The Silent Struggle – by L. William Ross-Child, MLC
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The vast majority of literature out there about ADHD is about children. And fair enough, there are enough popular misunderstandings of ADHD in children so it’s good those works exist… but what about adults?
Adults face different challenges than children, and have different responsibilities. People have different expectations. And even if you say you have ADHD… If you’re not behaving like a squirrel, they will often not accept this, much less understand it, because half the actual symptoms are not what most people think they are.
Ross-Child first lays out the neurobiological underpinnings of ADHD. This is a good place to start, because the physiology of it explains a lot of the other parts of it that can otherwise seem quite mystifying.
Thereafter, he looks one-by-one at the various cognitive and behavioral aspects of ADHD in adults, which will surely help the reader to better understand themself (or perhaps a loved one).
The next part of the book is given over to an exploration of ADHD and the differences it can make in the workplace, relationships (incl. ADHD and sex), as well as parenting, and how these things can all be navigated better by all concerned.
The style throughout is light and very readable, peppered with science made comprehensible. If there’s any flaw, it’s that there are only two pages of references in the bibliography—we’d have liked to have seen more.
All in all though, a really useful guide if you or a loved one has ADHD and you’d like strategies for working with (or around) this condition in a world not made to be kind to such.
Order your copy of “The Silent Struggle: Taking Charge of ADHD in Adults” from Amazon today!
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The Magic Of Mindful Self-Awareness − by Matt Tenny
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As the author is not a Dr. Matt Tenny, you may wonder his qualifications. In this case, the answer is summed up in the title of the first part of the book, “How I discovered unconditional happiness on my journey from prisoner to monk to social entrepreneur”. In other words, this one’s about personal experience of changing his life considerably.
Part two, however, is where the actual practical content starts, with such topics as:
- How to be free from your thoughts so you can stop overthinking and enjoy the present moment
- How to clear your mind and make the practice of self-awareness (almost) effortless
- How to transform mundane activities into magical moments and be happy 95% of the time
You may be wondering about the other 5%; i.e. will this not work for some things? The answer is rather that sometimes we will experience emotions that are considered negative, and that’s ok. It need not be much of the time, but if we didn’t experience them at all, we’d just normalize a new set point and consider the least enjoyable 5% of that to be negative.
And indeed, part three is “how to be at peace during the 5% of life that is truly painful, and live a deeply meaningful life”.
Which, honestly, is a very important life skill, and this alone is worth the price of the book if you don’t already have this skill (and if you do, then condolences for however you got it, but congratulations on having it).
The style is quite personal and direct, and—unlike that of a lot of CEO-monk types—surprisingly down-to-earth and (actually!) mindfully self-aware.
Bottom line: if you’d like to be at peace in life with more practical advice than just “practice some mindfulness meditation”, then this book could be just the turning point you need.
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What’s the difference between ‘man flu’ and flu? Hint: men may not be exaggerating
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What’s the difference? is a new editorial product that explains the similarities and differences between commonly confused health and medical terms, and why they matter.
The term “man flu” takes a humorous poke at men with minor respiratory infections, such as colds, who supposedly exaggerate their symptoms.
According to the stereotype, a man lies on the sofa with a box of tissues. Meanwhile his female partner, also with a snotty nose, carries on working from home, doing the chores and looking after him.
But is man flu real? Is there a valid biological reason behind men’s symptoms or are men just malingering? And how does man flu differ from flu?
baranq/Shutterstock What are the similarities?
Man flu could refer to a number of respiratory infections – a cold, flu, even a mild case of COVID. So it’s difficult to compare man flu with flu.
But for simplicity, let’s say man flu is actually a cold. If that’s the case, man flu and flu have some similar features.
Both are caused by viruses (but different ones). Both are improved with rest, fluids, and if needed painkillers, throat lozenges or decongestants to manage symptoms.
Both can share similar symptoms. Typically, more severe symptoms such as fever, body aches, violent shivering and headaches are more common in flu (but sometimes occur in colds). Meanwhile sore throats, runny noses, congestion and sneezing are more common in colds. A cough is common in both.
What are the differences?
Flu is a more serious and sometimes fatal respiratory infection caused by the influenza virus. Colds are caused by various viruses such as rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, and common cold coronaviruses, and are rarely serious.
Colds tend to start gradually while flu tends to start abruptly.Flu can be detected with laboratory or at-home tests. Man flu is not an official diagnosis.
Severe flu symptoms may be prevented with a vaccine, while cold symptoms cannot.
Serious flu infections may also be prevented or treated with antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu. There are no antivirals for colds.
OK, but is man flu real?
Again, let’s assume man flu is a cold. Do men really have worse colds than women? The picture is complicated.
One study, with the title “Man flu is not a thing”, did in fact show there were differences in men’s and women’s symptoms.
This study looked at symptoms of acute rhinosinusitis. That’s inflammation of the nasal passages and sinuses, which would explain a runny or stuffy nose, a sinus headache or face pain.
When researchers assessed participants at the start of the study, men and women had similar symptoms. But by days five and eight of the study, women had fewer or less-severe symptoms. In other words, women had recovered faster.
But when participants rated their own symptoms, we saw a somewhat different picture. Women rated their symptoms worse than how the researchers rated them at the start, but said they recovered more quickly.
All this suggests men were not exaggerating their symptoms and did indeed recover more slowly. It also suggests women feel their symptoms more strongly at the start.
Why is this happening?
It’s not straightforward to tease out what’s going on biologically.
There are differences in immune responses between men and women that provide a plausible reason for worse symptoms in men.
For instance, women generally produce antibodies more efficiently, so they respond more effectively to vaccination. Other aspects of women’s immune system also appear to work more strongly.
So why do women tend to have stronger immune responses overall? That’s probably partly because women have two X chromosomes while men have one. X chromosomes carry important immune function genes. This gives women the benefit of immune-related genes from two different chromosomes.
X chromosomes carry important immune function genes. Rost9/Shutterstock Oestrogen (the female sex hormone) also seems to strengthen the immune response, and as levels vary throughout the lifespan, so does the strength of women’s immune systems.
Men are certainly more likely to die from some infectious diseases, such as COVID. But the picture is less clear with other infections such as the flu, where the incidence and mortality between men and women varies widely between countries and particular flu subtypes and outbreaks.
Infection rates and outcomes in men and women can also depend on the way a virus is transmitted, the person’s age, and social and behavioural factors.
For instance, women seem to be more likely to practice protective behaviours such as washing their hands, wearing masks or avoiding crowded indoor spaces. Women are also more likely to seek medical care when ill.
So men aren’t faking it?
Some evidence suggests men are not over-reporting symptoms, and may take longer to clear an infection. So they may experience man flu more harshly than women with a cold.
So cut the men in your life some slack. If they are sick, gender stereotyping is unhelpful, and may discourage men from seeking medical advice.
Thea van de Mortel, Professor, Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Grains: Bread Of Life, Or Cereal Killer?
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Going Against The Grain?
In Wednesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your health-related opinion of grains (aside from any gluten-specific concerns), and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 69% said “They are an important cornerstone of a healthy balanced diet”
- About 22% said “They can be enjoyed in moderation, but watch out”
- About 8% said “They are terrible health-drainers that will kill us”
So, what does the science say?
They are terrible health-drainers that will kill us: True or False?
True or False depending on the manner of their consumption!
There is a big difference between the average pizza base and a bowl of oats, for instance. Or rather, there are a lot of differences, but what’s most critical here?
The key is: refined and ultraprocessed grains are so inferior to whole grains as to be actively negative for health in most cases for most people most of the time.
But! It’s not because processing is ontologically evil (in reality: some processed foods are healthy, and some unprocessed foods are poisonous). although it is a very good general rule of thumb.
So, we need to understand the “why” behind the “key” that we just gave above, and that’s mostly about the resultant glycemic index and associated metrics (glycemic load, insulin index, etc).
In the case of refined and ultraprocessed grains, our body gains sugar faster than it can process it, and stores it wherever and however it can, like someone who has just realised that they will be entertaining a houseguest in 10 minutes and must tidy up super-rapidly by hiding things wherever they’ll fit.
And when the body tries to do this with sugar from refined grains, the result is very bad for multiple organs (most notably the liver, but the pancreas takes quite a hit too) which in turn causes damage elsewhere in the body, not to mention that we now have urgently-produced fat stored in unfortunate places like our liver and abdominal cavity when it should have gone to subcutaneous fat stores instead.
In contrast, whole grains come with fiber that slows down the absorption of the sugars, such that the body can deal with them in an ideal fashion, which usually means:
- using them immediately, or
- storing them as muscle glycogen, or
- storing them as subcutaneous fat
👆 that’s an oversimplification, but we only have so much room here.
For more on this, see:
Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load vs Insulin Index
And for why this matters, see:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
And for fixing it, see:
They can be enjoyed in moderation, but watch out: True or False?
Technically True but functionally False:
- Technically true: “in moderation” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. One person’s “moderation” may be another person’s “abstemiousness” or “gluttony”.
- Functionally false: while of course extreme consumption of pretty much anything is going to be bad, unless you are Cereals Georg eating 10,000 cereals each day and being a statistical outlier, the issue is not the quantity so much as the quality.
Quality, we discussed above—and that is, as we say, paramount. As for quantity however, you might want to know a baseline for “getting enough”, so…
They are an important cornerstone of a healthy balanced diet: True or False?
True! This one’s quite straightforward.
3 servings (each being 90g, or about ½ cup) of whole grains per day is associated with a 22% reduction in risk of heart disease, 5% reduction in all-cause mortality, and a lot of benefits across a lot of disease risks:
❝This meta-analysis provides further evidence that whole grain intake is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer, and mortality from all causes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes.
These findings support dietary guidelines that recommend increased intake of whole grain to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature mortality.❞
~ Dr. Dagfinn Aune et al.
We’d like to give a lot more sources for the same findings, as well as papers for all the individual claims, but frankly, there are so many that there isn’t room. Suffice it to say, this is neither controversial nor uncertain; these benefits are well-established.
Here’s a very informative pop-science article, that also covers some of the things we discussed earlier (it shows what happens during refinement of grains) before getting on to recommendations and more citations for claims than we can fit here:
Harvard School Of Public Health | Whole Grains
“That’s all great, but what if I am concerned about gluten?”
There certainly are reasons you might be, be it because of a sensitivity, allergy, or just because perhaps you’d like to know more.
Let’s first mention: not all grains contain gluten, so it’s perfectly possible to enjoy naturally gluten-free grains (such as oats and rice) as well as gluten-free pseudocereals, which are not actually grains but do the same job in culinary and nutritional terms (such as quinoa and buckwheat, despite the latter’s name).
Finally, if you’d like to know more about gluten’s health considerations, then check out our previous mythbusting special:
Enjoy!
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Life After Death? (Your Life; A Loved One’s Death)
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The Show Must Go On
We’ve previously written about the topics of death and dying. It’s not cheery, but it is important to tackle.
Sooner is better than later, in the case of:
Preparations For Managing Your Own Mortality
And for those who are left behind, of course it is hardest of all:
What Grief Does To Your Body (And How To Manage It)
But what about what comes next? For those who are left behind, that is.
Life goes on
In cases when the death is that of a close loved one, the early days after death can seem like a surreal blur. How can the world go ticking on as normal when [loved one] is dead?
But incontrovertibly, it does, so we can only ask again: how?
And, we get to choose that, to a degree. The above-linked article about grief gives a “101” rundown, but it’s (by necessity, for space) a scant preparation for one of the biggest challenges in life that most of us will ever face.
For many people, processing grief involves a kind of “saying goodbye”. For others, it doesn’t, as in the following cases of grieving the loss of one’s child—something no parent should ever have to face, but it happens:
Dr. Ken Druck | The Love That Never Dies
(with warning, the above article is a little heavy)
In short: for those who choose not to “say goodbye” in the case of the death of a loved one, it’s more often not a case of cold neglect, but rather the opposite—a holding on. Not in the “denial” sense of holding on, but rather in the sense of “I am not letting go of this feeling of love, no matter how much it might hurt to hold onto; it’s all I have”.
What about widows, and love after death?
Note: we’ll use the feminine “widow” here as a) it’s the most common and b) most scientific literature focuses on widows, but there is no reason why most of the same things won’t also apply to widowers.
We say “most”, as society does tend to treat widows and widowers differently, having different expectations about a respectful mourning period, one’s comportment during same, and so on.
As an aside: most scientific literature also assumes heterosexuality, which is again statistically reasonable, and for the mostpart the main difference is any extra challenges presented by non-recognition of marriages, and/or homophobic in-laws. But otherwise, grief is grief, and as the saying goes, love is love.
One last specificity before we get into the meat of this: we are generally assuming marriages to be monogamous here. Polyamorous arrangements will likely sidestep most of these issues completely, but again, they’re not the norm.
Firstly, there’s a big difference between remarrying (or similar) after being widowed, and remarrying (or similar) after a divorce, and that largely lies in the difference of how they begin. A divorce is (however stressful it may often be) more often seen as a transition into a new period of freedom, whereas bereavement is almost always felt as a terrible loss.
The science, by the way, shows the stats for this; people are less likely to remarry, and slower to remarry if they do, in instances of bereavement rather than divorce, for example:
Timing of Remarriage Among Divorced and Widowed Parents
Love after death: the options
For widows, then, there seem to be multiple options:
- Hold on to the feelings for one’s deceased partner; never remarry
- Grieve, move on, find new love, relegating the old to history
- Try to balance the two (this is tricky but can be done*)
*Why is balancing the two tricky, and how can it be done?
It’s tricky because ultimately there are three people’s wishes at hand:
- The deceased (“they would want me to be happy” vs “I feel I would be betraying them”—which two feelings can also absolutely come together, by the way)
- Yourself (whether you actually want to get a new partner, or just remain single—this is your 100% your choice either way, and your decision should be made consciously)
- The new love (how comfortable are they with your continued feelings for your late love, really?)
And obviously only two of the above can be polled for opinions, and the latter one might say what they think we want to hear, only to secretly and/or later resent it.
One piece of solid advice for the happily married: talk with your partner now about how you each would feel about the other potentially remarrying in the event of your death. Do they have your pre-emptive blessing to do whatever, do you ask a respectable mourning period first (how long?), would the thought just plain make you jealous? Be honest, and bid your partner be honest too.
One piece of solid advice for everyone: make sure you, and your partner(s), as applicable, have a good emotional safety net, if you can. Close friends or family members that you genuinely completely trust to be there through thick and thin, to hold your/their hand through the emotional wreck that will likely follow.
Because, while depression and social loneliness are expected and looked out for, it’s emotional loneliness that actually hits the hardest, for most people:
Longitudinal Examination of Emotional Functioning in Older Adults After Spousal Bereavement
…which means that having even just one close friend or family member with whom one can be at one’s absolute worst, express emotions without censure, not have to put on the socially expected appearance of emotional stability… Having that one person (ideally more, but having at least one is critical) can make a huge difference.
But what if a person has nobody?
That’s definitely a hard place to be, but here’s a good starting point:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Take care!
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Vodka vs Beer – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing vodka to beer, we picked the vodka.
Why?
As you might have guessed, neither are exactly healthy. But one of them is relatively, and we stress relatively, less bad than the other.
In the category of nutrients, vodka is devoid of nutrients, and beer has small amounts of some vitamins and minerals—but the amounts are so small, that you would need to drink yourself to death before benefiting from them meaningfully. And while beer gets touted as “liquid bread”, it really isn’t. A thousand years ago it will have been a lot less alcoholic and more carby, but even then, it wasn’t a health product aside from that it provided a way of making potentially contaminated water safer to drink.
In the category of carbohydrates, vodka nominally has none, due to the distillation process, and beer has some. Glycemic index websites often advise that the GI of beers, wines, and spirits can’t be measured as their carb content is not sufficient to get a meaningful sample, but diabetes research tells a more useful story:
Any alcoholic drink will generally cause a brief drop in blood sugars, followed by a spike. This happens because the liver prioritises metabolizing alcohol over producing glycogen, so it hits pause on the sugar metabolism and then has a backlog to catch up on. In the case of alcoholic drinks that have alcohol and carbs, this will be more pronounced—so this means that the functional glycemic load of beer is higher.
That’s a point in favor of vodka.
Additionally, in terms of the alcohol content, correctly-distilled vodka’s alcohol is pure ethanol, while beer will contain an amount of methanol that will vary per beer, but an illustrative nominal figure could be about 16mg/L. Methanol is more harmful than ethanol.
So that’s another point in favor of vodka.
Once again, neither drink is healthy; both are distinctly unhealthy. But unit for unit, beer is the least healthy of the two, making vodka the lesser of two evils.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Can We Drink To Good Health? (answer: we cannot, but this was about alcohol’s proposed heart-healthy benefits)
- Guinness Is Good For You* (it isn’t, but this was the long-time slogan and marketing campaign that fooled many)
- How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
- How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
Take care!
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Chickpeas vs Peas – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing chickpeas to peas, we picked the chickpeas.
Why?
Both are great! But…
In terms of macros, chickpeas have more protein, fiber, and carbs, the ratio of which latter two also gives them the lower glycemic index. It’s worth noting that peas are not far behind chickpeas here, but by the numbers, it’s a win for chickpeas in this category.
In the category of vitamins, chickpeas have more of vitamins B9, E, and choline, while peas have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, C, and K. So, a win for peas this time!
When it comes to minerals, however, chickpeas have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while peas are not higher in any minerals.
Adding up the sections gives a 2:1 victory for chickpeas, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head
Enjoy!
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