Laugh Often, To Laugh Longest!

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Putting The Abs Into Absurdity

We’ve talked before about the health benefits of a broadly positive outlook on life:

Optimism Seriously Increases Longevity!

…and we’re very serious about it, but that’s about optimistic life views in general, and today we’re about not just keeping good humor in questionable circumstances, but actively finding good humor in the those moments—even when the moments in question might not be generally described as good!

After all, laughter really can be the best medicine, for example:

The effect of laughter yoga exercises on anxiety and sleep quality in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease

From the roots

First a quick recap on de-toothing the psychological aspect of threats, no matter how menacing they may be:

Hello, Emotions: Time For Radical Acceptance!

…which we can then take a step further:

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Choose your frame

Do you remember when that hacker hacked and publicized the US Federal no-fly list, after already hacking a nationwide cloud-based security camera company, getting access to more than 150,000 companies’ and private individuals’ security cameras, amongst various other cyber crimes, mostly various kinds of fraud and data theft?

Imagine how she (age 21) must have felt, when being indicted. What do you suppose this hacker had to say for itself under such circumstances?

❝congress is investigating now 🙂

but i stay silly :3 ❞

~ maia arson crimew

…the latter half of which, usually rendered “but I stay silly” or “but we stay silly” has since entered popular Gen-Z parlance, usually after expressing some negative thing, often in a state of powerlessness.

Which is an important life skill if powerlessness is something that is often likely.

It’s important for many Gen-Zs with negligible life prospects economically; it’s equally important for 60-somethings getting cancer diagnoses (statistically the most likely decade to find out one has cancer, by the way), and many other kinds of people younger, older, and in between.

Because at the end of the day, we all start powerless and we all end powerless.

Learned helplessness (two kinds)

In psychology, “learned helplessness” occurs when a person or creature gives up after learning that all and any attempts to resist a Bad Thing™ fail, perhaps even badly. A lab rat may just shut down and sit there getting electroshocked, for example. A person subjected to abuse may stop trying to improve their situation, and just go with the path of least resistance.

But, there’s another kind, wherein someone in a position of absolute powerlessness not only makes their peace with that, but also, decides that the one thing the outside world can’t control, is how they take it. Like the hacker we mentioned earlier.

Sometimes the gallows humor is even more literal, laughing at one’s own impending death. Not as a matter of bravado, but genuinely seeing the funny side.

But how?

Unfortunately, fortunately

The trick here is to “find a silver lining” that is nowhere near enough to compensate for the bad thing—and it may even be worse! But that’s fine:

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do the dishes before leaving for my vacation. Fortunately, I also forgot to turn the oven off, so the house burning down covered up my messy kitchen”

Writer’s personal less drastic example: today I set my espresso machine to press me an espresso; it doesn’t have an auto-off and I got distracted and it overflowed everywhere; my immediate reaction was “Oh! I have been blessed with an abundance of coffee!”

This kind of silly little thing, on a daily basis, builds a very solid habit for life that allows one to see the funny side in even the most absurd situations, even matters of life and death (can confirm: been there enough times personally—so far so good, still alive to find the remembered absurdity silly).

The point is not to genuinely value the “silver lining”, because half the time it isn’t even one, really, and it is useless to pretend, in seriousness.

But to pretend in silliness? Now we’re onto something, and the real benefit is in the laughs we had along the way.

Because those worst moments? Are probably when we need it the most, so it’s good to get some practice in!

Want more ways to find the funny and make it a life habit?

We reviewed a good book recently:

The Humor Habit: Rewire Your Brain To Stress Less, Laugh More, And Achieve More’er – by Paul Osincup

Stay silly!

Don’t Forget…

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  • Fitness Walking and Bodyweight Exercises – by Frank S. Ring

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    A lot of exercise manuals assume that the reader has a “basic” body (nothing Olympian, but nothing damaged either). As we get older, increasingly few of us fall into the “but nothing damaged either” category!

    Here’s where Ring brings to bear his decades of experience as a coach and educator, and also his personal recovery from a serious back injury.

    The book covers direct, actionable exercise advice (with all manner of detail), and also offers mental health tips he’s learned along the way.

    Ring, like us, is a big fan of keeping things simple, so he focusses on “the core four” of bodyweight exercises:

    1. Pushups
    2. Squats
    3. Lunges
    4. Planks

    These four exercises get a whole chapter devoted to them, though! Because there are ways to make each exercise easier or harder, or have different benefits. For example, adjustments include:

    • Body angle
    • Points of contact
    • Speed
    • Pausing
    • Range of motion

    This, in effect, makes a few square meters of floor (and perhaps a chair or bench) your fully-equipped gym.

    As for walking? Ring enjoys and extols the health benefits, and/but also uses his walks a lot for assorted mental exercises, and recommends we try them too.

    A fine book for anyone who wants to gain and/or maintain good health, but doesn’t pressingly want to join a gym or start pumping iron!

    Pick up “Fitness Walking and Bodyweight Exercises: Supercharge Your Fitness, Build Body Strength, and Live Longer” on Amazon today!

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  • What’s Keeping the US From Allowing Better Sunscreens?

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    When dermatologist Adewole “Ade” Adamson sees people spritzing sunscreen as if it’s cologne at the pool where he lives in Austin, Texas, he wants to intervene. “My wife says I shouldn’t,” he said, “even though most people rarely use enough sunscreen.”

    At issue is not just whether people are using enough sunscreen, but what ingredients are in it.

    The Food and Drug Administration’s ability to approve the chemical filters in sunscreens that are sold in countries such as Japan, South Korea, and France is hamstrung by a 1938 U.S. law that has required sunscreens to be tested on animals and classified as drugs, rather than as cosmetics as they are in much of the world. So Americans are not likely to get those better sunscreens — which block the ultraviolet rays that can cause skin cancer and lead to wrinkles — in time for this summer, or even the next.

    Sunscreen makers say that requirement is unfair because companies including BASF Corp. and L’Oréal, which make the newer sunscreen chemicals, submitted safety data on sunscreen chemicals to the European Union authorities some 20 years ago.

    Steven Goldberg, a retired vice president of BASF, said companies are wary of the FDA process because of the cost and their fear that additional animal testing could ignite a consumer backlash in the European Union, which bans animal testing of cosmetics, including sunscreen. The companies are asking Congress to change the testing requirements before they take steps to enter the U.S. marketplace.

    In a rare example of bipartisanship last summer, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) thanked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for urging the FDA to speed up approvals of new, more effective sunscreen ingredients. Now a bipartisan bill is pending in the House that would require the FDA to allow non-animal testing.

    “It goes back to sunscreens being classified as over-the-counter drugs,” said Carl D’Ruiz, a senior manager at DSM-Firmenich, a Switzerland-based maker of sunscreen chemicals. “It’s really about giving the U.S. consumer something that the rest of the world has. People aren’t dying from using sunscreen. They’re dying from melanoma.”

    Every hour, at least two people die of skin cancer in the United States. Skin cancer is the most common cancer in America, and 6.1 million adults are treated each year for basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The nation’s second-most-common cancer, breast cancer, is diagnosed about 300,000 times annually, though it is far more deadly.

    Dermatologists Offer Tips on Keeping Skin Safe and Healthy

    – Stay in the shade during peak sunlight hours, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daylight time.– Wear hats and sunglasses.– Use UV-blocking sun umbrellas and clothing.– Reapply sunscreen every two hours.You can order overseas versions of sunscreens from online pharmacies such as Cocooncenter in France. Keep in mind that the same brands may have different ingredients if sold in U.S. stores. But importing your sunscreen may not be affordable or practical. “The best sunscreen is the one that you will use over and over again,” said Jane Yoo, a New York City dermatologist.

    Though skin cancer treatment success rates are excellent, 1 in 5 Americans will develop skin cancer by age 70. The disease costs the health care system $8.9 billion a year, according to CDC researchers. One study found that the annual cost of treating skin cancer in the United States more than doubled from 2002 to 2011, while the average annual cost for all other cancers increased by just 25%. And unlike many other cancers, most forms of skin cancer can largely be prevented — by using sunscreens and taking other precautions.

    But a heavy dose of misinformation has permeated the sunscreen debate, and some people question the safety of sunscreens sold in the United States, which they deride as “chemical” sunscreens. These sunscreen opponents prefer “physical” or “mineral” sunscreens, such as zinc oxide, even though all sunscreen ingredients are chemicals.

    “It’s an artificial categorization,” said E. Dennis Bashaw, a retired FDA official who ran the agency’s clinical pharmacology division that studies sunscreens.

    Still, such concerns were partly fed by the FDA itself after it published a study that said some sunscreen ingredients had been found in trace amounts in human bloodstreams. When the FDA said in 2019, and then again two years later, that older sunscreen ingredients needed to be studied more to see if they were safe, sunscreen opponents saw an opening, said Nadim Shaath, president of Alpha Research & Development, which imports chemicals used in cosmetics.

    “That’s why we have extreme groups and people who aren’t well informed thinking that something penetrating the skin is the end of the world,” Shaath said. “Anything you put on your skin or eat is absorbed.”

    Adamson, the Austin dermatologist, said some sunscreen ingredients have been used for 30 years without any population-level evidence that they have harmed anyone. “The issue for me isn’t the safety of the sunscreens we have,” he said. “It’s that some of the chemical sunscreens aren’t as broad spectrum as they could be, meaning they do not block UVA as well. This could be alleviated by the FDA allowing new ingredients.”

    Ultraviolet radiation falls between X-rays and visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum. Most of the UV rays that people come in contact with are UVA rays that can penetrate the middle layer of the skin and that cause up to 90% of skin aging, along with a smaller amount of UVB rays that are responsible for sunburns.

    The sun protection factor, or SPF, rating on American sunscreen bottles denotes only a sunscreen’s ability to block UVB rays. Although American sunscreens labeled “broad spectrum” should, in theory, block UVA light, some studies have shown they fail to meet the European Union’s higher UVA-blocking standards.

    “It looks like a number of these newer chemicals have a better safety profile in addition to better UVA protection,” said David Andrews, deputy director of Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that researches the ingredients in consumer products. “We have asked the FDA to consider allowing market access.”

    The FDA defends its review process and its call for tests of the sunscreens sold in American stores as a way to ensure the safety of products that many people use daily, rather than just a few times a year at the beach.

    “Many Americans today rely on sunscreens as a key part of their skin cancer prevention strategy, which makes satisfactory evidence of both safety and effectiveness of these products critical for public health,” Cherie Duvall-Jones, an FDA spokesperson, wrote in an email.

    D’Ruiz’s company, DSM-Firmenich, is the only one currently seeking to have a new over-the-counter sunscreen ingredient approved in the United States. The company has spent the past 20 years trying to gain approval for bemotrizinol, a process D’Ruiz said has cost $18 million and has advanced fitfully, despite attempts by Congress in 2014 and 2020 to speed along applications for new UV filters.

    Bemotrizinol is the bedrock ingredient in nearly all European and Asian sunscreens, including those by the South Korean brand Beauty of Joseon and Bioré, a Japanese brand.

    D’Ruiz said bemotrizinol could secure FDA approval by the end of 2025. If it does, he said, bemotrizinol would be the most vetted and safest sunscreen ingredient on the market, outperforming even the safety profiles of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.

    As Congress and the FDA debate, many Americans have taken to importing their own sunscreens from Asia or Europe, despite the risk of fake products.

    “The sunscreen issue has gotten people to see that you can be unsafe if you’re too slow,” said Alex Tabarrok, a professor of economics at George Mason University. “The FDA is just incredibly slow. They’ve been looking at this now literally for 40 years. Congress has ordered them to do it, and they still haven’t done it.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Uric Acid’s Extensive Health Impact (And How To Lower It)

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    Uric Acid’s Extensive Health Impact (And How To Lower It)

    This is Dr. David Perlmutter. He’s a medical doctor, and a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. He’s a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, and has been widely published in many other peer-reviewed journals.

    What does he want us to know?

    He wants us to know about the health risks of uric acid (not something popularly talked about so much!), and how to reduce it.

    First: what is it? Uric acid is a substance we make in our own body. However, unlike most substances we make in our body, we have negligible use for it—it’s largely a waste product, usually excreted in urine.

    However, if we get too much, it can build up (and crystallize), becoming such things as kidney stones, or causing painful inflammation if it shows up in the joints, as in gout.

    More seriously (unpleasant as kidney stones and gout may be), this inflammation can have a knock-on effect triggering (or worsening) other inflammatory conditions, ranging from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, to arthritis, to dementia, and even heart problems. See for example:

    How can we reduce our uric acid levels?

    Uric acid is produced when we metabolize purine nucleotides, which are found in many kinds of food. We can therefore reduce our uric acid levels by reducing our purine intake, as well as things that mess up our liver’s ability to detoxify things. Offsetting the values for confounding variables (such as fiber content, or phytochemicals that mitigate the harm), the worst offenders include…

    Liver-debilitating things:

    • Alcohol (especially beer)
    • High-fructose corn syrup (and other fructose-containing things that aren’t actual fruit)
    • Other refined sugars
    • Wheat / white flour products (this is why beer is worse than wine, for example; it’s a double-vector hit)

    Purine-rich things:

    • Red meats and game
    • Organ meats
    • Oily fish, and seafood (great for some things; not great for this)

    Some beans and legumes are also high in purines, but much like real fruit has a neutral or positive effect on blood sugar health despite its fructose content, the beans and legumes that are high in purines, also contain phytochemicals that help lower uric acid levels, so have a beneficial effect.

    Eggs (consumed in moderation) and tart cherries have a uric-acid lowering effect.

    Water is important for all aspects of health, and doubly important for this.

    Hydrate well!

    Lifestyle matters beyond diet

    The main key here is metabolic health, so Dr. Perlmutter advises the uncontroversial lifestyle choices of moderate exercise and good sleep, as well as (more critically) intermittent fasting. We wrote previously on other things that can benefit liver health:

    How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver

    …in this case, that means the liver gets a break to recuperate (something it’s very good at, but does need to get a chance to do), which means that while you’re not giving it something new to do, it can quickly catch up on any backlog, and then tackle any new things fresh, next time you start eating.

    Want to know more about this from Dr. Perlmutter?

    You might like his article:

    An Integrated Plan for Lowering Uric Acid ← more than we had room for here; he also talks about extra things to include in your diet/supplementation regime for beneficial effects!

    And/or his book:

    Drop Acid: The Surprising New Science of Uric Acid―The Key to Losing Weight, Controlling Blood Sugar, and Achieving Extraordinary Health

    …on which much of today’s main feature was based.

    Take care!

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  • Mango vs Guava – 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 mango to guava, we picked the guava.

    Why?

    Looking at macros first, these two fruits are about equal on carbs (nominally mango has more, but it’s by a truly tiny margin), while guava has more than 3x the protein and more than 3x the fiber. A clear win for guava.

    In terms of vitamins, mango has more of vitamins A, E, and K, while guava has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B7, B9, and C. Another win for guava.

    In the category of minerals, mango is not higher in any minerals, while guava is higher in calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc.

    In short, enjoy both; both are healthy. But if you’re choosing one, there’s a clear winner here, and it’s guava.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?

    Take care!

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  • Sea Salt vs MSG – 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 sea salt to MSG, we picked the MSG.

    Why?

    Surprise! Or maybe not? The results of the poll for this one should be interesting, and will help us know whether we need to keep mentioning in every second recipe that MSG is a healthier alternative to salt.

    First of all, two things:

    • Don’t be fooled by their respective names, and/or with such, an appeal to naturalism. For example, hydroxybenzoic acids are a major group of beneficial phenolic compounds, whereas hemlock is a wildflower that grows in this writer’s garden and will kill you if you eat it. Actually hydroxybenzoic acids also grow here (on the apple tree), but that’s not the point. The point is: worry less about names, and more about evidence!
    • Don’t be fooled by the packaging. A lot of products go for “greenwashing” of one kind or another. You’re not eating the packaging (hopefully), so don’t be swayed by a graphic designer’s implementation of a marketing team’s aesthetic choices.

    If naturalism is for some reason very important to you though, do bear in mind that glutamates occur generously in many common foodstuffs (tomatoes are a fine, healthy example) and eating tomato in the presence of salt will have the same biochemical effect as eating MSG, because it’s the same chemicals.

    Since there are bad rumors about MSG’s safety, especially in the US where there is often a strong distrust of anything associated with China (actually MSG was first isolated in Japan, more than 100 years ago, by Japanese biochemist Dr. Kikunae Ikeda, but that gets drowned out by the “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” fear in the US), know that this has resulted in MSG being one of the most-studied food additives in the last 40 years or so, with many teams of scientists trying to determine its risks and not finding any (aside from the same that could be said of any substance; anything in sufficient excess will kill you, including water or oxygen).

    Well, that’s all been about safety, but what makes it healthier than sea salt?

    Simply, it has about ⅓ of the sodium content, that’s all. So, if you are laboring all day in a field under the hot summer sun, then probably the sea salt will be healthier, to replenish more of the sodium you lost through sweat. But for most people most of the time, having less sodium rather than more is the healthier option.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Watch Out For Lipedema

    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.

    Lipedema occurs mostly in women, mostly in times of hormonal change, with increasing risk as time goes by (so for example, puberty yields a lower risk than pregnancy, which yields a lower risk than menopause).

    Its name literally means “fat swelling”, and can easily be mistaken for obesity or, in its earlier stages, just pain old cellulite.

    Cellulite, by the way, is completely harmless and is also not, per se, an indicator of bad health. But if you have it and don’t like it, you can reduce it:

    Keep Cellulite At Bay

    Obesity is more of a complex matter, and one that we’ve covered here:

    Shedding Some Obesity Myths

    Lipedema is actively harmful

    Lipedema can become a big problem, because lifestyle change does not reduce lipedema fat, the fat is painful, can lead to obesity if one was not already obese, causes gait and joint abnormalities, causes fatigue, can lead to lymphedema (beyond the scope of today’s article—perhaps another time!) and very much psychosocial distress.

    Like many conditions that mostly affect women, the science is… Well, here’s a recent example review that was conducted and published:

    Lipedema: What we don’t know

    Fun fact: in Romanian there is an expression “one eye is laughing; the other is crying”, and it seems appropriate here.

    Spot the signs

    Because it’s most readily mistaken for cellulite in first presentation, let’s look at the differences between them:

    • Cellulite is characterized by dimpled, bumpy, or even skin; lipedema is the same but with swelling too.
    • Cellulite is a connective tissue condition; lipedema is too (at least in part), but also involves the abnormal accumulation and deposition of fat cells, rather than just pulling some down a bit.
    • Cellulite has no additional symptoms; lipedema soon also brings swollen limbs, joint pain, and/or skin that’s “spongy” and easily bruised.

    What to do about it

    First, get it checked out by a doctor.

    If the doctor says it is just cellulite or obesity, ask them what difference(s) they are basing that on, and ask that they confirm in writing having dismissed your concerns (having this will be handy later if it turns out to be lipedema after all).

    If it is lipedema, you will want to catch it early; there is no known cure, but advanced symptoms are a lot easier to keep at bay than they are to reverse once they’ve shown up.

    Weight maintenance, skin care (including good hydration), and compression therapy have all been shown to help slow the progression.

    If it is allowed to progress unhindered, that’s when a lot more fat accumulation and joint pain is likely to occur. Liposuction and surgery are options, but even they are only a temporary solution, and are obviously not fun things to have to go through.

    Prevention is, as ever, much better than cure treatment ← because there is no known cure

    One last thing

    Lipedema’s main risk factor is genetic. The bad news is, there’s not much that can be done about that for now, but the good news is, you can at least get the heads-up about whether you are at increased risk or not, and be especially vigilant if you’re in the increased risk group. See also:

    One Test, Many Warnings: The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: