bed :p
Descartes did a lot of his work from bed (and also a surprising amount of it while hiding in an oven, but that’s another story), which was probably not so good for the health.
As for Darwin, his health was terrible in quite a lot of ways, so he may not be a great model.
However! Certainly taking a break is well-established as an important and healthful practice:
How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)
❝I don’t like to admit it but I am getting old. Recently, I had my first “fall” (ominous word!) I was walking across some wet decking and, before I knew what had happened, my feet were shooting forwards, and I crashed to the ground. Luckily I wasn’t seriously damaged. But I was wondering whether you can give us some advice about how best to fall. Maybe there are some good videos on the subject? I would like to be able to practice falling so that it doesn’t come as such a shock when it happens!❞
This writer has totally done the same! You might like our recent main feature on the topic:
…if you’ll pardon the pun
Enjoy!
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5 Steps To Beat Overwhelm
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Dealing With Overwhelm
Whether we live a hectic life in general, or we usually casually take each day as it comes but sometimes several days gang up on us at once, everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes.
Today we’re going to look at how to deal with it healthily.
Step 1: Start anywhere
It’s easy to get stuck in “analysis paralysis” and not know how to tackle an unexpected large problem. An (unhealthy) alternative is to try to tackle everything at once, and end up doing nothing very well.
Even the most expert juggler will not successfully juggle 10 random things thrown unexpectedly at them.
So instead, just pick any part of the the mountain of to-dos, and start.
If you do want a little more finesse though, check out:
Procrastination, And How To Pay Off The To-Do List Debt
Step 2: Accept what you’re capable of
This one works both ways. It means being aware of your limitations yes, but also, of your actual abilities:
- Is the task ahead of you really beyond what you are capable of?
- Could you do it right now without hesitation if a loved one’s life depended on it?
- Could you do it, but there’s a price to pay (e.g. you can do it but it’ll wipe you out in some other life area)?
Work out what’s possible and acceptable to you, and make a decision. And remember, it could be that someone else could do it, but everyone has taken the “if you want something doing, give it to someone busy” approach. It’s flattering that people have such confidence in our competence, but it is also necessary to say “no” sometimes, or at least enlisting help.
Step 3: Listen to your body
…like a leader listening to an advisory council. Your perception of tiredness, pain, weakness, and all your emotions are simply messengers. Listen to the message! And then say “thank you for the information”, and proceed accordingly.
Sometimes that will be in the way the messengers seem to be hoping for!
Sometimes, however, maybe we (blessed with a weighty brain and not entirely a slave to our limbic system) know better, and know when it’s right to push through instead.
Similarly, that voice in your head? You get to decide where it goes and doesn’t. On which note…
Step 4: Be responsive, not reactive
We wrote previously on the difference between these:
A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It
Measured responses will always be better than knee-jerk reactions, unless it is literally a case of a split-second making a difference. 99% of our problems in life are not so; usually the problem will still be there unchanged after a moment’s mindful consideration, so invest in that moment.
You’ve probably heard the saying “give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe”. In this case, that can be your mind. Here’s a good starting point:
No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
And if your mental state is already worse than that, mind racing with threats (real or perceived) and doom-laden scenarios, here’s how to get out of that negative spiral first, so that you can apply the rest of this:
Do remember to turn it on again afterwards, though
Step 5: Transcend discomfort
This is partly a callback to step 3, but it’s now coming from a place of a clear ready mind, so the territory should be looking quite different now. Nevertheless, it’s entirely possible that your clear view shows discomfort ahead.
You’re going to make a conscious decision whether or not to proceed through the discomfort (and if you’re not, then now’s the time to start calmly and measuredly looking at alternative plans; delegating, ditching, etc).
If you are going to proceed through discomfort, then it can help to frame the discomfort as simply a neutral part of the path to getting where you want. Maybe you’re going to be going way out of your comfort zone in order to deal with something, and if that’s the case, make your peace with it now, in advance.
“Certainly it hurts” / “Well, what’s the trick then?” / “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts”
(lines from a famous scene from the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia)
It’s ok to say to yourself (if it’s what you decide is the right thing to do) “Yep, this experience is going to suck terribly, but I’m going to do it anyway”.
See also (this being about Radical Acceptance):
What’s The Worst That Could Happen?
Take care!
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Synergistic Brain-Training
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Let The Games Begin (But It Matters What Kind)
Exercise is good for brain health; we’ve written about this before, for example:
How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk ← there are many advices here, but exercise, especially cardiovascular exercise in this case, is an important item on the list!
Today it’s Psychology Sunday though, and we’re going to talk about looking after brain health by means of brain-training, via games.
“Brain-training” gets a lot of hype and flak:
- Hype: do sudoku every day and soon you will have an IQ of 200 and still have a sharp wit at the age of 120
- Flak: brain-training is usually training only one kind of cognitive function, with limited transferability to the rest of life
The reality is somewhere between the two. Brain training really does improve not just outwardly measurable cognitive function, but also internally measurable improvements visible on brain scans, for example:
- Cognitive training modified age-related brain changes in older adults with subjective memory decline
- Functional brain changes associated with cognitive training in healthy older adults: A preliminary ALE meta-analysis
But what about the transferability?
Let us play
This is where game-based brain-training comes in. And, the more complex the game, the better the benefits, because there is more chance of applicability to life, e.g:
- Sudoku: very limited applicability
- Crosswords: language faculties
- Chess: spatial reasoning, critical path analysis, planning, memory, focus (also unlike the previous two, chess tends to be social for most people, and also involve a lot of reading, if one is keen)
- Computer games: wildly varied depending on the game. While an arcade-style “shoot-em-up” may do little for the brain, there is a lot of potential for a lot of much more relevant brain-training in other kinds of games: it could be planning, problem-solving, social dynamics, economics, things that mirror the day-to-day challenges of running a household, even, or a business.
- It’s not that the skills are useful, by the way. Playing “Stardew Valley” will not qualify you to run a real farm, nor will playing “Civilization” qualify you to run a country. But the brain functions used and trained? Those are important.
It becomes easily explicable, then, why these two research reviews with very similar titles got very different results:
- A Game a Day Keeps Cognitive Decline Away? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Commercially-Available Brain Training Programs in Healthy and Cognitively Impaired Older Adults
- Game-based brain training for improving cognitive function in community-dwelling older adults: A systematic review and meta-regression
The first review found that game-based brain-training had negligible actual use. The “games” they looked at? BrainGymmer, BrainHQ, CogMed, CogniFit, Dakim, Lumosity, and MyBrainTrainer. In other words, made-for-purpose brain-trainers, not actual computer games per se.
The second reviewfound that game-based training was very beneficial. The games they looked at? They didn’t name them, but based on the descriptions, they were actual multiplayer online turn-based computer games, not made-for-purpose brain-trainers.
To summarize the above in few words: multiplayer online turn-based computer games outperform made-for-purpose brain-trainers for cognitive improvement.
Bringing synergy
However, before you order that expensive gaming-chair for marathon gaming sessions (research suggests a tail-off in usefulness after about an hour of continuous gaming per session, by the way), be aware that cognitive training and (physical) exercise training combined, performed close in time to each other or simultaneously, perform better than the sum of either alone:
See also:
❝Simultaneous training was the most efficacious approach for cognition, followed by sequential combinations and cognitive training alone, and significantly better than physical exercise.
Our findings suggest that simultaneously and sequentially combined interventions are efficacious for promoting cognitive alongside physical health in older adults, and therefore should be preferred over implementation of single-domain training❞
~ Dr. Hanna Malmberg Gavelin et al.
Take care!
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Stretching to Stay Young – by Jessica Matthews
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A lot of stretching gurus (especially the Instagrammable kind) offer advices like “if you can’t do the splits balanced between two chairs to start with, that’s fine… just practise by doing the splits against a wall first!”
Jessica Matthews, meanwhile, takes a more grounded approach. A lot of this is less like yoga and more like physiotherapy—it’s uncomplicated and functional. There’s nothing flashy here… just the promise of being able to thrive in your body; supple and comfortable, doing the activities that matter to you.
On which note: the book gives advices about stretches for before and after common activities, for example:
- a bedtime routine set
- a pre-gardening set
- a post-phonecall set
- a level-up-your golf set
- a get ready for dancing set
…and many more. Whether “your thing” is cross-country skiing or knitting, she’s got you covered.
The book covers the whole body from head to toe. Whether you want to be sure to stretch everything, or just work on a particular part of your body that needs special attention, it’s there… with beautifully clear illustrations (the front cover illustration is indicative of the style—note how the muscle being stretched is highlighted in orange, too) and simple, easy-to-understand instructions.
All in all, we’re none of us getting any younger, but we sure can take some of our youth into whatever years come next. This is the stuff that life is made of!
Get your copy of “Stretching To Stay Young” from Amazon today!
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Oh, Honey
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The Bee’s Knees?
If you’d like to pre-empt that runny nose, some say that local honey is the answer. The rationale is that bees visiting the local sources of pollen and making honey will introduce the same allergens to you in a non allergy-inducing fashion (the honey). The result? Inoculation against the allergens in question.
But does it work?
Researching this, we found a lot of articles saying there was no science to back it up.
And then! We found one solitary study from 2013, and the title was promising:
But we don’t stop at titles; that’s not the kind of newsletter we are. We pride ourselves on giving good information!
And it turned out, upon reading the method and the results, that:
- Both the control and test groups also took loratadine for the first 4 weeks of the study
- The test group additionally took 1g/kg bodyweight of honey, daily—so for example if you’re 165lb (75kg), that’s about 4 tablespoons per day
- The control group took the equivalent amount of honey-flavored syrup
- Both groups showed equal improvements by week 4
- The test group only showed continued improvements (over the control group) by week 8
The researchers concluded from this:
❝Honey ingestion at a high dose improves the overall and individual symptoms of AR, and it could serve as a complementary therapy for AR.❞
We at 10almonds concluded from this:
❝That’s a lot of honey to eat every day for months!❞
We couldn’t base an article on one study from a decade ago, though! Fortunately, we found a veritable honeypot of more recent research, in the form of this systematic review:
Read: The Potential Use Of Honey As A Remedy For Allergic Diseases
…which examines 13 key studies and 43 scientific papers over the course of 21 years. That’s more like it! This was the jumping-off point we needed into more useful knowledge.
We’re not going to cite all those here—we’re a health and productivity newsletter, not an academic journal of pharmacology, but we did sift through them so that you don’t have to, and:
The researchers (of that review) concluded:
❝Although there is limited evidence, some studies showed remarkable improvements against certain types of allergic illnesses and support that honey is an effective anti-allergic agent.❞
Our (10almonds team) further observations included:
- The research review notes that a lot of studies did not confirm which phytochemical compounds specifically are responsible for causing allergic reactions and/or alleviating such (so: didn’t always control for what we’d like to know, i.e. the mechanism of action)
- Some studies showed results radically different from the rest. The reviewers put this down to differences that were not controlled-for between studies, for example:
- Some studies used very different methods to others. There may be an important difference between a human eating a tablespoon of honey, and a rat having aerosolized honey shot up its nose, for instance. We put more weight to human studies than rat studies!
- Some kinds of honey (such as manuka) contain higher quantities of gallic acid which itself can relieve allergies by chemically inhibiting the release of histamine. In other words, never mind pollen-based inoculations… it’s literally an antihistamine.
- Certain honeys (such as tualang, manuka and gelam) contain higher quantities of quercetin. What’s quercetin? It’s a plant flavonoid that a recent study has shown significantly relieves symptoms of seasonal allergies. So again, it works, just not for the reason people say!
In summary:
The “inoculation by local honey” thing specifically may indeed remain “based on traditional use only” for now.
But! Honey as a remedy for allergies, especially manuka honey, has a growing body of scientific evidence behind it.
Bottom line:
If you like honey, go for it (manuka seems best)! It may well relieve your symptoms.
If you don’t, off-the-shelf antihistamines remain a perfectly respectable option.
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Be Your Future Self Now – by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
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Affirmations in the mirror are great and all, but they can only get you so far! And if you’re a regular reader of our newsletter, you probably know about the power of small daily habits adding up and compounding over time. So what does this book offer, that’s different?
“Be Your Future Self Now” beelines the route “from here to there”, with a sound psychological approach. On which note…
The book’s subtitle mentions “the science of intentional transformation”, and while Dr. Hardy is a psychologist, he’s an organizational psychologist (which doesn’t really pertain to this topic). It’s not a science-heavy book, but it is heavy on psychological rationality.
Where Dr. Hardy does bring psychology to bear, it’s in large part that! He teaches us how to overcome our biases that cause us to stumble blindly into the future… rather than intentfully creating our own future to step into. For example:
Most people (regardless of age!) acknowledge what a different person they were 10 years ago… but assume they’ll be basically the same person 10 years from now as they are today, just with changed circumstances.
Radical acceptance of the inevitability of change is the first step to taking control of that change.
That’s just one example, but there are many, and this is a book review not a book summary!
In short: if you’d like to take much more conscious control of the direction your life will take, this is a book for you.
Click here to get your copy of “Be Your Future Self Now” from Amazon!
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