International Women’s Day (and what it can mean for you, really)

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‍ How to not just #EmbraceEquity, but actually grow it, this International Women’s Day!

It’s International Women’s Day, and there’s a lot going on beyond the hashtagging! So, what’s happening, and how could you get involved in more than a “token” way in your workplace, business, or general life?

Well, that depends on your own environment and circumstances, but for example…

A feminist policy for productivity in the food sector?

We tend to think that in this modern world, we all have equal standing when it comes to productivity, food, and health. And yet…

❝If women do 70 per cent of the work in agriculture worldwide, but the land is mainly owned by men, then we don’t have equity yet. If in Germany, only one-tenth of female farmers manage the farm on which they work on, while they also manage the household, then there is no equity yet❞

~ Lea Leimann, Germany

What to do about it, though? It turns out there’s a worldwide organization dedicated to fixing this! It’s called Slow Food.

Their mission is to make food…

  • GOOD: quality, flavorsome and healthy food
  • CLEAN: production that does not harm the environment
  • FAIR: accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for producers

…and yes, that explicitly includes feminism-attentive food policy:

Read all about it: Slow Food women forge change in the food system

Do you work in the food system?

If so, you can have an impact. Your knee-jerk reaction might be “I don’t”, but there are a LOT of steps from farm-to-table, so, are you sure?

Story time: me, I’m a writer (you’d never have guessed, right?) and wouldn’t immediately think of myself as working “in the food system”.

But! Not long back I (a woman) was contracted by a marketing agent (a woman) to write marketing materials for a small business (owned by a woman) selling pickles and chutneys across the Australian market, based on the recipes she learned from her mother, in India. The result?

I made an impact in the food chain the other side of the planet from me, without leaving my desk.

Furthermore, the way I went about my work empowered—at the very least—myself and the end client (the lady making and selling the pickles and chutneys).

Sometimes we can’t change the world by ourselves… but we don’t have to.

If we all just nudge things in the right direction, we’ll end up with a healthier, better-fed, more productive system for all!

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  • How Stress Affects Your Body

    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.

    Dr. Sharon Bergquist gives us a tour:

    Stress, from the inside out

    Stress is a natural physical and emotional response to challenges or being overwhelmed. It can be beneficial in short-term situations (e.g. escape from a tiger) but is harmful when prolonged or frequent (e.g. escape the rat-race).

    Immediate physiological response: cortisol, adrenaline (epinephrine), and norepinephrine are released by the adrenal glands.

    The effects this has (non-exhaustive list; we’re just citing what’s in the video here):

    • Cortisol impairs blood vessel function, promoting atherosclerosis.
    • Adrenaline increases heart rate and blood pressure, leading to hypertension.
    • Stress disrupts the brain-gut connection, causing:
      • Digestive issues like irritable bowel syndrome and heartburn.
      • Changes in gut bacteria composition, potentially affecting overall health.
    • Cortisol increases appetite and cravings for energy-dense “comfort foods”.
      • This in turn promotes visceral fat storage, which raises the risk of heart disease and insulin resistance.
    • Immune-specific effects:
      • Stress hormones initially aid in healing and immune defense.
      • Chronic stress weakens immune function (by over-working it constantly), increasing susceptibility to infections and slowing recovery.
    • Other systemic effects:
      • Chronic stress shortens telomeres, which protect chromosomes. Shortened telomeres accelerate cellular aging.
      • Chronic stress can also cause acne, hair loss, sexual dysfunction, headaches, muscle tension, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty concentrating.

    So, how to manage this? The video says that viewing stressful situations as controllable challenges, rather than insurmountable threats, leads to better short-term performance and long-term health.

    Which would be wonderful, except that usually things are stressful precisely because they are not entirely within the field of our control, and the usual advice is to tend to what we can control, and accept what we can’t.

    However… That paradigm still leaves out the very big set of “this might be somewhat within our control or it might not; we really don’t know yet; we can probably impact it but what if we don’t do enough, or take the wrong approach and do the wrong thing? And also we have 17 competing stressors, which ones should we prioritize tending to first, and…” and so on.

    To that end, we suggest checking out the “Want to learn more?” link we drop below the video today, as it is about managing stress realistically, in a world that, if we’re honest about it, can sometimes be frankly unmanageable.

    Meanwhile, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Heart Health vs Systemic Stress ← this is good in and of itself, and also links to other stress-related resources of ours

    Take care!

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  • What’s the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? Less than you might think

    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.

    Articles about badly behaved people and how to spot them are common. You don’t have to Google or scroll too much to find headlines such as 7 signs your boss is a psychopath or How to avoid the sociopath next door.

    You’ll often see the terms psychopath and sociopath used somewhat interchangeably. That applies to perhaps the most famous badly behaved fictional character of all – Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs.

    In the book on which the movie is based, Lecter is described as a “pure sociopath”. But in the movie, he’s described as a “pure psychopath”. Psychiatrists have diagnosed him with something else entirely.

    So what’s the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? As we’ll see, these terms have been used at different times in history, and relate to some overlapping concepts.

    Benoit Daoust/Shutterstock

    What’s a psychopath?

    Psychopathy has been mentioned in the psychiatric literature since the 1800s. But the latest edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known colloquially as the DSM) doesn’t list it as a recognised clinical disorder.

    Since the 1950s, labels have changed and terms such as “sociopathic personality disturbance” have been replaced with antisocial personality disorder, which is what we have today.

    The Silence of the Lambs movie poster
    Was Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs a psychopath, a sociopath or something else entirely? Ralf Liebhold/Shutterstock

    Someone with antisocial personality disorder has a persistent disregard for the rights of others. This includes breaking the law, repeated lying, impulsive behaviour, getting into fights, disregarding safety, irresponsible behaviours, and indifference to the consequences of their actions.

    To add to the confusion, the section in the DSM on antisocial personality disorder mentions psychopathy (and sociopathy) traits. In other words, according to the DSM the traits are part of antisocial personality disorder but are not mental disorders themselves.

    US psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley provided the first formal description of psychopathy traits in his 1941 book The Mask of Sanity. He based his description on his clinical observations of nine male patients in a psychiatric hospital. He identified several key characteristics, including superficial charm, unreliability and a lack of remorse or shame.

    Canadian psychologist Professor Robert Hare refined these characteristics by emphasising interpersonal, emotional and lifestyle characteristics, in addition to the antisocial behaviours listed in the DSM.

    When we draw together all these strands of evidence, we can say a psychopath manipulates others, shows superficial charm, is grandiose and is persistently deceptive. Emotional traits include a lack of emotion and empathy, indifference to the suffering of others, and not accepting responsibility for how their behaviour impacts others.

    Finally, a psychopath is easily bored, sponges off others, lacks goals, and is persistently irresponsible in their actions.

    So how about a sociopath?

    The term sociopath first appeared in the 1930s, and was attributed to US psychologist George Partridge. He emphasised the societal consequences of behaviour that habitually violates the rights of others.

    Academics and clinicians often used the terms sociopath and psychopath interchangeably. But some preferred the term sociopath because they said the public sometimes confused the word psychopath with psychosis.

    “Sociopathic personality disturbance” was the term used in the first edition of the DSM in 1952. This aligned with the prevailing views at the time that antisocial behaviours were largely the product of the social environment, and that behaviours were only judged as deviant if they broke social, legal, and/or cultural rules.

    Some of these early descriptions of sociopathy are more aligned with what we now call antisocial personality disorder. Others relate to emotional characteristics similar to Cleckley’s 1941 definition of a psychopath.

    In short, different people had different ideas about sociopathy and, even today, sociopathy is less-well defined than psychopathy. So there is no single definition of sociopathy we can give you, even today. But in general, its antisocial behaviours can be similar to ones we see with psychopathy.

    Over the decades, the term sociopathy fell out of favour. From the late 60s, psychiatrists used the term antisocial personality disorder instead.

    Born or made?

    Both “sociopathy” (what we now call antisocial personality disorder) and psychopathy have been associated with a wide range of developmental, biological and psychological causes.

    For example, people with psychopathic traits have certain brain differences especially in regions associated with emotions, inhibition of behaviour and problem solving. They also appear to have differences associated with their nervous system, including a reduced heart rate.

    However, sociopathy and its antisocial behaviours are a product of someone’s social environment, and tends to run in families. These behaviours has been associated with physical abuse and parental conflict.

    What are the consequences?

    Despite their fictional portrayals – such as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs or Villanelle in the TV series Killing Evenot all people with psychopathy or sociopathy traits are serial killers or are physically violent.

    But psychopathy predicts a wide range of harmful behaviours. In the criminal justice system, psychopathy is strongly linked with re-offending, particularly of a violent nature.

    In the general population, psychopathy is associated with drug dependence, homelessness, and other personality disorders. Some research even showed psychopathy predicted failure to follow COVID restrictions.

    But sociopathy is less established as a key risk factor in identifying people at heightened risk of harm to others. And sociopathy is not a reliable indicator of future antisocial behaviour.

    In a nutshell

    Neither psychopathy nor sociopathy are classed as mental disorders in formal psychiatric diagnostic manuals. They are both personality traits that relate to antisocial behaviours and are associated with certain interpersonal, emotional and lifestyle characteristics.

    Psychopathy is thought to have genetic, biological and psychological bases that places someone at greater risk of violating other people’s rights. But sociopathy is less clearly defined and its antisocial behaviours are the product of someone’s social environment.

    Of the two, psychopathy has the greatest use in identifying someone who is most likely to cause damage to others.

    Bruce Watt, Associate Professor in Psychology, Bond University and Katarina Fritzon, Associate Professor of Psychology, Bond University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Vegan Eager for Milk Alternatives

    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!

    Q: Thanks for the info about dairy. As a vegan, I look forward to a future comment about milk alternatives

    Thanks for bringing it up! What we research and write about is heavily driven by subscriber feedback, so notes like this really help us know there’s an audience for a given topic!

    We’ll do a main feature on it, to do it justice. Watch out for Research Review Monday!

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  • How to Fall Back Asleep After Waking Up in the Middle of the Night

    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.

    Dr. Michael Bruce, the Sleep Doctor, addresses a common concern: waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to fall back asleep.

    Understanding the Wake-Up

    Firstly, why are we waking up during the night?

    Waking up between 2 AM and 3 AM is said to be normal, and linked to your core body temperature. As your body core temperature drops, to trigger melatonin release, and then rises again, you get into a lighter stage of sleep. This lighter stage of sleep makes you more prone to waking up.

    Note, there are also some medical conditions (such as sleep apnea) that can cause you to wake up during the night.

    But, what can we do about it? Aside from constantly shifting sleeping position (Should I be sleeping on my back? On my left? Right?)

    Avoid the Clock

    The first step is to resist the urge to check the time. It’s easy to be tempted to have a look at the clock, however, doing so can increase anxiety, making it harder to fall back asleep. As Dr. Bruce says, sleep is like love—the less you chase it, the more it comes.

    It may be useful to point your alarm clock (if you still have one of those) the opposite direction to your bed.

    Embracing Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR)

    Whilst this may not help you fall back asleep, it’s worth pointing out that just lying quietly in the dark without moving still offers rejuvenation. This revujenating stage is called Non-Sleep Deep Rest (otherwise known as NSDR)

    If you’re not familiar with NSDR, check out our overview of Andrew Huberman’s opinions on NSDR here.

    So, you can reassure yourself that whilst you may not be asleep, you are still resting.

    Keep Your Heart Rate Down

    To fall back asleep, it’s best if your heart rate is below 60 bpm. So, Dr. Bruce advises avoiding void getting up unnecessarily, as moving around can elevate your heart rate.

    On a similar vain, he introduces the 4-7-8 breathing technique, which is designed to lower your heart rate. The technique is simple:

    • Breathe in for 4 seconds.
    • Hold for 7 seconds.
    • Exhale for 8 seconds.

    Repeat this cycle gently to calm your body and mind.

    As per any of our Video Breakdowns, we only try to capture the most important pieces of information in text; the rest can be garnered from the video itself:

    Wishing you a thorough night’s rest!

    Do you know any other good videos on sleep? Send them to us via email!

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  • Why We’re Called “10almonds”, And Other Questions

    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? 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

    ❝Avid coffee drinker so very interested in the results Also question Is there something that you could take or eat that would prevent the caffeine from stimulating the kidneys? I tried to drink decaf from morning to night not a good result! Thanks❞

    That is a good question! The simple answer is “no” (but keep reading, because all is not lost)

    There’s no way (that we yet know of) to proof the kidneys against the stimulating effect of caffeine. This is especially relevant because part of caffeine’s stimulating effect is noradrenergic, and that “ren” in the middle there? It’s about the kidneys. This is just because the adrenal gland is situated next to them (actually, it’s pretty much sitting on top of them), hence the name, but it does mean that the kidneys are about the hardest thing in the body to have not affected by caffeine.

    However! The effects of caffeine in general can be softened a little with l-theanine (found in tea, or it can be taken as a supplement). It doesn’t stop it from working, but it makes the curve of the effect a little gentler, and so it can reduce some unwanted side effects.

    You can read more about l-theanine here:

    L-Theanine: What’s The Tea?

    ❝How to jump start a inactive metabolism and keep it going? THANKYOU❞

    The good news is, if you’re alive, your metabolism is active (it never stops!). So, it may just need perking up a little.

    As for keeping it going, well, that’s what we’re here for! We’re all in favor of healthy longevity.

    We’ll do a main feature soon on what we can do to influence our metabolism in either direction, but to give some quick notes here:

    • A lot of our metabolism is influenced by genes and is unalterable (without modifying our genes, anyway)
    • Metabolism isn’t just one thing—it’s many. And sometimes, parts of our metabolism can be much quicker or slower than others.
    • When people talk about wanting a “faster metabolism”, they’re usually referring to fat-burning, and that’s just a small part of the picture, but we understand that it’s a focal point for many.

    There really is enough material for a whole main feature on metabolic tweaks, though, so watch this space!

    ❝Why the name “10 Almonds?” Is this recommended by the Doctor? A daily dosage? And, if so, why? Thanks! Please answer me…I truly want to know!❞

    Almonds are very nutritionally dense, and for example 20g of almonds (so, about 20 almonds) would give a 100% daily dose of zinc, amongst other nutrients.

    We also do like to think that we give our readers an easily digestible dose of condensed “nutrition” in the form of health information.

    However! That’s not actually the reason at all. It’s a reference to a viral Facebook hoax! There was a post going around that claimed:

    ❝HEADACHE REMEDY. Eat 10–12 almonds, the equivalent of two aspirins, next time you have a headache❞ ← not true!

    It made us think about how much health-related disinformation there was circulating online! So, calling ourselves 10almonds was a bit of a nod to that story, but also a reminder to ourselves:

    We must always publish information with good scientific evidence behind it!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Life Extension Multivitamins vs Centrum Multivitamins – 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 Life Extension Multivitamins to Centrum Multivitamins, we picked the Life Extension.

    Why?

    The clue here was on the label: “two per day”. It’s not so that they can sell extra filler! It’s because they couldn’t fit it all into one.

    While the Centrum Multivitamins is a (respectably) run-of-the-mill multivitamin (and multimineral) containing reasonable quantities of most vitamins and minerals that people supplement, the Life Extension product has the same plus more:

    • More of the vitamins and minerals; i.e. more of them are hitting 100%+ of the RDA
    • More beneficial supplements, including:
      • Inositol, Alpha lipoic acid, Bio-Quercetin phytosome, phosphatidylcholine complex, Marigold extract, Apigenin, Lycopene, and more that we won’t list here because it starts to get complicated if we do.

    We’ll have to write some main features on some of those that we haven’t written about before, but suffice it to say, they’re all good things.

    Main take-away for today: sometimes more is better; it just necessitates then reading the label to check.

    Want to get some Life Extension Multivitamins (and/or perhaps just read the label on the back)? Here they are on Amazon

    PS: it bears mentioning, since we are sometimes running brands against each other head-to-head in this section: nothing you see here is an advertisement/sponsor unless it’s clearly marked as such. We haven’t, for example, been paid by Life Extension or any agent of theirs, to write the above. It’s just our own research and conclusion.

    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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