Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents – by Dr. Lindsay Gibson
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Not everyone had the best of parents, and the harm done can last well beyond childhood. This book looks at healing that.
Dr. Gibson talks about four main kinds of “difficult” parents, though of course they can overlap:
- The emotional parent, with their unpredictable outbursts
- The driven parent, with their projected perfectionism
- The passive parent, with their disinterest and unreliability
- The rejecting parent, with their unavailability and insults
For all of them, it’s common that nothing we could do was ever good enough, and that leaves a deep scar. To add to it, the unfavorable dynamic often persists in adult life, assuming everyone involved is still alive and in contact.
So, what to do about it? Dr. Gibson advocates for first getting a good understanding of what wasn’t right/normal/healthy, because it’s easy for a lot of us to normalize the only thing we’ve ever known. Then, beyond merely noting that no child deserved that lack of compassion, moving on to pick up the broken pieces one by one, and address each in turn.
The style of the book is anecdote-heavy (case studies, either anonymized or synthesized per common patterns) in a way that will probably be all-too-relatable to a lot of readers (assuming that if you buy this book, it’s for a reason), science-moderate (references peppered into the text; three pages of bibliography), and practicality-dense—that is to say, there are lots of clear usable examples, there are self-assessment questionnaires, there are worksheets for now making progress forward, and so forth.
Bottom line: if one or more of the parent types above strikes a chord with you, there’s a good chance you could benefit from this book.
Click here to check out Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and rebuild yourself!
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Cordyceps: Friend Or Foe?
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Cordyceps: friend or foe?
Cordyceps is a famously frightening fungus. It’s the one responsible for “zombie ants” and other zombie creatures, and it’s the basis for the existential threat to humanity in the TV show The Last of Us.
It’s a parasitic fungus that controls the central and peripheral nervous systems of its host, slowly replacing the host’s body, as well as growing distinctive spines that erupt out of the host’s body. Taking over motor functions, it compels the host to do two main things, which are to eat more food, and climb to a position that will be good to release spores from.
Fortunately, none of that matters to humans. Cordyceps does not (unlike in the TV show) affect humans that way.
What does Cordyceps do in humans?
Cordyceps (in various strains) is enjoyed as a health supplement, based on a long history of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and nowadays it’s coming under a scientific spotlight too.
The main health claims for it are:
- Against inflammation
- Against aging
- Against cancer
- For blood sugar management
- For heart health
- For exercise performance
Sounds great! What does the science say?
There’s a lot more science for the first three (which are all closely related to each other, and often overlapping in mechanism and effect).
So let’s take a look:
Against inflammation
The science looks promising for this, but studies so far have either been in vitro (cell cultures in petri dishes), or else murine in vivo (mouse studies), for example:
- Anti-inflammatory effects of Cordyceps mycelium in murine macrophages
- Cordyceps sinensis as an immunomodulatory agent
- Immunomodulatory functions of extracts from Cordyceps cicadae
- Cordyceps pruinosa inhibits in vitro and in vivo inflammatory mediators
In summary: we can see that it has anti-inflammatory properties for mice and in the lab; we’d love to see the results of studies done on humans, though. Also, while it has anti-inflammatory properties, it performed less well than commonly-prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs, for example:
❝C. militaris can modulate airway inflammation in asthma, but it is less effective than prednisolone or montelukast.❞
Against aging
Because examining the anti-aging effects of a substance requires measuring lifespans and repeating the experiment, anti-aging studies do not tend to be done on humans, because they would take lifetimes to perform. To this end, it’s inconvenient, but not a criticism of Cordyceps, that studies have been either mouse studies (short lifespan, mammals like us) or fruit fly studies (very short lifespan, genetically surprisingly similar to us).
The studies have had positive results, with typical lifespan extensions of 15–20%:
- The lifespan-extending effect of Cordyceps sinensis in normal mice
- Cordyceps sinensis oral liquid prolongs the lifespan of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster
- Anti-aging activity of polysaccharides from Cordyceps militaris
- Anti-aging effect of Cordyceps sinensis extract
Against cancer
Once again, the studies here have been in vitro, or murine in vivo. They do look good though:
In vitro (human cell cultures in a lab):
In vivo (mouse studies):
Summary of these is: Cordyceps quite reliably inhibits tumor growth in vitro (human cell cultures) and in vivo (mouse studies). However, trials in human cancer patients are so far conspicuous by their absence.
For blood sugar management
Cordyceps appears to mimic the action of insulin, without triggering insulin sensitivity. For example:
The anti-hyperglycemic activity of the fruiting body of Cordyceps in diabetic rats
There were some other rat/mouse studies with similar results. No studies in humans yet.
For heart health
Cordyceps contains adenosine. You may remember that caffeine owes part of its stimulant effect to blocking adenosine, the hormone that makes us feel sleepy. So in this way, Cordyceps partially does the opposite of what caffeine does, and may be useful against arrhythmia:
Cardiovascular protection of Cordyceps sinensis act partially via adenosine receptors
For exercise performance
A small (30 elderly participants) study found that Cordyceps supplementation improved VO2 max by 7% over the course of six weeks:
However, another small study (22 young athletes) failed to reproduce those results:
Cordyceps Sinensis supplementation does not improve endurance exercise performance
In summary…
Cordyceps almost certainly has anti-inflammation, anti-aging, and anti-cancer benefits.
Cordyceps may have other benefits too, but the evidence is thinner on the ground for those, so far.
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Strategic Wellness
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Strategic Wellness: planning ahead for a better life!
This is Dr. Michael Roizen. With hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and 14 US patents, his work has been focused on the importance of lifestyle factors in healthy living. He’s the Chief Wellness Officer at the world-famous Cleveland Clinic, and is known for his “RealAge” test and related personalized healthcare services.
If you’re curious about that, you can take the RealAge test here.
(they will require you inputting your email address if you do, though)
What’s his thing?
Dr. Roizen is all about optimizing health through lifestyle factors—most notably, diet and exercise. Of those, he is particularly keen on optimizing nutritional habits.
Is this just the Mediterranean Diet again?
Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more, he makes the case for what he calls “circadian eating”, optimally timing what we eat and when.
Is that just Intermittent Fasting again?
Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more:
Dr. Roizen takes a more scientific approach. Which isn’t to say that intermittent fasting is unscientific—on the contrary, there’s mountains of evidence for it being a healthful practice for most people. But while people tend to organize their intermittent fasting purely according to convenience, he notes some additional factors to take into account, including:
- We are evolved to eat when the sun is up
- We are evolved to be active before eating (think: hunting and gathering)
- Our insulin resistance increases as the day goes on
Now, if you’ve a quick mind about you, you’ll have noticed that this means:
- We should keep our eating to a particular time window (classic intermittent fasting), and/but that time window should be while the sun is up
- We should not roll out of bed and immediately breakfast; we need to be active for a bit first (moderate exercise is fine—this writer does her daily grocery-shopping trip on foot before breakfast, for instance… getting out there and hunting and gathering those groceries!)
- We should not, however, eat too much later in the day (so, dinner should be the smallest meal of the day)
The latter item is the one that’s perhaps biggest change for most people. His tips for making this as easy as possible include:
- Over-cater for dinner, but eat only one portion of it, and save the rest for an early-afternoon lunch
- First, however, enjoy a nutrient-dense protein-centric breakfast with at least some fibrous vegetation, for example:
- Salmon and asparagus
- Scrambled tofu and kale
- Yogurt and blueberries
Enjoy!
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Hearty Healthy Ragù
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Ragù is a traditional Italian meaty sauce with tomato, and is the base for a number of other Italian dishes. It can be enjoyed as-is, or with very minor modifications can be turned into a Bolognese sauce or a lasagna filling or various other things. Our variations from tradition are mainly twofold here: we’re using nutrition-packed lentils instead of meat (but with a couple of twists that make them meatier), and we’re not using wine.
Traditionally, red wine is used in a ragù (white wine if you want to make it into a Bolognese sauce, by the way), but with all we’re doing it’s not necessary. If you want to add a splash of wine, we’re not going to call that a healthy ingredient, but we’re also not the boss of you
You will need
- 1 large onion (or equivalent small ones), chopped roughly
- 1 bulb garlic (or to your heart’s content), chopped finely or crushed
- 4 large tomatoes, chopped (or 2 cans chopped tomatoes)
- 1 tube (usually about 7 oz) tomato purée
- 1 cup brown lentils (green lentils will do if you can’t get brown)
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tbsp black pepper, cracked or coarse ground
- 1 bunch fresh basil, finely chopped (or 1 tbsp, freeze-dried)
- 1 bunch fresh oregano, finely chopped (or 1 tbsp, freeze-dried)
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (failing that, 1 tbsp yeast extract, yes, even if you don’t like it, we promise it won’t taste like it once it’s done; it just makes the dish meatier in taste and also adds vitamin B12)
- 1 tsp cumin, ground (note that this one was tsp, not tbsp like the others)
- 1 tsp MSG, or 2 tsp low-sodium salt
- 4 cups water
- Olive oil for frying (ideally Extra Virgin, but so long as it’s at least marked virgin olive oil and not cut with other oils, that’s fine)
- Parsley, chopped, to garnish
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Put the lentils in a small saucepan, or if you have one, a rice cooker (the rice cooker is better; works better and requires less attention), adding the chia seeds, MSG or low sodium salt, and nutritional yeast (or yeast extract). as well as the cumin. Add 4 cups boiling water and turn on the heat to cook them. This will probably take about 15–20 minutes; you want the lentils to be soft; a tiny bit past al dente, but not so far as mushy.
2) Fry the onion in some olive oil in a big pan (everything is going in here eventually if the pan is big enough; if it isn’t, you’ll need to transfer to a bigger pan in a bit). Once they’re nearly done, throw in the garlic too. If the lentils aren’t done yet, take the onions and garlic off the heat while you wait. After a few times of doing this recipe, you’ll be doing everything like clockwork and it’ll all align perfectly.
3) Drain the lentils (if all the water wasn’t absorbed; again, after doing it a few times, you’ll just use the right amount of water for your apparatus) but don’t rinse them (remember you put seasonings in here!), and add them to the pan with the onions and garlic; add a splash more olive oil if necessary, and stir until all the would-be-excess fat is absorbed into the lentils.
Note: the excess fat to be absorbed by the lentils was a feature not a bug; we wanted a little fat in the lentils! Makes the dish meatier and tastier, as well as more nutrient-dense.
4) add the tomatoes and tomato purée, stirring them in thoroughly; add the basil and oregano too and stir those in as well. Set it on a low heat for at least 10–15 minutes, stirring occasionally to let the flavors blend.
(if you happen to be serving pasta with it, then the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta is a good time for the flavors to do their thing)
5) take it off the heat, and add the parsley garnish. It’s done!
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- What Is The Mediterranean Diet, Anyway?
- Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean
- Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure ← one more reason for the brown lentils today
- Chia: The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal
- The Many Health Benefits of Garlic
- Olive Oil: Is “Extra Virgin” Worth It?
Take care!
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The Lies That Depression Tells Us
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In this short (6:42) video, psychiatrist Dr. Tracey Marks talks about 8 commonly-believed lies that depression often tells us. They are:
- “I don’t measure up”
- “No one cares about me”
- “I’m better off alone”
- “No one understands”
- “It’s all my fault”
- “I have no reason to be depressed”
- “Nothing matters”
- “I’ll never get better”
Some of these can be reinforced by people around us; it’s easy to believe that “no one understands” if for example the few people we interact with the most don’t understand, or that “I have no reason to be depressed” if people try to cheer you up by pointing out your many good fortunes.
The reality, of course, is that depression is a large, complex, and many-headed beast, with firm roots in neurobiology.
There are things we can do that may ameliorate it… But they also may not, and sometimes life is just going to suck for a while. That doesn’t mean we should give up (that, too, is depression lying to us, per “I’ll never get better”), but it does mean that we should not be so hard on ourselves for not having “walked it off” the way one might “just walk off” a broken leg.
Oh, you can’t “just walk off” a broken leg? Well then, perhaps it’s not surprising if we don’t “just think off” a broken brain, either. The brain can rebuild itself, but that’s a slow process, so buckle in:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to know more?
You might like these previous articles of ours about depression (managing it, and overcoming it):
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
- Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
- The Easiest Way To Take Up Journaling
- Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
Take care!
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Lime-Charred Cauliflower Popcorn
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Called “popcorn” for its appearance and tasty-snackness, this one otherwise bears little relation to the usual movie theater snack, and it’s both tastier and healthier. All that said, it can be eaten on its own as a snack (even with a movie, if you so wish), or served as one part of a many-dish banquet, or (this writer’s favorite) as a delicious appetizer that also puts down a healthy bed of fiber ready for the main course to follow it.
You will need
- 1 cauliflower, cut into small (popcorn-sized) florets
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp lime pickle
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp chili flakes
- 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- ½ tsp ground turmeric
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat your oven as hot as it will go
2) Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl except the cauliflower, to form a marinade
3) Drizzle the marinade over the cauliflower in a larger bowl (i.e. big enough for the cauliflower), and mix well until the cauliflower is entirely, or at least almost entirely, coated. Yes, it’s not a lot of marinade but unless you picked a truly huge cauliflower, the proportions we gave will be enough, and you want the end result to be crisp, not dripping.
4) Spread the marinaded cauliflower florets out on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Put it in the oven on the middle shelf, so it doesn’t cook unevenly, but keeping the temperature as high as it goes.
5) When it is charred and crispy golden, it’s done—this should take about 20 minutes, but we’ll say ±5 minutes depending on your oven, so do check on it periodically—and time to serve (it is best enjoyed warm).
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- We must do a main feature on the merits of cruciferous vegetables! Watch this space.
- All About Olive Oils (Extra Virgin & Otherwise)
- Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold
Take care!
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Want to sleep longer? Adding mini-bursts of exercise to your evening routine can help – new study
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Exercising before bed has long been discouraged as the body doesn’t have time to wind down before the lights go out.
But new research has found breaking up a quiet, sedentary evening of watching television with short bursts of resistance exercise can lead to longer periods of sleep.
Adults spend almost one third of the 24-hour day sleeping. But the quality and length of sleep can affect long-term health. Sleeping too little or waking often in the night is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Physical activity during the day can help improve sleep. However, current recommendations discourage intense exercise before going to bed as it can increase a person’s heart rate and core temperature, which can ultimately disrupt sleep.
Nighttime habits
For many, the longest period of uninterrupted sitting happens at home in the evening. People also usually consume their largest meal during this time (or snack throughout the evening).
Insulin (the hormone that helps to remove sugar from the blood stream) tends to be at a lower level in the evening than in the morning.
Together these factors promote elevated blood sugar levels, which over the long term can be bad for a person’s health.
Our previous research found interrupting evening sitting every 30 minutes with three minutes of resistance exercise reduces the amount of sugar in the bloodstream after eating a meal.
But because sleep guidelines currently discourage exercising in the hours before going to sleep, we wanted to know if frequently performing these short bursts of light activity in the evening would affect sleep.
Activity breaks for better sleep
In our latest research, we asked 30 adults to complete two sessions based in a laboratory.
During one session the adults sat continuously for a four-hour period while watching streaming services. During the other session, they interrupted sitting by performing three minutes of body-weight resistance exercises (squats, calf raises and hip extensions) every 30 minutes.
After these sessions, participants went home to their normal life routines. Their sleep that evening was measured using a wrist monitor.
Our research found the quality of sleep (measured by how many times they woke in the night and the length of these awakenings) was the same after the two sessions. But the night after the participants did the exercise “activity breaks” they slept for almost 30 minutes longer.
Identifying the biological reasons for the extended sleep in our study requires further research.
But regardless of the reason, if activity breaks can extend sleep duration, then getting up and moving at regular intervals in the evening is likely to have clear health benefits.
Time to revisit guidelines
These results add to earlier work suggesting current sleep guidelines, which discourage evening exercise before bed, may need to be reviewed.
As the activity breaks were performed in a highly controlled laboratory environment, future research should explore how activity breaks performed in real life affect peoples sleep.
We selected simple, body-weight exercises to use in this study as they don’t require people to interrupt the show they may be watching, and don’t require a large space or equipment.
If people wanted to incorporate activity breaks in their own evening routines, they could probably get the same benefit from other types of exercise. For example, marching on the spot, walking up and down stairs, or even dancing in the living room.
The key is to frequently interrupt evening sitting time, with a little bit of whole-body movement at regular intervals.
In the long run, performing activity breaks may improve health by improving sleep and post-meal blood sugar levels. The most important thing is to get up frequently and move the body, in a way the works best for a person’s individual household.
Jennifer Gale, PhD candidate, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago and Meredith Peddie, Senior Lecturer, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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