How To Grow In Comfort
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How To Grow (Without Leaving Your Comfort Zone)
“You have to get out of your comfort zone!” we are told, from cradle to grave.
When we are young, we are advised (or sometimes more forcefully instructed!) that we have to try new things. In our middle age, we are expected to be the world’s greatest go-getters, afraid of nothing and always pushing limits. And when we are old, people bid us “don’t be such a dinosaur”.
It is assumed, unquestioned, that growth can only occur through hardship and discomfort.
But what if that’s a discomforting lie?
Butler (2023) posited an idea: “We never achieve success faster and with less effort than when we are in our comfort zone”
Her words are an obvious callback to the ideas of Csikszentmihalyi (1970) in the sense of “flow”, in the sense in which that word is used in psychology.
Flow is: when a person is in a state of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment of an activity.
As a necessary truth (i.e: a function of syllogistic logic), the conditions of “in a state of flow” and “outside of one’s comfort zone” cannot overlap.
From there, we can further deduce (again by simple logic) that if flow can be found, and/but cannot be found outside of the comfort zone, then flow can only be found within the comfort zone.
That is indeed comforting, but what about growth?
Imagine you’ve never gone camping in your life, but you want to get outside of your comfort zone, and now’s the time to do it. So, you check out some maps of the Yukon, purchase some camping gear, and off you go into the wilderness. In the event that you survive to report it, you will indeed be able to say “it was not comfortable”.
But, did growth occur? Maybe, but… it’s a folly to say “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” as a reason to pursue such things. Firstly, there’s a high chance it may kill us. Secondly, what doesn’t kill us often leaves us incredibly weakened and vulnerable.
When Hannibal famously took his large army of mostly African mercenaries across the Alps during winter to march on Rome from the other side, he lost most of his men on the way, before proceeding to terrorize Northern Italy convincingly with the small remainder. But! Their hard experience hadn’t made them stronger; it had just removed the weaker soldiers, making the resultant formations harder to break.
All this to say, please do not inflict hardship and discomfort and danger in the hopes it’ll make you stronger; it will probably do the opposite.
But…
If, instead of wilderness trekking in the Yukon…
- You start off with a camper van holiday, then you’ll be taking a fair amount of your comfort with you. In effect, you will be stretching and expanding your comfort zone without leaving it.
- Then maybe another year you might try camping in a tent on a well-catered camping site.
- Later, you might try “roughing it” at a much less well-catered camping site.
- And so on.
Congratulations, you have tried new things and undergone growth, taking your comfort zone with you all the way!
This is more than just “easing yourself into” something
It really is about taking your comfort with you too. If you want to take up running, don’t ask “how can I run just a little bit first” or “how can I make it easier” (well, feel free to ask those things too, but) ask yourself: how can I bring my comfort with me? Comfortable shoes, perhaps, an ergonomic water bottle, shade for your head, maybe.
❝Any fool can rough it, but a good soldier can make himself comfortable in any circumstances❞
~ British Army maxim
This goes for more than just physical stuff, too
If you want to learn a new skill, the initial learning curve can be anxiety-inducing, especially if you are taking a course and worried about keeping up or “not being good enough”.
So, “secretly” study in advance, at your leisure, get yourself a head start. Find a degree of comfort in what you’ve learned so far, and then bring that comfort with you into your entry-level course that is now less intimidating.
Discomfort isn’t a badge of honor (and impedes growth)
Take that extra rest stop on the highway. Bring your favorite coffee with you. Use that walking stick, if it helps.
Whatever it takes to bring your comfort with you, bring it.
Trust us, you’ll get further that way.
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Who will look after us in our final years? A pay rise alone won’t solve aged-care workforce shortages
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Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they deserved substantial wage rises of up to 28%. The federal government has committed to the increases, but is yet to announce when they will start.
But while wage rises for aged-care workers are welcome, this measure alone will not fix all workforce problems in the sector. The number of people over 80 is expected to triple over the next 40 years, driving an increase in the number of aged care workers needed.
How did we get here?
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which delivered its final report in March 2021, identified a litany of tragic failures in the regulation and delivery of aged care.
The former Liberal government was dragged reluctantly to accept that a total revamp of the aged-care system was needed. But its weak response left the heavy lifting to the incoming Labor government.
The current government’s response started well, with a significant injection of funding and a promising regulatory response. But it too has failed to pursue a visionary response to the problems identified by the Royal Commission.
Action was needed on four fronts:
- ensuring enough staff to provide care
- building a functioning regulatory system to encourage good care and weed out bad providers
- designing and introducing a fair payment system to distribute funds to providers and
- implementing a financing system to pay for it all and achieve intergenerational equity.
A government taskforce which proposed a timid response to the fourth challenge – an equitable financing system – was released at the start of last week.
Consultation closed on a very poorly designed new regulatory regime the week before.
But the big news came at end of the week when the Fair Work Commission handed down a further determination on what aged-care workers should be paid, confirming and going beyond a previous interim determination.
What did the Fair Work Commission find?
Essentially, the commission determined that work in industries with a high proportion of women workers has been traditionally undervalued in wage-setting. This had consequences for both care workers in the aged-care industry (nurses and Certificate III-qualified personal-care workers) and indirect care workers (cleaners, food services assistants).
Aged-care staff will now get significant pay increases – 18–28% increase for personal care workers employed under the Aged Care Award, inclusive of the increase awarded in the interim decision.
The commission determined aged care work was undervalued.
Shutterstock/Toa55Indirect care workers were awarded a general increase of 3%. Laundry hands, cleaners and food services assistants will receive a further 3.96% on the grounds they “interact with residents significantly more regularly than other indirect care employees”.
The final increases for registered and enrolled nurses will be determined in the next few months.
How has the sector responded?
There has been no push-back from employer groups or conservative politicians. This suggests the uplift is accepted as fair by all concerned.
The interim increases of up to 15% probably facilitated this acceptance, with the recognition of the community that care workers should be paid more than fast food workers.
There was no criticism from aged-care providers either. This is probably because they are facing difficulty in recruiting staff at current wage rates. And because government payments to providers reflect the actual cost of aged care, increased payments will automatically flow to providers.
When the increases will flow has yet to be determined. The government is due to give its recommendations for staging implementation by mid-April.
Is the workforce problem fixed?
An increase in wages is necessary, but alone is not sufficient to solve workforce shortages.
The health- and social-care workforce is predicted to grow faster than any other sector over the next decade. The “care economy” will grow from around 8% to around 15% of GDP over the next 40 years.
This means a greater proportion of school-leavers will need to be attracted to the aged-care sector. Aged care will also need to attract and retrain workers displaced from industries in decline and attract suitably skilled migrants and refugees with appropriate language skills.
Aged care will need to attract workers from other sectors.
nastya_ph/ShutterstockThe caps on university and college enrolments imposed by the previous government, coupled with weak student demand for places in key professions (such as nursing), has meant workforce shortages will continue for a few more years, despite the allure of increased wages.
A significant increase in intakes into university and vocational education college courses preparing students for health and social care is still required. Better pay will help to increase student demand, but funding to expand place numbers will ensure there are enough qualified staff for the aged-care system of the future.
Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight
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Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight
This is Dr. Michael Greger. We’ve featured him before: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
This time, we’re working from his latest book, the excellent “How Not To Age”, which we reviewed all so recently. It is very information-dense, but we’re going to be focussing on one part, his “anti-aging eight”, that is to say, eight interventions he rates the most highly to slow aging in general (other parts of the book pertained to slowing eleven specific pathways of aging, or preserving specific bodily functions against aging, for example).
Without further ado, his “anti-aging eight” are…
- Nuts
- Greens
- Berries
- Xenohormesis & microRNA manipulation
- Prebiotics & postbiotics
- Caloric restriction / IF
- Protein restriction
- NAD+
As you may have noticed, some of these are things might appear already on your grocery shopping list; others don’t seem so “household”. Let’s break them down:
Nuts, greens, berries
These are amongst the most nutrient-dense and phytochemical-useful parts of the diet that Dr. Greger advocates for in his already-famous “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”.
For brevity, we’ll not go into the science of these here, but will advise you: eat a daily portion of nuts, a daily portion of berries, and a couple of daily portions of greens.
Xenohormesis & microRNA manipulation
You might, actually, have these on your grocery shopping list too!
Hormesis, you may recall from previous editions of 10almonds, is about engaging in a small amount of eustress to trigger the body’s self-strengthening response, for example:
Xenohormesis is about getting similar benefits, second-hand.
For example, plants that have been grown to “organic” standards (i.e. without artificial pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers) have had to adapt to their relatively harsher environment by upping their levels of protective polyphenols and other phytochemicals that, as it turns out, are as beneficial to us as they are to the plants:
Hormetic Effects of Phytochemicals on Health and Longevity
Additionally, the flip side of xenohormesis is that some plant compounds can themselves act as a source of hormetic stress that end up bolstering us. For example:
In essence, it’s not just that it has anti-oxidant effect; it also provides a tiny oxidative-stress immunization against serious sources of oxidative stress—and thus, aging.
MicroRNA manipulation is, alas, too complex to truly summarize an entire chapter in a line or two, but it has to do with genetic information from the food that we eat having a beneficial or deleterious effect to our own health:
Diet-derived microRNAs: unicorn or silver bullet?
A couple of quick takeaways (out of very many) from Dr. Greger’s chapter on this is to spring for the better quality olive oil, and skip the cow’s milk:
- Impact of Phenol-Enriched Virgin Olive Oils on the Postprandial Levels of Circulating microRNAs Related to Cardiovascular Disease
- MicroRNA exosomes of pasteurized milk: potential pathogens of Western diseases
Prebiotics & Postbiotics
We’re short on space, so we’ll link you to a previous article, and tell you that it’s important against aging too:
Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
An example of how one of Dr. Greger’s most-recommended postbiotics helps against aging, by the way:
- The mitophagy activator urolithin A is safe and induces a molecular signature of improved mitochondrial and cellular health in humans
- Urolithin A improves muscle strength, exercise performance, and biomarkers of mitochondrial health in a randomized trial in middle-aged adults
(Urolithin can be found in many plants, and especially those containing tannins)
See also: How to Make Urolithin Postbiotics from Tannins
Caloric restriction / Intermittent fasting
This is about lowering metabolic load and promoting cellular apoptosis (programmed cell death; sounds bad; is good) and autophagy (self-consumption; again, sounds bad; is good).
For example, he cites the intermittent fasters’ 46% lower risk of dying in the subsequent years of follow-up in this longitudinal study:
For brevity we’ll link to our previous IF article, but we’ll revisit caloric restriction in a main feature on of these days:
Fasting Without Crashing? We sort the science from the hype!
Dr. Greger favours caloric restriction over intermittent fasting, arguing that it is easier to adhere to and harder to get wrong if one has some confounding factor (e.g. diabetes, or a medication that requires food at certain times, etc). If adhered to healthily, the benefits appear to be comparable for each, though.
Protein restriction
In contrast to our recent main feature Protein vs Sarcopenia, in which that week’s featured expert argued for high protein consumption levels, protein restriction can, on the other hand, have anti-aging effects. A reminder that our body is a complex organism, and sometimes what’s good for one thing is bad for another!
Dr. Greger offers protein restriction as a way to get many of the benefits of caloric restriction, without caloric restriction. He further notes that caloric restriction without protein restriction doesn’t decrease IGF-1 levels (a marker of aging).
However, for FGF21 levels (these are good and we want them higher to stay younger), what matters more than lowering proteins in general is lowering levels of the amino acid methionine—found mostly in animal products, not plants—so the source of the protein matters:
For example, legumes deliver only 5–10% of the methionine that meat does, for the same amount of protein, so that’s a factor to bear in mind.
NAD+
This is about nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+ to its friends.
NAD+ levels decline with age, and that decline is a causal factor in aging, and boosting the levels can slow aging:
Therapeutic Potential of NAD-Boosting Molecules: The In Vivo Evidence
Can we get NAD+ from food? We can, but not in useful quantities or with sufficient bioavailability.
Supplements, then? Dr. Greger finds the evidence for their usefulness lacking, in interventional trials.
How to boost NAD+, then? Dr. Greger prescribes…
Exercise! It boosts levels by 127% (i.e., it more than doubles the levels), based on a modest three-week exercise bike regimen:
Skeletal muscle NAMPT is induced by exercise in humans
Another study on resistance training found the same 127% boost:
Take care!
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Two Things You Can Do To Improve Stroke Survival Chances
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Dr. Andrew’s Stroke Survival Guide
This is Dr. Nadine Andrew. She’s a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine at Monash University. She’s the Research Data Lead for the National Center of Healthy Aging. She is lead investigator on the NHMRC-funded PRECISE project… The most comprehensive stroke data linkage study to date! In short, she knows her stuff.
We’ve talked before about how sample size is important when it comes to scientific studies. It’s frustrating; sometimes we see what looks like a great study until we notice it has a sample size of 17 or something.
Dr. Andrew didn’t mess around in this regard, and the 12,386 participants in her Australian study of stroke patients provided a huge amount of data!
With a 95% confidence interval because of the huge dataset, she found that there was one factor that reduced mortality by 26%.
And the difference was…
Whether or not patients had a chronic disease management plan set up with their GP (General Practitioner, or “family doctor”, in US terms), after their initial stroke treatment.
45% of patients had this; the other 55% did not, so again the sample size was big for both groups.
Why this is important:
After a stroke, often a patient is discharged as early as it seems safe to do so, and there’s a common view that “it just takes time” and “now we wait”. After all, no medical technology we currently have can outright repair that damage—the body must repair itself! Medications—while critical*—can only support that and help avoid recurrence.
*How critical? VERY critical. Critical critical. Dr. Andrew found, some years previously, that greater levels of medication adherence (ie, taking the correct dose on time and not missing any) significantly improved survival outcomes. No surprise, right? But what may surprise is that this held true even for patients with near-perfect adherence. In other words: miss a dose at your peril. It’s that important.
But, as Dr. Andrew’s critical research shows, that’s no reason to simply prescribe ongoing meds and otherwise cut a patient loose… or, if you or a loved one are the patient, to allow yourself/them to be left without a doctor’s ongoing active support in the form of a chronic disease management plan.
What does a chronic disease management plan look like?
First, what it’s not:
- “Yes yes, I’m here if you need me, just make an appointment if something changes”
- “Let’s pencil in a check-up in three months”
- Etc
What it actually looks like:
It looks like a plan. A personal care plan, built around that person’s individual needs, risks, liabilities… and potential complications.
Because who amongst us, especially at the age where strokes are more likely, has an uncomplicated medical record? There will always be comorbidities and confounding factors, so a one-size-fits-all plan will not do.
Dr. Andrew’s work took place in Australia, so she had the Australian healthcare system in mind… We know many of our subscribers are from North America and other places. But read this, and you’ll see how this could go just as much for the US or Canada:
❝The evidence shows the importance of Medicare financially supporting primary care physicians to provide structured chronic disease management after a stroke.
We also provide a strong case for the ongoing provision of these plans within a universal healthcare system. Strategies to improve uptake at the GP level could include greater financial incentives and mandates, education for patients and healthcare professionals.❞
See her groundbreaking study for yourself here!
The Bottom Line:
If you or a loved one has a stroke, be prepared to make sure you get a chronic health management plan in place. Note that if it’s you who has the stroke, you might forget this or be unable to advocate for yourself. So, we recommend to discuss this with a partner or close friend sooner rather than later!
“But I’m quite young and healthy and a stroke is very unlikely for me”
Good for you! And the median age of Dr. Andrew’s gargantuan study was 70 years. But:
- do you have older relatives? Be aware for them, too.
- strokes can happen earlier in life too! You don’t want to be an interesting statistic.
Some stroke-related quick facts:
Stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the U.S.
Stroke can happen to anyone—any age, any time—and everyone needs to know the warning signs.
On average, 1.9 million brain cells die every minute that a stroke goes untreated.
Stroke is an EMERGENCY. Call 911 immediately.
Early treatment leads to higher survival rates and lower disability rates. Calling 911 lets first responders start treatment on someone experiencing stroke symptoms before arriving at the hospital.
Source: https://www.stroke.org/en/about-stroke
What are the warning signs for stroke?
Use the letters F.A.S.T. to spot a stroke and act quickly:
- F = Face Drooping—does one side of the face droop or is it numb? Ask the person to smile. Is the person’s smile uneven?
- A = Arm Weakness—is one arm weak or numb? Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
- S = Speech Difficulty—is speech slurred?
- T = Time to call 911
Source: https://www.stroke.org/en/about-stroke/stroke-symptoms
Last but not least, while we’re sharing resources:
Download the PDF Checklist: 8 Ways To Help Prevent a Second Stroke
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Dry Needling for Meralgia Paresthetica?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Could you address dry needling, who should administer it, and could it be a remedy for meralgia paresthetica? If not, could you speak to home-based remedies for meralgia paresthetica? Thank you?❞
We’ll need to take a main feature some time to answer this one fully, but we will say some quick things here:
- Dry needling, much like acupuncture, has been found to help with pain relief.
- Meralgia paresthetica, being a neuropathy, may benefit from some things that benefit people with peripheral neuropathy, such as lion’s mane mushroom. There is definitely not research to support this hypothesis yet though (so far as we could find anyway; there is plenty to support lion’s mane helping with nerve regeneration in general, but nothing specific for meralgia paresthetica).
Some previous articles you might enjoy meanwhile:
- Pinpointing The Usefulness Of Acupuncture
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief
- Peripheral Neuropathy: How To Avoid It, Manage It, Treat It
- What Does Lion’s Mane Actually Do, Anyway?
Take care!
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The Medicinal Chef – by Dale Pinnock
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The philosophy here is very much like our own—to borrow from Hippocrates: “let food be thy medicine”. Obviously please do also let medicine be thy medicine if you need it, but the point is that food is a very good starting place for combatting a lot of disease.
To this end, instead of labelling the recipes with such things as “V”, “Ve”, “GF” and suchlike, it assumes we can tell those things from the ingredients lists, and instead labels things per what they are especially good for:
- S: skin
- J: joints & bones
- R: respiratory system
- I: immune system
- M: metabolic health
- N: nervous system and mental health
- H: heart and circulation
- D: digestive system
- U: reproductive & urinary systems
As for the recipes themselves… They’re a lot like the recipes we share here at 10almonds in their healthiness, skill level, and balance of easy-to-find ingredients with the occasional “order it online” items that punch above their weight. In fact, we’ll probably modify some of the recipes for sharing here.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for genuinely healthy recipes that are neither too basic nor too arcane, this book has about 80 of them.
Click here to check out The Medicinal Chef: Healthy Every Day, and be healthy every day!
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Healthy Choco-Banoffee Ice Cream
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Chocolate, banana, and coffee—quite a threesome, whether for breakfast or dessert, and this is healthy enough for breakfast while being decadent enough for dessert! With no dairy or added sugar, and lots of antioxidants, this is a healthy way to start or end your day.
You will need
- 3 bananas
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder, no additives
- 2 shots espresso, chilled
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- On standby: milk of your choice—we recommend almond or hazelnut
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Peel, slice, and freeze the bananas (let them freeze for at least 2–3 hours)
2) Blend the ingredients, except the milk. Add milk as necessary if the mixture is too thick to blend. Be careful not to add too much at once though, or it will become less of an ice cream and more of a milkshake!
3) Scoop into a sundae glass to serve:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Which Plant Milk?
- The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
- Cacao vs Carob – Which is Healthier?
- Apples vs Bananas – Which is Healthier?
- Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
- Tasty Polyphenols
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
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