The Good Life – by Robert Waldinger, MD, and Marc Schulz, PhD

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For any who have thought “there must be some middle-ground between entirely subjective self-help books advising how to feel better, and sifting through clinical data on what actually affects people’s moods“, this book is exactly that middle-ground!

Drs. Waldinger and Schultz went through the 80-year-long Harvard Study of Adult Development with a fine-toothed comb, and this book details—more readably—what they found.

There are frequent references to data from the study. Not just numbers, though, people’s answers to questions, too. And how different factors about people’s lives affected their answers to the same questions.

We hear from all ages, from young adults to octagenarians, and learn how attitudes (including: of the same people) change over time. Not because people are fickle, but because people grow… or become disillusioned. Or sometimes, both.

We learn about the importance of money… And where that importance ends.

We learn importance of relationships of various kinds, and this is certainly a recurring theme throughout the study—and thus, throughout the book.

The book doesn’t just present data, though, it also presents actionable insights along the way.

Bottom line: the combined wisdom and life-experiences of a lot of people provide a very “big picture” view of life, and what makes us happy, really. We highly recommend it!

Pick up The Good Life from Amazon Today!

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  • Chia Seeds vs Flax Seeds – 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 chia to flax, we picked the chia.

    Why?

    Both are great! And it’s certainly close. Both are good sources of protein, fiber, and healthy fats.

    Flax seeds contain a little more fat (but it is healthy fat), while chia seeds contain a little more fiber.

    They’re both good sources of vitamins and minerals, but chia seeds contain more. In particular, chia seeds have about twice as much calcium and selenium, and notably more iron and phosphorous—though flax seeds do have more potassium.

    Of course the perfect solution is to enjoy both, but since for the purpose of this exercise we have to pick one, we’d say chia comes out on top—even if flax is not far behind.

    Enjoy!

    Learn more

    For more on these, check out:

    Take care!

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  • A Correction, And A New, Natural Way To Boost Daily Energy Levels

    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.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    First: a correction and expansion!

    After yesterday’s issue of 10almonds covering breast cancer risks and checks, a subscriber wrote to say, with regard to our opening statement, which was:

    Anyone (who has not had a double mastectomy, anyway) can get breast cancer”

    ❝I have been enjoying your newsletter. This statement is misleading and should have a disclaimer that says even someone who has had a double mastectomy can get breast cancer, again. It is true and nothing…nothing is 100% including a mastectomy. I am a 12 year “thriver” (I don’t like to use the term survivor) who has had a double mastectomy. I work with a local hospital to help newly diagnosed patients deal with their cancer diagnosis and the many decisions that follow. A double mastectomy can help keep recurrence from happening but there are no guarantees. I tried to just delete this and let it go but it doesn’t feel right. Thank you!❞

    Thank you for writing in about this! We wouldn’t want to mislead, and we’re always glad to hear from people who have been living with conditions for a long time, as (assuming they are a person inclined to learning) they will generally know topics far more deeply than someone who has researched it for a short period of time.

    Regards a double mastectomy (we’re sure you know this already, but noting here for greater awareness, prompted by your message), a lot of circumstances can vary. For example, how far did a given cancer spread, and especially, did it spread to the lymph nodes at the armpits? And what tissue was (and wasn’t) removed?

    Sometimes a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy will leave the lymph nodes partially or entirely intact, and a cancer could indeed come back, if not every last cancerous cell was removed.

    A total double mastectomy, by definition, should have removed all tissue that could qualify as breast tissue for a breast cancer, including those lymph nodes. However, if the cancer spread unnoticed somewhere else in the body, then again, you’re quite correct, it could come back.

    Some people have a double mastectomy without having got cancer first. Either because of a fear of cancer due to a genetic risk (like Angelina Jolie), or for other reasons (like Elliot Page).

    This makes a difference, because doing it for reasons of cancer risk may mean surgeons remove the lymph nodes too, while if that wasn’t a factor, surgeons will tend to leave them in place.

    In principle, if there is no breast tissue, including lymph nodes, and there was no cancer to spread, then it can be argued that the risk of breast cancer should now be the same “zero” as the risk of getting prostate cancer when one does not have a prostate.

    But… Surgeries are not perfect, and everyone’s anatomy and physiology can differ enough from “textbook standard” that surprises can happen, and there’s almost always a non-zero chance of certain health outcomes.

    For any unfamiliar, here’s a good starting point for learning about the many types of mastectomy, that we didn’t go into in yesterday’s edition. It’s from the UK’s National Health Service:

    NHS: Mastectomy | Types of Mastectomy

    And for the more sciency-inclined, here’s a paper about the recurrence rate of cancer after a prophylactic double mastectomy, after a young cancer was found in one breast.

    The short version is that the measured incidence rate of breast cancer after prophylactic bilateral mastectomy was zero, but the discussion (including notes about the limitations of the study) is well worth reading:

    Breast Cancer after Prophylactic Bilateral Mastectomy in Women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 Mutation

    ❝[Can you write about] the availability of geriatric doctors Sometimes I feel my primary isn’t really up on my 70 year old health issues. I would love to find a doctor that understands my issues and is able to explain them to me. Ie; my worsening arthritis in regards to food I eat; in regards to meds vs homeopathic solutions.! Thanks!❞

    That’s a great topic, worthy of a main feature! Because in many cases, it’s not just about specialization of skills, but also about empathy, and the gap between studying a condition and living with a condition.

    About arthritis, we’re going to do a main feature specifically on that quite soon, but meanwhile, you might like our previous article:

    Keep Inflammation At Bay (arthritis being an inflammatory condition)

    As for homeopathy, your question prompts our poll today!

    (and then we’ll write about that tomorrow)

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  • Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Especially After 60)

    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.

    Keeping your kidneys happy: it’s more than just hydration!

    Your kidneys are very busy organs. They filter waste products, balance hydration, pH, salt, and potassium. They also make some of our hormones, and are responsible for regulating red blood cell production too. They also handle vitamin D in a way our bodies would not work without, making them essential for calcium absorption and the health of our bones, and even muscular function.

    So, how to keep them in good working order?

    Yes, hydrate

    This is obvious and may go without saying, but we try to not leave important things without saying. So yes, get plenty of water, spread out over the day (you can only usefully absorb so much at once!). If you feel thirsty, you’re probably already dehydrated, so have a little (hydrating!) drink.

    Don’t smoke

    It’s bad for everything, including your kidneys.

    Look after your blood

    Not just “try to keep it inside your body”, but also:

    Basically, your kidneys’ primary job of filtering blood will go much more smoothly if that blood is less problematic on the way in.

    Watch your over-the-counter pill intake

    A lot of PRN OTC NSAIDs (PRN = pro re nata, i.e. you take them as and when symptoms arise) (NSAIDs = Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, such as ibuprofen for example) can cause kidney damage if taken regularly.

    Many people take ibuprofen (for example) constantly for chronic pain, especially the kind cause by chronic inflammation, including many autoimmune diseases.

    It is recommended to not take them for more than 10 days, nor more than 8 per day. Taking more than that, or taking them for longer, could damage your kidneys temporarily or permanently.

    Read more: National Kidney Foundation: Advice About Pain Medicines

    See also: Which Drugs Are Harmful To Your Kidneys?

    Get a regular kidney function checkup if you’re in a high risk group

    Who’s in a high risk group?

    • If you’re over 60
    • If you have diabetes
    • If you have cardiovascular disease
    • If you have high blood pressure
    • If you believe, or know, you have existing kidney damage

    The tests are very noninvasive, and will be a urine and/or blood test.

    For more information, see:

    Kidney Testing: Everything You Need to Know

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook – by Nisha Vora
  • How (And Why) To Train Your Pre-Frontal Cortex

    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.

    Dr. Chapman’s Keys For Mental Focus

    This is Dr. Sandra Chapman; she’s a cognitive neuroscientist, on a mission to, in her words, further our understanding of:

    • what makes the brain stronger, faster and last longer
    • what enhances human cognitive capacity, and
    • what enhances the underlying brain systems across the lifespan.

    To this end, she’s also the founder and Chief Director of the Center For Brain Health, where she has worked on her mission for the past 25 years (clocking up hundreds of peer-reviewed publications to her name), as well as being a professor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at UT Dallas.

    What does she want us to know?

    Get your brain into gear

    When it comes to your brainpower, it is “use it or lose it”, but it is also perfectly possible to use it and lose it.

    Why?

    Very often, what we are using our brains for is high-strain, low-yield stuff, such as multitasking, overthinking, or overthinking while multitasking. And to make it worse, we often do it without sufficient rest.

    This is the equivalent of owning a Ferrari but trying to drive it in second and third gear at once by switching between the two as rapidly as possible. And doing that for 18 hours each day.

    Suffice it to say, you’ll be going nowhere quickly.

    An alternative “use” of brainpower is low-strain, low-yield stuff, such as having to pay close attention to a boring conversation. It’s enough to stop your mind from doing anything else, but not enough to actually stimulate you.

    This is the equivalent of owning a Ferrari but keeping it idling. The wear and tear is minimal this time, but you’re not actually going anywhere either.

    Better, of course, are the other two quadrants:

    • low-strain, high-yield: consistently using our brain in relatively non-taxing ways that encourage its development
    • high-strain, high-yield: here the Ferrari metaphor definitely fails, because unlike cars, our bodies (including our brains) are machines that benefit from judicious regular progressive overloading (but just by a bit, and with adequate recovery time between overloads).

    See also: 12 Weeks To Measurably Boost Your Brain

    How to do the “low-strain, low-yield” part

    When it comes to “what’s the most important part of the brain to help in the face of cognitive decline?” the usual answer is either to focus on memory (hippocampi) or language (various parts, but for example Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area), since people most fear losing memory, and language is very important both socially and practically.

    Those are indeed critical, and we at 10almonds stand by them, but Dr. Chapman (herself having originally trained as speech and language pathologist!) makes a strong case for adding a third brain part to the list.

    Specifically, she advocates for strengthening the pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for inhibition, task-switching, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. If that seems like a lot, do remember it’s a whole cortex and not one of the assorted important-but-small brain bits we mentioned above.

    How? She has developed training programs for this, based on what she calls Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Tactics (SMART), to support support attention, planning, judgment and emotional management.

    You can read more about those programs here:

    Center For Brain Health | Our Programs

    Participation in those is mostly not free, however, if you join their…

    Center For Brain Health | BrainHealth Project

    …then they will periodically invite you to join pilot programs, research programs, and the like, which will either be free or they-pay-you affairs—because this is how science is done, and you can read about yourself (anonymized, of course) later in peer-reviewed papers of the kind we often cite here.

    If you’re not interested in any of that though, we will say that according to Dr. Chapman, the keys are:

    Inhibition: be conscious of this function of your brain, and develop it. This is the function of your brain that stops you from making mistakes—or put differently: stops you from saying/doing something stupid.

    Switching: do this consciously; per “I am now doing this task, now I am switching to this other task”, rather than doing the gear-grinding thing we discussed earlier

    Working memory: this is effectively your brain’s RAM. Unlike the RAM of a computer (can be enhanced by adding another chip or replacing with a bigger chip), our brain’s RAM can be increased by frequent use, and especially by judicious use of progressive overloading (with rests between!) which we’ll discuss in the high-strain, high-yield section.

    Flexibility: this is about creative problem-solving, openness to new ideas, and curiosity

    See also: Curiosity Kills The Neurodegeneration

    How to do the “high-strain, high-yield” part

    Delighting this chess-playing writer, Dr. Chapman recommends chess. Although, similar games such as go (a Chinese game that looks simpler than chess but actually requires more calculation) work equally well too.

    Why?

    Games like chess and go cause structural changes that are particularly helpful, in terms of engaging in such foundational tasks as learning, abstract reasoning, problem-solving and self-control:

    Chess Practice as a Protective Factor in Dementia

    Basically, it checks (so to speak) a lot of boxes, especially for the pre-frontal cortex. Some notes:

    • Focusing on the game is required for brain improvement; simply pushing wood casually will not do it. Ideally, calculating several moves ahead will allow for strong working memory use (because to calculate several moves ahead, one will have to hold increasingly many possible positions in the mind while doing so).
    • The speed of play must be sufficiently slow as to allow not only for thinking, but also for what in chess is called “blunder-checking”, in other words, having decided on one’s move, pausing to consider whether it is a mistake, and actively trying to find evidence that it is. This is the crucial “inhibition habit”, and when one does it reflexively, one will make fewer mistakes. Tying this to dementia, see for example how one of the common symptoms of dementia is falling for scams that one wouldn’t have previously. How did cognitive decline make someone naïve? It didn’t, per se; it just took away their ability to, having decided what to do, pause to consider whether it was a mistake, and actively trying to find evidence that it is.
    • That “conscious switching” that we talked about, rather than multitasking? In chess, there is a difference between strategy and tactics. Don’t worry about what that difference is for now (learn it if you want to take up chess), but know that strong players will only strategize while it is their opponent’s turn, and only calculate (tactics) while it is their own turn. It’s very tempting to flit constantly between one and the other, but chess requires players to have the mental discipline be able to focus on one task or the other and stick with that task until it’s the appointed time to switch.

    If you feel like taking up chess, this site (and related app, if you want it) is free (it’s been funded by voluntary donations for a long time now) and good and even comes with free tuition and training tools: LiChess.org

    Here’s another site that this writer (hi, it’s me) personally uses—it has great features too, but many are paywalled (I’m mostly there just because I’ve been there nearly since its inception, so I’m baked into the community now): Chess.com

    Want to know more?

    You might like this book by Dr. Chapman, which we haven’t reviewed yet but it did inform large parts of today’s article:

    Make Your Brain Smarter: Increase Your Brain’s Creativity, Energy, and Focus – by Dr. Sandra Chapman

    Enjoy!

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  • Feta or Parmesan – 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 feta to parmesan, we picked the parmesan.

    Why?

    It’s close! Looking at the macros, parmesan has more protein and slightly less fat. Of the fat content, parmesan also has slightly less saturated fat, but neither of them are doing great in this category. Still, a relative win for parmesan.

    In the category of vitamins, feta is a veritable vitamin-B-fest with more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9. On the other hand, parmesan has more of vitamins A, B12, and choline. By strength of numbers, this is a win for feta.

    Minerals tell a different story; parmesan has a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Meanwhile, feta is not higher in any minerals. A clear win for parmesan.

    Both cheeses offer gut-healthy benefits (if consumed regularly in small portions), while neither are great for the heart.

    On balance, we say parmesan wins the day.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Feta Cheese vs Mozzarella – Which is Healthier?

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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

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  • Anxiety Attack vs Panic Attack: Do You Know The Difference?

    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 terms are sometimes used incorrectly, but have quite different meanings. Dr. Julie Smith, psychologist, explains in this short video:

    Important distinctions

    Anxiety attacks are not clinically recognized terms and lack a clear definition, often used to describe a build-up of anxiety before anticipated stressful events (e.g. social gatherings, medical appointments, etc, though of course what it is will vary from person to person—not everyone finds the same things stressful, or has the same kinds of anticipations around things).

    Panic attacks, in contrast, are sudden surges of intense fear or discomfort that peak within minutes. They are characterized by symptoms including at least 4 of:

    • palpitations
    • sweating
    • shortness of breath
    • chest pain
    • dizziness
    • fear of losing control or dying

    There’s a misconception that panic attacks never have identifiable triggers while anxiety attacks always do.

    In reality, both can occur with or without a clear cause. Panic attacks can arise from various conditions, including trauma, OCD, or phobias, and don’t necessarily mean you have a panic disorder. They can also occur as a drug response, without any known underlying psychological condition.

    You may also notice that that list of symptoms has quite a bit of overlap with the symptoms of a heart attack, which a) does not help people to calm down b) can, on the flipside, cause a heart attack to be misdiagnosed as a panic attack.

    In terms of management:

    • In the moment: breathing exercises, like extending your exhalation (a common example is the “7-11” method, inhaling for 7 seconds and exhaling for 11 seconds), can calm the body and reduce panic symptoms.
    • More generally: to prevent panic attacks from becoming more frequent, avoid avoiding safe environments that triggered an attack, like supermarkets or social gatherings. Gradual exposure helps reduce anxiety over time, while avoidance can worsen it.

    If panic attacks persist, Dr. Smith advises to seek help from a doctor or psychologist to understand their root causes and develop effective coping strategies.

    For more on all of this, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    How To Set Anxiety Aside

    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

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