Anxiety Attack vs Panic Attack: Do You Know The Difference?
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The terms are sometimes used incorrectly, but have quite different meanings. Dr. Julie Smith, psychologist, explains in this short video:
Important distinctions
Anxiety attacks are not clinically recognized terms and lack a clear definition, often used to describe a build-up of anxiety before anticipated stressful events (e.g. social gatherings, medical appointments, etc, though of course what it is will vary from person to person—not everyone finds the same things stressful, or has the same kinds of anticipations around things).
Panic attacks, in contrast, are sudden surges of intense fear or discomfort that peak within minutes. They are characterized by symptoms including at least 4 of:
- palpitations
- sweating
- shortness of breath
- chest pain
- dizziness
- fear of losing control or dying
There’s a misconception that panic attacks never have identifiable triggers while anxiety attacks always do.
In reality, both can occur with or without a clear cause. Panic attacks can arise from various conditions, including trauma, OCD, or phobias, and don’t necessarily mean you have a panic disorder. They can also occur as a drug response, without any known underlying psychological condition.
You may also notice that that list of symptoms has quite a bit of overlap with the symptoms of a heart attack, which a) does not help people to calm down b) can, on the flipside, cause a heart attack to be misdiagnosed as a panic attack.
In terms of management:
- In the moment: breathing exercises, like extending your exhalation (a common example is the “7-11” method, inhaling for 7 seconds and exhaling for 11 seconds), can calm the body and reduce panic symptoms.
- More generally: to prevent panic attacks from becoming more frequent, avoid avoiding safe environments that triggered an attack, like supermarkets or social gatherings. Gradual exposure helps reduce anxiety over time, while avoidance can worsen it.
If panic attacks persist, Dr. Smith advises to seek help from a doctor or psychologist to understand their root causes and develop effective coping strategies.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
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Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book – by Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum
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The book is divided into three parts:
- What you should know
- What you should do
- All about you
This is a very useful format, since it lays out all the foundational knowledge, before offering practical advice and “how to” explanations, before finally wrapping up with personalizing things.
The latter is important, because while our basic risk factors can be assembled in a few lines of data (age, sex, race, genes, diet, exercise habits, etc) there’s a lot more to us than that, and oftentimes the data that doesn’t make the cut, makes the difference. Hormones on high on this list; we can say that a person is a 65-year-old woman and make a guess, but that’s all it is: a guess. Very few of us are the “average person” that statistical models represent accurately. And nor are social and psychological factors irrelevant; in fact often they are deciding factors!
So, it’s important to be able to look at ourselves as the whole persons we are, or else we’ll get a heart-healthy protocol that works on paper but actually falls flat in application, because the mathematical model didn’t take into account that lately we have been very stressed about such-and-such a thing, and deeply anxious about so-and-so, and a hopefully short-term respiratory infection has reduced blood oxygen levels, and all these kinds of things need to be taken into account too, for an overall plan to work.
The greatest strength of this book is that it attends to that.
The style of the book is a little like a long sales pitch (when all that’s being sold, by the way, is the ideas the book is offering; she wants you to take her advice with enthusiasm), but there’s plenty of very good information all the way through, making it quite worth the read.
Bottom line: if you’re a woman and/or love at least one woman, then you can benefit from this important book for understanding heart health that’s not the default.
Click here to check out Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book, and enjoy a heart-healthy life!
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The 5 Love Languages Gone Wrong
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Levelling up the 5 love languages
The saying “happy wife; happy life” certainly goes regardless of gender, and if we’re partnered, it’s difficult to thrive in our individual lives if we’re not thriving as a couple. So, with the usual note that mental health is also just health, let’s take a look at getting beyond the basics of a well-known, often clumsily-applied model:
The 5 love languages
You’re probably familiar with “the 5 love languages”, as developed by Dr. Gary Chapman. If not, they are:
- Acts of Service
- Gift-Giving
- Physical Touch
- Quality Time
- Words of Affirmation
The idea is that we each weight these differently, and problems can arise when a couple are “speaking a different language”.
So, is this a basic compatibility test?
It doesn’t have to be!
We can, if we’re aware of each other’s primary love languages, make an effort to do a thing we wouldn’t necessarily do automatically, to ensure they’re loved the way they need to be.
But…
What a lot of people overlook is that we can also have different primary love languages for giving and for receiving. And, missing that can mean that even taking each other’s primarily love languages into account, efforts to make a partner feel loved, or to feel loved oneself, can miss 50% of the time.
For example, I (your writer here today, hi) could be asked my primary love language and respond without hesitation “Acts of Service!” because that’s my go-to for expressing love.
I’m the person who’ll run around bringing drinks, do all the housework, and without being indelicate, will tend towards giving in the bedroom. But…
A partner trying to act on that information to make me feel loved by giving Acts of Service would be doomed to catastrophic failure, because my knee-jerk reaction would be “No, here, let me do that for you!”
So it’s important for partners to ask each other…
- Not: “what’s your primary love language?” ❌
- But: “what’s your primary way of expressing love?” ✅
- And: “which love language makes you feel most loved?” ✅
For what it’s worth, I thrive on Words of Affirmation, so thanks again to everyone who leaves kind feedback on our articles! It lets me know I provided a good Act of Service
So far, so simple, right? You and your partner (or: other person! Because as we’ve just seen, these go for all kinds of dynamics, not just romantic partnerships) need to be aware of each other’s preferred love languages for giving and receiving.
But…
There’s another pitfall that many fall into, and that’s assuming that the other person has the same idea about what a given love language means, when there’s more to clarify.
For example:
- Acts of Service: is it more important that the service be useful, or that it took effort?
- Gift-Giving: is it better that a gift be more expensive, or more thoughtful and personal?
- Physical Touch: what counts here? If we’re shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, is that physical touch or is something more active needed?
- Quality Time: does it count if we’re both doing our own thing but together in the same room, comfortable in silence together? Or does it need to be a more active and involved activity together? And is it quality time if we’re at a social event together, or does it need to be just us?
- Words of Affirmation: what, exactly, do we need to hear? For romantic partners, “I love you” can often be important, but is there something else we need to hear? Perhaps a “because…”, or perhaps a “so much that…”, or perhaps something else entirely? Does it no longer count if we have to put the words in our partner’s mouth, or is that just good two-way communication?
Bottom line:
There’s a lot more to this than a “What’s your love language?” click-through quiz, but with a little application and good communication, this model can really resolve a lot of would-be problems that can grow from feeling unappreciated or such. And, the same principles go just the same for friends and others as they do for romantic partners.
In short, it’s one of the keys to good interpersonal relationships in general—something critical for our overall well-being!
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Does Eating Shellfish Contribute To Gout?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
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 have a question about seafood as healthy, doesn’t eating shellfish contribute to gout?❞
It can do! Gout (a kind of inflammatory arthritis characterized by the depositing of uric acid crystals in joints) has many risk factors, and diet is one component, albeit certainly the most talked-about one.
First, you may be wondering: isn’t all arthritis inflammatory? Since arthritis is by definition the inflammation of joints, this is a reasonable question, but when it comes to classifying the kinds, “inflammatory” arthritis is caused by inflammation, while “non-inflammatory” arthritis (a slightly confusing name) merely has inflammation as one of its symptoms (and is caused by physical wear-and-tear). For more information, see:
- Tips For Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis ←inflammatory
- Tips For Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis ← “non-inflammatory”
As for gout specifically, top risk factors include:
- Increasing age: risk increases with age
- Being male: women do get gout, but much less often
- Hypertension: all-cause hypertension is the biggest reasonably controllable factor
There’s not a lot we can do about age (but of course, looking after our general health will tend to slow biological aging, and after all, diseases only care about the state of our body, not what the date on the calendar is).
As for sex, this risk factor is hormones, and specifically has to do with estrogen and testosterone’s very different effects on the immune system (bearing in mind that chronic inflammation is a disorder of the immune system). However, few if any men would take up feminizing hormone therapy just to lower their gout risk!
That leaves hypertension, which happily is something that we can all (barring extreme personal circumstances) do quite a bit about. Here’s a good starting point:
Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt
…and for further pointers:
How To Lower Your Blood Pressure (Cardiologists Explain)
As for diet specifically (and yes, shellfish):
The largest study into this (and thus, one of the top ones cited in a lot of other literature) looked at 47,150 men with no history of gout at the baseline.
So, with the caveat that their findings could have been different for women, they found:
- Eating meat in general increased gout risk
- Narrowing down specific meats: beef, pork, and lamb were the worst offenders
- Eating seafood in general increased gout risk
- Narrowing down specific seafoods: all seafoods increased gout risk within a similar range
- As a specific quirk of seafoods: the risk was increased if the man had a BMI under 25
- Eating dairy in general was not associated with an increased risk of gout
- Narrowing down specific dairy foods: low-fat dairy products such as yogurt were associated with a decreased risk of gout
- Eating purine-rich vegetables in general was not associated with an increased risk of gout
- Narrowing down to specific purine-rich vegetables: no purine-rich vegetable was associated with an increase in the risk of gout
Dairy products were included in the study, as dairy products in general and non-fermented dairy products in particular are often associated with increased inflammation. However, the association was simply not found to exist when it came to gout risk.
Purine-rich vegetables were included in the study, as animal products highest in purines have typically been found to have the worst effect on gout. However, the association was simply not found to exist when it came to plants with purines.
You can read the full study here:
Purine-Rich Foods, Dairy and Protein Intake, and the Risk of Gout in Men
So, the short answer to your question of “doesn’t eating shellfish contribute to the risk of gout” is:
Yes, it can, but occasional consumption probably won’t result in gout unless you have other risk factors going against you.
If you’re a slim male 80-year-old alcoholic smoker with hypertension, then definitely do consider skipping the lobster, but honestly, there may be bigger issues to tackle there.
And similarly, obviously skip it if you have a shellfish allergy, and if you’re vegan or vegetarian or abstain from shellfish for religious reasons, then you can certainly live very healthily without ever having any.
See also: Do We Need Animal Products, To Be Healthy?
For most people most of the time, a moderate consumption of seafood, including shellfish if you so desire, is considered healthy.
As ever, do speak with your own doctor to know for sure, as your individual case may vary.
For reference, this question was surely prompted by the article:
Lobster vs Crab – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Fix Your Upper Back With These Three Steps
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When it comes to back pain, the lower back gets a lot of attention, but what about when it’s nearer the neck and shoulders?
Reaching for better health
In this short video, Liv describes and shows three exercises:
Exercise 1: Thoracic Pullover (Dumbbell Pullover)
Purpose: Improves overhead reach and shoulder mobility.
Equipment: light weight, yoga block, or foam roller.
Steps:- Lie on the floor with the foam roller/block beneath the upper back.
- Hold the weight in both hands, arms extended upward.
- Inhale deeply and reach the weight toward the ceiling.
- Exhale and arc your spine over the block, moving the weight backward.
- Keep core tension to maintain a neutral lower back position.
- Perform 10 repetitions.
Exercise 2: Rotational Mobility Stretch
Purpose: enhances torso rotation, core strength, and hip mobility.
Equipment: none (or a mat)
Steps:- Lie on your side with knees stacked at 90° and arms extended in front.
- Hold a weight in the top hand.
- Inhale and lift the top arm toward the ceiling, extending the shoulder blade.
- Exhale and twist your torso, allowing the arm to move toward the floor.
- Modify by extending the bottom leg for a deeper twist if needed.
- Perform 6 reps per side, switching legs and repeating on the other side.
Exercise 3: Doorway/Pole Side Stretch
Purpose: targets multiple areas for a deep, satisfying stretch.
Equipment: door frame, pole, or wall.
Steps:- Stand at arm’s length from the wall or frame.
- Cross the outer leg (furthest from the wall) behind the inner leg.
- Place the closest hand on the wall and reach the other arm overhead.
- Grip the wall or frame with the top hand, pressing away with the bottom hand.
- Lean into a banana-shaped curve and rotate your chest upward for a deeper stretch.
- Hold for 20–30 seconds per side and repeat 2–3 times.
For more on all of these, plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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You might also like:
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Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese
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Cream cheese is a delicious food, and having a plant-based diet isn’t a reason to miss out. Here we have a protein-forward nuts-based cream cheese that we’re sure you’ll love (unless you’re allergic to nuts, in which case, maybe skip this one).
You will need
- 1½ cups raw cashews, soaked in warm water and then drained
- ½ cup water
- ½ cup coconut cream
- Juice of ½ lemon
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- ½ tsp onion powder
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp black pepper
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- ¼ tsp MSG, or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
- Optional: ⅓ cup fresh basil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Blend all of the ingredients until creamy.
2) Optional: leave on the countertop, covered, for 1–2 hours, if you want a more fermented (effectively: cheesy) taste.
3) Refrigerate, ideally overnight, before serving. Serving on bagels is a classic, but you can also enjoy with the Healthy Homemade Flatbreads we made yesterday
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Pistachios vs Cashews – Which is Healthier? ← Pistachios actually won here, but cashews are also great and are better (from a culinary perspective) for making cream cheese
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
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Healthiest-Three-Nut Butter
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We’re often telling you to “diversify your nuts”, so here’s a great way to get in three at once with no added sugar, palm oil, or preservatives, and only the salt you choose to put in. We’ve picked three of the healthiest nuts around, but if you happen to be allergic, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered too.
You will need
- 1 cup almonds (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. chia, and make it ½ cup)
- 1 cup walnuts (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. pumpkin, and make it ½ cup)
- 1 cup pistachios (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. poppy, and make it ½ cup)
- 1 tbsp almond oil (if allergic, substitute extra virgin olive oil) (if you prefer sweet nut butter, substitute 1 tbsp maple syrup; the role here is to emulsify the nuts, and this will do the same job)
- Optional: ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1a) If using nuts, heat your oven to 350℉ / 180℃. Place the nuts on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and bake/roast for about 10 minutes, but keep an eye on it to ensure the nuts don’t burn, and jiggle them if necessary to ensure they toast evenly. Once done, allow to cool.
1b) If using seeds, you can either omit that step, or do the same for 5 minutes if you want to, but really it’s not necessary.
2) Blend all ingredients (nuts/seeds, oil, MSG/salt) in a high-speed blender. Note: this will take about 10 minutes in total, and we recommend you do it in 30-second bursts so as to not overheat the motor. You also may need to periodically scrape the mixture down the side of the blender, to ensure a smooth consistency.
3) Transfer to a clean jar, and enjoy at your leisure:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Sesame Seeds vs Poppy Seeds – Which is Healthier?
- If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out
- Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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