5 Ways To Make Your Smoothie Blood Sugar Friendly (Avoid the Spike!)

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At 10almonds, we are often saying “eat whole fruit; don’t drink your calories”. Whole fruit is great for blood sugars; fruit juices and many smoothies on the other hand, not so much. Especially juices, being near-completely or perhaps even completely stripped of fiber, but even smoothies have had a lot of the fiber broken down and are still a liquid, meaning they are very quickly and easily digestible, and thus their sugars (whatever carbs are in there) can just zip straight into your veins.

However, there are ways to mitigate this…

Slow it down

The theme here is “give the digestive process something else to do”; some things are more quickly and easily digestible than others, and if it’s working on breaking down some of the slower things, it’s not waving sugars straight on through; they have to wait their turn.

To that end, recommendations include:

  1. Full-fat Greek yogurt which provides both protein and fat, helping to slow down the absorption of sugar. Always choose unsweetened versions to avoid added sugars, though!
  2. Coconut milk (canned) which is low in sugar and carbs, high in fat. This helps reduce blood sugar spikes, as she found through personal experimentation too.
  3. Avocado which is rich in healthy fats that help stabilize blood sugar. As a bonus, it blends well into smoothies without affecting the taste much.
  4. Coconut oil which contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) that are quickly absorbed for energy without involving glucose, promoting fat-burning and reducing blood sugar spikes.
  5. Collagen powder which is a protein that helps lower blood sugar spikes while also supporting muscle growth, skin, and joints.

For more on all of these, enjoy:

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  • Creatine, Genomic Screening, & More

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    In this week’s health news…

    Creatine: no difference vs control at 5g/day

    A study found, as the title suggests, no difference between creatine and placebo, at the usual dose of 5g/day, while doing a supervised resistance training program.

    This was a 12-week trial, and in the first week, the creatine group put on an average of 0.5kg more lean (i.e. not fat) body mass than the control group, however, as this quickly equalized after the first week, it is assumed that the brief extra weight gain was water weight (creatine promotes water retention, especially in the initial phase).

    However, it is still possible that it may promote weight gain at higher doses.

    This study was done with adult participants under the age of 50; we’ve noted before that it is generally young people who use creatine for bodybuilding, so in principle, this should have been ideal for that, but it wasn’t.

    Read in full: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

    Related: Creatine’s Brain Benefits Increase With Age ← this, on the other hand, does work—but only for older adults.

    Genomics & disease risk: what to know

    In a recent study evaluation, 175,500 participants were screened, and 1 in 30 received medically important genetic results. More than 90% of those found to have a genetic risk were previously unaware of it.

    This is important, because most current genetic risk assessment for patients is based on personal and family history, which often misses a lot of data due to barriers to care or lack of family history.

    Genomic screening helps close these gaps:

    Read in full: Genomic screening is important in identifying disease risk, study finds

    Related: Do You Have A Personalized Health Plan? (Here’s How)

    FDA-Approved Antivirals (Not Vaccines) Ineffective Against H5N1

    The H5N1 avian influenza outbreak is now rife amongst dairy farms, with the virus found in cows’ milk and infecting farmworkers. Researchers studied potential treatments, revealing two FDA-approved antivirals (baloxavir and oseltamivir) were generally ineffective in treating severe H5N1 infections.

    Oral infections per raw milk consumption, were the most severe and hardest to treat, and the virus spread quickly to the blood and brain (when the infection is respiratory, it is much slower to spread from the respiratory tract).

    It wasn’t a complete loss, though:

    • Eye infections were better controlled with baloxavir, achieving a 100% survival rate compared to 25% with oseltamivir.
    • For nasal infections, baloxavir reduced viral levels better but still allowed the virus to reach the brain. Survival rates were 75% for baloxavir and 50% for oseltamivir.

    The researchers in question are urging preventative measures as being of critical importance, given the difficulty of treatment:

    Read in full: Current antivirals likely less effective against severe infection caused by bird flu virus in cows’ milk

    Related: Bird Flu: Children At High Risk; Older Adults Not So Much

    Take care!

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  • Algorithms to Live By – by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

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    As humans, we subconsciously use heuristics a lot to make many complex decisions based on “fuzzy logic”. For example:

    Do we buy the cheap shoes that may last us a season, or the much more expensive ones that will last us for years? We’ll—without necessarily giving it much conscious thought—quickly weigh up:

    • How much do we like each prospective pair of shoes?
    • What else might we need to spend money on now/soon?
    • How much money do we have right now?
    • How much money do we expect to have in the future?
    • Considering our lifestyle, how important is it to have good quality shoes?

    How well we perform this rapid calculation may vary wildly, depending on many factors ranging from the quality of the advertising to how long ago we last ate.

    And if we make the wrong decision, later we may have buyer’s (or non-buyer’s!) remorse. So, how can we do better?

    Authors Brain Christian and Tom Griffiths have a manual for us!

    This book covers many “kinds” of decision we often have to make in life, and how to optimize those decisions with the power of mathematics and computer science.

    The problems (and solutions) run the gamut of…

    • Optimal stopping (when to say “alright, that’s good enough”)
    • Overcoming cognitive biases
    • Scheduling quandaries
    • Bayes’ Theorem
    • Game Theory
    • And when it’s more efficient to just leave things to chance!

    …and many more (12 main areas of decision-making are covered).

    For all it draws heavily from mathematics and computer science, the writing style is very easy-reading. It’s a “curl up in the armchair and read for pleasure” book, no matter how weighty and practical its content.

    Bottom line: if you improve your ability to make the right decisions even marginally, this book will have been worth your while in the long run!

    Order your copy of “Algorithms To Live By” from Amazon today!

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  • The Natural Facelift – by Sophie Perry

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    First, what this book isn’t: it’s mostly not about beauty, and it’s certainly not about ageist ideals of “hiding” aging.

    The author herself discusses the privilege that is aging (not everyone gets to do it) and the importance of taking thankful pride in our lived-in bodies.

    The title and blurb belie the contents of the book rather. Doubtlessly the publisher felt that extrinsic beauty would sell better than intrinsic wellbeing. As for what it’s actually more about…

    Ever splashed your face in cold water to feel better? This book’s about revitalising the complex array of facial muscles (there are anatomical diagrams) and the often-tired and very diverse tissues that cover them, complete with the array of nerve endings very close to your CNS (not to mention the vagus nerve running just behind your jaw), and some of the most important blood vessels of your body, serving your brain.

    With all that in mind, this book, full of useful therapeutic techniques, is a very, very far cry from “massage like this and you’ll look like you got photoshopped”.

    The style varies, as some parts of explanation of principles, or anatomy, and others are hands-on (literally) guides to the exercises, but it is all very clear and easy to understand/follow.

    Bottom line: aspects of conventional beauty may be a side-effect of applying the invigorating exercises described in this book. The real beauty is—literally—more than skin-deep.

    Click here to check out The Natural Facelift, and order yours!

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  • Easy Quinoa Falafel

    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.

    Falafel is a wonderful snack or accompaniment to a main, and if you’ve only had shop-bought, you’re missing out. Plus, with this quinoa-based recipe, it’s almost impossible to accidentally make them dry.

    You will need

    • 1 cup cooked quinoa
    • 1 cup chopped fresh parsley
    • ½ cup wholewheat breadcrumbs (or rye breadcrumbs if you’re avoiding wheat/gluten)
    • 1 can chickpeas, drained
    • 4 green onions, chopped
    • ½ bulb garlic, minced
    • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for frying
    • 2 tbsp tomato paste
    • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
    • 2 tsp nutritional yeast
    • 2 tsp ground cumin
    • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
    • 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • 1 tsp dried thyme
    • ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Blend all the ingredients in a food processor until it has an even, but still moderately coarse, texture.

    2) Shape into 1″ balls, and put them in the fridge to chill for about 20 minutes.

    3) Fry the balls over a medium-high heat until evenly browned—just do a few at a time, taking care to not overcrowd the pan.

    4) Serve! Great with salad, hummus, and other such tasty healthy snack items:

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in more of what we have going on today:

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  • He Thinks His Wife Died in an Understaffed Hospital. Now He’s Trying to Change the Industry.

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    For the past year, police Detective Tim Lillard has spent most of his waking hours unofficially investigating his wife’s death.

    The question has never been exactly how Ann Picha-Lillard died on Nov. 19, 2022: She succumbed to respiratory failure after an infection put too much strain on her weakened lungs. She was 65.

    For Tim Lillard, the question has been why.

    Lillard had been in the hospital with his wife every day for a month. Nurses in the intensive care unit had told him they were short-staffed, and were constantly rushing from one patient to the next.

    Lillard tried to pitch in where he could: brushing Ann’s shoulder-length blonde hair or flagging down help when her tracheostomy tube gurgled — a sign of possible respiratory distress.

    So the day he walked into the ICU and saw staff members huddled in Ann’s room, he knew it was serious. He called the couple’s adult children: “It’s Mom,” he told them. “Come now.”

    All he could do then was sit on Ann’s bed and hold her hand, watching as staff members performed chest compressions, desperately trying to save her life.

    A minute ticked by. Then another. Lillard’s not sure how long the CPR continued — long enough for the couple’s son to arrive and take a seat on the other side of Ann’s bed, holding her other hand.

    Finally, the intensive care doctor called it and the team stopped CPR. Time of death: 12:37 p.m.

    Lillard didn’t know what to do in a world without Ann. They had been married almost 25 years. “We were best friends,” he said.

    Just days before her death, nurses had told Lillard that Ann could be discharged to a rehabilitation center as soon as the end of the week. Then, suddenly, she was gone. Lillard didn’t understand what had happened.

    Lillard said he now believes that overwhelmed, understaffed nurses hadn’t been able to respond in time as Ann’s condition deteriorated. And he has made it his mission to fight for change, joining some nursing unions in a push for mandatory ratios that would limit the number of patients in a nurse’s care. “I without a doubt believe 100% Ann would still be here today if they had staffing levels, mandatory staffing levels, especially in ICU,” Lillard said.

    Last year, Oregon became the second state after California to pass hospital-wide nurse ratios that limit the number of patients in a nurse’s care. Michigan, Maine, and Pennsylvania are now weighing similar legislation.

    But supporters of mandatory ratios are going up against a powerful hospital industry spending millions of dollars to kill those efforts. And hospitals and health systems say any staffing ratio regulations, however well-intentioned, would only put patients in greater danger.

    Putting Patients at Risk

    By next year, the United States could have as many as 450,000 fewer nurses than it needs, according to one estimate. The hospital industry blames covid-19 burnout, an aging workforce, a large patient population, and an insufficient pipeline of new nurses entering the field.

    But nursing unions say that’s not the full story. There are now 4.7 million registered nurses in the country, more than ever before.

    The problem, the unions say, is a hospital industry that’s been intentionally understaffing their units for years in order to cut costs and bolster profits. The unions say there isn’t a shortage of nurses but a shortage of nurses willing to work in those conditions.

    The nurse staffing crisis is now affecting patient care. The number of Michigan nurses who say they know of a patient who has died because of understaffing has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a Michigan Nurses Association survey last year.

    Just months before Ann Picha-Lillard’s death, nurses and doctors at the health system where she died had asked the Michigan attorney general to investigate staffing cuts they believed were leading to dangerous conditions, including patient deaths, according to The Detroit News.

    But Lillard didn’t know any of that when he drove his wife to the hospital in October 2022. She had been feeling short of breath for a few weeks after she and Lillard had mild covid infections. They were both vaccinated, but Ann was immunocompromised. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that had also caused scarring in her lungs.

    To be safe, doctors at DMC Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital wanted to keep Ann for observation. After a few days in the facility, she developed pneumonia. Doctors told the couple that Ann needed to be intubated. Ann was terrified but Lillard begged her to listen to the doctors. Tearfully, she agreed.

    With Ann on a ventilator in the ICU, it seemed clear to Lillard that nurses were understaffed and overwhelmed. One nurse told him they had been especially short-staffed lately, Lillard said.

    “The alarms would go off for the medications, they’d come into the room, shut off the alarm when they get low, run to the medication room, come back, set them down, go to the next room, shut off alarms,” Lillard recalled. “And that was going on all the time.”

    Lillard felt bad for the nurses, he said. “But obviously, also for my wife. That’s why I tried doing as much as I could when I was there. I would comb her hair, clean her, just keep an eye on things. But I had no idea what was really going on.”

    Finally, Ann’s health seemed to be stabilizing. A nurse told Lillard they’d be able to discharge Ann, possibly by the end of that week.

    By Nov. 17, Ann was no longer sedated and she cried when she saw Lillard and her daughter. Still unable to speak, she tried to mouth words to her husband “but we couldn’t understand what she was saying,” Lillard said.

    The next day, Lillard went home feeling hopeful, counting down the days until Ann could leave the hospital.

    Less than 24 hours later, Ann died.

    Lillard couldn’t wrap his head around how things went downhill so fast. Ann’s underlying lung condition, the infection, and her weakened state could have proved fatal in the best of circumstances. But Lillard wanted to understand how Ann had gone from nearly discharged to dying, seemingly overnight.

    He turned his dining room table into a makeshift office and started with what he knew. The day Ann died, he remembered her medical team telling him that her heart rate had spiked and she had developed another infection the night before. Lillard said he interviewed two DMC Huron Valley-Sinai nurse administrators, and had his own doctor look through Ann’s charts and test results from the hospital. “Everybody kept telling me: sepsis, sepsis, sepsis,” he said.

    Sepsis is when an infection triggers an extreme reaction in the body that can cause rapid organ failure. It’s one of the leading causes of death in U.S. hospitals. Some experts say up to 80% of sepsis deaths are preventable, while others say the percentage is far lower.

    Lives can be saved when sepsis is caught and treated fast, which requires careful attention to small changes in vital signs. One study found that for every additional patient a nurse had to care for, the mortality rate from sepsis increased by 12%.

    Lillard became convinced that had there been more nurses working in the ICU, someone could have caught what was happening to Ann.

    “They just didn’t have the time,” he said.

    DMC Huron Valley-Sinai’s director of communications and media relations, Brian Taylor, declined a request for comment about the 2022 staffing complaint to the Michigan attorney general.

    Following the Money

    When Lillard asked the hospital for copies of Ann’s medical records, DMC Huron Valley-Sinai told him he’d have to request them from its parent company in Texas.

    Like so many hospitals in recent years, the Lillards’ local health system had been absorbed by a series of other corporations. In 2011, the Detroit Medical Center health system was bought for $1.5 billion by Vanguard Health Systems, which was backed by the private equity company Blackstone Group.

    Two years after that, in 2013, Vanguard itself was acquired by Tenet Healthcare, a for-profit company based in Dallas that, according to its website, operates 480 ambulatory surgery centers and surgical hospitals, 52 hospitals, and approximately 160 additional outpatient centers.

    As health care executives face increasing pressure from investors, nursing unions say hospitals have been intentionally understaffing nurses to reduce labor costs and increase revenue. Also, insurance reimbursements incentivize keeping nurse staffing levels low. “Hospitals are not directly reimbursed for nursing services in the same way that a physician bills for their services,” said Karen Lasater, an associate professor of nursing in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania. “And because hospitals don’t perceive nursing as a service line, but rather a cost center, they think about nursing as: How can we reduce this to the lowest denominator possible?” she said.

    Lasater is a proponent of mandatory nurse ratios. “The nursing shortage is not a pipeline problem, but a leaky bucket problem,” she said. “And the solutions to this crisis need to address the root cause of the issue, which is why nurses are saying they’re leaving employment. And it’s rooted in unsafe staffing. It’s not safe for the patients, but it’s also not safe for nurses.”

    A Battle Between Hospitals and Unions

    In November, almost one year after Ann’s death, Lillard told a room of lawmakers at the Michigan State Capitol that he believes the Safe Patient Care Act could save lives. The health policy committee in the Michigan House was holding a hearing on the proposed act, which would limit the amount of mandatory overtime a nurse can be forced to work, and require hospitals to make their staffing levels available to the public.

    Most significantly, the bills would require hospitals to have mandatory, minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. For example: one nurse for every patient in the ICU; one for every three patients in the emergency room; a nurse for triage; and one nurse for every four postpartum birthing patients and well-baby care.

    Efforts to pass mandatory ratio laws failed in Washington and Minnesota last year after facing opposition from the hospital industry. In Minnesota, the Minnesota Nurses Association accused the Mayo Clinic of using “blackmail tactics”: Mayo had told lawmakers it would pull billions of dollars in investment from the state if mandatory ratio legislation passed. Soon afterward, lawmakers removed nurse ratios from the legislation.

    While Lillard waited for his turn to speak to Michigan lawmakers about the Safe Patient Care Act in November, members of the Michigan Nurses Association, which says it represents some 13,000 nurses, told lawmakers that its units were dangerously understaffed. They said critical care nurses were sometimes caring for up to 11 patients at a time.

    “Last year I coded someone in an ICU for 10 minutes, all alone, because there was no one to help me,” said the nurses association president and registered nurse Jamie Brown, reading from another nurse’s letter.

    “I have been left as the only specially trained nurse to take care of eight babies on the unit: eight fragile newborns,” said Carolyn Clemens, a registered nurse from the Grand Blanc area of Michigan.

    Nikia Parker said she has left full-time emergency room nursing, a job she believes is her calling. After her friend died in the hospital where she worked, she was left wondering whether understaffing may have contributed to his death.

    “If the Safe Patient Care Act passed, and we have ratios, I’m one of those nurses who would return to the bedside full time,” Parker told lawmakers. “And so many of my co-workers who have left would join me.”

    But not all nurses agree that mandatory ratios are a good idea. 

    While the American Nurses Association supports enforceable ratios as an “essential approach,” that organization’s Michigan chapter does not, saying there may not be enough nurses in the state to satisfy the requirements of the Safe Patient Care Act.

    For some lawmakers, the risk of collateral damage seems too high. State Rep. Graham Filler said he worries that mandating ratios could backfire.

    “We’re going to severely hamper health care in the state of Michigan. I’m talking closed wards because you can’t meet the ratio in a bill. The inability for a hospital to treat an emergent patient. So it feels kind of to me like a gamble we’re taking,” said Filler, a Republican.

    Michigan hospitals are already struggling to fill some 8,400 open positions, according to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association. That association says that complying with the Safe Patient Care Act would require hiring 13,000 nurses.

    Every major health system in the state signed a letter opposing mandatory ratios, saying it would force them to close as many as 5,100 beds.

    Lillard watched the debate play out in the hearing. “That’s a scare tactic, in my opinion, where the hospitals say we’re going to have to start closing stuff down,” he said.

    He doesn’t think legislation on mandatory ratios — which are still awaiting a vote in the Michigan House’s health policy committee — are a “magic bullet” for such a complex, national problem. But he believes they could help.

    “The only way these hospitals and the administrations are gonna make any changes, and even start moving towards making it better, is if they’re forced to,” Lillard said.

    Seated in the center of the hearing room in Lansing, next to a framed photo of Ann, Lillard’s hands shook as he recounted those final minutes in the ICU.

    “Please take action so that no other person or other family endures this loss,” he said. “You can make a difference in saving lives.”

    Grief is one thing, Lillard said, but it’s another thing to be haunted by doubts, to worry that your loved one’s care was compromised before they ever walked through the hospital doors. What he wants most, he said, is to prevent any other family from having to wonder, “What if?”

    This article is from a partnership that includes Michigan Public, NPR, and KFF Health News.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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    This story can be republished for free (details).

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • A Guide to the Good Life – by Dr. William Irvine

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    “Living well” is a surprisingly underrated part of wellness. We spend much of our lives in turmoil. Some of us, windswept and battered by the storms of life; others, up in quietly crumbling towers, seemingly “great” but definitely not feeling it. Diet and exercise etc will only get us so far. What else, then, can we do?

    For Dr. Irvine, the key lies in two main things:

    1. Deciding how we intend to live our life (and doing so)
    2. Remaining tranquil in the face of external stressors

    In Japanese terms, these things can be seen in ikigai and zen, respectively. This book puts them in Western terms, specifically, that of Stoic philosophy. But the goals and methods are very similar.

    Far from being an abstract tome of wishy-washy philosophy, this book offers down-to-earth practical exercises and easily applicable advice. There was even an exercise that was new to this reviewer who has been reading such things for decades.

    The writing style is also, true to Stoic principles, unpretentious and simple. This is an easy book to read, while being nonethless very engaging from start to finish—and thereafter!

    Bottom line: so far as we know, we only get one shot at life, so we might as well make it a good one. Applying the ideas found in this book can help any reader to live better, and take more joy in it along the way.

    Click here to check out a Guide to the Good Life, and live your best!

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