Avocado vs Olives – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing avocado to olives, we picked the avocado.
Why?
Both are certainly great! And when it comes to their respective oils, olive oil wins out as it retains many micronutrients that avocado oil loses. But, in their whole form, avocado beats olive:
In terms of macros, avocado has more protein, carbs, fiber, and (healthy) fats. Simply, it’s more nationally-dense than the already nutritionally-dense food that is olives.
When it comes to vitamins, olives are great but avocados really shine; avocado has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7 B9, C, E, K, and choline, while olives boast only more vitamin A.
In the category of minerals, things are closer to even; avocado has more magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while olives have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, and selenium. Still, a marginal victory for avocado here.
In short, this is another case of one very healthy food looking bad by standing next to an even better one, so by all means enjoy both—if you’re going to pick one though, avocado is the more nutritionally dense.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Avocado Oil vs Olive Oil – Which is Healthier? ← when made into oils, olive oil wins, but avocado oil is still a good option too
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7 Signs of Undiagnosed Autism in Adults
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When it comes to adults and autism, there are two kinds of person in the popular view: those who resemble the Rain Man, and those who are making it up. But, it’s not so, as Paul Micallef explains:
The signs
We’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:
- Social interaction difficulties: such a person may struggle with understanding social cues, leading to awkwardness, isolation, or appearing eccentric.
- Need for structure and routine: either highly structured or disorganized, both of which stem from executive function challenges. The former, of course, is a coping mechanism, while the latter is the absence of same.
- Sensory sensitivities: can include sensitivities or insensitivities to light, sound, temperature, smells, tastes, and so forth.
- Spiky skillset: extreme strengths in certain areas, coupled with significant difficulties in others, leading to uneven abilities. May be able to dismantle and rebuild a PC, while not knowing how to arrange an Über.
- Emotional regulation issues: experiences of meltdowns, shutdowns, or withdrawal as coping mechanisms when overwhelmed. Not that this is “or”, not necessarily “and”. The latter goes especially unnoticed as an emotional regulation issue, because for everyone else, it’s something that’s not there to see.
- Unusual associations: making mental connections or associations that seem random or uncommon compared to others. The mind went to 17 places quickly and while everyone else got from idea A to idea B, this person is already at idea Q.
- Being “just different”: a general sense of being the odd one out, standing out in subtle or distinct ways. This is rather a catch-all, but if there’s someone who fits this, there’s a good chance, the other things apply too.
For more on all of these, whether pertaining to yourself or a loved one (or both!), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- 16 Overlooked Autistic Traits In Women
- What is AuDHD? 5 important things to know when someone has both autism and ADHD
Take care!
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80-Year-Olds Share Their Biggest Regrets
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Notwithstanding the title, some of these people are a little younger than 80, but this adds to the interest a little as we see the different regrets / learned wisdoms at different stages of later life!
If we could turn back the time…
There are dozens of life regrets / wishes / retroactive advices shared in this video; here are some highlights:
- “My regret was I had a dysfunctional family and I wish I would have learned not to take responsibility.”
- “In my 30s, when I started drinking very heavily, I wish I hadn’t done that because it escalated to drug abuse.”
- “When my parents were old ages, I was working very hard… I didn’t have time to take care of them, not even spend the time with them. That’s my biggest regret.”
- “Live life to the fullest because none of us have any assurance on how old we’re going to be when we’re going to die.”
- “If I could do it over, I would have called home more and realized what my brother was going through.”
- “Spent a lot of years being concerned about what other people thought of me.”
- “You got to be careful what you say to your children because it means a lot.”
For the rest, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Managing Your Mortality Without Regrets
- How To Avoid Carer Burnout (Without Dropping Care)
- Managing Sibling Relationships In Adult Life
- Family Estrangment & How To Fix It
Take care!
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Support For Long COVID & Chronic Fatigue
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Long COVID and Chronic Fatigue
Getting COVID-19 can be very physically draining, so it’s no surprise that getting Long COVID can (and usually does) result in chronic fatigue.
But, what does this mean and what can we do about it?
What makes Long COVID “long”
Long COVID is generally defined as COVID-19 whose symptoms last longer than 28 days, but in reality the symptoms not only tend to last for much longer than that, but also, they can be quite distinct.
Here’s a large (3,762 participants) study of Long COVID, which looked at 203 symptoms:
Characterizing long COVID in an international cohort: 7 months of symptoms and their impact
Three symptoms stood at out as most prevalent:
- Chronic fatigue (CFS)
- Cognitive dysfunction
- Post-exertional malaise (PEM)
The latter means “the symptoms get worse following physical or mental exertion”.
CFS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, is also called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).
What can be done about it?
The main “thing that people do about it” is to reduce their workload to what they can do, but this is not viable for everyone. Note that work doesn’t just mean “one’s profession”, but anything that requires physical or mental energy, including:
- Childcare
- Housework
- Errand-running
- Personal hygiene/maintenance
For many, this means having to get someone else to do the things—either with support of family and friends, or by hiring help. For many who don’t have those safety nets available, this means things simply not getting done.
That seems bleak; isn’t there anything more we can do?
Doctors’ recommendations are chiefly “wait it out and hope for the best”, which is not encouraging. Some people do recover from Long COVID; for others, it so far appears it might be lifelong. We just don’t know yet.
Doctors also recommend to journal, not for the usual mental health benefits, but because that is data collection. Patients who journal about their symptoms and then discuss those symptoms with their doctors, are contributing to the “big picture” of what Long COVID and its associated ME/CFS look like.
You may notice that that’s not so much saying what doctors can do for you, so much as what you can do for doctors (and in the big picture, eventually help them help people, which might include you).
So, is there any support for individuals with Long COVID ME/CFS?
Medically, no. Not that we could find.
However! Socially, there are grassroots support networks, that may be able to offer direct assistance, or at least point individuals to useful local resources.
Grassroots initiatives include Long COVID SOS and the Patient-Led Research Collaborative.
The patient-led organization Body Politic also used to have such a group, until it shut down due to lack of funding, but they do still have a good resource list:
Click here to check out the Body Politic resource list (it has eight more specific resources)
Stay strong!
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Activate Your Brain – by Scott G. Halford
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We’ve reviewed a number of “improve your brain health” books over time, and this one’s quite different. How?
Most of the books we’ve reviewed have been focused on optimizing diet and exercise for brain health with a nod to other factors… This one focuses more on those other factors.
While this book does reference a fair bit of hard science, much of it is written more like a pop psychology book. As a result, most of the actionable advices, of which there are many, pertain to cognitive and behavioral adjustments.
And no, this is not a book of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It just happened to also address those two aspects.
We learn, for example, how our neurochemistry influences us—but also how we can influence our neurochemistry.
We also learn the oft-neglected (in other books!) social factors that influence brain health. Not just for our happiness, but for our productivity and peak cognitive performance too. Halford talks us through optimizing these such that we and those around us all get to enjoy the best brain benefits available to each of us.
The format of the book is that each chapter explains what you need to know for a given “activation” as the author calls it, and then an exercise to try out. With fifteen such chapters, every reader is bound to find at least something new.
Bottom line: if you want to grease those synapses in more ways than just eating some nuts and berries and getting good sleep and exercise, this book is a great resource.
Click here to check out “Activate Your Brain” and find your next level of cognitive performance!
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Acorns vs Chestnuts – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing acorns to chestnuts, we picked the acorns.
Why?
In terms of macros, chestnuts are mostly water, so it’s not surprising that acorns have a lot more carbs, fat, protein, and fiber. Thus, unless you have personal reasons for any of those to be a problem, acorns are the better choice, offering a lot more nutritional value.
In the category of vitamins, acorns lead with a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9, while chestnuts have more of vitamins B1 and C. However, that vitamin C is useless to us, because it is destroyed in the cooking process (by boiling or roasting), and both of these nuts can be harmful if consumed raw, so that cooking does need to be done. That leaves acorns with a 6:1 lead.
When it comes to minerals, things are more even; acorns have more copper, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, while chestnuts have more calcium, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. Thus, a 4:4 tie (and yes, the margins of difference are approximately equal too).
We mentioned “both of these nuts can be harmful if consumed raw”, so a note on that: it’s because, while both contain an assortment of beneficial phytochemicals, they also both contain tannins that, if consumed raw, chelate with iron, essentially taking it out of our diet and potentially creating an iron deficiency. Cooking tannins stops this from being an issue, and the same cooking process renders the tannins actively beneficial to the health, for their antioxidant powers.
You may have heard that acorns are poisonous; that’s not strictly speaking true, except insofar as anything could be deemed poisonous in excess (including such things as water, and oxygen). Rather, it’s simply the above-described matter of the uncooked tannins and iron chelation. Even then, you’re unlikely to suffer ill effects unless you consume them raw in a fair quantity. While acorns have fallen from popular favor sufficient that one doesn’t see them in supermarkets, the fact is they’ve been enjoyed as an important traditional part of the diet by various indigenous peoples of N. America for centuries*, and provided they are cooked first, they are a good healthy food for most people.
*(going so far as to cultivate natural oak savannah areas, by burning out young oaks to leave the old ones to flourish without competition, to maximize acorn production, and then store dried acorns in bulk sufficient to cover the next year or so in case of a bad harvest later—so these was not just an incidental food, but very important “our life may depend on this” food. Much like grain in many places—and yes, acorns can be ground into flour and used to make bread etc too)
Do note: they are both still tree nuts though, so if you have a tree nut allergy, these ones aren’t for you.
Otherwise, enjoy both; just cook them first!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
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Bright Line Eating – by Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson
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This is a great title! It’s a great book too, but let’s talk about the title for a moment:
The “Bright Line” referenced (often used in the plural within the book) is the line one draws between what one will and will not do. It’s a line one doesn’t cross, and it’s a bright line, because it’s not a case of “oh woe is me I cannot have the thing”, but rather “oh yay is me for I being joyously healthy”.
And as for living happy, thin, and free? The author makes clear that “thin” is only a laudable goal if it’s bookended by “happy” and “free”. Eating things because we want to, and being happy about our choices.
To this end, while some of the book is about nutrition (and for example the strong recommendation to make the first “bright lines” one draws cutting out sugar and flour), the majority of it is about the psychology of eating.
This includes, hunger and satiety, willpower and lack thereof, disordered eating and addictions, body image issues and social considerations, the works. She realizes and explains, that if being healthy were just a matter of the right diet plan, everyone would be healthy. But it’s not; our eating behaviors don’t exist in a vacuum, and there’s a lot more to consider.
Despite all the odds, however, this is a cheerful and uplifting book throughout, while dispensing very practical, well-evidenced methods for getting your brain to get your body to do what you want it to.
Bottom line: this isn’t your average diet book, and it’s not just a motivational pep talk either. It’s an enjoyable read that’s also full of science and can make a huge difference to how you see food.
Click here to check out Bright Line Eating, and enjoy life, healthily!
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