Avoiding Razor Burn, Ingrown Hairs & Other Shaving Irritation
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How Does The Video Help?
Dr. Simi Adedeji’s incredibly friendly persona makes this video (below) on avoiding skin irritation, ingrown hairs, and razor burn after shaving a pleasure to watch.
To keep things simple, she breaks down her guide into 10 simple tips.
What Are The 10 Simple Tips?
Tip 1: Prioritize Hydration. Shaving dry hair can lead to increased skin irritation, so Dr. Simi recommends moistening the hair by showering or using a warm, wet towel for 2-4 minutes before getting the razor out.
Tip 2: Avoid Dry Shaving. Dry shaving not only removes hair but can also remove the protective upper layer of skin, which contributes to razor burn. To prevent this, simply use some shaving gel or cream.
Tip 3: Keep Blades New and Sharp. This one’s simple: dull blades can cause skin irritation, whilst a sharp blade ensures a smoother and more comfortable shaving experience.
Tip 4: Avoid Shaving the Same Area Repeatedly. Multiple passes over the same area can remove skin layers, leading to cuts and irritation. Aim to shave each area only once for safer results.
Tip 5: Consider Hair Growth Direction. Shaving in the direction of hair growth results in less irritation, although it may not provide the closest shave.
Tip 6: Apply Gentle Pressure While Shaving. Excessive pressure can lead to cuts and nicks. Use a gentle touch to reduce these risks.
Tip 7: Incorporate Exfoliation into Your Routine. Exfoliating helps release trapped hairs and reduces the risk of ingrown hairs. For those with sensitive skin, it’s recommended to exfoliate either two days before or after shaving.
Tip 8: Avoid Excessive Skin Stretching. Over-stretching the skin during shaving can cause hairs to become ingrown.
Tip 9: Moisturize After Shaving. Shaving can compromise the skin barrier, leading to dryness. Using a moisturizer can be a simple fix.
Tip 10: Regularly Rinse Your Blade. Make sure that, during the shaving process, you are rinsing your blade frequently to remove hair and skin debris. This keeps it sharp during your shave.
If this summary doesn’t do it for you, then you can watch the full video here:
How did you find that video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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Chocolate & Health
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Chocolate & Health: Fact or Fiction?
“Chocolate Is Good For The Heart”
“When making chocolate chip cookies, you don’t measure using cups, you measure by heart”
…but how good is chocolate when it comes to heart health?
First, what is heart health?
A healthy heart typically has a low resting pulse rate and a strong, steady beat. This is affected strongly by exercise habits, and diet plays only a support role (can’t exercise without energy from food!).
It is also important to have blood pressure within a healthy range (with high blood pressure being a more common problem than low, so things that lower blood pressure are generally considered good).
- Flavanols, flavonoids, and polyphenols in chocolate contribute to lower blood pressure
- Dark chocolate is best for these, as milk chocolate contains much less cocoa solids and more unhelpful fats
- White chocolate contains no cocoa solids and is useless for this
- Some of the fats in most commercial chocolate can contribute to atherosclerosis which raises blood pressure and ultimately can cause heart attacks.
- If you’re diabetic, you will probably not get the usual heart-related benefits from chocolate (sorry)
The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, can support good heart health.
“Chocolate Is Good For The Brain”
Chocolate has been considered a “brain food”… why?
- The brain uses more calories than any other organ (chocolate has many calories)
- The heart benefits we listed above mean improved blood flow—including to your brain
- Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, a powerful chemical that has a similar effect to amphetamines… But it’s metabolized in digestion and never makes it to the central nervous system (so basically, this one’s a miss; we had a good run with the other two, though!)
The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, can support good brain health
“Chocolate Is An Aphrodisiac”
“If chocolate be the food of love, pass me that cocoa; I’m starving”
Most excitingly, chocolate contains phenylethylamine, the “molecule of love” or, more accurately, lust. It has an effect similar to amphetamines, and while we can synthesize it in the body, we can also get it from certain foods. But…
Our body is so keen to get it that most of it is metabolized directly during digestion and doesn’t make it to the brain. Also, chocolate is not as good a source as cabbage—do with that information what you will!
However!
Chocolate contains theobromine and small amounts of caffeine, both stimulants and both generally likely to improve mood; it also contains flavonoids which in turn stimulate production of nitric oxide, which is a relaxant. All in all, things that are convivial to having a good time.
On the other hand…
That relaxation comes specifically with a reduction in blood pressure—something typically considered good for the health for most people most of the time… but that means lowering blood pressure in all parts of your body, which could be the opposite of what you want in intimate moments.
Chocolate also contains zinc, which is essential for hormonal health for most people—the body uses it to produce testosterone and estrogen, respectively. Zinc supplements are popularly sold to those wishing to have more energy in general and good hormonal health in particular, and rightly so. However…
This approach requires long-term supplementation—you can’t just pop a zinc tablet / bar of chocolate / almond before bed and expect immediate results. And if your daily zinc supplementation takes the form of a 3.5oz (100g) bar of chocolate, then you may find it has more effects on your health, and not all of them good!
The Verdict: dark chocolate, in moderation, may promote “the mood”, but could be a double-edged sword when it comes to “the ability”.
“Chocolate Is Good During Menstruation”
The popular wisdom goes that chocolate is rich in iron (of which more is needed during menstruation), and indeed, if you eat 7oz (150g) of dark chocolate made with 85% cocoa, you’ll get a daily a dose of iron (…and nearly 1,000 calories).
More bang-for-buck dietary sources of iron include chickpeas and broccoli, but for some mysterious reason, these are not as commonly reported as popular cravings.
The real explanation for chocolate cravings is more likely that eating chocolate—a food high in sugar and fat along with a chemical bombardment of more specialized “hey, it’s OK, you can relax now” molecules (flavanols/flavonoids, polyphenols, phenylamines, even phenylethylamine, etc) gives a simultaneous dopamine kick (the body’s main “reward” chemical) with a whole-body physiological relaxation… so, little wonder we might crave it in times of stress and discomfort!
The Verdict: it helps, not because it serves a special nutritional purpose, but rather, because the experience of eating chocolate makes us feel good.
Fun fact: Tiramisu (this writer’s favorite dessert) is literally Italian for “pick-me-up”
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Hate Sit-Ups? Try This 10-Minute Standing Abs Routine!
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Abdominal muscles are important to many people for aesthetics; they also fulfil the important role of keeping your innards in, as well as being a critical part of core stability (and you cannot have a truly healthy back without healthy abs on the other side). However, not everyone loves sit-ups and their many variations, so here’s an all-standing workout instead:
On your feet!
The exercise are as follows:
- High knees: engage core to work abs; do slow for low impact. Great for speeding up the metabolism. Jog during rest to keep moving.
- Extend & twist: raise arms high, drive them down while raising one leg into a twist. No rest, switch sides immediately.
- Extend & vertical crunch: extend leg back, drive knee forward into a crunch. Swap sides with no breaks.
- Oblique jacks: jump or slow version; targeting the obliques.
- Front toe-touch: engage core for effectiveness.
- Crossover toe-touch: no break; move into this directly from the front toe-touch.
- Wood chop: lift arms up, twist, chop down. Great for obliques. No rest between sides.
- Heisman: step side to side, bringing your other knee up towards the opposite side. Focus on core engagement rather than speed.
- Side leg raise & side bent: raise leg to side with slight bend; works obliques. No rest between sides.
That’s it!
For a visual demonstration, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Is A Visible Six-Pack Obtainable Regardless Of Genetic Predisposition?
Take care!
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Air Purifiers & Sleep
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I’ve read that air pollution has a negative effect on sleep quality and duration. Since I live next to a busy road, I was wondering whether I should invest in an air purifier. What are 10Almonds’s views?❞
Going straight to the science, there are two questions here:
- Does air pollution negatively affect sleep quality and duration?
- Does the use of an air purify actually improve the air quality in the way(s) necessary to make a difference?
We thought we’d have to tackle these questions separately, but we did find one study that addressed your question directly. It was a small study (n=30 if you believe the abstract; n=29 if you read the paper itself—one person dropped out); the results were modest but clear:
❝The purifier filter was associated with increased total sleep time for an average of 12 min per night, and increased total time in bed for an average of 19 min per night relative to the placebo.
There were several sleep and mood outcomes for which no changes were observed, and time awake after sleep onset was higher for the purifier filter. Air quality was better during the high-efficiency particulate air filter condition.
These findings offer positive indications that environmental interventions that improve air quality can have benefits for sleep outcomes in healthy populations who are not exhibiting clinical sleep disturbances.❞
In the above-linked paper’s introduction, it does establish the deleterious effect of air pollution on a wide variety of health metrics, including sleep, this latter evidenced per Caddick et al. (2018): A review of the environmental parameters necessary for an optimal sleep environment
Now, you may be wondering: is an extra 12 minutes per night worth it?
That’s your choice to make, but we would argue that it is. We can make many choices in our lives that affect our health slightly for the better or the worse. If we make a stack of choices in a particular direction, the effects will also stack, if not outright compound.
So in the case of sleep, it might be (arbitrary numbers for the sake of illustration):
- Get good exercise earlier in the day (+3%)
- Get good food earlier in the day (+2.5%)
- Practice mindfulness/meditation before bed (+2.5%)
- Have a nice dark room (+5%)
- Have fresh bedding (+2.5%)
- Have an air purifier running (+3%)
Now, those numbers are, as we said, arbitrary*, but remember that percentages don’t add up; they compound. So that “+3%” starts being a lot more meaningful than if it were just by itself.
*Confession: the figure of 3% for the air purifier wasn’t entirely arbitrary; it was based on 100(12/405) = 80/27 ≈ 3, wherein the 405 figure was an approximation of the average total time (in minutes) spent sleeping with placebo, based on a peep at their results graph. There are several ways the average could be reasonably calculated, but 6h45 (i.e., 405 minutes) was an approximate average of those reasonable approximate averages.
So, 12 minutes is a 3% improvement on that.
Don’t have an air purifier and want one?
We don’t sell them, but here’s an example on Amazon, for your convenience
Take care!
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Ending Aging – by Dr. Aubrey de Grey
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We know about how to slow aging. We know about diet, exercise, sleep, intermittent fasting, and other lifestyle tweaks to make. But how much can we turn back the clock, according to science?
Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s foundational principle is simple: the body is a biological machine, and aging is fundamentally an engineering problem.
He then outlines the key parts to that problem: the princple ways in which cells (and DNA) get damaged, and what we need to do about that in each case. Car tires get damaged over time; our approach is to replace them within a certain period of time so that they don’t blow out. In the body, it’s a bit similar with cells so that we don’t get cancer, for example.
The book goes into detail regards each of the seven main ways we accumulate this damage, and highlights avenues of research looking to prevent it, and in at least some cases, the measures already available to so.
Bottom line: if you want a hard science overview of actual rejuvenation research in biogerontology, this is a book that presents that comprehensively, without assuming prior knowledge.
Click here to check out Ending Aging and never stop learning!
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How to Find Happiness In Yourself – by Michelle Mann
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A lot of books about happiness tell you what to pursue, generally. What things to focus on, and that’s good, but incomplete. This book does cover those things too (complete with academic sources to back up what really works), but also goes further:
Michelle Mann gives 25 key habits that will cumulatively build happiness, which is what it’s really about. After all:
- If you watch your favourite movie, you’ll be happy for 90 minutes (or 9 hours if it’s The Lord of the Rings).
- If you build daily habits that add happiness to you, your surroundings, and those around you, you’ll be happy for life.
They do also cover happiness while going through difficult times, such as divorce, job loss, illness, or bereavement.
Sometimes, knowing what we “should” do in theory is the easy part. Where Mann excels here is in providing explanations of each habit. This means that rather than it being some platitude, the principles underlying it are truly understood… and thus motivate us to actually apply the advice and build the habits into our life.
While the explanations are therefore the greatest value of the book, we do recommend copying out the 25 habits (which are effectively subchapter headings) and putting them somewhere to read often.
Bottom line: we recommend getting yourself (and/or your loved ones!) a copy of this book. You (and/or they) will be happy you did!
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How we can prepare for future public health emergencies
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The U.S. is experiencing an increasing number of disease outbreaks and extreme weather events. While state and national preparedness for public health emergencies has improved in some areas, dangerous gaps remain, says a recent report from Trust for America’s Health.
Titled, “Ready or Not 2024: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism,” the report identifies gaps in national and state preparedness for public health emergencies and provides recommendations for improvement.
Using nine key indicators, the report categorizes all U.S. states and the District of Columbia into three readiness levels: high, medium, and low. The writers hope the report will help policymakers in under-performing states improve public health infrastructure.
Read on to learn more about what the research found and how we can individually prepare for future public health emergencies.
There’s work to be done
The report highlights areas with strong performance as well as those that need improvement.
Some areas with strong performance:
- State public health funding: Most states and the District of Columbia either maintained or increased their public health funding during the 2023 fiscal year.
- Health care labor force preparedness: Most states have started expanding the health care labor force for improved emergency response. As of 2023, 39 states participated in the Nurse Licensure Compact, which allows nurses to work in multiple member states without the need for additional state licenses.
Some areas that need improvement:
- Hospital safety scores: Only 25 percent of acute care hospitals earned the highest patient safety grade in fall 2023. These scores measure health care-associated infection rates, intensive care unit capacity, and other metrics. More high-scoring hospitals would improve preparedness for future public health emergencies.
- Access to paid time off: From March 2018 to March 2023, only 55 percent of U.S. workers used paid time off. Access to paid time off is important for reducing the spread of infectious diseases.
We can all do our part by staying up to date on vaccines
While the report focuses on policy changes that would improve emergency preparedness, Trust for America’s Health’s research identifies one way that we can individually prepare for future public health emergencies: staying up to date on vaccines.
The report found that during the 2022-2023 flu season, only 49 percent of those eligible for the flu vaccine received it. Public health experts are concerned that false claims about COVID-19 vaccines have resulted in overall vaccine hesitancy.
A decline in vaccination rates has led to an uptick in life-threatening, vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles. Increasing vaccine uptake would prevent the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases and reduce strain on hospital systems during public health crises.
Make sure that you and your children have received all recommended vaccines to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death. Learn more about recommended vaccines for adults and children from the CDC.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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