Take Care Of Your “Unwanted” Parts Too!

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Meet The Family…

If you’ve heard talk of “healing your inner child” or similar ideas, then today’s featured type of therapy takes that to several extra levels, in a way that helps many people.

It’s called Internal Family Systems therapy, often “IFS” for short.

Here’s a quick overview:

Psychology Today | Internal Family Systems Therapy

Note: if you are delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic, or have some other related disorder*, then IFS would probably be a bad idea for you as it could worsen your symptoms, and/or play into them badly.

*but bipolar disorder, in its various forms, is not usually a problem for IFS. Do check with your own relevant healthcare provider(s), of course, to be sure.

What is IFS?

The main premise of IFS is that your “self” can be modelled as a system, and its constituent parts can be examined, questioned, given what they need, and integrated into a healthy whole.

For example…

  • Exile is the name given to parts that could be, for example, the “inner child” referenced in a lot of pop-psychology, but it could also be some other ignored and pushed-down part of oneself, often from some kind of trauma. The defining characteristic of an exile is that it’s a part of ourself that we don’t consciously allow ourselves to see as a current part of ourself.
  • Protector is the name given to a part of us that looks to keep us safe, and can do this in an adaptive (healthy) or maladaptive (unhealthy) way, for example:
    • Firefighter is the name given to a part of us that will do whatever is necessary in the moment to deal with an exile that is otherwise coming to the surface—sometimes with drastic actions/reactions that may not be great for us.
    • Manager is the name given to a part of us that has a more nurturing protective role, keeping us from harm in what’s often a more prophylactic manner.

To give a simple illustration…

A person was criticized a lot as a child, told she was useless, and treated as a disappointment. Consequently, as an adult she now has an exile “the useless child”, something she strives to leave well behind in her past, because it was a painful experience for her. However, sometimes when someone questions and/or advises her, she will get defensive as her firefighter “the hero” will vigorously speak up for her competence, like nobody did when she was a child. This vigor, however, manifests as rude abrasiveness and overcompensation. Finally, she has a manager, “the advocate”, who will do the same job, but in a more quietly confident fashion.

This person’s therapy will look at transferring the protector job from the firefighter to the manager, which will involve examining, questioning, and addressing all three parts.

The above example is fictional and created for simplicity and clarity; here’s a real-world case study if you’d like a more in-depth overview of how it can work:

American Journal of Psychotherapy | The Teenager’s Confession: Regulating Shame in Internal Family Systems Therapy

How it all fits together in practice

IFS looks to make sure all the parts’ needs are met, even the “bad” ones, because they all have their functions.

Good IFS therapy, however, can make sure a part is heard, and then reassure that part in a way that effectively allows that part to “retire”, safe and secure in the knowledge that it has done what it needed to, and/or the job is being done by another part now.

That can involve, for example, thanking the firefighter for looking after our exile for all these years, but that our exile is safe and in good hands now, so it can put that fire-axe away.

See also: On Being Reactive vs Being Responsive

Questions you might ask yourself

While IFS therapy is best given by a skilled practitioner, we can take some of the ideas of it for self-therapy too. For example…

  • What is a secret about yourself that you will take to the grave? And now, why did that part of you (now an exile) come to exist?
  • What does that exile need, that it didn’t get? What parts of us try to give it that nowadays?
  • What could we do, with all that information in mind, to assign the “protection” job to the part of us best-suited to healthy integration?

Want to know more?

We’ve only had the space of a small article to give a brief introduction to Family Systems therapy, so check out the “resources” tab at:

IFS Institute | What Is Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Take care!

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  • Undoing Creatine’s Puffiness Side Effect

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    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 😎

    ❝Creatine is known to increase “puffiness”, especially in my face. Are there any supplements that do the opposite?!❞

    So first, let’s examine why this happens: creatine is most often taken to boost muscle size and performance. Your muscles are, of course, mostly water by mass, and so building your muscles requires extra water, which triggers systemic water retention.

    In other words: you take creatine, exercise, and as the muscles start growing, the body goes “oh heck, we are running out of water, better save as much as possible in order to keep hydrating the muscles without running out” and starts putting it anywhere it can that’s not your bladder, so this will largely be the soft tissues of your body.

    So, this results in classic water retentions symptoms including bloating and, yes, facial puffiness.

    How much this happens, and how long the effects last, depend on three main things:

    • What daily dose of creatine you are taking
    • What kind of exercise you are doing
    • What your hydration is like

    The dose is relevant as it’s most common to get this puffiness during the “loading” phase, i.e. if you’re taking an increased dose to start with.

    The exercise is relevant as it affects how much your body is actually using the water to build muscles.

    The hydration is relevant because the less water you are taking, the more the body will try to retain whatever you do have.

    This means, of course, that the supplement you are looking for to undo the facial puffiness is, in fact, water (even, nay, especially, if you feel bloated too):

    Water For Everything? Water’s Counterintuitive Properties

    Additionally, you could scale back the dose of creatine you’re taking, if you’re not currently doing heavy muscle-building exercise.

    That said, the recommended dose for cognitive benefits is 5g/day, which is a very standard main-phase (i.e., post-loading) bodybuilding dose, so do with that information what you will.

    See also: Creatine’s Brain Benefits Increase With Age

    On which note: whether or not you want to take creatine for brain benefits, however, may depend on your age:

    Creatine: Very Different For Young & Old People

    Most research on creatine’s effects on humans has usually been either collegiate athletes or seniors, which leaves quite a research gap in the middle—so it’s unclear at what age the muscle-building effects begin to taper off, and at what age the cognitive benefits begin to take off.

    Want a quicker fix?

    If you want to reduce your facial puffiness acutely (e.g., you have a date in an hour and would like to not have a puffy face), then there are two things you can do that will help immediately, and/but only have short-term effects, meaning you’d have to do them daily to enjoy the results every day:

    The first is an ice bath; simply fill a large bowl with water and ice cubes, give it a couple of minutes to get down to temperature, hold your breath and plunge your face in for as long as you can comfortably hold your breath. Repeat a few times, and towel off.

    This helps by waking up the vasculature in your face, helping it to reduce puffiness naturally.

    The second is facial yoga or guā shā, which is the practice of physically manipulating the soft tissues of your face to put them where you want them, rather than where you don’t want them. This will work against water retention puffiness, as well as cortisol puffiness, lymphatic puffiness, and more:

    7-Minute Face Fitness For Lymphatic Drainage & Youthful Jawline

    Enjoy!

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  • Carbonated Water: For Weight Loss, Satiety, Or Just Gas?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    There are two main mechanisms of action by which sparkling water is considered to help satiety and/or weight loss; they are:

    1. It “fills us up” such that we feel fuller sooner, and thus eat less, and thus (all other things being equal) perhaps lose weight
    2. The carbon dioxide is absorbed into the bloodstream, where (as a matter of chemistry) it improves glucose metabolism, thus lowering blood sugars and indirectly leading (potentially) to weight loss, but even if not, lowered blood sugars are good for most people most of the time, right?

    However, there are just a few problems:

    Full of gas?

    Many people self-report enjoying sparkling water as a way to feel fuller while fasting (or even while eating). However, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, so, here be data… Ish:

    ❝In order to determine whether such satiating effects occur through oral carbonic stimulation alone, we conducted modified sham-feeding (SF) tests (carbonated water ingestion (CW), water ingestion (W), carbonated water sham-feeding (CW-SF), and water sham-feeding (W-SF)), employing an equivalent volume and standardized temperature of carbonated and plain water, in a randomized crossover design.

    Thirteen young women began fasting at 10 p.m. on the previous night and were loaded with each sample (15ºC, 250 mL) at 9 a.m. on separate days. Electrogastrography (EGG) recordings were obtained from 20 min before to 45 min after the loading to determine the power and frequency of the gastric myoelectrical activity. Appetite was assessed using visual analog scales. After ingestion, significantly increased fullness and decreased hunger ratings were observed in the CW group. After the load, transiently but significantly increased fullness as well as decreased hunger ratings were observed in the CW-SF group. The powers of normogastria (2-4 cpm) and tachygastria (4-9 cpm) showed significant increases in the CW and W groups, but not in the CW-SF and W-SF groups. The peak frequency of normogastria tended to shift toward a higher band in the CW group, whereas it shifted toward a lower band in the CW-SF group, indicating a different EGG rhythm.

    Our results suggest that CO2-induced oral stimulation is solely responsible for the feeling of satiety.❞

    ~ Dr. Maki Suzuki et al.

    Now, that’s self-reported, and a sample size of 13, so it’s not the most airtight science ever, but it is at least science. Here’s the paper, by the way:

    Oral Carbonation Attenuates Feeling of Hunger and Gastric Myoelectrical Activity in Young Women

    Here’s another small study with 8 people, which found that still and sparkling water had the exact same effect:

    Effect of carbonated water on gastric emptying and intragastric meal distribution

    However, drinking water (still or sparkling) with a meal will not have anywhere near the same effect for satiety as consuming food that has a high water-content.

    See also: Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety ← our main feature in which we examine the science of volumetrics, including a study that shows how water incorporated into a food (but not served with a food) decreases caloric intake.

    As an aside, one difference that carbonation can make is to increase ghrelin levels—that’s the hunger hormone (the satiety hormone is leptin, by the way). This one’s a rat study, but it seems reasonable that the same will be true of humans:

    Carbon dioxide in carbonated beverages induces ghrelin release and increased food consumption in male rats: implications on the onset of obesity

    …which is worth bearing in mind even if you yourself are not, in fact, a male rat.

    The glucose guzzler?

    This one has simply been the case of a study being misrepresented, for example here:

    Fizzy water might aid weight loss by providing a small boost to glucose uptake and metabolism

    The idea is that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the blood mean faster glucose metabolism, which is technically true. Now, often “technically true” is the best kind of true, but not here, because it’s simply not useful.

    In short, we produce so much carbon dioxide as part of our normal respiratory processes, that any carbon dioxide we might consume in a carbonated water is barely a blip in the graph.

    Oh, and that article we just linked? Even within the article, despite running with that headline, the actual scientists quoted are saying such things as:

    ❝While there is a hypothetical link between carbonated water and glucose metabolism, this has yet to be tested in well-designed human intervention studies❞

    ~ Professor Sumantra Ray

    Note: the word “hypothetical” means “one level lower than theoretical”. This is very far from being a conclusion.

    And the study itself? Wasn’t even about carbonated water, it was about kidney dialysis and how the carbon dioxide content can result in hypoglycemia:

    The mechanism of hypoglycemia caused by hemodialysis

    …which got referenced in this paper (not a study):

    Can carbonated water support weight loss?

    …and even that concluded:

    ❝CO2 in carbonated water may promote weight loss by enhancing glucose uptake and metabolism in red blood cells.

    However, the amount is so small that it is difficult to expect weight loss effects solely from the CO2 in carbonated water.

    Drinking carbonated water may also affect blood glucose measurements.❞

    Note: the word “may”, when used by a scientist and in the absence of any stronger claims, means “we haven’t ruled out the possibility”.

    What breaking news that is.

    Stop the press! No, really, stop it!

    So… What does work?

    There are various ways of going about actually hacking hunger (and they stack; i.e. you can use multiple methods and get cumulative results), and we wrote about them here:

    Hack Your Hunger

    Enjoy!

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  • Fatty Acids For The Eyes & Brain: The Good And The Bad

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Good For The Eyes; Good For The Brain

    We’ve written before about omega-3 fatty acids, covering the basics and some lesser-known things:

    What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us

    …and while we discussed its well-established benefits against cognitive decline (which is to be expected, because omega-3 is good against inflammation, and a large part of age-related neurodegeneration is heavily related to neuroinflammation), there’s a part of the brain we didn’t talk about in that article: the eyes.

    We did, however, talk in another article about supplements that benefit the eyes and [the rest of the] brain, and the important links between the two, to the point that an examination of the levels of lutein in the retina can inform clinicians about the levels of lutein in the brain as a whole, and strongly predict Alzheimer’s disease (because Alzheimer’s patients have significantly less lutein), here:

    Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!

    Now, let’s tie these two ideas together

    In a recent (June 2024) meta-analysis of high-quality observational studies from the US and around the world, involving nearly a quarter of a million people over 40 (n=241,151), researchers found that a higher intake of omega-3 is significantly linked to a lower risk of macular degeneration.

    To put it in numbers, the highest intake of omega-3s was associated with an 18% reduced risk of early stage macular degeneration.

    They also looked at a breakdown of what kinds of omega-3, and found that taking a blend DHA and EPA worked best of all, although of people who only took one kind, DHA was the best “single type” option.

    You can read the paper in full, here:

    Association between fatty acid intake and age-related macular degeneration: a meta-analysis

    A word about trans-fatty acids (TFAs)

    It was another feature of the same study that, while looking at fatty acids in general, they also found that higher consumption of trans-fatty acids was associated with a higher risk of advanced age-related macular degeneration.

    Specifically, the highest intake of TFAs was associated with a more than 2x increased risk.

    There are two main dietary sources of trans-fatty acids:

    • Processed foods that were made with TFAs; these have now been banned in a lot of places, but only quite recently, and the ban is on the processing, not the sale, so if you buy processed foods that contain ingredients that were processed before 2021 (not uncommon, given the long life of many processed foods), the chances of them having TFAs is higher.
    • Most animal products. Most notably from mammals and their milk, so beef, pork, lamb, milk, cheese, and yes even yogurt. Poultry and fish technically do also contain TFAs in most cases, but the levels are much lower.

    Back to the omega-3 fatty acids…

    If you’re wondering where to get good quality omega-3, well, we listed some of the best dietary sources in our main omega-3 article (linked at the top of today’s).

    However, if you want to supplement, here’s an example product on Amazon that’s high in DHA and EPA, following the science of what we shared today 😎

    Take care!

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  • The Cough Doctor

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The Cough Doctor

    This is Dr. Peter Small, who worked in epidemiology since the beginning of HIV epidemic. He became a pioneer in the field of molecular epidemiology. As such, his work was a guiding beacon for the public health response to the resurgence of tuberculosis. He’s travelled the world spending years in various institutions studying all manner of respiratory illnesses…. These have ranged from tuberculosis to pneumonia to lung cancer and (back to epidemiology) Covid-19.

    He’s now the Chief Medical Officer at…

    Hyfe

    Hyfe, a medical AI company, was founded in 2020. Its objective: to build acoustic tools for respiratory diagnostics and monitoring.

    In other words: it records coughs and collects data about coughing.

    ❝It’s ironic how much people focus on counting steps while ignoring cough, which is far more consequential. Hyfe is a science-driven company with the technology to make cough count. Particularly now, with increased awareness of cough and the rapid growth of digital health driven by Covid-19, this technology can improve the lives of patients, the care provided by doctors, and the efficiency of health systems.❞

    ~ Dr. Peter Small, CMO, Hyfe

    How does it do it?

    Hyfe’s AI monitors the number of times a person coughs and the sound of the cough through any smartphone or other smart device.

    This data collected over time provides increasingly more reliable information than a single visit to the doctor! By constantly listening and analyzing, it can detect patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.

    How big is this “big data” effort?

    Hyfe maintains the largest cough dataset in the world. This means it can compare the sound of a patient’s cough with more than 400 million cough-like sounds from 83 countries across all continents.

    The human brain doesn’t handle big numbers well. So, just to illustrate: if the average cough is 1 second long, that means it’d take more than 12 years to listen to them all.

    Hyfe, meanwhile, can:

    • listen to many things simultaneously
    • index them all against user and location,
    • use its ever-growing neural net to detect and illustrate patterns.

    It’s so attentive, that it can learn to distinguish between different people’s coughs in the same household.

    ❝Companies like Google Health see even basic information such as getting an accurate count of the number of times a person coughs a day as a useful resource, and part of a larger need to collect and chronicle more health information to refine the way doctors diagnose disease and manage treatments in the future.❞

    ~ Time Magazine

    What are the public health implications?

    The most obvious application is to note when there’s a spike in coughing, and see how such spikes grow and spread (if they do), to inform of contagion risks.

    Another is to cross-reference it with data about local environmental allergens. Knowing how things like pollution and even pollen affect individuals differently could be helpful in identifying (and managing) chronic conditions like asthma.

    What are the private health implications?

    ❝It’s going to transform the whole clinical approach for this common and chronic symptom. Patients will come in, have the data on how much they are coughing, and the physician can suggest a treatment based on that information to see if it makes the coughs better❞

    ~ Dr. Peter Small

    Dr. Small’s colleague Dr. Cai, speaking for Google Health on this project, sees even more utility for diagnostics:

    ❝When I was in medical school, never ever did they teach us that we could listen to somebody cough and identify whether that person has TB (tuberculosis), COPD, or a tumor. But I keep seeing more and more studies of people coughing into a microphone, and an algorithm can detect whether somebody has TB with 95% specificity and sensitivity, or if someone has pneumonia or an exacerbation of COPD❞

    ~ Dr. Lawrence Cai

    And the privacy implications?

    Perhaps you don’t quite fancy the idea of not being able to cough without Google knowing about it. Hyfe’s software is currently opt-in, but…

    If you cough near someone else’s Hyfe app, their app will recognize you’re not the app’s user, and start building a profile for you. Of course, that won’t be linked to your name, email address, or other IDs, as it would if you were the app’s user.

    Hyfe will ask to connect to your social media, to collect more information about you and your friends.

    Whether you’d like to try this or perhaps you’re just curious to learn more about this fascinating project, you can check out:

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Apple Cider Vinegar vs Apple Cider Vinegar Gummies – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing apple cider vinegar (bottled) to apple cider vinegar (gummies), we picked the bottled.

    Why?

    There are several reasons!

    The first reason is about dosage. For example, the sample we picked for apple cider vinegar gummies, boasts:

    2 daily chewable gummies deliver 800 mg of Apple Cider Vinegar a day, equivalent to a teaspoon of liquid apple cider vinegar

    That sounds good until you note that it’s recommended to take 1–2 tablespoons (not teaspoons) of apple vinegar. So this would need more like 4–8 gummies to make the dose. Suddenly, either that bottle of gummies is running out quickly, or you’re just not taking a meaningful dose and your benefits will likely not exceed placebo.

    The other is reason about sugar. Most apple cider vinegar gummies are made with some kind of sugar syrup, often even high-fructose corn syrup, which is one of the least healthy foodstuffs (in the loosest sense of the word “foodstuffs”) known to science.

    The specific brand we picked today was the best we can find; it used maltitol syrup.

    Maltitol syrup, a corn derivative (and technically a sugar alcohol), has a Glycemic Index of 52, so it does raise blood sugars but not as much as sucrose would. However (and somewhat counterproductive to taking apple cider vinegar for gut health) it can cause digestive problems for many people.

    And remember, you’re taking 4–8 gummies, so this is amounting to several tablespoons of the syrup by now.

    On the flipside, apple cider vinegar itself has two main drawbacks, but they’re much less troublesome issues:

    • many people don’t like the taste
    • its acidic nature is not good for teeth

    To this the common advice for both is to dilute it with water, thus diluting the taste and the acidity.

    (this writer shoots hers from a shot glass, thus not bathing the teeth since it passes them “without touching the sides”; as for the taste, well, I find it invigorating—I do chase it with water, though to be sure of not leaving vinegar in my mouth)

    Want to check them out for yourself?

    Here they are:

    Apple cider vinegar | Apple cider vinegar gummies

    Want to know more about apple cider vinegar?

    Check out:

    Take care!

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  • Older adults need another COVID-19 vaccine

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    What you need to know 

    • The CDC recommends people 65 and older and immunocompromised people receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring—if at least four months have passed since they received a COVID-19 vaccine.
    • Updated COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting against severe illness, hospitalization, death, and long COVID.
    • The CDC also shortened the isolation period for people who are sick with COVID-19.

    Last week, the CDC said people 65 and older should receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring. The recommendation also applies to immunocompromised people, who were already eligible for an additional dose.

    Older adults made up two-thirds of COVID-19-related hospitalizations between October 2023 and January 2024, so enhancing protection for this group is critical.

    The CDC also shortened the isolation period for people who are sick with COVID-19, although the contagiousness of COVID-19 has not changed.

    Read on to learn more about the CDC’s updated vaccination and isolation recommendations.

    Who is eligible for another COVID-19 vaccine this spring?

    The CDC recommends that people ages 65 and older and immunocompromised people receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring—if at least four months have passed since they received a COVID-19 vaccine. It’s safe to receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna, or Novavax, regardless of which COVID-19 vaccines you received in the past.

    Updated COVID-19 vaccines are available at pharmacies, local clinics, or doctor’s offices. Visit Vaccines.gov to find an appointment near you.

    Under- and uninsured adults can get the updated COVID-19 vaccine for free through the CDC’s Bridge Access Program. If you’re over 60 and unable to leave your home, call the Aging Network at 1-800-677-1116 to learn about free at-home vaccination options.

    What are the benefits of staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines?

    Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines prevents severe illness, hospitalization, death, and long COVID.

    Additionally, the CDC says staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines is a safer and more reliable way to build protection against COVID-19 than getting sick from COVID-19.

    What are the new COVID-19 isolation guidelines?

    According to the CDC’s general respiratory virus guidance, people who are sick with COVID-19 or another common respiratory illness, like the flu or RSV, should isolate until they’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication and their symptoms improve.

    After that, the CDC recommends taking additional precautions for the next five days: wearing a well-fitting mask, limiting close contact with others, and improving ventilation in your home if you live with others. 

    If you’re sick with COVID-19, you can infect others for five to 12 days, or longer. Moderately or severely immunocompromised patients may remain infectious beyond 20 days.

    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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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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