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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Apples vs Lemons – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apples to lemons, we picked the lemons.
Why?
It’s a straightforward one today! Apples are great, but…
In terms of macros, apples have more carbs while lemons have more fiber and protein; a win for lemons, we say.
In the category of vitamins, apples have more of vitamin A, while lemons have more of vitamins B1, B5, B6, B9, C, and choline. A clear win for lemons, even before we consider the amount by which they contain more vitamin C (10x more than apples have).
When it comes to minerals, apples have a tiny touch more manganese, while lemons have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc.
In short, if an apple a day keeps the doctor a way, then lemons could well be your doctor’s retirement plan.
Of course, enjoy either or both though; diversity is good!
You may be thinking: “but I’m not going to eat lemons like I eat apples; this is an unfair comparison”
To that we say:
- you can if you want; nobody can stop you!
- apple slices and lemon slices can often go in similar things (drinks, desserts, etc)
Want to learn more?
You might like:
The Best Foods For Collagen Production ← another reason to enjoy lemons
Enjoy!
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A warm, wet spring means more mozzies. How to protect yourself from the diseases they spread
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Mosquito bites are annoying. They can also have deadly consequences. So what diseases do mosquitoes in Australia carry?
And with warmer weather on its way and rain expected to continue, how can you prepare for the coming mosquito season?
Mosquitoes are deadliest animal
Mosquitoes kill more people than any other animal. Worldwide, more than half a million people die each year from mosquito bites that transmit malaria parasites.
Australia is fortunate to be free of major outbreaks of malaria, though occasional cases do occur.
The most common mosquito-borne disease in Australia is caused by Ross River virus. Around 5,000 cases are reported each year and, while never fatal, the illness can be severely debilitating. Symptoms include fever, rash, joint pain and fatigue.
Mosquito populations fluctuate year by year. A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), CC BY-NC-SA Murray Valley encephalitis virus is responsible for very rare but potentially fatal disease. It’s detected most years in northern Australia.
There has been a resurgence of the virus in southeastern parts of Australia following flooding in recent years. Mosquitoes pick up the virus from waterbirds throughout the Murray Darling Basin before they pass on the pathogen to people. Mosquito and waterbird populations both boom after flooding.
Mosquitoes in some coastal areas of Victoria can also pass on the flesh-eating bacteria that can cause Buruli ulcer.
What about Japanese encephalitis?
Japanese encephalitis virus can cause fever, headaches, vomiting and, in rare cases, death.
Over the summer of 2021-22, there were 45 cases of Japanese encephalitis in southeastern Australia. This virus was never expected to spread so widely. In some parts of Australia, people died due to mosquito bites for the first time in around 50 years.
Scientists and health authorities thought Japanese encephalitis virus would transmit in a similar way to the closely related Murray Valley encephalitis virus, with outbreaks typically occurring after flooding that provided ideal conditions for both mosquitoes and the waterbirds carrying the virus.
But we now know pigs – especially feral pigs – are in the mix too, along with a range of other animals.
With gaps in our understanding of what drives local transmission, predictions of Japanese encephalitis activity are now proving to be less reliable. This makes it hard to work out the threat it may pose this summer.
Last summer, despite the lack of any substantial rainfall, the virus turned up even though mosquito (and waterbird) populations were generally low.
The virus also wasn’t limited to those areas where we’d expect to see it. There is growing evidence it’s made its way to the east coast, with the virus detected in the suburbs of Brisbane.
Ongoing wet weather can provide ideal conditions for mosquitoes. A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), CC BY-NC-SA How will the weather impact mosquitoes this season?
Like all insects, mosquitoes thrive in warmer weather. But they also need water.
It doesn’t really matter if it’s a “wet” or “dry” summer, mosquitoes are always active. But sometimes there are more – lots more.
In most parts of Australia, there is currently no shortage of water. Some regions have had record rainfall this winter, with more on the way.
The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting above-average rainfall through to the end of the year. Once the weather warms up, it could be a “buzzy” start to mosquito season.
This doesn’t mean outbreaks of mosquito-borne disease are inevitable. But we need to be alert to the risks and how best to protect ourselves and family.
Scientists like me trap mosquitoes across Australia each summer to track changes in their abundance, as well as activity of pathogens. A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), CC BY-NC-SA Monitoring mozzies
More rain means a greater risk of mosquito-borne disease. But outbreaks aren’t easy to predict, so surveillance is critical.
Australian state and territory health authorities undertake monitoring of mosquitoes and the pathogens they carry each year. The objective is to provide an early warning of elevated risk of mosquito-borne diseases. This may be due to increased mosquito activity or the detection of mosquito-borne pathogens.
Given the uncertainty around Japanese encephalitis, it’s also important to monitor locations where the virus has not yet been detected.
How to stay safe this spring and summer
There’s a lot you can do to protect yourself and family from mosquito bites and mosquito-borne disease.
A vaccine is available for those at risk of Japanese encephalitis. See your local health professional for advice on accessing the vaccine.
But there aren’t vaccines for the other local mosquito-borne diseases. Nor are there any specific treatments for these diseases. So preventing mosquito bites is the best way to protect yourself.
If you’re outdoors when mosquitoes are active, cover up with long pants, a long-sleeved shirt and covered shoes. Apply an insect repellent containing diethyltoluamide, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus to all exposed skin.
Skip the stickers, patches and wristbands, as the evidence shows they aren’t a reliable way to prevent bites.
Keep your property free of mosquito breeding grounds, too. Mosquitoes can lay eggs in any container that fills with water: a plant saucer, a bird bath, discarded plastic buckets, bottles or tins. Tip them out each week, cover them up or throw them away.
Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Medical Science & Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute; Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Semaglutide’s Surprisingly Unexamined Effects
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Semaglutide’s Surprisingly Big Research Gap
GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic, Wegovy, and other semaglutide drugs. are fast becoming a health industry standard go-to tool in the weight loss toolbox. When it comes to recommending that patients lose weight, “Have you considered Ozempic?” is the common refrain.
Sometimes, this may be a mere case of kicking the can down the road with regard to some other treatment that it can be argued (sometimes even truthfully) would go better after some weight loss:
How weight bias in health care can harm patients with obesity: Research
…which we also covered in fewer words in the second-to-last item here:
But GLP-1 agonists work, right?
Yes, albeit there’s a litany of caveats, top of which are usually:
- there are often adverse gastrointestinal side effects
- if you stop taking them, weight regain generally ensues promptly
For more details on these and more, see:
…but now there’s another thing that’s come to light:
The dark side of semaglutide’s weight loss
In academia, “dark” is often used to describe “stuff we don’t have much (or in some cases, any) direct empirical evidence of, but for reasons of surrounding things, we know it’s there”.
Well-known examples include “dark matter” in physics and the Dark Ages in (European) history.
In the case of semaglutide and weight loss, a review by a team of researchers (Drs. Sandra Christenen, Katie Robinson, Sara Thomas, and Dominique Williams) has discovered how little research has been done into a certain aspect of GLP-1 agonist’s weight loss effects, namely…
Dietary changes!
There’s been a lot of popular talk about “people taking semaglutide eat less”, but it’s mostly anecdotal and/or presumed based on parts of the mechanism of action (increasing insulin production, reducing glucagon secretions, modulating dietary cravings).
Where studies have looked at dietary changes, it’s almost exclusively been a matter of looking at caloric intake (which has been found to be a 16–39% reduction), and observations-in-passing that patients reported reduction in cravings for fatty and sweet foods.
This reduction in caloric intake, by the way, is not significantly different to the reduction brought about by counselling alone (head-to-head studies have been done; these are also discussed in the research review).
However! It gets worse. Very few studies of good quality have been done, even fewer (two studies) actually had a registered dietitian nutritionist on the team, and only one of them used the “gold standard” of nutritional research, the 24-hour dietary recall test. Which, in case you’re curious, you can read about what that is here:
Dietary Assessment Methods: What Is A 24-Hour Recall?
Of the four studies that actually looked at the macros (unlike most studies), they found that on average, protein intake decreased by 17.1%. Which is a big deal!
It’s an especially big deal, because while protein’s obviously important for everyone, it’s especially important for anyone trying to lose weight, because muscle mass is a major factor in metabolic base rate—which in turn is much important for fat loss/maintenance than exercise, when it comes to how many calories we burn by simply existing.
A reasonable hypothesis, therefore, is that one of the numerous reasons people who quit GLP-1 agonists immediately put fat back on, is because they probably lost muscle mass in amongst their weight loss, meaning that their metabolic base rate will have decreased, meaning that they end up more disposed to put on fat than before.
And, that’s just a hypothesis and it’s a hypothesis based on very few studies, so it’s not something to necessarily take as any kind of definitive proof of anything, but it is to say—as the researchers of this review do loudly say—more research needs to be done into this, because this has been a major gap in research so far!
Any other bad news?
While we’re talking research gaps, guess how many studies looked into micronutrient intake changes in people taking GLP-1 agonists?
If you guessed zero, you guessed correctly.
You can find the paper itself here:
What’s the main take-away here?
On a broad, scoping level: we need more research!
On a “what this means for individuals who want to lose weight” level: maybe we should be more wary of this still relatively new (less than 10 years old) “wonder drug”. And for most of those 10 years it’s only been for diabetics, with weight loss use really being in just the past few years (2021 onwards).
In other words: not necessarily any need to panic, but caution is probably not a bad idea, and natural weight loss methods remain very reasonable options for most people.
See also: How To Lose Weight (Healthily!)
Take care!
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Surviving A Heart Attack? Stroke? There’s An App For That
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❝Stopped.❞
~ The last words of Dr. Joseph Henry Green, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, who had been taking his own pulse
Sometimes, self-diagnosis isn’t so clear as that, though, especially when it comes to life-threatening issues with the heart and brain (i.e. things we can’t readily look at, and diagnose with the same ease we might diagnose a broken arm or such). Indeed, many people have a heart attack or stroke and, upon finding that they are not dead, conclude “I guess I’m fine after all” and continue about their day
Unfortunately, it’s often the case that in fact they still needed medical attention within the hour (literally: the hour after a heart attack or stroke is called “the golden hour” by doctors in the field, as medical treatments are most effective then, and less likely to help so much afterwards).
As a result, a lot of people die because they didn’t seek medical attention because they dismissed their own experience once the immediate symptoms abated.
About The “Emergency Call for Heart Attack and Stroke” (ECHAS) App
This is a smartphone app that can be used at home to identify the signs of heart attacks and strokes, including:
- A virtual exam using questions similar to those asked in ERs.
- A finger-tapping test to detect one-sided body weakness.
- A risk score to advise whether to call 911, a hotline, or a doctor.
In a moderate-size (n=202) study, it successfully detected strokes in under 2 minutes and heart attacks in 1 minute, and when we say “successfully”, it was 100% accurate in identifying patients who were later admitted to the hospital. Obviously, we cannot say about the patients who didn’t go to hospital, because there was (consequently) no further data for them, but we can conclude:
- there were no false positives (that’s the “100% accurate in identifying patients who were later admitted to the hospital” part)
- while we can’t say for sure there were no false negatives, it is promising that there were no reports of “app said patient was fine, patient then deteriorated/died”, which would have been picked up. So, it looks promisingly like there were no false negatives either.
In terms of ease of use, it was rated by the study participants as very easy to use, making it suitable for people without medical training, and for that matter, people without medical training in the middle of a medical crisis who thus might not be at their best when using it.
You can read the study paper in full, here: Assessment of the Sensitivity of a Smartphone App to Assist Patients in the Identification of Stroke and Myocardial Infarction: Cross-Sectional Study
Sounds great; where can I get it?
At time of writing, it’s not publicly available just yet, but the researchers want to trial it on a much larger scale, so we’ll keep an eye out for invitations to that trial (probably in a huge, crowdsourced data way, like ZOE and 1 Million Nights and such) and advise you to do so, too.
In all likelihood, it’ll appear soon for iPhone and Android in their respective app stores.
In the meantime, you might want to check out:
Take care!
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Scattered Minds – by Dr. Gabor Maté
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This was not the first book that Dr. Maté sat down to write, by far. But it was the first that he actually completed. Guess why.
Writing from a position of both personal and professional experience and understanding, Dr. Maté explores the inaptly-named Attention Deficit Disorder (if anything, there’s often a surplus of attention, just, to anything and everything rather than necessarily what would be most productive in the moment), its etiology, its presentation, and its management.
This is a more enjoyable book than some others by the same author, as while this condition certainly isn’t without its share of woes (often, for example, a cycle of frustration and shame re “why can’t I just do the things; this is ruining my life and it would be so easy if I could just do the things!”), it’s not nearly so bleak as entire books about trauma, addiction, and so forth (worthy as those books also are).
Dr. Maté frames it specifically as a development disorder, and one whereby with work, we can do the development later that (story of an ADHDer’s life) we should have done earlier but didn’t. In terms of practical advice, he includes a program for effecting this change, including as an adult.
The style is easy-reading, in small chapters, with ADHD’d-up readers in mind, giving a strong sense of speeding pleasantly through the book.
Bottom line: when it’s a book by Dr. Gabor Maté, you know it’s going to be good, and this is no exception. Certainly read it if you, anyone you care about, or even anyone you just spend a lot of time around, has ADHD or similar.
Click here to check out Scattered Minds, and unscatter yours!
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Healthy Habits For Your Heart – by Monique Tello
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Did you guess we’d review this one today? Well, you’ve already had a taste of what Dr. Tello has to offer, but if you want to take your heart health seriously, this incredibly accessible guide is excellent.
Because Dr. Tello doesn’t assume prior knowledge, the first part of the book (the first three chapters) are given over to “heart and habit basics”—heart science, the effect your lifestyle can have on such, and how to change your habits.
The second part of the book is rather larger, and addresses changing foundational habits, nutrition habits, weight loss/maintenance, healthy activity habits, and specifically addressing heart-harmful habits (especially drinking, smoking, and the like).
She then follows up with a section of recipes, references, and other useful informational appendices.
The writing style throughout is super simple and clear, even when giving detailed clinical information. This isn’t a dusty old doctor who loves the sound of their own jargon, this is good heart health rendered as easy and accessible as possible to all.
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