A Guide to Rational Living – by Drs. Albert Ellis and Robert Harper

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We’ve talked before about the evidence-based benefits of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and this book is indeed about CBT. In fact, it’s in many ways the book that popularized Third Wave CBT—in other words, CBT in its modern form.

Dr. Ellis’s specific branch of CBT is Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, (REBT). What this means is using rationality to rewire emotions so that we’re not constantly sabotaging ourselves and our lives.

This is very much a “for the masses” book and doesn’t assume any prior knowledge of psychology, therapy, or psychotherapy. Or, for that matter, philosophy, since Stoic philosopher Epictetus had a lot to say that influenced Dr. Ellis’s work, too!

This book has also been described as “a self-help book for people who don’t like self-help books”… and certainly that Stoicism we mentioned does give the work a very different feel than a lot of books on the market.

The authors kick off with an initial chapter “How far can you go with self-therapy?”, and the answer is: quite far, even if it’s not a panacea. Everything has its limitations, and this book is no exception. On the other hand…

What the book does offer is a whole stack of tools, resources, and “How to…” chapters. In fact, there are so many “How to…” items in this book that, while it can be read cover-to-cover, it can also be used simply as a dip-in reference guide to refer to in times of need.

Bottom line: this book is highly recommendable to anyone and everyone, and if you don’t have it on your bookshelf, you should.

Click here to check out “A Guide To Rational Living” on Amazon today!

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    Whip up a healthy and delicious breakfast with baguette slices topped with feta-yogurt purée, chestnuts, and apricots – perfect for gut health and flavor.

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  • 11 Things That Can Change Your Eye Color

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    Eye color is generally considered so static that iris scans are considered a reasonable security method. However, it can indeed change—mostly for reasons you won’t want, though:

    Ringing the changes

    Putting aside any wishes of being a manga protagonist with violet eyes, here are the self-changing options:

    • Aging in babies: babies are often born with lighter eyes, which can darken as melanocytes develop during the first few months of life. This is similar to how a small child’s blonde hair can often be much darker by the time puberty hits!
    • Aging in adults: eyes may continue to darken until adulthood, while aging into the elderly years can cause them to lighten due to conditions like arcus senilis
    • Horner’s syndrome: a nerve disorder that can cause the eyes to become lighter due to loss of pigment
    • Fuchs heterochromic iridocyclitis: an inflammation of the iris that leads to lighter eyes over time
    • Pigment dispersion syndrome: the iris rubs against eye fibers, leading to pigment loss and lighter eyes
    • Kayser-Fleischer rings: excess copper deposits on the cornea, often due to Wilson’s disease, causing larger-than-usual brown or grayish rings around the iris
    • Iris melanoma: a rare cancer that can darken the iris, often presenting as brown spots
    • Cancer treatments: chemotherapy for retinoblastoma in children can result in lighter eye color and heterochromia
    • Medications: prostaglandin-based glaucoma treatments can darken the iris, with up to 23% of patients seeing this effect
    • Vitiligo: an autoimmune disorder that destroys melanocytes, mostly noticed in the skin, but also causing patchy loss of pigment in the iris
    • Emotional and pupil size changes: emotions and trauma can affect pupil size, making eyes appear darker or lighter temporarily by altering how much of the iris is visible

    For more about all these, and some notes about more voluntary changes (if you have certain kinds of eye surgery), enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Understanding And Slowing The Progression Of Cataracts

    Take care!

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  • Egg Noodles vs Soba Noodles – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing egg noodles to soba noodles, we picked the soba.

    Why?

    First of all, for any unfamiliar, soba noodles are made with buckwheat. Buckwheat, for any unfamiliar, is not wheat and does not contain gluten; it’s just the name of a flowering plant that gets used as though a grain, even though it’s technically not.

    In terms of macros, egg noodles have slightly more protein 2x the fat (of which, some cholesterol) while soba noodles have very slightly more carbs and 3x the fiber (and, being plant-based, no cholesterol). Given that the carbs are almost equal, it’s a case of which do we care about more: slightly more protein, or 3x the fiber? We’re going with 3x the fiber, and so are calling this category a win for soba.

    In the category of vitamins, egg noodles have more of vitamins A, B12, C, D, E, K, and choline, while soba noodles have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9. That’s a 6:6 tie. One could argue that egg noodles’ vitamins are the ones more likely to be a deficiency in people, but on the other hand, soba noodles’ vitamins have the greater margins of difference. So, still a tie.

    When it comes to minerals, egg noodles have more calcium and selenium, while soba noodles have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. So, this one’s not close; it’s an easy win for soba noodles.

    Adding up the sections makes for a clear win for soba noodles, but by all means, enjoy moderate portions of either or both (unless you are vegan or allergic to eggs, in which case, skip the egg noodles and just enjoy the soba!).

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Egg Noodles vs Rice Noodles – Which is Healthier?

    Take care!

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  • Demystifying Cholesterol

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    All About Cholesterol

    When it comes to cholesterol, the most common lay understanding (especially under a certain age) is “it’s bad”.

    A more informed view (and more common after a certain age) is “LDL cholesterol is bad; HDL cholesterol is good”.

    A more nuanced view is “LDL cholesterol is established as significantly associated with (and almost certainly a causal factor of) atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and related mortality in men; in women it is less strongly associated and may or may not be a causal factor”

    You can read more about that here:

    Statins: His & Hers? ← we highly recommend reading this, especially if you are a woman and/or considering/taking statins. To be clear, we’re not saying “don’t take statins!”, because they might be the right medical choice for you and we’re not your doctors. But we are saying: here’s something to at least know about and consider.

    Beyond HDL & LDL

    There is also VLDL cholesterol, which as you might have guessed, stands for “very low-density lipoprotein”. It has a high, unhealthy triglyceride content, and it increases atherosclerotic plaque. In other words, it hardens your arteries more quickly.

    The term “hardening the arteries” is an insufficient descriptor of what’s happening though, because while yes it is hardening the arteries, it’s also narrowing them. Because minerals and detritus passing through in the blood (the latter sounds bad, but there is supposed to be detritus passing through in the blood; it’s got to get out of the body somehow, and it’s off to get filtered and excreted) get stuck in the cholesterol (which itself is a waxy substance, by the way) and before you know it, those minerals and other things have become a solid part of the interior of your artery wall, like a little plastering team came and slapped plaster on the inside of the walls, then when it hardened, slapped more plaster on, and so on. Macrophages (normally the body’s best interior clean-up team) can’t eat things much bigger than themselves, so that means they can’t tackle the build-up of plaque.

    Impact on the heart

    Narrower less flexible arteries means very poor circulation, which means that organs can start having problems, which obviously includes your heart itself as it is not only having to do a harder job to keep the blood circulating through the narrower blood vessels, but also, it is not immune to also being starved of oxygen and nutrients along with the rest of the body when the circulation isn’t good enough. It’s a catch 22.

    What if LDL is low and someone is getting heart disease anyway?

    That’s often a case of apolipoprotein B, and unlike lipoprotein A, which is bound to LDL so usually* isn’t a problem if LDL is in “safe” ranges, Apo-B can more often cause problems even when LDL is low. Neither of these are tested for in most standard cholesterol tests by the way, so you might have to ask for them.

    *Some people, around 1 in 20 people, have hereditary extra risk factors for this.

    What to do about it?

    Well, get those lipids tests! Including asking for the LpA and Apo-B tests, especially if you have a history of heart disease in your family, or otherwise know you have a genetic risk factor.

    With or without extra genetic risks, it’s good to get lipids tests done annually from 40 onwards (earlier, if you have extra risk factors).

    See also: Understanding your cholesterol numbers

    Wondering whether you have an increased genetic risk or not?

    Genetic Testing: Health Benefits & Methods ← we think this is worth doing; it’s a “one-off test tells many useful things”. Usually done from a saliva sample, but some companies arrange a blood draw instead. Cost is usually quite affordable; do shop around, though.

    Additionally, talk to your pharmacist to check whether any of your meds have contraindications or interactions you should be aware of in this regard. Pharmacists usually know contraindications/interactions stuff better than doctors, and/but unlike doctors, they don’t have social pressure on them to know everything, which means that if they’re not sure, instead of just guessing and reassuring you in a confident voice, they’ll actually check.

    Lastly, shocking nobody, all the usual lifestyle medicine advice applies here, especially get plenty of moderate exercise and eat a good diet, preferably mostly if not entirely plant-based, and go easy on the saturated fat.

    Note: while a vegan diet contains zero dietary cholesterol (because plants don’t make it), vegans can still get unhealthy blood lipid levels, because we are animals and—like most animals—our body is perfectly capable of making its own cholesterol (indeed, we do need some cholesterol to function), and it can make its own in the wrong balance, if for example we go too heavy on certain kinds of (yes, even some plant-based) saturated fat.

    Read more: Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy? ← see for example how palm oil and coconut oil are both plant-based, and both high in saturated fat, but palm oil’s is heart-unhealthy on balance, while coconut oil’s is heart-healthy on balance (in moderation).

    Want to know more about your personal risk?

    Try the American College of Cardiology’s ASCVD risk estimator (it’s free)

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Indistractable – by Nir Eyal
  • Does Music Really Benefit The Brain?

    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.

    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 😎

    ❝Is it actually beneficial for the brain to listen to music, or is it just in line with any relaxing activity? And what kind of music is most beneficial❞

    The short answer, first of all, is that it is indeed beneficial.

    One reason for this without having to get very deep into it, is that a very important thing for general brain health is using it, and that means lighting up all areas of your brain.

    Now, we all lead different lives and thus different parts of our brains will get relatively more resources than others depending on what we do with them, and that’s ok.

    For example, if you were to scan this writer’s polyglot brain, you’d surely find overdevelopment in areas associated with language use and verbal memory, but if you were to scan a taxi-driver’s brain, then it’d be spatial reasoning and spatial memory that’s overpowered, and for a visual artist, it may be visual processing and creativity that’s enhanced. A musician’s brain? Fine motor skills, auditory processing, auditory memory.

    Now, for those of us who aren’t musicians, how then can we light up areas associated with music? By listening to music, of course. It won’t give us the fine motor skills of a concert violinist, but the other areas we mentioned will get a boost.

    See also: How To Engage Your Whole Brain ← this covers music too, but it’s about (as the title suggests) the whole brain, so check it out and see if there are any areas you’ve been neglecting!

    There are other benefits too, though, including engaging our parasympathetic nervous system, which is good for our heart, gut, brain, and general healthespecially if we sing or hum along to the music:

    The Science Of Sounds ← this also covers the science (yes, science) of mantra meditation vs music

    As for “and what kind of music is most beneficial”, we’d hypothesize that a variety is best, just like with food!

    However, there are some considerations to bear in mind, with science to support them. For example…

    About tempo:

    ❝EEG analysis revealed significant changes in brainwave signals across different frequency bands under different tempi.

    For instance, slow tempo induced higher Theta and Alpha power in the frontal region, while fast tempo increased Beta and Gamma band power.

    Moreover, fast tempo enhanced the average connectivity strength in the frontal, temporal, and occipital regions, and increased phase synchrony value (PLV) between the frontal and parietal regions.

    Read in full: Music tempo modulates emotional states as revealed through EEG insights

    And if you’re wondering about those different brainwave bands, check out:

    Additionally, if you just want science-backed relaxation, the following 8-minute soundscape was developed by sound technicians working with a team of psychologists and neurologists.

    It’s been clinically tested, and found to have a much more relaxing effect (in objective measures of lowering heart rate and lowering cortisol levels, as well as in subjective self-reports) than merely “relaxing music”.

    Try it and see for yourself:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    For much deeper dive into the effect of music on the brain, check out this book we reviewed a while back, by an accomplished musician and neuroscientist (that’s one person, who is both things):

    This Is Your Brain on Music – by Dr. Daniel Levitin

    Enjoy!

    And now for a bonus item…

    A s a bit of reader feedback prompted some interesting thoughts:

    ❝You erred on the which is better section. Read this carefully :Looking at minerals, grapes have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, and zinc, while grapes have more potassium and manganese. A clear win for strawberries here.❞

    You’re quite right; thank you for pointing it out, and kindly pardon the typo, which has now been corrected!

    The reason for the mistake was because when I (writer responsible for it here, hi) was writing this, I had the information for both fruits in front of me, but the information for grapes was on the right in my field of vision, so I errantly put it on the right on the page, too, while also accidentally crediting strawberries’ minerals to grapes, since strawberries’ data was on the left in my field a vision.

    The reason for explaining this: it’s a quirky, very human way to err, in an era when a lot of web content is AI-generated with very different kinds of mistakes (usually because AI is very bad at checking sources, so will confidently state something as true despite the fact that the source was The Onion, or Clickhole, or someone’s facetiously joking answer on Quora, for example).

    All in all, while we try to not make typos, we’d rather such human errors than doing like an AI and confidently telling you that Amanita phalloides mushrooms are a rich source of magnesium, and also delicious (they are, reportedly, but they are also the most deadly mushroom on the face of the Earth, also known as the Death Cap mushroom).

    In any case, here’s the corrected version of the grapes vs strawberries showdown:

    Grapes vs Strawberries – Which is Healthier?

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • 3 Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic

    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.

    Dr. Annette Bosworth gives her recommendations, and explains why:

    What and how

    We’ll get straight to it; the recommendations are:

    • Coffee, black, unsweetened: not only suppresses the appetite but also boosts the metabolism, increasing fat burn.
    • Salt: especially for when fasting (as under such circumstances we may lose salts without replenishing them), a small taste of this can help satisfy taste buds while replenishing sodium and—depending on the salt—other minerals. For example, if you buy “low-sodium salt” in the supermarket, this is generally sodium chloride cut with potassium chloride and/or occasionally magnesium sulfate.
    • Ketones (MCT oil): ketones can suppress hunger, particularly when fasting causes blood sugar levels to drop. Supplementing with MCT oil promotes ketone production in the liver, training the body to produce more ketones naturally, thus curbing appetite.

    For more on these including the science of them, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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  • The Natural Facelift – by Sophie Perry

    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.

    First, what this book isn’t: it’s mostly not about beauty, and it’s certainly not about ageist ideals of “hiding” aging.

    The author herself discusses the privilege that is aging (not everyone gets to do it) and the importance of taking thankful pride in our lived-in bodies.

    The title and blurb belie the contents of the book rather. Doubtlessly the publisher felt that extrinsic beauty would sell better than intrinsic wellbeing. As for what it’s actually more about…

    Ever splashed your face in cold water to feel better? This book’s about revitalising the complex array of facial muscles (there are anatomical diagrams) and the often-tired and very diverse tissues that cover them, complete with the array of nerve endings very close to your CNS (not to mention the vagus nerve running just behind your jaw), and some of the most important blood vessels of your body, serving your brain.

    With all that in mind, this book, full of useful therapeutic techniques, is a very, very far cry from “massage like this and you’ll look like you got photoshopped”.

    The style varies, as some parts of explanation of principles, or anatomy, and others are hands-on (literally) guides to the exercises, but it is all very clear and easy to understand/follow.

    Bottom line: aspects of conventional beauty may be a side-effect of applying the invigorating exercises described in this book. The real beauty is—literally—more than skin-deep.

    Click here to check out The Natural Facelift, and order yours!

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