16/8 Intermittent Fasting For Beginners
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Health Insider explains in super-simple fashion why and how to do Intermittent Fasting (IF), which is something that can sound complicated at first, but becomes very simple and easy once understood.
What do we need to know?
Intermittent fasting (IF) is a good, well-evidenced way to ease your body’s metabolic load, and
give your organs a chance to recover from the strain of digestion and its effects. That’s not just your gastrointestinal organs! It’s your pancreas and liver too, amongst others—this is about glucose metabolism as much as it is about digestion.
This, in turn, allows your body some downtime to do its favorite thing, which is: maintenance!
This maintenance takes the form of enhanced cellular apoptosis and autophagy, helping to keep cells young and cancer-free.
In other words, with well-practised intermittent fasting, we can reduce our risk of metabolic disease (including heart disease and diabetes) as well as cancer and neurodegeneration.
You may be wondering: this sounds miraculous; what’s the catch? There are a couple:
- While fasting from food, the body’s enhanced metabolism requires more water, so you’ll need to take extra care keep on top of your hydration (this is one reason why Ramadan fasting, while healthy for most people, is not as healthy as IF—because Ramadan fasting means abstaining from water, too).
- If you are diabetic, and especially if you have Type 1 Diabetes, fasting may not be a safe option for you, since if you get a hypo in the middle of your fasting period, it’s obviously not a good idea to wait another many hours before fixing it.
Extra note on that last one: it’s easy to think “can’t I just lower my bolus insulin instead of eating?” and while superficially yes that will raise your blood sugar levels, it’s because the sugar will be sticking around in your blood, and not actually getting released into the organs that need it. So while your blood glucose monitor may say you’re fine, you will be starving your organs and if you keep it up they may suffer serious damage.
Disclaimer: our standard legal/medical disclaimer applies, and this is intended for educational purposes only; please do speak with your endocrinologist before changing anything you usually do with regard to your blood sugar maintenance.
Ok, back onto the cheerier topic at hand:
Aside from the above: for most people, IF is a remarkably healthful practice in very many ways.
For more on the science, practicalities, and things to do/avoid, enjoy this short (4:53) video:
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Want to know more?
Check out our previous main feature on this topic:
Intermittent Fasting: Mythbusting Edition
Enjoy!
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Gut-Healthy Spaghetti Chermoula
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Chermoula is a Maghreb relish/marinade (it’s used for both purposes); it’s a little like chimichurri but with distinctly N. African flavors. The gut-healthiness starts there (it’s easy to forget that olives—unless fresh—are a fermented food full of probiotic Lactobacillus sp. and thus great for the gut even beyond their fiber content), and continues in the feta, the vegetables, and the wholewheat nature of the pasta. The dish can be enjoyed at any time, but it’s perfect for warm summer evenings—perhaps dining outside, if you’ve place for that.
You will need
- 9oz wholewheat spaghetti (plus low-sodium salt for its water)
- 10oz broccoli, cut into small florets
- 3oz cilantro (unless you have the soap gene)
- 3oz parsley (whether or not you included the cilantro)
- 3oz green olives, pitted, rinsed
- 1 lemon, pickled, rinsed
- 1 bulb garlic
- 3 tbsp pistachios, shelled
- 2 tbsp mixed seeds
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp chili flakes
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- For the garnish: 3oz feta (or plant-based equivalent), crumbled, 3oz sun-dried tomatoes, diced, 1 tsp cracked black pepper
Note: why are we rinsing the things? It’s because while picked foods are great for the gut, the sodium can add up, so there’s no need to bring extra brine with them too. By doing it this way, there’ll be just the right amount for flavor, without overdoing it.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Cook the spaghetti as you normally would, but when it’s a minute or two from being done, add the broccoli in with it. When it’s done, drain and rinse thoroughly to get rid of excess starch and salt, and also because cooling it even temporarily (as in this case) lowers its glycemic index.
2) Put the rest of the ingredients into a food processor (except the olive oil and the garnish), and blitz thoroughly until no large coarse bits remain. When that’s done, add the olive oil, and pulse it a few times to combine. We didn’t add the olive oil previously, because blending it so thoroughly in that state would have aerated it in a way we don’t want.
3) Put ⅔ of the chermoula you just made into the pan you used for cooking the spaghetti, and set it over a medium heat. When it starts bubbling, return the spaghetti and broccoli to the pan, mixing gently but thoroughly. If the pasta threatens to stick, you can add a little more chermoula, but go easy on it. Any leftover chermoula that you didn’t use today, can be kept in the fridge and used later as a pesto.
4) Serve! Add the garnish as you do.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Less Obvious Probiotics Benefits
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- What Matters Most For Your Heart? ← spoiler: this is why, while we do watch the sodium, we care more about the fiber
- All about Olive Oil: Is “Extra Virgin” Worth It?
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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What’s the difference between physical and chemical sunscreens? And which one should you choose?
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Sun exposure can accelerate ageing, cause skin burns, erythema (a skin reaction), skin cancer, melasmas (or sun spots) and other forms of hyperpigmentation – all triggered by solar ultraviolet radiation.
Approximately 80% of skin cancer cases in people engaged in outdoor activities are preventable by decreasing sun exposure. This can be done in lots of ways including wearing protective clothing or sunscreens.
But not all sunscreens work in the same way. You might have heard of “physical” and “chemical” sunscreens. What’s the difference and which one is right for you?
How sunscreens are classified
Sunscreens are grouped by their use of active inorganic and organic ultraviolet (UV) filters. Chemical sunscreens use organic filters such as cinnamates (chemically related to cinnamon oil) and benzophenones. Physical sunscreens (sometimes called mineral sunscreens) use inorganic filters such as titanium and zinc oxide.
These filters prevent the effects of UV radiation on the skin.
Organic UV filters are known as chemical filters because the molecules in them change to stop UV radiation reaching the skin. Inorganic UV filters are known as physical filters, because they work through physical means, such as blocking, scattering and reflection of UV radiation to prevent skin damage.
Nano versus micro
The effectiveness of the filters in physical sunscreen depends on factors including the size of the particle, how it’s mixed into the cream or lotion, the amount used and the refraction index (the speed light travels through a substance) of each filter.
When the particle size in physical sunscreens is large, it causes the light to be scattered and reflected more. That means physical sunscreens can be more obvious on the skin, which can reduce their cosmetic appeal.
Nanoparticulate forms of physical sunscreens (with tiny particles smaller than 100 nanometers) can improve the cosmetic appearance of creams on the skin and UV protection, because the particles in this size range absorb more radiation than they reflect. These are sometimes labelled as “invisible” zinc or mineral formulations and are considered safe.
So how do chemical sunscreens work?
Chemical UV filters work by absorbing high-energy UV rays. This leads to the filter molecules interacting with sunlight and changing chemically.
When molecules return to their ground (or lower energy) state, they release energy as heat, distributed all over the skin. This may lead to uncomfortable reactions for people with skin sensitivity.
Generally, UV filters are meant to stay on the epidermis (the first skin layer) surface to protect it from UV radiation. When they enter into the dermis (the connective tissue layer) and bloodstream, this can lead to skin sensitivity and increase the risk of toxicity. The safety profile of chemical UV filters may depend on whether their small molecular size allows them to penetrate the skin.
Chemical sunscreens, compared to physical ones, cause more adverse reactions in the skin because of chemical changes in their molecules. In addition, some chemical filters, such as dibenzoylmethane tend to break down after UV exposure. These degraded products can no longer protect the skin against UV and, if they penetrate the skin, can cause cell damage.
Due to their stability – that is, how well they retain product integrity and effectiveness when exposed to sunlight – physical sunscreens may be more suitable for children and people with skin allergies.
Although sunscreen filter ingredients can rarely cause true allergic dermatitis, patients with photodermatoses (where the skin reacts to light) and eczema have higher risk and should take care and seek advice.
What to look for
The best way to check if you’ll have a reaction to a physical or chemical sunscreen is to patch test it on a small area of skin.
And the best sunscreen to choose is one that provides broad-spectrum protection, is water and sweat-resistant, has a high sun protection factor (SPF), is easy to apply and has a low allergy risk.
Health authorities recommend sunscreen to prevent sun damage and cancer. Chemical sunscreens have the potential to penetrate the skin and may cause irritation for some people. Physical sunscreens are considered safe and effective and nanoparticulate formulations can increase their appeal and ease of use.
Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland and Khanh Phan, Postdoctoral research associate, Frazer Institute, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Breathe; Don’t Vent (At Least In The Moment)
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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:
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:
❝The work was inspired in part by the rising popularity of rage rooms that promote smashing things (such as glass, plates and electronics) to work through angry feelings.
I wanted to debunk the whole theory of expressing anger as a way of coping with it,” she said. “We wanted to show that reducing arousal, and actually the physiological aspect of it, is really important.❞
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:
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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Three Daily Servings of Beans?
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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
❝Not crazy about the Dr.s food advice. Beans 3X a day?❞
For reference, this is in response to our recent article on the topic of 12 things to aim to get a certain amount of each day:
So, there are a couple of things to look at here:
Firstly, don’t worry, it’s a guideline and an aim. If you don’t hit it on a given day, there is always tomorrow. It’s just good to know what one is aiming for, because without knowing that, achieving it will be a lot less likely!
Secondly, the beans/legumes/pulses category says three servings, but the example serving sizes are quite small, e.g. ½ cup cooked beans, or ¼ cup hummus. And also as you notice, dips/pastes/sauces made from beans count too. So given the portion sizes, you could easily get two servings in by breakfast (and two servings of whole grains, too) if you enjoy frijoles refritos, for example. Many of the recipes we share on this site have “stealth” beans/legumes/pulses in this fashion
Take care!
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Built to Move – by Kelly starrett & Juliet Starrett
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In our everyday lives, for most of us anyway, it’s not too important to be able to run a marathon or leg-press a car. Rather more important, however, are such things as:
- being able to get up from the floor comfortably
- reach something on a high shelf without twinging a shoulder
- being able to put our socks on without making a whole plan around this task
- get accidentally knocked by an energetic dog or child and not put our back out
- etc
Starrett and Starrett, of “becoming a supple leopard” fame, lay out for us how to make sure our mobility stays great. And, if it’s not already where it needs to be, how to get there.
The “ten essential habits” mentioned in the subtitle “ten essential habits to help you move freely and live fully”, in fact also come with ten tests. No, not in the sense of arduous trials, but rather, mobility tests.
For each test, it’s explained to us how to score it out of ten (this is an objective assessment, not subjective). It’s then explained how to “level up” whatever score we got, with different advices for different levels of mobility or immobility. And if we got a ten, then of course, we just build the appropriate recommended habit into our daily life, to keep it that way.
The writing style is casual throughout, and a strong point of the book is its very clear illustrations, too.
Bottom line: if you’d like to gain/maintain good mobility (at any age), this book gives a very reliable outline for doing so.
Click here to check out Built to Move, and take care of your body!
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How To Stop Binge-Eating: Flip This Switch!
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“The Big Eating Therapist” Sarah Dosanjh has insights from both personal and professional experience:
No “Tough Love” Necessary
Eating certain foods is often socially shamed, and it’s easy to internalize that, and feel guilty. While often guilt is considered a pro-social emotion that helps people to avoid erring in a way that will get us excluded from the tribe (bearing in mind that for most of our evolutionary history, exile would mean near-certain death), it is not good at behavior modification when it comes to addictions or anything similar to addictions.
The reason for this is that if we indulge in a pleasure we feel we “shouldn’t” and expect we’d be shamed for, we then feel bad, and we immediately want something to make us feel better. Guess what that something will be. That’s right: the very same thing we literally just felt ashamed about.
So guilt is not helpful when it comes to (for example) avoiding binge-eating.
Instead, Dosanjh points us to a study whereby dieters ate a donut and drank water, before being given candy for taste testing. The control group proceeded without intervention, while the experimental group had a self-compassion intervention between the donut and the candy. This meant that researchers told the participants not to feel bad about eating the donut, emphasizing self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity. The study found that those who received the intervention, ate significantly less candy.
What we can learn from this is: we must be kind to ourselves. Allowing ourselves, consciously and mindfully, “a little treat”, secures its status as being “little”, and “a treat”. Then we smile, thinking “yes, that was a nice little thing to do for myself”, and proceed with our day.
This kind of self-compassion helps avoid the “meta-binge” process, where guilt from one thing leads to immediately reaching for another.
For more on this, plus a link to the study she mentioned, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Take care!
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