The Intelligence Trap – by David Robson

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We’re including this one under the umbrella of “general wellness”, because it happens that a lot of very intelligent people make stunningly unfortunate choices sometimes, for reasons that may baffle others.

The author outlines for us the various reasons that this happens, and how. From the famous trope of “specialized intelligence in one area”, to the tendency of people who are better at acquiring knowledge and understanding to also be better at acquiring biases along the way, to the hubris of “I am intelligent and therefore right as a matter of principle” thinking, and many other reasons.

Perhaps the greatest value of the book is the focus on how we can avoid these traps, narrow our bias blind spots, and play to our strengths while paying full attention to our weaknesses.

The style is very readable, despite having a lot of complex ideas discussed along the way. This is entirely to be expected of this author, an award-winning science writer.

Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand the array of traps that disproportionately catch out the most intelligent people (and how to spot such), then this is a great book for you.

Click here to check out The Intelligence Trap, and be more wary!

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  • Young Mind Young Body – by Sue Ziang
    Holistic health coach Ziang’s book offers insights on mind-rejuvenation and practical physical health tips like mindful eating and moving more for a balanced lifestyle.

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  • 10 Ways To Self-Soothe That Don’t Involve Food Or Drink

    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.

    If one is accustomed to comfort-eating or drowning one’s sorrows, what are the alternatives that can actually work? Holistic nutritionist Selin Bilgin has a list:

    Self-Care That’s Not Self-Sabotage

    You might want to make a note of these 10 things, so they can be a sort of “menu” for you when you need them:

    • Give your introversion or extroversion what it needs (e.g. alone time to decompress, or social activities)
    • Treat your senses: often we don’t actually need food/drink so much as culinary entertainment. So, we can sate this sensory mood in other ways, for example pleasant candles, flowers, and so forth.
    • Bathe/shower nicely: it’s cliché but some personal pampering can go a long way
    • Beautify yourself: it’s also cliché, but a makeover evening has its place
    • Move! Go for a walk, do some yoga, whatever suits you, but move your body.
    • Make movie nights luxurious: instead of making it about food/drink, focus on creating an enjoyable atmosphere
    • Physically release tension: at 10almonds we recommend progressive relaxation for this!
    • Create something: whether it’s art, craft, baking, or something else, creativity feels good
    • Tackle things you’ve been procrastinating: this one doesn’t seem like self-soothing from the front end, but from the back end (i.e., having done it), it makes a big difference!
    • Journal: expressing your thoughts and feelings can help a lot—really.

    For more on each of these, enjoy:

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    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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  • We’re only using a fraction of health workers’ skills. This needs to change

    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.

    Roles of health professionals are still unfortunately often stuck in the past. That is, before the shift of education of nurses and other health professionals into universities in the 1980s. So many are still not working to their full scope of practice.

    There has been some expansion of roles in recent years – including pharmacists prescribing (under limited circumstances) and administering a wider range of vaccinations.

    But the recently released paper from an independent Commonwealth review on health workers’ “scope of practice” identifies the myriad of barriers preventing Australians from fully benefiting from health professionals’ skills.

    These include workforce design (who does what, where and how roles interact), legislation and regulation (which often differs according to jurisdiction), and how health workers are funded and paid.

    There is no simple quick fix for this type of reform. But we now have a sensible pathway to improve access to care, using all health professionals appropriately.

    A new vision for general practice

    I recently had a COVID booster. To do this, I logged onto my general practice’s website, answered the question about what I wanted, booked an appointment with the practice nurse that afternoon, got jabbed, was bulk-billed, sat down for a while, and then went home. Nothing remarkable at all about that.

    But that interaction required a host of facilitating factors. The Victorian government regulates whether nurses can provide vaccinations, and what additional training the nurse requires. The Commonwealth government has allowed the practice to be paid by Medicare for the nurse’s work. The venture capitalist practice owner has done the sums and decided allocating a room to a practice nurse is economically rational.

    The future of primary care is one involving more use of the range of health professionals, in addition to GPs.

    It would be good if my general practice also had a physiotherapist, who I could see if I had back pain without seeing the GP, but there is no Medicare rebate for this. This arrangement would need both health professionals to have access to my health record. There also needs to be trust and good communication between the two when the physio might think the GP needs to be alerted to any issues.

    This vision is one of integrated primary care, with health professionals working in a team. The nurse should be able to do more than vaccination and checking vital signs. Do I really need to see the GP every time I need a prescription renewed for my regular medication? This is the nub of the “scope of practice” issue.

    How about pharmacists?

    An integrated future is not the only future on the table. Pharmacy owners especially have argued that pharmacists should be able to practise independently of GPs, prescribing a limited range of medications and dispensing them.

    This will inevitably reduce continuity of care and potentially create risks if the GP is not aware of what other medications a patient is using.

    But a greater role for pharmacists has benefits for patients. It is often easier and cheaper for the patient to see a pharmacist, especially as bulk billing rates fall, and this is one of the reasons why independent pharmacist prescribing is gaining traction.

    Pharmacists explains something to a patient
    It’s often easier for a patient to see a pharmacist than a GP. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Every five years or so the government negotiates an agreement with the Pharmacy Guild, the organisation of pharmacy owners, about how much pharmacies will be paid for dispensing medications and other services. These agreements are called “Community Pharmacy Agreements”. Paying pharmacists independent prescribing may be part of the next agreement, the details of which are currently being negotiated.

    GPs don’t like competition from this new source, even though there will be plenty of work around for GPs into the foreseeable future. So their organisations highlight the risks of these changes, reopening centuries old turf wars dressed up as concerns about safety and risk.

    Who pays for all this?

    Funding is at the heart of disputes about scope of practice. As with many policy debates, there is merit on both sides.

    Clearly the government must increase its support for comprehensive general practice. Existing funding of fee-for-service medical benefits payments must be redesigned and supplemented by payments that allow practices to engage a range of other health professionals to create health-care teams.

    This should be the principal direction of primary care reform, and the final report of the scope of practice review should make that clear. It must focus on the overall goal of better primary care, rather than simply the aspirations of individual health professionals, and working to a professional’s full scope of practice in a team, not a professional silo.

    In parallel, governments – state and federal – must ensure all health professionals are used to their best of their abilities. It is a waste to have highly educated professionals not using their skills fully. New funding arrangements should facilitate better access to care from all appropriately qualified health professionals.

    In the case of prescribing, it is possible to reconcile the aspirations of pharmacists and the concerns of GPs. New arrangements could be that pharmacists can only renew medications if they have agreements with the GP and there is good communication between them. This may be easier in rural and suburban areas, where the pharmacists are better known to the GPs.

    The second issues paper points to the complexity of achieving scope of practice reforms. However, it also sets out a sensible path to improve access to care using all health professionals appropriately.

    Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne

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

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  • There are ‘forever chemicals’ in our drinking water. Should standards change to protect our 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.

    Today’s news coverage reports potentially unsafe levels of “forever chemicals” detected in drinking water supplies around Australia. These include human-made chemicals: perfluorooctane sulfonate (known as PFOS) and perflurooctanic acid (PFOA). They are classed under the broader category of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS chemicals.

    The contaminants found in our drinking water are the same ones United States authorities warn can cause cancer over a long period of time, with reports warning there is “no safe level of exposure”.

    In April, the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) sent shock waves through the water industry around the world when it announced stricter advice on safe levels of PFOS/PFOA in drinking water. This reduced limits considered safe in supplies to zero and gave the water industry five years to meet legally enforceable limits of 4 parts per trillion.

    So, should the same limits be enforced here in Australia? And how worried should we be that the drinking in many parts of Australia would fail the new US standards?

    What are the health risks?

    Medical knowledge about the human health effects of PFOS/PFOA is still emerging. An important factor is the bioaccumulation of these chemicals in different organs in the body over time.

    Increased exposure of people to these chemicals has been associated with several adverse health effects. These include higher cholesterol, lower birth weights, modified immune responses, kidney and testicular cancer.

    It has been very difficult to accurately track and measure effects of different levels of PFAS exposure on people. People may be exposed to PFAS chemicals in their everyday life through waterproofing of clothes, non-stick cookware coatings or through food and drinking water. PFAS can also be in pesticides, paints and cosmetics.

    The International Agency for Research on Cancer (on behalf of the World Health Organization) regards PFOA as being carcinogenic to humans and PFOS as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

    child at water fountain outdoors
    Is our drinking water safe? What about long-term risks? Volodymyr TVERDOKHLIB/Shutterstock

    Our guidelines

    Australian drinking water supplies are assessed against national water quality standards. These Australian Drinking Water Guidelines are continuously reviewed by industry and health experts that scan the international literature and update them accordingly.

    All city and town water supplies across Australia are subject to a wide range of physical and chemical water tests. The results are compared to Australian water guidelines.

    Some tests relate to human health considerations, such as levels of lead or bacteria. Others relate to “aesthetic” considerations, such as the appearance or taste of water. Most water authorities across Australia make water quality information and compliance with Australian guidelines freely available.

    What about Australian PFOS and PFOA standards?

    These chemicals can enter our drinking water system from many potential sources, such as via their use in fire-fighting foams or pesticides.

    According to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, PFOS should not exceed 0.07 micrograms per litre in drinking water. And PFOA should not exceed 0.56 micrograms per litre. One microgram is equivalent to one part per billion.

    The concentration of these chemicals in water is incredibly small. And much of the advice on their concentration is provided in different units. Sometimes in micrograms or nannograms. The USEPA uses parts per trillion.

    In parts per trillion (ppt) the Australian Guidelines for PFOS is 70 ppt and PFOA is 560 ppt. The USEPA’s new maximum contaminant levels (enforceable levels) are 4 ppt for both PFOS and also PFOA. Previous news reports have pointed out Australian guidelines for these chemicals in drinking water are up to 140 times higher than the USEPA permits.

    Yikes! That seems like a lot

    Today’s news report cites PFOS and PFOA water tests done at many different water supplies across Australia. Some water samples did not detect either chemicals. But most did, with the highest PFOS concentration 15.1–15.6 parts per trillion from Glenunga, South Australia. The highest PFOA concentration was reported from a small water supply in western Sydney, where it was detected at 5.17–9.66 parts per trillion.

    Australia and the US are not alone. This is an enormous global problem.

    One of the obvious challenges for the Australian water industry is that current water treatment processes may not be effective at removing PFOS or PFOA. The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines provide this advice:

    Standard water treatment technologies including coagulation followed by physical separation, aeration, chemical oxidation, UV irradiation, and disinfection have little or no effect on PFOS or PFOA concentrations.

    Filtering with activated carbon and reverse osmosis may remove many PFAS chemicals. But no treatment systems appear to be completely effective at their removal.

    Removing these contaminants might be particularly difficult for small regional water supplies already struggling to maintain their water infrastructure. The NSW Auditor General criticised the planning for, and funding of, town water infrastructure in regional NSW back in 2020.

    Where to from here?

    The Australian water industry likely has little choice but to follow the US lead and address PFOS/PFAS contamination in drinking water. Along with lower thresholds, the US committed US$1 billion to water infrastructure to improve detection and water treatment. They will also now require:

    Public water systems must monitor for these PFAS and have three years to complete initial monitoring (by 2027) […]

    As today’s report notes, it is very difficult to find any recent data on PFOS and PFOA in Australian drinking water supplies. Australian regulators should also require ongoing and widespread monitoring of our major city and regional water supplies for these “forever chemicals”.

    The bottom line for drinking tap water is to keep watching this space. Buying bottled water might not be effective (2021 US research detected PFAS in 39 out of 100 bottled waters). The USEPA suggests people can reduce PFAS exposure with measures including avoiding fish from contaminated waters and considering home filtration systems.

    Correction: this article previously listed the maximum Australian Drinking Water Guidelines PFOA level as 0.056 micrograms per litre. The figure has been updated to show the correct level of 0.56 micrograms per litre.

    Ian A. Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

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

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Related Posts

  • Women’s Strength Training Anatomy – by Frédéric Delavier
  • ADHD For Smart Ass Women – by Tracy Otsuka

    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 ADHD in adults before, what makes this one different? It’s the wholly female focus. Which is not to say some things won’t apply to men too, they will.

    But while most books assume a male default unless it’s “bikini zone” health issues, this one is written by a woman for women focusing on the (biological and social) differences in ADHD for us.

    A strength of the book is that it neither seeks to:

    • over-medicalize things in a way that any deviation from the norm is inherently bad and must be fixed, nor
    • pretend that everything’s a bonus, that we are superpowered and beautiful and perfect and capable and have no faults that might ever need addressing actually

    …instead, it gives a good explanation of the ins and outs of ADHD in women, the strengths and weaknesses that this brings, and good solid advice on how to play to the strengths and reduce (or at least work around) the weaknesses.

    Bottom line: this book has been described as “ADHD 2.0 (a very popular book that we’ve reviewed previously), but for women”, and it deserves that.

    Click here to check out ADHD for Smart Ass Women, and fall in love with your neurodivergent brain!

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  • Your Brain On (And Off) Estrogen

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    This is Dr. Lisa Mosconi. She’s a professor of Neuroscience in Neurology and Radiology, and is one of the 1% most influential scientists of the 21st century. That’s not a random number or an exaggeration; it has to do with citation metrics collated over 20 years:

    A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field

    What does she want us to know?

    Women’s brains age differently from men’s

    This is largely, of course, due to menopause, and as such is a generalization, but it’s a statistically safe generalization, because:

    • Most women go through menopause—and most women who don’t, avoid it by dying pre-menopause, so the aging also does not occur in those cases
    • Menopause is very rarely treated immediately—not least of all because menopause is diagnosed officially when it has been one year since one’s last period, so there’s almost always a year of “probably” first, and often numerous years, in the case of periods slowing down before stopping
    • Menopausal HRT is great, but doesn’t completely negate that menopause occurred—because of the delay in starting HRT, some damage can be done already and can take years to reverse.

    Medicated and unmedicated menopause proceed very differently from each other, and this fact has historically caused obfuscation of a lot of research into age-related neurodegeneration.

    For example, it is well-established that women get Alzheimer’s at nearly twice the rate than men do, and deteriorate more rapidly after onset, too.

    Superficially, one might conclude “estrogen is to blame” or maybe “the xx-chromosomal karyotype is to blame”.

    The opposite, however, is true with regard to estrogen—estrogen appears to be a protective factor in women’s neurological health, which is why increased neurodegeneration occurs when estrogen levels decline (for example, in menopause).

    For a full rundown on this, see:

    Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear

    It’s not about the extra X

    Dr. Mosconi examines this in detail in her book “The XX Brain”. To summarize and oversimplify a little: the XX karyotype by itself makes no difference, or more accurately, the XY karyotype by itself makes no difference (because biologically speaking, female physiological attributes are more “default” than male ones; it is only 12,000ish* years of culture that has flipped the social script on this).

    *Why 12,000ish years? It’s because patriarchalism largely began with settled agriculture, for reasons that are fascinating but beyond the scope of this article, which is about health science, not archeology.

    The topic of “which is biologically default” is relevant, because the XY karyotype (usually) informs the body “ignore previous instructions about ovaries, and adjust slightly to make them into testes instead”, which in turn (usually) results in a testosterone-driven system instead of an estrogen-driven system. And that is what makes the difference to the brain.

    One way we can see that it’s about the hormones not the chromosomes, is in cases of androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which the natal “congratulations, it’s a girl” pronouncement may later be in conflict with the fact it turns out she had XY chromosomes all along, but the androgenic instructions never got delivered successfully, so she popped out with fairly typical female organs. And, relevantly for Dr. Mosconi, a typically female brain that will age in a typically female fashion, because it’s driven by estrogen, regardless of the Y-chromosome.

    The good news

    The good news from all of this is that while we can’t (with current science, anyway) do much about our chromosomes, we can do plenty about our hormones, and also, the results of changes in same.

    Remember, Dr. Mosconi is not an endocrinologist, nor a gynecologist, but a neurologist. As such, she makes the case for how a true interdisciplinary team for treating menopause should not confined to the narrow fields usually associated with “bikini medicine”, but should take into account that a lot of menopause-related changes are neurological in nature.

    We recently reviewed another book by Dr. Mosconi:

    The Menopause Brain – by Dr. Lisa Mosconi

    …and as we noted there, many sources will mention “brain fog” as a symptom of menopause, Dr. Mosconi can (and will) point to a shadowy patch on a brain scan and say “that’s the brain fog, there”.

    And so on, for other symptoms that are often dismissed as “all in your head”, as though that’s a perfectly acceptable place for problems to be.

    This is critical, because it’s treating real neurological things as the real things they are.

    Dr. Mosconi’s advice, beyond HRT

    Dr. Mosconi notes that brain health tends to dip during perimenopause but often recovers, showing the brain’s resilience to hormonal shifts. As such, all is not lost if for whatever reason, hormone replacement therapy isn’t a viable option for you.

    Estrogen plays a crucial role in brain energy, and women’s declining estrogen levels during menopause increase the need for antioxidants to protect brain health—something not often talked about.

    Specifically, Dr. Mosconi tells us, women need more antioxidants and have different metabolic responses to diets compared to men.*

    *Yes, even though men usually have negligible estrogen, because their body (and thus brain, being also part of their body) is running on testosterone instead, which is something that will only happen if either you are producing normal male amounts of testosterone (requires normal male testes) or you are taking normal male amounts of testosterone (requires big bottles of testosterone; this isn’t the kind of thing you can get from a low dose of testogel as sometimes prescribed as part of menopausal HRT to perk your metabolism up).

    Note: despite women being a slight majority on Earth, and despite an aging population in wealthy nations, meaning “a perimenopausal woman” is thus the statistically average person in, for example, the US, and despite the biological primacy of femaleness… Medicine still mostly looks to men as the “default person”, which in this case can result in seriously low-balled estimates of what antioxidants are needed.

    In terms of supplements, therefore, she recommends:

    • Antioxidants: key for brain health, especially in women. Rich sources include fruits (especially berries) and vegetables. Then there’s the world’s most-consumed antioxidant, which is…
    • Coffee: Italian-style espresso has the highest antioxidant power. Adding a bit of fat (e.g. oat milk) helps release caffeine more slowly, reducing jitters. Taking it alongside l-theanine also “flattens the curve” and thus improves its overall benefits.
    • Flavonoids: important for both men and women but particularly essential for women. Found in many fruits and vegetables.
    • Chocolate: dark chocolate is an excellent source of antioxidants and flavonoids!
    • Turmeric: a natural neuroprotectant with anti-inflammatory properties, best boosted by taking with black pepper, which improves absorption as well as having many great qualities of its own.
    • B Vitamins: B6, B9, and B12 are essential for anti-aging and brain health; deficiency in B6 is rare, while deficiency in B9 (folate) and especially B12 is very common later in life.
    • Vitamins C & E: important antioxidants, but caution is needed with fat-soluble vitamins to avoid toxicity.
    • Omega-3s: important for brain health; can be consumed in the diet, but supplements may be necessary.
    • Caution with zinc: zinc can support immunity and endocrine health (and thus, indirectly, brain health) but may be harmful in excess, particularly for brain health.
    • Probiotics & Prebiotics: beneficial for gut health, and in Dr. Mosconi’s opinion, hard to get sufficient amounts from diet alone.

    For more pointers, you might want to check out the MIND diet, that is to say, the “Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay” upgrade to make the Mediterranean diet even brain-healthier than it is by default:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

    Want to know more from Dr. Mosconi?

    Here’s her TED talk:

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

    Enjoy!

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  • Forever Strong – by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

    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.

    Obesity kills a lot of people (as does medical neglect and malpractice when it comes to obese patients, but that is another matter), but often the biggest problem is not “too much fat” but rather “too little muscle”. This gets disguised a bit, because these factors often appear in the same people, but it’s a distinction that’s worthy of note.

    Dr. Lyon lays out a lot of good hard science in this work, generally in the field of protein metabolism, but also with a keen eye on all manner of blood metrics (triglycerides, LDL/HDL, fasting blood sugars, assorted other biomarkers of metabolic health).

    The style of this book is two books in one. It’s a very accessible pop-science book in its primary tone, with an extra layer of precise science and lots of references, for those who wish to dive into that.

    In the category of criticism, the diet plan section of the book is rather meat-centric, but the goal of this is protein content, not meat per se, so substitutions can easily be made. That’s just one small section of the book, though, and it’s little enough a downside that even Dr. Mark Hyman (a popular proponent of plant-based nutrition) highly recommends the book.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to be less merely fighting decline and more actually becoming healthier as you age, then this book will help you do just that.

    Click here to check out Forever Strong, and level up your wellness as you age!

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