Goodbye Autoimmune Disease – by Dr. Brooke Goldner
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First let’s examine: will it prevent and reverse all the chronic illnesses mentioned on the cover? Probably not. In fact, for several of the things mentioned, it is not currently known what causes them, and others, there are known genetic factors that may not be undone by lifestyle changes.
However! A more modest claim would have been more justified, such as “alleviate the symptoms of”.
On account of this, the book still has merit.
The main thrust of the book is, as you might expect, to reduce inflammation by avoiding inflammatory things and enjoy anti-inflammatory things. It’s not just diet, though, and it also covers a lot of other lifestyle factors, including the obvious topics of exercise, sleep, etc but also various mental health aspects that often go overlooked. The dietary component is important, though, and has a 6-step process that is absolutely integral to her method, so that’s an important thing to focus on.
The book makes heavy use of anecdotal case studies. Case studies are great when one wants to illustrate how something works; they’re not so great as a putative proof that something works, so we’d rather have seen fewer anecdotes and more actual science.
The author is also her own case study, having recovered from systemic lupus nephritis, which means two things:
- She does understand what it is like to have a chronic illness, which sets her apart from a lot of doctors
- She overlooks survivorship bias, and posits that the same approach will work for everyone with all chronic illnesses
The latter may be a little overly optimistic, but on balance, optimism is generally a beneficial thing, so this is better than the alternative of (just as incorrectly) assuming there is no hope.
Bottom line: this may not in fact cure all autoimmune conditions, but at the very least it will alleviate a lot of symptoms, if not reverse disease. So, if you have an autoimmune condition, following this book’s very reasonable advice does seem very sound.
Click here to check out Goodbye Autoimmune Disease, and see what a difference it can make for you!
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If You Want Better Cognitive Health Later, Improve/Protect These Things Now
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…and other items from this week’s health news:
Keep your eyes and ears open (keep your mind open, too)
A new study from Sweden has shown a link between good hearing and good vision in older adults (looking especially at the changes between the ages of 65 years and 75 years), and better cognitive health outcomes (that is to say, less age-related cognitive decline is experienced by those with good hearing and vision, than by those with hearing loss and/or vision loss).
Both of those two things, in turn, were influenced by education level, which may suggest that ongoing learning has a protective effect too. And while in the US, “education level” is often a very strong indicator of someone’s financial standing, in Sweden, it is arguably less so—which suggests that it may really be (at least in part) the education level itself that’s relevant, not merely the socioeconomic class for reasons of financial security (and financial security being necessary for good healthcare—which is again, still a factor, but somewhat less of a factor in Sweden than in the US).
Note: the study included data from older people throughout Europe, but the vast majority of the study participants were from Sweden and Denmark, countries that are well-known for their very high health-related quality of life scores.
Read in full: Better hearing and vision linked to stronger cognitive health in older adults
Related: 12 Questions For Better Brain Health
Atherosclerosis: His & Hers?
Hormones affect a lot of things that people don’t commonly associate them with, and heart disease risk is one of those things.
While it’s been well-established for some time that hormones affect CVD risk in general, and heart attack risk in particular, it’s now been discovered that the physical attributes of arterial plaque differ according to sex:
❝Men tend to develop cardiovascular diseases earlier and are more susceptible, often showing lipid-rich plaques and bleeding.
In contrast, women—possibly due to protective effects of pre-menopausal hormones—typically develop carotid stenosis later, with plaque erosion being more common❞
Specifically, for those who like to know the technical ins and outs: estrogen promotes more osteogenic smooth muscle cells, macrophages that help regulate the immune response, and endothelial cells that change into mesenchymal cells, while testosterone promotes more chondrocyte-like smooth muscle cells, macrophages involved in tissue remodeling, and angiogenic endothelial cells that promote the formation of new blood vessels.
Or, in simpler English: things get built differently, which means that when things go wrong, they go wrong differently, too.
Little wonder that treatment efficacy of certain medications varies so much by sex!
Read in full: Sex differences in carotid artery plaques and stroke symptoms revealed in new study
Related: Statins: His & Hers?
Are you as stressed as the rest?
Over in the UK, there’s a big debate presently about whether mental health issues are being overdiagnosed—the idea seems to be that if a sufficiently large number of people are being diagnosed with something, then surely most of them do not really have it. This logic relies on an assumption that mental health (good or bad) is distributed fairly and conservatively amongst the population with only a tiny minority of randomly-lucky people getting bad mental health, as some sort of immutable law of the universe, with the percentages of the distribution remaining more or less the same over time. It doesn’t account for the fact that if things are happening that adversely affect many people, then many people’s health will suffer, including their mental health.
In the US, meanwhile, there’s a growing mental health crisis too. We may hypothesize that this is for “out of the pandemic, into the economic crisis” reasons (i.e. things that adversely affect many people), but that’s just a hypothesis, of course. What’s not a hypothesis, and is actual data, is that stress levels are rising amongst the American population.
And while any individual stressful event can be managed and soon we get to the other side of it in one piece, chronic stress has knock-on deleterious effects for the rest of health:
Read in full: Nearly half of Americans are stressed at least once a week, and one in six are stressed every day
Related: How To Reduce Chronic Stress
Take care!
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Hope: A research-based explainer
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This year, more than 60 countries, representing more than 4 billion people, will hold major elections. News headlines already are reporting that voters are hanging on to hope. When things get tough or don’t go our way, we’re told to hang on to hope. HOPE was the only word printed on President Barack Obama’s iconic campaign poster in 2008.
Research on hope has flourished only in recent decades. There’s now a growing recognition that hope has a role in physical, social, and mental health outcomes, including promoting resilience. As we embark on a challenging year of news, it’s important for journalists to learn about hope.
So what is hope? And what does the research say about it?
Merriam-Webster defines hope as a “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” This definition highlights the two basic dimensions of hope: a desire and a belief in the possibility of attaining that desire.
Hope is not Pollyannaish optimism, writes psychologist Everett Worthington in a 2020 article for The Conversation. “Instead, hope is a motivation to persevere toward a goal or end state, even if we’re skeptical that a positive outcome is likely.”
There are several scientific theories about hope.
One of the first, and most well-known, theories on hope was introduced in 1991 by American psychologist Charles R. Snyder.
In a paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Snyder defined hope as a cognitive trait centered on the pursuit of goals and built on two components: a sense of agency in achieving a goal, and a perceived ability to create pathways to achieve that goal. He defined hope as something individualistic.
Snyder also introduced the Hope Scale, which continues to be used today, as a way to measure hope. He suggested that some people have higher levels of hope than others and there seem to be benefits to being more hopeful.
“For example, we would expect that higher as compared with lower hope people are more likely to have a healthy lifestyle, to avoid life crises, and to cope better with stressors when they are encountered,” they write.
Others have suggested broader definitions.
In 1992, Kaye Herth, a professor of nursing and a scholar on hope, defined hope as “a multidimensional dynamic life force characterized by a confident yet uncertain expectation of achieving good, which to the hoping person, is realistically possible and personally significant.” Herth also developed the Herth Hope Index, which is used in various settings, including clinical practice and research.
More recently, others have offered an even broader definition of hope.
Anthony Scioli, a clinical psychologist and author of several books on hope, defines hope “as an emotion with spiritual dimensions,” in a 2023 review published in Current Opinion in Psychology. “Hope is best viewed as an ameliorating emotion, designed to fill the liminal space between need and reality.”
Hope is also nuanced.
“Our hopes may be active or passive, patient or critical, private or collective, grounded in the evidence or resolute in spite of it, socially conservative or socially transformative,” writes Darren Webb in a 2007 study published in History of the Human Sciences. “We all hope, but we experience this most human of all mental feelings in a variety of modes.”
To be sure, a few studies have shown that hope can have negative outcomes in certain populations and situations. For example, one study highlighted in the research roundup below finds that Black college students who had higher levels of hope experienced more stress due to racial discrimination compared with Black students who had lower levels of hope.
Today, hope is one of the most well-studied constructs within the field of positive psychology, according to the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, which dedicated its August 2023 issue to the subject. (Positive psychology is a branch of psychology focused on characters and behaviors that allow people to flourish.)
We’ve gathered several studies below to help you think more deeply about hope and recognize its role in your everyday lives.
Research roundup
The Role of Hope in Subsequent Health and Well-Being For Older Adults: An Outcome-Wide Longitudinal Approach
Katelyn N.G. Long, et al. Global Epidemiology, November 2020.The study: To explore the potential public health implications of hope, researchers examine the relationship between hope and physical, behavioral and psychosocial outcomes in 12,998 older adults in the U.S. with a mean age of 66.
Researchers note that most investigations on hope have focused on psychological and social well-being outcomes and less attention has been paid to its impact on physical and behavioral health, particularly among older adults.
The findings: Results show a positive association between an increased sense of hope and a variety of behavioral and psychosocial outcomes, such as fewer sleep problems, more physical activity, optimism and satisfaction with life. However, there wasn’t a clear association between hope and all physical health outcomes. For instance, hope was associated with a reduced number of chronic conditions, but not with stroke, diabetes and hypertension.
The takeaway: “The later stages of life are often defined by loss: the loss of health, loved ones, social support networks, independence, and (eventually) loss of life itself,” the authors write. “Our results suggest that standard public health promotion activities, which often focus solely on physical health, might be expanded to include a wider range of factors that may lead to gains in hope. For example, alongside community-based health and nutrition programs aimed at reducing chronic conditions like hypertension, programs that help strengthen marital relations (e.g., closeness with a spouse), provide opportunities to volunteer, help lower anxiety, or increase connection with friends may potentially increase levels of hope, which in turn, may improve levels of health and well-being in a variety of domains.”
Associated Factors of Hope in Cancer Patients During Treatment: A Systematic Literature Review
Corine Nierop-van Baalen, Maria Grypdonck, Ann van Hecke and Sofie Verhaeghe. Journal of Advanced Nursing, March 2020.The study: The authors review 33 studies, written in English or Dutch and published in the past decade, on the relationship between hope and the quality of life and well-being of patients with cancer. Studies have shown that many cancer patients respond to their diagnosis by nurturing hope, while many health professionals feel uneasy when patients’ hopes go far beyond their prognosis, the authors write.
The findings: Quality of life, social support and spiritual well-being were positively associated with hope, as measured with various scales. Whereas symptoms, psychological distress and depression had a negative association with hope. Hope didn’t seem to be affected by the type or stage of cancer or the patient’s demographics.
The takeaway: “Hope seems to be a process that is determined by a person’s inner being rather than influenced from the outside,” the authors write. “These factors are typically given meaning by the patients themselves. Social support, for example, is not about how many patients experience support, but that this support has real meaning for them.”
Characterizing Hope: An Interdisciplinary Overview of the Characteristics of Hope
Emma Pleeging, Job van Exel and Martijn Burger. Applied Research in Quality of Life, September 2021.The study: This systematic review provides an overview of the concept of hope based on 66 academic papers in ten academic fields, including economics and business studies, environmental studies, health studies, history, humanities, philosophy, political science, psychology, social science, theology and youth studies, resulting in seven themes and 41 sub-themes.
The findings: The authors boil down their findings to seven components: internal and external sources, the individual and social experience of hope, internal and external effects, and the object of hope, which can be “just about anything we can imagine,” the authors write.
The takeaway: “An important implication of these results lies in the way hope is measured in applied and scientific research,” researchers write. “When measuring hope or developing instruments to measure it, researchers could be well-advised to take note of the broader understanding of the topic, to prevent that important characteristics might be overlooked.”
Revisiting the Paradox of Hope: The Role of Discrimination Among First-Year Black College Students
Ryon C. McDermott, et al. Journal of Counseling Psychology, March 2020.The study: Researchers examine the moderating effects of hope on the association between experiencing racial discrimination, stress and academic well-being among 203 first-year U.S. Black college students. They build on a small body of evidence that suggests high levels of hope might have a negative effect on Black college students who experience racial discrimination.
The authors use data gathered as part of an annual paper-and-pencil survey of first-year college students at a university on the Gulf Coast, which the study doesn’t identify.
The findings: Researchers find that Black students who had higher levels of hope experienced more stress due to racial discrimination compared with students who had lower levels of hope. On the other hand, Black students with low levels of hope may be less likely to experience stress when they encounter discrimination.
Meanwhile, Black students who had high levels of hope were more successful in academic integration — which researchers define as satisfaction with and integration into the academic aspects of college life — despite facing discrimination. But low levels of hope had a negative impact on students’ academic well-being.
“The present study found evidence that a core construct in positive psychology, hope, may not always protect Black students from experiencing the psychological sting of discrimination, but it was still beneficial to their academic well-being,” the authors write.
The takeaway: “Our findings also highlight an urgent need to reduce discrimination on college campuses,” the researchers write. “Reducing discrimination could help Black students (and other racial minorities) avoid additional stress, as well as help them realize the full psychological and academic benefits of having high levels of hope.”
Additional reading
Hope Across Cultural Groups Lisa M. Edwards and Kat McConnell. Current Opinion in Psychology, February 2023.
The Psychology of Hope: A Diagnostic and Prescriptive Account Anthony Scioli. “Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope,” July 2020.
Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind C.R. Snyder. Psychological Inquiry, 2002
This article first appeared on The Journalist’s Resource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Can You Pass This 60-Second Muscle Test? (Most Over-50s Fail)
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Will Harlow, the over-50s specialist physio, gives us a challenge:
It’s time to get a grip
Grip strength reflects overall muscle health and, per a large body of evidence, is linked in research to independence, functional ability, and lower mortality risk.
Difficulty opening jars, dropping objects, or struggling with shopping can indicate declining grip and total-body strength, but there’s a more objective test than that:
- 50% carry test: hold roughly 25% of your body weight in each hand (so, 50% in total) and walk for 60 seconds to assess whole-body and grip strength.
- 50+ benchmark: aim to carry 50% of your body weight total for at least 30 seconds comfortably, and struggling early or failing due to grip is a fail for now.
What to not do (because it’s a common mistake): isolated grip tools don’t rebuild meaningful strength, because the body functions as an integrated system. Guess what happens if you have a integrated system of which one part is well-trained? That’s right, it fails, because one part can’t do it by itself.
To give a practical example: if you are just using squeezy grippers to train strength, any benefits you gain will vanish the instant you need to grip something at a different angle, or while rotating it in a certain way, or while slightly off-balance, or if it is a slightly different shape or weight distribution, or or or… You get the idea.
So, for functional strength that covers most bases:
- Reverse curl and press: lift dumbbells with your palms down to shoulder height, press overhead, then return under control to strengthen your forearms and upper body together.
- Towel wringing: twist a rolled towel tightly and hold for 5 seconds in each direction to train your grip, wrists, and forearms in a functional pattern.
- Farmer’s walk: walk with moderately challenging weights (about 15% of your body weight per hand) for 20–60 seconds to build grip, posture, core stability, and full-body strength.
As for how what to expect, consistent practice two or three times per week can noticeably improve strength and function within 6–8 weeks.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
10 Tips To Build Muscle Without Weights
Take care!
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Aging Well: Exercise, Diet, Relationships
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Questions and Answers at 10almonds
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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
I am interested in the following: Aging, Exercise, Diet, Relationships, Purpose, Lowering Stress
You’re going to love our Psychology Sunday editions of 10almonds!
You may particularly like some of these:
- Seriously Useful Communication Skills! ← this is about relationship stuff
- Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How) ← about “the stress hormone”
- How To Set Your Anxiety Aside ← these methods work for stress too
(This coming Psychology Sunday will have a feature specifically on stress, so do make sure to read that when it comes out!)
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A Surprisingly Accessible Treatment For Migraines
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…and other items from this week’s health news:
Cannabis’s very good stats for migraine relief
Migraine attacks are thought by many people to be “just a bad headache”, but in fact, there’s a lot more to it than that, and they’re also famously resistant to a lot of usual headache-relief medications and other remedies.
So, what’s new? Researchers (Dr. Dawn Buse et al.) tested cannabis vs placebo for the treatment of migraine, and got great results:
How it worked: 92 participants used vaporized cannabis containing 6% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and 11% cannabidiol (CBD), which are considdered relatively low potencies.
And the results?
- 67% of participants experienced a reduction in migraine pain within two hours of treatment
- 35% of participants became completely pain-free after treatment
These benefits lasted for up to 48 hours across 247 treated migraine attacks, and in terms of safety, no serious adverse events were reported during the study.
Read in full: Cannabis shows anti-migraine benefits
Related: Migraine: When Headaches Are The Tip Of The Neurological Iceberg
Alcohol use disorder: what are the key factors affecting relapse?
Long-term relapse in alcohol use disorder was most strongly linked to a gradual reduction in recovery focus or vigilance, making it the most prevalent and potent risk factor. As for what this looked like, it often involved deprioritizing recovery-related attitudes and routines, alongside disengagement from mutual-help groups and other recovery supports.
In other words, rather than a sudden failure as such relapses are generally assumed to be, it was usually more of a slow erosion of commitment to ongoing recovery maintenance.
That, perhaps, explains why psychological and social factors also play a major role, particularly worsening mental health symptoms, loneliness, social isolation, and increased exposure to alcohol-related environments, generally increasing in the year leading up to relapse:
Read in full: Key risk factors identified for long-term relapse in alcohol use disorder
Related: Which Addiction-Quitting Methods Work Best?
Not “basically just steam” after all
Vapes have enjoyed a (so far, it seems, well-earned) reputation of being less harmful than cigarettes. One of the ways in which they are considered less bad healthwise is when it comes to passive consumption, i.e., second-hand smoke/vapour. In the case of smoke, it’s smoke, and whatever else is in it, everyone knows smoke is bad to inhale, right? Whereas vapour… Steam inhalation is good for the health, no?
And in this case: no
As it turns out, secondhand vape plumes can contain ultrafine particles loaded with metals and reactive peroxides that interact to form lung-damaging free radicals. Additionally, volatile organic compounds in vape vapor can react with indoor ozone to form peroxides, which then interact with metals to generate reactive radicals.
It gets worse: because ultrafine particles can penetrate deep into your lungs and reach fluid-lined alveoli, they may damage lung tissue and impair lower respiratory function. And, paradoxically, ultrafine particles carry higher proportions of metals and peroxides than larger particles.
Read in full: Secondhand vape plumes could form lung-damaging radicals
Related: Vaping: A Lot Of Hot Air?
Take care!
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Natto, Taurine + Black Pepper, And Other Game-Changers
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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
❝Loved the info on nuts; of course I always eat pecans, which didn’t make the list of healthy nuts!❞
Dear subscriber, pardon the paraphrase of your comment—somehow it got deleted and now exists only in this writer’s memory. However, to address it:
Pecans are great too! We can’t include everything in every article (indeed, we got another feedback the same day saying the article was too long), but we love when you come to us with stuff for us to look at and write about (seriously, writer here: the more you ask, the easier it makes my job), so let’s talk pecans for a moment:
Pecans would have been number six on our list if we’d have written more!
Like many nuts, they’ve an abundance of healthy fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
They’re particularly good for zinc, which is vital for immune function, healing (including normal recovery after normal exercise), and DNA synthesis (so: anti-aging).
Pecans are also great for reducing LDL (“bad” cholesterol) and triglycerides (which are also bad for heart health); check it out:
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