Your friend has been diagnosed with cancer. Here are 6 things you can do to support them
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Across the world, one in five people are diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime. By age 85, almost one in two Australians will be diagnosed with cancer.
When it happens to someone you care about, it can be hard to know what to say or how to help them. But providing the right support to a friend can make all the difference as they face the emotional and physical challenges of a new diagnosis and treatment.
Here are six ways to offer meaningful support to a friend who has been diagnosed with cancer.
1. Recognise and respond to emotions
When facing a cancer diagnosis and treatment, it’s normal to experience a range of emotions including fear, anger, grief and sadness. Your friend’s moods may fluctuate. It is also common for feelings to change over time, for example your friend’s anxiety may decrease, but they may feel more depressed.
Some friends may want to share details while others will prefer privacy. Always ask permission to raise sensitive topics (such as changes in physical appearance or their thoughts regarding fears and anxiety) and don’t make assumptions. It’s OK to tell them you feel awkward, as this acknowledges the challenging situation they are facing.
When they feel comfortable to talk, follow their lead. Your support and willingness to listen without judgement can provide great comfort. You don’t have to have the answers. Simply acknowledging what has been said, providing your full attention and being present for them will be a great help.
2. Understand their diagnosis and treatment
Understanding your friend’s diagnosis and what they’ll go through when being treated may be helpful.
Being informed can reduce your own worry. It may also help you to listen better and reduce the amount of explaining your friend has to do, especially when they’re tired or overwhelmed.
Explore reputable sources such as the Cancer Council website for accurate information, so you can have meaningful conversations. But keep in mind your friend has a trusted medical team to offer personalised and accurate advice.
3. Check in regularly
Cancer treatment can be isolating, so regular check-ins, texts, calls or visits can help your friend feel less alone.
Having a normal conversation and sharing a joke can be very welcome. But everyone copes with cancer differently. Be patient and flexible in your support – some days will be harder for them than others.
Remembering key dates – such as the next round of chemotherapy – can help your friend feel supported. Celebrating milestones, including the end of treatment or anniversary dates, may boost morale and remind your friend of positive moments in their cancer journey.
Always ask if it’s a good time to visit, as your friend’s immune system may be compromised by their cancer or treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. If you’re feeling unwell, it’s best to postpone visits – but they may still appreciate a call or text.
4. Offer practical support
Sometimes the best way to show your care is through practical support. There may be different ways to offer help, and what your friend needs might change at the beginning, during and after treatment.
For example, you could offer to pick up prescriptions, drive them to appointments so they have transport and company to debrief, or wait with them at appointments.
Meals will always be welcome. However it’s important to remember cancer and its treatments may affect taste, smell and appetite, as well as your friend’s ability to eat enough or absorb nutrients. You may want to check first if there are particular foods they like. Good nutrition can help boost their strength while dealing with the side effects of treatment.
There may also be family responsibilities you can help with, for example, babysitting kids, grocery shopping or taking care of pets.
5. Explore supports together
Studies have shown mindfulness practices can be an effective way for people to manage anxiety associated with a cancer diagnosis and its treatment.
If this is something your friend is interested in, it may be enjoyable to explore classes (either online or in-person) together.
You may also be able to help your friend connect with organisations that provide emotional and practical help, such as the Cancer Council’s support line, which offers free, confidential information and support for anyone affected by cancer, including family, friends and carers.
Peer support groups can also reduce your friend’s feelings of isolation and foster shared understanding and empathy with people who’ve gone through a similar experience. GPs can help with referrals to support programs.
6. Stick with them
Be committed. Many people feel isolated after their treatment. This may be because regular appointments have reduced or stopped – which can feel like losing a safety net – or because their relationships with others have changed.
Your friend may also experience emotions such as worry, lack of confidence and uncertainty as they adjust to a new way of living after their treatment has ended. This will be an important time to support your friend.
But don’t forget: looking after yourself is important too. Making sure you eat well, sleep, exercise and have emotional support will help steady you through what may be a challenging time for you, as well as the friend you love.
Our research team is developing new programs and resources to support carers of people who live with cancer. While it can be a challenging experience, it can also be immensely rewarding, and your small acts of kindness can make a big difference.
Stephanie Cowdery, Research Fellow, Carer Hub: A Centre of Excellence in Cancer Carer Research, Translation and Impact, Deakin University; Anna Ugalde, Associate Professor & Victorian Cancer Agency Fellow, Deakin University; Trish Livingston, Distinguished Professor & Director of Special Projects, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, and Victoria White, Professor of Pyscho-Oncology, School of Psychology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Breaking The Age Code – by Dr. Becca Levy
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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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Body Image Dissatisfaction/Appreciation Across The Ages
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Every second news article about body image issues is talking about teens and social media use, but science tells a different story.
A large (n=1,327) study of people of mixed genders aged 16–88 examined matters relating to people’s body image, expecting…
❝We hypothesized that body dissatisfaction and importance of appearance would be higher in women than in men, that body dissatisfaction would remain stable across age in women, and that importance of appearance would be lower in older women compared to younger women. Body appreciation was predicted to be higher in men than in women.❞
As they discovered, only half of that turned out to be true:
❝In line with our hypotheses, body dissatisfaction was higher in women than in men and was unaffected by age in women, and importance of appearance was higher in women than in men.
However, only in men did age predict a lower level of the importance of appearance. Compared to men, women stated that they would invest more hours of their lives to achieve their ideal appearance.
Contrary to our assumption, body appreciation improved and was higher in women across all ages than in men.❞
You can read the study in full here:
That’s a lot of information, and we don’t have the space to go into all parts of it here, fascinating as that would be. So we’re going to put two pieces of information (from the above) next to each other:
- body dissatisfaction was higher in women than in men and was unaffected by age in women
- body appreciation improved and was higher in women across all ages than in men
…and resolve this apparent paradox.
Dissatisfied appreciation
How is it that women are both more dissatisfied with, and yet also more appreciative of, their bodies?
The answer is that we can have positive and negative feelings about the same thing, without them cancelling each other out. In short, simply, feeling more feelings about it.
Whether the gender-related disparity in this case comes more from hormones or society could be vigorously debated, but chances are, it’s both. And, for our gentleman-readers, note that the principle still applies to you, even if scaled down on average.
Call to action:
- be aware of the negative feelings of body dissatisfaction
- focus on the positive feelings of body appreciation
While in theory both could motivate us to action, in reality, the former will tend to inform us (about what we might wish to change), while the latter will actually motivate us in a useful way (to do something positive about it).
This is because the negative feelings about body image tend to be largely based in shame, and shame is a useless motivator (i.e., it simply doesn’t work) when it comes to taking positive actions:
Why Shame Only Works Negatively
You can’t hate yourself into a body you love
That may sound like a wishy-washy platitude, but given the evidence on how shame works (and doesn’t), it’s true.
Instead, once you’ve identified the things about your body with which you’re dissatisfied, you can then assess:
- what can reasonably be changed
- whether it is important enough to you to change it
- how to go about usefully changing it
While weight issues are perhaps the most commonly-discussed body image consideration, to the point that often all others get forgotten, let’s look at something that’s generally more specific to adults, and also a very common cause of distress for women and men alike: hair loss/thinning.
If your hair is just starting to thin and fall, then if this bothers you, there’s a lot that can be done about it quite easily, but (and this is important) you have to love yourself enough to actually do it. Merely feeling miserable about it, and perhaps like you don’t deserve better, or that it is somehow a personal failing on your part, will not help.
If your hair has been gone for years, then chances are you’ve made your peace with this by now, and might not even take it back if a fairy godmother came along and offered to restore it magically. On the other hand, let’s say that you’re just coming out the other end of a 10-year-long depression, and perhaps you let a lot of things go that you now wish you hadn’t, and maybe your hair is one of them. In this case, now you need to decide whether getting implants (likely the only solution at this late stage) is worth it.
Note that in both cases, whatever the starting point and whether the path ahead is easy or hard, the person who has dissatisfaction and/but still values themself and their body will get what they need.
In contrast, the person who has dissatisfaction and does not value themself and their body, will languish.
The person without dissatisfaction, of course, probably already has what they need.
In short: identification of dissatisfaction + love and appreciation of oneself and one’s body → motivation to usefully take action (out of love, not hate)
Now, dear reader, apply the same thinking to whatever body image issues you may have, and take it from there!
Embodiment
A quick note in closing: if you are a person with no body dissatisfactions, there are two main possible reasons:
- You are genuinely happy with your body in all respects. Congratulations!
- You have disassociated from your body to such an extent that it’s become a mere vehicle to you and you don’t care about it.
This latter may seem like a Zen-level win, but in fact it’s a warning sign for depression, so please do examine that even if you don’t “feel” depressed (depression is often characterized by a lack of feelings), perhaps by taking the (very quick) free PHQ9 Test ← under 2 minutes; immediate results; industry-standard diagnostic tool
Take care!
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I’ve recovered from a cold but I still have a hoarse voice. What should I do?
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Cold, flu, COVID and RSV have been circulating across Australia this winter. Many of us have caught and recovered from one of these common upper respiratory tract infections.
But for some people their impact is ongoing. Even if your throat isn’t sore anymore, your voice may still be hoarse or croaky.
So what happens to the voice when we get a virus? And what happens after?
Here’s what you should know if your voice is still hoarse for days – or even weeks – after your other symptoms have resolved.
Why does my voice get croaky during a cold?
A healthy voice is normally clear and strong. It’s powered by the lungs, which push air past the vocal cords to make them vibrate. These vibrations are amplified in the throat and mouth, creating the voice we hear.
The vocal cords are two elastic muscles situated in your throat, around the level of your laryngeal prominence, or Adam’s apple. (Although everyone has one, it tends to be more pronounced in males.) The vocal cords are small and delicate – around the size of your fingernail. Any small change in their structure will affect how the voice sounds.
When the vocal cords become inflamed – known as laryngitis – your voice will sound different. Laryngitis is a common part of upper respiratory tract infections, but can also be caused through misuse.
Viruses such as the common cold can inflame the vocal cords. Pepermpron/Shutterstock Catching a virus triggers the body’s defence mechanisms. White blood cells are recruited to kill the virus and heal the tissues in the vocal cords. They become inflamed, but also stiffer. It’s harder for them to vibrate, so the voice comes out hoarse and croaky.
In some instances, you may find it hard to speak in a loud voice or have a reduced pitch range, meaning you can’t go as high or loud as normal. You may even “lose” your voice altogether.
Coughing can also make things worse. It is the body’s way of trying to clear the airways of irritation, including your own mucus dripping onto your throat (post-nasal drip). But coughing slams the vocal cords together with force.
Chronic coughing can lead to persistent inflammation and even thicken the vocal cords. This thickening is the body trying to protect itself, similar to developing a callus when a pair of new shoes rubs.
Thickening on your vocal cords can lead to physical changes in the vocal cords – such as developing a growth or “nodule” – and further deterioration of your voice quality.
Coughing and exertion can cause inflamed vocal cords to thicken and develop nodules. Pepermpron/Shutterstock How can you care for your voice during infection?
People who use their voices a lot professionally – such as teachers, call centre workers and singers – are often desperate to resume their vocal activities. They are more at risk of forcing their voice before it’s ready.
The good news is most viral infections resolve themselves. Your voice is usually restored within five to ten days of recovering from a cold.
Occasionally, your pharmacist or doctor may prescribe cough suppressants to limit additional damage to the vocal cords (among other reasons) or mucolytics, which break down mucus. But the most effective treatments for viral upper respiratory tract infections are hydration and rest.
Drink plenty of water, avoid alcohol and exposure to cigarette smoke. Inhaling steam by making yourself a cup of hot water will also help clear blocked noses and hydrate your vocal cords.
Rest your voice by talking as little as possible. If you do need to talk, don’t whisper – this strains the muscles.
Instead, consider using “confidential voice”. This is a soft voice – not a whisper – that gently vibrates your vocal cords but puts less strain on your voice than normal speech. Think of the voice you use when communicating with someone close by.
During the first five to ten days of your infection, it is important not to push through. Exerting the voice by talking a lot or loudly will only exacerbate the situation. Once you’ve recovered from your cold, you can speak as you would normally.
What should you do if your voice is still hoarse after recovery?
If your voice hasn’t returned to normal after two to three weeks, you should seek medical attention from your doctor, who may refer you to an ear nose and throat specialist.
If you’ve developed a nodule, the specialist would likely refer you to a speech pathologist who will show you how to take care of your voice. Many nodules can be treated with voice therapy and don’t require surgery.
You may have also developed a habit of straining your vocal cords, if you forced yourself to speak or sing while they were inflamed. This can be a reason why some people continue to have a hoarse voice even when they’ve recovered from the cold.
In those cases, a speech pathologist may play a valuable role. They may teach you to exercises that make voicing more efficient. For example, lip trills (blowing raspberries) are a fun and easy way you can learn to relax the voice. This can help break the habit of straining your voice you may have developed during infection.
Yeptain Leung, Postdoctoral Research and Lecturer of Speech Pathology, School of Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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It’s Not You, It’s Your Hormones – by Nicki Williams, DipION, mBANT, CNHC
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.
So, first a quick note: this book is very similar to the popular bestseller “The Galveston Diet”, not just in content, but all the way down to its formatting. Some Amazon reviewers have even gone so far as to suggest that “It’s Not You, It’s Your Hormones” (2017) brazenly plagiarized “The Galveston Diet” (2023). However, after carefully examining the publication dates, we feel quite confident that this book is not a copy of the one that came out six years after it. As such, we’ve opted for reviewing the original book.
Nicki Williams’ basic principle is that we can manage our hormonal fluctuations, by managing our diet. Specifically, in three main ways:
- Intermittent fasting
- Anti-inflammatory diet
- Eating more protein and healthy fats
Why should these things matter to our hormones? The answer is to remember that our hormones aren’t just the sex hormones. We have hormones for hunger and satedness, hormones for stress and relaxation, hormones for blood sugar regulation, hormones for sleep and wakefulness, and more. These many hormones make up our endocrine system, and affecting one part of it will affect the others.
Will these things magically undo the effects of the menopause? Well, some things yes, other things no. No diet can do the job of HRT. But by tweaking endocrine system inputs, we can tweak endocrine system outputs, and that’s what this book is for.
The style is very accessible and clear, and Williams walks us through the changes we may want to make, to avoid the changes we don’t want.
In the category of criticism, there is some extra support that’s paywalled, in the sense that she wants the reader to buy her personally-branded online plan, and it can feel a bit like she’s holding back in order to upsell to that.
Bottom line: this book is aimed at peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women. It could also definitely help a lot of people with PCOS too, and, when it comes down to it, pretty much anyone with an endocrine system. It’s a well-evidenced, well-established, healthy way of eating regardless of age, sex, or (most) physical conditions.
Click here to check out It’s Not You, It’s Your Hormones, and take control of yours!
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How to Boost Your Metabolism When Over 50
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Dr. Dawn Andalon, a physiotherapist, explains the role of certain kinds of exercise in metabolism; here’s what to keep in mind:
Work with your body
Many people make the mistake of thinking that it is a somehow a battle of wills, and they must simply will their body to pick up the pace. That’s not how it works though, and while that can occasionally get short-term results, at best it’ll quickly result in exhaustion. So, instead:
- Strength training: engage in weight training 2–3 times per week; build muscle and combat bone loss too. Proper guidance from trainers familiar with older adults is recommended. Pilates (Dr. Andalon is a Pilates instructor) can also complement strength training by enhancing core stability and preventing injuries. The “building muscle” thing is important for metabolism, because muscle increases the body’s metabolic base rate.
- Protein intake: Dr. Andalon advises to consume 25–30 grams of lean protein per meal to support muscle growth and repair (again, important for the same reason as mentioned above re exercise). Dr. Andalon’s recommendation is more protein per meal than is usually advised, as it is generally held that the body cannot use more than about 20g at once.
- Sleep quality: prioritize good quality sleep, by practising good sleep hygiene, and also addressing any potential hormonal imbalances affecting sleep. If you do not get good quality sleep, your metabolism will get sluggish in an effort to encourage you to sleep more.
- Exercise to manage stress: regular walking (such as the popular 10,000 steps daily) helps manage stress and improve metabolism. Zone two cardio (low-intensity movement) also supports joint health, blood flow, and recovery—but the main issue about stress here is that if your body experiences unmanaged stress, it will try to save you from whatever is stressing you by reducing your metabolic base rate so that you can out-survive the bad thing. Which is helpful if the stressful thing is that the fruit trees got stripped by giraffes and hunting did not yield a kill, but not so helpful if the stressful thing is the holiday season.
- Hydration: your body cannot function properly without adequate hydration; water is needed (directly or indirectly) for all bodily processes, and your metabolism will also “dry up” without it.
- Antidiabetic & anti-inflammatory diet: minimize sugar intake and reduce processed foods, especially those with inflammatory refined oils (esp. canola & sunflower) and the like. This has very directly to do with your body’s energy metabolism, and as they say in computing, “garbage in; garbage out”.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Burn! How To Boost Your Metabolism
Take care!
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Why You Probably Need More Sleep
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Sleep: yes, you really do still need it!
We asked you how much sleep you usually get, and got the above-pictured, below-described set of responses:
- A little of a third of all respondents selected the option “< 7 hours”
- However, because respondents also selected options such as < 6 hours, < 5 hours, and < 4 hours, so if we include those in the tally, the actual total percentage of respondents who reported getting under 7 hours, is actually more like 62%, or just under two thirds of all respondents.
- Nine respondents, which was about 5% of the total, reported usually getting under 4 hours sleep
- A little over quarter of respondents reported usually getting between 7 and 8 hours sleep
- Fifteen respondents, which was a little under 10% of the total, reported usually getting between 8 and 9 hours of sleep
- Three respondents, which was a little under 2% of the total, reported getting over 9 hours of sleep
- In terms of the classic “you should get 7–9 hours sleep”, approximately a third of respondents reported getting this amount.
You need to get 7–9 hours sleep: True or False?
True! Unless you have a (rare!) mutated ADRB1 gene, which reduces that.
The way to know whether you have this, without genomic testing to know for sure, is: do you regularly get under 6.5 hours sleep, and yet continue to go through life bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? If so, you probably have that gene. If you experience daytime fatigue, brain fog, and restlessness, you probably don’t.
About that mutated ADRB1 gene:
NIH | Gene identified in people who need little sleep
Quality of sleep matters as much as duration, and a lot of studies use the “RU-Sated” framework, which assesses six key dimensions of sleep that have been consistently associated with better health outcomes. These are:
- regularity / usual hours
- satisfaction with sleep
- alertness during waking hours
- timing of sleep
- efficiency of sleep
- duration of sleep
But, that doesn’t mean that you can skimp on the last one if the others are in order. In fact, getting a good 7 hours sleep can reduce your risk of getting a cold by three or four times (compared with six or fewer hours):
Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold
^This study was about the common cold, but you may be aware there are more serious respiratory viruses freely available, and you don’t want those, either.
Napping is good for the health: True or False?
True or False, depending on how you’re doing it!
If you’re trying to do it to sleep less in total (per polyphasic sleep scheduling), then no, this will not work in any sustainable fashion and will be ruinous to the health. We did a Mythbusting Friday special on specifically this, a while back:
Could Just Two Hours Sleep Per Day Be Enough?
PS: you might remember Betteridge’s Law of Headlines
If you’re doing it as a energy-boosting supplement to a reasonable night’s sleep, napping can indeed be beneficial to the health, and can give benefits such as:
- Increased alertness
- Helps with learning
- Improved memory
- Boost to immunity
- Enhance athletic performance
However! There is still a right and a wrong way to go about it, and we wrote about this previously, for a Saturday Life Hacks edition of 10almonds:
How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
As we get older, we need less sleep: True or False
False, with one small caveat.
The small caveat: children and adolescents need 9–12 hours sleep because, uncredited as it goes, they are doing some seriously impressive bodybuilding, and that is exhausting to the body. So, an adult (with a normal lifestyle, who is not a bodybuilder) will tend to need less sleep than a child/adolescent.
But, the statement “As we get older, we need less sleep” is generally taken to mean “People in the 65+ age bracket need less sleep than younger adults”, and this popular myth is based on anecdotal observational evidence: older people tend to sleep less (as our survey above shows! For any who aren’t aware, our readership is heavily weighted towards the 60+ demographic), and still continue functioning, after all.
Just because we survive something with a degree of resilience doesn’t mean it’s good for us.
In fact, there can be serious health risks from not getting enough sleep in later years, for example:
Sleep deficiency promotes Alzheimer’s disease development and progression
Want to get better sleep?
What gets measured, gets done. Sleep tracking apps can be a really good tool for getting one’s sleep on a healthier track. We compared and contrasted some popular ones:
The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
Take good care of yourself!
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