Here’s Looking At Ya!
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This Main Feature Should Take You Two Minutes (and 18 Seconds) To Read*
*Or at least, that’s what we’re told by our powerful software that checks things for readability!
Curious what that looks like? Try Out Hemingway App Online Here!
There’s a problem nobody wants to talk about when it comes to speed-reading
If you’re not very conscientious in your method, information does get lost. Especially, anything over 500 words per minute is almost certainly skimming and not true speed-reading.
One of the reasons information gets lost is because of a weird and wonderful feature of our eyes and brain: saccades.
Basically, our eyes can either collect visual information or they can move; they can’t do both at once. And as you may know, our eyes are almost always moving. So why aren’t we blind most of the time?
We actually are.
Did you know: your eyes take two upside-down 2D images and your brain presents you one 3D image the right way around instead? You probably did know that. So: it’s a bit like that.
Your brain takes a series of snapshots from whenever your eyes weren’t moving, and mentally fills in the blanks for you, just like a studio animation. We have a “frame rate” of about 60 frames per second, by the way—that’s why many computer monitors use that frequency. Lower frequencies can result in a noticeable flicker, and higher frequencies are wasted on us mere mortals!
Our eyes do some super-speedy movements called saccades (up to 500º per second! Happily no, our eyes don’t rotate 500º, but that’s the “per second” rate) and our brain fills in the gaps with its best guesses. The more you push it, the more it’ll guess wrong.
We’re not making this up, by the way! See for yourself:
Eye Movements In Reading And Information Processing: 20 Years Of Research
Fortunately, it is possible to use your eyes in a way that reduces the brain’s need to guess. That also means it has more processing power left over to guess correctly when it does need to.
Yes, There’s An App For That
Actually there are a few! But we’re going to recommend Spreeder as a top-tier option, with very rapid improvement right from day one.
It works by presenting the text with a single unmoving focal point. This is the opposite of traditional speed-reading methods that involve a rapidly moving pacer (such as your finger on the page, or a dot on the screen).
This unmoving focal point (while the words move instead) greatly reduces the number of saccades needed, and so a lot less information is lost to optical illusions and guesswork.
Try Spreeder (any platform) Here Now!
If you find that easy to use and would like something with a few more features, you might like another app that works on the same principle: Spritz.
It can take a bit more getting-used-to, but allows for greater integrations with all your favourite content in the long-run:
Check Out Spritz: Android App / iOS App / Free Chrome Extension
Lastly, if you don’t want any of those fancy apps and would just like to read more quickly and easily with less eye-strain, Beeline has you covered.
For free, unless you want to unlock some premium features!
How Beeline works is by adding a color gradient to text on websites and in documents. This makes it a lot easier for the eye to track without going off-piste, skipping a line, or re-reading the same bit again, etc.
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The Link Between Introversion & Sensory Processing
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We’ve talked before about how to beat loneliness and isolation, and how that’s important for all of us, including those of us on the less social end of the scale.
However, while we all need at least the option of social contact in order to be at our best, there’s a large portion of the population who also need to be able to retreat to somewhere quiet to recover from too much social goings-on.
Clinically speaking, this sometimes gets called introversion, or at least a negative score for extroversion on the “Big Five Inventory”, the only personality-typing system that actually gets used in science. Today we’re going to be focusing on a term that typically gets applied to those generally considered introverts:
The “highly sensitive person”
This makes it sound like a very rare snowflake condition, when in fact the diagnostic criteria yield a population bell curve of 30:40:30, whereupon 30% are in the band of “high sensitivity”, 40% “normal sensitivity” and the remaining 30% “low sensitivity”.
You may note that “high” and “low” together outnumber “normal”, but statistics is like that. It is interesting to note, though, that this statistical spread renders it not a disorder, so much as simply a description.
You can read more about it here:
Sensory-processing sensitivity and its relation to introversion and emotionality
What it means in practical terms
Such a person will generally seek solitude more frequently during the day than others will, and it’s not because of misanthropy (at least, statistically speaking it’s not; can’t speak for individuals!), but rather, it’s about needing downtime after what has felt like too much sensory processing resulting:
If this need for solitude is not met (sometimes it’s simply not practicable), then it can lead to overwhelm.
Sidenote about overwhelm: pick your battles! No, pick fewer than that. Put some back. That’s still too many 😜
Back to seriousness: if you’re the sort of person to walk into a room and immediately do the Sherlock Holmes thing of noticing everything about everyone, who is doing what, what has changed about the room since last time you were there, etc… Then that’s great; it’s a sign of a sharp mind, but it’s also a lot of information to process and you’re probably going to need a little decompression afterwards:
This is the biological equivalent of needing to let an overworked computer or phone cool down after excessive high-intensity use of its CPU.
The same goes if you’re the sort of person who goes into “performance mode” when in company, is “the life and soul of the party” etc, and/or perhaps “the elegant hostess”, but needs to then collapse afterwards because it’s more of a role you play than your natural inclination.
Take care of your battery
To continue the technological metaphor from earlier, if you repeatedly overuse a device without allowing it cooldown periods, it will break down (and if it’s a certain generation of iPhone, it might explode).
Similarly, if you repeatedly overuse your own highly sensitive senses (such as being often in social environment where there’s a lot going on) without allowing yourself adequate cooldown periods, you will break down (or indeed, explode: not literally, but some people are prone to emotional outbursts after bottling things up).
None of this is good for the health, not in the short term and not in the long term, either:
With that in mind, take care to take care of yourself, meeting your actual needs instead of just those that get socially assumed.
Want to take the test?
Here’s a two-minute test (results available immediately right there on-screen; no need to give your email or anything) 😎
Want to know more?
We reviewed this book about playing to one’s strengths in the context of sensitivity, a while back, and highly recommend it:
Sensitive – by Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo
Enjoy!
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A Tale Of Two Cinnamons
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Cinnamon’s Health Benefits (But Watch Out!)
Cinnamon is enjoyed for its sweet and punchy flavor. It also has important health properties!
Let’s take a look at the science…
A Tale Of Two Cinnamons
In your local supermarket, there is likely “cinnamon” and if you’re lucky, also “sweet cinnamon”. The difference between these is critical to understand before we continue:
“Cinnamon” = Cinnamomum cassia or Cinnamomum aromaticum. This is cheapest and most readily available. It has a relatively high cinnamaldehyde content, and a high coumarin content.
“Sweet cinnamon” Cinnamomum verum or Cinnamomum zeylanicum. It has a lower cinnamaldehyde content, and/but a much lower (almost undetectable) coumarin content.
You may be wondering: what’s with the “or” in both of those cases? Each simply has two botanical names in use. It’s inconvenient and confusing, but that’s how it is.
Great! What’s cinnamaldehyde and what’s coumarin?
Cinnamaldehyde is what gives cinnamon its “spice” aspect; it’s strong and fragrant. It also gives cinnamon most of its health benefits.
As a quick aside: it’s also used as the flavoring element in cinnamon flavored vapes, and in that form, it can cause health problems. So do eat it, but we recommend not to vape it.
Coumarin is toxic in large quantities.
The recommended safe amount is 0.1mg/kg, so you could easily go over this with a couple of teaspoons of cassia cinnamon:
Toxicology and risk assessment of coumarin: focus on human data
…while in Sweet/True/Ceylon cinnamon, those levels are almost undetectable:
Medicinal properties of ‘true’ cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum): a systematic review
If you have a cinnamon sensitivity, it is likely, but not necessarily, tied to the coumarin content rather than the cinnamaldehyde content.
Summary of this section before moving on:
“Cinnamon”, or cassia cinnamon, has about 50% stronger health benefits than “Sweet Cinnamon”, also called Ceylon cinnamon.
“Cinnamon”, or cassia cinnamon, has about 250% stronger health risks than “Sweet Cinnamon”, also called Ceylon cinnamon.
The mathematics here is quite simple; sweet cinnamon is the preferred way to go.
The Health Benefits
We spent a lot of time/space today looking at the differences. We think this was not only worth it, but necessary. However, that leaves us with less time/space for discussing the actual benefits. We’ll summarize, with links to supporting science:
“Those three things that almost always go together”:
Heart and blood benefits:
- Reduces triglyceride levels
- Reduces high blood pressure
- Reduces insulin insensitivity
- Reduces fasting blood sugar levels
Neuroprotective benefits:
The science does need more testing in these latter two, though.
Where to get it?
You may be able to find sweet cinnamon in your local supermarket, or if you prefer capsule form, here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Chromium Picolinate For Blood Sugar Control & Weight Loss
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First, a quick disambiguation:
- chromium found in food, trivalent chromium of various kinds, is safe (in the quantities usually consumed) and is sometimes considered an essential mineral, sometimes considered unnecessary but beneficial. It’s hard to know for sure, since it’s in a lot of foods (naturally, like many trace elements)
- chromium found in pollution, hexavalent chromium (so: twice as many cationic bonds, if this writer’s chemistry serves her correctly) is poisonous.
We’re going to be writing about the food kind, which is also possible to take as a supplement.
In this case, supplementing vs getting from food is quite a big difference, by the way, since (unlike for a lot of things, which are often the other way around) the bioavailability of chromium from food is very low (around 2.5%), whereas chromium picolinate, one of the most commonly-used supplement forms, boasts higher bioavailability.
Does it work for blood sugars?
Yes, it does! At least, it does in the case of people with type 2 diabetes. Rather than bombard you with many individual studies, here’s a systematic review and meta-analysis of 22 criteria-meeting randomized clinical trials that found:
❝The available evidence suggests favourable effects of chromium supplementation on glycaemic control in patients with diabetes.
Chromium monosupplement may additionally improve triglycerides and HDL-C levels.❞
Type 1 diabetes does not have anything like the same weight of evidence, and indeed,
we couldn’t find a single human study. It was beneficial for mice with artificially-induced T1D, thoughwait no, we have an update! We found literally a single human study:Chromium picolinate supplementation for diabetes mellitus
Literally, as in: it’s a case study of one person, and the results were a modest reduction in Hb A1c levels after 3 months of 600μg daily; the researchers concluded that ❝chromium picolinate continues to fall squarely within the scope of “alternative medicine,” with both unproven benefits and unknown risks❞.
As for people without diabetes, it may reduce the risk of diabetes:
Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Is Lower in US Adults Taking Chromium-Containing Supplements
However! This was an observational study, and correlation ≠ causation.
Furthermore, they said:
❝Over one-half the adult US population consumes nutritional supplements, and over one-quarter consumes supplemental chromium. The odds of having T2D were lower in those who, in the previous 30 d, had consumed supplements containing chromium❞
That “over one-quarter consumes supplemental chromium” brought our attention to the fact that this is not talking about specifically chromium “monosupplements” (definitely not quarter of the adult population take those), but rather, “multivitamin and mineral” supplements that also contain a tiny amount (often under 50μg) of chromium.
In other words, this ruins the data and honestly the benefit could have been from anything in the “multivitamin and mineral” supplement, or indeed, could just be “the kind of person who takes supplements is the kind of person who lives a lifestyle that is less conducive to becoming diabetic”.
Does it work for weight loss?
We’re running out of space here, so we’ll be brief:
No.
There are many papers that have concluded this, but here are two:
Chromium picolinate supplementation for overweight or obese adults
and
Is it safe?
Science’s current best answer is “we don’t know; it hasn’t been tested enough; we haven’t even established the tolerable upper limit, which is usually step 1 of establishing safety”.
Nor is there an estimated average requirement (if indeed there even is a requirement, which question is also not as yet answered conclusively by science), and science falls back to “here’s an average of what people consume in their diet, so that’s probably safe, we guess”.
(that average was reckoned as 25μg/day for young women and 25μg/day for young men, by the way; older ages not as yet reckoned)
You can read about this sorry state of affairs here.
Want to try some?
Notwithstanding the above lack of data for safety, it does have benefits for blood sugars, so if that’s a gamble you’re willing to make, then here’s an example product on Amazon.
Note: the dosage per capsule there (800μg) is half of the low end of the dose that was implicated in the serious kidney condition caused in this case study (1200–2400μg), so if you are going to try it, we strongly recommend not taking more than one per day.
Take care!
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The Simple Six – by Clinton Dobbins
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We at 10almonds don’t believe in keeping things a mystery, so…
“The Simple Six” are:
- the squat
- the goblet squat
- the hinge
- the kettlebell swing
- the push
- the push-up
- the kettle-bell press
- the pull
- the chin-up
- the gait, and
- walking.
Ok, we’re being a little glib here because to be fair, those are chunked into six groups, but the point is: don’t let the title fool you into thinking the book could have been an article; there’s plenty of valuable content here.
That said, it is a short book (64 pages), but with an average of 10 pages per exercise type, it’s a lot more than for example we could ever put into our newsletter.
Bottom line: we know that 10almonds readers like simple, clear, evidence-based, to-the-point health information, and that’s what this book is, so we do recommend it.
Click here to check out The Simple Six, and streamline your workouts!
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Overcome Front-Of-Hip Pain
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Dr. Alyssa Kuhn, physiotherapist, demonstrates how:
One, two, three…
One kind of pain affects a lot of related things: hip pain has an impact on everything that’s connected to the pelvis, which is basically the rest of the body, but especially the spine itself. For this reason, it’s critical to keep it in as good condition as possible.
Two primary causes of hip stiffness and pain:
- Anterior pelvic tilt due to posture, weight distribution, or pain. This tightens the front muscles and weakens the back muscles.
- Prolonged sitting, which tightens the hip muscles due to inactivity.
Three exercises are recommended by Dr. Kuhn to relieve pain and stiffness:
- Bridge exercise:
- Lie on a firm surface with your knees bent.
- Push through your feet, engage your hamstrings, and flatten your lower back.
- Hold for 3–5 seconds, relax, and repeat (10–20 reps).
- Wall exercise with arms:
- Stand with your lower back against the wall, feet a step away.
- Tilt your hips backwards, keeping your lower back in contact with the wall.
- Alternate lifting one arm at a time while maintaining back contact with the wall (10–20 reps).
- Wall exercise with legs:
- Same stance as the previous exercise but wider now.
- Lift one heel at a time while keeping your hips stable and your back against the wall.
- Practice for 30–60 seconds, maintaining good form.
As ever, consistency is key for long-term relief. Dr. Kuhn recommends doing these regularly, especially before any expected periods of prolonged sitting (e.g. at desk, or driving, etc). And of course, do try to reduce, or at least break up, those sitting marathons if you can.
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 to read:
Take care!
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Measles cases are rising—here’s how to protect your family
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The U.S. is currently experiencing a spike in measles cases across several states. Measles a highly contagious and potentially life-threatening disease caused by a virus. The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine prevents measles; unvaccinated people put themselves and everyone around them at risk, including babies who are too young to receive the vaccine.
Read on to learn more about measles: what it is, how to stay protected, and what to do if a measles outbreak happens near you.
What are the symptoms of measles?
Measles symptoms typically begin 10 to 14 days after exposure. The disease starts with a fever followed by a cough, runny nose, and red eyes and then produces a rash of tiny red spots on the face and body. Measles can affect anyone, but is most serious for children under 5, immunocompromised people, and pregnant people, who may give birth prematurely or whose babies may have low birth weight as a result of a measles infection.
Measles isn’t just a rash—the disease can cause serious health problems and even death. About one in five unvaccinated people in the U.S. who get measles will be hospitalized and could suffer from pneumonia, dehydration, or brain swelling.
If you get measles, it can also damage your immune system, making you more vulnerable to other diseases.
How do you catch measles?
Measles spreads through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. It’s so contagious that unvaccinated people have a 90 percent chance of becoming infected if exposed.
An infected person can spread measles to others before they have symptoms.
Why are measles outbreaks happening now?
The pandemic caused many children to miss out on routine vaccinations, including the MMR vaccine. Delayed vaccination schedules coincided with declining confidence in vaccine safety and growing resistance to vaccine requirements.
Skepticism about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines has resulted in some people questioning or opposing the MMR vaccine and other routine immunizations.
How do I protect myself and my family from measles?
Getting an MMR vaccine is the best way to prevent getting sick with measles or spreading it to others. The CDC recommends that children receive the MMR vaccine at 12 to 15 months and again at 4 to 6 years, before starting kindergarten.
One dose of the MMR vaccine provides 93 percent protection and two doses provide 97 percent protection against all strains of measles. Because some children are too young to be immunized, it’s important that those around them are vaccinated to protect them.
Is the MMR vaccine safe?
The MMR vaccine has been rigorously tested and monitored over 50 years and determined to be safe. Adverse reactions to the vaccine are extremely rare.
Receiving the MMR vaccine is much safer than contracting measles.
What do I do if there’s a measles outbreak in my community?
Anyone who is not fully vaccinated for measles should be immunized with a measles vaccine as soon as possible. Measles vaccines given within 72 hours after exposure may prevent or reduce the severity of disease.
Children as young as 6 months old can receive the MMR vaccine if they are at risk during an outbreak. If your child isn’t fully vaccinated with two doses of the MMR vaccine—or three doses, if your child received the first dose before their first birthday—talk to your pediatrician.
Unvaccinated people who have been exposed to the virus should stay home from work, school, day care, and other activities for 21 days to avoid spreading the disease.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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