Water-based Lubricant vs Silicon-based Lubricant – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing water-based lubricant to silicon-based lubricant, we picked the silicon-based.
Why?
First, some real talk about vaginas, because this is something not everyone knows, so let’s briefly cover this before moving onto the differences:
Yes, vaginas are self-lubricating, but a) not always and b) not always sufficiently, especially as we get older. Much like with penile hardness (or lack thereof), there’s a lot of stigma associated with vaginal dryness, and there really needn’t be, because the simple reality is that we don’t live in the fictitious world of porn, and here in the real world, anatomy and physiology can be quite arbitrary at times.
It is this writer’s firm opinion that everyone (or: everyone who is sexual, anyway) should have good quality lube at home—regardless of one’s gender, relationship status, or anything else.
Ok, with that in mind, onwards:
The water-based lube has nine ingredients: water, glycerin, cytopentasioxane, propylene glycol, xantham gum, phenoxyethanol, dimethiconol, triethanolamine, and ethylhexylglycerine.
All of these ingredients are considered body-safe in the doses present, and/but most of them will be absorbed into the skin, especially via the relatively permeable membrane that is the inside of the vagina (or anus—while the microbiome is very different, tissue-wise these are very similar).
While this is not meaningfully toxic, there’s a delicate balance going on in there, and this can upset that balance a little.
Also, because the lube is absorbed into the skin, you’ll then need more, which means either a moment’s inconvenience to add more, or else the risk of chafing, which isn’t fun.
The silicon lube has four ingredients: dimethicone, dimethiconol, cyclomethicone, and tocopheryl acetate.
Note: “tocopheryl acetate” is vitamin E
…which reminds us: just because something is hard to spell, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad for us.
What are the other three ingredients, though? They are all silicon compounds, all inert, and all with molecules too big to be absorbed into our skin. Basically they all slide right off, which is entirely the point of lube, after all.
It not being absorbed into our skin is good for our health; it’s also convenient as it means a tiny bit of lube goes a long way.
Any downsides to silicon-based lube?
There are two, and neither are health-related:
- It can damage silicon toys if not cleaned quickly and thoroughly, the silicon of the lube may bond with the silicon of the toy after a while.
- Because it doesn’t just disappear like water-based lube, you might want to put a towel down if you don’t want your bed to be slippy afterwards! The towel can then be put in the laundry as normal.
Want to try it out? Here it is on Amazon
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
MSG vs. Salt: Sodium Comparison
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.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Q: Is MSG healthier than salt in terms of sodium content or is it the same or worse?
Great question, and for that matter, MSG itself is a great topic for another day. But your actual question, we can readily answer here and now:
- Firstly, by “salt” we’re assuming from context that you mean sodium chloride.
- Both salt and MSG do contain sodium. However…
- MSG contains only about a third of the sodium that salt does, gram-for-gram.
- It’s still wise to be mindful of it, though. Same with sodium in other ingredients!
- Baking soda contains about twice as much sodium, gram for gram, as MSG.
Wondering why this happens?
Salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) is equal parts sodium and chlorine, by atom count, but sodium’s atomic mass is lower than chlorine’s, so 100g of salt contains only 39.34g of sodium.
Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO₃) is one part sodium for one part hydrogen, one part carbon, and three parts oxygen. Taking each of their diverse atomic masses into account, we see that 100g of baking soda contains 27.4g sodium.
MSG (monosodium glutamate, C₅H₈NO₄Na) is only one part sodium for 5 parts carbon, 8 parts hydrogen, 1 part nitrogen, and 4 parts oxygen… And all those other atoms put together weigh a lot (comparatively), so 100g of MSG contains only 12.28g sodium.
Share This Post
-
You’re Not Forgetful: How To Remember Everything
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.
Elizabeth Filips, medical student busy learning a lot of information, explains how in today’s video:
Active processing
An important thing to keep in mind is that forgetting is an active process, not passive as once believed. It has its own neurotransmitters and pathways, and as such, to improve memory, it’s essential to understand and manage forgetting.
So, how does forgetting occur? Memories are stored with cues or tags, which help retrieve information. However, overloading cues with too much information can cause “transient forgetting”—that is to say, the information is still in there somewhere; you just don’t have the filing system required to retrieve the data. This is the kind of thing that you will try hard to remember at some point in the day when you need it, fail, and then wake up at 3am with an “Aha!” because your brain finally found what you were looking for. So, to avoid that, use unique and strong cues to help improve recall (mnemonics are good for this, as are conceptual anchors).
While memory does not appear to actually be finite, there is some practical truth in the “finite storage” model insofar as learning new information can overwrite previous knowledge, iff your brain mistakes it for an update rather than addition. So for that reason, it’s good to periodically go over old information—in psychology this is called rehearsal, which may conjure theatrical images, but it can be as simple as mentally repeating a phone number, a mnemonic, or visually remembering a route one used to take to go somewhere.
Self-perception affects memory performance. Negative beliefs about one’s memory can worsen performance (so don’t say “I have a bad memory”, even to yourself, and in contrast, find more positive affirmations to make about your memory), and mental health in general plays a significant role in memory. For example, if you have ever had an extended period of depression, then chances are good you have some huge gaps in your memory for that time in your life.
A lot of what we learned in school was wrong—especially what we learned about learning. Traditional (vertical) learning is harder to retain, whereas horizontal learning (connecting topics through shared characteristics) creates stronger, interconnected memories. In short, your memories should tell contextual stories, not be isolated points of data.
Embarking on a new course of study? Yes? (If not, then why not? Pick something!)
It may be difficult at first, but experts memorize things more quickly due to built-up intuition in their field. For example a chess master can glance at a chess board for about 5 seconds and memorize the position—but only if the position is one that could reasonably arise in a game; if the pieces are just placed at random, then their memorization ability plummets to that of the average person, because their expertise has been nullified.
What this means in practical terms: building a “skeleton” framework before learning can enhance memorization through logical connections. For this reason, if embarking on a serious course of study, getting a good initial overview when you start is critical, so that you have a context for the rest of what you learn to go into. For example, let’s say you want to learn a language; if you first quickly do a very basic bare-bones course, such as from Duolingo or similar, then even though you’ll have a very small vocabulary and a modest grasp of grammar and make many mistakes and have a lot of holes in your knowledge, you now have somewhere to “fit” every new word or idea you learn. Same goes for other fields of study; for example, a doctor can be told about a new drug and remember everything about it immediately, because they understand the systems it interacts with, understand how it does what it does, and can compare it mentally to similar drugs, and they thus have a “place” in that overall system for the drug information to reside. But for someone who knows nothing about medicine, it’s just a lot of big words with no meaning. So: framework first, details later.
For more on all this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How To Boost Your Memory Immediately (Without Supplements)
Take care!
Share This Post
-
Optimism Seriously Increases Longevity!
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.
Always look on the bright side for life
❝I’m not a pessimist; I’m a realist!❞
~ every pessimist ever
To believe self-reports, the world is divided between optimists and realists. But how does your outlook measure up, really?
Below, we’ve included a link to a test, and like most free online tests, this is offered “as-is” with the usual caveats about not being a clinical diagnostic tool, this one actually has a fair amount of scientific weight behind it:
❝Empirical testing has indicated the validity of the Optimism Pessimism Instrument as published in the scientific journal Current Psychology: Research and Reviews.
The IDRlabs Optimism/Pessimism Test (IDR-OPT) was developed by IDRlabs. The IDR-OPT is based on the Optimism/Pessimism Instrument (OPI) developed by Dr. William Dember, Dr. Stephanie Martin, Dr. Mary Hummer, Dr. Steven Howe, and Dr. Richard Melton, at the University of Cincinnati.❞
Take This Short (1–2 mins) Test
How did you score? And what could you do to improve on that score?
We said before that we’d do a main feature on this sometime, and today’s the day! Fits with the theme of Easter too, as for those who observe, this is a time for a celebration of hope, new beginnings, and life stepping out of the shadows.
On which note, before we go any further, let’s look at a very big “why” of optimism…
There have been many studies done regards optimism and health, and they generally come to the same conclusion: optimism is simply good for the health.
Here’s an example. It’s a longitudinal study, and it followed 121,700 women (what a sample size!) for eight years. It controlled for all kinds of other lifestyle factors (especially smoking, drinking, diet, and exercise habits, as well as pre-existing medical conditions), so this wasn’t a case of “people who are healthy are more optimistic as a result. And, in the researchers’ own words…
❝We found strong and statistically significant associations of increasing levels of optimism with decreasing risks of mortality, including mortality due each major cause of death, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and infection.
Importantly, findings were maintained after close control for potential confounding factors, including sociodemographic characteristics and depression❞
Read: Optimism and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study
So that’s the why. Now for the how…
Positive thinking is not what you think it is
A lot of people think of “think positive thoughts” as a very wishy-washy platitude, but positive thinking isn’t about ignoring what’s wrong, or burying every negative emotion.
Rather, it is taking advantage of the basic CBT, DBT, and, for that matter, NLP principles:
- Our feelings are driven by our thoughts
- Our thoughts can be changed by how we frame things
This is a lot like the idea that “there’s not such thing as bad weather; only the wrong clothes”. Clearly written by someone who’s never been in a hurricane, but by and large, the principle stands true.
For example…
- Most problems can be reframed as opportunities
- Replace “I have to…” with “I get to…”
- Will the task be arduous? It’ll be all the better looking back on it.
- Did you fail abjectly? Be proud that you lived true to your values anyway.
A lot of this is about focusing on what you can control. If you live your life by your values (first figure out what they are, if you haven’t already), then that will become a reassuring thing that you can always count on, no matter what.
Practice positive self-talk (eliminate the negative)
We often learn, usually as children, to be self deprecatory so as to not appear immodest. While modesty certainly has its place, we don’t have to trash ourselves to do that!
There are various approaches to this, for example:
- Replacing a self-criticism (whether it was true or not) with a neutral or positive statement that you know is true. “I suck at xyz” is just putting yourself down, “Xyz is a challenge for me” asks the question, how will you rise to it?
- Replacing a self-criticism with irony. It doesn’t matter how dripping with sarcasm your inner voice is, the words will still be better. “Glamorous as ever!” after accidentally putting mascara in your eye. “So elegant and graceful!” after walking into furniture. And so on.
Practice radical acceptance
This evokes the “optimistic nihilism” approach to life. It’s perhaps not best in all scenarios, but if you’re consciously and rationally pretty sure something is going to be terrible (and/or know it’s completely outside of your control), acknowledging that possibility (or even, likelihood) cheerfully. Borrowing from the last tip, this can be done with as much irony as you find necessary. For example:
Facing a surgery the recovery from which you know categorically will be very painful: with a big smile “Yep, I am going to be in a lot of pain, so that’s going to be fun!” (fun fact: psychological misery will not make the physical pain any less painful, so you might as well see the funny side) ← see link for additional benefits laughter can add to health-related quality of life)
Plan for the future with love
You know the whole “planting trees in whose shade you’ll never sit”, thing, but: actually for yourself too. Plan (and act!) now, out of love and compassion for your future self.
Simple example: preparing (or semi-preparing, if appropriate) breakfast for yourself the night before, when you know in the morning you’ll be tired, hungry, and/or pressed for time. You’ll wake up, remember that you did that, and…
Tip: at moments like that, take a moment to think “Thanks, past me”. (Or call yourself by your name, whatever works for you. For example I, your writer here, might say to myself “Thanks, past Nastja!”)
This helps to build a habit of gratitude for your past self and love for your future self.
This goes for little things like the above, but it also goes for things whereby there’s much longer-term delayed gratification, such as:
- Healthy lifestyle changes (usually these see slow, cumulative progress)
- Good financial strategies (usually these see slow, cumulative progress)
- Long educational courses (usually these see slow, cumulative progress)
Basically: pay it forward to your future self, and thank yourself later!
Some quick ideas of systems and apps that go hard on the “long slow cumulative progress” approach that you can look back on with pride:
- Noom—nutritional program with a psychology-based approach to help you attain and maintain your goals, long term
- You Need A Budget—we’ve recommended it before and we’ll recommend it again. This is so good. If you click through, you can see a short explanation of what makes it so different to other budgeting apps.
- Duolingo—the famously persistence-motivational language learning app
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Hazelnuts vs Almonds – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing hazelnuts to almonds, we picked the almonds.
Why?
It’s closer than you might think! But we say almonds do come out on top.
In terms of macronutrients, almonds have notably more protein, while hazelnuts have notably more fat (healthy fats, though). Almonds are also higher in both carbs and fiber. Looking at Glycemic Index, hazelnuts’ GI is low and almonds’ GI is zero. We could call the macros category a tie, but ultimately if we need to prioritize any of these things, it’s protein and fiber, so we’ll call this a nominal win for almonds.
When it comes to vitamins, hazelnuts have more of vitamins B1, B5, B6, B9 C, and K. Meanwhile, almonds have more of vitamins B2, B3, E, and choline. So, a moderate win for hazelnuts.
In the category of minerals, almonds retake the lead with more calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while hazelnuts boast more copper and manganese. A clear win for almonds.
Adding up the categories, this makes for a marginal win for almonds. Of course, both of these nuts are very healthy (assuming you are not allergic), and best is to enjoy both if possible.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates – by Susan Neal
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.
We will not keep the steps a mystery; abbreviated, they are:
- decide to really do this thing
- get knowledge and support
- clean out that pantry/fridge/etc and put those things behind you
- buy in healthy foods while starving your candida
- plan for an official start date, so that everything is ready
- change the way you eat (prep methods, timings, etc)
- keep on finding small ways to improve, without turning back
Particularly important amongst those are starving the candida (the fungus in your gut that is responsible for a lot of carb cravings, especially sugar and alcohol—which latter can be broken down easily into sugar), and changing the “how” of eating as well as the “what”; those are both things that are often overlooked in a lot of guides, but this one delivers well.
Walking the reader by the hand through things like that is probably the book’s greatest strength.
In the category of subjective criticism, the author does go off-piste a little at the end, to take a moment while she has our attention to talk about other things.
For example, you may not need “Appendix 7: How to Become A Christian and Disciple of Jesus Christ”.
Of course if that calls to you, then by all means, follow your heart, but it certainly isn’t a necessary step of quitting sugar. Nevertheless, the diversion doesn’t detract from the good dietary change advice that she has just spent a book delivering.
Bottom line: there’s no deep science here, but there’s a lot of very good, very practical advice, that’s consistent with good science.
Click here to check out 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar, and watch your health improve!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Solitary Fitness – by Charles Bronson
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.
Sometimes it can seem that every new diet and/or exercise regime you want to try will change your life, if just you first max out your credit card on restocking your kitchen and refurbishing your home gym, not to mention buying all the best supplements, enjoying the latest medical gadgets, and so on and so forth.
And often… Most of those things genuinely are good! And it’s great that such things are becoming more accessible and available.
But… Wouldn’t it be nice to know how to have excellent strength and fitness without any of that, even if just as a “bare bones” protocol to fall back on? That’s what Manson provides in this book.
The writing style is casual and friendly; Manson is not exactly an academic, but he knows his stuff when it comes to what works. And a good general rule of thumb is: if it’s something that he can do in his jail cell, we can surely do it in the comfort of our homes.
Bottom line: if you want functional strength and fitness with zero gimmicks, this is the book for you (as an aside, it’s also simply an interesting and recommendable read, sociologically speaking, but that’s another matter entirely).
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
