Understanding and Responding to Self-Harm – by Dr. Allan House

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Whether it’s yourself, or (statistically much more likely) a loved one, it’s common to be faced with the deeply unpleasant reality of self-harm. This is a case where most definitely, “forewarned is forearmed”.

Dr. House covers not just the “what” and “why” of self-harm, but also the differences between suicidal and non-suicidal self-harm, as well as the impulsive and the planned.

Stylistically, the book is well-written, well-edited, and well-formatted. All this makes for easy reading and efficient learning.

Much of the book is, of course, given over to how to help in cases of self-harm. More specifically: how to approach things with both seriousness and compassion, and how to help in a way that doesn’t create undue pressure.

Because, as Dr. House explains and illustrates, a lot of well-meaning people end up causing more harm, by their botched attempts to help.

This book looks to avoid such tragedies.

Bottom line: if you’d rather know these things now, instead of wishing you’d known later, then this book is the one-stop guide it claims to be.

Click here to check out Understanding and Responding to Self-Harm, and be prepared!

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    Nori: The red algae that’s a nutritional powerhouse, delivering animal-like omega-3s, ideal iodine levels, and rare plant-based B12, all while aiding detoxification.

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  • SuperLife – by Darin Olien

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    We mostly know more or less what we’re supposed to be doing, at least to a basic level, when it comes to diet and exercise. So why don’t we do it?

    Where Darin Olien excels in this one is making healthy living—mostly the dietary aspects thereof—not just simple, but also easy.

    He gives principles we can apply rather than having to memorize lots of information… And his “this will generally be better than that” format also means that the feeling is one of reducing harm, increasing benefits, without needing to get absolutist about anything. And that, too, makes healthy living easier.

    The book also covers some areas that a lot of books of this genre don’t—such as blood oxygenation, and maintenance of healthy pH levels—and aspects such as those are elements that help this book to stand out too.

    Don’t be put off and think this is a dry science textbook, though—it’s not. In fact, the tone is light and the style is easy-reading throughout.

    Bottom line: if you want to take an easy, casual, but scientifically robust approach to tweaking your health for the better, this book will enable you to do that.

    Click here to check out SuperLife and start upgrading your health!

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  • Carrot vs Kale – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing carrot to kale, we picked the kale.

    Why?

    These are both known as carotene-containing heavyweights, but kale emerges victorious:

    In terms of macros, carrot has more carbs while kale has more protein and fiber. An easy win there for kale.

    When it comes to vitamins, both are great! But, carrots contain more of vitamins A, B5, and choline, whereas kale contains more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, E, and K. And while carrot’s strongest point is vitamin A, a cup of carrots contains around 10x the recommended daily dose of vitamin A, whereas a cup of kale contains “only” 6x the recommended daily dose of vitamin A. So, did we really need the extra in carrots? Probably not. In any case, kale already won on overall vitamin coverage, by a long way.

    In the category of minerals, kale again sweeps. On the one hand, carrots contain more sodium. On the other hand, kale contains a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Not a tricky choice!

    But don’t be fooled: carrots really are a nutritional powerhouse and a great food. Kale is just better—nutritionally speaking, in any case. If you’re making a carrot cake, please don’t try substituting kale; it will not work 😉

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!

    Take care!

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  • Green Coffee Bean Extract: Coffee Benefits Without The Coffee?

    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.

    Coffee is, on balance, very good for the health in moderation. We wrote about it here:

    The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)

    Some quick facts before moving on:

    Those are some compelling statistics!

    But what about the caffeine content?

    Assuming one doesn’t have a caffeine sensitivity, caffeine is also healthy in moderation—but it is easy to accidentally become dependent on it, so it can be good to take a “tolerance break” once in a while, and then reintroduce it with more modest moderation:

    Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?

    We also, for that matter, have discussed its impact on the gut:

    Coffee & Your Gut ← surprise, it’s a positive impact

    What if I don’t like coffee?

    We suspect that, having seen the title of this article, you know what the answer’s going to be here:

    Green coffee bean extract is the extract from green (i.e. unroasted) coffee beans. It has one or two advantages over drinking coffee:

    1. For those who do not like drinking coffee, this supplement sidesteps that neatly
    2. Roasting coffee beans destroys a lot (sometimes almost all; it depends on the temperature and duration) of their chlorogenic acid, a highly beneficial polyphenol; using unroasted (i.e. green) coffee beans avoids that

    See: Role of roasting conditions in the level of chlorogenic acid content in coffee beans

    All about GCE and CGA

    That’s “green coffee extract” and “chlorogenic acid”, respectively, bearing in mind that the latter is found generously in the former.

    As to what it does:

    ❝CGA is an important and biologically active dietary polyphenol, playing several important and therapeutic roles such as antioxidant activity, antibacterial, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, neuroprotective, anti-obesity, antiviral, anti-microbial, anti-hypertension, free radicals scavenger and a central nervous system (CNS) stimulator. Furthermore, CGA causes hepatoprotective effects.❞

    👆 Those are the things we know for sure that it does. And it may do even more things:

    ❝In addition, it has been found that CGA could modulate lipid metabolism and glucose in both genetically and healthy metabolic related disorders. It is speculated that CGA can perform crucial roles in lipid and glucose metabolism regulation and thus help to treat many disorders such as hepatic steatosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity as well.❞

    Read in full: Chlorogenic acid (CGA): A pharmacological review and call for further research

    About lipid metabolism

    • Green coffee extract supplementation significantly reduces serum total cholesterol levels.
    • Green coffee extract supplementation significantly reduces serum LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels.
    • Increases in HDL (“good” cholesterol) after green coffee bean extract consumption are significant in green coffee bean extract dosages ≥400mg/day.

    Source: The effects of green coffee bean extract supplementation on lipid profile in humans: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

    About blood glucose and insulin

    • Green coffee extract supplementation significantly improved fasting blood sugar levels
    • Green coffee extract supplementation at ≥400 mg/day significantly lowered postprandial insulin levels (that’s good)

    Source: The influence of green coffee bean extract supplementation on blood glucose levels: A systematic review and dose–response meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

    Want to try some?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎

    Enjoy!

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Related Posts

  • Never Enough – by Dr. Judith Grisel
  • Increase in online ADHD diagnoses for kids poses ethical questions

    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.

    In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, clinical protocols were altered for Ontario health clinics, allowing them to perform more types of care virtually. This included ADHD assessments and ADHD prescriptions for children – services that previously had been restricted to in-person appointments. But while other restrictions on virtual care are back, clinics are still allowed to virtually assess children for ADHD.

    This shift has allowed for more and quicker diagnoses – though not covered by provincial insurance (OHIP) – via a host of newly emerging private, for-profit clinics. However, it also has raised significant ethical questions.

    It solves an equity issue in terms of rural access to timely assessments, but does it also create new equity issues as a privatized service?

    Is it even feasible to diagnose a child for a condition like ADHD without meeting that child in person?

    And as rates of ADHD diagnosis continue to rise, should health regulators re-examine the virtual care approach?

    Ontario: More prescriptions, less regulation

    There are numerous for-profit clinics offering virtual diagnoses and prescriptions for childhood ADHD in Ontario. These include KixCare, which does not offer the option of an in-person assessment. Another clinic, Springboard, makes virtual appointments available within days, charging around $2,600 for assessments, which take three to four hours. The clinic offers coaching and therapy at an additional cost, also not covered by OHIP. Families can choose to continue to visit the clinic virtually during a trial stage with medications, prescribed by a doctor in the clinic who then sends prescribing information back to the child’s primary care provider.

    For-profit clinics like these are departing from Canada’s traditional single-payer health care model. By charging patients out-of-pocket fees for services, the clinics are able to generate more revenue because they are working outside of the billing standards for OHIP, standards that set limits on the maximum amount doctors can earn for providing specific services. Instead many services are provided by non-physician providers, who are not limited by OHIP in the same way.

    Need for safeguards

    ADHD prescriptions rose during the pandemic in Ontario, with women, people of higher income and those aged 20 to 24 receiving the most new diagnoses, according to research published in January 2024 by a team including researchers from the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health and Holland Bloorview Children’s Hospital. There may be numerous reasons for this increase but could the move to virtual care have been a factor?

    Ontario psychiatrist Javeed Sukhera, who treats both children and adults in Canada and the U.S., says virtual assessments can work for youth with ADHD, who may receive treatment quicker if they live in remote areas. However, he is concerned that as health care becomes more privatized, it will lead to exploitation and over-diagnosis of certain conditions.

    “There have been a lot of profiteers who have tried to capitalize on people’s needs and I think this is very dangerous,” he said. “In some settings, profiteering companies have set up systems to offer ADHD assessments that are almost always substandard. This is different from not-for-profit setups that adhere to quality standards and regulatory mechanisms.”

    Sukhera’s concerns recall the case of Cerebral Inc., a New York state-based virtual care company founded in 2020 that marketed on social media platforms including Instagram and TikTok. Cerebral offered online prescriptions for ADHD drugs among other services and boasted more than 200,000 patients. But as Dani Blum reported in the New York Times, Cerebral was accused in 2023 of pressuring doctors on staff to prescribe stimulants and faced an investigation by state prosecutors into whether it violated the U.S. Controlled Substances Act.

    “At the start of the pandemic, regulators relaxed rules around medical prescription of controlled substances,” wrote Blum. “Those changes opened the door for companies to prescribe and market drugs without the protocols that can accompany an in-person visit.”

    Access increased – but is it equitable?

    Virtual care has been a necessity in rural areas in Ontario since well before the pandemic, although ADHD assessments for children were restricted to in-person appointments prior to 2020.

    But ADHD assessment clinics that charge families out-of-pocket for services are only accessible to people with higher incomes. Rural families, many of whom are low income, are unable to afford thousands for private assessments, let alone the other services upsold by providers. If the private clinic/virtual care trend continues to grow unchecked, it may also attract doctors away from the public model of care since they can bill more for services. This could further aggravate the gap in care that lower income people already experience.

    This could further aggravate the gap in care that lower income people already experience.

    Sukhera says some risks could be addressed by instituting OHIP coverage for services at private clinics (similar to private surgical facilities that offer mixed private/public coverage), but also with safeguards to ensure that profits are reinvested back into the health-care system.

    “This would be especially useful for folks who do not have the income, the means to pay out of pocket,” he said.

    Concerns of misdiagnosis and over-prescription

    Some for-profit companies also benefit financially from diagnosing and issuing prescriptions, as has been suggested in the Cerebral case. If it is cheaper for a clinic to do shorter, virtual appointments and they are also motivated to diagnose and prescribe more, then controls need to be put in place to prevent misdiagnosis.

    The problem of misdiagnosis may also be related to the nature of ADHD assessments themselves. University of Strathclyde professor Matthew Smith, author of Hyperactive: The Controversial History of ADHD, notes that since the publication of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, assessment has typically involved a few hours of parents and patients providing their subjective perspectives on how they experience time, tasks and the world around them.

    “It’s often a box-ticking exercise, rather than really learning about the context in which these behaviours exist,” Smith said. “The tendency has been to use a list of yes/no questions which – if enough are answered in the affirmative – lead to a diagnosis. When this is done online or via Zoom, there is even less opportunity to understand the context surrounding behaviour.”

    Smith cited a 2023 BBC investigation in which reporter Rory Carson booked an in-person ADHD assessment at a clinic and was found not to have the condition, then had a private online assessment – from a provider on her couch in a tracksuit – and was diagnosed with ADHD after just 45 minutes, for a fee of £685.

    What do patients want?

    If Canadian regulators can effectively tackle the issue of privatization and the risk of misdiagnosis, there is still another hurdle: not every youth is willing to take part in virtual care.

    Jennifer Reesman, a therapist and Training Director for Neuropsychology at the Chesapeake Center for ADHD, Learning & Behavioural Health in Maryland, echoed Sukhera’s concerns about substandard care, cautioning that virtual care is not suitable for some of her young clients who had poor experiences with online education and resist online health care. It can be an emotional issue for pediatric patients who are managing their feelings about the pandemic experience.

    “We need to respect what their needs are, not just the needs of the provider,” says Reesman.

    In 2020, Ontario opted for virtual care based on the capacity of our health system in a pandemic. Today, with a shortage of doctors, we are still in a crisis of capacity. The success of virtual care may rest on how engaged regulators are with equity issues, such as waitlists and access to care for rural dwellers, and how they resolve ethical problems around standards of care.

    Children and youth are a distinct category, which is why we had restrictions on virtual ADHD diagnosis prior to the pandemic. A question remains, then: If we could snap our fingers and have the capacity to provide in-person ADHD care for all children, would we? If the answer to that question is yes, then how can we begin to build our capacity?

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

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  • In Praise of Slowness – by Carl Honoré

    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.

    This isn’t just about “taking the time to smell the roses” although yes, that too. Rather, it’s mostly about looking at what drives us to speed everything up in the first place, and correcting where appropriate.

    If your ancestors had time to eat fruit and lie in the sun, then why, with all of modern technology now available, are you harangued 16+ hours a day by the pressures of universally synchronized timepieces?

    Honoré places a lot of the blame squarely on the industrial revolution; whereas previously our work would be limited by craftsmen who take a year to complete something, or the pace of animals in a field, now humans had to keep up with the very machines that were supposed to serve us—and it’s only got worse from there.

    This book takes a tour of many areas affected by this artificial “need for speed”, and how it harms not just our work-life balance, but also our eating habits, the medical attention we get, and even our love lives.

    The prescription is deceptively simple, “slow down”. But Honoré dedicates the final three chapters of the book to the “how” of this, when of course there’s a lot the outside world will not accommodate—but where we can slow down, there’s good to be gained.

    Bottom line: if you’ve ever felt that you could get all of your life into order if you could just pause the outside world for a week or two, this is the book for you.

    Click here to check out In Praise of Slowness, and make time for what matters most!

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  • Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer

    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.

    Dr. Amy Dee, pharmacist and cancer survivor herself, lays out the best options for anticancer fruits:

    The fruits

    Without further ado, they are:

    • Kiwi: promotes cancer cell death while sparing healthy cells
    • Plums & peaches: an interesting choice to list these similar fruits together as one item, but they both also induce cell death in cancer cells while sparing healthy ones
    • Dragon fruit: this does the same, while also inhibiting cancer cell growth
    • Figs: these have antitumor effects specifically, while removing carcinogens too, and additionally sensitizing cancer cells to light therapy
    • Cranberries: disrupt cancer cell adhesion, breaking down tumors, while protecting non-cancerous cells against DNA damage
    • Citrus fruits: inhibit tumor growth and kill cancer cells; regular consumption is also associated with a lower cancer risk (be warned though, grapefruit interacts with some medications)
    • Cherries: induce cancer cell death; protect healthy cells against DNA damage
    • Tomatoes: don’t often make it into lists of fruits, but lycopene reduces cancer risk, and slows the growth of cancer cells (10almonds note: watermelon has more lycopene than tomatoes, and is more traditionally considered a fruit in all respects, so could have taken the spot here).

    We would also argue that apricots could have had a spot on the list, both for their lycopene content (comparable to tomatoes) and their botanical (and thus phytochemical) similarities to peaches and plums.

    For more information on each of these (she also talks about the different polyphenols and other nutrients that constitute the active compounds delivering these anticancer effects), enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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