Eat Well With Arthritis – by Emily Johnson, with Dr. Deepak Ravindran
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Author Emily Johnson was diagnosed with arthritis in her early 20s, but it had been affecting her life since the age of 4. Suffice it to say, managing the condition has been integral to her life.
She’s written this book with not only her own accumulated knowledge, but also the input of professional experts; the book contains insights from chronic pain specialist Dr. Deepak Ravindran, and gets an additional medical thumbs-up in a foreword by rheumatologist Dr. Lauren Freid.
The recipes themselves are clear and easy, and the ingredients are not obscure. There’s information on what makes each dish anti-inflammatory, per ingredient, so if you have cause to make any substitutions, that’s useful to know.
Speaking of ingredients, the recipes are mostly plant-based (though there are some chicken/fish ones) and free from common allergens—but not all of them are, so each of those is marked appropriately.
Beyond the recipes, there are also sections on managing arthritis more generally, and information on things to get for your kitchen that can make your life with arthritis a lot easier!
Bottom line: if you have arthritis, cook for somebody with arthritis, or would just like a low-inflammation diet, then this is an excellent book for you.
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How stigma perpetuates substance use
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In 2022, 54.6 million people 12 and older in the United States needed substance use disorder (SUD) treatment. Of those, only 24 percent received treatment, according to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
SUD is a treatable, chronic medical condition that causes people to have difficulty controlling their use of legal or illegal substances, such as alcohol, tobacco, prescription opioids, heroin, methamphetamine, or cocaine. Using these substances may impact people’s health and ability to function in their daily life.
While help is available for people with SUD, the stigma they face—negative attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination—often leads to shame, worsens their condition, and keeps them from seeking help.
Read on to find out more about how stigma perpetuates substance use.
Stigma can keep people from seeking treatment
Suzan M. Walters, assistant professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, has seen this firsthand in her research on stigma and health disparities.
She explains that people with SUD may be treated differently at a hospital or another health care setting because of their drug use, appearance (including track marks on their arms), or housing situation, which may discourage them from seeking care.
“And this is not just one case; this is a trend that I’m seeing with people who use drugs,” Walters tells PGN. “Someone said, ‘If I overdose, I’m not even going to the [emergency room] to get help because of this, because of the way I’m treated. Because I know I’m going to be treated differently.’”
People experience stigma not only because of their addiction, but also because of other aspects of their identities, Walters says, including “immigration or race and ethnicity. Hispanic folks, brown folks, Black folks [are] being treated differently and experiencing different outcomes.”
And despite the effective harm reduction tools and treatment options available for SUD, research has shown that stigma creates barriers to access.
Syringe services programs, for example, provide infectious disease testing, Narcan, and fentanyl test strips. These programs have been proven to save lives and reduce the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. SSPs don’t increase crime, but they’re often mistakenly “viewed by communities as potential settings of drug-related crime;” this myth persists despite decades of research proving that SSPs make communities safer.
To improve this bias, Walters says it’s helpful for people to take a step back and recognize how we use substances, like alcohol, in our own lives, while also humanizing those with addiction. She says, “There’s a lack of understanding that these are human beings and people … [who] are living lives, and many times very functional lives.”
Misconceptions lead to stigma
SUD results from changes in the brain that make it difficult for a person to stop using a substance. But research has shown that a big misconception that leads to stigma is that addiction is a choice and reflects a person’s willpower.
Michelle Maloney, executive clinical director of mental health and addiction recovery services for Rogers Behavioral Health, tells PGN that statements such as “you should be able to stop” can keep a patient from seeking treatment. This belief goes back to the 1980s and the War on Drugs, she adds.
“We think about public service announcements that occurred during that time: ‘Just say no to drugs,’” Maloney says. “People who have struggled, whether that be with nicotine, alcohol, or opioids, [know] it’s not as easy as just saying no.”
Stigma can worsen addiction
Stigma can also lead people with SUD to feel guilt and shame and blame themselves for their medical condition. These feelings, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, may “reinforce drug-seeking behavior.”
In a 2020 article, Dr. Nora D. Volkow, the director of NIDA, said that “when internalized, stigma and the painful isolation it produces encourage further drug taking, directly exacerbating the disease.”
Overall, research agrees that stigma harms people experiencing addiction and can make the condition worse. Experts also agree that debunking myths about the condition and using non-stigmatizing language (like saying someone is a person with a substance use disorder, not an addict) can go a long way toward reducing stigma.
Resources to mitigate stigma:
- CDC: Stigma Reduction
- National Harm Reduction Coalition: Respect To Connect: Undoing Stigma
- NIDA:
- Shatterproof: Addiction language guide (Disclosure: The Public Good Projects, PGN’s parent company, is a Shatterproof partner)
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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PTSD, But, Well…. Complex.
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PTSD is typically associated with military veterans, for example, or sexual assault survivors. There was a clear, indisputable, Bad Thing™ that was experienced, and it left a psychological scar. When something happens to remind us of that—say, there are fireworks, or somebody touches us a certain way—it’ll trigger an immediate strong response of some kind.
These days the word “triggered” has been popularly misappropriated to mean any adverse emotional reaction, often to something trivial.
But, not all trauma is so clear. If PTSD refers to the result of that one time you were smashed with a sledgehammer, C-PTSD (Complex PTSD) refers to the result of having been hit with a rolled-up newspaper every few days for fifteen years, say.
This might have been…
- childhood emotional neglect
- a parent with a hair-trigger temper
- bullying at school
- extended financial hardship as a young adult
- “just” being told or shown all too often that your best was never good enough
- the persistent threat (real or imagined) of doom of some kind
- the often-reinforced idea that you might lose everything at any moment
If you’re reading this list and thinking “that’s just life though”, you might be in the estimated 1 in 5 people with (often undiagnosed) C-PTSD.
How About You? Take The (5mins) Test Here
Now, we at 10almonds are not doctors or therapists and even if we were, we certainly wouldn’t try to diagnose from afar. But, even if there’s only a partial match, sometimes the same advice can help.
So what are the symptoms of C-PTSD?
- A feeling that nothing is safe; we might suddenly lose what we have gained
- The body keeps the score… And it shows. We may have trouble relaxing, an aversion to exercise for reasons that don’t really add up, or an aversion to being touched.
- Trouble sleeping, born of nagging sense that to sleep is to be vulnerable to attack, and/or lazy, and/or negligent of our duties
- Poor self-image, about our body and/or about ourself as a person.
- We’re often drawn to highly unavailable people—or we are the highly unavailable person to which our complementary C-PTSD sufferers are attracted.
- We are prone to feelings of rage. Whether we keep a calm lid on it or lose our temper, we know it’s there. We’re angry at the world and at ourselves.
- We are not quick to trust—we may go through the motions of showing trust, but we’re already half-expecting that trust to have been misplaced.
- “Hell is other people” has become such a rule of life that we may tend to cloister ourselves away from company.
- We may try to order our environment around us as a matter of safety, and be easily perturbed by sudden changes being imposed on us, even if ostensibly quite minor or harmless.
- In a bid to try to find safety, we may throw ourselves into work—whatever that is for us. It could be literally our job, or passion projects, or our family, or community, and in and of itself that’s great! But the motivation is more of an attempt to distract ourselves from The Horrors™.
“Alright, I scored more of those than I care to admit. What now?”
A lot of the answer lies in first acknowledging to yourself what happened, to make you feel the way you do now. If you, for example, have an abject hatred of Christmas, what were your childhood Christmases like? If you fear losing money that you’ve accumulated, what underpins that fear? It could be something that directly happened to you, but it also could just be repeated messages you received from your parents, for example.
It could even be that you had superficially an idyllic perfect childhood. Health, wealth, security, a loving family… and simply a chemical imbalance in your brain made it a special kind of Hell for you that nobody understood, and perhaps you didn’t either.
Unfortunately, a difficult task now lies ahead: giving love, understanding, compassion, and reassurance to the person for whom you may have the most contempt in the world: yourself.
If you’d like some help with that, here are some resources:
ComplexTrauma.org (a lot of very good free resources, with no need for interaction)
CPTSD Foundation (mostly paid courses and the like)
Some final words about healing…
- You are in fact amazing,
- You can do it, and
- You deserve it.
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Zero Sugar / One Month – by Becky Gillaspy
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We’ve reviewed books about the evils of sugar before, so what makes this one different?
This one has a focus on helping the reader quit it. It assumes we already know the evils of sugar (though it does cover that too).
It looks at the mechanisms of sugar addiction (habits-based and physiological), and how to safely and painlessly cut through those to come out the other side, free from sugar.
The author gives a day-by-day plan, for not only eliminating sugar, but also adding and including things to fill the gap it leaves, keeping us sated, energized, and happy along the way.
In the category of subjective criticism, it does also assume we want to lose weight, which may not be the case for many readers. But that’s a by-the-by and doesn’t detract from the useful guide to quitting sugar, whatever one’s reasons.
Bottom line: if you would like to quit sugar but find it hard, this book thinks of everything and walks you by the hand, making it easy.
Click here to check out Zero Sugar / One Month, and reap the health benefits!
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Eating Disorders: More Varied (And Prevalent) Than People Think
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Disordered Eating Beyond The Stereotypes
Around 10% of Americans* have (or have had) an eating disorder. That might not seem like a high percentage, but that’s one in ten; do you know 10 people? If so, it might be a topic that’s near to you.
*Source: Social and economic cost of eating disorders in the United States of Americ
Our hope is that even if you yourself have never had such a problem in your life, today’s article will help arm you with knowledge. You never know who in your life might need your support.
Very misunderstood
Eating disorders are so widely misunderstood in so many ways that we nearly made this a Friday Mythbusting edition—but we preface those with a poll that we hope to be at least somewhat polarizing or provide a spectrum of belief. In this case, meanwhile, there’s a whole cluster of myths that cannot be summed up in one question. So, here we are doing a Psychology Sunday edition instead.
“Eating disorders aren’t that important”
Eating disorders are the second most deadly category of mental illness, second only to opioid addiction.
Anorexia specifically has the highest case mortality rate of any mental illness:
Source: National Association of Anorexia Nervosa & Associated Disorders: Eating Disorder Statistics
So please, if someone needs help with an eating disorder (including if it’s you), help them.
“Eating disorders are for angsty rebellious teens”
While there’s often an element of “this is the one thing I can control” to some eating disorders (including anorexia and bulimia), eating disorders very often present in early middle-age, very often amongst busy career-driven individuals using it as a coping mechanism to have a feeling of control in their hectic lives.
13% of women over 50 report current core eating disorder symptoms, and that is probably underreported.
Source: as above; scroll to near the bottom!
“Eating disorders are a female thing”
Nope. Officially, men represent around 25% of people diagnosed with eating disorders, but women are 5x more likely to get diagnosed, so you can do the math there. Women are also 1.5% more likely to receive treatment for it.
By the time men do get diagnosed, they’ve often done a lot more damage to their bodies because they, as well as other people, have overlooked the possibility of their eating being disordered, due to the stereotype of it being a female thing.
Source: as above again!
“Eating disorders are about body image”
They can be, but that’s far from the only kind!
Some can be about control of diet, not just for the sake of controlling one’s body, but purely for the sake of controlling the diet itself.
Still yet others can be not about body image or control, like “Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder”, which in lay terms sometimes gets dismissed as “being a picky eater” or simply “losing one’s appetite”, but can be serious.
For example, a common presentation of the latter might be a person who is racked with guilt and/or anxiety, and simply stops eating, because either they don’t feel they deserve it, or “how can I eat at a time like this, when…?” but the time is an ongoing thing so their impromptu fast is too.
Still yet even more others might be about trying to regulate emotions by (in essence) self-medicating with food—not in the healthy “so eat some fruit and veg and nuts etc” sense, but in the “Binge-Eating Disorder” sense.
And that latter accounts for a lot of adults.
You can read more about these things here:
Psychology Today | Types of Eating Disorder ← it’s pop-science, but it’s a good overview
Take care! And if you have, or think you might have, an eating disorder, know that there are organizations that can and will offer help/support in a non-judgmental fashion. Here’s the ANAD’s eating disorder help resource page, for example.
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Alzheimer’s Risk Reduction Methods
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It’s Q&A Day!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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: I am now in the “aging” population. A great concern for me is Alzheimers. My father had it and I am so worried. What is the latest research on prevention?
Very important stuff! We wrote about this not long back:
(one good thing to note is that while Alzheimer’s has a genetic component, it doesn’t appear to be hereditary per se. Still, good to be on top of these things, and it’s never too early to start with preventive measures!)
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Eat to Your Heart’s Content – by Dr. Sat Bains
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Making food heart-healthy and tasty is a challenge that vexes many, but it doesn’t have to be so difficult.
Dr. Sat Bains, a professional chef with multiple Michelin stars to his name, is an expert on “tasty”, and after surviving a heart attack himself, he’s become an expert on “heart-healthy” since then.
The book contains not only the recipes (of which there are 68, by the way), but also large sections of explanation of what makes various ingredients or methods heart-healthy or heart-unhealthy.
There’s science in there too, and these sections were written under the guidance of Dr. Neil Williams, a lecturer in physiology and nutrition.
You may be wondering as to why the author himself has a doctorate too; in fact he has three, none of which are relevant:
- Doctor of Arts
- Doctor of Laws
- Doctor of Hospitality (Honorary)
…but we prefix “Dr.” when people are that and he is that. The expertise we’re getting here though is really his culinary skill and extracurricular heart-healthy learning, plus Dr. Williams’ actual professional health guidance.
Bottom line: if you’d like heart-healthy recipes with restaurant-level glamour, this book is a fine choice.
Click here to check out Eat To Your Heart’s Content, and look after yours!
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