11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips – by Melinda Wright

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If hips don’t lie, what are yours saying to you? If what they’re saying to you sounds like a cry for help sometimes, this is the book to get you onto a better track.

The hip is the largest joint in your body, and it bears a lot of weight. So it’s little wonder if sometimes they’d like a word with the boss. The question is: what will you do about it? Melinda Wright has suggestions to keep your hips—and you—happy.

She spends the first couple of chapters introducing key concepts, and some anatomy and physiology that’ll be good to know.

Then we’re into resistance stretching, basic hip exercises, all the way through to more advanced stuff. There are very clear photos for each. One thing that stands out about this book is each exercise is not just explained simply and clearly, but also offers “easing oneself in” exercises. After all, we’re not all at the same starting point.

The book finishes off with some more holistic advice about chronic pain management, based on her personal experience with scoliosis, and some dietary tips to reduce joint pain and inflammation too.

All in all, a very helpful book!

Pick up 11 “Minutes to Pain-Free Hips” at Amazon today!

^You will also see options for pain-free back, and pain-free neck, by the same author

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Recommended

  • Fast Exercise – by Dr. Michael Mosley & Peta Bee
  • Own Your Past Change Your Future – by Dr. John Delony
    Own Your Past To Change Your Future offers a casual approach to reframing your life through storytelling and practical steps. No psychology jargon, just results.

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  • Do You Believe In Magic? – by Dr. Paul Offit

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    Here at 10almonds, we like to examine and present the science wherever it leads, so this book was an interesting read.

    Dr. Offit, himself a much-decorated vaccine research scientist, and longtime enemy of the anti-vax crowd, takes aim at alternative therapies in general, looking at what does work (and how), and what doesn’t (and what harm it can cause).

    The style of the book is largely polemic in tone, but there’s lots of well-qualified information and stats in here too. And certainly, if there are alternative therapies you’ve left unquestioned, this book will probably prompt questions, at the very least.

    And science, of course, is about asking questions, and shouldn’t be afraid of such! Open-minded skepticism is a key starting point, while being unafraid to actually reach a conclusion of “this is probably [not] so”, when and if that’s where the evidence brings us. Then, question again when and if new evidence comes along.

    To that end, Dr. Offit does an enthusiastic job of looking for answers, and presenting what he finds.

    If the book has downsides, they are primarily twofold:

    • He is a little quick to dismiss the benefits of a good healthy diet, supplemented or otherwise.
      • His keenness here seems to step from a desire to ensure people don’t skip life-saving medical treatments in the hope that their diet will cure their cancer (or liver disease, or be it what it may), but in doing so, he throws out a lot of actually good science.
    • He—strangely—lumps menopausal HRT in with alternative therapies, and does the exact same kind of anti-science scaremongering that he rails against in the rest of the book.
      • In his defence, this book was published ten years ago, and he may have been influenced by a stack of headlines at the time, and a popular celebrity endorsement of HRT, which likely put him off it.

    Bottom line: there’s something here to annoy everyone—which makes for stimulating reading.

    Click here to check out Do You Believe In Magic, and expand your knowledge!

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  • Is Sugar The New Smoking?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    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 😎

    ❝Could you do a this or that of which. Is worse, smoking cigarettes or having a sweet tooth? Also, perhaps have us evaluate one part of newsletter at a time, rather than overall. I especially appreciate your book reviews and often find them through my library system.❞

    We’re glad you enjoy the book reviews! We certainly enjoy reading many books to write about them for you.

    As for the idea having readers evaluate one part of the newsletter at a time, rather than overall, there is a technical limitation that embedded polls are very large, data-wise, so if we were to do a poll for each section, the email would then get clipped by gmail and other email providers. However, you are always more than welcome to do as you’ve done, and include comments about what section(s) you took the most value from.

    Now, onto your main question/request: as it doesn’t quite fit the usual format for our This vs That section, we’ve opted to do it as a main feature here 🙂

    So, let’s get into it…

    Not a zero-sum game

    First, let’s be clear that for most people there is no pressing reason that this should be an either/or decision. There is nothing inherent to quitting either one that makes the other loom larger.

    However, that said, if you’re (speaking generally here, and not making any presumptions about the asker) currently smoking regularly and partaking of a lot of added sugar, then you may be wondering which you should prioritize quitting first—as it is indeed generally recommended to only try to quit one thing at a time.

    Indeed, we wrote previously, as a guideline for “what to do in one what order”:

    Not sure where to start? We suggest this order of priorities, unless you have a major health condition that makes something else a higher priority:

    1. If you smoke, stop
    2. If you drink, reduce, or ideally stop
    3. Improve your diet

    About that diet…

    Worry less about what to exclude, and instead focus on adding more variety of fruit/veg.

    See also: Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)

    That said, if you’re looking for things to cut, sugar is a top candidate (and red meat is in clear second place albeit some way below)

    That’s truncated from a larger list, but those were the top items.

    You can read the rest in full, here: The Best Few Interventions For The Best Health: These Top 5 Things Make The Biggest Difference

    The flipside of this “you can quit both” reality is that the inverse is also true: much like how having one disease makes it more likely we will get another, unhealthy habits tend to come in clusters too, as each will weaken our resolve with regard to the others. Thus, there is a sort of “comorbidity of habits” that occurs.

    The good news is: the same can be said for healthy habits, so they (just like unhealthy habits) can support each other, stack, and compound. This means that while it may seem harder to quit two bad habits than one, in actual fact, the more bad habits you quit, the more it’ll become easy to quit the others. And similarly, the more good habits you adopt, the more it’ll become easy to adopt others.

    See also: How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

    So, let’s keep that in mind, while we then look at the cases against smoking, and sugar:

    The case against smoking

    This is perhaps one of the easiest cases to make in the entirety of the health science world, and the only difficult part is knowing where to start, when there’s so much.

    The World Health Organization leads with these key facts, on its tobacco fact sheet:

    • Tobacco kills up to half of its users who don’t quit.
    • Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year, including an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.
    • Around 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.
    • In 2020, 22.3% of the world’s population used tobacco: 36.7% of men and 7.8% of women.
    • To address the tobacco epidemic, WHO Member States adopted the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in 2003. Currently 182 countries are Parties to this treaty.
    • The WHO MPOWER measures are in line with the WHO FCTC and have been shown to save lives and reduce costs from averted healthcare expenditure.

    Source: World Health Organization | Tobacco

    Now, some of those are just interesting sociological considerations (well, they are of practical use to the WHO whose job it is to offer global health policy guidelines, but for us at 10almonds, with the more modest goal of helping individual people lead their best healthy lives, there’s not so much that we can do with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, for example), but for the individual smoker, the first two are really very serious, so let’s take a closer look:

    ❝Tobacco kills up to half of its users who don’t quit.❞

    A bold claim, backed up by at least three very large, very compelling studies:

    ❝Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year, including an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.

    The WHO’s cited source for this was gatekept in a way we couldn’t access (and so probably most of our readers can’t either), but take a look at what the CDC has to say for the US alone (bearing in mind the US’s population of a little over 300,000,000, which is just 3.75% of the global population of a little over 8,000,000,000):

    smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths [in the US] annually, with an estimated 41,000 deaths from secondhand smoke exposure, and it can reduce a person’s life expectancy by 10 years. Quitting smoking before the age of 40 reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related disease by about 90%❞

    If we now remember that third bullet point, that said “Around 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.”, then we can imagine the numbers are worse for many other countries, including large-population countries that have a lower median income than the US, such as India and Brazil.

    Source for the CDC comment: Tobacco-Related Mortality

    See also: AAMC | Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

    We only have so much room here, but if that’s not enough…

    More than 100 reasons to quit tobacco

    The case against sugar

    We reviewed an interesting book about this:

    The Case Against Sugar – by Gary Taubes

    But suffice it to say, added sugar is a big health problem; not in the same league as tobacco, but it’s big, because of how it messes with our metabolism (and when our metabolism goes wrong, everything else goes wrong):

    From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    The epidemiology of sugar consumption and related mortality is harder to give clear stats about than smoking, because there’s not a clear yes/no indicator, and cause and effect are harder to establish when the waters are so muddied by other factors. But for comparison, we’ll note that compared to the 480,000 deaths caused by tobacco in the US annually, the total death to diabetes (which is not necessarily “caused by sugar consumption”, but there’s at least an obvious link when it comes to type 2 diabetes and refined carbohydrates) was 101,209 deaths due to diabetes in 2022:

    National Center for Health Statistics | Diabetes

    Now, superficially, that looks like “ok, so smoking is just under 5x more deadly”, but it’s important to remember that almost everyone eats added sugar, whereas a minority of people smoke, and those are mortality per total US population figures, not mortality per user of the substance in question. So in fact, smoking is, proportionally to how many people smoke, many times more deadly than diabetes, which currently ranks 8th in the “top causes of death” list.

    Note: we recognize that you did say “having a sweet tooth” rather than “consuming added sugar”, but it’s worth noting that artificial sweeteners are not a get-out-of-illness-free card either:

    The Problem With Sweeteners

    Let’s get back to sugar though, as while it’s a very different beast than tobacco, it is arguably addictive also, by multiple mechanisms of addiction:

    The Not-So-Sweet Science Of Sugar Addiction

    That said, those mechanisms of addiction are not necessarily as strong as some others, so in the category of what’s easy or hard to quit, this is on the easier end of things—not that that means it’s easy, just, quitting many drugs is harder. In any case, it can be done:

    When It’s More Than “Just” Cravings: Beat Food Addictions!

    In summary

    Neither are good for the health, but tobacco is orders of magnitude worse, and should be the priority to quit, unless your doctor(s) tell you otherwise because of your personal situation, and even then, try to get multiple opinions to be sure.

    Take care!

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  • Milk Thistle For The Brain, Bones, & More

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    “Thistle Do Nicely”

    Milk thistle is a popular supplement; it comes from the milk thistle plant (Silybum marianum), commonly just called thistles. There are other kinds of thistle too, but these are one of the most common.

    So, what does it do?

    Liver health

    Milk thistle enjoys popular use to support liver health; the liver is a remarkably self-regenerative organ if given the chance, but sometimes it can use a helping hand.

    See for example: How To Undo Liver Damage

    As for milk thistle’s beneficence, it is very well established:

    Brain health

    For this one the science is less well-established, as studies so far have been on non-human animals, or have been in vitro studies.

    Nevertheless, the results so far are promising, and the mechanism of action seems to be a combination of reducing oxidative stress and neuroinflammation, as well as suppressing amyloid β-protein (Aβ) fibril formation, in other words, reducing amyloid plaques.

    General overview: A Mini Review on the Chemistry and Neuroprotective Effects of Silymarin

    All about the plaques, but these are non-human animal studies:

    Against diabetes

    Milk thistle improves insulin sensitivity, and reduces fasting blood sugar levels and HbA1c levels. The research so far is mostly in type 2 diabetes, however (at least, so far as we could find). For example:

    Silymarin in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

    Studies we could find for T1D were very far from translatable to human usefulness, for example, “we poisoned these rats with streptozotocin then gave them megadoses of silymarin (10–15 times the dose usually recommended for humans) and found very small benefits to the lenses of their eyes” (source).

    Against osteoporosis

    In this case, milk thistle’s estrogenic effects may be of merit to those at risk of menopause-induced osteoporosis:

    Antiosteoclastic activity of milk thistle extract after ovariectomy to suppress estrogen deficiency-induced osteoporosis

    If you’d like a quick primer about such things as what antiosteoclastic activity is, here’s a quick recap:

    Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?

    Is it safe?

    It is “Generally Recognized As Safe”, and even when taken at high doses for long periods, side effects are very rare.

    Contraindications include if you’re pregnant, nursing, or allergic.

    Potential reasons for caution (but not necessarily contraindication) include if you’re diabetic (its blood-sugar lowering effects will decrease the risk of hyperglycemia while increasing the risk of hypoglycemia), or have a condition that could be exacerbated by its estrogenic effects—including if you are on HRT, because it’s an estrogen receptor agonist in some ways (for example those bone benefits we mentioned before) but an estrogen antagonist in others (for example, in the uterus, if you have one, or in nearby flat muscles, if you don’t).

    As ever, speak with your doctor/pharmacist to be sure.

    Want to try it?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon

    Enjoy!

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Related Posts

  • Fast Exercise – by Dr. Michael Mosley & Peta Bee
  • Fat’s Real Barriers To Health

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Fat Justice In Healthcare

    This is Aubrey Gordon, an author, podcaster, and fat justice activist. What does that mean?

    When it comes to healthcare, we previously covered some ideas very similar to her work, such as how…

    There’s a lot of discrimination in healthcare settings

    In this case, it often happens that a thin person goes in with a medical problem and gets treated for that, while a fat person can go in with the same medical problem and be told “you should try losing some weight”.

    Top tip if this happens to you… Ask: “what would you advise/prescribe to a thin person with my same symptoms?”

    Other things may be more systemic, for example:

    When a thin person goes to get their blood pressure taken, and that goes smoothly, while a fat person goes to get their blood pressure taken, and there’s not a blood pressure cuff to fit them, is the problem the size of the person or the size of the cuff? It all depends on perspective, in a world built around thin people.

    That’s a trivial-seeming example, but the same principle has far-reaching (and harmful) implications in healthcare in general, e.g:

    • Surgeons being untrained (and/or unwilling) to operate on fat people
    • Getting a one-size-fits-all dose that was calculated using average weight, and now doesn’t work
    • MRI machines are famously claustrophobia-inducing for thin people; now try not fitting in it in the first place

    …and so forth. So oftentimes, obesity will be correlated with a poor healthcare outcome, where the problem is not actually the obesity itself, but rather the system having been set up with thin people in mind.

    It would be like saying “Having O- blood type results in higher risks when receiving blood transfusions”, while omitting to add “…because we didn’t stock O- blood”.

    Read more on this topic: Shedding Some Obesity Myths

    Does she have practical advice about this?

    If she could have you understand one thing, it would be:

    You deserve better.

    Or if you are not fat: your fat friends deserve better.

    How this becomes useful is: do not accept being treated as the problem!

    Demand better!

    If you meekly accept that you “just need to lose weight” and that thus you are the problem, you take away any responsibility from your healthcare provider(s) to actually do their jobs and provide healthcare.

    See also Gordon’s book, which we’ve not reviewed yet but probably will one of these days:

    “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People – by Aubrey Gordon

    Are you saying fat people don’t need to lose weight?

    That’s a little like asking “would you say office workers don’t need to exercise more?”; there are implicit assumptions built into the question that are going unaddressed.

    Rather: some people might benefit healthwise from losing weight, some might not.

    In fact, over the age of 65, being what is nominally considered “overweight” reduces all-cause mortality risk.

    For details of that and more, see: When BMI Doesn’t Measure Up

    But what if I do want/need to lose weight?

    Gordon’s not interested in helping with that, but we at 10almonds are, so…

    Check out: Lose Weight, But Healthily

    Where can I find more from Aubrey Gordon?

    You might enjoy her blog:

    Aubrey Gordon | Your Fat Friend

    Or her other book, which we reviewed previously:

    What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat – by Aubrey Gordon

    Enjoy!

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  • Non-Sleep Deep Rest: A Neurobiologist’s Take

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    How to get many benefits of sleep, while awake!

    Today we’re talking about Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor in the department of neurobiology at Stanford School of Medicine.

    He’s also a popular podcaster, and as his Wikipedia page notes:

    ❝In episodes lasting several hours, Huberman talks about the state of research in a specific topic, both within and outside his specialty❞

    Today, we won’t be taking hours, and we will be taking notes from within his field of specialty (neurobiology). Specifically, in this case:

    Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR)

    What is it? To quote from his own dedicated site on the topic:

    What is NSDR (Yoga Nidra)? Non-Sleep Deep Rest, also known as NSDR, is a method of deep relaxation developed by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University School of Medicine.

    It’s a process that combines controlled breathing and detailed body scanning to bring you into a state of heightened awareness and profound relaxation. The main purpose of NSDR is to reduce stress, enhance focus, and improve overall well-being.❞

    While it seems a bit bold of Dr. Huberman to claim that he developed yoga nidra, it is nevertheless reassuring to get a neurobiologist’s view on this:

    How it works, by science

    Dr. Huberman says that by monitoring EEG readings during NSDR, we can see how the brain slows down. Measurably!

    • It goes from an active beta range of 13–30 Hz (normal waking) to a conscious meditation state of an alpha range of 8–13 Hz.
    • However, with practice, it can drop further, into a theta range of 4–8 Hz.
    • Ultimately, sustained SSDR practice can get us to 0.5–3 Hz.

    This means that the brain is functioning in the delta range, something that typically only occurs during our deepest sleep.

    You may be wondering: why is delta lower than theta? That’s not how I remember the Greek alphabet being ordered!

    Indeed, while the Greek alphabet goes alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta (and so on), the brainwave frequency bands are:

    • Gamma = concentrated focus, >30 Hz
    • Beta = normal waking, 13–30 Hz
    • Alpha = relaxed state, 8–13 Hz
    • Theta = light sleep, 4–8 Hz
    • Delta = deep sleep, 1–4 Hz

    Source: Sleep Foundationwith a nice infographic there too

    NSDR uses somatic cues to engage our parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn enables us to reach those states. The steps are simple:

    1. Pick a time and place when you won’t be disturbed
    2. Lie on your back and make yourself comfortable
    3. Close your eyes as soon as you wish, and now that you’ve closed them, imagine closing them again. And again.
    4. Slowly bring your attention to each part of your body in turn, from head to toe. As your attention goes to each part, allow it to relax more.
    5. If you wish, you can repeat this process for another wave, or even a third.
    6. Find yourself well-rested!

    Note: this engagement of the parasympathetic nervous system and slowing down of brain activity accesses restorative states not normally available while waking, but 10 minutes of NSDR will not replace 7–9 hours of sleep; nor will it give you the vital benefits of REM sleep specifically.

    So: it’s an adjunct, not a replacement

    Want to try it, but not sure where/how to start?

    When you’re ready, let Dr. Huberman himself guide you through it in this shortish (10:49) soundtrack:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

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

    Take care!

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  • Total Fitness After 40 – by Nick Swettenham

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Time may march relentlessly on, but can we retain our youthful good health?

    The answer is that we can… to a degree. And where we can’t, we can and should adapt what we do as we age.

    The key, as Swettenham illustrates, is that there are lifestyle factors that will help us to age more slowly, thus retaining our youthful good health for longer. At the same time, there are factors of which we must simply be mindful, and take care of ourselves a little differently now than perhaps we did when we were younger. Here, Swettenham acts guide and instructor.

    A limitation of the book is that it was written with the assumption that the reader is a man. This does mean that anything relating to hormones is assuming that we have less testosterone as we’re getting older and would like to have more, which is obviously not the case for everyone. However, happily, the actual advice remains applicable regardless.

    Swettenham covers the full spread of what he believes everyone should take into account as we age:

    • Mindset changes (accepting that physical changes are happening, without throwing our hands in the air and giving up)
    • Focus on important aspects such as:
      • strength
      • flexibility
      • mobility
      • agility
      • endurance
    • Some attention is also given to diet—nothing you won’t have read elsewhere, but it’s a worthy mention.

    All in all, this is a fine book if you’re thinking of taking up or maintaining an exercise routine that doesn’t stick its head in the sand about your aging body, but doesn’t just roll over and give up either. A worthy addition to anyone’s bookshelf!

    Check Out Fitness After 40 On Amazon Today!

    Looking for a more women-centric equivalent book? Vonda Wright M.D. has you covered (and her bio is very impressive)!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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