The Pain-Free Mindset – by Dr. Deepak Ravindran
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First: please ignore the terrible title. This is not the medical equivalent of “think and grow rich”. A better title would have been something like “The Pain-Free Plan”.
Attentive subscribers may notice that this author was our featured expert yesterday, so you can learn about his “seven steps” described in our article there, without us repeating that in our review here.
This book’s greatest strength is also potentially its greatest weakness, depending on the reader: it contains a lot of detailed medical information.
This is good or bad depending on whether you like lots of detailed medical information. Dr. Ravindran doesn’t assume prior knowledge, so everything is explained as we go. However, this means that after his well-referenced clinical explanations, high quality medical diagrams, etc, you may come out of this book feeling like you’ve just done a semester at medical school.
Knowledge is power, though, so understanding the underlying processes of pain and pain management really does help the reader become a more informed expert on your own pain—and options for reducing that pain.
Bottom line: this, disguised by its cover as a “think healing thoughts” book, is actually a science-centric, information-dense, well-sourced, comprehensive guide to pain management from one of the leading lights in the field.
Click here to check out The Pain-Free Mindset, and manage yours more comfortably!
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The Truth About Chocolate & Skin Health
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
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
❝What’s the science on chocolate and acne? Asking for a family member❞
The science is: these two things are broadly unrelated to each other.
There was a very illustrative study done specifically for this, though!
❝65 subjects with moderate acne ate either a bar containing ten times the amount of chocolate in a typical bar, or an identical-appearing bar which contained no chocolate. Counting of all the lesions on one side of the face before and after each ingestion period indicated no difference between the bars.
Five normal subjects ingested two enriched chocolate bars daily for one month; this represented a daily addition of the diet of 1,200 calories, of which about half was vegetable fat. This excessive intake of chocolate and fat did not alter the composition or output of sebum.
A review of studies purporting to show that diets high in carbohydrate or fat stimulate sebaceous secretion and adversely affect acne vulgaris indicates that these claims are unproved.❞
Source: Effect of Chocolate on Acne Vulgaris
As for what might help against acne more than needlessly abstaining from chocolate:
Why Do We Have Pores, And Could We Not?
…as well as:
Of Brains & Breakouts: The Neuroscience Of Your Skin
And here are some other articles that might interest you about chocolate:
- Chocolate & Health: Fact or Fiction?
- The “Love Drug”: Get PEA-Brained!
- Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
Enjoy! And while we have your attention… Would you like this section to be bigger? If so, send us more questions!
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The Problem With Active Listening
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The problem with active listening
Listening is an important skill to keep well-trained at any age. It’s important in romantic relationships, parent-child relationships, friendships, and more.
First, for any unfamiliar or hazy-of-memory: active listening is the practice of listening, actively. The “active” side of this comes in several parts:
- Asking helpful questions
- Giving feedback to indicate that the answer has been understood
- Prompting further information-giving
This can look like:
- A: How did you feel when that happened?
- B: My heart was racing and I felt panicked, it really shocked me
- A: It really shocked you?
- B: Yes, because it was so unexpected; I’d never imagined something like this happening
- A: You’d never expect something like that
- B: No, I mean, I had no reason to
And… As a superficial listening technique, it’s not terrible, and it has its place
But unfortunately, if it’s one’s only listening technique, one will very quickly start sounding like a Furby—that children’s toy from the 90s that allegedly randomly parroted fragments of things that had been said to it. In fact this was a trick of programming, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
The point is: the above technique, if used indiscriminately and/or too often, starts to feel like talking to a very basic simulacrum.
Which is the opposite of feeling like being listened to!
A better way to listen
Start off similarly, but better.
Ask open questions, or otherwise invite sharing of information.
People can be resistant to stock phrases like “How did that make you feel?”, but this can be got around by simply changing it up, e.g.:
- “What was your reaction?” ← oblique but often elicits the same information
- “I’m not sure how I’d feel about that, in your shoes” ← not even a question, but shows active attention much better than the “mmhmm” noises of traditional active listening, and again prompts the same information
Express understanding… But better
People have been told “I understand” a lot, and often it’s code for “Stop talking”. So, avoid “I understand”. Instead, try:
- “I can understand that”
- “Understandable”
- “That makes sense”
Ask clarifying questions… Better
Sometimes, a clarifying question doesn’t have to have its own point, beyond prompting more sharing, and sometimes, an “open question” can be truly wide open, meaning that vaguer is better, such as:
- “Oh?”
- “How so?” ← this is the heavy artillery that can open up a lot
Know when to STFU
Something that good therapists (and also military interrogators) know: when to STFU
If someone is talking, don’t interrupt them. If you do, they might not start again, or might skip what they were going to say.
Interruption says “I think you’ve said all that needs to be said there”, or else, if the interruption was to ask one of the above questions, it says “you’re not doing a good enough job of talking”, and neither of those sentiments encourage people to share, nor do they make someone feel listened-to!
Instead, just listen. Passive listening has its place too! When there’s a break, then you can go to one of the above questions/prompts/expressions of understanding, as appropriate.
Judge not, lest they feel judged
Reserve judgement until the conversation is over, at the earliest. If asked for your judgement of some aspect, be as reassuring as you can. People feel listened-to when they don’t feel judged.
If they feel judged, conversely, they can often feel you didn’t listen properly, or else you’d be in agreement with them. So instead, just sit on it for as long as you can.
Note: that goes for positive judgements too! Sit on it. Expressing a positive judgement too soon can seem that you were simply eager to please, and can suggest insincerity.
If this seems simple, that’s because it is. But, try it, and see the difference.
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The Book Of Hormones – by Dr. Shweta Patel
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The subtitle promising “through every stage of life” is a slight overstatement, as the book barely touches on puberty, but we know that the vast majority of our readers have left that one far behind in the past, so probably this is not such an issue.
Where the book gives more attention is in general adult life, through the years of potential fertility, into menopause and beyond. This means lots about the hormonal fluctuations inherent to the menstrual cycle (both the normal, and the still-quite-commonly abnormal, e.g. in cases of PCOS etc), the before-during-after of pregnancy, and many hormonal matters that are not related to sex hormones, such as stress-related hormones and food-related hormones. As such, the book certainly lives up to its title; it is indeed “the book of hormones”.
The style is light and conversational; we get a lot of lessons in chemistry here, but it never feels like it, and there’s certainly no hard science, just clear and easy explanations.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand hormones quite comprehensively but in a light-hearted manner, this book is a very pleasant and educational read.
Click here to check out The Book Of Hormones, and understand them!
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The Keys to Good Mental Wellbeing
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The Nine Keys To Good Mental Wellbeing
Today’s main feature is a bit “pop psychology”, but it has its underpinnings in actual psychology, and is especially useful if approached from that angle.
What it’s most popularly enjoyed as:
- A personality-typing system.
- People love little quizzes and identifiers and such.
What it’s actually really useful as:
- A tool for understanding why people (including ourselves) are the way we are
- A foundational knowledge for living better ourselves, and helping others too
This stems from the fairly simple principle, uncontroversial in psychology:
- We have needs, desires, and aversions
- We act in a way that tries to get our needs met and avoid suffering
- Thus: Need/Fear → Motivation → Action
The Enneagram
The Enneagram (ἐννέα = “nine” in Ancient Greek) system posits that we each have one fundamental need/fear (from a list of nine) that’s strongest for us. A deep-seated insecurity/longing, that we’ll go to almost any lengths to try to meet. Sometimes, in good ways, sometimes, bad.
The Nine Basic Fears/Insecurities, And Their Corresponding Needs/Desires:
- Fear of being a fundamentally bad, wrong person / Need to be good and correct
- Fear of being fundamentally unloveable / Need to be loved
- Fear of being fundamentally worthless / Need to be valued
- Fear of being like everyone else / Need to be different
- Fear of being useless / Need to be useful
- Fear of being outcast / Need to have a set place in the group
- Fear of missing out / Need to experience things
- Fear of being hurt or controlled / Need to be in control
- Fear of conflict / Need to be at peace
Of course, most of us have most of these fears/needs to some extent, though usually one will stand out—especially if we aren’t managing it well. The less healthy our coping mechanisms, the more obvious it is how we’re trying to overcompensate in some fashion. For example:
- A person who fears being wrong and so becomes a perfectionist rules-abider to a fault
- A person who fears being unloveable, and so exaggerates problems to get pity, as the next best thing
- A person who fears being worthless, and so exaggerates their accomplishments in order to be admired and valued
- A person who fears being like everyone else, and so descends into a “nobody could ever possibly understand me” black hole of pathos.
- A person who fears being useless, so burns themself out trying to be an omnicompetent Leonardo da Vinci without ever actually taking the time to stop and smell the flowers as Leonardo did.
- A person who fears being outcast, so becomes clingy, passive-aggressive, and suspicious
- A person who fears missing out, so tries to experience all the things all the time, ruining their health with dizzying highs and crushing lows.
- A person who fears being hurt or controlled, so becomes aggressive and domineering
- A person who fears conflict, so shuts down at the slightest hint of it
If we have healthier coping mechanisms, these same nine people can look a lot different, but in much more subtle ways because we’re not trying to overcompensate so badly:
- A person who lives their life rationally by principles that can be adapted as they learn
- A person who loves and is loved, as perhaps the most notable part of their character
- A person who sets reasonable goals and accomplishes them, and seeks to uplift others
- A person who creates and innovates, enriching their own life and the lives of others
- A person who is simply very competent and knowledgeable, without overstretching
- A person who is dependable and loyal, and a reliable part of something bigger than themself
- A person who is fun to be around and loves trying new things, while also knowing how to relax
- A person who develops their leadership skills and is a tower of strength for others
- A person who knows how to make peace and does so—by themself, and with others
By being aware of our own fears/insecurities that may drive our motivations and thus underpin our behaviors, we can usually manage them in a much more mindful fashion. Same goes when it comes to managing interactions with other people, too:
- Letting the Type 3 know you value them, not their accomplishments or what they can do for you.
- Appreciating the Type 5’s (varied or specialist) skills and knowledge.
- Giving love to a Type 2 unprompted, but on your own terms, with your own boundaries.
- And so on for other types
Or for yourself…
- As a Type 8, remembering that you can let go sometimes and let someone else be in charge.
- As a Type 1, catching yourself holding yourself (or others) to impossible standards, and then easing up on that a little.
- As a Type 9, remembering to stand up for yourself and others, however gently, but firmly.
- And so on for other types
If you’re unsure what to focus on, ask yourself: what’s your worst nightmare or greatest daydream? Then work out what it is about that, that makes it feel so bad or good.
Then, approach things mindfully. Catch yourself in your unhealthy coping mechanisms, and find healthy ones instead.
What if I get my type wrong? Or I get someone else’s type wrong?
Obviously it’s better to get them right for maximum effect, but you can never go too far wrong anyway… because we all have all nine of those qualities in us, it’s just a matter of how strong a factor each is for us. So in the worst case scenario, you’ll make someone feel more secure about something that was only a very minor insecurity for them, for example.
Or in the case of your own type, you may mistakenly think you’re acing being the world’s healthiest Type 5, until you realize you’re actually a Type 3 who thought learning all those things would make you more worthy (spoiler: those things are great, but you’re worthy already). Again, not the end of the world! No matter what, you’re learning and growing, and that’s good.
Want to delve further?
Read: The Nine Enneagram Type Descriptions (Basic, but more detailed descriptions than the above)
Read: How The Enneagram System Works (More complex. Now we’re getting into the more arcane stuff we didn’t have time for today—wings and lines, triads, health levels, directions of integration and disintegration, and more)
Like learning from books? Here are our top two picks, depending on your learning style:
- The Wisdom of the Enneagram – Very comprehensive textbook and guide to improving your coping mechanism and growing as a person.
- The Enneagram Made Easy – it explains it with cartoons!
We’d love to offer a quick free test here, but all the tests we could find either require paid registration or are wildly inaccurate, so we’ll not waste your time.
However, we do also think that working it out for yourself is better, as it means you have a handle on what those ideas, fears, insecurities, desires, needs, really mean to you—that way you can actually use the information!
We’ll close by repeating our previous advice: If you’re unsure what to focus on, ask yourself: what’s your worst nightmare or greatest daydream? Then work out what it is about those scenarios that make them so bad or good. That’ll help you find your real fears/needs, such that you can work on them.
Good luck!
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The Starch Solution – by Dr. John McDougall & Mary McDougall
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Carb-strong or carb-wrong? We’ve written about this ourselves before, and it comes down to clarifying questions of what and how and why. Even within the general field of carbs, even within the smaller field of starch, not all foods are equal. A slice of white bread and a baked potato are both starchy, but the latter also contains fiber, vitamins, minerals, and suchlike.
The authors make the case for a whole-foods plant-based diet in which one need not shy away from starchy foods in general; one simply must enjoy them discriminately—whole grains, and root vegetables that have not been processed to Hell and back, for examples.
The style is “old-school pop-sci” but with modern science; claims are quite well-sourced throughout, with nine pages of bibliography at the end. Right after the ninety-nine pages of recipes!
Bottom line: if you’re a carb-enjoyer, all is definitely not lost healthwise, and in fact on the contrary, this can be the foundation of a very healthy and nutrient-rich diet.
Click here to check out The Starch Solution, and enjoy the foods you love, healthily!
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Ikigai – by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
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Ikigai is the Japanese term for what in English we often call “raison d’être”… in French, because English is like that.
But in other words: ikigai is one’s purpose in life, one’s reason for living.
The authors of this work spend some chapters extolling the virtues of finding one’s ikigai, and the health benefits that doing so can convey. It is, quite clearly, an important and relevant factor.
The rest of the book goes beyond that, though, and takes a holistic look at why (and how) healthy longevity is enjoyed by:
- Japanese people in general,
- Okinawans in particular,
- Residents of Okinawa’s “blue zone” village with the highest percentage of supercentenarians, most of all.
Covering considerations from ikigai to diet to small daily habits to attitudes to life, we’re essentially looking at a blueprint for healthy longevity.
For a book whose title and cover suggests a philosophy-heavy content, there’s a lot of science in here too, by the way! From microbiology to psychiatry to nutrition science to cancer research, this book covers all bases.
In short: this book gives a lot of good science-based suggestions for adjustments we can make to our lives, without moving to an Okinawan village!
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