Does This New Machine Cure Depression?

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Let us first talk briefly about the slightly older tech that this may replace, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

TMS involves electromagnetic fields to stimulate the left half of the brain and inhibit the right half of the brain. It sounds like something from the late 19th century—“cure your melancholy with the mystical power of magnetism”—but the thing is, it works:

Regulatory Clearance and Approval of Therapeutic Protocols of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Psychiatric Disorders

The main barriers to its use are that the machine itself is expensive, and it has to be done in a clinic by a trained clinician. Which, if it were treating one’s heart, say, would not be so much of an issue, but when treating depression, there is a problem that depressed people are not the most likely to commit to (and follow through with) going somewhere probably out-of-town regularly to get a treatment, when merely getting out of the door was already a challenge and motivation is thin on the ground to start with.

Thus, antidepressant medications are more often the go-to for cost-effectiveness and adherence. Of course, some will work better than others for different people, and some may not work at all in the case of what is generally called “treatment-resistant depression”:

Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!

Transcranial stimulation… At home?

Move over transcranial magnetic stimulation; it’s time for transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS).

First, what it’s not: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Rather, it uses a very low current.

What it is: a small and portable headset (as opposed to the big machine to go sit in for TMS) that one can use at home. Here’s an example product on Amazon, though there are more stylish versions around, this is the same basic technology.

In a recent study, 45% of those who received treatment with this device experienced remission in 10 weeks, significantly beating placebo (bearing in mind that placebo effect is strongest when it comes to invisible ailments such as depression).

See also: How To Leverage Placebo Effect For Yourself ← this explains more about how the placebo effect works, to the extent that it can even be an adjuvant tool to augment “real” therapies

And as for the study, here it is:

Home-based transcranial direct current stimulation treatment for major depressive disorder: a fully remote phase 2 randomized sham-controlled trial

…which rather cuts through the “depressed people don’t make it to the clinic consistently, if at all” problem. Of course, it still requires adherence to its use at home, for example three 30-minute sessions per week, but honestly, “lie/sit still” is likely within the abilities of the majority of depressed people. However…

Important note: you remember we said “in 10 weeks”? That may be critical, because shorter studies (e.g. 6 weeks) have previously returned without such glowing results:

Home-Use Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for the Treatment of a Major Depressive Episode

This means that if you get this tech for yourself or a loved one, it’ll be necessary to persist for likely 10 weeks, certainly more than 6 weeks, and not abandon it after a few sessions when it hasn’t been life-changing yet. And that may be more of a challenge for a depressed person, so likely an “accountability buddy” of some kind is in order (partner, close friend, etc) to help ensure adherence and generally bug you/them into doing it consistently.

And then, of course, you/they might still be in the 55% of people for whom it didn’t work. And that does suck, but random antidepressant medications (i.e., not personalized) don’t fare much better, statistically.

Want something else against depression meanwhile?

Here are some strategies that not only can significantly help, but also are tailored to be actually doable while depressed:

The Mental Health First-Aid You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← written by your writer who has previously suffered extensively from depression and knows what it is like

Take care!

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  • With Only Gloves To Protect Them, Farmworkers Say They Tend Sick Cows Amid Bird Flu

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    GREELEY, Colo. — In early August, farmworkers gathered under a pavilion at a park here for a picnic to celebrate Farmworker Appreciation Day. One sign that this year was different from the others was the menu: Beef fajitas, tortillas, pico de gallo, chips, beans — but no chicken.

    Farms in Colorado had culled millions of chickens in recent months to stem the transmission of bird flu. Organizers filled out the spread with hot dogs.

    No matter the menu, some dairy workers at the event said they don’t exactly feel appreciated. They said they haven’t received any personal protective equipment beyond gloves to guard against the virus, even as they or colleagues have come down with conjunctivitis and flu-like symptoms that they fear to be bird flu.

    “They should give us something more,” one dairy worker from Larimer County said in Spanish. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear he’d lose his job for speaking out. “What if something happens to us? They act as if nothing is wrong.”

    Agricultural health and safety experts have been trying to get the word out about how to protect against bird flu, including through bilingual videos on TikTok showing the proper way to gear up with respirators, eye protection, gloves, and coveralls. And Colorado’s health and agriculture departments have offered a free month’s supply of protective equipment to any producer who requests it.

    But so far, many farms aren’t taking them up on it: According to numbers provided by the state health department in late August, fewer than 13% of the state’s dairies had requested and received such PPE.

    The virus is known to infect mammals — from skunks, bears, and cows to people and house pets. It began showing up in dairy cattle in recent months, and Colorado has been in the thick of it. Ten of the 13 confirmed human cases in the U.S. this year have occurred in Colorado, where it continues to circulate among dairy cows. It isn’t a risk in cooked meat or pasteurized milk but is risky for those who come into contact with infected animals or raw milk.

    Weld County, where the farmworker event was held, is one of the nation’s top milk producers, supplying enough milk each month this year to fill about 45 Olympic-size swimming pools, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Neighboring counties are notable producers, too.

    Concerns are growing about undiagnosed illness among farmworkers because of a lack of testing and safety precautions. One reason for concern: Bird flu and seasonal flu are capable of gene trading, so if they ended up in the same body at the same time, bird flu might end up with genes that boost its contagiousness. The virus doesn’t appear to be spreading easily between people yet. That could change, and if people aren’t being tested then health officials may be slow to notice.

    Strains of seasonal flu already kill some 47,000 people in the U.S. a year. Public health officials fear the havoc a new form of the flu could wreak if it spreads among people.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that dairy workers don a respirator and goggles or a face shield, among other protections, whether they are working with sick animals or not.

    A recent study found that not all infected cows show symptoms, so workers could be interacting with contagious animals without realizing it. Even when it is known that animals are infected, farmworkers often still have to get in close contact with them, sometimes under grueling conditions, such as during a recent heat wave when Colorado poultry workers collected hundreds of chickens by hand for culling because of the outbreak. At least six of the workers became infected with bird flu.

    One dairy worker in Weld County, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said his employer has not offered any protective equipment beyond gloves, even though he works with sick cows and raw milk.

    His bosses asked the workers to separate sick cows from the others after some cows produced less milk, lost weight, and showed signs of weakness, he said. But the employer didn’t say anything about the bird flu, he said, or suggest they take any precautions for their own safety.

    He said he bought protective goggles for himself at Walmart when his eyes became itchy and red earlier this summer. He recalled experiencing dizziness, headaches, and low appetite around the same time. But he self-medicated and pushed through, without missing work or going to a doctor.

    “We need to protect ourselves because you never know,” he said in Spanish. “I tell my wife and son that the cows are sick, and she tells me to leave, but it will be the same wherever I go.”

    He said he’d heard that his employers were unsympathetic when a colleague approached them about feeling ill. He’d even seen someone affiliated with management remove a flyer about how people can protect themselves from the bird flu and throw it in a bin.

    The dairy worker in neighboring Larimer County said he, too, has had just gloves as protection, even when he has worked with sick animals — close enough for saliva to wipe off on him. He started working with them when a colleague missed work because of his flu-like symptoms: fever, headache, and red eyes.

    “I only wear latex gloves,” he said. “And I see that those who work with the cows that are sick also only wear gloves.”

    He said he doesn’t have time to wash his hands at work but puts on hand sanitizer before going home and takes a shower once he arrives. He has not had symptoms of infection.

    Such accounts from dairy workers echo those from farmworkers in Texas, as reported by KFF Health News in July.

    “Employers who are being proactive and providing PPE seem to be in the minority in most states,” said Bethany Boggess Alcauter with the National Center for Farmworker Health, a not-for-profit organization based in Texas that advocates for improving the health of farmworkers and their families. “Farmworkers are getting very little information.”

    But Zach Riley, CEO of the Colorado Livestock Association, said he thinks such scenarios are the exception, not the rule.

    “You would be hard-pressed to find a dairy operation that isn’t providing that PPE,” he said. Riley said dairies typically have a stockpile of PPE ready to go for situations like this and that, if they don’t, it’s easily accessed through the state. “All you have to do is ask.”

    Producers are highly motivated to keep infections down, he said, because “milk is their life source.” He said he has heard from some producers that “their family members who work on the farm are doing 18-to 20-hour days just to try to stay ahead of it, so that they’re the first line between everything, to protect their employees.”

    Colorado’s health department is advertising a hotline that ill dairy workers can call for help getting a flu test and medicine.

    Project Protect Food Systems Workers, an organization that emerged early in the covid-19 pandemic to promote farmworker health across Colorado, is distributing PPE it received from the state so promotoras — health workers who are part of the community they serve — can distribute masks and other protections directly to workers if employers aren’t giving them out.

    Promotora Tomasa Rodriguez said workers “see it as another virus, another covid, but it is because they don’t have enough information.”

    She has been passing out flyers about symptoms and protective measures, but she can’t access many dairies. “And in some instances,” she said, “a lot of these workers don’t know how to read, so the flyers are not reaching them, and then the employers are not doing any kind of talks or trainings.”

    The CDC’s Nirav Shah said during an Aug. 13 call with journalists that awareness about bird flu among dairy workers isn’t as high as officials would like it to be, despite months of campaigns on social media and the radio.

    “There’s a road ahead of us that we still need to go down to get awareness on par with, say, what it might be in the poultry world,” he said. “We’re using every single messenger that we can.”

    KFF Health News correspondents Vanessa G. Sánchez and Amy Maxmen contributed to this report.

    Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Sign up for its newsletters here.

    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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  • Basil vs Oregano – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing basil to oregano, we picked the basil.

    Why?

    You may be thinking: these are just herbs; we don’t eat enough of these for the nutritional values to be relevant!

    And to this we say: there’s nothing stopping you :p Herbs are full of flavor and goodness and there is really no reason to deny yourself. On this note, check out the sabzi khordan (traditional Levantine herb platter), linked below. You’ll start thinking about herbs in new ways, and you can thank us later!

    Now, in terms of macros, nominally basil has more protein and oregano has more carbs and fiber, but the numbers are so close in each case that we’re going to call this category a tie.

    When it comes to vitamins, things get more interesting: basil has more of vitamins B2, B3, B6, B9, K, and choline, while oregano has more of vitamins A, B1, B5, C, and E. This means a 6:5 win for basil, but note how the two herbs together give an impressive vitamin coverage. In other words, they complement each other nutritionally, not just culinarily!

    In the category of minerals, basil has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium and zinc, while oregano has more selenium. Now, this is obviously a clear win for basil, but we’d like to highlight that both of these herbs are incredibly rich in minerals (i.e. oregano is a very good source of all those minerals we listed for basil, too!); it’s just that basil has even more of most of them.

    When looking at any nutrient-dense food (which most herbs are), it’s worth looking at polyphenols. In this case, both are very abundant in polyphenols, and/but their respective numbers are close enough to be within each other’s margin of variation (i.e. exact numbers will depend on the individual plant’s life history), so this category is a tie.

    Adding up the sections makes for an overall clear win for basil, but absolutely please do enjoy both unless you have a good reason not to—they complement each other so well, in nutrients as well as in flavor!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Enjoy!

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  • Healthy Harissa Falafel Patties

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    You can make these as regular falafel balls if you prefer, but patties are quicker and easier to cook, and are great for popping in a pitta.

    You will need

    For the falafels:

    • 1 can chickpeas, drained, keep the chickpea water (aquafaba)
    • 1 red onion, roughly chopped
    • 2 tbsp chickpea flour (also called gram flour or garbanzo bean flour)
    • 1 bunch parsley
    • 1 tbsp harissa paste
    • Extra virgin olive oil for frying

    For the harissa sauce:

    • ½ cup crème fraîche or plant-based equivalent (you can use our Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese recipe and add the juice of 1 lemon)*
    • 1 tbsp harissa paste (or adjust this quantity per your heat preference)

    *if doing this, rather than waste the zest of the lemon, you can add the zest to the falafels if you like, but it’s by no means necessary, just an option

    For serving:

    • Wholegrain pitta or other flatbread (you can use our Healthy Homemade Flatbreads recipe)
    • Salad (your preference; we recommend some salad leaves, sliced tomato, sliced cucumber, maybe some sliced onion, that sort of thing)

    Method

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

    1) Blend the chickpeas, 1 oz of the aquafaba, the onion, the parsley, and the harissa paste, until smooth. Then add in the chickpea flour until you get a thick batter. If you overdo it with the chickpea flour, add a little more of the aquafaba to equalize. Refrigerate the mixture for at least 30 minutes.

    2) Heat some oil in a skillet, and spoon the falafel mixture into the pan to make the patties, cooking on both sides (you can use a spatula to gently turn them), and set them aside.

    3) Mix the harissa sauce ingredients in a small bowl.

    4) Assemble; best served warm, but enjoy it however you like!

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in more of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Reasons to Stay Alive – by Matt Haig

    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.

    We’ve previously reviewed Matt Haig’s (excellent) The Comfort Book, and now it’s time for his more famous book: Reasons To Stay Alive. So, what’s this one, beyond the obvious?

    It narrates the experience of anxiety, depression, and suicidality, and discovering how to find beauty and joy in the world despite it all. It’s not that the author found a magical cure—he still experiences depression and anxiety (cannot speak for suicidality) but he knows now how to manage it, and live his life.

    You may be wondering: is this book instructional; is it reproducible, or is it just an autobiography? It’s centered around his own experience and learnings, but it gives a huge sense of not feeling alone, of having hope, and it gives a template for making sense of one’s own experience, even if every person will of course have some points of differences, the commonalities are nonetheless of immense value.

    The writing style is similar to The Comfort Book; it’s lots of small chapters, and all very easy-reading. Well, the subject matter is sometimes rather heavy, but the language is easy-reading! In other words, just the thing for when one is feeling easily overwhelmed, or not feeling up to reading a lot.

    Bottom line: whether or not you suffer with anxiety and/or depression, whether or not you sometimes feel suicidal, the contents of this book are important, valuable insights for everyone.

    Click here to check out Reasons To Stay Alive, and see through the highs and lows of life.

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  • Healthy Chocolate Fudge Energy Bites

    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.

    While these are quite high-calorie, they’re also high in protein, and the fiber and healthy fats flatten the blood sugar curve:

    You will need

    • 1 cup peanut butter
    • 4 oz dark chocolate, melted (try to get dark chocolate with >80% cocoa, if you can; 85% is very respectable and 90% is perfect)
    • ⅓ cup maple syrup (you can safely reduce this, or even omit it, if you prefer less sweetness)
    • ¼ cup hazelnuts
    • ¼ cup almond milk (or your preferred milk, but we recommend almond for taste and health)
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • Topping: ¼ cup hazelnuts, roughly chopped

    Method

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

    1) Combine all the ingredients (except the topping) in a food processor, and blend until smooth.

    2) Line a container (5″x7″ is a good size) with baking paper and spread the mixture evenly into it, pressing down gently.

    3) Sprinkle the topping onto it, press that even more gently into it.

    4) Refrigerate overnight (or chill it for 2hrs in the freezer).

    5) Cut into cubes to serve; they can be served frozen or thawed, per your preference:

    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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  • Fitness In Our Fifties

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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

    Q: What’s a worthwhile fitness goal for people in their 50s?

    A: At 10almonds, we think that goals are great but habits are better.

    If your goal is to run a marathon, that’s a fine goal, and can be very motivating, but then after the marathon, then what? You’ll look back on it as a great achievement, but what will it do for your future health?

    PS, yes, marathon-running in one’s middle age is a fine and good activity for most people. Maybe skip it if you have osteoporosis or some other relevant problem (check with your doctor), but…

    Marathons in Mid- and Later-Life ← we wrote about the science of it here

    PS, we also explored some science that may be applicable to your other question, on the same page as that about marathons!

    The thing about habits vs goals is that habits give ongoing cumulative (often even: compounding) benefits:

    How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

    If you pressingly want advice on goals though, our advice is this:

    Make it your goal to be prepared for the health challenges of later life. It may seem gloomy to say that old age is coming for us all if something else doesn’t get us first, but the fact is, old age does not have to come with age-related decline, and the very least, we can increase our healthspan (so we’re hitting 90 with most of the good health we enjoyed in our 70s, for example, or hitting 80 with most of the good health we enjoyed in our 60s).

    If that goal seems a little wishy-washy, here are some very specific and practical ideas to get you started:

    Train For The Event Of Your Life!

    As for the limits and/or extents of how much we can do in that regard? Here are what two aging experts have to say:

    And here’s what we at 10almonds had to say:

    Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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