I’ve been diagnosed with cancer. How do I tell my children?
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With around one in 50 adults diagnosed with cancer each year, many people are faced with the difficult task of sharing the news of their diagnosis with their loved ones. Parents with cancer may be most worried about telling their children.
It’s best to give children factual and age-appropriate information, so children don’t create their own explanations or blame themselves. Over time, supportive family relationships and open communication help children adjust to their parent’s diagnosis and treatment.
It’s natural to feel you don’t have the skills or knowledge to talk with your children about cancer. But preparing for the conversation can improve your confidence.
Preparing for the conversation
Choose a suitable time and location in a place where your children feel comfortable. Turn off distractions such as screens and phones.
For teenagers, who can find face-to-face conversations confronting, think about talking while you are going for a walk.
Consider if you will tell all children at once or separately. Will you be the only adult present, or will having another adult close to your child be helpful? Another adult might give your children a person they can talk to later, especially to answer questions they might be worried about asking you.
Finally, plan what to do after the conversation, like doing an activity with them that they enjoy. Older children and teenagers might want some time alone to digest the news, but you can suggest things you know they like to do to relax.
Also consider what you might need to support yourself.
Preparing the words
Parents might be worried about the best words or language to use to make sure the explanations are at a level their child understands. Make a plan for what you will say and take notes to stay on track.
The toughest part is likely to be saying to your children that you have cancer. It can help to practise saying those words out aloud.
Ask family and friends for their feedback on what you want to say. Make use of guides by the Cancer Council, which provide age-appropriate wording for explaining medical terms like “cancer”, “chemotherapy” and “tumour”.
Having the conversation
Being open, honest and factual is important. Consider the balance between being too vague, and providing too much information. The amount and type of information you give will be based on their age and previous experiences with illness.
Remember, if things don’t go as planned, you can always try again later.
Start by telling your children the news in a few short sentences, describing what you know about the diagnosis in language suitable for their age. Generally, this information will include the name of the cancer, the area of the body affected and what will be involved in treatment.
Let them know what to expect in the coming weeks and months. Balance hope with reality. For example:
The doctors will do everything they can to help me get well. But, it is going to be a long road and the treatments will make me quite sick.
Check what your child knows about cancer. Young children may not know much about cancer, while primary school-aged children are starting to understand that it is a serious illness. Young children may worry about becoming unwell themselves, or other loved ones becoming sick.
Older children and teenagers may have experiences with cancer through other family members, friends at school or social media.
This process allows you to correct any misconceptions and provides opportunities for them to ask questions. Regardless of their level of knowledge, it is important to reassure them that the cancer is not their fault.
Ask them if there is anything they want to know or say. Talk to them about what will stay the same as well as what may change. For example:
You can still do gymnastics, but sometimes Kate’s mum will have to pick you up if I am having treatment.
If you can’t answer their questions, be OK with saying “I’m not sure”, or “I will try to find out”.
Finally, tell children you love them and offer them comfort.
How might they respond?
Be prepared for a range of different responses. Some might be distressed and cry, others might be angry, and some might not seem upset at all. This might be due to shock, or a sign they need time to process the news. It also might mean they are trying to be brave because they don’t want to upset you.
Children’s reactions will change over time as they come to terms with the news and process the information. They might seem like they are happy and coping well, then be teary and clingy, or angry and irritable.
Older children and teenagers may ask if they can tell their friends and family about what is happening. It may be useful to come together as a family to discuss how to inform friends and family.
What’s next?
Consider the conversation the first of many ongoing discussions. Let children know they can talk to you and ask questions.
Resources might also help; for example, The Cancer Council’s app for children and teenagers and Redkite’s library of free books for families affected by cancer.
If you or other adults involved in the children’s lives are concerned about how they are coping, speak to your GP or treating specialist about options for psychological support.
Cassy Dittman, Senior Lecturer/Head of Course (Undergraduate Psychology), Research Fellow, Manna Institute, CQUniversity Australia; Govind Krishnamoorthy, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Wellbeing, Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of Southern Queensland, and Marg Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education; Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of New England
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Exercise vs Neurodegeneration: What Matters The Most?
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Spoiler: what matters the most is how it adds up over time. So the best time to start was decades ago, but the next best time to start is now 😉
Exercise is a critical tool in the fight against neurodegeneration. We talked about it in one of earliest articles here at 10almonds: How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
A large part of the reason for this is that exercise is good for the heart, and as we often say, “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain”, and this is because the former feeds the latter, with oxygen and nutrients, and also clears away detritus like beta-amyloid (associated with Alzheimer’s) and alpha-synuclein (associated with Parkinson’s).
See also: The Neuroscientist In The Gym: The Exercise That Protects Your Brain
This exercise doesn’t even have to be incredibly vigorous! For a gentler approach, see for example: How To Walk Away From Alzheimer’s
Now, some of the brain benefits of exercise are immediate:
How Your Exercise Today Gives A Brain Boost Tomorrow
…and some are very measurable over a fairly short timeframe:
Daily Activity Levels & The Measurable Difference They Make To Brain Health
But… What about cumulative activity over time? Does what we did on a Tuesday afternoon 10 years ago matter to our brains today? Or to put the question going forwards: will what we do on a Tuesday afternoon today make a difference to our brain 10 years from now?
This question has now been answered; the answer is “yes“, and the reason for the answer is that every bit of exercise we do, no matter how small, does add up over time:
The study
Researchers (Dr. Suhang Song et al.) investigated cumulative activity over time*, and found that people with higher cumulative physical activity showed slower declines in global cognition, memory, and executive function. The participants were 13,450 adults aged 50+ who were cognitively healthy at the start.
*how much time, you wonder? It was a longitudinal study, with an average participation length of 11 years (of course, participation lengths will differ if individuals die or otherwise withdraw from the study before the end). The upper end on participation was 16 years, as you’ll see in the study title.
What’s important about this study is that they found that being physically active over long periods (not just sporadically) was mostly strongly linked to maintaining better cognitive health. and that the more often and longer people stayed active, the stronger the protective effect became—which means that yes, those benefits grew over time.
As for how the exercise was measured: they calculated cumulative physical activity by combining the intensity, frequency, and duration of all activities each person did over time (using metabolic equivalent rates). This way, it was also possible to look at the total amounts of exercise as a single discrete variable, while taking into account that doing the laundry, for example, is not quite so vigorous as playing tennis.
One cannot really do a randomized controlled trial for this sort of thing (e.g. and the control group will merely believe they are doing vigorous exercise, but in fact it is placebo), and it was also not an interventional study, it rather reflected people’s natural tendencies to exercise more or less and/or in different ways, and one thing that was noticed was that even modest changes such as shifting from occasional to weekly vigorous or moderate activity were associated with a noticeably slower rate of decline.
You can read the paper in full, here: Long-term cumulative physical activity associated with less cognitive decline: Evidence from a 16-year cohort study
Want to learn more?
You might like this book that we reviewed a little while back:
Take care!
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What Happens To Your Brain Without Any Social Contact?
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Humans are, by evolution, social creatures. As individuals we may have something of a spectrum from introvert to extrovert, but as a species, we thrive in community. And we suffer, when we don’t have that.
But how?
It depends on the reason
This video makes the important distinction of forced isolation vs chosen solitude, on the grounds that while voluntary solitude can relieve stress, involuntary isolation can cause severe and lasting psychological harm, for example:
- Involuntary isolation often leads to chronic stress, disrupted identity, impaired reasoning, and emotional instability, including depression, obsessions, suicidal thoughts, and hallucinations.
- On a neurological level, the limbic system becomes hyperactive (heightened fear and stress), while the prefrontal cortex shrinks, reducing focus, memory, and moral reasoning.
- On a beyond-the-brain but still physical level, it can cause insomnia, heart palpitations, dizziness, hypersensitivity, headaches, and stress-related weight loss.
Notably, the UN and many human rights groups view long-term solitary confinement (such as is commonly practised in prisons, and disproportionately so in the US) as a form of psychological torture.
Of course you, dear reader, are not in that position (or else you would not be reading this), but it does mean that if at any point you find you’re becoming increasingly isolated and not by choice, then it’s probably time to try to turn things around (see our link in the “Learn more” section for how).
Not discussed in the video: did you notice the difference in terms, “voluntary solitude” vs “involuntary isolation“? Interestingly, these two words that both have “-sol-” in them are etymologically unrelated:
- solitude comes from “solitudo” which ultimately comes from “solus” (alone) ← so this is simply about the state of being alone
- isolation comes from “isolato” which comes from “insulatus” which comes from “insula” (island) ← so this is specifically about being cut off from others
/bonus content from your writer who is a language nerd 😉
For more on all of this (except the last bit), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
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Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health
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 Will Be Blood
Are you counting steps? Counting calories? Monitoring your sleep? Heart rate zones? These all have their merits:
- Steps: One More Resource Against Osteoporosis!
- Calories: Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?
- Sleep: A Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
- Heart Rate Zones: Heart Rate Zones, Oxalates, & More
About calories: this writer (it’s me, hi) opines that intermittent fasting has the same benefits as caloric restriction, without the hassle of counting, and is therefore superior. I also personally find fasting psychologically more pleasant. However, our goal here is to be informative, not prescriptive, and some people may have reasons to prefer CR to IF!
Examples that come to mind include ease of adherence in the case of diabetes management, especially Type 1, or if one’s schedule (and/or one’s “medications that need to be taken with food” schedule) does not suit IF.
And now for the blood…
A rising trend in health enthusiasts presently is the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), which do exactly what is sounds like they do: they continually monitor glucose. Specifically, the amount of it in your blood.
Of course, these have been in use in diabetes management for years; the technology is not new, but the application of the technology is.
A good example of what benefits a non-diabetic person can gain from the use of a CGM is Jessie Inchauspé, the food scientist of “Glucose Revolution” and “The Glucose Goddess Method” fame.
By wearing a CGM, she was able to notice what things did and didn’t spike her blood sugars, and found that a lot of the things were not stuff that people knew/advised about!
For example, much of diabetes management (including avoiding diabetes in the first place) is based around paying attention to carbs and little else, but she found that it made a huge difference what she ate (or didn’t) with the carbs. By taking many notes over the course of her daily life, she was eventually able to isolate these patterns, showed her working-out in The Glucose Revolution (there’s a lot of science in that book), and distilled that information into bite-size (heh) advice such as:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
That’s great, but since people like Inchauspé have done the work, I don’t have to, right?
You indeed don’t have to! But you can still benefit from it. For example, fastidious as her work was, it’s a sample size of one. If you’re not a slim white 32-year-old French woman, there may be some factors that are different for you.
All this to say: glucose responses, much like nutrition in general, are not a one-size-fits-all affair.
With a CGM, you can start building up your own picture of what your responses to various foods are like, rather than merely what they “should” be like.
This, by the way, is also one of the main aims of personalized health company ZOE, which crowdsourced a lot of scientific data about personalized metabolic responses to standardized meals:
Not knowing these things can be dangerous
We don’t like to scaremonger here, but we do like to point out potential dangers, and in this case, blindly following standardized diet advice, if your physiology is not standard, can have harmful effects, see for example:
Diabetic-level glucose spikes seen in non-diabetic people
Where can I get a CGM?
We don’t sell them, and neither does Amazon, but you can check out some options here:
The 4 Best CGM Devices For Measuring Blood Sugar in 2024
…and if your doctor is not obliging with a prescription, note that the device that came out top in the above comparisons, will be available OTC soon:
The First OTC Continuous Glucose Monitor Will Be Available Summer 2024
Take care!
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Unprocessed – by Kimberly Wilson
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First, what this is not: hundreds of pages to say “eat less processed food”. That is, of course, also advisable (and indeed, is advised in the book too), but there’s a lot more going on here too.
Though not a doctor, the author is a psychologist who brings a lot of data to the table, especially when it comes to the neurophysiology at hand, what forgotten micronutrients many people are lacking, and what trends in society worsen these deficiencies in the population at large.
If you only care about the broadest of take-away advice, it is: eat a diet that’s mostly minimally processed plants and some oily fish, watch out for certain deficiencies in particular, and increase dietary intake of them where necessary (with taking supplements as a respectable next-best remedy).
On which note, a point of criticism is that there’s some incorrect information about veganism and brain health; she mentions that DHA is only found in fish (in fact, fish get it from algae, which has it, and is the basis of many vegan omega-3 supplements), and the B12 is found only in animals (also found in yeast, which is not an animal, as well as various bacteria in soil, and farm animals get their B12 from supplements these days anyway, so it is arguable that we could keep things simpler by just cutting out the middlecow).
However, the strength of this book really is in the delivery of understanding about why certain things matter. If you’re told “such-and-such is good for the brain”, you’ll up your intake for 1–60 days, depending on whether you bought a supermarket item or ordered a batch of supplements. And then you’ll forget, until 6–12 months later, and you’ll do it again. On the other hand, if you understand how something is good or bad for the brain, what it does (for good or ill) on a cellular level, the chemistry and neurophysiology at hand, you’ll make new habits for life.
The style is middle-range pop-science; by this we mean there are tables of data and some long words that are difficult to pronounce, but also it’s not just hard science throughout—there’s (as one might expect from an author who is a psychologist) a lot about the psychology and sociology of why many people make poor dietary decisions, and the things governments often do (or omit doing) that affect this adversely—and how we can avoid those traps as individuals (unless we be incarcerated or such).
As an aside, the author is British, so governmental examples are mostly UK-based, but it doesn’t take a lot to mentally measure that against what the governments of, for example, the US or Canada do the same or differently.
Bottom line: there’s a lot of great information about brain health here; the strongest parts are whether the author stays within her field (psychology encompasses such diverse topics as neurophysiology and aspects of sociology, but not microbiology, for example). If you want to learn about the physiology of brain health and enjoy quite a sociopolitical ride along the way, this one’s a good one for that.
Click here to check out Unprocessed, and make the best choices for you!
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Copper vs Arthritis! Does It Work, & If So, How?
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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!
No question/request too big or small 😎
❝What is the science about copper bracelets for arthritis? And magnets, can they give relief or is it just placebo?❞
The short answer is: no, these things do not work at all, except insofar as they can indeed contribute to placebo effect.
Which latter is not nothing!
People think of placebo as make-believe, but actually it’s more like believe-make.
That is to say, your brain directs, mostly without your conscious thought, almost all of your bodily functions, either directly (through messages sent via nerves) or indirectly (through messages sent via hormones produced somewhere other than the brain, where those other hormone-producing places got their signals from brain).
So, it genuinely can be a helpful thing, and is not just a case of “imagining it’s better”.
Learn more: How To Leverage Placebo Effect For Yourself
So it’s certainly not beyond your brain’s ability to modulate, for example, an inflammatory response (to either fight a disease, or else stop it from overreacting to something and causing problems, as in the case of arthritis*).
Yes, arthritis is divided into “inflammatory” and “non-inflammatory” arthritis, but actually both involve inflammation as part of their pathogenic process, it’s just that in the “inflammatory” kind it comes first, whereas in the “non-inflammatory” kind, physical damage comes first and the inflammation comes later. In both cases, alleviating the inflammation can alleviate the pain and improve function.
For more on this, see:
There are also lots of supplements that enjoy popular claims of helping vs arthritis; not all of them actually do, but here are some good evidence-based ones: Five Supplements That Actually Work Vs Arthritis
One way copper can help
Copper is an essential mineral, and we do need to get the right amount of it in our diet.
However, there is a sweet spot (around 900μg/day, and please note that’s micrograms, not milligrams!), and getting too much is as bad as getting too little, just differently bad.
- Too much = you suffer and, in extreme, die, because of copper toxicity
- Too little = you suffer and, in extreme, die, because it was an essential mineral
Without getting too side-tracked into all the other things copper does for us when enjoyed in the correct amounts:
The double-edged sword role of copper in rheumatoid arthritis: Mechanisms, therapeutics, and challenges ← note that this is about dietary copper, not wearing jewelry!
Good dietary sources of copper include: almonds, cashews, brown rice, most beans/legumes, dark chocolate, and leafy green vegetables.
So what’s the deal with copper bracelets and magnets?
Scientifically, there isn’t one. They just don’t do anything in this regard. Aside from the placebo effect that we discussed above.
Pseudoscientifically, the ideas were:
- Copper bracelets: the copper is absorbed through the skin and treats a copper deficiency
- Magnets: increase blood flow to that area due to attracting the iron in the blood
But they were all of them deceived. Because, in reality:
- Copper bracelets: don’t work that way (similar to how you also cannot usefully wear an iron gauntlet to treat an iron deficiency, by the way) and even if they did, they’d require the root cause to be a copper deficiency, which it’s usually not
- Technically yes it can be absorbed through the skin, but at a rate of about 0.03%, so if you really tried with high levels of skin exposure to copper, you could theoretically get about 0.6 µg/day, which is equivalent to 1/1500th of the recommended daily amount. For more details, see: Can Copper be Absorbed Through the Skin?
- Magnets: don’t work that way (iron in the blood is not ferromagnetic), and we can be thankful for that, because if it were otherwise, we’d explode into fine mist if placed into an MRI machine (which, mercifully, does not happen).
- This one has even less wiggle-room. People just don’t explode in MRI machines. If you still need reassurance about this, here’s an explainer of what goes on (and what doesn’t): Is Blood Magnetic? MRI, Iron, & Hemoglobin Explained
But, my friend’s sister’s husband’s friend’s dog’s aunt used one, and…
Not only is anecdote a poor substitute for meaningful data from randomized controlled trials, but also…
There’s a fallacy that’s easy to fall into that if your symptoms are at their absolute worst and it makes you desperate enough to try something that has no clinical evidence for it working, and then your symptoms improve, it’s easy to ascribe it to “it worked” rather than “my symptoms were at rock bottom, so the only way was up”.
See also, for more on these kinds of fallacies to watch out for: How Science News Outlets Can Lie To You (Yes, Even If They Cite Studies!)
And, for that matter: How To Know Whom To Trust In The Health World
Take care!
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How Does Fat Actually Leave The Body? Where Does It Go?
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Fat loss is often misunderstood, with many believing it simply “vanishes” through exercise, is simply excreted in solid form in the bathroom, or materially disappears when converted for energy. However, the principle of conservation of mass plays out here, in that the mass in fat doesn’t disappear—it changes its arrangement:
In and out
Fat is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, with an example common form of fat in the body being C55H104O6. That’s a lot of Cs and Hs, and a few Os.
When fat leaves the body, it has been primarily converted into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O).
According to a 2014 study by the University of South Wales, 84% of the mass of fat exits the body as CO2 exhaled through breathing, while 16% leaves as water through sweat, urine, and other bodily fluids (all of which contain H2O).
You’ll notice there are a lot more Os going out, proportionally, than we originally had in the C55H104O6. For this reason, the process requires oxygen intake; for every 10 kilograms of fat burned, by simple mathematics the body needs around 29 kilograms of oxygen.
Physical activity plays a crucial role in fat loss. When the body exerts itself, it naturally switches to a higher oxygen metabolism necessary for fat breakdown. This effect is amplified during intermittent fasting, which boosts human growth hormone (HGH), a hormone that aids in fat metabolism.
However, simply hyperventilating won’t work; exercise is essential to activate these processes—otherwise it’s just a case of oxygen in, oxygen out, without involving the body’s chemical energy reserves.
Consequently, one of the best diet-and-exercise combinations for fat loss is intermittent fasting with high-intensity interval training.
And, as for what to eat, this video says raw vegan, but honestly, that’s not scientific consensus. However, a diet rich in unprocessed (or minimally processed) fruits and vegetables definitely is where it’s at, with the plant-heavy Mediterranean diet generally scoring highest—which can be further improved by skipping the mammals to make it pesco-Mediterranean. Current scientific consensus does not give any extra benefits for also omitting moderate consumption of fish and fermented dairy products, so include those if you want, or skip those if you prefer.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Are You A Calorie-Burning Machine? (Calorie Mythbusting)
Take care!
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