Breathe; Don't Vent (At Least In The Moment)

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• There are different approaches to anger management, and some work better in the moment, while other strategies can be needed for longer-term issues.

  • Today’s main feature looks at some new science of anger management approaches, and how they stack up

  • We realize that “the new science of” is a popular marketing phrase, but we mean literally, the study was published in April 2024. If you’re wondering how that happens, it’s because online journals have content that distributed publications won’t distribute until the next month 😉 

• Would you like to exercise at the gym more, and/but would like your workout to be more science-based?

  • Today’s sponsor Orangetheory Fitness are offering a free trial session (US only, though) of their heart-rate-based training program. Check them out!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

What Happens To Your Brain When You Mindlessly Scroll? (9:23)

ASAP Science explains (with plenty of actual science to back it up):

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Prefer text? Check out their scientific references / further reading links under the video! 🤓

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

• Of Brains And Breakouts

• Vaping: A Lot Of Hot Air?

❓ MYSTERY ITEM

At Your Feet

Hint: yes, today’s mystery item does really look like that, and it is to scale

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

• Marathons in Mid- and Later-Life

• Make Your Coffee Heart-Healthier!

🧘‍♀️ MAIN FEATURE

Zen And The Art Of Breaking Things

We’ve talked before about identifying emotions and the importance of being able to express them:

Answering The Most Difficult Question: How Are You?

However, there can be a difference between “expressing how we feel” and “being possessed by how we feel and bulldozing everything in our path”

…which is, of course, primarily a problem in the case of anger—and by extension, emotions that are often contemporaneous with anger, such as jealousy, shame, fear, etc.

How much feeling is too much?

While this is in large part a subjective matter, clinically speaking the key question is generally: is it adversely affecting daily life to the point of being a problem?

For example, if you have to spend half an hour every day actively managing a certain emotion, that’s probably indicative of something unusual, but “unusual” is not inherently bad. If you’re managing it safely and in a way that doesn’t negatively affect the rest of your life, then that is generally considered fine, unless you feel otherwise about it.

A good example of this is complicated grief and/or prolonged grief.

But what about when it comes to anger? How much is ok?

When it comes to those around you, any amount of anger can seem like too much. Anger often makes us short-tempered even with people who are not the object of our anger, and it rarely brings out the best in us.

We can express our feelings in non-aggressive ways, for example:

When You “Can’t Complain”

and

Seriously Useful Communication Skills!

Sometimes, there’s another way though…

Breathe; don’t vent

That’s a great headline, but we can’t take the credit for it, because it came from:

Breathe, don't vent: turning down the heat is key to managing anger

…in which it was found that, by all available metrics, the popular wisdom of “getting it off your chest” doesn’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny, at least in the short term:

And indeed, he and his team did find that various arousal-increasing activities (such as hitting a punchbag, breaking things, doing vigorous exercise) did not help as much as arousal-decreasing activities, such as mindfulness-based relaxation techniques.

If you’d like to read the full paper, then so would we, but we couldn’t get full access to this one yet. However, the abstract includes representative statistics, so that’s worth a once-over:

A meta-analytic review of anger management activities that increase or decrease arousal: What fuels or douses rage?

Caveat!

Did you notice the small gap between their results and their conclusion?

In a lab or similar short-term observational setting, their recommendation is clearly correct.

However, if the source of your anger is something chronic and persistent, it could well be that calming down without addressing the actual cause is just “kicking the can down the road”, and will still have to actually be dealt with eventually.

So, while “here be science”, it’s not a mandate for necessarily suffering in silence. It’s more about being mindful about how we go about tackling our anger.

As for a primer on mindfulness, feel free to check out:

No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Take care!

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• Coenzyme Q10 From Foods & Supplements

• When “Normal” Health Is Not What You Want

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates: Healthy Eating for Healthy Living with a Low-Carbohydrate, Anti-Inflammatory Diet – by Susan Neal

We will not keep the steps a mystery; abbreviated, they are:

1. decide to really do this thing

2. get knowledge and support

3. clean out that pantry/fridge/etc and put those things behind you

4. buy in healthy foods while starving your candida

5. plan for an official start date, so that everything is ready

6. change the way you eat (prep methods, timings, etc)

7. 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!

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team