Scattered Minds – by Dr. Gabor Maté

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This was not the first book that Dr. Maté sat down to write, by far. But it was the first that he actually completed. Guess why.

Writing from a position of both personal and professional experience and understanding, Dr. Maté explores the inaptly-named Attention Deficit Disorder (if anything, there’s often a surplus of attention, just, to anything and everything rather than necessarily what would be most productive in the moment), its etiology, its presentation, and its management.

This is a more enjoyable book than some others by the same author, as while this condition certainly isn’t without its share of woes (often, for example, a cycle of frustration and shame re “why can’t I just do the things; this is ruining my life and it would be so easy if I could just do the things!”), it’s not nearly so bleak as entire books about trauma, addiction, and so forth (worthy as those books also are).

Dr. Maté frames it specifically as a development disorder, and one whereby with work, we can do the development later that (story of an ADHDer’s life) we should have done earlier but didn’t. In terms of practical advice, he includes a program for effecting this change, including as an adult.

The style is easy-reading, in small chapters, with ADHD’d-up readers in mind, giving a strong sense of speeding pleasantly through the book.

Bottom line: when it’s a book by Dr. Gabor Maté, you know it’s going to be good, and this is no exception. Certainly read it if you, anyone you care about, or even anyone you just spend a lot of time around, has ADHD or similar.

Click here to check out Scattered Minds, and unscatter yours!

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  • The Brain Health Book – by Dr. John Randolph
  • Coffee, From A Blood Sugar Management Perspective
    Jessie Inchauspé spills the beans on coffee’s impact on health, blood sugar, and the best times to indulge in your java fix!

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  • They Were Injured at the Super Bowl Parade. A Month Later, They Feel Forgotten.

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    KFF Health News and KCUR are following the stories of people injured during the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration. Listen to how one Kansas family is coping with the trauma.

    Jason Barton didn’t want to attend the Super Bowl parade this year. He told a co-worker the night before that he worried about a mass shooting. But it was Valentine’s Day, his wife is a Kansas City Chiefs superfan, and he couldn’t afford to take her to games since ticket prices soared after the team won the championship in 2020.

    So Barton drove 50 miles from Osawatomie, Kansas, to downtown Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Bridget, her 13-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and Gabriella’s school friend. When they finally arrived home that night, they cleaned blood from Gabriella’s sneakers and found a bullet in Bridget’s backpack.

    Gabriella’s legs were burned by sparks from a ricocheted bullet, Bridget was trampled while shielding Gabriella in the chaos, and Jason gave chest compressions to a man injured by gunfire. He believes it was Lyndell Mays, one of two men charged with second-degree felony murder.

    “There’s never going to be a Valentine’s Day where I look back and I don’t think about it,” Gabriella said, “because that’s a day where we’re supposed to have fun and appreciate the people that we have.”

    One month after the parade in which the U.S. public health crisis that is gun violence played out on live television, the Bartons are reeling from their role at its epicenter. They were just feet from 43-year-old Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who was killed. Twenty-four other people were injured. Although the Bartons aren’t included in that official victim number, they were traumatized, physically and emotionally, and pain permeates their lives: Bridget and Jason keep canceling plans to go out, opting instead to stay home together; Gabriella plans to join a boxing club instead of the dance team.

    During this first month, Kansas City community leaders have weighed how to care for people caught in the bloody crossfire and how to divide more than $2 million donated to public funds for victims in the initial outpouring of grief.

    The questions are far-reaching: How does a city compensate people for medical bills, recovery treatments, counseling, and lost wages? And what about those who have PTSD-like symptoms that could last years? How does a community identify and care for victims often overlooked in the first flush of reporting on a mass shooting: the injured?

    The injured list could grow. Prosecutors and Kansas City police are mounting a legal case against four of the shooting suspects, and are encouraging additional victims to come forward.

    “Specifically, we’re looking for individuals who suffered wounds from their trying to escape. A stampede occurred while people were trying to flee,” said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. Anyone who “in the fleeing of this event that maybe fell down, you were trampled, you sprained an ankle, you broke a bone.”

    Meanwhile, people who took charge of raising money and providing services to care for the injured are wrestling with who gets the money — and who doesn’t. Due to large donations from celebrities like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, some victims or their families will have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical expenses. Other victims may simply have their counseling covered.

    The overall economic cost of U.S. firearm injuries is estimated by a recent Harvard Medical School study at $557 billion annually. Most of that — 88% — represented quality-of-life losses among those injured by firearms and their families. The JAMA-published study found that each nonfatal firearm injury leads to roughly $30,000 in direct health care spending per survivor in the first year alone.

    In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, as well-intentioned GoFundMe pages popped up to help victims, executives at United Way of Greater Kansas City gathered to devise a collective donation response. They came up with “three concentric circles of victims,” said Jessica Blubaugh, the United Way’s chief philanthropy officer, and launched the #KCStrong campaign.

    “There were folks that were obviously directly impacted by gunfire. Then the next circle out is folks that were impacted, not necessarily by gunshots, but by physical impact. So maybe they were trampled and maybe they tore a ligament or something because they were running away,” Blubaugh said. “Then third is folks that were just adjacent and/or bystanders that have a lot of trauma from all of this.”

    PTSD, Panic, and the Echo of Gunfire

    Bridget Barton returned to Kansas City the day after the shooting to turn in the bullet she found in her backpack and to give a statement at police headquarters. Unbeknownst to her, Mayor Quinton Lucas and the police and fire chiefs had just finished a press conference outside the building. She was mobbed by the media assembled there — interviews that are now a blur.

    “I don’t know how you guys do this every day,” she remembered telling a detective once she finally got inside.

    The Bartons have been overwhelmed by well wishes from close friends and family as they navigate the trauma, almost to the point of exhaustion. Bridget took to social media to explain she wasn’t ignoring the messages, she’s just responding as she feels able — some days she can hardly look at her phone, she said.

    A family friend bought new Barbie blankets for Gabriella and her friend after the ones they brought to the parade were lost or ruined. Bridget tried replacing the blankets herself at her local Walmart, but when she was bumped accidentally, it triggered a panic attack. She abandoned her cart and drove home.

    “I’m trying to get my anxiety under control,” Bridget said.

    That means therapy. Before the parade, she was already seeing a therapist and planning to begin eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a form of therapy associated with treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Now the shooting is the first thing she wants to talk about in therapy.

    Since Gabriella, an eighth grader, has returned to middle school, she has dealt with the compounding immaturity of adolescence: peers telling her to get over it, pointing finger guns at her, or even saying it should have been her who was shot. But her friends are checking on her and asking how she’s doing. She wishes more people would do the same for her friend, who took off running when the shooting started and avoided injury. Gabriella feels guilty about bringing her to what turned into a horrifying experience.

    “We can tell her all day long, ‘It wasn’t your fault. She’s not your responsibility.’ Just like I can tell myself, ‘It wasn’t my fault or my responsibility,’” Bridget said. “But I still bawled on her mom’s shoulder telling her how sorry I was that I grabbed my kid first.”

    The two girls have spent a lot of time talking since the shooting, which Gabriella said helps with her own stress. So does spending time with her dog and her lizard, putting on makeup, and listening to music — Tech N9ne’s performance was a highlight of the Super Bowl celebration for her.

    In addition to the spark burns on Gabriella’s legs, when she fell to the concrete in the pandemonium she split open a burn wound on her stomach previously caused by a styling iron.

    “When I see that, I just picture my mom trying to protect me and seeing everyone run,” Gabriella said of the wound.

    It’s hard not to feel forgotten by the public, Bridget said. The shooting, especially its survivors, have largely faded from the headlines aside from court dates. Two additional high-profile shootings have occurred in the area since the parade. Doesn’t the community care, she wonders, that her family is still living with the fallout every day?

    “I’m going to put this as plainly as possible. I’m f—ing pissed because my family went through something traumatic,” Bridget vented in a recent social media post. “I don’t really want anything other [than], ‘Your story matters, too, and we want to know how you’re doing.’ Have we gotten that? Abso-f—lutely not.”

    ‘What Is the Landscape of Need?’

    Helped in part by celebrities like Swift and Kelce, donations for the family of Lopez-Galvan, the lone fatality, and other victims poured in immediately after the shootings. Swift and Kelce donated $100,000 each. With the help of an initial $200,000 donation from the Kansas City Chiefs, the United Way’s #KCStrong campaign took off, reaching $1 million in the first two weeks and sitting at $1.2 million now.

    Six verified GoFundMe funds were established. One solely for the Lopez-Galvan family has collected over $406,000. Smaller ones were started by a local college student and Swift fans. Churches have also stepped up, and one local coalition had raised $183,000, money set aside for Lopez-Galvan’s funeral, counseling services for five victims, and other medical bills from Children’s Mercy Kansas City hospital, said Ray Jarrett, executive director of Unite KC.

    Money for Victims Rolls In

    Donations poured in for those injured at the Super Bowl Parade in Kansas City after the Feb. 14 shootings. The largest, starting with a $200,000 donation from the Kansas City Chiefs, is at the United Way of Greater Kansas City. Six GoFundMe sites also popped up, due in part to $100,000 donations each from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Here’s a look at the totals as of March 12.United Way#KCStrong: $1.2 million.Six Verified GoFundMe AccountsLisa Lopez-Galvan GoFundMe (Taylor Swift donated): $406,142Reyes Family GoFundMe (Travis Kelce donated): $207,035Samuel Arellano GoFundMe: $11,896Emily Tavis GoFundMe: $9,518Cristian Martinez’s GoFundMe for United Way: $2,967Swifties’ GoFundMe for Children’s Mercy hospital: $1,060ChurchesResurrection (Methodist) “Victims of Violence Fund”: $53,358‘The Church Loves Kansas City’: $183,000 

    Meanwhile, those leading the efforts found models in other cities. The United Way’s Blubaugh called counterparts who’d responded to their own mass shootings in Orlando, Florida; Buffalo, New York; and Newtown, Connecticut.

    “The unfortunate reality is we have a cadre of communities across the country who have already faced tragedies like this,” Blubaugh said. “So there is an unfortunate protocol that is, sort of, already in place.”

    #KCStrong monies could start being paid out by the end of March, Blubaugh said. Hundreds of people called the nonprofit’s 211 line, and the United Way is consulting with hospitals and law enforcement to verify victims and then offer services they may need, she said.

    The range of needs is staggering — several people are still recovering at home, some are seeking counseling, and many weren’t even counted in the beginning. For instance, a plainclothes police officer was injured in the melee but is doing fine now, said Police Chief Stacey Graves.

    Determining who is eligible for assistance was one of the first conversations United Way officials had when creating the fund. They prioritized three areas of focus: first were the wounded victims and their families, second was collaborating with organizations already helping victims in violence intervention and prevention and mental health services, and third were the first responders.

    Specifically, the funds will be steered to cover medical bills, or lost wages for those who haven’t been able to work since the shootings, Blubaugh said. The goal is to work quickly to help people, she said, but also to spend the money in a judicious, strategic way.

    “We don’t have a clear sightline of the entire landscape that we’re dealing with,” Blubaugh said. “Not only of how much money do we have to work with, but also, what is the landscape of need? And we need both of those things to be able to make those decisions.”

    Firsthand Experience of Daily Kansas City Violence

    Jason used his lone remaining sick day to stay home with Bridget and Gabriella. An overnight automation technician, he is the family’s primary breadwinner.

    “I can’t take off work, you know?” he said. “It happened. It sucked. But it’s time to move on.”

    “He’s a guy’s guy,” Bridget interjected.

    On Jason’s first night back at work, the sudden sound of falling dishes startled Bridget and Gabriella, sending them into each other’s arms crying.

    “It’s just those moments of flashbacks that are kicking our butts,” Bridget said.

    Tell Us About Your Experience

    We are continuing to report on the effects of the parade shooting on the people who were injured and the community as a whole. Do you have an experience you want to tell us about, or a question you think we should look into? Message KCUR’s text line at (816) 601-4777. Your information will not be used in an article without your permission.

    In a way, the shooting has brought the family closer. They’ve been through a lot recently. Jason survived a heart attack and cancer last year. Raising a teenager is never easy.

    Bridget can appreciate that the bullet lodged in her backpack, narrowly missing her, and that Gabriella’s legs were burned by sparks but she wasn’t shot.

    Jason is grateful for another reason: It wasn’t a terrorist attack, as he initially feared. Instead, it fits into the type of gun violence he’d become accustomed to growing up in Kansas City, which recorded its deadliest year last year, although he’d never been this close to it before.

    “This crap happens every single day,” he said. “The only difference is we were here for 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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  • Unprocess Your Life – by Rob Hobson

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    Rob Hobson is not a doctor, but he is a nutritionist with half the alphabet after his name (BSc, PGDip, MSc, AFN, SENR) and decades of experience in the field.

    The book covers, in jargon-free fashion, the science of ultra-processed foods, and why for example that pack of frozen chicken nuggets are bad but a pack of tofu (which obviously also took some processing, because it didn’t grow on the plant like that) isn’t.

    This kind of explanation puts to rest a lot of the “does this count?” queries that a reader might have when giving the shopping list a once-over.

    He also covers practical considerations such as kitchen equipment that’s worth investing in if you don’t already have it, and an “unprocessed pantry” shopping list.

    The recipes (yes, there are recipes, nearly a hundred of them) are not plant-based by default, but there is a section of vegan and vegetarian recipes. Given that the theme of the book is replacing ultra-processed foods, it doesn’t mean a life of abstemiousness—there are recipes for all manner of things from hot sauce to cakes. Just, healthier unprocessed ones! There are classically healthy recipes too, of course.

    Bottom line: if you’ve been wishing for a while that you could get rid of those processed products that are just so convenient that you haven’t got around to replacing them with healthier options, this book can indeed help you do just that.

    Click here to check out Unprocess Your Life, and unprocess your life!

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  • Bath vs Shower – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing bathing to showering, we picked the shower.

    Why?

    For the basic task of getting your body clean, the shower is better as it is an entirely one-way process. Clean water hits your body, dirty water leaves it, and no dirt is making its way back.

    Baths do not have this advantage, and if you enter a bath dirty, you will then be sitting in dirty water. You will leave it a lot cleaner than you entered it (because a lot of the dirt stayed in the bathwater to be drained away after the bath), but not as clean as if you had showered.

    One could argue soap or equivalent will prevent the dirt re-sticking, and that’s true, but it’s true for soap in the shower too, so it doesn’t offset anything.

    Additionally, being immersed in water for more than 15 minutes can start to have a (paradoxically) dehydrating effect on the skin; this happens not only because of losing skin oils to the water, but also because of osmosis, the resultant mild edema, the body’s homeostatic response to the mild edema, then getting out the bath and drying, leaving one with the response having now just caused dehydrated skin.

    Baths do have some health advantages! And these come primarily from the mental health benefits of relaxation in warm water and/or generally pampering oneself. Additionally, some bath oils or bath salts can be beneficial in a way that couldn’t be administered the same way in the shower.

    Best of both worlds?

    In some parts of the world (Thailand and Turkey come to mind; doubtlessly there are many others) there are traditions of first taking a shower to get clean, and then taking a bath for the rest of the bathing experience. As a bonus, the bathing experience is then all the more pleasant for the water remaining just as clean as it was to start with.

    However, if you do have to pick one (and for the purpose of our “This or That” exercise, we do), then it’s the shower, hands-down.

    Want to read more?

    You might want to also take into account how it’s still possible to have too much of a good thing:

    Enjoy!

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Related Posts

  • The Brain Health Book – by Dr. John Randolph
  • Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – 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 sweet cinnamon to regular cinnamon, we picked the sweet.

    Why?

    In this case, it’s not close. One of them is health-giving and the other is poisonous (but still widely sold in supermarkets, especially in the US and Canada, because it is cheaper).

    It’s worth noting that “regular cinnamon” is a bit of a misnomer, since sweet cinnamon is also called “true cinnamon”. The other cinnamon’s name is formally “cassia cinnamon”, but marketers don’t tend to call it that, preferring to calling it simply “cinnamon” and hope consumers won’t ask questions about what kind, because it’s cheaper.

    Note: this too is especially true in the US and Canada, where for whatever reason sweet cinnamon seems to be more difficult to obtain than in the rest of the world.

    In short, both cinnamons contain cinnamaldehyde and coumarin, but:

    • Sweet/True cinnamon contains only trace amounts of coumarin
    • Regular/Cassia cinnamon contains about 250x more coumarin

    Coumarin is heptatotoxic, meaning it poisons the liver, and the recommended safe amount is 0.1mg/kg, so it’s easy to go over that with just a couple of teaspoons of cassia cinnamon.

    You might be wondering: how can they get away with selling something that poisons the liver? In which case, see also: the alcohol aisle. Selling toxic things is very common; it just gets normalized a lot.

    Cinnamaldehyde is responsible for cinnamon’s healthier properties, and is found in reasonable amounts in both cinnamons. There is about 50% more of it in the regular/cassia than in the sweet/true, but that doesn’t come close to offsetting the potential harm of its higher coumarin content.

    Want to learn more?

    You may like to read:

    • A Tale Of Two Cinnamons ← this one has more of the science of coumarin toxicity, as well as discussing (and evidencing) cinnamaldehyde’s many healthful properties against inflammation, cancer, heart disease, neurodegeneration, etc

    Enjoy!

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  • Gut-Healthy Sunset Soup

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    So-called for its gut-healthy ingredients, and its flavor profile being from the Maghreb (“Sunset”) region, the western half of the N. African coast.

    You will need

    • 1 can chickpeas (do not drain)
    • 1 cup low-sodium vegetable stock
    • 1 small onion, finely chopped
    • 1 carrot, finely chopped
    • 2 tbsp sauerkraut, drained and chopped (yes, it is already chopped, but we want it chopped smaller so it can disperse evenly in the soup)
    • 2 tbsp tomato paste
    • 1 tbsp harissa paste (adjust per your heat preference)
    • 1 tbsp ras el-hanout
    • ¼ bulb garlic, crushed
    • Juice of ½ lemon
    • ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
    • Extra virgin olive oil
    • Optional: herb garnish; we recommend cilantro or flat-leaf parsley

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Heat a little oil in a sauté pan or similar (something suitable for combination cooking, as we’ll be frying first and then adding liquids), and fry the onion and carrot until the onion is soft and translucent; about 5 minutes.

    2) Stir in the garlic, tomato paste, harissa paste, and ras el-hanout, and fry for a further 1 minute.

    3) Add the remaining ingredients* except the lemon juice. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.

    *So yes, this includes adding the “chickpea water” also called “aquafaba”; it adds flavor and also gut-healthy fiber in the form of oligosaccharides and resistant starches, which your gut microbiota can use to make short-chain fatty acids, which improve immune function and benefit the health in more ways than we can reasonably mention as a by-the-way in a recipe.

    4) Stir in the lemon juice, and serve, adding a herb garnish if you wish.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Makkō-Hō – by Haruka Nagai

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    We’ve all heard the claims, “Fluent in 3 Months!”, “Russian in Two Weeks!”, “Overnight Mandarin Chinese”, “15-Minute Arabic!”, “Instant Italian!”.

    We see the same in the world of health and fitness too. So how does this one’s claim of “five minutes’ physical fitness” hold up?

    Well, it is 5 minutes per day. And indeed, the author writes:

    ❝The total time [to do these exercises], then, is only one minute and thirty seconds. This series I call one round. When it has been completed, execute another complete round. You should find the exercises easier to do the second time. Executed this way, the exercsies will prove very effective, though they take only three minutes in all. After you have leaned back into the final position, you must remain in that posture for one minute. That brings the total time to four minutes. Even when [some small additions] are added, it takes only five minutes at most.❞

    The exercises themselves are from makkō-hō, which is a kind of Japanese dynamic yoga. They involve repetitions of (mostly) moving stretches with good form, and are excellent for mobility and general health, keeping us supple and robust as we get older.

    The text descriptions are clear, as are the diagrams and photos. The language is a little dated, as this book was written in the 1970s, but the techniques themselves are timeless.

    Bottom line: consider it a 5-minute anti-aging regimen. And, as Nagai says, “the person who cannot find 5 minutes out of 24 hours, was never truly interested in their health”.

    Click here to check out Makkō-Hō and schedule your five minutes!

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