Is Ant Oil Just “Snake Oil”?

Health and Productivity, Made Crazy Simple.

Today, it’s “Resource Wednesday” where we test out a few different products and services that could be of interest to you. Let’s get started!

We Tested Out “Ant Egg Oil”

Neither did we, and when we heard about it, we did our usual research, and discovered a startling secret.

We decided to dig deeper, and the plot (unlike the hair in question) thickens:

We could not find any science for or against (or even generally about) the use of ant egg oil to prevent hair regrowth. Not a peep. What we did find though was a cosmetic chemist who did an analysis of the oil as sold, and found its main ingredient appears to be furan-2-carbaldehyde, or Furfural, to its friends.

Surprise! There’s also no science that we could find about the effect of Furfural (we love the name, though! Fur for all!) on hair, except that it’s bad for rodents (and their hair) if they eat a lot of it. So please don’t eat it. Especially if you’re a mouse.

And yet, many ostensibly real reviews out in the wild claim it works wonders. So, we took the investigative reporting approach and tried it ourselves.

That’s right, a plucky member of our team tried it, and she reports:

❝ At first glance, it seems like olive oil. There’s something else though, adding a darker colour and a slight bitterness to the smell.

After waxing, I applied a little every few days. When the hair eventually regrew (and it did), it grew back thinner, and removing the new hairs was a strangely easy experience, like pulling hairs out of soft soap instead of out of skin. It didn’t hurt at all, either.

I had more of the oil, so I kept going with the treatment, and twelve weeks later there are very few hairs regrowing at all; probably there will be none left soon. Whatever’s in this, be it from ant eggs or wheat bran or something else entirely, it worked for me!❞

So in short: it remains a mystery for now! If you try it, let us know how it went for you.

Here’s the “interesting” website that sells it, though you may find it for less on eBay or similar. (Note, we aren’t earning any commissions from these links. We just wanted to make it easier for you to dive deeper).

Feeling The Squeeze Financially In These “Unprecedented” Times?

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, and oh, how we long for “precedented” times. But here we are, so:

Whether you’re tightening the purse-strings or just trying to be more organised, one of the problems found by many when it comes to budgeting is that all too often, real life defies our expectations.

Expenses we forgot about arrive unexpectedly, sometimes all at once! We find ourselves in a tangled mess, and the answer to “can I afford that?” is usually either a wild guess, or “well I’ll have to, somehow”.

 It’s stressful.

You Need A Budget is a resource we love, that takes a different approach to most budgeting softwares and systems: it doesn’t let you budget money you don’t have yet.

This may seem strange: how, then, are we to plan? How can we know what we can afford? This sounds terrifying!

The answer: by projecting our expenses as normal, but only assigning actual money to them as the money in question arrives. If all your expenses are monthly and your pay is also monthly, this means you could do this in one sitting. But more often, some expenses are daily, some weekly, some monthly, some quarterly, some annually, and some unpredictably ad hoc. For some (such as those who are self-employed), income can be equally irregular.

Imagine each of your expenses in a list, but with an extra column to say how much actual money of what you have right now has been assigned to that. So if you have enough money to put money aside for all of those expenses, great! If not, the money you have gets assigned according to priority, and/or on a pro-rata basis, with a deadline for having it 100% fulfilled. It’s like a little private GoFundMe for each of your expenses, so you know with complete certainty at any given time precisely what you can afford.

And what about unexpected expenses? They get budgeted-for too; you just create a category for “car repairs”, for example, then assign it a figure and gradually let it accrue money as and when you have spare money to assign to it.

If you care for your privacy, you can input the ins-and-outs manually, or even just use the system without using YNAB’s software. If you want them to do it (and pay them a fee accordingly), they can automate most of the work for you.

Check out YNAB’s own explanation of their system here!

One-Minute Book Review

A lot of diet books—which this isn’t—presuppose that the reader wants to lose weight, and varyingly encourage and shame the reader into trying to do so. Henri Marcoux takes a completely different approach:

He starts by assuming we are—whether consciously or not—the weight we want to be, and looks at the various physical and psychological factors that influence us to such. Ranging from food poverty to eating our feelings to social factors and more, he bids us examine our relationship with food and eating—not just in the sense of mindful eating, but from multiple scientific angles too.

From this, Marcoux gives us questions and suggestions to ensure that our relationship with food and eating is what we want it to be, for us. If you want to gain or lose weight, there’s a good chance this book will help you. If you want to be happier and healthier at the weight you are, there’s a good chance this book will help you with that, too.

Check out today’s book on Amazon!

See you tomorrow!

The 10almonds team

DISCLAIMER: None of this is medical advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not medical advice or a solicitation to buy any supplements or medications, or to make any medical decisions. Always be careful. Always consult a professional.