The Wandering Mind – by Dr. Michael Corballis
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Our mind’s tendency to wander can be a disability, but could it also be a superpower? Dr. Corballis makes the case for such.
While many authors focus on, well, how to focus, Dr. Corballis argues in this book that our wandering imagination can be more effective at problem-solving and creative tasks, than a focused, blinkered mind.
The book’s a quick read (184 pages of quite light reading), and yet still quite dense with content. He takes us on a tour of the brain, theory of mind, the Default Mode Network (where a lot of the brain’s general ongoing organization occurs), learning, memory, forgetting, and creativity.
Furthermore, he cites (and explains) studies showing what kinds of “breaks” from mental work allow the wandering mind to do its thing at peak efficiency, and what kinds of breaks are counterproductive. Certainly this has practical applications for all of us!
Bottom line: if you’d like to be less frustrated by your mind’s tendency to wander, this is a fine book to show how to leverage that trait to your benefit.
Click here to check out The Wandering Mind, and set yours onto more useful tracks!
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The Collagen Cure – by Dr. James DiNicolantonio
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Collagen is vital for, well, most of our bodies, really. Where me most tend to feel its deficiency is in our joints and skin, but it’s critical for bones and many other tissues too.
You may be wondering: why a 572-page book to say what surely must amount to “take collagen, duh”?
Dr. DiNicolantonio has a lot more of value to offer us than that. In this book, we learn about not just collagen synthesis and usage, different types of collagen, the metabolism of it in our diet (if we get it—vegans and vegetarians won’t). We also learn about the building blocks of collagen (vegans and vegetarians do get these, assuming a healthy balanced diet), with a special focus on glycine, the smallest amino acid which makes up about a third of the mass of collagen (a protein).
Not stopping there, we also learn about the interplay of other nutrients with our metabolism of glycine and, if applicable, collagen. Vitamin C and copper are star features, but there’s a lot more going on with other nutrients too, down to the level of “So take this 75 minutes before this but after that and/but definitely not with the other”, etc.
The style is incredibly clear and readable for something that’s also quite scientifically dense (over 1000 references and many diagrams).
Bottom line: if you’re serious about maintaining your body as you get older, and you’d like a book about collagen that’s a lot more helpful than “take collagen, duh”, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Collagen Cure, and take care of yours!
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Maximize Your Misery! (7 Great Methods)
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Let’s imagine that instead of being healthily fulfilled in life, you wanted to spend your days as miserable as possible. What should you do?
Here are a few pointers:
Stay still
Avoid physical activity and/or outdoor exposure, to avoid any mood-lifting neurochemicals. In fact, remain indoors as much as possible, preferably in the same room.
If you want to absolutely maximize your misery, make your bedroom the sole space for all activities that it’s possible to do there.
Disrupt your sleep
Keep an irregular sleep schedule by varying your bedtime and wake-up times frequently. Sleep in as much as possible, and make up for it by staying up late to ensure ongoing exhaustion.
Maximize screentime
Use digital entertainment as much as possible to distract you from meaningful activities and rest—as a bonus, this will also help you to avoid self-reflection.
Begin and end your day with a device in hand.
Fuel negative emotions
If you’re going to focus on something, focus on problems you cannot control, to stoke the fires of anger and angst.
A good way of doing this is by staying informed about distressing events, while avoiding meaningful actions to address them. Contribute only in token gestures, and then lament the lack of change.
Follow your impulses
Act on short-term desires without considering long-term consequences, while avoiding behaviors that you know might improve your mood or wellbeing.
Trust that doing the same things that have not previously resulted in happiness, will continue to reliably deliver unhappiness.
Set goals to miss
It’s important that your goals should be vague, and overly ambitious in their scope and/or deliverability. Ideally you should also disregard any preparatory work that a person would normally do before embarking on such a project.
Bonus tip: you can further sabotage any chances of progress, by waiting for motivation to strike before you take any action.
Pursue happiness
Focus on chasing happiness itself, instead of improving your situation or skills. Treat happiness as an end goal, instead of a by-product of worthwhile activities.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to know many more ways to be miserable, we featured these 7 from this book of 40, which we haven’t reviewed yet, but probably will one of these days:
How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use – by Dr. Randy Paterson
Alternatively…
If for some strange reason you’d rather not do those things, you might consider a previous article of ours:
How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
Enjoy!
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One in twenty people has no sense of smell – here’s how they might get it back
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During the pandemic, a lost sense of smell was quickly identified as one of the key symptoms of COVID. Nearly four years later, one in five people in the UK is living with a decreased or distorted sense of smell, and one in twenty have anosmia – the total loss of the ability to perceive any odours at all. Smell training is one of the few treatment options for recovering a lost sense of smell – but can we make it more effective?
Smell training is a therapy that is recommended by experts for recovering a lost sense of smell. It is a simple process that involves sniffing a set of different odours – usually essential oils, or herbs and spices – every day.
The olfactory system has a unique ability to regenerate sensory neurons (nerve cells). So, just like physiotherapy where exercise helps to restore movement and function following an injury, repeated exposure to odours helps to recover the sense of smell following an infection, or other cause of smell loss (for example, traumatic head injury).
Several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of smell training under laboratory conditions. But recent findings have suggested that the real-world results might be disappointing.
One reason for this is that smell training is a long-term therapy. It can take months before patients detect anything, and some people may not get any benefit at all.
In one study, researchers found that after three months of smell training, participation dropped to 88%, and further declined to 56% after six months. The reason given was that these people did not feel as though they noticed any improvement in their ability to smell.
Cross-modal associations
To remedy this, researchers are now investigating how smell training can be improved. One interesting idea is that information from our other senses, or “cross-modal associations”, can be applied to smell training to promote odour perception and improve the results.
Cross-modal associations are described as the tendency for sensory cues from different sensory systems to be matched. For example, brightness tends to be associated with loudness. Pitch is related to size. Colours are linked to temperature, and softness is matched with round shapes, while spiky shapes feel more rough. In previous studies, these associations have been shown to have a considerable influence on how sensory information is processed. Especially when it comes to olfaction.
Recent research has shown that the sense of smell is influenced by a combination of different sensory inputs – not just odours. Sensory cues such as colour, shape, and pitch are believed to play a role in the ability to correctly identify and name odours, and can influence perceptions of odour pleasantness and intensity.
In one study, participants were asked to complete a test that measured their ability to discriminate between different odours while they were presented with the colour red or yellow, an outline drawing of a strawberry or a lemon, or a combination of these colours and shapes. The results suggested that corresponding odour and colour associations (for example, the colour red and strawberry) were linked to increased olfactory performance compared with odours and colours that were not associated (for example, the colour yellow and strawberry).
People who associated strawberries with the colour red performed better on smell tests. GCapture/Shutterstock While projects focusing on harnessing these cross-modal associations to improve treatments for smell loss are underway, research has already started to deliver some promising results.
In a recent study that aimed to investigate whether the effects of smell training could be improved with the addition of cross-modal associations, participants watched a guidance video containing sounds that matched the odours that they were training with. The results suggest that cross-modal interactions plus smell training improved olfactory function compared to smell training alone.
The results reported in recent studies have been promising and offer new insights into the field of olfactory science. It is hoped that this will soon lead to the development of more effective treatment options for smell recovery.
In the meantime, smell training is one of the best things you can do for a lost sense of smell, so patients are encouraged to stick with it so that they give themselves the best chance at recovery.
Emily Spencer, PhD Candidate, Olfaction, Edinburgh Napier University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
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Research Review: Collagen
For something that’s a very popular supplement, not many people understand what collagen is, where it comes from, or what it does.
In a nutshell:
Collagen is a kind of protein. Our bodies make it naturally, and we can also get more in our diet and/or take extra as a supplement.
Our bodies use collagen in connective tissue, skin, tendon, bone, and cartilage. It has many functions, but a broad description would be “holding things together”.
As we get older, our bodies produce less collagen. Signs of this include wrinkles, loss of skin hydration, and joint pain.
Quick test: pinch the skin on the middle of the back of one of your hands, and then watch what happens when you get low. How quickly and easily did your skin returns to its original shape?
If it was pretty much instantanous and flawless, congratulations, you have plenty of collagen (and also elastin). If you didn’t, you are probably low on both!
(they are quite similar proteins and are made from the same base “stuff”, so if you’re low on one, you’ll usually be low on both)
Quick note: A lot of research out there has been funded by beauty companies, so we had our work cut out for us today, and have highlighted where any research may be biased.
More than skin deep
While marketing for collagen is almost exclusively aimed at “reduce wrinkles and other signs of aging”, it does a lot more than that.
You remember we mentioned that many things from the bones outward are held together by collagen? We weren’t kidding…
Read: Osteoporosis, like skin ageing, is caused by collagen loss which is reversible
Taking extra collagen isn’t the only way
We can’t (yet!) completely halt the age-related loss of collagen, but we can slow it, with our lifestyle choices:
- Don’t smoke tobacco
- Drink only in moderation (or not at all)
- Avoid foods with added sugar, and high-processed foods in general
- Wear sunscreen when appropriate
Can I get collagen from food?
Yep! Just as collagen holds our bodies together, it holds the bodies of other animals together. And, just like collagen is found in most parts of our body but most plentifully in our skin and bones, that’s what to eat to get collagen from other animals, e.g:
- Chicken skin
- Fish skin
- Bone broth ← health benefits and recipes at this link!
What about vegans?
Yes, vegans are also held together by collagen! We do not, however, recommend eating their skin or boiling their bones into broth. Ethical considerations aside, cannibalism can give you CJD!
More seriously, if you’re vegan, you can’t get collagen from a plant-based diet, but you can get the stuff your body uses to make collagen. Basically, you want to make sure you get plenty of:
- Protein (beans, pulses, nuts, etc are all fine; it’s hard to go wrong with this)
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin D
- and Zinc
Just be sure to continue to remember to avoid highly-processed foods. So:
- Soy mince/chunks whose ingredients list reads: “soya”? Yes!
- The Incredible Burger or Linda McCartney’s Sausages? Sadly less healthy
Read: Advanced Glycation End Products in Foods and a Practical Guide to Their Reduction in the Diet
Meat-eaters might want to read that one too. By far the worst offenders for AGEs (Advanced Glycation End Products, which can not only cause collagen to stiffen, but also inactivate proteins responsible for collagen repair, along with doing much more serious damage to your body’s natural functions) include:
- Hot dogs
- Bacon
- Fried/roasted/grilled meats
Is it worth it as a supplement?
That depends on you, your age, and your lifestyle, but it’s generally considered safe*
*if you have a seafood allergy, be careful though, as many supplements are from fish or shellfish—you will need to find one that’s free from your allergen
Also, all collagen is animal-derived. So if you’re a vegan, decide for yourself whether this constitutes medicine and if so, whether that makes it ethically permissible to you.
With that out of the way:
What the science says on collagen supplementation
Collagen for skin
Read: Effects of collagen supplementation on skin aging (systematic review and meta-analysis)
The short version is that they selected 19 studies with over a thousand participants in total, and they found:
In the meta-analysis, a grouped analysis of studies showed favorable results of hydrolyzed collagen supplementation compared with placebo in terms of skin hydration, elasticity, and wrinkles.
The findings of improved hydration and elasticity were also confirmed in the subgroup meta-analysis.
Based on results, ingestion of hydrolyzed collagen for 90 days is effective in reducing skin aging, as it reduces wrinkles and improves skin elasticity and hydration.
Caveat: while that systematic review had no conflicts of interests, at least some of the 19 studies will have been funded by beauty companies. Here are two, so that you know what that looks like:
Funded by Quiris to investigate their own supplement, Elasten®:
A Collagen Supplement Improves Skin Hydration, Elasticity, Roughness, and Density
Funded by BioCell to investigate their own supplement, BioCell Collagen:
The Effects of Skin Aging Associated with the Use of BioCell Collagen
A note on funding bias: to be clear, the issue is not that the researchers might be corrupt (though that could happen).
The issue is more that sometimes companies will hire ten labs to do ten research studies… and then pull funding from ones whose results aren’t going the way they’d like.
So the “best” (for them) study is the one that gets published.
Here’s another systematic review—like the one at the top of this section—that found the same, with doses ranging from 2.5g–15g per day for 8 weeks or longer:
Read: Oral Collagen Supplementation: A Systematic Review of Dermatological Applications
Again, some of those studies will have been funded by beauty companies. The general weight of evidence does seem clear and favorable, though.
Collagen for bones
Here, we encountered a lot less in the way of potential bias, because this is simply marketed a lot less. Despite being arguably far more important!
We found a high quality multi-vector randomized controlled study with a sample size of 131 postmenopausal women. They had these women take 5g collagen supplement (or placebo), and studied the results over the course of a year.
They found:
- The intake of the supplement increased bone mineral density (BMD)
- Supplementation was also associated with a favorable shift in bone markers, indicating:
- increased bone formation
- reduced bone degradation
Read: Specific Collagen Peptides Improve Bone Mineral Density and Bone Markers in Postmenopausal Wome
A follow-up study with 31 of these women found that taking 5 grams of collagen daily for a total of 4 years was associated with a progressive increase in BMD.
You might be wondering if collagen also helps against osteoarthritis.
The answer is: yes, it does (at least, it significantly reduces the symptoms)
Read: Effect of collagen supplementation on osteoarthritis symptoms
In summary:
- You need collagen for health skin, bones, joints, and more
- Your body makes collagen from your food
- You can help it by getting plenty of protein, vitamins, and minerals
- You can also help it by not doing the usual Bad Things™ (smoking, drinking, eating processed foods, especially processed meats)
- You can also eat collagen directly in the form of other animals’ skin and bones
- You can also buy collagen supplements (but watch out for allergens)
Want to try collagen supplementation?
We don’t sell it (or anything else), but for your convenience…
Check it out: Hydrolyzed Collagen Peptides (the same as in most of the above studies), 90 days supply at 5g/day
We selected this one because it’s the same kind used in many of the studies, and it doesn’t contain any known allergens.
It’s bovine collagen, meaning it’s from cows, so it’s not vegan, and also some subscribers may want to abstain for religious reasons. We respect that, and/but make our recommendations based solely on the science of health and productivity.
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Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health
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There Will Be Blood
Are you counting steps? Counting calories? Monitoring your sleep? Heart rate zones? These all have their merits:
- Steps: One More Resource Against Osteoporosis!
- Calories: Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?
- Sleep: A Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
- Heart Rate Zones: Heart Rate Zones, Oxalates, & More
About calories: this writer (it’s me, hi) opines that intermittent fasting has the same benefits as caloric restriction, without the hassle of counting, and is therefore superior. I also personally find fasting psychologically more pleasant. However, our goal here is to be informative, not prescriptive, and some people may have reasons to prefer CR to IF!
Examples that come to mind include ease of adherence in the case of diabetes management, especially Type 1, or if one’s schedule (and/or one’s “medications that need to be taken with food” schedule) does not suit IF.
And now for the blood…
A rising trend in health enthusiasts presently is the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), which do exactly what is sounds like they do: they continually monitor glucose. Specifically, the amount of it in your blood.
Of course, these have been in use in diabetes management for years; the technology is not new, but the application of the technology is.
A good example of what benefits a non-diabetic person can gain from the use of a CGM is Jessie Inchauspé, the food scientist of “Glucose Revolution” and “The Glucose Goddess Method” fame.
By wearing a CGM, she was able to notice what things did and didn’t spike her blood sugars, and found that a lot of the things were not stuff that people knew/advised about!
For example, much of diabetes management (including avoiding diabetes in the first place) is based around paying attention to carbs and little else, but she found that it made a huge difference what she ate (or didn’t) with the carbs. By taking many notes over the course of her daily life, she was eventually able to isolate these patterns, showed her working-out in The Glucose Revolution (there’s a lot of science in that book), and distilled that information into bite-size (heh) advice such as:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
That’s great, but since people like Inchauspé have done the work, I don’t have to, right?
You indeed don’t have to! But you can still benefit from it. For example, fastidious as her work was, it’s a sample size of one. If you’re not a slim white 32-year-old French woman, there may be some factors that are different for you.
All this to say: glucose responses, much like nutrition in general, are not a one-size-fits-all affair.
With a CGM, you can start building up your own picture of what your responses to various foods are like, rather than merely what they “should” be like.
This, by the way, is also one of the main aims of personalized health company ZOE, which crowdsourced a lot of scientific data about personalized metabolic responses to standardized meals:
Not knowing these things can be dangerous
We don’t like to scaremonger here, but we do like to point out potential dangers, and in this case, blindly following standardized diet advice, if your physiology is not standard, can have harmful effects, see for example:
Diabetic-level glucose spikes seen in non-diabetic people
Where can I get a CGM?
We don’t sell them, and neither does Amazon, but you can check out some options here:
The 4 Best CGM Devices For Measuring Blood Sugar in 2024
…and if your doctor is not obliging with a prescription, note that the device that came out top in the above comparisons, will be available OTC soon:
The First OTC Continuous Glucose Monitor Will Be Available Summer 2024
Take care!
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Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
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Capsaicin’s Hot Benefits
Capsaicin, the compound in hot peppers that makes them spicy, is a chemical irritant and a neurotoxin. However, humans being humans, we decided to eat them for fun.
In contrast to many other ways in which humans recreationally enjoy things that are objectively poisonous, consuming capsaicin (in moderation) is considered to have health benefits, such as aiding weight loss (by boosting metabolism) and reducing inflammation.
Let’s see what the science says…
First: is it safe?
Capsaicin is classified as “Generally Recognized As Safe”. That said, the same mechanism that causes them to boost metabolism, does increase blood pressure:
Mechanisms underlying the hypertensive response induced by capsaicin
If you are in good cardiovascular health, this increase should be slight and not pose any threat, unless for example you enter a chili-eating contest when not acclimated to such:
Capsaicin and arterial hypertensive crisis
As ever, if unsure, do check with your doctor first, especially if you are taking any blood pressure medications, or otherwise have known blood pressure issues.
Does it really boost metabolism?
It certainly does; it works by increasing oxygen consumption and raising body temperature, both of which mean more calories will be burned for the same amount of work:
Dietary capsaicin and its anti-obesity potency: from mechanism to clinical implications
This means, of course, that chili peppers enjoy the status of being functionally a “negative calorie” food, and a top-tier one at that:
Chili pepper as a body weight-loss food
Here’s a good quality study that showed a statistically significant* fat loss improvement over placebo:
*To put it in numbers, the benefit was:
- 5.91 percentage points lower body fat percentage than placebo
- 6.68 percentage points greater change in body fat mass than placebo
See also: Difference between percentages and percentage points
For those who prefer big reviews than single studies, we’ve got you covered:
Does it really reduce inflammation?
Counterintuitive as it may seem, yes. By means of reducing oxidative stress. Given that things that reduce oxidative stress tend to reduce inflammation, and in turn tend to reduce assorted disease risks (from diabetes to cancer to Alzheimer’s), this probably has more knock-on benefits too, but we don’t have room to explore all of those today.
Fresh peppers are best for this, but dried peppers (such as when purchased as a ground spice in the supermarket, or when purchased as a capsule-based supplement) still have a very respectable anti-inflammatory effect:
- Capsaicinoids, Polyphenols and Antioxidant Activities of Capsicum annuum: Comparative Study of the Effect of Ripening Stage and Cooking Methods
- A Review on the Effect of Drying on Antioxidant Potential of Fruits and Vegetables
How much should we take?
It’s recommended to start at a low dose and gradually increase it, but 2–6mg of capsaicin per day is the standard range used in studies.
If you’re getting this from peppers, then for example cayenne pepper (a good source of capsaicin) contains around 2.5mg of capsaicin per 1 gram of cayenne.
In the case of capsules, if for example you don’t like eating hot pepper, this will usually mean taking 2–6 capsules per day, depending on dosage.
Make sure to take it with plenty of water!
Where can we get it?
Fresh peppers or ground spice from your local grocery store is fine. Your local health food store probably sells the supplements, too.
If you’d like to buy it online, here is an example product on Amazon.
Note: options on Amazon were more limited than usual, so this product is not vegan, and probably not halal or kosher, as the capsule contains an unspecified gelatin.
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