Our family is always glued to separate devices. How can we connect again?
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It’s Saturday afternoon and the kids are all connected to separate devices. So are the parents. Sounds familiar?
Many families want to set ground rules to help them reduce their screen time – and have time to connect with each other, without devices.
But it can be difficult to know where to start and how to make a plan that suits your family.
First, look at your own screen time
Before telling children to “hop off the tech”, it’s important parents understand how much they are using screens themselves.
Globally, the average person spends an average of six hours and 58 minutes on screens each day. This has increased by 13%, or 49 minutes, since 2013.
Parents who report high screen time use tend to see this filtering down to the children in their family too. Two-thirds of primary school-aged children in Australia have their own mobile screen-based device.
Australia’s screen time guidelines recommended children aged five to 17 years have no more than two hours of sedentary screen time (excluding homework) each day. For those aged two to five years, it’s no more than one hour a day. And the guidelines recommend no screen time at all for children under two.
Yet the majority of children, across age groups, exceed these maximums. A new Australian study released this week found the average three-year-old is exposed to two hours and 52 minutes of screen time a day.
Some screen time is OK, too much increases risks
Technology has profoundly impacted children’s lives, offering both opportunities and challenges.
On one hand, it provides access to educational resources, can develop creativity, facilitates communication with peers and family members, and allows students to seek out new information.
On the other hand, excessive screen use can result in too much time being sedentary, delays in developmental milestones, disrupted sleep and daytime drowsiness.
Yulia Raneva/Shutterstock
Too much screen time can affect social skills, as it replaces time spent in face-to-face social interactions. This is where children learn verbal and non-verbal communication, develop empathy, learn patience and how to take turns.
Many families also worry about how to maintain a positive relationship with their children when so much of their time is spent glued to screens.
What about when we’re all on devices?
When families are all using devices simultaneously, it results in less face-to-face interactions, reducing communication and resulting in a shift in family dynamics.
The increased use of wireless technology enables families to easily tune out from each other by putting in earphones, reducing the opportunity for conversation. Family members wearing earphones during shared activities or meals creates a physical barrier and encourages people to retreat into their own digital worlds.
Wearing earphones for long periods may also reduce connection to, and closeness with, family members. Research from video gaming, for instance, found excessing gaming increases feelings of isolation, loneliness and the displacement of real-world social interactions, alongside weakened relationships with peers and family members.
How can I set screen time limits?
Start by sitting down as a family and discussing what limits you all feel would be appropriate when using TVs, phones and gaming – and when is an appropriate time to use them.
Have set rules around family time – for example, no devices at the dinner table – so you can connect through face-to-face interactions.
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
Consider locking your phone or devices away at certain periods throughout the week, such as after 9pm (or within an hour of bedtime for younger children) and seek out opportunities to balance your days with physical activities, such kicking a footy at the park or going on a family bush walk.
Parents can model healthy behaviour by regulating and setting limits on their own screen time. This might mean limiting your social media scrolling to 15 or 30 minutes a day and keeping your phone in the next room when you’re not using it.
When establishing appropriate boundaries and ensuring children’s safety, it is crucial for parents and guardians to engage in open communication about technology use. This includes teaching critical thinking skills to navigate online content safely and employing parental control tools and privacy settings.
Parents can foster a supportive and trusting relationship with children from an early age so children feel comfortable discussing their online experiences and sharing their fears or concerns.
For resources to help you develop your own family’s screen time plan, visit the Raising Children Network.
Elise Waghorn, Lecturer, School of Education, RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Imposter Syndrome (and why almost everyone has it)
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Imposter Syndrome (and why almost everyone has it)
Imposter syndrome is the pervasive idea that we’re not actually good enough, people think we are better than we are, and at any moment we’re going to get found out and disappoint everyone.
Beyond the workplace
Imposter syndrome is most associated with professionals. It can range from a medical professional who feels like they’ve been projecting an image of confidence too much, to a writer or musician who is sure that their next piece will never live up to the acclaim of previous pieces and everyone will suddenly realize they don’t know what they’re doing, to a middle-manager who feels like nobody above or below them realizes how little they know how to do.
But! Less talked-about (but no less prevalent) is imposter syndrome in other areas of life. New parents tend to feel this strongly, as can the “elders” of a family that everyone looks to for advice and strength and support. Perhaps worst is when the person most responsible for the finances of a household feels like everyone just trusts them to keep everything running smoothly, and maybe they shouldn’t because it could all come crashing down at any moment and everyone will see them for the hopeless shambles of a human being that they really are.
Feelings are not facts
And yet (while everyone makes mistakes sometimes) the reality is that we’re all doing our best. Given that imposter syndrome affects up to 82% of people, let’s remember to have some perspective. Everyone feels like they’re winging it sometimes. Everyone feels the pressure.
Well, perhaps not everyone. There’s that other 18%. Some people are sure they’re the best thing ever. Then again, there’s probably some in that 18% that actually feel worse than the 82%—they just couldn’t admit it, even in an anonymized study.
But one thing’s for sure: it’s very, very common. Especially in high-performing women, by the way, and people of color. In other words, people who typically “have to do twice as much to get recognized as half as good”.
That said, the flipside of this is that people who are not in any of those categories may feel “everything is in my favor, so I really have no excuse to not achieve the most”, and can sometimes take very extreme actions to try to avoid perceived failure, and it can be their family that pays the price.
Things to remember
If you find imposter syndrome nagging at you, remember these things:
- There are people far less competent than you, doing the same thing
- Nobody knows how to do everything themselves, especially at first
- If you don’t know how to do something, you can usually find out
- There is always someone to ask for help, or at least advice, or at least support
At the end of the day, we evolved to eat fruit and enjoy the sun. None of us are fully equipped for all the challenges of the modern world, but if we do our reasonable best, and look after each other (and that means that you too, dear reader, deserve looking after as well), we can all do ok.
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Chili Chestnut, Sweet Apricot, & Whipped Feta Toasts
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This is a delightful breakfast or light lunch option, full of gut-healthy ingredients and a fair list of healthy polyphenols too.
You will need
- ½ baguette, sliced into ½” slices; if making your own, feel free to use our Delicious Quinoa Avocado Bread recipe. If buying shop-bought, a sourdough baguette will likely be the healthiest option, and tasty too.
- 4 oz feta cheese; if you are vegan, a plant-based version will work in culinary terms, but will have a different (less gut-healthy) nutritional profile, as plant-based cheeses generally use a lot of coconut oil and potato starch, and are not actually fermented.
- 1 tbsp yogurt; your preference what kind; live-cultured with minimal additives is of course best—and this time, plant-based is also just as good, healthwise, since they are fermented and contain more or less the same beneficial bacteria, and have a good macro profile too.
- 4 oz precooked chestnuts, finely chopped
- 6 dried apricots, finely chopped
- ¼ bulb garlic, grated
- 2 tsp harissa paste
- 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil, for frying
- Optional garnish: finely chopped chives
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine the feta and yogurt in a small, high-speed blender and process into a smooth purée. If it isn’t working, add 1 tbsp kettle-hot water and try again.
2) Heat the oil in a skillet over a medium heat; add the garlic and when it starts to turn golden, add the chestnuts and harissa, as well as the black pepper and MSG/salt. Stir for about 2 minutes, and then stir in the apricots and take it off the heat.
3) Toast the baguette slices under the grill. If you’re feeling bold about the multitasking, you can start this while still doing the previous step, for optimal timing. If not, simply doing it in the order presented is fine.
4) Assemble: spread the whipped feta over the toast; add the apricot-chestnut mixture, followed by the finely chopped chives if using, and serve immediately:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- Apricots vs Peaches – Which is Healthier?
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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What Nobody Teaches You About Strengthening Your Knees
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Strengthening unhappy knees can seem difficult, because many obvious exercises like squats may hurt, and can feel like they are doing harm (and if your knees are bad enough, maybe they are; it depends on many factors). Here’s a way to improve things:
The muscle nobody talks about
Well, not nobody. But, it’s a muscle that’s rarely talked about; namely, the tibialis anterior.
It plays a key role in decelerating knee motion—in other words, the movement that hurts if you have bad knees. It’s essential for absorbing shock during activities like walking, climbing stairs, and stepping off curbs
So, of course, strengthening this muscle supports knee health.
The exercise this video recommends for strengthening it involves leaning against a wall with feet about a foot away (closer feet make it easier, further makes it harder). Note, this is a lean, not a “Roman chair”.
The exercise involves squeezing the quadriceps, lifting toes toward the nose, and engaging the tibialis anterior muscle. If you’re wondering what to do with your hands, they can be held out with palms open to work on posture, or hanging by the sides. Do this for about 1½–2 minutes.
For more on all this, plus a visual demonstration, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
When Bad Joints Stop You From Exercising (5 Things To Change)
Take care!
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Dates vs Prunes – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing dates to prunes, we picked the prunes.
Why?
First let’s note: we’re listing the second fruit here as “prunes” rather than “plums”, since prunes are dehydrated plums, and it makes more sense to compare the dried fruit to dates which are invariably dried too. Otherwise, the water weight of plums would unfairly throw out the nutrient proportions per 100g (indeed, upon looking up numbers, dates would overwhelmingly beat plums easily in the category of pretty much every nutrient).
So let’s look at the fairer comparison:
In terms of macros, dates have a little more protein, carbohydrate, and fiber. This is because while both are dried, prunes are usually sold with more water remaining than dates; indeed, per 100g prunes still have 30g water weight to dates’ 20g water weight. This makes everything close, but we are going to call this category a nominal win for dates. Mind you, hydration is still good, but please do not rely on dried fruit for your hydration!
When it comes to vitamins, dates have more of vitamins B5 and B9, while prunes have more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, C, E, K, and choline. A clear win for prunes here.
In the category of minerals, it’s a similar story: dates have more iron, magnesium, and selenium, while prunes have more calcium, copper, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. Another win for prunes.
In short, enjoy either or both, but prunes win on overall nutritional density!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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Broccoli Sprouts & Sulforaphane
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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 😎
❝How much science is there behind sulforaphane / broccoli spirits and its health claims??❞
So, first of all, what it is: sulforaphane is a compound found in Brassica oleracea, of which species broccoli is a cultivar. It’s found in the other Brassica oleracea cultivars too (e.g. cauliflower, various cabbages, Brussels sprouts, kale, etc), but for whatever reason*, most research has been on broccoli and broccoli sprouts.
*Likely the reason is: research begets research—it’s easier to get funding to expand upon previous research, than it is to break ground on researching a different plant, where for the first third of your paper you have almost no existing scientific literature to cite. So once they got started on broccoli sprouts, everything else has been broccoli sprouts too.
And for clarity on what broccoli sprouts are: this means that when broccoli seeds have been germinated and just begun to sprout, they are harvested and eaten. That’s the one-line explanation, anyway; there’s a little more to it than that, so anyone interested should check out our previous main feature:
Good Things Come In Small Packages: Sprout Your Seeds, Grains, Beans, Etc
…and for more depth than we have room for in a one-page article, check out this book we reviewed:
The Sprout Book: Tap Into The Power Of The Planet’s Most Nutritious Food – by Doug Evans
One thing that the science is clear on: sprouts of a given plant indeed have much higher general nutritional density than their “adult” siblings. And in the case of sulforaphane specifically, it’s about 100x higher in broccoli sprouts than in adult broccoli:
Broccoli or Sulforaphane: Is It the Source or Dose That Matters? ← we suggest skipping down to the section “broccoli-based clinical trials”
So, that prompts the next question: do we care?
In other words: is sulforaphane really particularly important?
Sulforaphane vs cancer
The most well-evidenced health-giving property of sulforaphane is its anticancer activity:
Brassicaceae-Derived Anticancer Agents: Towards a Green Approach to Beat Cancer
A lot of the research there is epidemiological rather than RCTs, and where there are RCTs, they are mostly small ones, like this 10-person broccoli soup study about bioavailability (rather than the effects themselves):
Bioavailability of Glucoraphanin and Sulforaphane from High-Glucoraphanin Broccoli
To get into sulforaphane’s anticancer potential in seriousness, we have to look at a lot of in-vitro studies trialling it to limit carcinogenesis, or to shrink tumors with it, or specifically targetting cancer stem cells with it, which make for quite compelling reading:
A quick aside: if you’re reading that and thinking “Why is sonic the hedgehog in here?” it’s because after the observation of the influence of certain genes that influence cuticular denticles (the growth of spikes) on fruit fly larvae (bearing in mind the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is used for so much first- or second-line genetic research, being either the go-to or the go-to after the nematode C. elegans) caused the whole group of genes to get called “hedgehog genes” and then it became scientific convention to name each newly researched gene in that set after a different kind of hedgehog. One of them, instead of being named after a real-world hedgehog species like the others, got named after the videogame character.
Unfortunately, this now means that because the gene is associated with a certain congenital brain disorder, sometimes a doctor has to explain to a family that the reason their baby has a brain defect is because of a mutated sonic hedgehog.
Ok, back to talking about cancer. Let’s just quickly drop a few more papers so it’s clear that this is well-established:
- Multi-targeted prevention of cancer by sulforaphane ← this shows how it works on the cellular level
- Cruciferous vegetables: dietary phytochemicals for cancer prevention ← this shows how it works on the population level
However, that’s not the only established benefit:
❝SFN has other beneficial effects in addition to cancer protection. SFN exhibits neuroprotective effects and is implemented in treating conditions such as traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.❞
Source: Sulforaphane in broccoli: The green chemoprevention!! Role in cancer prevention and therapy
Now, after the extract we quoted above, the rest of the section “other health benefits of sulforaphane” includes a lot of speculation, weak science, and/or things attributable to other phytochemicals in broccoli, including various polyphenols, vitamins, and minerals.
About those broccoli spirits
Ok, we know it was a typo, but… Actually, there is something worth mentioning here, and that’s that sulforaphane is only activated when glucoraphanin (its inactive form) comes into contact with myrosinase (an enzyme that’s only released when the plant is damaged).
In other words, it’s necessary to injure the broccoli before consuming it, in order to release the
spiritsmyrosinase. Now, while very few people are out there swallowing adult broccoli plants whole, it could well happen that people might wolf down uncut broccoli sprouts, since they are only small, after all.For this reason, it’s best that broccoli, even if it’s broccoli sprouts, be cut while raw before consumption.
In terms of cooking, heat in excess of 140℃ / 284℉ will destroy the glucoraphanin, and less/no glucoraphanin means less/no sulforaphane.
So, enjoying them raw or lightly steaming them seems to be best for this purpose:
Impact of thermal processing on sulforaphane yield from broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. ssp. italica)
Just want a supplement?
Many studies (including some cited by the research reviews we cited above) deal with sulforaphane in extract form, rather than whole plants, so there’s no shame in taking it that way if you’re not a fan of broccoli.
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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Walnuts vs Pecans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing walnuts to pecans, we picked the walnuts.
Why?
It was very close, though, and an argument could be made for pecans! Walnuts are nevertheless always a very good bet, and so far in our This-or-That comparisons, the only nut to beat them so far as been almonds, and that was very close too.
In terms of macros, walnuts have a lot more protein, while pecans have a little more fiber (for approximately the same carbs). Both are equally fatty (near enough; technically pecans have a little more) but where the walnuts stand out in the fat category is that while pecans have mostly healthy monounsaturated fats, walnuts have mostly healthy polyunsaturated fats, including including a good balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. So, while we do love the extra fiber from pecans, we’re calling it for walnuts in the macros category, on account of the extra protein and the best lipids profile (not that pecans’ lipids profile is bad by any stretch; just, walnuts have it better).
In the vitamins category, walnuts have more of vitamins B2, B6, B9, and C, while pecans offer more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B5, E, K, and choline. The margins aren’t huge and walnuts are also excellent for all the vitamins that pecans narrowly beat them on, but still, the vitamins category is a win for pecans.
When it comes to minerals, walnuts take back the crown; walnuts offer more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while pecans have a little more manganese and zinc. Once again, the margins aren’t huge and pecans are also excellent for all the minerals that walnuts narrowly beat them on, but still, the minerals category is a win for walnuts.
In short: enjoy both of these nuts for their healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber, but if you’re going to pick one, walnuts come out on top.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
Take care!
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