Yes, you still need to use sunscreen, despite what you’ve heard on TikTok
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Summer is nearly here. But rather than getting out the sunscreen, some TikTokers are urging followers to chuck it out and go sunscreen-free.
They claim it’s healthier to forgo sunscreen to get the full benefits of sunshine.
Here’s the science really says.
How does sunscreen work?
Because of Australia’s extreme UV environment, most people with pale to olive skin or other risk factors for skin cancer need to protect themselves. Applying sunscreen is a key method of protecting areas not easily covered by clothes.
Sunscreen works by absorbing or scattering UV rays before they can enter your skin and damage DNA or supportive structures such as collagen.
When UV particles hit DNA, the excess energy can damage our DNA. This damage can be repaired, but if the cell divides before the mistake is fixed, it causes a mutation that can lead to skin cancers.
The most common skin cancers are basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Melanoma is less common, but is the most likely to spread around the body; this process is called metastasis.
Two in three Australians will have at least one skin cancer in their lifetime, and they make up 80% of all cancers in Australia.
Around 99% of skin cancers in Australia are caused by excessive exposure to UV radiation.
Excessive exposure to UV radiation also affects the appearance of your skin. UVA rays are able to penetrate deep into the skin, where they break down supportive structures such as elastin and collagen.
This causes signs of premature ageing, such as deep wrinkling, brown or white blotches, and broken capillaries.
Sunscreen can help prevent skin cancers
Used consistently, sunscreen reduces your risk of skin cancer and slows skin ageing.
In a Queensland study, participants either used sunscreen daily for almost five years, or continued their usual use.
At the end of five years, the daily-use group had reduced their risk of squamous cell carcinoma by 40% compared to the other group.
Ten years later, the daily use group had reduced their risk of invasive melanoma by 73%
Does sunscreen block the health-promoting properties of sunlight?
The answer is a bit more complicated, and involves personalised risk versus benefit trade-offs.
First, the good news: there are many health benefits of spending time in the sun that don’t rely on exposure to UV radiation and aren’t affected by sunscreen use.
Sunscreen only filters UV rays, not visible light or infrared light (which we feel as heat). And importantly, some of the benefits of sunlight are obtained via the eyes.
Visible light improves mood and regulates circadian rhythm (which influences your sleep-wake cycle), and probably reduces myopia (short-sightedness) in children.
Infrared light is being investigated as a treatment for several skin, neurological, psychiatric and autoimmune disorders.
So what is the benefit of exposing skin to UV radiation?
Exposing the skin to the sun produces vitamin D, which is critical for healthy bones and muscles.
Vitamin D deficiency is surprisingly common among Australians, peaking in Victoria at 49% in winter and being lowest in Queensland at 6% in summer.
Luckily, people who are careful about sun protection can avoid vitamin D deficiency by taking a supplement.
Exposing the skin to UV radiation might have benefits independent of vitamin D production, but these are not proven. It might reduce the risk of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis or cause release of a chemical that could reduce blood pressure. However, there is not enough detail about these benefits to know whether sunscreen would be a problem.
What does this mean for you?
There are some benefits of exposing the skin to UV radiation that might be blunted by sunscreen. Whether it’s worth foregoing those benefits to avoid skin cancer depends on how susceptible you are to skin cancer.
If you have pale skin or other factors that increase you risk of skin cancer, you should aim to apply sunscreen daily on all days when the UV index is forecast to reach 3.
If you have darker skin that rarely or never burns, you can go without daily sunscreen – although you will still need protection during extended times outdoors.
For now, the balance of evidence suggests it’s better for people who are susceptible to skin cancer to continue with sun protection practices, with vitamin D supplementation if needed.
Katie Lee, PhD Candidate, Dermatology Research Centre, The University of Queensland and Rachel Neale, Principal research fellow, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Escape From The Clutches Of Shame
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We’ve written before about managing various emotions, including “negative” ones. We put that in “scare quotes” because they also all have positive aspects, that are just generally overshadowed by the fact that the emotions themselves are not pleasant. But for example…
We evolved our emotions, including the “negative” ones, for our own benefit as a species:
- Stress keeps us safe by making sure we take important situations seriously
- Anger keeps us safe by protecting us from threats
- Disgust keeps us safe by helping us to avoid things that might cause disease
- Anxiety keeps us safe by ensuring we don’t get complacent
- Guilt keeps us safe by ensuring we can function as a community
- Sadness keeps us safe by ensuring we value things that are important to us, and learn to become averse to losing them
- …and so on
You can read more about how to turn these off (or rather, at least pause them) when they’re misfiring and/or just plain not convenient, here:
While it’s generally considered good to process feelings instead of putting them aside, the fact is that sometimes we have to hold it together while we do something, such that we can later have an emotional breakdown at a convenient time and place, instead of the supermarket or bank or office or airport or while entertaining houseguests or… etc.
Today, though, we’re not putting things aside, for the most part (though we will get to that too).
We’ll be dealing with shame, which is closely linked to the guilt we mentioned in that list there.
See also: Reconsidering the Differences Between Shame and Guilt
Shame’s purpose
Shame’s purpose is to help us (as a community) avoid anti-social behavior for which we might be shamed, and thus exiled from the in-group. It helps us all function better together, which is how we thrive as a species.
Shame, therefore, is often assumed to be something we can (and possibly should) use to ensure that we (ourselves and/or others) “do the right thing”.
But there’s a catch…
Shame only works negatively
You may be thinking “well duh, it’s a negative emotion”, but this isn’t about negativity in the subjective sense, but rather, positive vs negative motivation:
- Positive motivation: motivation that encourages us to do a given thing
- Negative motivation: motivation that encourages us to specifically not do a given thing
Shame is only useful as a negative motivation, i.e., encouraging us to specifically not do a given thing.
Examples:
- You cannot (in any way that sticks, at least) shame somebody into doing more housework.
- You can, however, shame somebody out of drinking and driving.
This distinction matters a lot when it comes to how we are with our children, or with our employees (or those placed under us in a management structure), or with people who otherwise look to us as leaders.
It also matters when it comes to how we are with ourselves.
Here’s a paper about this, by the way, with assorted real-world examples:
The negative side of motivation: the role of shame
From those examples, we can see that attempts to shame someone (including oneself) into doing something positive will generally not only fail, they will actively backfire, and people (including oneself) will often perform worse than pre-shaming.
Looking inwards: healthy vs unhealthy shame
Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs use a degree of pro-social shame to help members abstain from the the act being shamed.
Rather than the unhelpful shame of exiling a person from a group for doing a shameful thing, however, they take an approach of laying out the shame for all to see, feeling the worst of it and moving past it, which many report as being quite freeing emotionally while still [negatively] motivational to not use the substance in question in the future (and similar for activity-based addictions/compulsions, such as gambling, for example).
As such, if you are trying to avoid doing a thing, shame can be a useful motivator. So by all means, if it’s appropriate to your goals, tell your friends/family about how you are now quitting this or that (be it an addiction, or just something generally unhealthy that you’d like to strike off your regular consumption/activity list).
You will still be tempted! But the knowledge of the shame you would feel as a result will help keep you from straying into that temptation.
If you are trying to do a thing, however, (even something thought of in a negative frame, such as “lose weight”), then shame is not helpful and you will do best to set it aside.
You can shame yourself out of drinking sodas (if that’s your plan), but you can’t shame yourself into eating healthy meals. And even if your plan is just shaming yourself out of eating unhealthy food… Without a clear active positive replacement to focus on instead, all you’ll do there is give yourself an eating disorder. You’ll eat nothing when people are looking, and then either a) also eat next to nothing in private or else b) binge in secret, and feel terrible about yourself, neither of which are any good for you whatsoever.
Similarly, you can shame yourself out of bed, but you can’t shame yourself into the gym:
Let it go
There are some cases, especially those where shame has a large crossover with guilt, that it serves no purpose whatsoever, and is best processed and then put aside.
For example, if you did something that you are ashamed of many years ago, and/or feel guilty about something that you did many years ago, but this is not an ongoing thing for you (i.e., it was a one-off bad decision, or a bad habit that have now long since dropped), then feeling shame and/or guilt about that does not benefit you or anyone else.
As to how to process it and put it aside, if your thing harmed someone else, you could see if there’s a way to try to make amends (even if without confessing ill, such as by acting anonymously to benefit the person/group you harmed).
And then, forgive yourself. Regardless of whether you feel like you deserve it. Make the useful choice, that better benefits you, and by extension those around you.
If you are religious, you may find that of help here too. We’re a health science publication not a theological one, but for example: Buddhism preaches compassion including for oneself. Judaism preaches atonement. Christianity, absolution. For Islam, mercy is one of the holiest ideals of the religion, along with forgiveness. So while religion isn’t everyone’s thing, for those for whom it is, it can be an asset in this regard.
For a more worldly approach:
To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy (Here’s How To Do It) ← this goes for when the forgiveness in question is for yourself, too—and we do write about that there (and how)!
Take care!
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Dealing With Waking Up In The Night
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I’m now in my sixties and find that I invariably wake up at least once during the night. Is this normal? Even if it is, I would still like, once in a while, to sleep right through like a teenager. How might this be achieved, without pills?❞
Most people wake up briefly between sleep cycles, and forget doing so. But waking up for more than a brief moment is indeed best avoided. In men of your age, if you’re waking to pee (especially if it’s then not actually that easy to pee), it can be a sign of an enlarged prostate. Which is again a) normal b) not optimal.
By “without pills” we’ll assume you mean “without sleeping pills”. There are options to treat an enlarged prostate, including well-established supplements. We did a main feature on this:
Prostate Health: What You Should Know
If the cause of waking up is something else, then again this is common for everyone as we get older, and again it’s not optimal. But since there are so many possible causes (and thus solutions), it’s more than we can cover in less than a main feature, so we’ll have to revisit this later.
Meanwhile, take care!
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Galveston Diet Cookbook for Beginners – by Martha McGrew
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We recently reviewed “The Galveston Diet”, and here’s a cookbook (by a nutritionist) to support that.
For the most part, it’s essentially keto-leaning, with an emphasis on protein and fats, but without quite the carb-cut that keto tends to have. It’s also quite plant-centric, but it’s not by default vegan or even vegetarian; you will find meat and fish in here. As you might expect from an anti-inflammatory cookbook, it’s light on the dairy too, though fermented dairy products such as yogurt do feature as well.
The recipes are quite simple and easy to follow, with suggestions of alternative ingredients along the way, making for extra variety as well as convenience.
If you are going to buy this book, you might want to take a look at the buying options, to ensure you get a full-color version, as recent reprints have photos in black and white, whereas older runs have color throughout.
Bottom line: if you’d like to cook the Galveston Diet way, this is as good a way to start as any.
Click here to check out the Galveston Diet Cookbook for Beginners, and get cooking!
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Parenting a perfectionist? Here’s how you can respond
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Some children show signs of perfectionism from early on. Young children might become frustrated and rip up their drawing if it’s not quite right. Older children might avoid or refuse to do homework because they’re afraid to make a mistake.
Perfectionism can lead to children feeling overwhelmed, angry and frustrated, or sad and withdrawn.
And yet perfectionism isn’t considered all bad in our society. Being called a “perfectionist” can be a compliment – code for being a great worker or student, someone who strives to do their best and makes sure all jobs are done well.
These seemingly polarised views reflect the complex nature of perfectionism.
Annie Spratt/Unsplash What is perfectionism?
Researchers often separate perfectionism into two parts:
- perfectionistic strivings: being determined to meet goals and achieve highly
- perfectionistic concerns: worry about being able to meet high standards, and self-criticism about performance.
While perfectionistic strivings can be positive and lead to high achievement, perfectionistic concerns can lead to a higher chance of children developing eating disorders or anxiety and depression, and having lower academic achievement.
Perfectionistic concerns can result in lower academic achievement. Jessica Lewis/Unsplash Children and adolescents may experience perfectionism in relation to school work, sport, performance in art or music, or in relation to their own body.
Signs of perfectionistic concerns in children and adolescents may include:
- children being highly critical of themselves
- their reactions to mistakes seeming to be an overreaction
- intense preoccupation and worry over their standards and goals and/or procrastination
- significant change in performance, for example, lower academic results
- irritability and negative emotions, stress and feelings of worthlessness
- social problems with peers and friends, such as bullying and alienating themselves from peers.
A range of genetic, biological and environmental factors influence perfectionism in children. And as a parent, our role is important. While research evidence suggests we can’t successfully increase positive perfectionistic strivings in our children, harsh or controlling parenting can increase negative perfectionistic concerns in children.
Parents who are perfectionistic themselves can also model this to their children.
So, how can we walk the line between supporting our child’s interests and helping them to achieve their potential, without pressuring them and increasing the risk of negative outcomes?
Give them space to grow
A great metaphor is the gardener versus the carpenter described by psychology professor Alison Gopnik.
Instead of trying to build and shape our children by controlling them and their environment (like a carpenter), parents can embrace the spirit of the gardener – providing lots of space for children to grow in their own direction, and nourishing them with love, respect and trust.
Parents don’t need to control their child and their environment. Noah Silliman/Unsplash We can’t control who they become, so it’s better to sit back, enjoy the ride, and look forward to watching the person they grow into.
However, there is still plenty we can do as parents if our child is showing signs of perfectionism. We can role model to our children how to set realistic goals and be flexible when things change or go wrong, help our children manage stress and negative emotions, and create healthy balance in our family daily routine.
Set realistic goals
People with perfectionistic tendencies will often set unattainable goals. We can support the development of flexibility and realistic goal setting by asking curious questions, for example, “what would you need to do to get one small step closer to this goal?” Identifying upper and lower limits for goals is also helpful.
If your child is fixed on a high score at school, for example, set that as the “upper limit” and then support them to identify a “lower limit” they would find acceptable, even if they are less happy with the outcome.
This strategy may take time and practice to widen the gap between the two, but is useful to create flexibility over time.
If a goal is performance-based and the outcome cannot be guaranteed (for example, a sporting competition), encourage your child to set a personal goal they have more control over.
Parents can help children set goals they can achieve. liz99/Unsplash We can also have conversations about perfectionism from early on, and explain that everyone makes mistakes. In fact, it’s great to model this to our children – talking about our own mistakes and feelings, to show them that we ourselves are not perfect.
Talk aloud practices can help children to see that we “walk the walk”. For example, if you burn dinner you could reflect:
I’m disappointed because I put time and effort into that and it didn’t turn out as I expected. But we all make mistakes. I don’t get things right every time.
Manage stress and negative emotions
Some children and adolescents have a natural tendency towards perfectionism. Rather than trying to control their behaviour, we can provide gentle, loving support.
When our child or adolescent becomes frustrated, angry, sad or overwhelmed, we support them best by helping them to name, express and validate all of their emotions.
Parents may fear that acknowledging their child’s negative emotions will make the emotions worse, but the opposite is true.
Creating healthy balance
The building blocks of healthy child development are strong loving family relationships, good nutrition, creative play and plenty of physical activity, sleep and rest.
Perfectionism is associated with rigidity, and thinking that there is only one correct way to succeed. We can instead encourage flexibility and creativity in children.
Children’s brains grow through play. There is strong research evidence showing that creative, child-led play is associated with higher emotion regulation skills, and a range of cognitive skills, including problem-solving, memory, planning, flexibility and decision-making.
Play helps children’s brains grow. Mi Pham/Unsplash Play isn’t just for young children either – there’s evidence that explorative, creative play of any kind also benefits adolescents and adults.
There is also evidence that getting active outdoors in nature can promote children’s coping skills, emotion regulation and cognitive development.
Elizabeth Westrupp, Associate Professor in Psychology, Deakin University; Gabriella King, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University, and Jade Sheen, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Mineral-Rich Mung Bean Pancakes
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Mung beans are rich in an assortment of minerals, especially iron, copper, phosphorus, and magnesium. They’re also full of protein and fiber! What better way to make pancakes healthy?
You will need
- ½ cup dried green mung beans
- ½ cup chopped fresh parsley
- ½ cup chopped fresh dill
- ¼ cup uncooked wholegrain rice
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp MSG, or 2 tsp low-sodium salt
- 2 green onions, finely sliced
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Soak the mung beans and rice together overnight.
2) Drain and rinse, and blend them in a blender with ¼ cup of water, to the consistency of regular pancake batter, adding more water (sparingly) if necessary.
3) Transfer to a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients except for the olive oil, which latter you can now heat in a skillet over a medium-high heat.
4) Add a few spoonfuls of batter to the pan, depending on how big you want the pancakes to be. Cook on both sides until you get a golden-brown crust, and repeat for the rest of the pancakes.
5) Serve! As these are savory pancakes, you might consider serving them with a little salad—tomatoes, olives, and cucumbers go especially well.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)
- What’s The Deal With MSG?
- All About Olive Oils: Is “Extra Virgin” Worth It?
Take care!
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How To *Really* Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
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The Healthiest Habit-Building
Why was that book “Atomic Habits” called that? It wasn’t just because it’s a catchy title…
Habits are—much like atoms—things that are almost imperceptibly small, yet when stacked, they make up the substance of many much larger and more obvious things, and also contain an immense amount of potential power.
About that power…
Habits are the “compound interest” of natural human life. Every action we take, every decision we make, makes our life (often imperceptibly) better or worse. But getting even just 1% better or 1% worse at something every day? That’s going to not just add up over time… It’ll actively compound over time.
Habits will snowball one way or the other, good or bad. So, we want to control that snowball so that it works for us rather than against us.
Thus, we need to choose habits that are helpful to us, rather than those that are harmful to us. Top examples include:
- Making healthy food choices rather than unhealthy ones
- Moving our body regularly rather than being sedentary
- Having a good bedtime/morning routine rather than a daily chaotic blur
- Learning constantly rather than digging into old beliefs out of habit
- Forging healthy relationships rather than isolating ourselves
We all know that to make a habit stick, we need to practice it regularly, with opinions varying on how long it takes for something to become habit. Some say 21 days; some say 66. The number isn’t the important part!
What is important
You will never get to day 66, much less will you get to day 366, if you don’t first get to day 6 (New Year’s Resolutions, anyone?).
So in the early days especially, when the habit is most likely to get dropped, it’s critical to make the habit as easy as possible to form.
That means:
- The habit should be made as pleasant as possible
- (e.g. by making modifications to it if it’s not already intrinsically pleasant)
- The habit should take under 2 minutes to do at first
- (no matter if it takes longer than 2 minutes to be useful; it’ll never be useful if you don’t first get it to stick, so make your initial commitment only 2 minutes, just to get in the habit)
- The habit should have cues to remind you
- (as it’s not habit yet, you will need to either set a reminder on your phone, or leave a visual reminder, such as your workout clothes laid out ready for you in the morning, or a bowl of fruit in plain view where you spend a lot of time)
What gets measured, gets done
Streaks are a great way to do this. Habit-tracking apps help. Marks on a calendar or in a journal are also totally fine.
What can help especially, and that a lot of people don’t do, is to have a system of regular personal reviews—like a work “performance review”, but for oneself and one’s own life.
Set a reminder or write on the calendar / in your diary, to review monthly, or weekly if you prefer, such things as:
- How am I doing in the areas of life that are important to me?
- Have a list of the areas of life that are important to you, by the way, and genuinely reflect on each of them, e.g:
- Health
- Finances
- Relationships
- Learning
- Sleep
- Etc
- Have a list of the areas of life that are important to you, by the way, and genuinely reflect on each of them, e.g:
- What is working for me, and what isn’t working for me?
- What will I do better in this next month/week?
…and then do it!
Good luck, and may it all stack up in your favor!
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