Love Sense – by Dr. Sue Johnson

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Let’s quickly fact-check the subtitle:

  • Is it revolutionary? It has a small element of controversy, but mostly no
  • Is it new? No, it is based on science from the 70s that was expanded in the 80s and 90s and has been, at most, tweaked a little since.
  • Is it science? Yes! It is so much science. This book comes with about a thousand references to scientific studies.

What’s the controversy, you ask? Dr. Johnson asserts, based on our (as a species) oxytocin responsiveness, that we are biologically hardwired for monogamy. This is in contrast to the prevailing scientific consensus that we are not.

Aside from that, though, the book is everything you could expect from an expert on attachment theory with more than 35 years of peer-reviewed clinical research, often specifically for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which is her thing.

The writing style is similar to that of her famous “Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations For A Lifetime Of Love”, a very good book that we reviewed previously. It can be a little repetitive at times in its ideas, but this is largely because she revisits some of the same questions from many angles, with appropriate research to back up her advice.

Bottom line: if you are the sort of person who cares to keep working to improve your romantic relationship (no matter whether it is bad or acceptable or great right now), this book will arm you with a lot of deep science that can be applied reliably with good effect.

Click here to check out Love Sense, and level-up yours!

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  • The Brain Health Kitchen – by Dr. Annie Fenn
  • Healing Spices – by Dr. Bharat Aggarwal & Debora Yost
    Dive into the health and culinary secrets of herbs and spices, from supermarket staples to the exotic, with easy-to-follow recipes and growing tips.

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  • Which Tea Is Best, By Science?

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    What kind of tea is best for the health?

    It’s popular knowledge that tea is a healthful drink, and green tea tends to get the popular credit for “healthiest”.

    Is that accurate? It depends on what you’re looking for…

    Black

    Its strong flavor packs in lots of polyphenols, often more than other kinds of tea. This brings some great benefits:

    As well as effects beyond the obvious:

    The Effect of Black Tea on Blood Pressure: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

    …and its cardioprotective benefits aren’t just about lowering blood pressure; it improves triglyceride levels as well as improving the LDL to HDL ratio:

    The effect of black tea on risk factors of cardiovascular disease in a normal population

    Finally (we could say more, but we only have so much room), black tea usually has the highest caffeine content, compared to other teas.

    That’s good or bad depending on your own physiology and preferences, of course.

    White

    White tea hasn’t been processed as much as other kinds, so this one keeps more of its antioxidants, but that doesn’t mean it comes out on top; in this study of 30 teas, the white tea options ranked in the mid-to-low 20s:

    Phenolic Profiles and Antioxidant Activities of 30 Tea Infusions from Green, Black, Oolong, White, Yellow and Dark Teas

    White tea is also unusual in its relatively high fluoride content, which is consider a good thing:

    White tea: A contributor to oral health

    In case you were wondering about the safety of that…

    Water Fluoridation: Is It Safe, And How Much Is Too Much?

    Green

    Green tea ranks almost as high as black tea, on average, for polyphenols.

    Its antioxidant powers have given it a considerable anti-cancer potential, too:

    …and many others, but you get the idea. Notably:

    Green Tea Catechins: Nature’s Way of Preventing and Treating Cancer

    …or to expand on that:

    Potential Therapeutic Targets of Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG), the Most Abundant Catechin in Green Tea, and Its Role in the Therapy of Various Types of Cancer

    About green tea’s much higher levels of catechins, they also have a neuroprotective effect:

    Simultaneous Manipulation of Multiple Brain Targets by Green Tea Catechins: A Potential Neuroprotective Strategy for Alzheimer and Parkinson Diseases

    Green tea of course is also a great source of l-theanine, which we could write a whole main feature about, and we did:

    L-Theanine: What’s The Tea?

    Red

    Also called “rooibos” or (literally translated from Afrikaans to English) “redbush”, it’s quite special in that despite being a “true tea” botanically and containing many of the same phytochemicals as the other teas, it has no caffeine.

    There’s not nearly as much research for this as green tea, but here’s one that stood out:

    Effects of rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) on oxidative stress and biochemical parameters in adults at risk for cardiovascular disease

    However, in the search for the perfect cup of tea (in terms of phytochemical content), another set of researchers found:

    ❝The optimal cup was identified as sample steeped for 10 min or longer. The rooibos consumers did not consume it sufficiently, nor steeped it long enough. ❞

    ~ Dr. Hannelise Piek et al.

    Read in full: Rooibos herbal tea: an optimal cup and its consumers

    Bottom line

    Black, white, green, and red teas all have their benefits, and ultimately the best one for you will probably be the one you enjoy drinking, and thus drink more of.

    If trying to choose though, we offer the following summary:

    • 🖤 Black tea: best for total beneficial phytochemicals
    • 🤍 White tea:best for your oral health
    • 💚 Green tea: best for your brain
    • ❤️ Red tea: best if you want naturally caffeine-free

    Enjoy!

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  • What’s The Difference Between Minoxidil For Men vs For Women?

    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 😎

    ❝I’m confused, does minoxidil work the same for women and for men? The label on the minoxidil I was looking at says it is only for men❞

    Great question!

    Simple answer: yes, it works (or not, as the case may be for some people, more on that later) exactly the same for men and women.

    You may be wondering: what, then, is the difference between minoxidil for men and minoxidil for women?

    And the answer is: the packaging/marketing. That’s literally it.

    It’s like with razors, there are razors marketed to men and razors marketed to women, and both come with advertising/marketing promising to be enhance your masculine/feminine appearance (as applicable), but at the end of the day, in both cases it’s just sharp steel blades that cut through hairs as closely as possible to the skin. The sharp steel neither knows nor cares about your gender.

    When it comes to minoxidil, in both cases the active ingredient is indeed minoxidil, usually at 2% or 5% strength (though other options exist, and all these get marketed to men and women), and in both cases it works in the same ways, by:

    • dilating the blood vessels that feed the hair follicles and thus allowing them to perform better
    • kicking the follicles into anagen (growth phase) and keeping them there for longer

    Note: this is why we mentioned that it won’t work for all people, and it’s because (regardless of sex/gender), it cannot do those things for your hair follicles if you do not have hair follicles to treat. In the case of someone who has had hair loss for a long time, sometimes there will not be enough living follicles remaining to do anything useful with. As a general rule of thumb, provided you have some hairs there (even if they are little downy baby hairs), they can usually be coaxed back to full life.

    In both cases, it’s for treating “pattern hair loss”, the pattern being “male pattern” or “female pattern”, respectively, but in both cases it’s androgenetic alopecia, and in both cases it’s caused by the corresponding genetic factors and hormone-mediated gene expression (the physical pattern therefore is usually a little different for men and women; that’s because of the “hormone-mediated gene expression”, or to put it into lay terms “the hormones tell the body which genes to turn on and off”.

    Fun fact: it’s the same resultant phenotype as for PCOS, though usually occurring at different stages in life; PCOS earlier and AGA later—sometimes people (including people with both ovaries and hair) can get one without the other, though, as there may be other considerations going on besides the genetic and hormonal.

    Limitation: if the hair loss is for reasons other than androgenetic alopecia, it’s unlikely to work. In fact, it is usually flat-out stated that it won’t work, but since one of the common listed side effects of minoxidil is “hair growth in other places”, it seems fair to say that the scalp is not really the only place it can cause hair to grow.

    Want to know more?

    You can read about the science of various pharmaceutical options (including minoxidil) here:

    Hair-Loss Remedies, By Science ← this also goes more into the pros and cons of minoxidil than we have today, so if you’re considering minoxidil, you might want to read this first, to make the most informed decision.

    And if you want to be a bit less pharmaceutical about it:

    Gentler Hair Health Options

    Take care!

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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.

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Related Posts

  • The Brain Health Kitchen – by Dr. Annie Fenn
  • 6 Kinds Of Drinks That Hasten Dementia

    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. William Li, most well-known for his diabetes expertise (remember that there are clear associations between diabetes and dementia), discusses drinks you might want to skip:

    Here’s to your good health

    The 6 kinds of drink are:

    • Alcohol which is bad for pretty much everything and this is no exception. Can cause a deficiency of thiamine, brain-shrinking, neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and resultant neuron damage.
    • Soda / diet soda, the former of which is bad for the diabetes-dementia connection, and the latter of which is also usually (depends on the sweetener) harmful to the gut and thus the gut-brain connection.
    • Fruit juices, especially if processed, as the high sugar and zero or nearly-zero fiber can lead to insulin resistance, affecting the brain’s energy processing. In particular, fruit juice drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) can accumulated as fat in the brain (due to how the body processes fructose in the absence of fiber to slow it down), impacting cognition.
    • Energy drinks, being basically the same as soda / diet soda, just now with added caffeine too.
    • [Caffeinated] late-night coffee, can (shocking nobody) disrupt sleep, and chronic sleep deprivation contributes to the build-up of harmful brain plaques.
    • Sports drinks, which (unless you’re super-sure about everything on the label; there are some good sports drinks out there) often contain HFCS in the US, along with various other additives that may not always be great for you. Also, the sodium content of electrolyte drinks are fine if you genuinely are actively sweating it out, but otherwise, can lead to high blood pressure, which is itself a dementia risk factor.

    Better options include:

    • decaffeinated coffee (or coffee enjoyed in the early afternoon)
    • green tea
    • turmeric-based drinks

    Dr. Li mentions turmeric milk drinks, but unfermented dairy is generally inflammatory, so better to make it kefir (fermented milk drink) or plant-based. Or just have a turmeric tea; that works too.

    Dr. Li also mentions berry smoothies, which are not nearly as bad as fruit juice, but still not as good as eating whole berries.

    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:

    Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

    Take care!

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  • Wasting Your Vitamins?

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    Are you flushing away your vitamins?

    Most likely…but you don’t have to.

    We all know what a wasteful expense supplements can sometimes be, but you can optimise your intake to get more bang for your buck!

    Top Tips for Getting Your Money’s Worth:

    1. Liquids are better than tablets—the body can’t absorb nutrients from tablets anywhere as easily as it can from liquids, with some saying as low as a 50% absorption rate for tablets, so if your supplement can come in drinkable form, take it that way!
    2. Capsules are better than tablets—capsules, depending on the kind, contain either a powder (true capsules) or a liquid (softgels). Once the capsule/softgel is broken down in the stomach, it releases its contents, which will now be absorbed as though you took it as a drink.
    3. Stay hydrated—on that note, your body can only make use of nutrients that it can easily transport, and if you’re dehydrated, the process is sluggish! Having a big glass of water with your supplements will go a long way to helping your body get them where they’re needed.
    4. Take with black pepper—studies disagree on exactly how much black pepper improves absorption of nutrients. Some say it improves it by 50%, others say as much as 7x better. The truth is probably that it varies from one nutrient to the next, but what is (almost) universally accepted is that black pepper helps you absorb many nutrients you take orally.
    5. Take with a meal—bonus if you seasoned it with black pepper! But also: many nutrients are best absorbed alongside food, and many are specifically fat-soluble (so you want to take a little fat around the same time for maximum absorption)
    6. Consider split doses—a lot of nutrients are best absorbed when spread out a bit. Why? Your body can often only absorb so much at once, and what it couldn’t absorb can, depending on the nutrient, pass right through you. So better to space out the doses—breakfast and dinner make for great times to take them.
    7. Consider cycling—no, not the two-wheeled kind, though feel free to do that too! What cycling means when it comes to supplements is to understand that your body can build a tolerance to some supplements, so you’ll get gradually less effect for the same dose. Combat this by scheduling a break—five days on, two days off is a common schedule—allowing your body to optimise itself in the process!
    8. Check Medications—and, as is always safe, make sure you check whether any medications you take can interrupt your supplement absorption!

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  • Women and Minorities Bear the Brunt of Medical Misdiagnosis

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    Charity Watkins sensed something was deeply wrong when she experienced exhaustion after her daughter was born.

    At times, Watkins, then 30, had to stop on the stairway to catch her breath. Her obstetrician said postpartum depression likely caused the weakness and fatigue. When Watkins, who is Black, complained of a cough, her doctor blamed the flu.

    About eight weeks after delivery, Watkins thought she was having a heart attack, and her husband took her to the emergency room. After a 5½-hour wait in a North Carolina hospital, she returned home to nurse her baby without seeing a doctor.

    When a physician finally examined Watkins three days later, he immediately noticed her legs and stomach were swollen, a sign that her body was retaining fluid. After a chest X-ray, the doctor diagnosed her with heart failure, a serious condition in which the heart becomes too weak to adequately pump oxygen-rich blood to organs throughout the body. Watkins spent two weeks in intensive care.

    She said a cardiologist later told her, “We almost lost you.”

    Watkins is among 12 million adults misdiagnosed every year in the U.S.

    In a study published Jan. 8 in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers found that nearly 1 in 4 hospital patients who died or were transferred to intensive care had experienced a diagnostic error. Nearly 18% of misdiagnosed patients were harmed or died.

    In all, an estimated 795,000 patients a year die or are permanently disabled because of misdiagnosis, according to a study published in July in the BMJ Quality & Safety periodical.

    Some patients are at higher risk than others.

    Women and racial and ethnic minorities are 20% to 30% more likely than white men to experience a misdiagnosis, said David Newman-Toker, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the lead author of the BMJ study. “That’s significant and inexcusable,” he said.

    Researchers call misdiagnosis an urgent public health problem. The study found that rates of misdiagnosis range from 1.5% of heart attacks to 17.5% of strokes and 22.5% of lung cancers.

    Weakening of the heart muscle — which led to Watkins’ heart failure — is the most common cause of maternal death one week to one year after delivery, and is more common among Black women.

    Heart failure “should have been No. 1 on the list of possible causes” for Watkins’ symptoms, said Ronald Wyatt, chief science and chief medical officer at the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

    Maternal mortality for Black mothers has increased dramatically in recent years. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, non-Hispanic Black mothers are 2.6 times as likely to die as non-Hispanic white moms. More than half of these deaths take place within a year after delivery.

    Research shows that Black women with childbirth-related heart failure are typically diagnosed later than white women, said Jennifer Lewey, co-director of the pregnancy and heart disease program at Penn Medicine. That can allow patients to further deteriorate, making Black women less likely to fully recover and more likely to suffer from weakened hearts for the rest of their lives.

    Watkins said the diagnosis changed her life. Doctors advised her “not to have another baby, or I might need a heart transplant,” she said. Being deprived of the chance to have another child, she said, “was devastating.”

    Racial and gender disparities are widespread.

    Women and minority patients suffering from heart attacks are more likely than others to be discharged without diagnosis or treatment.

    Black people with depression are more likely than others to be misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.

    Minorities are less likely than whites to be diagnosed early with dementia, depriving them of the opportunities to receive treatments that work best in the early stages of the disease.

    Misdiagnosis isn’t new. Doctors have used autopsy studies to estimate the percentage of patients who died with undiagnosed diseases for more than a century. Although those studies show some improvement over time, life-threatening mistakes remain all too common, despite an array of sophisticated diagnostic tools, said Hardeep Singh, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine who studies ways to improve diagnosis.

    “The vast majority of diagnoses can be made by getting to know the patient’s story really well, asking follow-up questions, examining the patient, and ordering basic tests,” said Singh, who is also a researcher at Houston’s Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. When talking to people who’ve been misdiagnosed, “one of the things we hear over and over is, ‘The doctor didn’t listen to me.’”

    Racial disparities in misdiagnosis are sometimes explained by noting that minority patients are less likely to be insured than white patients and often lack access to high-quality hospitals. But the picture is more complicated, said Monika Goyal, an emergency physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., who has documented racial bias in children’s health care.

    In a 2020 study, Goyal and her colleagues found that Black kids with appendicitis were less likely than their white peers to be correctly diagnosed, even when both groups of patients visited the same hospital.

    Although few doctors deliberately discriminate against women or minorities, Goyal said, many are biased without realizing it.

    “Racial bias is baked into our culture,” Goyal said. “It’s important for all of us to start recognizing that.”

    Demanding schedules, which prevent doctors from spending as much time with patients as they’d like, can contribute to diagnostic errors, said Karen Lutfey Spencer, a professor of health and behavioral sciences at the University of Colorado-Denver. “Doctors are more likely to make biased decisions when they are busy and overworked,” Spencer said. “There are some really smart, well-intentioned providers who are getting chewed up in a system that’s very unforgiving.”

    Doctors make better treatment decisions when they’re more confident of a diagnosis, Spencer said.

    In an experiment, researchers asked doctors to view videos of actors pretending to be patients with heart disease or depression, make a diagnosis, and recommend follow-up actions. Doctors felt far more certain diagnosing white men than Black patients or younger women.

    “If they were less certain, they were less likely to take action, such as ordering tests,” Spencer said. “If they were less certain, they might just wait to prescribe treatment.”

    It’s easy to see why doctors are more confident when diagnosing white men, Spencer said. For more than a century, medical textbooks have illustrated diseases with stereotypical images of white men. Only 4.5% of images in general medical textbooks feature patients with dark skin.

    That may help explain why patients with darker complexions are less likely to receive a timely diagnosis with conditions that affect the skin, from cancer to Lyme disease, which causes a red or pink rash in the earliest stage of infection. Black patients with Lyme disease are more likely to be diagnosed with more advanced disease, which can cause arthritis and damage the heart. Black people with melanoma are about three times as likely as whites to die within five years.

    The covid-19 pandemic helped raise awareness that pulse oximeters — the fingertip devices used to measure a patient’s pulse and oxygen levelsare less accurate for people with dark skin. The devices work by shining light through the skin; their failures have delayed critical care for many Black patients.

    Seven years after her misdiagnosis, Watkins is an assistant professor of social work at North Carolina Central University in Durham, where she studies the psychosocial effects experienced by Black mothers who survive severe childbirth complications.

    “Sharing my story is part of my healing,” said Watkins, who speaks to medical groups to help doctors improve their care. “It has helped me reclaim power in my life, just to be able to help others.”

    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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