Future-Proof Your Brain
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This is Kimberly Wilson. She’s a psychologist, not a doctor, and/but her speciality is neurophysiology and brain health.
Here’s what she wants us to know…
Avoid this very common killer
As you’re probably aware, the #1 killer in the US is heart disease, followed by COVID, which effectively pushed everything down a place. Thereafter, we see cancer, followed by accidental injuries, stroke, and dementia (including Alzheimer’s).
Over in the UK, where Wilson is from, dementia (including Alzheimer’s disease) is the #1 killer, followed by heart disease and then respiratory diseases (including COVID), and then stroke, then cancer.
As ever, what’s good for the heart is good for the brain, so many of the same interventions will help avoid both. With regard to some of the other differences in order, the reasons are mostly due to differences in the two countries’ healthcare systems and firearms laws.
It’s worth noting, though, that the leading cause of death in young people (aged 15–19) is suicide in the UK; in the US it’s nominally accidental injuries first (e.g. accidental shootings) with intentional suicide in the second spot.
In other words… Young or old, mental health is a serious health category that kills literally the most people in the UK, and also makes the top spots in the US.
Avoid the early killer
Given the demographics of most of our readership, chances are you’ve already lived past your teens and twenties. That’s not to say that suicide is no longer a risk, though, and it’s also worth noting that while mental health issues are invisible, they’re still physical illnesses (the brain is also an organ, after all!), so this isn’t something where you can simply “decide not to” and that’s you set, safe for life. So, please do continue to take good care in that regard.
We wrote about this previously, here:
How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)
Avoid the later killer
Wilson talks about how a recent survey found that…
- while nearly half of adults say dementia is the disease they fear most,
- only a third of those thought you could do anything to avoid it, and
- just 1% could name the 7 known risk factors.
Quick test: can you name the 7 known risk factors?
Please take a moment to actually try (this kind of mental stimulation is good in any case), and count them out on your fingers (or write them down), and then…
When you’re ready: click here to see the answer!
How many did you get? If you got them all, well done. If not, then well, now you know, so that’s good.
So, with those 7 things in mind, the first obvious advice is to take care of those things.
Taking an evidence-based medicine approach, Wilson recommends some specific interventions that will each improve one or more of those things, directly or indirectly:
Eating right
Wilson is a big fan of “nutritional psychiatry” and feeding one’s brain properly. We wrote about this, here:
The 6 Pillars Of Nutritional Psychiatry
As well as agreeing with the obvious “eat plenty of fiber, different-colored plants, and plenty of greens and beans”, Wilson specifically also champions getting enough of vitamins B9, B12, and D, as well as getting a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids.
She also recommends intermittent fasting, if that’s a reasonable option for you—but advocates for not worrying about it, if it’s not easy for you. For example, if you are diabetic, or have (or have a history with) some kind of eating disorder(s), then it’s probably not usefully practicable. But for most people, it can reduce systemic inflammation, which means also reducing neuroinflammation.
Managing stress right
Here she advocates for three main things:
- Mindful meditation (see: Evidence-Based, No-Frills Mindfulness)
- Psychological resilience (see: Building Psychological Resilience)
- Mindful social media use (see: Making Social Media Work For Your Mental Health)
Managing money right
Not often we talk about this in a health science publication as opposed to a financial planning publication, but the fact is that a lot of mental distress, which goes on to have a huge impact on the brain, is rooted in financial stresses.
And, of course, it’s good to be able to draw on financial resources to directly fund one’s good health, but that is the secondary consideration here—the financial stress is the biggest issue, and you can’t CBT your way out of debt, for example.
Therapists often face this, and what has been referred to informally by professionals in the field as “Shit Life Syndrome”—and there’s only so much that therapy can do about that.
We’re not a financial publication, but one recommendation we’ll drop is that if you don’t currently have budgeting software that you use, this writer personally uses and swears by YNAB (You Need A Budget), so maybe check that out if you don’t already have everything covered in that regard. It’s not free, but there is a 34-day free trial.
Therapy can be very worthwhile nonetheless
Wilson notes that therapy is like non-invasive brain surgery (because of neuroplasticity, it’s literally changing physical things in your brain).
It’s not a magic bullet and it’s not the right choice for everyone, but it’s worth considering, and even self-therapy can yield benefits for many:
The Gym For Your Mental Health: Getting The Most Out Of Therapy
Sleeping right
Sleep is not only critical for health in general and brain health in particular, it’s also most of when our glymphatic system does clean-up in the brain (essential for avoiding Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s, amongst other diseases):
How To Clean Your Brain (Glymphatic Health Primer)
Want to know more from Kimberley Wilson?
We reviewed a book of hers recently, here:
Unprocessed: What your Diet Is Doing To Your Brain – by Kimberley Wilson
However, much of what we shared today was sourced from another book of hers that we haven’t reviewed yet but probably will do one of these days:
Enjoy!
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The Truth About Vaccines
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The Truth About Vaccines
Yesterday we asked your views on vaccines, and we got an interesting spread of answers. Of those who responded to the poll, most were in favour of vaccines. We got quite a lot of comments this time too; we can’t feature them all, but we’ll include extracts from a few in our article today, as they raised interesting points!
Vaccines contain dangerous ingredients that will harm us more than the disease would: True or False?
False, contextually.
Many people are very understandably wary of things they know full well to be toxic, being injected into them.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are poison, and/or are some manner of conspiracy ” wrote:
❝I think vaccines from 50–60 years ago are true vaccines and were safer than vaccines today. I have not had a vaccine for many, many years, and I never plan to have any kind of vaccine/shot again.❞
They didn’t say why they personally felt this way, but the notion that “things were simpler back in the day” is a common (and often correct!) observation regards health, especially when it comes to unwanted additives and ultraprocessing of food.
Things like aluminum or mercury in vaccines are much like sodium and chlorine in table salt. Sodium and chlorine are indeed both toxic to us. But in the form of sodium chloride, it’s a normal part of our diet, provided we don’t overdo it.
Additionally, the amount of unwanted metals (e.g. aluminum, mercury) in vaccines is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount in dietary sources—even if you’re a baby and your “dietary sources” are breast milk and/or formula milk.
In the case of formaldehyde (an inactivating agent), it’s also the dose that makes the poison (and the quantity in vaccines is truly miniscule).
This academic paper alone cites more sources than we could here without making today’s newsletter longer than it already is:
Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation
I have a perfectly good immune system, it can handle the disease: True or False?
True! Contingently.
In fact, our immune system is so good at defending against disease, that the best thing we can do to protect ourselves is show our immune system a dead or deactivated version of a pathogen, so that when the real pathogen comes along, our immune system knows exactly what it is and what to do about it.
In other words, a vaccine.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are important but in some cases the side effects can be worse ” wrote:
❝In some ways I’m vacd out. I got COVid a few months ago and had no symptoms except a cough. I have asthma and it didn’t trigger a lot of congestion. No issues. I am fully vaccinated but not sure I’ll get one in fall.❞
We’re glad this subscriber didn’t get too ill! A testimony to their robust immune system doing what it’s supposed to, after being shown a recent-ish edition of the pathogen, in deactivated form.
It’s very reasonable to start wondering: “surely I’m vaccinated enough by now”
And, hopefully, you are! But, as any given pathogen mutates over time, we eventually need to show our immune system what the new version looks like, or else it won’t recognize it.
See also: Why Experts Think You’ll Need a COVID-19 Booster Shot in the Future
So why don’t we need booster shots for everything? Often, it’s because a pathogen has stopped mutating at any meaningful rate. Polio is an example of this—no booster is needed for most people in most places.
Others, like flu, require annual boosters to keep up with the pathogens.
Herd immunity will keep us safe: True or False?
True! Ish.
But it doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. For example, in the UK, “herd immunity” was the strategy promoted by Prime Minister of the hour, Boris Johnson. But he misunderstood what it meant:
- What he thought it meant: everyone gets the disease, then everyone who doesn’t die is now immune
- What it actually means: if most people are immune to the disease (for example: due to having been vaccinated), it can’t easily get to the people who aren’t immune
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are critical for our health; vax to the max! ” wrote:
❝I had a chiropractor a few years ago, who explained to me that if the general public took vaccines, then she would not have to vaccinate her children and take a risk of having side effects❞
Obviously, we can’t speak for this subscriber’s chiropractor’s children, but this raises a good example: some people can’t safely have a given vaccine, due to underlying medical conditions—or perhaps it is not available to them, for example if they are under a certain age.
In such cases, herd immunity—other people around having been vaccinated and thus not passing on the disease—is what will keep them safe.
Here’s a useful guide from the US Dept of Health and Human Services:
How does community immunity (a.k.a. herd immunity) work?
And, for those who are more visually inclined, here’s a graphical representation of a mathematical model of how herd immunity works (you can run a simulation)!
Stay safe!
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Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight – by Dr. Neal Barnard
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We previously reviewed Dr. Barnard’s “The Power Foods Diet”, and this time his work is about weight loss.
This time there are more recipes (which take up most of the book, so this one could be reasonably described as a cookbook), but not until after nearly a hundred pages of concepts, principles, and tips.
The recipes themselves are again very respectable, even if some may be a little redundant (e.g. the double-page recipe for blueberry muffins is followed by a double-page recipe for banana and date muffins, instead of just saying “or substitute this”—things like that) and run the gamut from salad dressings to hearty main meals.
A strength of the book is that it’s about what you eat, not how much of it you eat, so if you love eating (which is a very healthy trait to have in general), then you’ll enjoy that aspect.
Bottom line: if you’d like to eat more and weigh less, then this is a top-tier book for you.
Click here to check out “Foods That Cause You To Lose Weight”, and enjoy eating!
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Undoing The Damage Of Life’s Hard Knocks
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Sometimes, What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us Insecure
We’ve written before about Complex PTSD, which is much more common than the more popularly understood kind:
Given that C-PTSD affects so many people (around 1 in 5, but really, do read the article above! It explains it better than we have room to repeat today), it seems like a good idea to share tips for managing it.
(Last time, we took all the space for explaining it, so we just linked to some external resources at the end)
What happened to you?
PTSD has (as a necessity, as part of its diagnostic criteria) a clear event that caused it, which makes the above question easy to answer.
C-PTSD often takes more examination to figure out what tapestry of circumstances (and likely but not necessarily: treatment by other people) caused it.
Often it will feel like “but it can’t be that; that’s not that bad”, or “everyone has things like that” (in which case, you’re probably one of the one in five).
The deeper questions
Start by asking yourself: what are you most afraid of, and why? What are you most ashamed of? What do you fear that other people might say about you?
Often there is a core pattern of insecurity that can be summed up in a simple, harmful, I-message, e.g:
- I am a bad person
- I am unloveable
- I am a fake
- I am easy to hurt
- I cannot keep my loved ones safe
…and so forth.
For a bigger list of common insecurities to see what resonates, check out:
Basic Fears/Insecurities, And Their Corresponding Needs/Desires
Find where they came from
You probably learned bad beliefs, and consequently bad coping strategies, because of bad circumstances, and/or bad advice.
- When a parent exclaimed in anger about how stupid you are
- When a partner exclaimed in frustration that always mess everything up
- When an employer told you you weren’t good enough
…or maybe they told you one thing, and showed you the opposite. Or maybe it was entirely non-verbal circumstances:
- When you gambled on a good idea and lost everything
- When you tried so hard at some important endeavour and failed
- When you thought someone could be trusted, and learned the hard way that you were wrong
These are “life’s difficult bits”, but when we’ve lived through a whole stack of them, it’s less like a single shattering hammer-blow of PTSD, and more like the consistent non-stop tap tap tap that ends up doing just as much damage in the long run.
Resolve them
That may sound a bit like a “and quickly create world peace” level of task, but we have tools:
Ask yourself: what if…
…it had been different? Take some time and indulge in a full-blown fantasy of a life that was better. Explore it. How would those different life lessons, different messages, have impacted who you are, your personality, your behaviour?
This is useful, because the brain is famously bad at telling real memories from false ones. Consciously, you’ll know that one was an exploratory fantasy, but to your brain, it’s still doing the appropriate rewiring. So, little by little, neuroplasticity will do its thing.
Tell yourself a better lie
We borrowed this one from the title of a very good book which we’ve reviewed previously.
This idea is not about self-delusion, but rather that we already express our own experiences as a sort of narrative, and that narrative tends to contain value judgements that are often not useful, e.g. “I am stupid”, “I am useless”, and all the other insecurities we mentioned earlier. Some simple examples might be:
- “I had a terrible childhood” → “I have come so far”
- “I should have known better” → “I am wiser now”
- “I have lost so much” → “I have experienced so much”
So, replacing that self-talk can go a long way to re-writing how secure we feel, and therefore how much trauma-response (ideally: none!) we have to stimuli that are not really as threatening as we sometimes feel they are (a hallmark of PTSD in general).
Here’s a guide to more ways:
How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
Take care!
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Signs That Are Present When Someone Is Dying
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You’ve probably been there a few times, although given the emotional nature of the thing, it’s likely that you weren’t taking notes. Hospice workers, on the other hand, do take notes, so here are some things you might want to know, and if anything makes the next time even a little easier, that’ll be good:
Last stages
Here are the discussed signs of the “active dying” phase:
- Increasing unconsciousness:
- The person will be mostly unresponsive most of the time.
- Eyes may be open or partially open but not making eye contact.
- Mouth will likely remain open due to muscle relaxation.
- Cessation of food and water intake
- The person will likely not eat or drink for several days.
- This is a natural process and does not cause suffering per se (e.g. thirst, hunger).
- Dryness of mouth, however, can be treated with a little moistening, for comfort.
- Changes in breathing
- Breathing patterns will change and may be irregular.
- This is a natural metabolic response, and is not a sign of distress.
- Terminal secretions (“death rattle”) may occur:
- A gurgling sound caused by saliva buildup due to loss of swallowing reflex.
- Not painful or distressing for the person.
- Can be managed by repositioning or using medication to dry secretions.
- Skin color changes / mottling:
- First appears on fingers and toes (purple or gray discoloration).
- May spread to knees, nose, or other extremities.
- Temperature fluctuations:
- The body loses its ability to regulate temperature.
- Person may feel hot but be cold (or vice versa).
- Fevers are common—cooling measures and/or Tylenol can help.
A person in discomfort may appear restless, have a furrowed brow, or show physical agitation. If on the other hand they appear peaceful and unresponsive, they are almost certainly not in distress. At such times, it’s best to focus on just keeping them clean and comfortable.
For more on all of these, see:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Managing Mortality: When Planning Is a Matter of Life and Death
Take care!
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- Increasing unconsciousness:
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What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast – by Laura Vanderkram
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First, what this is not:this is not a rehash of “The 5AM Club”, and nor is it a rehash of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.
What it is: packed with tips about time management for real people operating here in the real world. The kind of people who have non-negotiable time-specific responsibilities, and frequent unavoidable interruptions. The kind of people who have partners, families, and personal goals and aspirations too.
The “two other short guides” mentioned in the subtitle are her other books, whose titles start the same but instead of “…before Breakfast”, substitute:
- …on the Weekend
- …at Work
However, if you’re retired (we know many of our subscribers are), this still applies to you:
- The “weekend” book is about getting the most out of one’s leisure time, and we hope you have that too!
- The “work” book is about not getting lost in the nitty-gritty of the daily grind, and instead making sure to keep track of the big picture. You probably have this in your personal projects, too!
Bottom line: if, in the mornings, it sometimes seems like your get-up-and-go has got up and gone without you, then you will surely benefit from this book that outstrips its competitors in usefulness and applicability.
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5 Ways To Avoid Hearing Loss
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Hear Ye, Hear Ye
Hearing loss is often associated with getting older—but it can strike at any age. In the US, for example…
- Around 13% of adults have hearing difficulties
- Nearly 27% of those over 65 have hearing difficulties
Complete or near-complete hearing loss is less common. From the same source…
- A little under 2% of adults in general had a total or near-total inability to hear
- A little over 4% of those over 65 had a total or near-total inability to hear
Source: CDC | Hearing Difficulties Among Adults: United States, 2019
So, what to do if we want to keep our hearing as it is?
Avoid loud environments
An obvious one, but it bears stating for the sake of being methodical. Loud environments damage our ears, but how loud is too loud?
You can check how loud an environment is by using a free smartphone app, such as:
Decibel Pro: dB Sound Level Meter (iOS / Android)
An 82 dB environment is considered safe for 16 hours. That’s the equivalent of, for example moderate traffic.
Every 3 dB added to that halves the safe exposure time, for example:
- An 85 dB environment is considered safe for 8 hours. That’s the equivalent of heavier traffic, or a vacuum cleaner.
- A 94 dB environment is considered safe for 1 hour. That might be a chainsaw, a motorcycle, or a large sporting event.
Many nightclubs or concert venues often have environments of 110 dB and more. So the safe exposure time would be under two minutes.
Source: NIOSH | Noise and Hearing Loss
With differences like that per 3 dB increase, then you may want to wear hearing protection if you’re going to be in a noisy environment.
Discreet options include things like these -20 dB silicone ear plugs that live in a little case on one’s keyring.
Stop sticking things in your ears
It’s said “nothing smaller than your elbow should go in your ear canal”. We’ve written about this before:
What’s Good (And What’s Not) Against Earwax
Look after the rest of your health
Our ears are not islands unaffected by the rest of our health, and indeed, they’re larger and more complex organs than we think about most of the time, since we only tend to think about the (least important!) external part.
Common causes of hearing loss that aren’t the percussive injuries we discussed above include:
- Diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Smoking
- Infections
- Medications
Lest that last one sound a little vague, it’s because there are hundreds of medications that have hearing loss as a potential side-effect. Here’s a list so you can check if you’re taking any of them:
List of Ototoxic Medications That May Cause Tinnitus or Hearing Loss
Get your hearing tested regularly.
There are online tests, but we recommend an in-person test at a local clinic, as it won’t be subject to the limitations and quirks of the device(s) you’re using. Pretty much anywhere that sells hearing aids will probably offer you a free test, so take advantage of it!
And, more generally, if you suddenly notice you lost some or all of your hearing in one or more ears, then get thee to a doctor, and quickly.
Treat it as an emergency, because there are many things that can be treated if and only if they are caught early, before the damage becomes permanent.
Use it or lose it
This one’s important. As we get older, it’s easy to become more reclusive, but the whole “neurons that fire together, wire together” neuroplasticity thing goes for our hearing too.
Our brain is, effectively, our innermost hearing organ, insofar as it processes the information it receives about sounds that were heard.
There are neurological hearing problems that can show up without external physical hearing damage (auditory processing disorders being high on the list), but usually these things are comorbid with each other.
So if we want to maintain our ability to process the sounds our ears detect, then we need to practice that ability.
Important implication:
That means that if you might benefit from a hearing aid, you should get it now, not later.
It’s counterintuitive, we know, but because of the neurological consequences, hearing aids help people retain their hearing, whereas soldiering on without can hasten hearing loss.
On the topic of hearing difficulty comorbidities…
Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is, paradoxically, associated with both hearing loss, and with hyperacusis (hearing supersensitivity, which sounds like a superpower, but can be quite a problem too).
Learn more about managing that, here:
Tinnitus: Quieting The Unwanted Orchestra In Your Ears
Take care!
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