The Keys to Good Mental Wellbeing
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The Nine Keys To Good Mental Wellbeing
Today’s main feature is a bit “pop psychology”, but it has its underpinnings in actual psychology, and is especially useful if approached from that angle.
What it’s most popularly enjoyed as:
- A personality-typing system.
- People love little quizzes and identifiers and such.
What it’s actually really useful as:
- A tool for understanding why people (including ourselves) are the way we are
- A foundational knowledge for living better ourselves, and helping others too
This stems from the fairly simple principle, uncontroversial in psychology:
- We have needs, desires, and aversions
- We act in a way that tries to get our needs met and avoid suffering
- Thus: Need/Fear → Motivation → Action
The Enneagram
The Enneagram (ἐννέα = “nine” in Ancient Greek) system posits that we each have one fundamental need/fear (from a list of nine) that’s strongest for us. A deep-seated insecurity/longing, that we’ll go to almost any lengths to try to meet. Sometimes, in good ways, sometimes, bad.
The Nine Basic Fears/Insecurities, And Their Corresponding Needs/Desires:
- Fear of being a fundamentally bad, wrong person / Need to be good and correct
- Fear of being fundamentally unloveable / Need to be loved
- Fear of being fundamentally worthless / Need to be valued
- Fear of being like everyone else / Need to be different
- Fear of being useless / Need to be useful
- Fear of being outcast / Need to have a set place in the group
- Fear of missing out / Need to experience things
- Fear of being hurt or controlled / Need to be in control
- Fear of conflict / Need to be at peace
Of course, most of us have most of these fears/needs to some extent, though usually one will stand out—especially if we aren’t managing it well. The less healthy our coping mechanisms, the more obvious it is how we’re trying to overcompensate in some fashion. For example:
- A person who fears being wrong and so becomes a perfectionist rules-abider to a fault
- A person who fears being unloveable, and so exaggerates problems to get pity, as the next best thing
- A person who fears being worthless, and so exaggerates their accomplishments in order to be admired and valued
- A person who fears being like everyone else, and so descends into a “nobody could ever possibly understand me” black hole of pathos.
- A person who fears being useless, so burns themself out trying to be an omnicompetent Leonardo da Vinci without ever actually taking the time to stop and smell the flowers as Leonardo did.
- A person who fears being outcast, so becomes clingy, passive-aggressive, and suspicious
- A person who fears missing out, so tries to experience all the things all the time, ruining their health with dizzying highs and crushing lows.
- A person who fears being hurt or controlled, so becomes aggressive and domineering
- A person who fears conflict, so shuts down at the slightest hint of it
If we have healthier coping mechanisms, these same nine people can look a lot different, but in much more subtle ways because we’re not trying to overcompensate so badly:
- A person who lives their life rationally by principles that can be adapted as they learn
- A person who loves and is loved, as perhaps the most notable part of their character
- A person who sets reasonable goals and accomplishes them, and seeks to uplift others
- A person who creates and innovates, enriching their own life and the lives of others
- A person who is simply very competent and knowledgeable, without overstretching
- A person who is dependable and loyal, and a reliable part of something bigger than themself
- A person who is fun to be around and loves trying new things, while also knowing how to relax
- A person who develops their leadership skills and is a tower of strength for others
- A person who knows how to make peace and does so—by themself, and with others
By being aware of our own fears/insecurities that may drive our motivations and thus underpin our behaviors, we can usually manage them in a much more mindful fashion. Same goes when it comes to managing interactions with other people, too:
- Letting the Type 3 know you value them, not their accomplishments or what they can do for you.
- Appreciating the Type 5’s (varied or specialist) skills and knowledge.
- Giving love to a Type 2 unprompted, but on your own terms, with your own boundaries.
- And so on for other types
Or for yourself…
- As a Type 8, remembering that you can let go sometimes and let someone else be in charge.
- As a Type 1, catching yourself holding yourself (or others) to impossible standards, and then easing up on that a little.
- As a Type 9, remembering to stand up for yourself and others, however gently, but firmly.
- And so on for other types
If you’re unsure what to focus on, ask yourself: what’s your worst nightmare or greatest daydream? Then work out what it is about that, that makes it feel so bad or good.
Then, approach things mindfully. Catch yourself in your unhealthy coping mechanisms, and find healthy ones instead.
What if I get my type wrong? Or I get someone else’s type wrong?
Obviously it’s better to get them right for maximum effect, but you can never go too far wrong anyway… because we all have all nine of those qualities in us, it’s just a matter of how strong a factor each is for us. So in the worst case scenario, you’ll make someone feel more secure about something that was only a very minor insecurity for them, for example.
Or in the case of your own type, you may mistakenly think you’re acing being the world’s healthiest Type 5, until you realize you’re actually a Type 3 who thought learning all those things would make you more worthy (spoiler: those things are great, but you’re worthy already). Again, not the end of the world! No matter what, you’re learning and growing, and that’s good.
Want to delve further?
Read: The Nine Enneagram Type Descriptions (Basic, but more detailed descriptions than the above)
Read: How The Enneagram System Works (More complex. Now we’re getting into the more arcane stuff we didn’t have time for today—wings and lines, triads, health levels, directions of integration and disintegration, and more)
Like learning from books? Here are our top two picks, depending on your learning style:
- The Wisdom of the Enneagram – Very comprehensive textbook and guide to improving your coping mechanism and growing as a person.
- The Enneagram Made Easy – it explains it with cartoons!
We’d love to offer a quick free test here, but all the tests we could find either require paid registration or are wildly inaccurate, so we’ll not waste your time.
However, we do also think that working it out for yourself is better, as it means you have a handle on what those ideas, fears, insecurities, desires, needs, really mean to you—that way you can actually use the information!
We’ll close by repeating our previous advice: If you’re unsure what to focus on, ask yourself: what’s your worst nightmare or greatest daydream? Then work out what it is about those scenarios that make them so bad or good. That’ll help you find your real fears/needs, such that you can work on them.
Good luck!
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Knit for Health & Wellness – by Betsan Corkhill
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Betsan Corkhill, a physiotherapist, has more than just physiotherapy in mind when it comes to the therapeutic potential of knitting (although yes, also physiotherapy!), and much of this book is about the more psychological benefits that go way beyond “it’s a relaxing pastime”.
She makes the case for how knitting (much like good mental health) requires planning, action, organization, persistence, focus, problem-solving, and flexibility—and thus the hobby develops and maintains all the appropriate faculties for those things, which will then be things you get to keep in the rest of your life, too.
Fun fact: knitting, along with other similar needlecrafts, was the forerunner technology for modern computer programming! And indeed, early computers, the kind with hole-punch data streams, used very similar pattern-storing methods to knitting patterns.
So, for something often thought of as a fairly mindless activity for those not in the know, knitting has a lot to offer for what’s between your ears, as well as potentially something for keeping your ears warm later.
One thing this book’s not, by the way: a “how to” guide for learning to knit. It assumes you either have that knowledge already, or will gain it elsewhere (there are many tutorials online).
Bottom line: if you’re in the market for a new hobby that’s good for your brain, this book will give you great motivation to give knitting a go!
Click here to check out Knit For Health & Wellness, and get knitting!
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What Are Nootropics, Really?
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What are nootropics, really?
A nootropic is anything that functions as a cognitive enhancer—in other words, improves our brainpower.
These can be sensationalized as “smart drugs”, misrepresented excitingly in science fiction, meme-ified in the mundane (“but first, coffee”), and reframed entirely, (“exercise is the best nootropic”).
So, clearly, “nootropics” can mean a lot of different things. Let’s look at some of the main categories…
The neurochemical modulators
These are what often get called “smart drugs”. They are literally drugs (have a chemical effect on the body that isn’t found in our diet), and they affect the levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, such as by:
- Adding more of that neurotransmitter (simple enough)
- Decreasing the rate at which we lose that neurotransmitter (re-uptake inhibitors)
- Antagonizing an unhelpful neurotransmitter (doing the opposite thing to it)
- Blocking an unhelpful neurotransmitter (stopping the receptors from receiving it)
“Unhelpful” here is relative and subjective, of course. We need all the neurotransmitters that are in our brain, after all, we just don’t need all of them all the time.
Examples: modafinil, a dopamine re-uptake inhibitor (mostly prescribed for sleep disorders), reduces the rate at which our brains scrub dopamine, resulting in a gradual build-up of dopamine that we naturally produced, so we get to enjoy that dopamine for longer. This will tend to promote wakefulness, and may also help with problem-solving and language faculties—as well as giving a mood boost. In other words, all things that dopamine is used for. Mirtazaрine, an adrenoreceptor agonist (mostly prescribed as an antidepressant), increases noradrenergic neurotransmission, thus giving many other brain functions a boost.
Why it works: our brains need healthy levels of neurotransmitters, in order to function well. Those levels are normally self-regulating, but can become depleted in times of stress or fatigue, for example.
The metabolic brain boosters
These are the kind of things that get included in nootropic stacks (stack = a collection of supplements and/or drugs that complement each other and are taken together—for example, a multivitamin tablet could be described as a vitamin stack) even though they have nothing specifically relating them to brain function. Why are they included?
The brain needs so much fuel. Metabolically speaking, it’s a gas-guzzler. It’s the single most resource-intensive organ of our body, by far. So, metabolic brain boosters tend to:
- Increase blood flow
- Increase blood oxygenation
- Increase blood general health
- Improve blood pressure (this is relative and subjective, since very obviously there’s a sweet spot)
Examples: B-vitamins. Yep, it can be that simple. A less obvious example might be Co-enzyme Q10, which supports energy production on a cellular level, and good cardiovascular health.
Why it works: you can’t have a healthy brain without a healthy heart!
We are such stuff as brains are made of
Our brains are made of mostly fat, water, and protein. But, not just any old fat and protein—we’re at least a little bit special! So, brain-food foods tend to:
- Give the brain the fats and proteins it’s made of
- Give the brain the stuff to make the fats and proteins it’s made of (simpler fats, and amino acids)
- Give the brain hydration! Just having water, and electrolytes as appropriate, does this
Examples: healthy fats from nuts, seeds, and seafood; also, a lot of phytonutrients from greens and certain fruits. Long-time subscribers may remember our article “Brain Food: The Eyes Have It!” on the importance of dietary lutein in reducing Alzheimer’s risk, for example
Why it works: this is matter of structural upkeep and maintenance—our brains don’t work fabulously if deprived of the very stuff they’re made of! Especially hydration is seriously underrated as a nootropic factor, by the way. Most people are dehydrated most of the time, and the brain dehydrates quickly. Fortunately, it rehydrates quickly as well when we take hydrating liquids.
Weird things that sound like ingredients in a witch’s potion
These are too numerous and too varied in how they work to cover here, but they do appear a lot in nootropic stacks and in popular literature on the subject.
Often they work by one of the mechanisms described above; sometimes we’re not entirely sure how they work, and have only measured their effects sufficiently to know that, somehow, they do work.
Examples: panax ginseng is one of the best-studied examples that still remains quite mysterious in many aspects of its mechanism. Lion’s Mane (the mushroom, not the jellyfish or the big cat hairstyle), meanwhile, is known to contain specific compounds that stimulate healthy brain cell growth.
Why it works: as we say, it varies so much from on ingredient to another in this category, so… Watch out for our Research Review Monday features, as we’ll be covering some of these in the coming weeks!
(PS, if there’s any you’d like us to focus on, let us know! We always love to hear from you. You can hit reply to any of our emails, or use the handy feedback widget at the bottom)
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When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)
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When knowing what to do isn’t the problem
Often, we know what we need to do. Sometimes, knowing isn’t the problem!
The topic today is going to be a technique used by therapeutic service providers to help people to enact positive changes in their lives.
While this is a necessarily dialectic practice (i.e., it involves a back-and-forth dialogue), it’s still perfectly possible to do it alone, and that’s what we’ll be focussing on in this main feature.
What is Motivational Interviewing?
❝Motivational interviewing (MI) is a technique that has been specifically developed to help motivate ambivalent patients to change their behavior.❞
Read in full: Motivational Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Approach for Use in Medical Practice
It’s mostly used for such things as helping people reduce or eliminate substance abuse, or manage their weight, or exercise more, things like that.
However, it can be employed for any endeavour that requires motivation and sustained willpower to carry it through.
Three Phases
Motivational Interviewing traditionally has three phases:
- Exploring and understanding the issue at hand
- Guiding and deciding importance and goals
- Choosing and setting an action plan
In self-practice, maybe you can already know and understand what it is that you want/need to change.
If not, consider asking yourself such questions as:
- What does a good day look like? What does a bad day look like?
- If things are not good now, when were they good? What changed?
- If everything were perfect now, what would that look like? How would you know?
Once you have a clear idea of where you want to be, the next thing to know is: how much do you want it? And how confident are you in attaining it?
This is a critical process:
- Give your answers numerically on a scale from 0 to 10
- Whatever your score, ask yourself why it’s not lower. For example, if you scored your motivation 4 and your confidence 2, what factors made your motivation not a lower number? What factors made your confidence not a lower number?
- In the unlikely event that you gave yourself a 0, ask whether you can really afford to scrap the goal. If you can’t, find something, anything, to bring it to at least a 1.
- After you’ve done that, then you can ask yourself the more obvious question of why your numbers aren’t higher. This will help you identify barriers to overcome.
Now you’re ready to choose what to focus on and how to do it. Don’t bite off more than you can chew; it’s fine to start low and work up. You should revisit this regularly, just like you would if you had a counsellor helping you.
Some things to ask yourself at this stage of the motivational self-interviewing:
- What’s a good SMART goal to get you started?
- What could stop you from achieving your goal?
- How could you overcome that challenge?
- What is your backup plan, if you have to scale back your goal for some reason?
A conceptual example: if your goal is to stick to a whole foods Mediterranean diet, but you are attending a wedding next week, then now is the time to decide in advance 1) what personal lines-in-the-sand you will or will not draw 2) what secondary, backup plan you will make to not go too far off track.
The same example in practice: wedding menus often offer meat/fish/vegetarian options, so you might choose the fish or vegetarian, and as for sugar and alcohol, you might limit yourself to “a small slice of wedding cake only; coffee/cheese option instead of dessert”, and “alcohol only for toasts”.
Giving yourself the permission well in advance for small (clearly defined and boundaried!) diversions from the plan, will stop you from falling into the trap of “well, since today’s a cheat-day now…”
Secret fourth stage
The secret here is to keep going back and reassessing at regular intervals. Set your own calendar; you might want to start out weekly and then move to monthly when you’re more strongly on-track.
For this reason, it’s good to keep a journal with your notes from your self-interview sessions, the scores you gave yourself, the goals and plans you set, etc.
When conducting your regular review, be sure to examine what worked for you, and what didn’t (and why). That way, you can practice trial-and-improvement as you go.
Want to learn more?
We only have so much room here, but there are lots of resources out there.
Here’s a high-quality page that:
- explains motivational interviewing in more depth than we have room for here
- offers a lot of free downloadable resource packs and the like
Check it out: Motivational Interviewing Theory & Resources
Enjoy!
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Cranberries vs Goji Berries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing cranberries to goji berries, we picked the cranberries.
Why?
Both are great! And your priorities may differ. Here’s how they stack up:
In terms of macros, goji berries have more protein, carbs, and fiber. This is consistent with them generally being eaten very dried, whereas cranberries are more often eaten fresh or from frozen, or partially rehydrated. In any case, goji berries are the “more food per food” option, so it wins this category. The glycemic indices are both low, by the way, though goji berries are the lower.
When it comes to vitamins, cranberries have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, E, K, and choline, while goji berries have more of vitamins A and C. Admittedly it’s a lot more, but still, on strength of overall vitamin coverage, the clear winner here is cranberries.
We see a similar story when it comes to minerals: cranberries have more copper, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while goji berries have (a lot) more calcium and iron. Again, by strength of overall mineral coverage, the clear winner here is cranberries.
Cranberries do also have some extra phytochemical benefits, including their prevention/cure status when it comes to UTIs—see our link below for more on that.
At any rate, enjoy either or both, but those are the strengths and weaknesses of these two berries!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Health Benefits Of Cranberries (But: You’d Better Watch Out)
- Goji Berries: Which Benefits Do They Really Have?
- The Sugary Food That Lowers Blood Sugars ← this is also about goji berries
Take care!
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PFAS Exposure & Cancer: The Numbers Are High
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PFAS & Cancer Risk: The Numbers Are High
Image Credits Mount Sinai This is Dr. Maaike van Gerwen. Is that an MD or a PhD, you wonder? It’s both.
She’s also Director of Research in the Department of Otolaryngology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Scientific Director of the Program of Personalized Management of Thyroid Disease, and Member of the Institute for Translational Epidemiology and the Transdisciplinary Center on Early Environmental Exposures.
What does she want us to know?
She’d love for us to know about her latest research published literally today, about the risks associated with PFAS, such as the kind widely found in non-stick cookware:
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure and thyroid cancer risk
Dr. van Gerwen and her team tested this several ways, and the very short and simple version of the findings is that per doubling of exposure, there was a 56% increased rate of thyroid cancer diagnosis.
(The rate of exposure was not just guessed based on self-reports; it was measured directly from PFAS levels in the blood of participants)
- PFAS exposure can come from many sources, not just non-stick cookware, but that’s a “biggie” since it transfers directly into food that we consume.
- Same goes for widely-available microwaveable plastic food containers.
- Relatively less dangerous exposures include waterproofed clothing.
To keep it simple and look at the non-stick pans and microwavable plastic containers, doubling exposure might mean using such things every day vs every second day.
Practical take-away: PFAS may be impossible to avoid completely, but even just cutting down on the use of such products is already reducing your cancer risk.
Isn’t it too late, by this point in life? Aren’t they “forever chemicals”?
They’re not truly “forever”, but they do have long half-lives, yes.
See: Can we take the “forever” out of forever chemicals?
The half-lives of PFOS and PFOA in water are 41 years and 92 years, respectively.
In the body, however, because our body is constantly trying to repair itself and eliminate toxins, it’s more like 3–7 years.
That might seem like a long time, and perhaps it is, but the time will pass anyway, so might as well get started now, rather than in 3–7 years time!
Read more: National Academies Report Calls for Testing People With High Exposure to “Forever Chemicals”
What should we use instead?
In place of non-stick cookware, cast iron is fantastic. It’s not everyone’s preference, though, so you might also like to know that ceramic cookware is a fine option that’s functionally non-stick but without needing a non-stick coating. Check for PFAS-free status; they should advertise this.
In place of plastic microwaveable containers, Pyrex (or equivalent) glass dishes (you can get them with lids) are a top-tier option. Ceramic containers (without metallic bits!) are also safely microwaveable.
See also:
Here’s a List of Products with PFAS (& How to Avoid Them)
Take care!
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The Energy Plan – by James Collins
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There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there about how we should maintain our energy levels, for example:
- Eat fewer carbs!
- Eat more carbs!
- Eat slow-release carbs!
- Eat quick-release carbs!
- Practise intermittent fasting!
- Graze constantly throughout the day!
- Forget carbs and focus on fats!
- Actually it’s all about B-vitamins!
…and so on.
What Collins does differently is something much less-often seen:
Here, we’re advised on how to tailor our meals to our actual lifestyle, taking into account the day we actually have each day. For example:
- What will our energy needs be for the day?
- Will our needs be intense, or long, or both, or neither?
- What kind of recovery have we had, or do we need, from previous activities?
- Do we need to replace lost muscle glycogen, or are we looking to trim the fat?
- Are we doing a power-up or just maintenance today?
Rather than bidding us have a five-way spreadsheet and do advanced mathematics for every meal, though, Collins has done the hard work for us. The book explains the various principles in a casual format with a light conversational tone, and gives us general rules to follow.
These rules cover what to do for different times of day… and also, at different points in our life (the metabolic needs of a 13-year-old, 33-year-old, and 83-year-old, are very different!). That latter’s particularly handy, as a lot of books assume an age bracket for the reader, and this one doesn’t.
In short: a great book for anyone who wants to keep their energy levels up (throughout life’s ups and downs in activity) without piling on the pounds or starving oneself.
Click here to check out The Energy Plan on Amazon and fuel your days better!
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