All In Your Head (Which Is Where It’s Supposed To Be)

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Today’s news is all about things above the neck, and mostly in the brain. From beating depression to beating cognitive decline, from mindfulness against pain to dentistry nightmares to avoid:

Transcranial ultrasound stimulation

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is one of those treatments that sounds like it’s out of a 1950s sci-fi novel, and yet, it actually works (it’s very well-evidenced against treatment-resistant depression, amongst other things). However, a weakness of it is that it’s difficult to target precisely, making modulation of most neurological disorders impossible. Using ultrasound instead of a magnetic field allows for much more finesse, with very promising initial results across a range of neurological disorders

Read in full: Transcranial ultrasound stimulation: a new frontier in non-invasive brain therapy

Related: Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!

This may cause more pain and damage, but at least it’s more expensive too…

While socialized healthcare systems sometimes run into the problem of not wanting to spend money where it actually is needed, private healthcare systems have the opposite problem: there’s a profit incentive to upsell to more expensive treatments. Here’s how that’s played out in dentistry:

Read in full: Dentists are pulling healthy and treatable teeth to profit from implants, experts warn

Related: Tooth Remineralization: How To Heal Your Teeth Naturally

Mindfulness vs placebo, for pain

It can be difficult with some “alternative therapies” to test against placebo, for example “and control group B will merely believe that they are being pierced with needles”, etc. However, in this case, mindfulness meditation was tested as an analgesic vs sham meditation (just deep breathing) and also vs placebo analgesic cream, vs distraction (listening to an audiobook). Mindfulness meditation beat all of the other things:

Read in full: Mindfulness meditation outperforms placebo in reducing pain

Related: No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Getting personal with AI doctors

One of the common reasons that people reject AI doctors is the “lack of a human touch”. However, human and AI doctors may be meeting in the middle nowadays, as humans are pressed to see more patients in less time, and AI is trained to be more personal—not just a friendlier affect, but also, such things as remembering the patient’s previous encounters (again, something with which overworked human doctors sometimes struggle). This makes a big difference to patient satisfaction:

Read in full: Personalization key to patient satisfaction with AI doctors

Related: AI: The Doctor That Never Tires?

Combination brain therapy against cognitive decline

This study found that out of various combinations trialled, the best intervention against cognitive decline was a combination of 1) cognitive remediation (therapeutic interventions designed to improve cognitive functioning, like puzzles and logic problems), and 2) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a form of non-invasive direct brain stimulation, similar to the magnetic or ultrasound methods we mentioned earlier today. Here’s how it worked:

Read in full: Study reveals effective combination therapy to slow cognitive decline in older adults

Related: How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

Take care!

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  • Sticky Jackfruit Burgers

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    All the taste and experience of pulled pork, without the increased risk of cancer and metabolic disease. On the contrary, jackfruit introduces lots of fiber, vitamins, carotenoids, and flavanones. We’ll have to do a main feature about jackfruit sometime; it’s an unusual fruit especially for its protein content, but for now, let’s get cooking!

    You will need

    • 1 can (14oz/400g) green jackfruit, drained (the flesh will not, in fact, be green—this is referring to the fruit being unripe and thus still firm in texture, which is what we want. The outside of the fruit, which will not be in the can, will have been green)
    • 1/4 red cabbage, thinly sliced
    • 1/2 carrot, grated
    • 6 mangetout, thinly sliced
    • 2 tbsp mayonnaise (your preference what kind, and yes, vegan is fine too)
    • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
    • 1 tbsp gochujang paste (if you can’t find gochujang paste locally, you can either order it online (here it is on Amazon) or substitute with harissa paste, which is not the same—it uses different spices—but will do the same job here re texture, umami taste, and level of spiciness)
    • 1 tbsp soy sauce
    • 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
    • 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
    • 1 tsp garlic paste
    • 1 tsp tomato paste
    • 1 tsp ginger paste
    • 1 tsp chili flakes
    • 3½ fl oz water
    • 2 burger buns (unless you make them yourself, burger buns will probably not be healthy; you can, however, also look for small round wholemeal breads—the name of which varies far too much by region for us to try to get a catch-all name here—and use them in place of burger buns)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Combine the garlic paste, ginger paste, tomato paste, gochujang paste, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and chili flakes in a saucepan

    2) Boil the 3½ fl oz water we mentioned; add it to the saucepan, mixing well, turn on the heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes or until it is thick and sticky (it will thicken more as it cools, too, so don’t worry if it doesn’t seem thick enough yet). Set it aside.

    3) Dry the jackfruit (using strong kitchen paper should be fine), add the olive oil to a skillet and bring it to a high heat; add the jackfruit and fry on both sides for a few minutes, until it looks cooked (remember, while this may look like animal meat, it’s not, so there’s no danger of undercooking here).

    4) When the jackfruit looks a nice golden-brown, add two thirds of the sauce from the saucepan, and break apart the jackfruit a bit (this can be done with a wooden/bamboo spatula, so as to not damage your pan), When it all looks how you’d expect pulled jackfruit (or pulled pork) to look, take it off the heat.

    5) Combine the carrot, cabbage, and mangetout in a small bowl, adding the apple cider vinegar and mixing well; this will be the coleslaw element

    6) Mix the remaining sauce with the mayonnaise

    7) (optional) toast the burger buns

    8) Assemble the burgers; we recommend the following order: bottom bun, pulled jackfruit, coleslaw, gochujang mayo, top bun

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Do we need animal products to be healthy?

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    Do we need animal products to be healthy?

    We asked you for your (health-related) perspective on plant-based vs anima-based foods, and got the above-pictured spread of answers.

    “Some or all of us may need small amounts of animal products” came out on top with more votes than the two more meat-eatery options combined, and the second most popular option was the hard-line “We can all live healthily and happily on just plants”.

    Based on these answers, it seems our readership has quite a lot of vegans, vegetarians, and perhaps “flexitarians” who just have a little of animal products here and there.

    Perhaps we should have seen this coming; the newsletter is “10almonds”, not “10 rashers of bacon”, after all.

    But what does the science say?

    We are carnivores and are best eating plenty of meat: True or False?

    False. Let’s just rip the band-aid off for this one.

    In terms of our anatomy and physiology, we are neither carnivores nor herbivores:

    • We have a mid-length digestive tract (unlike carnivores and herbivores who have short and long ones, respectively)
    • We have a mouthful of an assortment of teeth; molars and premolars for getting through plants from hard nuts to tough fibrous tubers, and we have incisors for cutting into flesh and (vestigial, but they’re there) canines that really serve us no purpose now but would have been a vicious bite when they were bigger, like some other modern-day primates.
    • If we look at our closest living relatives, the other great apes, they are mostly frugivores (fruit-eaters) who supplement their fruity diet with a small quantity of insects and sometimes other small animals—of which they’ll often eat only the fatty organ meat and discard the rest.

    And then, there’s the health risks associated with meat. We’ll not linger on this as we’ve talked about it before, but for example:

    If we avoid processed and/or red meat, that’s good enough: True or False?

    True… Ish.

    Really this one depends on one’s criteria for “good enough”. The above-linked studies, and plenty more like them, give the following broad picture:

    • Red and/or processed meats are unequivocally terrible for the health in general
    • Other mammalian meats, such as from pigs, are really not much better
    • Poultry, on the other hand, the science is less clear on; the results are mixed, and thus so are the conclusions. The results are often barely statistically significant. In other words, when it comes to poultry, in the matter of health, the general consensus is that you can take it or leave it and will be fine. Some studies have found firmly for or against it, but the consensus is a collective scientific shrug.
    • Fish, meanwhile, has almost universally been found to be healthful in moderation. You may have other reasons for wanting to avoid it (ethics, environmentalism, personal taste) but those things are beyond the scope of this article.

    Some or all of us may need small amounts of animal products: True or False?

    True! With nuances.

    Let’s divide this into “some” and “all”. Firstly, some people may have health conditions and/or other mitigating circumstances that make an entirely plant-based diet untenable.

    We’re going light on quotations from subscriber comments today because otherwise this article will get a bit long, but here’s a great example that’s worth quoting, from a subscriber who voted for this option:

    ❝I have a rare genetic disease called hereditary fructose intolerance. It means I lack the enzyme, Aldolase B, to process fructose. Eating fruits and veggies thus gives me severe hypoglycemia. I also have anemia caused by two autoimmune diseases, so I have to eat meat for the iron it supplies. I also supplement with iron pills but the pills alone can’t fix the problem entirely.❞

    And, there’s the thing. Popular vegan talking-points are very good at saying “if you have this problem, this will address it; if you have that problem, that will address it”, etc. For every health-related objection to a fully plant-based diet there’s a refutation… Individually.

    But actual real-world health doesn’t work like that; co-morbidities are very common, and in some cases, like our subscriber above, one problem undermines the solution to another. Add a third problem and by now you really just have to do what you need to do to survive.

    For this reason, even the Vegan Society’s definition of veganism includes the clause “so far as is possible and practicable”.

    Now, as for the rest of us “all”.

    What if we’re really healthy and are living in optimal circumstances (easy access to a wide variety of choice of food), can we live healthily and happily just on plants?

    No—on a technicality.

    Vegans famously need to supplement vitamin B12, which is not found in plants. Ironically, much of the B12 in animal products comes from the animals themselves being given supplements, but that’s another matter. However, B12 can also be enjoyed from yeast. Popular options include the use of yeast extract (e.g. Marmite) and/or nutritional yeast in cooking.

    Yeast is a single-celled microorganism that’s taxonomically classified as a fungus, even though in many ways it behaves like an animal (which series of words may conjure an amusing image, but we mean, biologically speaking).

    However, it’s also not technically a plant, hence the “No—on a technicality”

    Bottom line:

    By nature, humans are quite versatile generalists when it comes to diet:

    • Most of us can live healthily and happily on just plants if we so choose.
    • Some people cannot, and will require varying kinds (and quantities) of animal products.
    • As for red and/or processed meats, we’re not the boss of you, but from a health perspective, the science is clear: unless you have a circumstance that really necessitates it, just don’t.
      • Same goes for pork, which isn’t red and may not be processed, but metabolically it’s associated with the same problems.
    • The jury is out on poultry, but it strongly appears to be optional, healthwise, without making much of a difference either way
    • Fish is roundly considered healthful in moderation. Enjoy it if you want, don’t if you don’t.

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  • Honey vs Maple Syrup – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing honey to maple syrup, we picked the honey.

    Why?

    It was very close, as both have small advantages:
    •⁠ ⁠Honey has some medicinal properties (and depending on type, may contain an antihistamine)
    •⁠ ⁠Maple syrup is a good source of manganese, as well as low-but-present amounts of other minerals

    However, you wouldn’t want to eat enough maple syrup to rely on it as a source of those minerals, and honey has the lower GI (average 46 vs 54; for comparison, refined sugar is 65), which works well as a tie-breaker.

    (If GI’s very important to you, though, the easy winner here would be agave syrup if we let it compete, with its GI of 15)

    Read more:
    •⁠ ⁠Can Honey Relieve Allergies?
    •⁠ ⁠From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose C’s

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  • Bright Line Eating – by Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson

    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.

    This is a great title! It’s a great book too, but let’s talk about the title for a moment:

    The “Bright Line” referenced (often used in the plural within the book) is the line one draws between what one will and will not do. It’s a line one doesn’t cross, and it’s a bright line, because it’s not a case of “oh woe is me I cannot have the thing”, but rather “oh yay is me for I being joyously healthy”.

    And as for living happy, thin, and free? The author makes clear that “thin” is only a laudable goal if it’s bookended by “happy” and “free”. Eating things because we want to, and being happy about our choices.

    To this end, while some of the book is about nutrition (and for example the strong recommendation to make the first “bright lines” one draws cutting out sugar and flour), the majority of it is about the psychology of eating.

    This includes, hunger and satiety, willpower and lack thereof, disordered eating and addictions, body image issues and social considerations, the works. She realizes and explains, that if being healthy were just a matter of the right diet plan, everyone would be healthy. But it’s not; our eating behaviors don’t exist in a vacuum, and there’s a lot more to consider.

    Despite all the odds, however, this is a cheerful and uplifting book throughout, while dispensing very practical, well-evidenced methods for getting your brain to get your body to do what you want it to.

    Bottom line: this isn’t your average diet book, and it’s not just a motivational pep talk either. It’s an enjoyable read that’s also full of science and can make a huge difference to how you see food.

    Click here to check out Bright Line Eating, and enjoy life, healthily!

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  • Why Adult ADHD Often Leads To Anxiety & Depression

    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.

    ADHD’s Knock-On Effects On Mental Health

    We’ve written before about ADHD in adult life, often late-diagnosed because it’s not quite what people think it is:

    ADHD… As An Adult?

    In women in particular, it can get missed and/or misdiagnosed:

    Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women

    …but what we’re really here to talk about today is:

    It’s the comorbidities that get you

    When it comes to physical health conditions:

    • if you have one serious condition, it will (usually) be taken seriously
    • if you have two, they will still be taken seriously, but people (friends and family members, as well as yes, medical professionals) will start to back off, as it starts to get too complicated for comfort
    • if you have three, people will think you are making at least one of them up for attention now
    • if you have more than three, you are considered a hypochondriac and pathological liar

    Yet, the reality is: having one serious condition increases your chances of having others, and this chance-increasing feature compounds with each extra condition.

    Illustrative example: you have fibromyalgia (ouch) which makes it difficult for you to exercise much, shop around when grocery shopping, and do much cooking at home. You do your best, but your diet slips and it’s hard to care when you just want the pain to stop; you put on some weight, and get diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, which in time becomes diabetes with high cardiovascular risk factors. Your diabetes is immunocompromising; you get COVID and find it’s now Long COVID, which brings about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, when you barely had the spoons to function in the first place. At this point you’ve lost count of conditions and are just trying to get through the day.

    If this is you, by the way, we hope at least something in the following might ease things for you a bit:

    It’s the same for mental health

    In the case of ADHD as a common starting point (because it’s quite common, may or may not be diagnosed until later in life, and doesn’t require any external cause to appear), it is very common that it will lead to anxiety and/or depression, to the point that it’s perhaps more common to also have one or more of them than not, if you have ADHD.

    (Of course, anxiety and/or depression can both pop up for completely unrelated reasons too, and those reasons may be physiological, environmental, or a combination of the above).

    Why?

    Because all the good advice that goes for good mental health (and/or life in general), gets harder to actuate when one had ADHD.

    • “Strong habits are the core of a good life”, but good luck with that if your brain doesn’t register dopamine in the same way as most people’s do, making intentional habit-forming harder on a physiological level.
    • “Plan things carefully and stick to the plan”, but good luck with that if you are neurologically impeded from forming plans.
    • “Just do it”, but oops you have the tendency-to-overcommitment disorder and now you are seriously overwhelmed with all the things you tried to do, when each of them alone were already going to be a challenge.

    Overwhelm and breakdown are almost inevitable.

    And when they happen, chances are you will alienate people, and/or simply alienate yourself. You will hide away, you will avoid inflicting yourself on others, you will brood alone in frustration—or distract yourself with something mind-numbing.

    Before you know it, you’re too anxious to try to do things with other people or generally show your face to the world (because how will they react, and won’t you just mess things up anyway?), and/or too depressed to leave your depression-lair (because maybe if you keep playing Kingdom Vegetables 2, you can find a crumb of dopamine somewhere).

    What to do about it

    How to tackle the many-headed beast? By the heads! With your eyes open. Recognize and acknowledge each of the heads; you can’t beat those heads by sticking your own in the sand.

    Also, get help. Those words are often used to mean therapy, but in this case we mean, any help. Enlist your partner or close friend as your support in your mental health journey. Enlist a cleaner as your support in taking that one thing off your plate, if that’s an option and a relevant thing for you. Set low but meaningful goals for deciding what constitutes “good enough” for each life area. Decide in advance what you can safely half-ass, and what things in life truly require your whole ass.

    Here’s a good starting point for that kind of thing:

    When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)

    And this is an excellent way to “get the ball rolling” if you’re already in a bit of a prison of your own making:

    Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

    If things are already bad, then you might also consider:

    And if things are truly at the worst they can possibly be, then:

    How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

    Take care!

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  • Psychedelics and Psychotherapy – Edited by Dr. Tim Read & Maria Papaspyrou

    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.

    A quick note on authorship, first: this book is edited by the psychiatrist and psychotherapist credited above, but after the introductory section, the rest of the chapters are written by experts on the individual topics.As such, the style will vary somewhat, from chapter to chapter.

    What this book isn’t: “try drugs and feel better!”

    Rather, the book explores the various ways in which assorted drugs can help people to—even if just briefly—shed things they didn’t know they were carrying, or otherwise couldn’t put down, and access parts of themselves they otherwise couldn’t.

    We also get to read a lot about the different roles the facilitator can play in guiding the therapeutic process, and what can be expected out of each kind of experience. This varies a lot from one drug to another, so it makes for very worthwhile reading, if that’s something you might consider pursuing. Knowledge makes for much more informed choices!

    Bottom line: if you’re curious about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, and want a reference that’s more personal than dry clinical studies, but still more “safe and removed” than diving in by yourself, this is the book for you.

    Click here to check out Psychedelics and Psychotherapy, and expand your understanding!

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