Stop Overthinking – by Nick Trenton
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.
This book is exactly what it says on the tin. We are given twenty-three techniques to relieve stress, stop negative spirals, declutter your mind, and focus on the present, in the calm pursuit of good mental health and productivity.
The techniques are things like the RAIN technique above, so if you liked that, you’ll love this. Being a book rather than a newsletter, it also takes the liberty of going into much more detail—hence the 200 pages for 23 techniques. Unlike many books, it’s not packed in fluff either. It’s that perfect combination of “to the point” and “very readable”.
If you’ve read this far into the review and you’re of two minds about whether or not this book could be useful to you, then you just might be overthinking it
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Health Simplified – by Daniel Cottmeyer
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.
Health Simplified – by Daniel Cottmeyer
A lot of books focus on the most marketable aspects of health, such as fat loss or muscle gain. Instead, Cottmeyer takes a “birds-eye-view” of health in all its aspects, and then boils it down to the most critical key parts.
Rather than giving a science-dense tome that nobody reads, or a light motivational piece that everyone reads but it amounts to “you can do it!”, here we get substance… but in a digestible form.
Which we at 10almonds love.
The book presents a simple action plan to:
- Improve your relationship with food/exercise
- Actually get better sleep
- Understand how nutrition really works
- Set up helpful habits that are workable and sustainable
- Bring these components together synergistically
Bottom line: if you’re going to buy only one health/fitness book, this is a fine contender.
Share This Post
-
The 5 Love Languages Gone Wrong
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.
Levelling up the 5 love languages
The saying “happy wife; happy life” certainly goes regardless of gender, and if we’re partnered, it’s difficult to thrive in our individual lives if we’re not thriving as a couple. So, with the usual note that mental health is also just health, let’s take a look at getting beyond the basics of a well-known, often clumsily-applied model:
The 5 love languages
You’re probably familiar with “the 5 love languages”, as developed by Dr. Gary Chapman. If not, they are:
- Acts of Service
- Gift-Giving
- Physical Touch
- Quality Time
- Words of Affirmation
The idea is that we each weight these differently, and problems can arise when a couple are “speaking a different language”.
So, is this a basic compatibility test?
It doesn’t have to be!
We can, if we’re aware of each other’s primary love languages, make an effort to do a thing we wouldn’t necessarily do automatically, to ensure they’re loved the way they need to be.
But…
What a lot of people overlook is that we can also have different primary love languages for giving and for receiving. And, missing that can mean that even taking each other’s primarily love languages into account, efforts to make a partner feel loved, or to feel loved oneself, can miss 50% of the time.
For example, I (your writer here today, hi) could be asked my primary love language and respond without hesitation “Acts of Service!” because that’s my go-to for expressing love.
I’m the person who’ll run around bringing drinks, do all the housework, and without being indelicate, will tend towards giving in the bedroom. But…
A partner trying to act on that information to make me feel loved by giving Acts of Service would be doomed to catastrophic failure, because my knee-jerk reaction would be “No, here, let me do that for you!”
So it’s important for partners to ask each other…
- Not: “what’s your primary love language?” ❌
- But: “what’s your primary way of expressing love?” ✅
- And: “which love language makes you feel most loved?” ✅
For what it’s worth, I thrive on Words of Affirmation, so thanks again to everyone who leaves kind feedback on our articles! It lets me know I provided a good Act of Service
So far, so simple, right? You and your partner (or: other person! Because as we’ve just seen, these go for all kinds of dynamics, not just romantic partnerships) need to be aware of each other’s preferred love languages for giving and receiving.
But…
There’s another pitfall that many fall into, and that’s assuming that the other person has the same idea about what a given love language means, when there’s more to clarify.
For example:
- Acts of Service: is it more important that the service be useful, or that it took effort?
- Gift-Giving: is it better that a gift be more expensive, or more thoughtful and personal?
- Physical Touch: what counts here? If we’re shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, is that physical touch or is something more active needed?
- Quality Time: does it count if we’re both doing our own thing but together in the same room, comfortable in silence together? Or does it need to be a more active and involved activity together? And is it quality time if we’re at a social event together, or does it need to be just us?
- Words of Affirmation: what, exactly, do we need to hear? For romantic partners, “I love you” can often be important, but is there something else we need to hear? Perhaps a “because…”, or perhaps a “so much that…”, or perhaps something else entirely? Does it no longer count if we have to put the words in our partner’s mouth, or is that just good two-way communication?
Bottom line:
There’s a lot more to this than a “What’s your love language?” click-through quiz, but with a little application and good communication, this model can really resolve a lot of would-be problems that can grow from feeling unappreciated or such. And, the same principles go just the same for friends and others as they do for romantic partners.
In short, it’s one of the keys to good interpersonal relationships in general—something critical for our overall well-being!
Share This Post
-
Can You Reverse Gray Hair? A Dermatologist Explains
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.
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines states “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no“—it’s not really a universal truth, but it’s true surprisingly often, and, as board certified dermatologist “The Beauty MD” Dr. Sam Ellis explains, it’s true in this case.
But, all is not lost.
Physiological Factors
Hair color is initially determined by genes and gene expression, instructing the body to color it with melanin (brown and black) and/or pheomelanin (blonde and red). If and when the body produces less of those pigments, our hair will go gray.
Factors that affect if/when our hair will go gray include:
- Genetics: primary determinant, essentially a programmed change
- Age: related to the above, but critically, the probability of going gray in any given year increases with age
- Ethnicity: the level of melanin in our skin is an indicator of how long we are likely to maintain melanin in our hair. Black people with the darkest skintones will thus generally go gray last, whereas white people with the lightest skintones will generally go gray first, and so on for a spectrum between the two.
- Medical conditions: immune conditions such as vitiligo, thyroid disease, and pernicious anemia promote an earlier loss of pigmentation
- Stress: oxidative stress, mainly, so factors like smoking will cause earlier graying. But yes, also chronic emotional stress does lead to oxidative stress too. Interestingly, this seems to be more about norepinephrine than cortisol, though.
- Nutrient deficiencies: the body can make a lot of things, but it needs the raw ingredients. Not having the right amounts of important vitamins and minerals will result in a loss of pigmentation (amongst other more serious problems). Vitamins B6, B9, and B12 are talked about in the video, as are iron and zinc. Copper is also needed for some hair colors. Selenium is needed for good hair health in general (but not too much, as an excess of selenium paradoxically causes hair loss), and many related things will stop working properly without adequate magnesium. Hair health will also benefit a lot from plenty of vitamin B7.
So, managing the above factors (where possible; obviously some of the above aren’t things we can influence) will result in maintaining one’s hair pigment for longer. As for texture, by the way, the reason gray hair tends to have a rougher texture is not for the lack of pigment itself, but is due to decreased sebum production. Judicious use of exogenous hair oils (e.g. argan oil, coconut oil, or whatever your preference may be) is a fine way to keep your grays conditioned.
However, once your hair has gone gray, there is no definitive treatment with good evidence for reversing that, at present. Dye it if you want to, or don’t. Many people (including this writer, who has just a couple of streaks of gray herself) find gray hair gives a distinguished look, and such harmless signs of age are a privilege not everyone gets to reach, and thus may be reasonably considered a cause for celebration
For more on all of the above, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Quinoa vs Couscous – 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 quinoa to couscous, we picked the quinoa.
Why?
Firstly, quinoa is the least processed by far. Couscous, even if wholewheat, has by necessity been processed to make what is more or less the same general “stuff” as pasta. Now, the degree to which something has or has not been processed is a common indicator of healthiness, but not necessarily declarative. There are some processed foods that are healthy (e.g. many fermented products) and there are some unprocessed plant or animal products that can kill you (e.g. red meat’s health risks, or the wrong mushrooms). But in this case—quinoa vs couscous—it’s all borne out pretty much as expected.
For the purposes of the following comparisons, we’ll be looking at uncooked/dry weights.
In terms of macros, quinoa has a little more protein, slightly lower carbs, and several times the fiber. The amino acids making up quinoa’s protein are also much more varied.
In the category of vitamins, quinoa has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, and B9, while couscous boasts a little more of vitamins B3 and B5. Given the respective margins of difference, as well as the total vitamins contained, this category is an easy win for quinoa.
When it comes to minerals, this one’s not even more clear. Quinoa has a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Couscous, meanwhile has more of just one mineral: sodium. So, maybe not one you want more of.
All in all, today’s is an easy pick: quinoa!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Carbohydrate Mythbusting: Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
- What’s The Real Deal With The Paleo Diet?
- Gluten Mythbusting: What’s The Truth? ← we didn’t mention it above, but couscous is by default gluten-free, and couscous, being made of wheat, is by default not gluten-free, which may be another reason for some to choose quinoa
Take care!
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:
-
Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It – by Gary Taubes
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 previously reviewed Taubes’ “The Case Against Sugar“. What does this one bring differently?
Mostly, it’s a different focus. Unsurprisingly, Taubes’ underlying argument is the same: sugar is the biggest dietary health hazard we face. However, this book looks at it specifically through the lens of weight loss, or avoiding weight gain.
Taubes argues for low-carb in general; he doesn’t frame it specifically as the ketogenic diet here, but that is what he is advocating. However, he also acknowledges that not all carbs are created equal, and looks at several categories that are relatively better or worse for our insulin response, and thus, fat management.
If the book has a fault it’s that it does argue a bit too much for eating large quantities of meat, based on Weston Price’s outdated and poorly-conducted research. However, if one chooses to disregard that, the arguments for a low-carb diet for weight management remain strong.
Bottom line: if you’d like to cut some fat without eating less (or exercising more), this book offers a good, well-explained guide for doing so.
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:
-
Why We Get Sick – by Dr. Benjamin Bikman
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.
There’s a slightly buried lede here in that the title doesn’t offer this spoiler, but we will: the book is about insulin resistance.
However, unlike the books we’ve reviewed about blood sugar management, this time the focus is really and truly on insulin itself—and that makes some important differences:
Dr. Bikman makes the case that while indeed hyper- or hypoglycemia bring their problems, mostly these are symptoms rather than causes, and the real culprit is insulin resistance, and this is important for two main reasons:
- Insulin resistance occurs well before the other symptoms set in (which means: it is the thing that truly needs to be nipped in the bud; if your fasting blood sugars are rising, then you missed “nipping it in the bud” likely by a decade or more)
- Insulin resistance causes more problems than “mere” hyperglycemia (the most commonly-known result of insulin resistance) does, so again, it really needs to be considered separately from blood sugar management.
This latter, Dr. Bikman goes into in great detail, linking insulin resistance (even if blood sugar levels are normal) to all manner of diseases (hence the title).
You may be wondering: how can blood sugar levels be normal, if we have insulin resistance?
And the answer is that for as long as it is still able, your pancreas will just faithfully crank out more and more insulin to deal with the blood sugar levels that would otherwise be steadily rising. Since people measure blood sugar levels much more regularly than anyone checks for actual insulin levels, this means that one can be insulin resistant for years without knowing it, until finally the pancreas is no longer able to keep up with the demand—then that’s when people finally notice.
The book is divided into sections:
- The Problem: What Is Insulin Resistance
- The Cause: What Makes Us Insulin Resistant
- How We Can Fight Insulin Resistance
The first two parts are essential for the reader’s understanding, but the third part is the practical part, with appropriately practical advice on the most insulin-friendly ways to exercise, eat, fast, and more. He also talks drugs, and discusses the pros and cons of various interventions—but of course, far better is the lifestyle management of insulin.
The style is mostly very pop-science in overall presentation, and then occasionally gets very dense at times, but when that happens, he will then tend to follow it with an easier-to-understand explanation, to ensure that nothing remains opaque.
Bottom line: if you care about your metabolic health and don’t mind reading a book where you may have to read a paragraph or two twice sometimes, then this is a top-tier book on insulin resistance and how to prevent/reverse it.
Click here to check out Why We Get Sick, and stay well instead!
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:
