Tick Tock… Goes the Death Clock?

This fun little test will ask a few questions about you and your lifestyle, and then make a prediction of your personal life expectancy, based on global statistics from the World Health Organisation.

And then the countdown starts… Literally, it generates a clock for you to see your life-seconds ticking away—this may or may not delight you, but it sure is a curiosity.

Their “Letters” page has a lot of reactions from people who just got their results (spoiler: people’s perspectives on life vary a lot)

Who mostly uses this service? According to their stats page, it’s mostly curious under-45s, with gradually less interest in knowing about it from 45 onwards… until the age of 70, when suddenly everyone wants to know about it again!

So Is It Possible To Pause The Clock On Aging? – Q&A Spotlight Interview

Life extension is sometimes viewed as the domain of the super-rich, and with less than half of Millennials (and almost none of Gen-Z) having retirement plans, often those of us who aren’t super-rich have more mundane (and immediate!) goals than living to 120.

And yet…

Middle class and working class life-extensionists do exist, even if not garnering the same media attention. We think that’s strange—after all, while the whimsies of the super-rich may be entertaining to read about, it’s not nearly as applicable to most people as more relatable stories:

• The twenty-something who gives up smoking and adds (healthier!) years to their life
• The thirty-something who adopts a plant-based diet and is less likely to die of heart disease
• The forty-something who stops drinking, and avoids health conditions and mishaps alike
• The fifty-something who reconsiders their health plan in light of their changing body
• The sixty-something who takes up yoga, or chess, or salsa dancing
• The seventy-something who gets asked what their secret is
• …and so on

But these are ideas, textbook examples. What if we make it more personal?

We interviewed 10 Almonds subscriber and longevity enthusiast Anastasia S., and here’s what she had to say:

Q: What does life extension mean to you, in your life?

A: To me, the key is healthy life extension. People often joke “I don’t want to live longer; the last years are the worst!” but they’re missing the point that after a certain age, those difficulties are coming whether they come at 50 or 70 or 90. Personally, I’d rather keep them at bay if I can.

Q: How do you do that?

A: Firstly, which won’t be a shock: good diet and exercise. Those two things are possibly the biggest active influences on my longevity. I’m vegan, which I don’t think is outright necessary for good health but done right, it can certainly be good. In this house we eat a lot of whole grains, beans, lentils, vegetables in general, nuts too. As for exercise, I do 30–60 minutes of Pilates daily; it’s nothing fancy and it’s just me in my pajamas at home, but it keeps me strong and fit and supple. I also walk everywhere; I don’t even own a car. Beyond that… I don’t drink or smoke (probably the biggest passive influences on my longevity, i.e., things that aren’t there to make it shorter), and I try to take my sleep seriously, making sure to schedule enough time and prepare properly for it.

Q: Take your sleep seriously? How so?

A: Good “sleep hygiene” as some call it—I schedule a little wind-down time before sleep, with no glaring screens or main lights, making a space between my busy day and restful sleep, kicking anything requiring brainpower to the morning, and making a conscious choice not to think more about those things in the meantime. I take care to make my sleeping environment as conducive as possible to good sleep too; I have a good mattress and pillows, I make sure the temperature is cool but cosy. I have a pot of herbal tea on my bedside table—I hydrate a lot.

Q: Do you take any supplements?

A: I do! They’re mostly quite general though, just “covering my bases”, so to speak. I take a daily nootropic stack (a collection of supplements specifically for brain health), too. I buy them in bulk, so they don’t cost so much.

Q: This seems quite a healthy lifestyle! Do you have any vices at all?

A: I definitely drink more coffee than I probably should! But hey, nobody’s perfect. I do love coffee, though, and as vices go, it’s probably not too bad.

Q: How’s it all working out for you? Do you feel younger?

A: I’m 38 and sometimes I feel like a teenager; sometimes I feel like an old lady. But the latter is usually for social reasons, not health-related reasons. I do have streaks of gray in my hair though, and I love that! If people don’t notice my grays, then they often think I’m in my 20s, rather than pushing 40. A little while back, I was stopped in the street by someone wanting to sell me a change of household utilities provider, then she stopped herself mid-sentence and said “Oh but wait, you look a bit too young, never mind”. Most general metrics of health would put me in my 20s.

Q: That’s interesting that you love your gray hairs, for someone who wants to stay young; is it an exception?

A: It’s more that I want to minimize the problems that come with age, and not everything’s a problem. Gray hairs are cool; joint pain, not so much. A long life rich with experiences is cool; memory loss, not so much. So, I try to keep healthy, and wear my years as best I can.

Q: Sounds good to us; good luck with it!

A: Thank you; I do my best!

Here at 10 Almonds, we love featuring what our readers are doing to improve their health; if you’re willing to be featured in our newsletter, let us know by replying to this email (where an actual human will read it, we promise!)

Asthma, obesity, and type 2 diabetes are closely linked, with the latter two greatly increasing asthma attack risk.

While bronchodilators / corticosteroids can have immediate adverse effects due to sympathetic nervous system activation, and lasting adverse effects due to the damage it does to metabolic health, diabetes drugs, on the other hand, can improve things with (for most people) fewer unwanted side effects.

Great! Which drugs?

Metformin, and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs).

Specifically, researchers have found:

• Metformin is associated with a 30% reduction in asthma attacks
• GLP-1RAs are associated with a 40% reduction in asthma attacks

…and yes, they stack, making for a 70% reduction in the case of people taking both. Furthermore, the results are independent of weight, glycemic control, or asthma phenotype.

In terms of what was counted, the primary outcome was asthma attacks at 12-month follow-up, defined by oral corticosteroid use, emergency visits, hospitalizations, or death.

The effect of metformin on asthma attacks was not affected by BMI, HbA1c levels, eosinophil count, asthma severity, or sex.

Of the various extra antidiabetic drugs trialled in this study, only GLP-1 receptor agonists showed a further and sustained reduction in asthma attacks.

Here’s the study itself, hot off the press, published on Monday:

JAMA Int. Med. | Antidiabetic Medication and Asthma Attacks

“But what if I’m not diabetic?”

Good news:

More than half of all US adults are eligible for semaglutide therapy ← this is because they’ve expanded the things that semaglutide (the widely-used GLP-1 receptor agonist drug) can be prescribed for, now going beyond just diabetes and/or weight loss 😎

And metformin, of course, is more readily available than semaglutide, so by all means speak with your doctor/pharmacist about that, if it’s of interest to you.

Take care!

Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt

Firstly, what is high blood pressure vs normal, and what do those blood pressure readings mean?

Rather than take up undue space here, we’ll just quickly link to…

Blood Pressure Readings Explained (With A Colorful Chart)

More details of specifics, at:

Hypotension | Normal | Elevated | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Danger zone

Keeping Blood Pressure Down

As with most health-related things (and in fact, much of life in general), prevention is better than cure.

People usually know “limit salt” and “manage stress”, but there’s a lot more to it!

Salt isn’t as big a factor as you probably think

That doesn’t mean go crazy on the salt, as it can cause a lot of other problems, including organ failure. But it does mean that you can’t skip the salt and assume your blood pressure will take care of itself.

This paper, for example, considers “high” sodium consumption to be more than 5g per day, and urinary excretion under 3g per day is considered to represent a low sodium dietary intake:

Sodium Intake and Hypertension

Meanwhile, health organizations often recommend to keep sodium intake to under 2g or under 1.5g

Top tip: if you replace your table salt with “reduced sodium” salt, this is usually sodium chloride (regular table salt) cut with potassium chloride, which is almost as “salty” tastewise, but obviously contains less sodium. Not only that, but potassium actually helps the body eliminate sodium, too.

The rest of what you eat is important too

The Mediterranean Diet is as great for this as it is for most health conditions.

If you sometimes see the DASH diet mentioned, that stands for “Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension”, and is basically the Mediterranean Diet with a few tweaks.

What are the tweaks?

• Beans went down a bit in priority
• Red meat got removed entirely instead of “limit to a tiny amount”
• Olive oil was deprioritized, and/but vegetable oil is at the bottom of the list (i.e., use sparingly)

You can check out the details here, with an overview and examples:

DASH Eating Plan—Description, Charts, and Recipes

Don’t drink or smoke

And no, a glass of red a day will not help your heart. Alcohol does make us feel relaxed, but that is because of what it does to our brain, not what it does to our heart.

In reality, even a single drink will increase blood pressure. Yes, really:

Alcohol Intake and Blood Pressure Levels: A Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Nonexperimental Cohort Studies

And smoking? It’s so bad that even second-hand smoke increases blood pressure:

Associations of Smoke‐Free Policies in Restaurants, Bars, and Workplaces With Blood Pressure Changes in the CARDIA Study

Get those Zs in

Sleep is a commonly underestimated/forgotten part of health, precisely because in a way, we’re not there for it when it happens. We sleep through it! But it is important, including to protect against hypertension:

Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption

Move your body!

Moving your body often is far more important for your heart than running marathons or bench-pressing your spouse.

Those 150 minutes “moderate exercise” (e.g. walking) per week are important, and can be for example:

• 22 minutes per day, 7 days per week
• 25 minutes per day, 6 days per week
• 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week
• 75 minutes per day, 2 days per week

If you’d like to know more about the science and evidence for this, as well as practical suggestions, you can download the complete second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans here (it’s free, and no sign-up required!)

If you prefer a bite-size summary, then here’s their own:

Top 10 Things to Know About the Second Edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans

PS: Want a blood pressure monitor? We don’t sell them (or anything else), but for your convenience, here’s a good one you might want to consider.