What does it mean to be transgender?
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Transgender media coverage has surged in recent years for a wide range of reasons. While there are more transgender television characters than ever before, hundreds of bills are targeting transgender people’s access to medical care, sports teams, gender-specific public spaces, and other institutions.
Despite the increase in conversation about the transgender community, public confusion around transgender identity remains.
Read on to learn more about what it means to be transgender and understand challenges transgender people may face.
What does it mean to be transgender?
Transgender—or “trans”—is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to their sex assigned at birth. People can discover they are trans at any age.
Gender identity refers to a person’s inner sense of being a woman, a man, neither, both, or something else entirely. Trans people who don’t feel like women or men might describe themselves as nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, or two-spirit, among other terms.
Gender expression describes the way a person communicates their gender through their appearance—such as their clothing or hairstyle—and behavior.
A person whose gender expression doesn’t conform to the expectations of their assigned sex may not identify as trans. The only way to know for sure if someone is trans is if they tell you.
Cisgender—or “cis”—describes people whose gender identities match the sex they were assigned at birth.
How long have transgender people existed?
Being trans isn’t new. Although the word “transgender” only dates back to the 1960s, people whose identities defy traditional gender expectations have existed across cultures throughout recorded history.
How many people are transgender?
A 2022 Williams Institute study estimates that 1.6 million people over the age of 13 identify as transgender in the United States.
Is being transgender a mental health condition?
No. Conveying and communicating about your gender in a way that feels authentic to you is a normal and necessary part of self-expression.
Social and legal stigma, bullying, discrimination, harassment, negative media messages, and barriers to gender-affirming medical care can cause psychological distress for trans people. This is especially true for trans people of color, who face significantly higher rates of violence, poverty, housing instability, and incarceration—but trans identity itself is not a mental health condition.
What is gender dysphoria?
Gender dysphoria describes a feeling of unease that some trans people experience when their perceived gender doesn’t match their gender identity, or their internal sense of gender. A 2021 study of trans adults pursuing gender-affirming medical care found that most participants started experiencing gender dysphoria by the time they were 7.
When trans people don’t receive the support they need to manage gender dysphoria, they may experience depression, anxiety, social isolation, suicidal ideation, substance use disorder, eating disorders, and self-injury.
How do trans people manage gender dysphoria?
Every trans person’s experience with gender dysphoria is unique. Some trans people may alleviate dysphoria by wearing gender-affirming clothing or by asking others to refer to them by a new name and use pronouns that accurately reflect their gender identity. The 2022 U.S. Trans Survey found that nearly all trans participants who lived as a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth reported that they were more satisfied with their lives.
Some trans people may also manage dysphoria by pursuing medical transition, which may involve taking hormones and getting gender-affirming surgery.
Access to gender-affirming medical care has been shown to reduce the risk of depression and suicide among trans youth and adults.
To learn more about the trans community, visit resources from the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Trevor Project, PFLAG, and Planned Parenthood.
If you or anyone you know is considering suicide or self-harm or is anxious, depressed, upset, or needs to talk, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. For international resources, here is a good place to begin.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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How Primary Care Is Being Disrupted: A Video Primer
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How patients are seeing their doctor is changing, and that could shape access to and quality of care for decades to come.
More than 100 million Americans don’t have regular access to primary care, a number that has nearly doubled since 2014. Yet demand for primary care is up, spurred partly by record enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans. Under pressure from increased demand, consolidation, and changing patient expectations, the model of care no longer means visiting the same doctor for decades.
KFF Health News senior correspondent Julie Appleby breaks down what is happening — and what it means for patients.
More From This Investigation
Primary Care Disrupted
Known as the “front door” to the health system, primary care is changing. Under pressure from increased demand, consolidation, and changing patient expectations, the model of care no longer means visiting the same doctor for decades. KFF Health News looks at what this means for patients.
Credits
Hannah Norman Video producer and animator Oona Tempest Illustrator and creative director KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
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Walnut, Apricot, & Sage Nut Roast
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It’s important to have at least one good nut roast recipe in your repertoire. It’s something that’s very good for making a good dish out of odds and ends that are in your house, and done well, it’s not only filling and nutritious, but a tasty treat too. Done badly, everyone knows the results can be unfortunate… Making this the perfect way to show off your skills!
You will need
- 1 cup walnuts
- ½ cup almonds
- ¼ cup whole mixed seeds (chia, pumpkin, & poppy are great)
- ¼ cup ground flax (also called flax meal)
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 1 large carrot, grated
- 4 oz dried apricots, chopped
- 3 oz mushrooms, chopped
- 1 oz dried goji berries
- ½ bulb garlic, crushed
- 2 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tsp dried rosemary
- 2 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tsp yeast extract (even if you don’t like it; trust us; it will work) dissolved in ¼ cup hot water
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃, and line a 2 lb loaf tin with baking paper.
2) Heat some oil in a skillet over a moderate heat, and fry the onion for a few minutes until translucent. Add the garlic, carrot, and mushrooms, cooking for another 5 minutes, stirring well. Set aside to cool a little once done.
3) Process the nuts in a food processor, pulsing until they are well-chopped but not so much that they turn into flour.
4) Combine the nuts, vegetables, and all the other ingredients in a big bowl, and mix thoroughly. If it doesn’t have enough structural integrity to be thick and sticky and somewhat standing up by itself if you shape it, add more ground flax. If it is too dry, add a little water but be sparing.
5) Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin, press down well (or else it will break upon removal), cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, and bake for a further 15 minutes, until firm and golden. When done, allow it to rest in the tin for a further 15 minutes, before turning it out.
6) Serve, as part of a roast dinner (roast potatoes, vegetables, gravy, etc).
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Chia Seeds vs Pumpkin Seeds – Which is Healthier?
- Apricots vs Peaches – Which is Healthier?
- Goji Berries: Which Benefits Do They Really Have?
- Ergothioneine: “The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
Take care!
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How Emotions Are Made – by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Barrett’s (also good) book Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain, and this one is very different, and of more practical use:
The main thrust of the book is: the bioessentialist model of emotions is flawed; there is also no Platonic perfect form of any given emotion, and in fact emotions are constructed by the brain as a learned adaptive response.
She argues this from the dual vectors of on the one hand hard sciences of affective neuroscience and clinical psychology, and on the other hand sociology and anthropology.
In the category of criticism: Dr. Barrett, a very well-known and well-respected cognitive neuroscientist, is not an expert on sociology and anthropology, and some of her claims there are verifiably false.
However, most of the book is given over the psychophysiology, which is entirely her thing, and she explains it clearly and simply while backing everything up with mountains of data.
The usefulness of this book is chiefly: if we understand that emotions are not innate and are instead constructed adaptive (and sometimes maladaptive) neurological responses to stimuli and associations, we can set about rewiring things a little in accord with what’s actually more beneficial to us. The book also outlines how.
Bottom line: if you’d like to be able to not merely manage emotions as they are, but also prune and/or grow them from the stem up, then this book provides a robustly scientific approach for doing that.
Click here to check out How Emotions Are Made, and get more discerning about yours!
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Peace Is Every Step – by Thích Nhất Hạnh
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Mindfulness is one of the few practices to make its way from religion (in this case, Buddhism) into hard science. We’ve written before about its many evidence-based benefits, and many national health information outlets recommend it. So, what does this book have to add?
Thích Nhất Hạnh spent most of his 95 years devoted to the practice and teaching of mindfulness and compassion. In this book, the focus is on bringing mindfulness off the meditation mat and into general life.
After all, what if we could extend that “unflappability” into situations that pressure and antagonize us? That would be some superpower!
The author offers techniques to do just that, simple exercises to transform negative emotions, and to make us more likely to remember to do so.
After all, “in the heat of the moment” is rarely when many of us are at our best, this book gives way to allow those moments themselves to serve as immediate triggers to be our best.
The title “Peace Is Every Step” is not a random collection of words; the goal of this book is to enable to reader to indeed carry peace with us as we go.
Not just “peace is always available to us”, but if we do it right: “we have now arranged for our own peace to automatically step in and help us when we need it most”.
Bottom line: if you’d like to practice mindfulness, or practice it more consistently, this book offers some powerful tools.
Click here to check out Peace Is Every Step, and carry yours with you!
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Twenty-One, No Wait, Twenty Tweaks For Better Health
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Dr. Greger’s 21 Tweaks… We say 20, though!
We’ve talked before about Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen (12 things he advises that we make sure to eat each day, to enjoy healthy longevity), but much less-talked-about are his “21 Tweaks”…
They are, in short, a collection of little adjustments one can make for better health. Some of them are also nutritional, but many are more like lifestyle tweaks. Let’s do a rundown:
At each meal:
- Preload with water
- Preload with “negative calorie” foods (especially: greens)
- Incorporate vinegar (1-2 tbsp in a glass of water will slow your blood sugar increase)
- Enjoy undistracted meals
- Follow the 20-minute rule (enjoy your meal over the course of at least 20 minutes)
Get your daily doses:
- Black cumin ¼ tsp
- Garlic powder ¼ tsp
- Ground ginger (1 tsp) or cayenne pepper (½ tsp)
- Nutritional yeast (2 tsp)
- Cumin (½ tsp)
- Green tea (3 cups)
Every day:
- Stay hydrated
- Deflour your diet
- Front-load your calories (this means implementing the “king, prince, pauper” rule—try to make your breakfast the largest meal of your day, followed my a medium lunch, and a small evening meal)
- Time-restrict your eating (eat your meals within, for example, an 8-hour window, and fast the rest of the time)
- Optimize exercise timing (before breakfast is best for most people, unless you are diabetic)
- Weigh yourself twice a day (doing this when you get up and when you go to bed results in much better long-term weight management than weighing only once per day)
- Complete your implementation intentions (this sounds a little wishy-washy, but it’s about building a set of “if this, then that” principles, and then living by them. An example could be directly physical health-related such as “if there is a choice of stairs or elevator, I will take the stairs”, or could be more about holistic good-living, such as “if someone asks me for help, I will try to oblige them so far as I reasonably can”)
Every night:
- Fast after 7pm
- Get sufficient sleep (7–9 hours is best. As we get older, we tend more towards the lower end of that, but try get at least those 7 hours!)
Experiment with Mild Trendelenburg(better yet, skip this one)*
*This involves a 6º elevation of the bed, at the foot end. Dr. Greger advises that this should only be undertaken after consulting your doctor, though, as a lot of health conditions can contraindicate it. We at 10almonds couldn’t find any evidence to support this practice, and numerous warnings against it, so we’re going to go ahead and say we think this one’s skippable.
Again, we do try to bring you the best evidence-based stuff here at 10almonds, and we’re not going to recommend something just because of who suggested it
As for the rest, you don’t have to do them all! And you may have noticed there was a little overlap in some of them. But, we consider them a fine menu of healthy life hacks from which to pick and choose!
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Broccoli vs Cauliflower – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing broccoli to cauliflower, we picked the broccoli.
Why?
This one is quite straightforward. Superficially, they’re very similar:
Both are great cruciferous vegetables with many health benefits to offer. Even for those keen to avoid oxalates, which cruciferous vegetables in general can be high in, these ones are quite low.
However, if you have IBS, you might want to avoid both, for their raffinose content that may cause problems for you.
For pretty much everyone else, unless you have a special reason why it’s not the case for you, both are a good source of abundant vitamins and minerals, and yet…
Anything cauliflower can do, broccoli can do better!
Broccoli contains more of the vitamins they both contain, and more of the minerals they both contain.
Broccoli also beats cauliflower on amino acids (except lysine), and contains a lot more lutein and zeaxanthin, carotenoids important for healthy eyes and brain.
So by all means enjoy both, but if you’re going to pick one, pick broccoli!
Want to know more?
Check out: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
Enjoy!
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