Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain – by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett

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.

We’ve reviewed books about neurology before, and we always try to review books that bring something new/different. So, what makes this one stand out?

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists, starts with an overview of how our unusual brain (definitely our species’ defining characteristic) came to be, and then devotes the rest of the book to mostly practical information.

She explains, in clear terms and without undue jargon, how the brain goes about such things as making constant predictions and useful assumptions about our environment, and reports these things to us as facts—which process is usually useful, and sometimes counterproductive.

We learn about how the apparently mystical trait of empathy works, in real flesh-and-blood terms, and why some kinds of empathy are more metabolically costly than others, and what that means for us all.

Unlike many such books, this one also looks at what is going on in the case of “different minds” that operate very dissimilarly to our own, and how this neurodiversity is important for our species.

Critically, she also looks at what else makes our brains stand out, the symphony of “5 Cs” that aren’t often found to the same extent all in the same species: creativity, communication, copying, cooperation, and compression. This latter being less obvious, but perhaps the most important; Dr. Feldman Barrett explains how we use this ability to layer summaries of our memories, perceptions, and assumptions, to allow us to think in abstractions—something that powers much of what we do that separates us from other animals.

Bottom line: if you’d like to learn more about that big wet organ between your ears, what it does for you, and how it goes about doing it, then this book gives a very practical foundation from which to build.

Click here to check out Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain, and learn more about yours!

Don’t Forget…

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

Recommended

  • The Aesthetic Brain – by Dr. Anjan Chatterjee
  • Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
    Transform your social media experience into a journey of wellness—find your tribe, share your story, and take control. It’s time for healthy connections online.

Learn to Age Gracefully

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

  • Healthiest-Three-Nut Butter

    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.

    We’re often telling you to “diversify your nuts”, so here’s a great way to get in three at once with no added sugar, palm oil, or preservatives, and only the salt you choose to put in. We’ve picked three of the healthiest nuts around, but if you happen to be allergic, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered too.

    You will need

    • 1 cup almonds (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. chia, and make it ½ cup)
    • 1 cup walnuts (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. pumpkin, and make it ½ cup)
    • 1 cup pistachios (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. poppy, and make it ½ cup)
    • 1 tbsp almond oil (if allergic, substitute extra virgin olive oil) (if you prefer sweet nut butter, substitute 1 tbsp maple syrup; the role here is to emulsify the nuts, and this will do the same job)
    • Optional: ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt

    Method

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

    1a) If using nuts, heat your oven to 350℉ / 180℃. Place the nuts on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and bake/roast for about 10 minutes, but keep an eye on it to ensure the nuts don’t burn, and jiggle them if necessary to ensure they toast evenly. Once done, allow to cool.

    1b) If using seeds, you can either omit that step, or do the same for 5 minutes if you want to, but really it’s not necessary.

    2) Blend all ingredients (nuts/seeds, oil, MSG/salt) in a high-speed blender. Note: this will take about 10 minutes in total, and we recommend you do it in 30-second bursts so as to not overheat the motor. You also may need to periodically scrape the mixture down the side of the blender, to ensure a smooth consistency.

    3) Transfer to a clean jar, and enjoy at your leisure:

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

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

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • At The Heart Of Women’s 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.

    A woman’s heart is a particular thing

    For the longest time (and still to a large degree now), “women’s health” is assumed to refer to the health of organs found under a bikini. But there’s a lot more to it than that. We are whole people, with such things as brains and hearts and more.

    Today (Valentine’s Day!) we’re focusing on the heart.

    A quick recap:

    We’ve talked previously about some of these sex differences when it comes to the heart, for example:

    Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)

    …but that’s fairly common knowledge at least amongst those who are attentive to such things, whereas…

    Statins: His & Hers?

    …is much less common knowledge, especially with the ways statins are more likely to make things worse for a lot of women (not all though; see the article for some nuance about that).

    We also talked about:

    What Menopause Does To The Heart

    …which is well worth reading too!

    A question:

    Why are women twice as likely to die from a heart attack as their age-equivalent male peers? Women develop heart disease later, but die from it sooner. Why is that?

    That’s been a question scientists have been asking (and tentatively answering, as scientists do—hypotheses, theories, conclusions even sometimes) for 20 years now. Likely contributing factors include:

    • A lack of public knowledge of the different symptoms
    • A lack of confidence of bystanders to perform CPR on a woman
    • A lack of public knowledge (including amongst prescribers) about the sex-related differences for statins
    • A lack of women in cardiology, comparatively.
    • A lack of attention to it, simply. Men get heart disease earlier, so it’s thought of as a “man thing”, by health providers as much as by individuals. Men get more regular cardiovascular check-ups, women get a mammogram and go.

    Statistically, women are much more likely to die from heart disease than breast cancer:

    • Breast cancer kills around 0.02% of us.
    • Heart disease kills one in three.

    And yet…

    ❝In a nationwide survey, only 22% of primary care doctors and 42% of cardiologists said they feel extremely well prepared to assess cardiovascular risks in women.

    We are lagging in implementing risk prevention guidelines for women.

    A lot of women are being told to just watch their cholesterol levels and see their doctor in a year. That’s a year of delayed care.❞

    ~ Dr. Gina Lundberg

    Source: The slowly evolving truth about heart disease and women

    (there’s a lot more in that article than we have room for in ours, so do check it out!)

    Some good news:

    The “bystanders less likely to feel confident performing CPR on a woman” aspect may be helped by the deployment of new automatic external defibrillator, that works from four sides instead of one.

    It’s called “double sequential external defibrillation”, and you can learn about it here:

    A new emergency procedure for cardiac arrests aims to save more lives—here’s how it works

    (it’s in use already in Canada and Aotearoa)

    Gentlemen-readers, thank you for your attention to this one even if it was mostly not about you! Maybe someone you love will benefit from being aware of this

    On a lighter note…

    Since it’s Valentine’s Day, a little more on affairs of the heart…

    Is chocolate good for the heart? And is it really an aphrodisiac?

    We answered these questions and more in our previous main feature:

    Chocolate & Health: Fact or Fiction?

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

  • 100 No-Equipment Workouts – by Neila Rey

    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.

    For those of us who for whatever reason prefer to exercise at home rather than at the gym, we must make do with what exercise equipment we can reasonably install in our homes. This book deals with that from the ground upwards—literally!

    If you have a few square meters of floorspace (and a ceiling that’s not too low, for exercises that involve any kind of jumping), then all 100 of these zero-equipment exercises are at-home options.

    As to what kinds of exercises they are, they each marked as being one or both of “cardio” and “strength”.

    They’re also marked as being of “difficulty level” 1, 2, or 3, so that someone who hasn’t exercised in a while (or hasn’t exercised like this at all), can know where best to start, and how best to progress.

    The exercises come with clear explanations in the text, and clear line-drawing illustrations of how to do each exercise. Really, they could not be clearer; this is top quality pragmatism, and reads like a military manual.

    Bottom line: whatever your strength and fitness goals, this book can see you well on your way to them (if not outright get you there already in many cases). It’s also an excellent “all-rounder” for full-body workouts.

    Click here to check out 100 No-Equipment Workouts, and find the joy and freedom in not needing anything at all for full-body training!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • The Aesthetic Brain – by Dr. Anjan Chatterjee
  • Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology – by Dr. Izabella Wentz

    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.

    The author is a doctor of pharmacology, and we’ve featured her before as an expert on Hashimoto’s, which she has. She has recommendations about specific blood tests and medications, but in this book she’s mainly focussing on what she calls the “three Rs” of managing hypothyroidism:

    1. Remove the causes and triggers of your hypothyroidism, so far as possible
    2. Repair the damage caused to your body, especially your gut
    3. Replace the thyroid hormones and related things in which your body has become deficient

    To this end, she provides recipes that avoid processed meats and unfermented dairy, and include plenty of nutrient-dense whole foods specifically tailored to meet the nutritional needs of someone with hypothyroidism.

    A nice bonus of the presentation of recipes (of which there are 125, if we include things like “mint tea” and “tomato sauce” and “hot lemon water” as recipes) is explaining the thyroid-supporting elements of each recipe.

    A downside for some will be that if you are vegetarian/vegan, this book is very much not, and since many recipes are paleo-style meat dishes, substitutions will change the nutritional profile completely.

    Bottom line: if you have hypothyroidism (especially if: Hashimoto’s) and like meat, this will be a great recipe book for you.

    Click here to check out Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology, and get cooking!

    Don’t Forget…

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

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow – by Dr. Daniel Kahneman

    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.

    We all try to make the best decisions we can with the information available… Don’t we?

    Yet, somehow, a survival chance of 90% seems better than a mortality rate of 10%, and as it turns out, we as fallible humans are prey to all manner of dubious heuristics.

    Nobel Prize winner Dr. Daniel Kahneman lays out for us two sytems of thought process:

    • Fast, intuitive, emotional
    • Slow, deliberate, logical

    He makes the case for how and why we do need both, but often end up using the wrong one. He notes how the first is required for efficiency, or we would spend all day deciding what socks to wear… The second, meanwhile, is required for high-stakes decisions, but is lazy by nature, and often we don’t engage it when we ought to.

    Over the course of many diverse examples, Dr. Kahneman shows how again and again, the second system is slowly cogitating at the back of the class, while the first system is bouncing up and down with its hand in the air saying “I know! I know!”, even when, in fact, it does not know.

    For a book largely founded in economics (it’s a massive takedown of the notion of the rational consumer), it is not at all dry, and is very readable in style. It’s engaging throughout, and readers far removed from Wall Street will find plenty of ways it relates to our everyday lives.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to avoid making many mistakes in what you’d assumed to be rational decisions, this book is critical reading.

    Click here to check out “Thinking, Fast And Slow”, and enjoy the results of better decisions!

    Don’t Forget…

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

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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

  • A Hospital Kept a Brain-Damaged Patient on Life Support to Boost Statistics. His Sister Is Now Suing for Malpractice.

    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.

    ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

    In 2018, Darryl Young was hoping for a new lease on life when he received a heart transplant at a New Jersey hospital after years of congestive heart failure. But he suffered brain damage during the procedure and never woke up.

    The following year, a ProPublica investigation revealed that Young’s case was part of a pattern of heart transplants that had gone awry at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in 2018. The spate of bad outcomes had pushed the center’s percentage of patients still alive one year after surgery — a key benchmark — below the national average. Medical staff were under pressure to boost that metric. ProPublica published audio recordings from meetings in which staff discussed the need to keep Young alive for a year, because they feared another hit to the program’s survival rate would attract scrutiny from regulators. On the recordings, the transplant program’s director, Dr. Mark Zucker, cautioned his team against offering Young’s family the option of switching from aggressive care to comfort care, in which no lifesaving efforts would be made. He acknowledged these actions were “very unethical.”

    ProPublica’s revelations horrified Young’s sister Andrea Young, who said she was never given the full picture of her brother’s condition, as did the findings of a subsequent federal regulator’s probe that determined that the hospital was putting patients in “immediate jeopardy.” Last month, she filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital and members of her brother’s medical team.

    The lawsuit alleges that Newark Beth Israel staff were “negligent and deviated from accepted standards of practice,” leading to Young’s tragic medical outcome.

    Defendants in the lawsuit haven’t yet filed responses to the complaint in court documents. But spokesperson Linda Kamateh said in an email that “Newark Beth Israel Medical Center is one of the top heart transplant programs in the nation and we are committed to serving our patients with the highest quality of care. As this case is in active litigation, we are unable to provide further detail.” Zucker, who is no longer on staff at Newark Beth Israel, didn’t respond to requests for comment. His attorney also didn’t respond to calls and emails requesting comment.

    Zucker also didn’t respond to requests for comment from ProPublica in 2018; Newark Beth Israel at the time said in a statement, made on behalf of Zucker and other staff, that “disclosures of select portions of lengthy and highly complex medical discussions, when taken out of context, may distort the intent of conversations.”

    The lawsuit alleges that Young suffered brain damage as a result of severely low blood pressure during the transplant surgery. In 2019, when the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services scrutinized the heart transplant program following ProPublica’s investigation, the regulators found that the hospital had failed to implement corrective measures even after patients suffered, leading to further harm. For example, one patient’s kidneys failed after a transplant procedure in August 2018, and medical staff made recommendations internally to increase the frequency of blood pressure measurement during the procedure, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that the hospital didn’t implement its own recommendations and that one month later, “these failures were repeated” in Young’s surgery, leading to brain damage.

    The lawsuit also alleges that Young wasn’t asked whether he had an advance directive, such as a preference for a do-not-resuscitate order, despite a hospital policy stating that patients should be asked at the time of admission. The lawsuit also noted that CMS’ investigation found that Andrea Young was not informed of her brother’s condition.

    Andrea Young said she understands that mistakes can happen during medical procedures, “however, it’s their duty and their responsibility to be honest and let the family know exactly what went wrong.” Young said she had to fight to find out what was going on with her brother, at one point going to the library and trying to study medical books so she could ask the right questions. “I remember as clear as if it were yesterday, being so desperate for answers,” she said.

    Andrea Young said that she was motivated to file the lawsuit because she wants accountability. “Especially with the doctors never, from the outset, being forthcoming and truthful about the circumstances of my brother’s condition, not only is that wrong and unethical, but it took a lot away from our entire family,” she said. “The most important thing to me is that those responsible be held accountable.”

    ProPublica’s revelation of “a facility putting its existence over that of a patient is a scary concept,” said attorney Jonathan Lomurro, who’s representing Andrea Young in this case with co-counsel Christian LoPiano. Besides seeking damages for Darryl Young’s children, “we want to call attention to this so it doesn’t happen again,” Lomurro said.

    The lawsuit further alleges that medical staff at Newark Beth Israel invaded Young’s privacy and violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, more commonly known as HIPAA, by sharing details of his case with the media without his permission. “We want people to be whistleblowers and want information out,” but that information should be told to patients and their family members directly, Lomurro said.

    The 2019 CMS investigation determined that Newark Beth Israel’s program placed patients in “immediate jeopardy,” the most serious level of violation, and required the hospital to implement corrective plans. Newark Beth Israel did not agree with all of the regulator’s findings and in a statement at the time said that the CMS team lacked the “evidence, expertise and experience” to assess and diagnose patient outcomes.

    The hospital did carry out the corrective plans and continues to operate a heart transplant program today. The most recent federal data, based on procedures from January 2021 through June 2023, shows that the one year probability of survival for a patient at Newark Beth is lower than the national average. It also shows that the number of graft failures, including deaths, in that time period was higher than the expected number of deaths for the program.

    Andrea Young said she’s struggled with a feeling of emptiness in the years after her brother’s surgery. They were close and called each other daily. “There’s nothing in the world that can bring my brother back, so the only solace I will have is for the ones responsible to be held accountable,” she said. Darryl Young died on Sept 12, 2022, having never woken up after the transplant surgery.

    A separate medical malpractice lawsuit filed in 2020 by the wife of another Newark Beth Israel heart transplant patient who died after receiving an organ infected with a parasitic disease is ongoing. The hospital has denied the allegations in court filing. The state of New Jersey, employer of the pathologists named in the case, settled for $1.7 million this month, according to the plaintiff’s attorney Christian LoPiano. The rest of the case is ongoing.

    Don’t Forget…

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

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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