The Two-Second Advantage – by Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney

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The titular “two-second advantage” can in some cases be literal (imagine you got a two-second head-start in a boxing match!), in other cases can refer to being just a little ahead of things in a way that can confer a great advantage, often cumulatively—as anyone who’s played Monopoly can certainly attest.

Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney give us lots of examples from business, sports, politics, economics, and more, in a way that seeks to cultivate a habit of asking the right questions in order to anticipate the future and not just be ahead of the competition—some areas of life don’t have competition for most people, like health, for example—but to generally have things “in hand”.

When it comes to personal finances, health, personal projects, and the like, those tiny initial advantages that lead to incremental further improvements, can be the difference between continually (and frantically) playing catch-up, or making the jump past breaking even to going from strength to strength.

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  • Chia Seeds vs Sunflower Seeds – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing chia seeds to sunflower, we picked the chia.

    Why?

    It was close, and they both have their merits!

    In terms of macros, chia has more carbs and a lot more fiber, while sunflower has a little more protein and a lot more fat. While the fat (in the seeds, not processed seed oils!) is mostly healthy polyunsaturated fat in both cases, chia has a lot more omega-3. All in all, we’re calling it a win for chia on macros.

    In the category of vitamins, chia has more of vitmains B3 and C, while sunflower has ore of vitamins B1, B2, B9, and E. Thus, a win for sunflower seeds this time.

    When it comes to minerals, chia has more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and selenium, while sunflower has more copper, potassium, and zinc. A 6:3 win for chia here.

    Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for chia, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value: If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out!

    Take care!

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  • How (And Why) To Train Your Pre-Frontal Cortex

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    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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  • Superfood Energy Balls

    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.

    They are healthy, they are tasty, they are convenient! Make some of these and when you need an energizing treat at silly o’clock when you don’t have time to prepare something, here they are, full of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, good for blood sugars too, and ready to go:

    You will need

    • 1 cup pitted dates
    • 1 cup raw mixed nuts
    • ¼ cup goji berries
    • 1 tbsp cocoa powder
    • 1 tsp chili flakes

    Naturally, you can adjust the spice level if you like! But this is a good starter recipe.

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Blend all the ingredients in a good processor to make a dough

    2) Roll the dough into 1″ balls; you should have enough dough for about 16 balls. If you want them to be pretty, you can roll them in some spare dry ingredients (e.g. chopped nuts, goji berries, chili flakes, seeds of some kind, whatever you have in your kitchen that fits the bill).

    3) Refrigerate for at least 1–2 hours, and serve! They can also be kept in the fridge for at least a good while—couldn’t tell you how long for sure though, because honestly, they’ve never stayed that long in the fridge without being eaten.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • The Blood Sugar Solution – by Dr. Mark Hyman
  • Resistance Beyond Weights

    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.

    Resistance, Your Way

    We’ve talked before about the importance of resistance training:

    Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

    And we’ve even talked about how to make resistance training more effective:

    HIIT, But Make It HIRT

    (High Intensity Interval Training, but make it High Intensity Resistance Training)

    Which resistance training exercises are best?

    There are two reasonable correct answers here:

    1. The resistance training exercises that you will actually do (because it’s no good knowing the best exercise ever if you’re not going to do it because it is in some way offputting to you)
    2. The resistance training exercises that will prevent you from getting a broken bone in the event of some accident or incident

    This latter is interesting, because when people think resistance training, the usually immediate go-to exercises are often things like the bench press, or the chest machine in the gym.

    But ask yourself: how often do we hear about some friend or relative who in their old age has broken their humerus?

    It can happen, for sure, but it’s not as often as breaking a hip, a tarsal (ankle bones), or a carpal (wrist bones).

    So, how can we train to make those bones strong?

    Strong bones grow under strong muscles

    When archaeologists dig up a skeleton from a thousand years ago, one of the occupations that’s easy to recognize is an archer. Why?

    An archer has an unusual frequent exercise: pushing with their left arm while pulling with their right arm. This will strengthen different muscles on each side, and thus, increase bone density in different places on each arm. The left first metacarpal and right first and second metacarpals and phalanges are also a giveaway.

    This is because: one cannot grow strong muscles on weak bones (or else the muscles would just break the bones), so training muscles will force the body to strengthen the relevant bones.

    So: if you want strong bones, train the muscles attached to those bones

    This answers the question of “how am I supposed to exercise my hips” etc.

    Weights, bodyweight, resistance bands

    If you go to the gym, there’s a machine for everything, and a member of gym staff will be able to advise which of their machines will strengthen which muscles.

    If you train with free weights at home:

    • Wrist curls (forearm supported and stationary, lifting a dumbbell in your hand, palm-upwards) will strengthen the wrist
    • The farmer’s walk (carrying a heavy weight in each hand) will also strengthen your wrist
      • A modified version of this involves holding the weight with just your fingertips, and then raising and lowering it by curling and uncurling your fingers)
    • Lateral leg raises (you will need ankle-weights for this) will strengthen your ankles and your hips, as will hip abductions (as in today’s featured video), especially with a weight attached.
    • Ankle raises (going up on your tip-toes and down again, repeat) while holding weights in your hands will strengthen your ankles

    If you don’t like weights:

    • Press-ups will strengthen your wrists
      • Fingertip press-ups are even better: to do these, do your press-ups as normal, except that the only parts of your hands in contact with the ground are your fingertips
      • This same exercise can be done the other way around, by doing pull-ups
      • And that same “even better” works by doing pull-ups, but holding the bar only with one’s fingertips, and curling one’s fingers to raise oneself up
    • Lateral leg raises and hip abductions can be done with a resistance band instead of with weights. The great thing about these is that whereas weights are a fixed weight, resistance bands will always provide the right amount of resistance (because if it’s too easy, you just raise your leg further until it becomes difficult again, since the resistance offered is proportional to how much tension the band is under).

    Remember, resistance training is still resistance training even if “all” you’re resisting is gravity!

    If it fells like work, then it’s working

    As for the rest of preparing to get older?

    Check out:

    Training Mobility Ready For Later Life

    Take care!

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  • The Dental Diet – by Dr. Steven Lin

    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.

    As it turns out, there’s a lot more to healthy teeth than skipping the sugar and getting some calcium.

    The author’s journey started with the realization that most of his work as a dentist should be unnecessary, and not just in the “you should have been flossing” sense. Rather, he came to the same conclusions as his fellow dentist Weston Price before him, and this time (unlike Price) he stuck to his own field, dentistry—meaning that the conclusions he kept were the more valid ones.

    Another thing he does better than Price is that he contextualizes the information—we don’t need, for example, to be eating seal fat as a main component of our diet, but we do need to be getting sufficient amounts of certain fat-soluble vitamins. And most people aren’t. Same with what’s good or bad for our oral microbiome, and by extension, our saliva, and by extension, our teeth and gums.

    There’s a lot of nutritional information in here; macros and micronutrients alike, but the book goes further than that, to also recommend minimally-processed food that requires more chewing, for example. Not just for its nutritional content, but because that helps our teeth move to (and then stay) where they are ideally supposed to be. No amount of perfectly-blended nutritional supplement drink will align your maxilla for you, say. But chomping on raw carrots? Different story.

    Dr. Lin offers a 40-day meal plan, but aware that if you’re vegetarian or vegan you’re probably going to have to rethink it yourself using the information he gives, because his meal plan includes animal products.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to eat for better oral health (nutritionally, physically, and for your oral microbiome), this book has all the information you’ll need.

    Click here to check out The Dental Diet, and improve yours!

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  • You can now order all kinds of medical tests online. Our research shows this is (mostly) a bad idea

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    Elena.Katkova/Shutterstock

    Many of us have done countless rapid antigen tests (RATs) over the course of the pandemic. Testing ourselves at home has become second nature.

    But there’s also a growing worldwide market in medical tests sold online directly to the public. These are “direct-to-consumer” tests, and you can access them without seeing a doctor.

    While this might sound convenient, the benefits to most consumers are questionable, as we discovered in a recent study.

    What are direct-to-consumer tests?

    Let’s start with what they’re not. We’re not talking about patients who are diagnosed with a condition, and use tests to monitor themselves (for example, finger-prick testing to monitor blood sugar levels for people with diabetes).

    We’re also not talking about home testing kits used for population screening, such as RATs for COVID, or the “poo tests” sent to people aged 50 and over for bowel cancer screening.

    Direct-to-consumer tests are products marketed to anyone who is willing to pay, without going through their GP. They can include hormone profiling tests, tests for thyroid disease and food sensitivity tests, among many others.

    Some direct-to-consumer tests allow you to complete the test at home, while self-collected lab tests give you the equipment to collect a sample, which you then send to a lab. You can now also buy pathology requests for a lab directly from a company without seeing a doctor.

    Hands preparing a RAT.
    We’ve all become accustomed to RATs during the pandemic.
    Ground Picture/Shutterstock

    What we did in our study

    We searched (via Google) for direct-to-consumer products advertised for sale online in Australia between June and December 2021. We then assessed whether each test was likely to provide benefits to those who use them based on scientific literature published about the tests, and any recommendations either for or against their use from professional medical organisations.

    We identified 103 types of tests and 484 individual products ranging in price from A$12.99 to A$1,947.

    We concluded only 11% of these tests were likely to benefit most consumers. These included tests for STIs, where social stigma can sometimes discourage people from testing at a clinic.

    A further 31% could possibly benefit a person, if they were at higher risk. For example, if a person had symptoms of thyroid disease, a test may benefit them. But the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners does not recommend testing for thyroid disease in people without symptoms because evidence showing benefits of identifying and treating people with early thyroid disease is lacking.

    Some 42% were commercial “health checks” such as hormone and nutritional status tests. Although these are legitimate tests – they may be ordered by a doctor in certain circumstances, or be used in research – they have limited usefulness for consumers.

    A test of your hormone or vitamin levels at a particular time can’t do much to help you improve your health, especially because test results change depending on the time of day, month or season you test.

    Most worryingly, 17% of the tests were outright “quackery” that wouldn’t be recommended by any mainstream health practitioner. For example, hair analysis for assessing food allergies is unproven and can lead to misdiagnosis and ineffective treatments.

    More than half of the tests we looked at didn’t state they offered a pre- or post-test consultation.

    A woman opening a box, which sits on her lap.
    Ordering medical tests online probably isn’t a good idea.
    fizkes/Shutterstock

    Products available may change outside the time frame of our study, and direct-to-consumer tests not promoted or directly purchasable online, such as those offered in pharmacies or by commercial health clinics, were not included.

    But in Australia, ours is the first and only study we know of mapping the scale and variety of direct-to-consumer tests sold online.

    Research from other countries has similarly found a lack of evidence to support the majority of direct-to-consumer tests.

    4 questions to ask before you buy a test online

    Many direct-to-consumer tests offer limited benefits, and could even lead to harms. Here are four questions you should ask yourself if you’re considering buying a medical test online.

    1. If I do this test, could I end up with extra medical appointments or treatments I don’t need?

    Doing a test yourself might seem harmless (it’s just information, after all), but unnecessary tests often find issues that would never have caused you problems.

    For example, someone taking a diabetes test may find moderately high blood sugar levels see them labelled as “pre-diabetic”. However, this diagnosis has been controversial, regarded by many as making patients out of healthy people, a large number of whom won’t go on to develop diabetes.

    2. Would my GP recommend this test?

    If you have worrying symptoms or risk factors, your GP can recommend the best tests for you. Tests your GP orders are more likely to be covered by Medicare, so will cost you a lot less than a direct-to-consumer test.

    3. Is this a good quality test?

    A good quality home self-testing kit should indicate high sensitivity (the proportion of true cases that will be accurately detected) and high specificity (the proportion of people who don’t have the disease who will be accurately ruled out). These figures should ideally be in the high 90s, and clearly printed on the product packaging.

    For tests analysed in a lab, check if the lab is accredited by the National Association of Testing Authorities. Avoid tests sent to overseas labs, where Australian regulators can’t control the quality, or the protection of your sample or personal health information.

    4. Do I really need this test?

    There are lots of reasons to want information from a test, like peace of mind, or just curiosity. But unless you have clear symptoms and risk factors, you’re probably testing yourself unnecessarily and wasting your money.

    Direct-to-consumer tests might seem like a good idea, but in most cases, you’d be better off letting sleeping dogs lie if you feel well, or going to your GP if you have concerns.The Conversation

    Patti Shih, Senior Lecturer, Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values, University of Wollongong; Fiona Stanaway, Associate Professor in Clinical Epidemiology, University of Sydney; Katy Bell, Associate Professor in Clinical Epidemiology, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, and Stacy Carter, Professor and Director, Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values, University of Wollongong

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

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