Can We Side-Step Age-Related Alienation?

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When The World Moves Without Us…

We’ve written before about how reduced social engagement can strike people of all ages, and what can be done about it:

How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

…but today we’re going to talk more about a specific aspect of it, namely, the alienation that can come with old age—and other life transitions too, but getting older is something that (unless accident or incident befall us first) all of us will definitely do.

What’s the difference?

Loneliness is a status, alienation is more of a process. It can be the alienation in the sense of an implicit “you don’t belong here” message from the world that’s geared around the average person and thus alienates those who are not that (a lack of accessibility to people with disabilities can be an important and very active example of this), and it can also be an alienation from what we’ve previously considered our “niche” in the world—the loss of purpose many people feel upon retirement fits this bill. It can even be a more generalized alienation from our younger selves; it’s easy to have a self-image that doesn’t match one’s current reality, for instance.

Read more: Estranged by Time: Alienation in the Aging Process

So, how to “un-alienate”?

To “un-alienate”, that is to say, to integrate/reintegrate, can be hard. Some things may even be outright impossible, but most will not be!

Consider how, for example, former athletes become coaches—or for that matter, how former party-goers might become party-hosts (even if the kind of “party” might change with time, give or take the pace at which we like to live our lives).

What’s important is that we take what matters the most to us, and examine how we can realistically still engage with that thing.

This is different from trying to hold on grimly to something that’s no longer our speed.

Letting go of the only thing we’ve known will always be scary; sometimes it’s for the best, and sometimes what we really need is just more of a pivot, like the examples above. The crux lies in knowing which:

  • Is our relationship with the thing (whatever it may be) still working for us, or is it just bringing strife now?
  • If it’s not working for us, is it because of a specific aspect that could be side-stepped while keeping the rest?
  • If we’re going to drop that thing entirely (or be dropped by it, which, while cruel, also happens in life), then where are we going to land?

This latter is one where foresight is a gift, because if we bury our heads in the sand we’re going to land wherever we’re dropped, whereas if we acknowledge the process, we can make a strategic move and land on our feet.

Here’s a good pop-science article about this—it’s aimed at people around retirement age, but honestly the advice is relevant for people of all ages, and facing all manner of life transitions, e.g. career transitions (of which retirement is of course the career transition to end all career transitions), relationship transitions (including B/B/B/B: births, betrothals/break-ups, and bereavements) health transitions (usually: life-changing illnesses and/or disabilities—which again, happens to most of us if something doesn’t get us first), etc. So with all that in mind, this becomes more of a “how to reassess your life at those times when it needs reassessing”:

How to Reassess Your Life in Retirement

But that doesn’t mean that letting go is always necessary

Sometimes, the opposite! Sometimes, the age-old advice to “lean in” really is all the situation calls for, which means:

  • Be ready to say “yes” to things, and if nobody’s asking, be ready to “hey, do you wanna…?” and take a “build it and they will come” approach. This includes with people of different ages, too! Intergenerational friendships can be very rewarding for all concerned, if done right. Communities that span age-ranges can be great for this—they might be about special interests (this writer has friends ranging through four generations from playing chess, for instance), they could be religious communities if we be religious, LGBT groups if that fits for us, even mutual support groups such as for specific disabilities or chronic illness if we have such—notice how the very things that might isolate us can also bring us together!
  • Be open-minded to new experiences; it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of “I’ve never done that” and mistake that self-assessment for an uncritical assumption of “I’m not the kind of person who does that”. Sometimes, you really won’t be! But at least think about it and entertain the possibility, before dismissing it out of hand. And, here’s a life tip: it can be really good to (within the realms of safety, and one’s personal moral principles, of course) take an approach of “try anything once”. Even if we’re almost certain we won’t like it, and even if we then turn out to indeed not like it, it can be a refreshing experience—and now we can say “Yep, tried that, not doing that again” from a position of informed knowledge. That’s the only way we get to look back on a richly lived life of broad experiences, after all, and it is never too late for such.
  • Be comfortable prioritizing quality over quantity. This goes for friends, it goes for activities, it goes for experiences. The topic of “what’s the best number of friends to have?” has been a matter of discussion since at least ancient Greek times (Plato and Aristotle examined this extensively), but whatever number we might arrive at, it’s clear that quality is the critical factor, and quantity after that is just a matter of optimizing.

In short: make sure you’re investing—in your relationships, in your areas of interest, in your community (whatever that may mean for you personally), and most of all, and never forget this: in yourself.

Take care!

Don’t Forget…

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  • Butternut Squash vs Pumpkin – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing butternut squash to pumpkin, we picked the butternut squash.

    Why?

    Both are great! But the butternut squash manages a moderate win in most categories.

    In terms of macros, butternut squash has more of everything except water. Most notably, it has more protein and more fiber. Yes, more carbs too, but the fiber content means that it also has the lower glycemic index, by quite a bit.

    When it comes to vitamins, pumpkin does have a little more of vitamin B1 and a lot more of vitamin E, while butternut squash has more of vitamins B3, B5, B9, C, K, and choline. They’re about equal in the other vitamins they both contain. A fair win for butternut squash.

    In the category of minerals, butternut squash has more calcium, magnesium, manganese, and selenium, while pumpkin has more copper, iron, and phosphorus. They’re about equal in potassium and zinc. A marginal win for butternut squash.

    Adding up the strong win, the fair win, and the marginal win, makes for an easy overall win for butternut squash!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Superfood-Stuffed Squash Recipe

    Take care!

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  • Horse Sedative Use Among Humans Spreads in Deadly Mixture of ‘Tranq’ and Fentanyl

    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.

    TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. — Andrew McClave Jr. loved to lift weights. The 6-foot-4-inch bartender resembled a bodybuilder and once posed for a photo flexing his muscles with former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan.

    “He was extremely dedicated to it,” said his father, Andrew McClave Sr., “to the point where it was almost like he missed his medication if he didn’t go.”

    But the hobby took its toll. According to a police report, a friend told the Treasure Island Police Department that McClave, 36, suffered from back problems and took unprescribed pills to reduce the pain.

    In late 2022, the friend discovered McClave in bed. He had no pulse. A medical examiner determined he had a fatal amount of fentanyl, cocaine, and xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer used to sedate horses, in his system, an autopsy report said. Heart disease was listed as a contributing factor.

    McClave is among more than 260 people across Florida who died in one year from accidental overdoses involving xylazine, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of medical examiner data from 2022, the first year state officials began tracking the substance. Numbers for 2023 haven’t been published.

    The death toll reflects xylazine’s spread into the nation’s illicit drug supply. Federal regulators approved the tranquilizer for animals in the early 1970s and it’s used to sedate horses for procedures like oral exams and colic treatment, said Todd Holbrook, an equine medicine specialist at the University of Florida. Reports of people using xylazine emerged in Philadelphia, then the drug spread south and west.

    What’s not clear is exactly what role the sedative plays in overdose deaths, because the Florida data shows no one fatally overdosed on xylazine alone. The painkiller fentanyl was partly to blame in all but two cases in which the veterinary drug was included as a cause of death, according to the Times analysis. Cocaine or alcohol played roles in the cases in which fentanyl was not involved.

    Fentanyl is generally the “800-pound gorilla,” according to Lewis Nelson, chair of the emergency medicine department at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and xylazine may increase the risk of overdose, though not substantially.

    But xylazine appears to complicate the response to opioid overdoses when they do happen and makes it harder to save people. Xylazine can slow breathing to dangerous levels, according to federal health officials, and it doesn’t respond to the overdose reversal drug naloxone, often known by the brand name Narcan. Part of the problem is that many people may not know they are taking the horse tranquilizer when they use other drugs, so they aren’t aware of the additional risks.

    Lawmakers in Tallahassee made xylazine a Schedule 1 drug like heroin or ecstasy in 2016, and several other states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia have taken action to classify it as a scheduled substance, too. But it’s not prohibited at the federal level. Legislation pending in Congress would criminalize illicit xylazine use nationwide.

    The White House in April designated the combination of fentanyl and xylazine, often called “tranq dope,” as an emerging drug threat. A study of 20 states and Washington, D.C., found that overdose deaths attributed to both illicit fentanyl and xylazine exploded from January 2019 to June 2022, jumping from 12 a month to 188.

    “We really need to continue to be proactive,” said Amanda Bonham-Lovett, program director of a syringe exchange in St. Petersburg, “and not wait until this is a bigger issue.”

    ‘A Good Business Model’

    There are few definitive answers about why xylazine use has spread — and its impact on people who consume it.

    The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in September said the tranquilizer is entering the country in several ways, including from China and in fentanyl brought across the southwestern border. The Florida attorney general’s office is prosecuting an Orange County drug trafficking case that involves xylazine from a New Jersey supplier.

    Bonham-Lovett, who runs IDEA Exchange Pinellas, the county’s anonymous needle exchange, said some local residents who use drugs are not seeking out xylazine — and don’t know they’re consuming it.

    One theory is that dealers are mixing xylazine into fentanyl because it’s cheap and also affects the brain, Nelson said.

    “It’s conceivable that if you add a psychoactive agent to the fentanyl, you can put less fentanyl in and still get the same kick,” he said. “It’s a good business model.”

    In Florida, men accounted for three-quarters of fatal overdoses involving xylazine, according to the Times analysis. Almost 80% of those who died were white. The median age was 42.

    Counties on Florida’s eastern coast saw the highest death tolls. Duval County topped the list with 46 overdoses. Tampa Bay recorded 19 fatalities.

    Cocaine was also a cause in more than 80 cases, including McClave’s, the Times found. The DEA in 2018 warned of cocaine laced with fentanyl in Florida.

    In McClave’s case, Treasure Island police found what appeared to be marijuana and a small plastic bag with white residue in his room, according to a police report. His family still questions how he took the powerful drugs and is grappling with his death.

    He was an avid fisherman, catching snook and grouper in the Gulf of Mexico, said his sister, Ashley McClave. He dreamed of being a charter boat captain.

    “I feel like I’ve lost everything,” his sister said. “My son won’t be able to learn how to fish from his uncle.”

    Mysterious Wounds

    Another vexing challenge for health officials is the link between chronic xylazine use and open wounds.

    The wounds are showing up across Tampa Bay, needle exchange leaders said. The telltale sign is blackened, crusty tissue, Bonham-Lovett said. Though the injuries may start small — the size of a dime — they can grow and “take over someone’s whole limb,” she said.

    Even those who snort fentanyl, instead of injecting it, can develop them. The phenomenon is unexplained, Nelson said, and is not seen in animals.

    IDEA Exchange Pinellas has recorded at least 10 cases since opening last February, Bonham-Lovett said, and has a successful treatment plan. Staffers wash the wounds with soap and water, then dress them.

    One person required hospitalization partly due to xylazine’s effects, Bonham-Lovett said. A 31-year-old St. Petersburg woman, who asked not to be named due to concerns over her safety and the stigma of drug use, said she was admitted to St. Anthony’s Hospital in 2023. The woman, who said she uses fentanyl daily, had a years-long staph infection resistant to some antibiotics, and a wound recently spread across half her thigh.

    The woman hadn’t heard of xylazine until IDEA Exchange Pinellas told her about the drug. She’s thankful she found out in time to get care.

    “I probably would have lost my leg,” she said.

    This article was produced in partnership with the Tampa Bay Times.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Cannabis Myths vs Reality

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    Cannabis Myths vs Reality

    We asked you for your (health-related) opinion on cannabis use—specifically, the kind with psychoactive THC, not just CBD. We got the above-pictured, below-described, spread of responses:

    • A little over a third of you voted for “It’s a great way to relax, without most of the dangers of alcohol”.
    • A little under a third of you voted for “It may have some medical uses, but recreational use is best avoided”.
    • About a quarter of you voted for “The negative health effects outweigh the possible benefits”
    • Three of you voted for “It is the gateway to a life of drug-induced stupor and potentially worse”

    So, what does the science say?

    A quick legal note first: we’re a health science publication, and are writing from that perspective. We do not know your location, much less your local laws and regulations, and so cannot comment on such. Please check your own local laws and regulations in that regard.

    Cannabis use can cause serious health problems: True or False?

    True. Whether the risks outweigh the benefits is a personal and subjective matter (for example, a person using it to mitigate the pain of late stage cancer is probably unconcerned with many other potential risks), but what’s objectively true is that it can cause serious health problems.

    One subscriber who voted for “The negative health effects outweigh the possible benefits” wrote:

    ❝At a bare minimum, you are ingesting SMOKE into your lungs!! Everyone SEEMS TO BE against smoking cigarettes, but cannabis smoking is OK?? Lung cancer comes in many forms.❞

    Of course, that is assuming smoking cannabis, and not consuming it as an edible. But, what does the science say on smoking it, and lung cancer?

    There’s a lot less research about this when it comes to cannabis, compared to tobacco. But, there is some:

    ❝Results from our pooled analyses provide little evidence for an increased risk of lung cancer among habitual or long-term cannabis smokers, although the possibility of potential adverse effect for heavy consumption cannot be excluded.❞

    Read: Cannabis smoking and lung cancer risk: Pooled analysis in the International Lung Cancer Consortium

    Another study agreed there appears to be no association with lung cancer, but that there are other lung diseases to consider, such as bronchitis and COPD:

    ❝Smoking cannabis is associated with symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and there may be a modest association with the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Current evidence does not suggest an association with lung cancer.❞

    Read: Cannabis Use, Lung Cancer, and Related Issues

    Cannabis edibles are much safer than smoking cannabis: True or False?

    Broadly True, with an important caveat.

    One subscriber who selected “It may have some medical uses, but recreational use is best avoided”, wrote:

    ❝I’ve been taking cannabis gummies for fibromyalgia. I don’t know if they’re helping but they’re not doing any harm. You cannot overdose you don’t become addicted.❞

    Firstly, of course consuming edibles (rather than inhaling cannabis) eliminates the smoke-related risk factors we discussed above. However, other risks remain, including the much greater ease of accidentally overdosing.

    ❝Visits attributable to inhaled cannabis are more frequent than those attributable to edible cannabis, although the latter is associated with more acute psychiatric visits and more ED visits than expected.❞

    Note: that “more frequent” for inhaled cannabis, is because more people inhale it than eat it. If we adjust the numbers to control for how much less often people eat it, suddenly we see that the numbers of hospital admissions are disproportionately high for edibles, compared to inhaled cannabis.

    Or, as the study author put it:

    ❝There are more adverse drug events associated on a milligram per milligram basis of THC when it comes in form of edibles versus an inhaled cannabis. If 1,000 people smoked pot and 1,000 people at the same dose in an edible, then more people would have more adverse drug events from edible cannabis.❞

    See the numbers: Acute Illness Associated With Cannabis Use, by Route of Exposure

    Why does this happen?

    • It’s often because edibles take longer to take effect, so someone thinks “this isn’t very strong” and has more.
    • It’s also sometimes because someone errantly eats someone else’s edibles, not realising what they are.
    • It’s sometimes a combination of the above problems: a person who is now high, may simply forget and/or make a bad decision when it comes to eating more.

    On the other hand, that doesn’t mean inhaling it is necessarily safer. As well as the pulmonary issues we discussed previously, inhaling cannabis has a higher risk of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (and the resultant cyclic vomiting that’s difficult to treat).

    You can read about this fascinating condition that’s sometimes informally called “scromiting”, a portmanteau of screaming and vomiting:

    Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome

    You can’t get addicted to cannabis: True or False?

    False. However, it is fair to say that the likelihood of developing a substance abuse disorder is lower than for alcohol, and much lower than for nicotine.

    See: Prevalence of Marijuana Use Disorders in the United States Between 2001–2002 and 2012–2013

    If you prefer just the stats without the science, here’s the CDC’s rendering of that:

    Addiction (Marijuana or Cannabis Use Disorder)

    However, there is an interesting complicating factor, which is age. One is 4–7 times more likely to develop a substance abuse disorder, if one starts use as an adolescent, rather than later in life:

    See: Likelihood of developing an alcohol and cannabis use disorder during youth: Association with recent use and age

    Cannabis is the gateway to use of more dangerous drugs: True or False?

    False, generally speaking. Of course, for any population there will be some outliers, but there appears to be no meaningful causal relation between cannabis use and other substance use:

    Is marijuana really a gateway drug? A nationally representative test of the marijuana gateway hypothesis using a propensity score matching design

    Interestingly, the strongest association (where any existed at all) was between cannabis use and opioid use. However, rather than this being a matter of cannabis use being a gateway to opioid use, it seems more likely that this is a matter of people looking to both for the same purpose: pain relief.

    As a result, growing accessibility of cannabis may actually reduce opioid problems:

    Some final words…

    Cannabis is a complex drug with complex mechanisms and complex health considerations, and research is mostly quite young, due to its historic illegality seriously cramping science by reducing sample sizes to negligible. Simply put, there’s a lot we still don’t know.

    Also, we covered some important topics today, but there were others we didn’t have time to cover, such as the other potential psychological benefits—and risks. Likely we’ll revisit those another day.

    Lastly, while we’ve covered a bunch of risks today, those of you who said it has fewer and lesser risks than alcohol are quite right—the only reason we couldn’t focus on that more, is because to talk about all the risks of alcohol would make this feature many times longer!

    Meanwhile, whether you partake or not, stay safe and stay well.

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  • How To Leverage Placebo Effect For Yourself

    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.

    Placebo Effect: Making Things Work Since… Well, A Very Long Time Ago

    The placebo effect is a well-known, well-evidenced factor that is very relevant when it comes to the testing and implementation of medical treatments:

    NIH | National Center for Biotechnology Information | Placebo Effect

    Some things that make placebo effect stronger include:

    • Larger pills instead of small ones: because there’s got to be more going on in there, right?
    • Thematically-colored pills: e.g. red for stimulant effects, blue for relaxing effects
    • Things that seem expensive: e.g. a well-made large heavy machine, over a cheap-looking flimsy plastic device. Similarly, medication from a small glass jar with a childproof lock, rather than popped out from a cheap blister-pack.
    • Things that seem rational: if there’s an explanation for how it works that you understand and find rational, or at least you believe you understand and find rational ← this works in advertising, too; if there’s a “because”, it lands better almost regardless of what follows the word “because”
    • Things delivered confidently by a professional: this is similar to the “argument from authority” fallacy (whereby a proposed authority will be more likely trusted, even if this is not their area of expertise at all, e.g. celebrity endorsements), but in the case of placebo trials, this often looks like a well-dressed middle-aged or older man with an expensive haircut calling for a young confident-looking aide in a lab coat to administer the medicine, and is received better than a slightly frazzled academic saying “and, uh, this one’s yours” while handing you a pill.
    • Things with ritual attached: this can be related to the above (the more pomp and circumstance is given to the administration of the treatment, the better), but it can also be as simple as an instruction on an at-home-trial medication saying “take 20 minutes before bed”. Because, if it weren’t important, they wouldn’t bother to specify that, right? So it must be important!

    And now for a quick personality test

    Did you see the above as a list of dastardly tricks to watch out for, or did you see the above as a list of things that can make your actual medication more effective?

    It’s arguably both, of course, but the latter more optimistic view is a lot more useful than the former more pessimistic one.

    Since placebo effect works at least somewhat even when you know about it, there is nothing to stop you from leveraging it for your own benefit when taking medication or doing health-related things.

    Next time you take your meds or supplements or similar, pause for a moment for each one to remember what it is and what it will be doing for you. This is a lot like the principles (which are physiological as well as psychological) of mindful eating, by the way:

    How To Get More Nutrition From The Same Food

    Placebo makes some surprising things evidence-based

    We’ve addressed placebo effect sometimes as part of an assessment of a given alternative therapy, often in our “Mythbusting Friday” edition of 10almonds.

    • In some cases, placebo is adjuvant to the therapy, i.e. it is one of multiple mechanisms of action (example: chiropractic or acupuncture)
    • In some cases, placebo is the only known mechanism of action (example: homeopathy)
    • In some cases, even placebo can’t help (example: ear candling)

    One other fascinating and far-reaching (in a potentially good way) thing that placebo makes evidence-based is: prayer

    …which is particularly interesting for something that is fundamentally faith-based, i.e. the opposite of evidence-based.

    Now, we’re a health science publication, not a theological publication, so we’ll consider actual divine intervention to be beyond the scope of mechanisms of action we can examine, but there’s been a lot of research done into the extent to which prayer is beneficial as a therapy, what things it may be beneficial for, and what factors affect whether it helps:

    Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials

    👆 full paper here, and it is very worthwhile reading if you have time, whether or not you are religious personally

    Placebo works best when there’s a clear possibility for psychosomatic effect

    We’ve mentioned before, and we’ll mention again:

    • psychosomatic effect does not mean: “imagining it”
    • psychosomatic effect means: “your brain regulates almost everything else in your body, directly or indirectly, including your autonomic functions, and especially notably when it comes to illness, your immune responses”

    So, a placebo might well heal your rash or even shrink a tumor, but it probably won’t regrow a missing limb, for instance.

    And, this is important: it’s not about how credible/miraculous the outcome will be!

    Rather, it is because we have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for healing rashes and shrinking tumors, that just need to be activated—whereas we don’t have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for regrowing a missing limb, so that’s not something our brain can just tell our body to do.

    So for this reason, in terms of what placebo can and can’t do:

    • Get rid of cancer? Yes, sometimes—because the body has a process for doing that; enjoy your remission
    • Fix a broken nail? No—because the body has no process for doing that; you’ll just have to cut it and wait for it to grow again

    With that in mind, what will you use the not-so-mystical powers of placebo for? What ever you go for… Enjoy, and take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • 7 Kinds Of Rest When Sleep Is Not Enough

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    Taking Rest Seriously (More Than Just Sleep)

    This is Dr. Matthew Edlund. He has 44 years experience as a psychiatrist, and is also a sleep specialist. He has a holistic view of health, which is reflected in his practice; he advocates for “a more complete health: physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being”.

    What does he want us to know?

    Sleep, yes

    Sleep cannot do all things for us in terms of rest, but it can do a lot, and it is critical. It is, in short, a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition for being well-rested.

    See also: Why You Probably Need More Sleep

    Rest actively

    Rest is generally thought of as a passive activity, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron. Popular thinking is that it’s not something defined by what we do, so much what we stop doing.

    In contrast, Dr. Edlund argues that to take rest seriously, we need do restful things.

    Rest is as important as eating, and we wouldn’t want for that to “just happen”, would we?

    Dr. Edlund advocates for restful activities such as going to the garden (or a nearby park) to relax. He also suggests we not underestimate the power of sex as an actively restful activity—this one is generally safer in the privacy of one’s home, though!

    Rest physically

    This is about actively relaxing our body—yoga is a great option here, practised in a way that is not physically taxing, but is physically rejuvenating; gentle stretches are key. Without such things, our body will keep tension, and that is not restful.

    For the absolute most restful yogic practice? Check out:

    Non-Sleep Deep Rest: A Neurobiologist’s Take

    this is about yoga nidra!

    Rest mentally

    The flipside of the above is that we do need to rest our mind also. When we try to rest from a mental activity by taking on a different mental activity that uses the same faculties of the brain, it is not restful.

    Writer’s example: as a writer, I could not rest from my writing by writing recreationally, or even by reading. An accountant, however, could absolutely rest from accounting by picking up a good book, should they feel so inclined.

    Rest socially

    While we all have our preferences when it comes to how much or how little social interaction we like in our lives, humans are fundamentally social creatures, and it is hardwired into us by evolution to function at our best in a community.

    This doesn’t mean you have to go out partying every night, but it does mean you should take care to spend at least a little time with friends, even if just once or twice per week, and yes, even if it’s just a videocall (in person is best, but not everyone lives close by!)

    If your social life is feeling a little thin on the ground these days, that’s a very common thing—not only as we get older, but also as many social institutions took a dive in functionality on account of the pandemic, and many are still floundering. Nevertheless, there are more options than you probably realize; yes, even for the naturally reclusive:

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Rest spiritually

    Be we religious or not, there are scientifically well-evidenced benefits to religious practices—some are because of the social aspect, and follow on from what we talked about just above. Other benefits come from activities such as prayer or meditation (which means that having some kind of faith, while beneficial, is not actually a requirement for spiritual rest—comparable practices without faith are fine too).

    We discussed the overlapping practices of prayer and meditation, here:

    The Science Of Mantra Meditation

    Rest at home

    Obviously, most people sleep at home. But…

    Busy family homes can sometimes need a bit of conscious effort to create a restful environment, even if just for a while. A family dinner together is one great way to achieve this, and also ties in with the social element we mentioned before!

    A different challenge faced by a lot of older people without live-in families, on the other hand, is the feeling of too much opportunity for rest—and then a feeling of shame for taking it. The view is commonly held that, for example, taking an afternoon nap is a sign of weakness.

    On the contrary: taking an afternoon nap can be a good source of strength! Check out:

    How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

    Rest at work

    Our readership has a lot of retirees, but we know that’s not the case for everyone. How then, to rest while at work? Ideally we have breaks, of course, but most workplaces do not exactly have an amusement arcade in the break room. Nevertheless, there are some quick resets that can be done easily, anywhere, and (almost) any time:

    Meditation Games: Meditation That You’ll Actually Enjoy

    Want to know more?

    You might also like:

    How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Water Fluoridation, Atheroma, & More

    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? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    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 😎

    ❝I watched a documentary recently on Fluoride in our drinking water & the dangers of it. Why are we poisoning our water?❞

    This is a great question, and it certainly is controversial. It sounds like the documentary you watched was predominantly or entirely negative, but there’s a lot of science to back both sides of this, and it’s not even that the science is contradictory (it’s not). It’s that what differs is people’s opinions about whether benefiting one thing is worth creating a risk to another, and that means looking at:

    • What is the risk associated with taking no action (error of omission)?
    • What is the risk associated with taking an action (error of commission)?

    The whole topic is worth a main feature, but to summarize a few key points:

    • Water fluoridation is considered good for the prevention of dental cavities
    • Water fluoridation aims to deliver fluoride and doses far below dangerous levels
      • This requires working on consumer averages, though
    • ”Where do we put the safety margins?” is to some extent a subjective question, in terms of trading off one aspect of health for another
    • Too much fluoride can also be bad for the teeth (at least cosmetically, creating little white* spots)
    • Detractors of fluoride tend to mostly be worried about neurological harm
      • However, the doses in public water supplies are almost certainly far below the levels required to cause this harm.
        • That said, again this is working on consumer averages, though.
    • A good guide is: watch your teeth! Those white* spots will be “the canary in the coal mine” of more serious harm that could potentially come from higher levels due to overconsumption of fluorine.

    *Teeth are not supposed to be pure white. The “Hollywood smile” is a lie. Teeth are supposed to be a slightly off-white, ivory color. Anything whiter than that is adding something else that shouldn’t be there, or stripping something off that should be there.

    ❝How does your diet change clean out your arteries of the bad cholesterol?❞

    There’s good news and bad news here, and they can both be delivered with a one-word reply:

    Slowly.

    Or rather: what’s being cleaned out is mostly not the LDL (bad) cholesterol, but rather, the result of that.

    When our diet is bad for cardiovascular health, our arteries get fatty deposits on their walls. Cholesterol gets stuck here too, but that’s not the main physical problem.

    Our body’s natural defenses come into action and try to clean it up, but they (for example macrophages, a kind of white blood cell that consumes invaders and then dies, before being recycled by the next part of the system) often get stuck and become part of the buildup (called atheroma), which can lead to atherosclerosis and (if calcium levels are high) hardening of the arteries, which is the worst end of this.

    This can then require medical attention, precisely because the body can’t remove it very well—especially if you are still maintaining a heart-unhealthy diet, thus continuing to add to the mess.

    However, if it is not too bad yet, yes, a dietary change alone will reverse this process. Without new material being added to the arterial walls, the body’s continual process of rejuvenation will eventually fix it, given time (free from things making it worse) and resources.

    In fact, your arteries can be one of the quickest places for your body to make something better or worse, because the blood is the means by which the body moves most things (good or bad) around the body.

    All the more reason to take extra care of it, since everything else depends on it!

    You might also like our previous main feature:

    All Things Heart Health

    Don’t Forget…

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