Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)
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Heart attack symptoms vary by sex. This is governed by hormones, so if you are for example a postmenopausal woman and not on HRT, your symptoms might be nearer that of men.
The following symptom list is intended as a rough “most likely” guide. You may not get all of the symptoms you “should”. You could get symptoms from the “wrong” category. So don’t sweat the minutiae, but do be aware of…
Symptoms for everyone:
- Jaw, neck, and/or back pain
- Nausea and/or vomiting
- Shortness of breath
- Feeling of impending doom ← heart attack survivors assure us that you’ll know this one if you experience it
Additional symptoms (mostly) just for men:
- Pressure and/or pain in the upper chest
- Discomfort and/or tingling in the arms
- Sudden cold sweat
Additional symptoms (mostly) just for women:
- Pressure and/or pain in the lower chest and/or abdomen
- Feeling of fullness and/or indigestion
- Fatigue, dizziness, possibly fainting
In the event of experiencing symptoms…
Call 911 or your local equivalent.This is not the time to wait to see if it goes away by itself. If unsure, call. Better safe than sorry/dead.
If you are not alone, or if it is someone with you who is having the suspected heart attack, it may be quicker to go to the Emergency Room by car, than wait for an ambulance.
Even if you choose to do that, you should still call 911 anyway, as the responder will be able to instruct you in real-time, not something we can do in a newsletter.
Note that if available, this means three people in the car is ideal:
Driver, patient, and third person on the phone giving information and following instructions.
Emergency situations rarely go entirely by-the-book, but with a little foreknowledge and at least one person with a calm head, preventable deaths can be avoided.
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Oranges vs Lemons – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing oranges to lemons, we picked the oranges.
Why?
In the battle of these popular citrus fruits, there is a clear winner on the nutritional front.
Things were initially promising for lemons when looking at the macros—lemons have a little more fiber while oranges are slightly higher in carbs, but the differences are small and both are very healthy in this regard.
However, alas for this writer who prefers sour fruits to sweet ones (I’m sweet enough already), the micronutrient profiles tell a different story:
In terms of vitamins, oranges have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B9, E, and choline. In contrast, lemons have a (very) little more vitamin B6. You might be wondering about vitamin C, since both fruits are famous for that—they’re equal on vitamin C. But, with that stack we listed above, oranges clearly win the vitamin category easily.
As for minerals, oranges boast more calcium, copper, magnesium, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while lemons have more iron, manganese, and phosphorus.
Technically lemons also have more sodium, but the numbers are truly miniscule (by coincidence, we discover upon grabbing a calculator, you’d need to eat approximately your own bodyweight in whole lemons to get to the RDA of sodium—and that’s to reach the RDA, not the upper healthy limit) so we’ll overlook the tiny sodium difference as irrelevant. Which means, while closer than the vitamins category, oranges win on minerals with a 6:3 lead over lemons.
Both fruits offer generous helpings of flavonoids and other polyphenols such as naringenin and hesperidin, which have anti-inflammatory properties and more specifically can also reduce allergy symptoms (unless, of course, you are allergic to citrus fruits, which is a relatively rare but extant allergy).
In short: as ever, enjoy both; diversity is great for the health. But if you want to maximize the nutrients you get, it’s oranges.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Lemons vs Limes – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Health Hacks from 20 Doctors
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Doctor Mike’s Approach
You may be used to Tuesday’s expert insights column, where we break down the work or research of a medical expert. Doctor Mike, the creator of the video below, has put us to shame, interviewing 20 experts and condensing it into one, sub 12-minute video.
In short, Doctor Mike has interviewed medical professionals and asked them to share a unique piece of advice, specific to their field, that’s easy to incorporate into your daily routine. He calls them Health Hacks (hey, that sounds similar to our Life Hacks section).
We aren’t going to list out all 20—you’ll have to watch the video for that—but here are a few of our favourites
Toenail Fungus Treatment
Dr. Dana Brems, a podiatrist, reveals that Vicks VapoRub has antifungal properties, and thus can be used on toenails affected by fungus.
Water Intake Myth
Dr. Rena Malik, a urologist, debunks the myth that everyone needs to drink eight glasses of water daily, advising people to drink when thirsty and monitor urine color for hydration.
(You can see what we’ve written on this subject here, as well as here).
Natural Lip Plumper
Dr. Anthony Youn, a plastic surgeon, offers a simple recipe for plumping lips—add a drop or two of food-grade peppermint oil to your lip gloss.
Toothbrushing Technique:
Dr. Winters, an orthodontist, explains that brushing teeth at a 45-degree angle towards the gums is more effective than the common side-to-side method. See our thoughts on this here and here.
Want more tips? Watch them all in the video below:
How was the video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
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Give Us This Day Our Daily Dozen
This is Dr. Michael Greger. He’s a physician-turned-author-educator, and we’ve featured him and his work occasionally over the past year or so:
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It! ← this is about dark leafy greens, lutein, & avoiding Alzheimer’s
- Twenty-One, No Wait, Twenty Tweaks For Better Health ← he says 21, but we say one of them is very skippable. Check it out and decide what you think!
- Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight ← his top well-evidenced interventions specifically for slowing aging
But what we’ve not covered, astonishingly, is one of the things for which he’s most famous, which is…
Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
Based on the research in the very information-dense tome that his his magnum opus How Not To Die (while it doesn’t confer immortality, it does help avoid the most common causes of death), Dr. Greger recommends that we take care to enjoy each of the following things per day:
Beans
- Servings: 3 per day
- Examples: ½ cup cooked beans, ¼ cup hummus
Greens
- Servings: 2 per day
- Examples: 1 cup raw, ½ cup cooked
Cruciferous vegetables
- Servings: 1 per day
- Examples: ½ cup chopped, 1 tablespoon horseradish
Other vegetables
- Servings: 2 per day
- Examples: ½ cup non-leafy vegetables
Whole grains
- Servings: 3 per day
- Examples: ½ cup hot cereal, 1 slice of bread
Berries
- Servings: 1 per day
- Examples: ½ cup fresh or frozen, ¼ cup dried
Other fruits
- Servings: 3 per day
- Examples: 1 medium fruit, ¼ cup dried fruit
Flaxseed
- Servings: 1 per day
- Examples: 1 tablespoon ground
Nuts & (other) seeds
- Servings: 1 per day
- Examples: ¼ cup nuts, 2 tablespoons nut butter
Herbs & spices
- Servings: 1 per day
- Examples: ¼ teaspoon turmeric
Hydrating drinks
- Servings: 60 oz per day
- Examples: Water, green tea, hibiscus tea
Exercise
- Servings: Once per day
- Examples: 90 minutes moderate or 40 minutes vigorous
Superficially it seems an interesting choice to, after listing 11 foods and drinks, have the 12th item as exercise but not add a 13th one of sleep—but perhaps he quite reasonably expects that people get a dose of sleep with more consistency than people get a dose of exercise. After all, exercise is mostly optional, whereas if we try to skip sleep for too long, our body will force the matter for us.
Further 10almonds notes:
- We’d consider chia superior to flax, but you do you. Flax is a fine choice also.
- We recommend trying to get each of these top 5 most health-giving spices in daily if you can.
Enjoy!
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Why scrapping the term ‘long COVID’ would be harmful for people with the condition
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The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that it’s time to stop using the term “long COVID” has made waves in Australian and international media over recent days.
Gerrard’s comments were related to new research from his team finding long-term symptoms of COVID are similar to the ongoing symptoms following other viral infections.
But there are limitations in this research, and problems with Gerrard’s argument we should drop the term “long COVID”. Here’s why.
A bit about the research
The study involved texting a survey to 5,112 Queensland adults who had experienced respiratory symptoms and had sought a PCR test in 2022. Respondents were contacted 12 months after the PCR test. Some had tested positive to COVID, while others had tested positive to influenza or had not tested positive to either disease.
Survey respondents were asked if they had experienced ongoing symptoms or any functional impairment over the previous year.
The study found people with respiratory symptoms can suffer long-term symptoms and impairment, regardless of whether they had COVID, influenza or another respiratory disease. These symptoms are often referred to as “post-viral”, as they linger after a viral infection.
Gerrard’s research will be presented in April at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. It hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
After the research was publicised last Friday, some experts highlighted flaws in the study design. For example, Steven Faux, a long COVID clinician interviewed on ABC’s television news, said the study excluded people who were hospitalised with COVID (therefore leaving out people who had the most severe symptoms). He also noted differing levels of vaccination against COVID and influenza may have influenced the findings.
In addition, Faux pointed out the survey would have excluded many older people who may not use smartphones.
The authors of the research have acknowledged some of these and other limitations in their study.
Ditching the term ‘long COVID’
Based on the research findings, Gerrard said in a press release:
We believe it is time to stop using terms like ‘long COVID’. They wrongly imply there is something unique and exceptional about longer term symptoms associated with this virus. This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.
But Gerrard and his team’s findings cannot substantiate these assertions. Their survey only documented symptoms and impairment after respiratory infections. It didn’t ask people how fearful they were, or whether a term such as long COVID made them especially vigilant, for example.
Tens of thousands of Australians, and millions of people worldwide, have long COVID.
New Africa/ShutterstockIn discussing Gerrard’s conclusions about the terminology, Faux noted that even if only 3% of people develop long COVID (the survey found 3% of people had functional limitations after a year), this would equate to some 150,000 Queenslanders with the condition. He said:
To suggest that by not calling it long COVID you would be […] somehow helping those people not to focus on their symptoms is a curious conclusion from that study.
Another clinician and researcher, Philip Britton, criticised Gerrard’s conclusion about the language as “overstated and potentially unhelpful”. He noted the term “long COVID” is recognised by the World Health Organization as a valid description of the condition.
A cruel irony
An ever-growing body of research continues to show how COVID can cause harm to the body across organ systems and cells.
We know from the experiences shared by people with long COVID that the condition can be highly disabling, preventing them from engaging in study or paid work. It can also harm relationships with their friends, family members, and even their partners.
Despite all this, people with long COVID have often felt gaslit and unheard. When seeking treatment from health-care professionals, many people with long COVID report they have been dismissed or turned away.
Last Friday – the day Gerrard’s comments were made public – was actually International Long COVID Awareness Day, organised by activists to draw attention to the condition.
The response from people with long COVID was immediate. They shared their anger on social media about Gerrard’s comments, especially their timing, on a day designed to generate greater recognition for their illness.
Since the start of the COVID pandemic, patient communities have fought for recognition of the long-term symptoms many people faced.
The term “long COVID” was in fact coined by people suffering persistent symptoms after a COVID infection, who were seeking words to describe what they were going through.
The role people with long COVID have played in defining their condition and bringing medical and public attention to it demonstrates the possibilities of patient-led expertise. For decades, people with invisible or “silent” conditions such as ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) have had to fight ignorance from health-care professionals and stigma from others in their lives. They have often been told their disabling symptoms are psychosomatic.
Gerrard’s comments, and the media’s amplification of them, repudiates the term “long COVID” that community members have chosen to give their condition an identity and support each other. This is likely to cause distress and exacerbate feelings of abandonment.
Terminology matters
The words we use to describe illnesses and conditions are incredibly powerful. Naming a new condition is a step towards better recognition of people’s suffering, and hopefully, better diagnosis, health care, treatment and acceptance by others.
The term “long COVID” provides an easily understandable label to convey patients’ experiences to others. It is well known to the public. It has been routinely used in news media reporting and and in many reputable medical journal articles.
Most importantly, scrapping the label would further marginalise a large group of people with a chronic illness who have often been left to struggle behind closed doors.
Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Get Past Executive Dysfunction
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In mathematics, there is a thing called the “travelling salesman problem”, and it is hard. Not just subjectively; it is classified in mathematical terms as an “NP-hard problem”, wherein NP stands for “nondeterministic polynomial”.
The problem is: a travelling salesman must visit a certain list of cities, order undetermined, by the shortest possible route that visits them all.
To work out what the shortest route is involves either very advanced mathematics, or else solving it by brute force, which means measuring every possible combination order (which number gets exponentially larger very quickly after the first few cities) and then selecting the shortest.
Why are we telling you this?
Executive dysfunction’s analysis paralysis
Executive dysfunction is the state of knowing you have things to do, wanting to do them, intending to do them, and then simply not doing them.
Colloquially, this can be called “analysis paralysis” and is considered a problem of planning and organizing, as much as it is a problem of initiating tasks.
Let’s give a simple example:
You wake up in the morning, and you need to go to the bathroom. But the bathroom will be cold, so you’ll want to get dressed first. However, it will be uncomfortable to get dressed while you still need to use the bathroom, so you contemplate doing that first. Those two items are already a closed loop now. You’re thirsty, so you want to have a drink, but the bathroom is calling to you. Sitting up, it’s colder than under the covers, so you think about getting dressed. Maybe you should have just a sip of water first. What else do you need to do today anyway? You grab your phone to check, drink untouched, clothes unselected, bathroom unvisited.
That was a simple example; now apply that to other parts of your day that have much more complex planning possible.
This is like the travelling salesman problem, except that now, some things are better if done before or after certain other things. Sometimes, possibly, they are outright required to be done before or after certain other things.
So you have four options:
- Solve the problem of your travelling-salesman-like tasklist using advanced mathematics (good luck if you don’t have advanced mathematics)
- Solve the problem by brute force, calculating all possible variations and selecting the shortest (good luck getting that done the same day)
- Go with a gut feeling and stick to it (people without executive dysfunction do this)
- Go towards the nearest item, notice another item on the way, go towards that, notice a different item on the way there, and another one, get stuck for a while choosing between those two, head towards one, notice another one, and so on until you’ve done a very long scenic curly route that has narrowly missed all of your targetted items (this is the executive dysfunction approach).
So instead, just pick one, do it, pick another one, do it, and so forth.
That may seem “easier said than done”, but there are tools available…
Task zero
We’ve mentioned this before in the little section at the top of our daily newsletter that we often use for tips.
One of the problems that leads to executive function is a shortage of “working memory”, like the RAM of a computer, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed with lists of things to do.
So instead, hold only two items in your mind:
- Task zero: the thing you are doing right now
- Task one: the thing you plan to do next
When you’ve completed task zero, move on to task one, renaming it task zero, and select a new task one.
With this approach, you will never:
- Think “what did I come into this room for?”
- Get distracted by alluring side-quests
Do not get corrupted by the cursed artefact
In fantasy, and occasionally science fiction, there is a trope: an item that people are drawn towards, but which corrupts them, changes their motivations and behaviors for the worse, as well as making them resistant to giving the item up.
An archetypal example of this would be the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.
It’s easy to read/watch and think “well I would simply not be corrupted by the cursed artefact”.
And then pick up one’s phone to open the same three apps in a cycle for the next 40 minutes.
This is because technology that is designed to be addictive hijacks our dopamine processing, and takes advantage of executive dysfunction, while worsening it.
There are some ways to mitigate this:
Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)
…but one way to avoid it entirely is to mentally narrate your choices. It’s a lot harder to make bad choices with an internal narrator going:
- “She picked up her phone absent-mindedly, certain that this time it really would be only a few seconds”
- “She picked up her phone for the eleventy-third time”
- “Despite her plan to put her shoes on, she headed instead for the kitchen”
This method also helps against other bad choices aside from those pertaining to executive dysfunction, too:
- “Abandoning her plan to eat healthily, she lingered in the confectionary aisle, scanning the shelves for sugary treats”
- “Monday morning will be the best time to start my new exercise regime”, she thought, for the 35th week so far this year
Get pharmaceutical or nutraceutical help
While it’s not for everyone, many people with executive dysfunction benefit from ADHD meds. However, they have their pros and cons (perhaps we’ll do a run-down one of these days).
There are also gentler options that can significantly ameliorate executive dysfunction, for example:
Bacopa Monnieri: A Well-Evidenced Cognitive Enhancer For Focus & More
Enjoy!
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Swordfish vs Tuna – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing swordfish to tuna, we picked the tuna.
Why?
Today in “that which is more expensive is not necessarily the healthier”…
Considering the macros first, swordfish has more than 8x more total fat, about 9x more saturated fat, and yes, more cholesterol. On the other hand, tuna has more protein. An easy win for tuna.
In terms of vitamins, swordfish has more of vitamins A, B5, D, and E, while tuna has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, and B12. A marginal win for tuna, unless you want to weight the other vitamins more heavily, in which case, more likely a tie, or maybe even an argument for swordfish if you have a particular vitamin deficiency on that side.
When it comes to minerals, swordfish has more calcium and zinc, while tuna has more iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium. A clear win for tuna.
One other thing: they’re both very rich in mercury, and while tuna is bad for that, swordfish has nearly 3x as much.
In short, both have a good spread of vitamins and minerals, and both are quite tainted with mercury, but in relative terms, there’s a clear winner even before considering the very different macros, and the winner is tuna.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught: Important Differences
Take care!
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