Dreams: Relevance, Meanings, Interpretations

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? 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 have a question or a suggestion for coverage in your “Psychology Sunday”. Dreams: their relevance, meanings ( if any) interpretations? I just wondered what the modern psychological opinions are about dreams in general.❞

We’ll indeed do that one of these Psychology Sundays! Thanks for suggesting it.

What we can say in advance is that there’s certainly not a single unified scientific consensus yet, but there are two or three prevailing views definitely worth covering, e.g. randomly generated, a by-product of reorganizing information in the brain, or expressions of subconscious thoughts/feelings.

There are also differences between a top-down/bottom-up approach to understanding dreaming, and efforts to tie those two together.

Watch this space!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • Hormone Replacement
  • How Does Someone Die From Dementia?
    Understanding Dementia’s Final Stage: Peaceful Transitions, Care Tips, and Managing Mortality.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Foods For Managing Hypothyroidism (incl. Hashimoto’s)

    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.

    Foods for Managing Hypothyroidism

    For any unfamiliar, hypothyroidism is the condition of having an underactive thyroid gland. The thyroid gland lives at the base of the front of your neck, and, as the name suggests, it makes and stores thyroid hormones. Those are important for many systems in the body, and a shortage typically causes fatigue, weight gain, and other symptoms.

    What causes it?

    This makes a difference in some cases to how it can be treated/managed. Causes include:

    • Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition
    • Severe inflammation (end result is similar to the above, but more treatable)
    • Dietary deficiencies, especially iodine deficiency
    • Secondary endocrine issues, e.g. pituitary gland didn’t make enough TSH for the thyroid gland to do its thing
    • Some medications (ask your pharmacist)

    We can’t do a lot about those last two by leveraging diet alone, but we can make a big difference to the others.

    What to eat (and what to avoid)

    There is nuance here, which we’ll go into a bit, but let’s start by giving the one-line two-line summary that tends to be the dietary advice for most things:

    • Eat a nutrient-dense whole-foods diet (shocking, we know)
    • Avoid sugar, alcohol, flour, processed foods (ditto)

    What’s the deal with meat and dairy?

    • Meat: avoid red and processed meats; poultry and fish are fine or even good (unless fried; don’t do that)
    • Dairy: limit/avoid milk; but unsweetened yogurt and cheese are fine or even good

    What’s the deal with plants?

    First, get plenty of fiber, because that’s important to ease almost any inflammation-related condition, and for general good health for most people (an exception is if you have Crohn’s Disease, for example).

    If you have Hashimoto’s, then gluten (as found in wheat, barley, and rye) may be an issue, but the jury is still out, science-wise. Here’s an example study for “avoid gluten” and “don’t worry about gluten”, respectively:

    So, you might want to skip it, to be on the safe side, but that’s up to you (and the advice of your nutritionist/doctor, as applicable).

    A word on goitrogens…

    Goitrogens are found in cruciferous vegetables and soy, both of which are very healthy foods for most people, but need some extra awareness in the case of hypothyroidism. This means there’s no need to abstain completely, but:

    • Keep serving sizes small, for example a 100g serving only
    • Cook goitrogenic foods before eating them, to greatly reduce goitrogenic activity

    For more details, reading even just the abstract (intro summary) of this paper will help you get healthy cruciferous veg content without having a goitrogenic effect.

    (as for soy, consider just skipping that if you suffer from hypothyroidism)

    What nutrients to focus on getting?

    • Top tier nutrients: iodine, selenium, zinc
    • Also important: vitamin B12, vitamin D, magnesium, iron

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

  • How To Improve Your Heart Rate Variability

    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.

    How’s your heart rate variability?

    The hallmarks of a good, strong cardiovascular system include a medium-to-low resting heart rate (for adults: under 60 beats per minute is good; under 50 is typical of athletes), and healthy blood pressure (for adults: under 120/80, while still above 90/60, is generally considered good).

    Less talked-about is heart rate variability, but it’s important too…

    What is heart rate variability?

    Heart rate variability is a measure of how quickly and easily your heart responds to changes in demands placed upon it. For example:

    • If you’re at rest and then start running your fastest (be it for leisure or survival or anything in between), your heart rate should be able to jump from its resting rate to about 180% of that as quickly as possible
    • When you stop, your heart rate should be able to shift gears back to your resting rate as quickly as possible

    The same goes, to a commensurately lesser extent, to changes in activity between low and moderate, or between moderate and high.

    • When your heart can change gears quickly, that’s called a high heart rate variability
    • When your heart is sluggish to get going and then takes a while to return to normal after exertion, that’s called a low heart rate variability.

    The rate of change (i.e., the variability) is measured in microseconds per beat, and the actual numbers will vary depending on a lot of factors, but for everyone, higher is better than lower.

    Aside from quick response to crises, why does it matter?

    If heart rate variability is low, it means the sympathetic nervous system is dominating the parasympathetic nervous system, which means, in lay terms, your fight-or-flight response is overriding your ability to relax.

    See for example: Stress and Heart Rate Variability: A Meta-Analysis and Review of the Literature

    This has a lot of knock-on effects for both physical and mental health! Your heart and brain will take the worst of this damage, so it’s good to improve things for them impossible.

    This Saturday’s Life Hacks: how to improve your HRV!

    Firstly, the Usual Five Things™:

    1. A good diet (that avoids processed foods)
    2. Good exercise (that includes daily physical activity—more often is more important than more intense!)
    3. Good sleep (7–9 hours of good quality sleep per night)
    4. Reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption (this is dose-dependent; any reduction is an improvement)
    5. Don’t smoke (just don’t)

    Additional regular habits that help a lot:

    • Breathing exercises, mindfulness, meditation
    • Therapy, especially CBT and DBT
    • Stress-avoidance strategies, for example:
      • Get (and maintain) your finances in good order
      • Get (and maintain) your relationship(s) in good order
      • Get (and maintain) your working* life in good order

    *Whatever this means to you. If you’re perhaps retired, or otherwise a home-maker, or even a student, the things you “need to do” on a daily basis are your working life, for these purposes.

    In terms of simple, quick-fix, physical tweaks to focus on if you’re already broadly leading a good life, two great ones are:

    • Exercise: get moving! Walk to the store even if you buy nothing but a snack or drink to enjoy while walking back. If you drove, make more trips with the shopping bags rather than fewer. If you like to watch TV, consider an exercise bike or treadmill to use while watching. If you have a partner, double-up and make it a thing you do together! Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Take the scenic route when walking someplace. Go to the bathroom that’s further away. Every little helps!
    • Breathe: even just a couple of times a day, practice mindful breathing. Start with even just a minute a day, to get the habit going. What breathing exercise you do isn’t so important as that you do it. Notice your breathing; count how long each breath takes. Don’t worry about “doing it right”—you’re doing great, just observe, just notice, just slowly count. We promise that regular practice of this will have you feeling amazing

    Share This Post

  • What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?

    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.

    Hormonal Health: Is It Really A Balancing Act?

    Have you ever wondered what “balancing your hormones” actually means?

    The popular view is that men’s hormones look like this:

    Testosterone (less) ⟷ Testosterone (more)

    …And that women’s hormones look more like this:

    ♀︎ Estrogen ↭ Progesterone ⤵︎

    ⇣⤷ FSH ⤦ ↴ ☾ ⤹⤷ Luteinizing Hormone ⤦

    DHEA ↪︎ Gonadotrophin ⤾

    ↪︎ Testosterone? ⥅⛢

    Clear as mud, right?

    But, don’t worry, Supplements McHerbal Inc will sell you something guaranteed to balance your hormones!

    How can a supplement (or dietary adjustment) “balance” all that hotly dynamic chaos, and make everything “balanced”?

    The truth is, “balanced” in such a nebulous term, and this is why you will not hear endocrinologists using it. It’s used in advertising to mean “in good order”, and “not causing problems”, and “healthy”.

    In reality, our hormone levels depend on everything from our diet to our age to our anatomy to our mood to the time of the day to the phase of the moon.

    Not that the moon has an influence on our physiology at all—that’s a myth—but you know, 28 day cycle and all. And, yes, half the hormones affect the levels of the others, either directly or indirectly.

    Trying to “balance” them would be quite a game of whack-a-mole, and not something that a “cure-all” single “hormone-balancing” supplement could do.

    So why aren’t we running this piece on Friday, for our “mythbusting” section? Well, we could have, but the more useful information is yet to come and will take up more of today’s newsletter than the myth-busting!

    What, then, can we do to untangle the confusion of these hormones?

    Well first, let’s understand what they do, in the most simple terms possible:

    • Estrogen—the most general feminizing hormone from puberty onwards, busiest in the beginning of the menstrual cycle, and starts getting things ready for ovulation.
    • Progesteronesecondary feminizing hormone, fluffs the pillows for the oncoming fertilized egg to be implanted, increases sex drive, and adjusts metabolism accordingly. Busiest in the second half of the menstrual cycle.
    • Testosterone—is also present, contributes to sex drive, is often higher in individuals with PCOS. If menopause is untreated, testosterone will also rise, because there will be less estrogen
      • (testosterone and estrogen “antagonize” each other, which is the colorfully scientific way of saying they work against each other)
      • DHEA—Dehydroepiandrosterone, supports production of testosterone (and estrogen!). Sounds self-balancing, but in practice, too much DHEA can thus cause elevated testosterone levels, and thus hirsutism.
    • Gonadotrophin—or more specifically human chorionic gonadotrophin, HcG, is “the pregnancy hormone“, present only during pregnancy, and has specific duties relating to such. This is what’s detected in (most) pregnancy test kits.
    • FSH—follicle stimulating hormone, is critical to ovulation, and is thus essential to female fertility. On the other hand, when the ovaries stop working, FSH levels will rise in a vain attempt to encourage the ovulation that isn’t going to happen anymore.
    • Luteinizing hormone—says “go” to the new egg and sends it on its merry way to go get fertilized. This is what’s detected by ovulation prediction kits.

    Sooooooo…

    What, for most women, most often is meant by a “hormonal imbalance” is:

    • Low levels of E and/or P
    • High levels of DHEA and/or T
    • Low or High levels of FSH

    In the case of low levels of E and/or P, the most reliable way to increase these is, drumroll please… To take E and/or P. That’s it, that’s the magic bullet.

    Bonus Tip: take your E in the morning (this is when your body will normally make more and use more) take your P in the evening (it won’t make you sleepy, but it will improve your sleep quality when you do sleep)

    In the case of high levels of DHEA and/or T, then that’s a bit more complex:

    • Taking E will antagonize (counteract) the unwanted T.
    • Taking T-blockers (such as spironolactone or bicalutamide) will do what it says on the tin, and block T from doing the jobs it’s trying to do, but the side-effects are considered sufficient to not prescribe them to most people.
    • Taking spearmint or saw palmetto will lower testosterone’s effects
      • Scientists aren’t sure how or why spearmint works for this
      • Saw palmetto blocks testosterone’s conversion into a more potent form, DHT, and so “detoothes” it a bit. It works similarly to drugs such as finasteride, often prescribed for androgenic alopecia, called “male pattern baldness”, but it affects plenty of women too.

    In the case of low levels of FSH, eating leafy greens will help.

    In the case of high levels of FSH, see a doctor. HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) may help. If you’re not of menopausal age, it could be a sign something else is amiss, so it could be worth getting that checked out too.

    What can I eat to boost my estrogen levels naturally?

    A common question. The simple answer is:

    • Flaxseeds and soy contain plant estrogens that the body can’t actually use as such (too incompatible). They’ve lots of high-quality nutrients though, and the polyphenols and isoflavones can help with some of the same jobs when it comes to sexual health.
    • Fruit, especially peaches, apricots, blueberries, and strawberries, contain a lot of lignans and also won’t increase your E levels as such, but will support the same functions and reduce your breast cancer risk.
    • Nuts, especially almonds (yay!), cashews, and pistachios, contain plant estrogens that again can’t be used as bioidentical estrogen (like you’d get from your ovaries or the pharmacy) but do support heart health.
    • Leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables support a lot of bodily functions including good hormonal health generally, in ways that are beyond the scope of this article, but in short: do eat your greens!

    Note: because none of these plant-estrogens or otherwise estrogenic nutrients can actually do the job of estradiol (the main form of estrogen in your body), this is why they’re still perfectly healthy for men to eat too, and—contrary to popular “soy boy” social myths—won’t have any feminizing effects whatsoever.

    On the contrary, most of the same foods support good testosterone-related health in men.

    The bottom line:

    • Our hormones are very special, and cannot be replaced with any amount of herbs or foods.
    • We can support our body’s natural hormonal functions with good diet, though.
    • Our hormones naturally fluctuate, and are broadly self-correcting.
    • If something gets seriously out of whack, you need an endocrinologist, not a homeopath or even a dietician.

    In case you missed it…

    We gave a more general overview of supporting hormonal health (including some hormones that aren’t sex hormones but are really important too), back in February.

    Check it out here: Healthy Hormones And How To Hack Them

    Want to read more?

    Anthea Levi, RD, takes much the same view:

    ❝For some ‘hormone-balancing’ products, the greatest risk might simply be lost dollars. Others could come at a higher cost.❞

    Read: Are Hormone-Balancing Products a Scam?

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Hormone Replacement
  • Coughing/Wheezing After Dinner?

    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.

    The After-Dinner Activities You Don’t Want

    A quick note first: our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies here, and we are not here to diagnose you or treat you; we are not doctors, let alone your doctors. Do see yours if you have any reason to believe there may be cause for concern.

    Coughing and/or wheezing after eating is more common the younger or older someone is. Lest that seem contradictory: it’s a U-shaped bell-curve.

    It can happen at any age and for any of a number of reasons, but there are patterns to the distribution:

    Mostly affects younger people:

    Allergies, asthma

    Young people are less likely to have a body that’s fully adapted to all foods yet, and asthma can be triggered by certain foods (for example sulfites, a common preservative additive):

    Adverse reactions to the sulphite additives

    Foods/drinks that commonly contain sulfites include soft drinks, wines and beers, and dried fruit

    As for the allergies side of things, you probably know the usual list of allergens to watch out for, e.g: dairy, fish, crustaceans, eggs, soy, wheat, nuts.

    However, that’s far from an exhaustive list, so it’s good to see an allergist if you suspect it may be an allergic reaction.

    Affects young and old people equally:

    Again, there’s a dip in the middle where this doesn’t tend to affect younger adults so much, but for young and old people:

    Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing)

    For children, this can be a case of not having fully got used to eating yet if very small, and when growing, can be a case of “this body is constantly changing and that makes things difficult”.

    For older people, this can can come from a variety of reasons, but common culprits include neurological disorders (including stroke and/or dementia), or a change in saliva quality and quantity—a side-effect of many medications:

    Hyposalivation in Elderly Patients

    (particularly useful in the article above is the table of drugs that are associated with this problem, and the various ways they may affect it)

    Managing this may be different depending on what is causing your dysphagia (as it could be anything from antidepressants to cancer), so this is definitely one to see your doctor about. For some pointers, though:

    NHS Inform | Dysphagia (swallowing problems)

    Affects older people more:

    Gastroesophagal reflux disease (GERD)

    This is a kind of acid reflux, but chronic, and often with a slightly different set of symptoms.

    GERD has no known cure once established, but its symptoms can be managed (or avoided in the first place) by:

    And of course, don’t smoke, and ideally don’t drink alcohol.

    You can read more about this (and the different ways it can go from there), here:

    NICE | Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease

    Note: this above page refers to it as “GORD”, because of the British English spelling of “oesophagus” rather than “esophagus”. It’s the exact same organ and condition, just a different spelling.

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Tomato vs Cucumber – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing tomato to cucumber, we picked the tomato.

    Why?

    Both are certainly great, but there are some nutritional factors between them:

    In terms of macros, everything is approximately equal except that tomato has more than 2x the fiber, so that’s a win for tomato.

    When it comes to vitamins, tomatoes have more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B6, B9, C, E, and choline, while cucumber has more of vitamins B2, B5, and K. In short, an 8:3 victory for tomatoes.

    In the category of minerals, tomatoes have more copper, potassium, and manganese, while cucumber has more calcium, iron, magnesium, selenium, and zinc. So, a win for cucumber this time.

    Both have useful phytochemical properties, too; tomatoes are rich in lycopene which has many benefits, and cucumbers have powerful anti-inflammatory powers whose mechanism of action is not yet fully understood—see the links below for more details!

    All in all, enjoy either or both (they make a great salad chopped roughly together with some olives, a little garlic, and a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a twist or three of black pepper), but if you have to pick just one (what a cruel world), we say the tomato has the most benefits, on balance.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Sensitive – by Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo

    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 book is written for what is called the “Highly Sensitive Person”, which makes it sound like a very rare snowflake condition, when in fact the diagnostic criteria (discussed early in the book) yield a population bell curve of 30:40:30, whereupon 30% are in the band of “high sensitivity”, 40% “normal sensitivity” and the remainder “low sensitivity”. You may note that “high” and “low” together outnumber “normal”, but statistics is like that.

    So, if you’re one of the approximately one in three people who fall into the higher category, and/or you have a loved one who is in that category, then this book looks at the many advantages to a commonly stigmatized and (by cruel irony) criticized personality trait.

    Those advantages range from personal life to work and even public life (yes, really), and can be grown, positively highlighted, used, and enjoyed.

    In the category of criticism, the book does not usefully cover the benefit of psychological resilience. Resilience does not mean losing sensitivity, just, being able to also dry one’s tears and weather life’s slings and arrows when the world is harsher than one might like. But for the authors, they have stacked all their chips on “we must make the world a better place”. Which is a noble goal, if not always an immediately attainable one.

    Bottom line: if you are more sensitive than average and would like to use that to benefit yourself and those around you, then this is the book for you!

    Click here to check out Sensitive, and make the most of your strengths!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: