How White Is Your Tongue?

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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!

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

❝So its normal to develop a white sort of coating on the tongue, right? It develops when I eat, and is able to (somewhat) easily be brushed off❞

If (and only if) there is no soreness and the coverage of the whiteness is not extreme, then, yes, that is normal and fine.

Your mouth has a microbiome, and it’s supposed to have one (helps keep the conditions in your mouth correct, so that food is broken down and/but your gums and teeth aren’t).

Read more: The oral microbiome: Role of key organisms and complex networks in oral health and disease

The whiteness you often see on a healthy tongue is, for the most part, bacteria and dead cells—harmless.

Cleaning the whiteness off with your brush is fine. You can also scrape off with floss is similar if you prefer. Or a tongue-scraper! Those can be especially good for people for whom brushing the tongue is an unpleasant sensation. Or you can just leave it, if it doesn’t bother you.

By the way, that microbiome is a reason it can be good to go easy on the mouthwash. Moderate use of mouthwash is usually fine, but you don’t want to wipe out your microbiome then have it taken over by unpleasantries that the mouthwash didn’t kill (unpleasantries like C. albicans).

There are other mouthwash-related considerations too:

Toothpastes and mouthwashes: which kinds help, and which kinds harm?

If you start to get soreness, that probably means the papillae (little villi-like things) are inflamed. If there is soreness, and/or the whiteness is extreme, then it could be a fungal infection (usually C. albicans, also called Thrush), in which case, antifungal medications will be needed, which you can probably get over the counter from your pharmacist.

Do not try to self-treat with antibiotics.

Antibiotics will make a fungal infection worse (indeed, antibiotic usage is often the reason for getting fungal growth in the first place) by wiping out the bacteria that normally keep it in check.

Other risk factors include a sugary diet, smoking, and medications that have “dry mouth” as a side effect.

Read more: Can oral thrush be prevented?

If you have any symptoms more exciting than the above, then definitely see a doctor.

Take care!

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  • We looked at over 166,000 psychiatric records. Over half showed people were admitted against their will

    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.

    Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia.

    Hopefully, both could be treated on a voluntary basis, taking into account their individual needs, preferences and capacity to consent. If not, you might imagine they should be equally likely to receive treatment against their will (known colloquially as being “sectioned” or “scheduled”).

    However, our research published in British Journal of Psychiatry Open suggests this is not the case.

    In the largest study globally of its kind, we found Australians are more likely to be treated in hospital for their acute mental illness against their will if they are born overseas, speak a language other than English or are unemployed.

    What we did and what we found

    We examined more than 166,000 episodes of voluntary and involuntary psychiatric care in New South Wales public hospitals between 2016 and 2021. Most admissions (54%) included at least one day of involuntary care.

    Being brought to hospital via legal means, such as by police or via a court order, was strongly linked to involuntary treatment.

    While our study does not show why this is the case, it may be due to mental health laws. In NSW, which has similar laws to most jurisdictions in Australia, doctors may treat a person on an involuntary basis if they present with certain symptoms indicating serious mental illness (such as hallucinations and delusions) which cause them to require protection from serious harm, and there is no other less-restrictive care available. Someone who has been brought to hospital by police or the courts may be more likely to meet the legal requirement of requiring protection from serious harm.

    The likelihood of involuntary care was also linked to someone’s diagnosis. A person with psychosis or organic brain diseases, such as dementia and delirium, were about four times as likely to be admitted involuntarily compared to someone with anxiety or adjustment disorders (conditions involving a severe reaction to stressors).

    However, our data suggest non-clinical factors contribute to the decision to impose involuntary care.

    Compared with people born in Australia, we found people born in Asia were 42% more likely to be treated involuntarily.

    People born in Africa or the Middle East were 32% more likely to be treated this way.

    Overall, people who spoke a language other than English were 11% more likely to receive involuntary treatment compared to those who spoke English as their first language.

    Some international researchers have suggested higher rates of involuntary treatment seen in people born overseas might be due to higher rates of psychotic illness. But our research found a link between higher rates of involuntary care in people born overseas or who don’t speak English regardless of their diagnosis.

    We don’t know why this is happening. It is likely to reflect a complex interplay of factors about both the people receiving treatment and the way services are provided to them.

    People less likely to be treated involuntarily included those who hold private health insurance, and those referred through a community health centre or outpatients unit.

    Our findings are in line with international studies. These show higher rates of involuntary treatment among people from Black and ethnic minority groups, and people living in areas of higher socioeconomic disadvantage.

    A last resort? Or should we ban it?

    Both the NSW and Australian mental health commissions have called involuntary psychiatric care an avoidable harm that should only be used as a last resort.

    Despite this, one study found Australia’s rate of involuntary admissions has increased by 3.4% per year and it has one of the highest rates of involuntary admissions in the world.

    Involuntary psychiatric treatment is also under increasing scrutiny globally.

    When Australia signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it added a declaration noting it would allow for involuntary treatment of people with mental illness where such treatments are “necessary, as a last resort and subject to safeguards”.

    However, the UN has rejected this, saying it is a fundamental human right “to be free from involuntary detention in a mental health facility and not to be forced to undergo mental health treatment”.

    Others question if involuntary treatment could ever be removed entirely.

    Where to from here?

    Our research not only highlights concerns regarding how involuntary psychiatric treatment is implemented, it’s a first step towards decreasing its use. Without understanding how and when it is used it will be difficult to create effective interventions to reduce it.

    But Australia is still a long way from significantly reducing involuntary treatment.

    We need to provide more care options outside hospital, ones accessible to all Australians, including those born overseas, who don’t speak English, or who come from disadvantaged communities. This includes intervening early enough that people are supported to not become so unwell they end up being referred for treatment via police or the criminal justice system.

    More broadly, we need to do more to reduce stigma surrounding mental illness and to ensure poverty and discrimination are tackled to help prevent more people becoming unwell in the first place.

    Our study also shows we need to do more to respect the autonomy of someone with serious mental illness to choose if they are treated. That’s whether they are in NSW or other jurisdictions.

    And legal reform is required to ensure more states and territories more fully reflect the principal that people who have the capacity to make such decisions should have the right to decline mental health treatment in the same way they would any other health care.

    If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

    Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney

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

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  • How Regularity Of Sleep Can Be Even More Important Than Duration

    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.

    A recent, large (n=72,269) 8-year prospective* observational study of adults aged 40-79 has found an association between irregular sleep and major cardiovascular events.

    *this means they started the study at a given point, and measured what happened for the next eight years—as opposed to a retrospective study, which would look at what had happened during the previous 8 years.

    As to what qualifies as major cardiovascular events, they counted:

    • Heart attack
    • Cardiac arrest
    • Stroke
    • Cardiovascular death (any)

    Irregular sleep, meanwhile, was defined per a bell curve of participants. Based on a sleep regularity index (SRI) score, those with a score of 87 or more were on the “regular” side of the curve, and those with a score of 72 or lower were on the “irregular” side of the curve.

    What they found is that irregular sleep is associated with major cardiovascular events, regardless of the actual amount of sleep that people got. So in other words, you could be sleeping 9 hours per day, but if it’s a different 9 hours each day, your cardiovascular risk will still be higher.

    How much higher?

    • For those in the middle of the curve (so, moderate irregularity), it was 8% higher than those on the “regular” side.
    • For those on the “irregular” side of the curve, it was 26% higher than those on the “regular” side.

    All of the above is after taking into account confounding variables such as age, physical activity levels, discretionary screen time, fruit, vegetable, and coffee intake, alcohol consumption, smoking, mental health issues, medication use, and shift work. Which is quite something, given that shift work is a very common reason for irregular sleep schedules in a lot of people.

    Limitations

    While, as noted above, they did their best to account for a lot of things, this was an observational study, not an interventional study or a randomized controlled trial, and as such, it cannot truly establish cause and effect.

    For example, an observational study in the 90s found that the sport most strongly associated with longevity was polo. For any unfamiliar, it’s a game played on horseback with mallets and balls. Why was this game so much better than, say, swimming? And the answer is most likely that polo is played almost entirely by very rich people. It wasn’t the sport that enhanced longevity—it was the wealth.

    So similarly here, it could be for example that people who are predisposed to heart conditions, are prone to having irregular schedules. We won’t know for sure until we have interventional studies (and we probably can’t get RCTs for this, for practical reasons).

    Still, it seems likely that the association is indeed causal, in which case, having a regular sleep schedule if at all possible seems like a very good way to look after one’s health.

    You can read more about the study here:

    Irregular sleep may elevate risk of major cardiovascular events

    Practical take-away

    This study strongly suggests that sleep regularity is even more important than sleep duration.

    This means that there is extra reason to not sleep in past one’s normal getting-up time, even if one had a less restful night.

    That’s the end of sleep that’s the most important in practical terms, too, because we can control our getting-up time, whereas we can’t really control our going-to-sleep time, because it’s perfectly possible to just lie there awake.

    So, controlling the getting-up time is really the key to the whole thing. See also:

    Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep

    And for scope, you might enjoy reading:

    Morning Larks vs Night Owls: How Much Can We Control Our Sleep Schedule?

    Enjoy!

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  • Rebounding Into The Best Of 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.

    “Trampoline” is a brand-name that’s been popularized as a generic name, and “rebounding”, the name used in this video, is the same thing as “trampolining”. With that in mind, let us bounce swiftly onwards:

    Surprising benefits

    It’s easy to think “isn’t that cheating?” to the point that such “cheating” could be useless, since surely the device is doing most of the work?

    The thing is, while indeed it’s doing a lot of the work for you, your muscles are still doing a lot—mostly stabilization work, which is of course a critical thing for our muscles to be able to do. While it’s rare that we need to do a somersault in everyday life, it’s common that we have to keep ourselves from falling over, after all.

    It also represents a kind of gentle resistance exercise, and as such, improves bone density—something first discovered during NASA research for astronauts. Other related benefits pertain to the body’s ability to deal with acceleration and deceleration; it also benefits the lymphatic system, which unlike the blood’s circulatory system, has no pump of its own. Rebounding does also benefit the cardiovascular system, though, as now the heart gets confused (in the healthy way, a little like it gets confused with high-intensity interval training).

    Those are the main evidence-based benefits; anecdotally (but credibly, since these things can be said of most exercise) it’s also claimed that it benefits posture, improves sleep and mood, promotes weight loss and better digestion, reduces bloating, improves skin (the latter being due to improved circulation), and alleviates arthritis (most moderate exercise improves immune response, and thus reduces chronic inflammation, so again, this is reasonable, even if anecdotal).

    For more details on all of these and more, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Fruit & Veg In The Fridge: Pros & Cons
  • Mango vs Pineapple – 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 pineapple, we picked the pineapple.

    Why?

    It was close! Both of these tropical fruits have almost identical macros, and when it comes to vitamins and minerals, mango has slightly more vitamins while pineapple has slightly more minerals, so that balances out too. Their glycemic loads are 11 and 13 respectively, so: very low, and very similar.

    See also: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    In terms of what sets them apart:

    Mango has a lot of vitamin A, to the point that it can interfere with blood-thinners if you take those.

    Pineapple has bromelain, an enzyme with unique anti-inflammatory properties that we must devote a Research Review Monday to one of these days, because there’s a lot to say, but the short version is, it’s very powerful.

    Since bromelain is found only in pineapples, whereas vitamin A is easy to find in abundance in many foods, we went with the pineapple.

    Enjoy!

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  • Pumpkin Seeds vs Watermelon Seeds – 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 pumpkin seeds to watermelon seeds, we picked the watermelon.

    Why?

    Starting with the macros: pumpkin seeds have a lot more carbs, while watermelon seeds have a lot more protein, despite pumpkin seeds being famous for such. They’re about equal on fiber. In terms of fats, watermelon seeds are higher in fats, and yes, these are healthy fats, mostly polyunsaturated.

    When it comes to vitamins, pumpkin seeds are marginally higher in vitamins A and C, while watermelon seeds are a lot higher in vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9. An easy win for watermelon seeds here.

    In the category of minerals, despite being famous for zinc, pumpkin seeds are higher only in potassium, while watermelon seeds are higher in iron, magnesium, manganese, and phosphorus; the two seeds are equal on calcium, copper, and zinc. Another win for watermelon seeds.

    In short, enjoy both, but watermelon has more to offer. Of course, if buying just the seeds and not the whole fruit, it’s generally easier to find pumpkin seeds than watermelon seeds, so do bear in mind that pumpkin seeds’ second place isn’t that bad here—it’s just a case of a very nutritious food looking bad by standing next to an even better one.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Seed Saving Secrets – by Alice Mirren

    Take care!

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  • Tell Yourself a Better Lie – by Marissa Peer

    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.

    As humans, we generally lie to ourselves constantly. Or perhaps we really believe some of the things we tell ourselves, even if they’re not objectively necessarily true:

    • I’ll always be poor
    • I’m destined to be alone
    • I don’t deserve good things
    • Etc.

    Superficially, it’s easy to flip those, and choose to tell oneself the opposite. But it feels hollow and fake, doesn’t it? That’s where Marissa Peer comes in.

    Our stories that we tell ourselves don’t start where we are—they’re generally informed by things we learned along the way. Sometimes good lessons, sometimes bad ones. Sometimes things that were absolutely wrong and/or counterproductive.

    Peer invites the reader to ask “What if…”, unravel how the unhelpful lessons got wired into our brains in the first place, and then set about untangling them.

    “Tell yourself a better lie” does not mean self-deceit. It means that we’re the authors of our own stories, so we might as well make them work for us. Many things in life are genuinely fixed; others are open to interpretation.

    Sorting one from the other, and then treating them correctly in a way that’s helpful to us? That’s how we can stop hurting ourselves, and instead bring our own stories around to uplift and fortify us.

    Get Your Copy of “Tell Yourself A Better Lie” on Amazon Today!

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