Using the”Task Zero” approach

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Jonathan Frakes Asks You Things” Voice:

  • Do you ever find yourself in a room and wonder what you’re doing there?
  • Or set about a to-do list, but get quickly distracted by side-quests?
  • Finally get through to a person in a call center, they ask how they can help, and your mind goes blank?
  • Go to the supermarket and come out with six things, none of which were the one you came for?

This is a “working memory” thing and you’re not alone. There’s a trick that can help keep you on track more often than not:

Don’t try to overburden your working memory. It is very limited (this goes for everyone to a greater or lesser degree). Instead, hold only two tasks at once:

  • Task zero (what you are doing right now)
  • Task one (your next task)

When you’ve completed task zero, task one becomes the new task zero, and you can populate a new task one from your to-do list.

This way, you will always know what you’re doing right now, and what you’re doing next, and your focus will be so intent on task zero, that you will not get sidetracked by task seventeen!

Happy focusing

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  • How many vegetables influence brain waves and control brain states?

    Is it OK if my child eats lots of fruit but no vegetables?

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    Does it seem like most vegetables you serve your children end up left on the plate, or worse, strewn across the floor? But mention dessert, and your fruit skewers are polished off in an instant.

    Or maybe the carrot and cucumber sticks keep coming home in your child’s lunchbox untouched, yet the orange slices are nowhere to be seen.

    If you’re facing these struggles with your child, you’re not alone. Many children prefer fruit to vegetables.

    So if your child eats lots of fruit but minimal or no vegetables, is that OK? And how can you get them to eat more veggies?

    Children have an innate preference for fruit

    The Australian Dietary Guidelines’ recommended daily intakes for vegetables and fruit depend on a child’s age.

    A chart showing the serving amounts of fruit and veg for ages 4-18.
    Fruit and vegetable serving sizes by age. The Conversation.
    National Health and Medical Research Council, CC BY-SA

    Consumption among Australian children falls well below recommendations. Around 62.6% of children aged over two meet the recommended daily fruit intake, but only 9% meet the recommended vegetable intake.

    This is not surprising given children have a natural preference for fruit. At least in part, this is due to its sweetness and texture, whether crispy, crunchy or juicy. The texture of fruit has been linked to a positive sensory experience among children.

    Vegetables, on the other hand, are more of an acquired taste, and certain types, such as cruciferous vegetables, can be perceived by children as bitter.

    The reason children often prefer fruit over vegetables could also be related to the parents’ preferences. Some research has even suggested we develop food preferences before birth based on what our mother consumes during pregnancy.

    Balance is key

    So, a preference for fruit is common. But is it OK if your child eats lots of fruit but little to no vegetables? This is a question we, as dietitians, get asked regularly.

    You might be thinking, at least my child is eating fruit. They could be eating no veggies and no fruit. This is true. But while it’s great your child loves fruit, vegetables are just as important as part of a balanced eating pattern.

    Vegetables provide us with energy, essential vitamins and minerals, as well as water and fibre, which help keep our bowels regular. They also support a strong immune system.

    If your child is only eating fruit, they are missing some essential nutrients. But the same is true if they are eating only veggies.

    Fruit likewise provides the body with a variety of essential vitamins and minerals, as well as phytochemicals, which can help reduce inflammation.

    Evidence shows healthy consumption of fruit and vegetables protects against chronic diseases including high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

    Consumed together, fruit and vegetables in a variety of colours provide different nutrients we need, some of which we can’t get from other foods. We should encourage kids to eat a “rainbow” of fruit and vegetables each day to support their growth and development.

    What if my child eats too much fruit?

    If your child is eating slightly more fruit than what’s recommended each day, it’s not usually a problem.

    Fruit contains natural sugar which is good for you. But too much of a good thing, even if it’s natural, can create problems. Fruit also contains virtually no fat and very little to no protein, both essential for a growing child.

    When overindulging in fruit starts to displace other food groups such as vegetables, dairy products and meat, that’s when things can get tricky.

    6 tips to get your kids to love vegetables

    1. Get them involved

    Take your child with you when you go shopping. Let them choose new vegetables. See if you can find vegetables even you haven’t tried, so you’re both having a new experience. Then ask them to help you with preparing or cooking the vegetables using a recipe you have chosen together. This will expose your child to veggies in a positive way and encourage them to eat more.

    2. Sensory learning

    Try to expose your child to vegetables rather than hiding them. Kids are more likely to eat veggies when they see, smell and feel them. This is called sensory learning.

    3. Have fun with food

    Use colourful vegetables of different sizes and textures. Make them fun by creating scenes or faces on your child’s plate. Add edible flowers or mint for decoration. You can even serve this with a side of veggie-based dip such as hummus or guacamole for some bonus healthy fats.

    4. Teach them to grow their own

    Teach your child how to grow their own vegetables. Evidence shows kids are more inclined to try the food they have helped and watched grow. You don’t need to have a big backyard to do this. A windowsill with a pot plant is a perfect start.

    5. Lead by example

    Your child learns from you, and your eating habits will influence theirs. Ensure they see you eating and enjoying veggies, whether in meals or as snacks.

    6. Practise persistence

    If your child refuses a particular vegetable once, don’t give up. It can take many attempts to encourage children to try a new food.The Conversation

    Yasmine Probst, Associate Professor, School of Medical, Indigenous and Health Sciences, University of Wollongong; Olivia Wills, Accredited Practising Dietitian, PhD candidate, University of Wollongong, and Shoroog Allogmanny, Accredited Practising Dietitian, PhD candidate, University of Wollongong

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

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  • Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep

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    This is Dr. Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep specialist, and he wants you to get a good night’s sleep, every night.

    First, let’s assume you know a lot of good advice about how to do that already in terms of environment and preparation, etc. If you want a recap before proceeding, then we recommend:

    Get Better Sleep: Beyond The Basics

    Now, what does he want to add?

    Wake up refreshed

    Of course, how obtainable this is will depend on the previous night’s sleep, but there is something important we can do here regardless, and it’s: beat sleep inertia.

    Sleep inertia is what happens when we wake up groggy (for reasons other than being ill, drugged, etc) rather than refreshed. It’s not actually related to how much sleep we have, though!

    Rather, it pertains to whether we woke up during a sleep cycle, or between cycles:

    • If we wake up between sleep cycles, we’ll avoid sleep inertia.
    • If we wake up during a sleep cycle, we’ll be groggy.

    Deep sleep generally occurs in 90-minute blocks, albeit secretly that is generally 3× 20 minute blocks in a trenchcoat, with transition periods between, during which the brainwaves change frequency.

    REM sleep generally occurs in 20 minute blocks, and will usually arrive in series towards the end of our natural sleep period, to fit neatly into the last 90-minute cycle.

    Sometimes these will appear a little out of order, because we are complicated organic beings, but those are the general trends.

    In any case, the take-away here is: interrupt them at your peril. You need to wake up between cycles. There are two ways you can do this:

    1. Carefully calculate everything, and set a very precise alarm clock (this will work so long as you are correct in guessing how long it will take you to fall asleep)
    2. Use a “sunrise” lamp alarm clock, that in the hour approaching your set alarm time, will gradually increase the light. Because the body will not naturally wake up during a cycle unless a threat is perceived (loud noise, physical rousing, etc), the sunrise lamp method means that you will wake up between sleep cycles at some point during that hour (towards the beginning or end, depending on what your sleep balance/debt is like).

    Do not sleep in (even if you have a sleep debt); it will throw everything out.

    Caffeine will not help much in the morning

    Assuming you got a reasonable night’s sleep, your brain has been cleansed of adenosine (a sleepy chemical), and if you are suffering from sleep inertia, the grogginess is due to melatonin (a different sleepy chemical).

    Caffeine is an adenosine receptor blocker, so that will do nothing to mitigate the effects of melatonin in your brain that doesn’t have any meaningful quantity of adenosine in it in the morning.

    Adenosine gradually accumulates in the brain over the course of the day (and then gets washed out while we sleep), so if you’re sleepy in the afternoon (for reasons other than: you just had a nap and now have sleep inertia again), then caffeine can block that adenosine in the afternoon.

    Of course, caffeine is also a stimulant (it increases adrenaline levels and promotes vasoconstriction), but its effects at healthily small doses are modest for most people, and you’d do better by splashing cold water on your face and/or listening to some upbeat music.

    Learn more: The Two Sides Of Caffeine

    Time your naps correctly (if you take naps)

    Dr. Breus has a lot to say about this, based on a lot of clinical research, but as it’s entirely consistent with what we’ve written before (based on the exact same research), to save space we’ll link to that here:

    How To Be An Expert Nap-Artist (With No “Sleep-Hangovers”)

    Calculate your bedtime correctly

    Remember what we said about sleep cycles? This means that that famous “7–9 hours sleep” is actually “either 7½ or 9 hours sleep”—because those are multiples of 90 minutes, whereas 8 hours (for example) is not.

    So, consider the time you want to get up (ideally, this should be relatively early, and the same time every day), and then count backwards either 7½ or 9 hours sleep (you choose), add 20–30 minutes to fall asleep, and that’s your bedtime.

    So for example: if you want to have 7½ hours sleep and get up at 6am, then your bedtime is anywhere between 10pm and 10:10pm.

    Remember how we said not to sleep in, even if you have a sleep debt? Now is the time to pay it off, if you have one. If you normally sleep 7½ hours, then make tonight a 9-hour sleep (plus 20–30 minutes to fall asleep). This means you’ll still get up at 6am, but your bedtime is now anywhere between 8:30pm and 8:40pm.

    Want to know more from Dr. Breus?

    You might like this excellent book of his that we reviewed a while back:

    The Power of When – by Dr. Michael Breus

    Enjoy!

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  • A New $16,000 Postpartum Depression Drug Is Here. How Will Insurers Handle It?

    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 much-awaited treatment for postpartum depression, zuranolone, hit the market in December, promising an accessible and fast-acting medication for a debilitating illness. But most private health insurers have yet to publish criteria for when they will cover it, according to a new analysis of insurance policies.

    The lack of guidance could limit use of the drug, which is both novel — it targets hormone function to relieve symptoms instead of the brain’s serotonin system, as typical antidepressants do — and expensive, at $15,900 for the 14-day pill regimen.

    Lawyers, advocates, and regulators are watching closely to see how insurance companies will shape policies for zuranolone because of how some handled its predecessor, an intravenous form of the same drug called brexanolone, which came on the market in 2019. Many insurers required patients to try other, cheaper medications first — known as the fail-first approach — before they could be approved for brexanolone, which was shown in early trials reviewed by the FDA to provide relief within days. Typical antidepressants take four to six weeks to take effect.

    “We’ll have to see if insurers cover this drug and what fail-first requirements they put in” for zuranolone, said Meiram Bendat, a licensed psychotherapist and an attorney who represents patients.

    Most health plans have yet to issue any guidelines for zuranolone, and maternal health advocates worry that the few that have are taking a restrictive approach. Some policies require that patients first try and fail a standard antidepressant before the insurer will pay for zuranolone.

    In other cases, guidelines require psychiatrists to prescribe it, rather than obstetricians, potentially delaying treatment since OB-GYN practitioners are usually the first medical providers to see signs of postpartum depression.

    Advocates are most worried about the lack of coverage guidance.

    “If you don’t have a published policy, there is going to be more variation in decision-making that isn’t fair and is less efficient. Transparency is really important,” said Joy Burkhard, executive director of the nonprofit Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health, which commissioned the study.

    With brexanolone, which was priced at $34,000 for the three-day infusion, California’s largest insurer, Kaiser Permanente, had such rigorous criteria for prescribing it that experts said the policy amounted to a blanket denial for all patients, according to an NPR investigation in 2021.

    KP’s written guidelines required patients to try and fail four medications and electroconvulsive therapy before they would be eligible for brexanolone. Because the drug was approved only for up to six months postpartum, and trials of typical antidepressants take four to six weeks each, the clock would run out before a patient had time to try brexanolone.

    An analysis by NPR of a dozen other health plans at the time showed Kaiser Permanente’s policy on brexanolone to be an outlier. Some did require that patients fail one or two other drugs first, but KP was the only one that recommended four.

    Miriam McDonald, who developed severe postpartum depression and suicidal ideation after giving birth in late 2019, battled Kaiser Permanente for more than a year to find effective treatment. Her doctors put her on a merry-go-round of medications that didn’t work and often carried unbearable side effects, she said. Her doctors refused to prescribe brexanolone, the only FDA-approved medication specifically for postpartum depression at the time.

    “No woman should suffer like I did after having a child,” McDonald said. “The policy was completely unfair. I was in purgatory.”

    One month after NPR published its investigation, KP overhauled its criteria to recommend that women try just one medication before becoming eligible for brexanolone.

    Then, in March 2023, after the federal Department of Labor launched an investigation into the insurer — citing NPR’s reporting — the insurer revised its brexanolone guidelines again, removing all fail-first recommendations, according to internal documents recently obtained by NPR. Patients need only decline a trial of another medication.

    “Since brexanolone was first approved for use, more experience and research have added to information about its efficacy and safety,” the insurer said in a statement. “Kaiser Permanente is committed to ensuring brexanolone is available when physicians and patients determine it is an appropriate treatment.”

    “Kaiser basically went from having the most restrictive policy to the most robust,” said Burkhard of the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health. “It’s now a gold standard for the rest of the industry.”

    McDonald is hopeful that her willingness to speak out and the subsequent regulatory actions and policy changes for brexanolone will lead Kaiser Permanente and other health plans to set patient-friendly policies for zuranolone.

    “This will prevent other women from having to go through a year of depression to find something that works,” she said.

    Clinicians were excited when the FDA approved zuranolone last August, believing the pill form, taken once a day at home over two weeks, will be more accessible to women compared with the three-day hospital stay for the IV infusion. Many perinatal psychiatrists told NPR it is imperative to treat postpartum depression as quickly as possible to avoid negative effects, including cognitive and social problems in the baby, anxiety or depression in the father or partner, or the death of the mother to suicide, which accounts for up to 20% of maternal deaths.

    So far, only one of the country’s six largest private insurers, Centene, has set a policy for zuranolone. It is unclear what criteria KP will set for the new pill. California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, has not yet established coverage criteria.

    Insurers’ policies for zuranolone will be written at a time when the regulatory environment around mental health treatment is shifting. The U.S. Department of Labor is cracking down on violations of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, which requires insurers to cover psychiatric treatments the same as physical treatments.

    Insurers must now comply with stricter reporting and auditing requirements intended to increase patient access to mental health care, which advocates hope will compel health plans to be more careful about the policies they write in the first place.

    In California, insurers must also comply with an even broader state mental health parity law from 2021, which requires them to use clinically based, expert-recognized criteria and guidelines in making medical decisions. The law was designed to limit arbitrary or cost-driven denials for mental health treatments and has been hailed as a model for the rest of the country. Much-anticipated regulations for the law are expected to be released this spring and could offer further guidance for insurers in California setting policies for zuranolone.

    In the meantime, Burkhard said, patients suffering from postpartum depression should not hold back from asking their doctors about zuranolone. Insurers can still grant access to the drug on a case-by-case basis before they formalize their coverage criteria.

    “Providers shouldn’t be deterred from prescribing zuranolone,” Burkhard said. 

    This article is from a partnership that includes KQEDNPR and KFF Health News.

    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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  • Language Fluency Beats General Intelligence & Memory For Longevity
  • Cannabis & Heart Attacks

    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 many, cannabis use has taken the place that alcohol used to have when it comes to wanting a “downer”, that is to say, a drug that relaxes us as opposed to stimulating us.

    Indeed, it is generally considered safer than alcohol ← however this is not a strong claim, because alcohol is much more dangerous than one would think given its ubiquity and (in many places, at least) social acceptability.

    We’ve talked a bit about cannabis use before, in its various forms, for example:

    Cannabis Myths vs Reality ← a very good starting point for the curious

    And one specifically about the use of THC gummies (THC is the psychoactive compound in cannabis, i.e. it’s the chemical that gets people high, as opposed to CBD, which is not psychoactive) as a sleep aid:

    Sweet Dreams Are Made of THC (Or Are They?)

    And for those skipping the THC, we’ve also written about CBD use, including:

    CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say? and Do CBD Gummies Work?

    So, about cannabis and heart attacks

    Alcohol is a relaxant, and yet it can contribute to heart disease (amongst many other things, of course):

    Can We Drink To Good Health? ← this is mostly about red wine’s putative heart health benefits, how the idea got popularized, and how it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when actually looking at the evidence.

    And cannabis, another relaxant? Not so good either!

    New research has shown that cannabis users have a higher risk of heart attacks, even among younger and otherwise healthy individuals. This is based on analyzing data from 4,636,628 relatively healthy adults.

    Specifically, the data showed that even young healthy cannabis users get:

    • Sixfold increased risk of heart attack
    • Fourfold increased risk of ischemic stroke
    • Threefold increased risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack, or stroke

    We mention the otherwise “relatively healthy” nature of the participants, because it’s important to note that less healthy people (who were perhaps using cannabis to self-medicate for some serious condition) were not included in the dataset, as it’d skew the data unhelpfully and it’d make the risk look a lot higher than the risk levels we mentioned above.

    The mechanisms by which cannabis affects heart health are not fully understood, but hypotheses include:

    • Disrupting heart rhythm regulation
    • Increasing oxygen demand in the heart muscle
    • Causing endothelial dysfunction, which affects blood vessel function

    Further, heart attack risk peaked one hour after cannabis use, and while this doesn’t prove causality, it certainly doesn’t make cannabis look safe.

    You can read the paper in its entirety here:

    Myocardial Infarction and Cardiovascular Risks Associated with Cannabis Use: A Multicenter Retrospective Study

    Want a safer way to relax?

    We recommend:

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • The Age-Proof Brain – by Dr. Marc Milstein

    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.

    Biological aging is not truly just one thing, but rather the amalgam of many things intersecting—and most of them are modifiable. The cells of your body neither know nor care how many times you have flown around the sun; they just respond to the stimuli they’re given.

    Which is what fuels this book. The idea is to have a brain that is less-assailed by the things that would make it age, and more rejuvenated by the things that can make it biologically younger.

    Dr. Milstein doesn’t neglect the rest of the body, and indeed notes the brain’s connections with the immune system, the heart, the gut, and more. But everything in this book is done with the brain in mind and its good health as the top priority outcome of all the things he advises.

    On which note, yes, there is plenty of practical, implementable advice here. For a book that is consistently full of study paper citations, he does take care to make everything useful to the reader, and makes everything as easy as possible for the layperson along the way.

    Bottom line: if you would like your brain to age less, this is an excellent, very evidence-based, guidebook.

    Click here to check out The Age-Proof Brain, and age-proof your brain!

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  • Great Sex Never Gets Old – by Kimberly Cunningham – by Kimberly Cunningham

    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.

    Here some readers may be thinking “after 40? But I am 70 already” or such, so be assured, there’s no upper limit on the applicability of this book’s writings. The number of 40 was chosen more as the start point of things, because it is an age after which the majority of hormonal declines happen (and with them, often, sex drive and/or physical ability). But, as she explains, this is by no means necessarily an end, and can instead be an exciting new beginning.

    She kicks things off with a “wellness check”, before diving into the science of the menopause—and yes, the andropause too.

    She doesn’t stop there though, and discusses other hormones besides the obvious ones, and other non-hormonal factors that can affect sex in what for most people is the later half of life.

    Nurse Cunningham, much like most of modern science, is strongly pro-HRT, and/but doesn’t claim it to be a magic bullet (though honestly, it can feel like it is! But here we’re reviewing the book, not HRT, so let’s continue), or else this book could have been a leaflet. Instead, she talks about the side-effects to expect (mostly good or neutral, but still, things you don’t want to be taken by surprise by), and what things will just be “a little different” now if you’re running on exogenous bioidentical hormones rather than ones your own body made. A lot of this comes down to how and when one takes them, by the way, since this can be different to your body making its own natural peaks and troughs.

    But it’s not all about hormones; there are also plenty of chapters on social and psychological issues, as well as medical issues other than hormones.

    The style is very light and conversational, while also casually dropping about 30 pages of scientific references. Like many nurses, the author knows at least as much as doctors when it comes to her area of expertise, and it shows.

    Bottom line: if your sex has ever hit a slump, and/or you simply recognize that it could, this book could make a very important difference.

    Click here to check out Great Sex Never Gets Old, and enjoy the best of life in the bedroom too!

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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