52 Small Changes – by Brett Blumenthal

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.

We see a lot of books that exhort us to get a six-pack in a month, change our life in 7 days, learn Japanese in 24 hours. The reality is, things take time!

Brett Blumenthal is more realistic while being just as motivational:

The idea is simple… Make one small change per week for 52 weeks, and at the end of the year, you’ll be healthier and happier.

At 10almonds, we’re big fans of small changes that add up (or rather: compound!) to make big differences, so this one’s absolutely our style!

Best of all, she offers us not just “do this” advice, but also “and here’s the information and resources you’ll need to make this change work the best it can for you”

The advices range in topic from nutrition to exercise to sleep to mental wellness to interpersonal stuff and more. The biggest focus is on personal health, though, with small changes to exercise and nutrition making up the lion’s share of the changes.

Bottom line: this is a book you’ll want to grab once a week. Consider setting a reminder on your phone to check in with it each Sunday, for example!

Take the first step and order “52 Small Changes” from Amazon today!

Don’t Forget…

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

Recommended

  • The Science and Technology of Growing Young – by Sergey Young
  • Cashews vs Peanuts – Which is Healthier?
    Peanuts trump cashews with higher fiber, more vitamins, and a winning mineral count; but for a healthy diet, mix it up!

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Buffed-Up Buffalo Cauliflower

    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.

    This is a tasty snack that also more protein than you’d think, because of the garbanzo bean flour. It also has plenty of health-giving spices, as well as blood-sugar-balancing vinegar, no added sugar, and very little salt.

    You will need

    • 1 medium head of cauliflower, cut into florets
    • ½ cup garbanzo bean flour
    • ½ cup water
    • ⅓ cup hot sauce (we recommend a low-sugar kind; Nando’s hot sauce is good for this if available where you are, as it has no added sugar and its main ingredient by volume is vinegar, which is good for balancing blood sugars)
    • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
    • 2 tsp garlic powder
    • 2 tsp nutritional yeast
    • 2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
    • 1 tsp smoked paprika
    • ½ tsp MSG, or 1 tsp low sodium salt

    For the ranch sauce:

    • ½ cup raw sunflower seeds
    • ⅓ cup water
    • ⅓ cup milk (plant milk being healthiest if you choose one that’s unsweetened)
    • 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
    • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
    • 1 tsp onion powder
    • 1 tsp dried thyme
    • 1 tsp dried oregano
    • 1 tsp dried dill
    • ½ tsp MSG, or 1 tsp low sodium salt

    Method

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

    1) Preheat the oven to 400℉/200℃.

    2) Blend the ranch sauce ingredients until smooth, and set aside.

    3) Mix the buffalo cauliflower ingredients except for the cauliflower, in a big bowl.

    4) Add the cauliflower to the big bowl, mixing well to coat evenly.

    5) Bake the buffalo cauliflower florets on a baking tray lined with baking paper, for about 25 minutes, turning gently if it seems they are at risk of cooking unevenly.

    6) Serve hot, with the sunflower ranch on the side!

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Anti-Inflammatory Piña Colada Baked Oats

    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.

    If you like piña coladas and getting songs stuck in your head, then enjoy this very anti-inflammatory, gut-healthy, blood-sugar-balancing, and frankly delicious dish:

    You will need

    • 9 oz pineapple, diced
    • 7 oz rolled oats
    • 3 oz desiccated coconut
    • 14 fl oz coconut milk (full fat, the kind from a can)
    • 14 fl oz milk (your choice what kind, but we recommend coconut, the kind for drinking)
    • Optional: some kind of drizzling sugar such as honey or maple syrup

    Method

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

    1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.

    2) Mix all the ingredients (except the drizzling sugar, if using) well, and put them in an ovenproof dish, compacting the mixture down gently so that the surface is flat.

    3) Drizzle the drizzling sugar, if drizzling.

    4) Bake in the oven for 30–40 minutes, until lightly golden-brown.

    5) Serve hot or cold:

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Give Your Adrenal Glands A Chance

    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.

    The Hats Of Wrath

    Your adrenal glands are two little hat-shaped glands that sit on top of your kidneys (like your kidneys are wearing them as hats, in fact).

    They produce adrenaline, as you might have guessed, and also cortisol and aldosterone, which you might or might not have known, as well as some miscellaneous corticosteroids that are beyond the scope of today’s article.

    Fun fact! For a long time, doctors thought adrenal glands were much larger than they usually are, because of learning anatomy from corpses that were dissected, but invariably the corpses were those of poor people, especially criminals, whose adrenal glands were almost always overworked and swollen.

    You don’t want yours to be like that.

    What goes wrong

    Assuming you don’t have a rare disorder like Addison’s disease (in which the adrenal glands don’t produce enough of the hormones they’re supposed to), your adrenal glands will usually not have trouble producing enough adrenaline et al.

    However, as we learned from the Victorian vagabonds, they can also have no problems producing too much—much like any organ that gets overworked, however, this has consequences.

    Hopefully you’re not living a life of stressful crime on the streets, but maybe you have other reasons your adrenal glands are working overtime, such as any source of chronic stress, bad sleep (can’t recharge without this downtime), overuse of stimulants (including caffeine and/or nicotine), and, counterintuitively, alcohol. All these things can tax the adrenal glands considerably.

    When this happens, in the extreme we can get Cushing’s syndrome, characterized by the symptoms: hypertension, cortisol-based fat distribution i.e. especially face and abdomen, weakness, fragile easily irritable skin, hair loss and/or hirsutism, paradoxically, and of course general fatigue.

    In the non-extreme, we get all the same symptoms just to a lower level, and experience what the medical profession is begging us not to call “Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome” because that’s not an official diagnosis, whereas if it gets a name then they’ll be expected to treat it.

    What keeps things going right

    Obviously, the opposite of the above, for a start. Which means:

    Manage chronic stress; see: How To Manage Chronic Stress

    Get good sleep; see: Why You Probably Need More Sleep

    Go easy on the caffeine; see: Caffeine Mythbusting

    Skip the nicotine; see: Nicotine Benefits (That We Don’t Recommend)!

    Avoid alcohol; see: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

    There are specific vitamins and minerals that support adrenal health too; they are: vitamins B5, B6, B12, C, & D, and also magnesium and zinc.

    Good dietary sources of the above include green leafy things, cruciferous vegetables*, nuts and seeds, avocados, olive oil, and if you eat fish, then also fatty fish.

    In contrast, it is good to cut down (or avoid entirely) red meat and unfermented dairy.

    *Unsure how to get cruciferous vegetables in more often? Try today’s featured recipe, superfood broccoli pesto

    Want to know more?

    A large part of adrenal health is about keeping cortisol levels down generally (except: for most of us, we can have a little hormesis, as a treat), so for the rest of that you might like to read:

    Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)

    Take care!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • The Science and Technology of Growing Young – by Sergey Young
  • Coffee & Your Gut

    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.

    Coffee, in moderation, is generally considered a healthful drink—speaking for the drink itself, at least! Because the same cannot be said for added sugar, various sorts of creamers, or iced caramelatte mocha frappucino dessert-style drinks:

    The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)

    Caffeine, too, broadly has more pros than cons (again, in moderation):

    Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?

    Some people will be concerned about coffee and the heart. Assuming you don’t have a caffeine sensitivity (or you do but you drink decaf), it is heart-neutral in moderation, though there are some ways of preparing it that are better than others:

    Make Your Coffee Heart-Healthier!

    So, what about coffee and the gut?

    The bacteria who enjoy a good coffee

    Amongst our trillions of tiny friends, allies, associates, and enemies-on-the-inside, which ones like coffee, and what kind of coffee do they prefer?

    A big (n=35,214) international multicohort analysis examined the associations between coffee consumption and very many different gut microbial species, and found:

    115 species were positively associated with coffee consumption, mostly of the kind considered “friendly”, including ones often included in probiotic supplements, such as various Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus species.

    The kind that was most strongly associated with coffee consumption, however, was Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus, a helpful little beast who converts chlorogenic acid (one of the main polyphenols in coffee) into caffeic acid, quinic acid, and various other metabolites that we can use.

    More specifically: moderate coffee-drinkers, defined as drinking 1–3 cups per day, enjoyed a 300–400% increase in L. asaccharolyticus, while high coffee-drinkers (no, not that kind of high), defined as drinking 4 or more cups of coffee per day, enjoyed a 400–800% increase, compared to “never/rarely” coffee-drinkers (defined as drinking 2 or fewer cups per month).

    Click here to see more data from the study, in a helpful infographic

    Things that did not affect the outcome:

    • The coffee-making method—it seems the bacteria are not fussy in this regard, as espresso or brewed, and even instant, yielded the same gut microbiome benefits
    • The caffeine content—as both caffeinated and decaffeinated yielded the same gut microbiome benefits

    You can read the paper itself in full for here:

    Coffee consumption is associated with intestinal Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus abundance and prevalence across multiple cohorts

    Want to enjoy coffee, but not keen on the effects of caffeine or the taste of decaffeinated?

    Taking l-theanine alongside coffee flattens the curve of caffeine metabolism, and means one can get the benefits without unwanted jitteriness:

    The Magic Of L-Theanine

    Enjoy!

    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

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Red Cabbage vs White Cabbage – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing red cabbage to white cabbage, we picked the red.

    Why?

    Perhaps you guessed this one, based on the “darker and/or more colorful foods are usually more nutritionally dense” dictum. That’s not always true, by the way, but it is a good rule of thumb and it is correct here. In the case of cabbages, each type is a nutritional powerhouse, but red does beat white:

    In terms of macros, they’re quite comparable. They’re both >90% water with just enough other stuff (carbs, fiber, protein) to hold them together, and the “other stuff” in question is quite similarly proportioned in both cases. Within the carbs, even the sugar breakdown is similar. There are slight differences, but the differences are not only tiny, but also they balance out in any case.

    When it comes to vitamins, as you might expect, the colorful red cabbage does better with more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, C, and choline, while white has more of vitamins B5, B9, E, and K. So, a 7:4 win for red.

    In the category of minerals, it’s even more polarized; red cabbage has more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. On the other hand, white contains a tiny amount more copper.

    In short, both are great (red just makes white look bad by standing next to it, but honestly, white has lots of all those same things too, just not quite as much as red), and this writer will continue to use white when making her favorite shchi, but if you’re looking for the most nutritionally dense option, it’s red.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain

    Take care!

    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

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • The Five Key Traits Of Healthy Aging

    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.

    The Five Keys Of Aging Healthily

    Image courtesy of Peter Prato.

    This is Dr. Daniel Levitin. He’s a neuroscientist, and his research focuses on aging, the brain, health, productivity, and creativity. Also music, and he himself is an accomplished musician also, but we’re not going to be focusing on that today.

    We’re going to be looking at the traits that, according to science, promote healthy longevity in old age. In other words, the things that increase our healthspan, from the perspective of a cognitive scientist.

    What does he say we should do?

    Dr. Levitin offers us what he calls the “COACH” traits:

    1. Curiosity
    2. Openness
    3. Associations
    4. Conscientiousness
    5. Healthy practices

    By “associations”, he means relationships. However, that would have made the acronym “CORCH”, and decisions had to be made.

    Curiosity

    Leonardo da Vinci had a list of seven traits he considered most important.

    We’ll not go into those today (he is not our featured expert of the day!), but we will say that he agreed with Dr. Levitin on what goes at the top of the list: curiosity.

    • Without curiosity, we will tend not to learn things, and learning things is key to keeping good cognitive function in old age
    • Without curiosity, we will tend not to form hypotheses about how/why things are the way they are, so we will not exercise imagination, creativity, problem-solving, and other key functions of our brain
    • Without curiosity, we will tend not to seek out new experiences, and consequently, our stimuli will be limited—and thus, so will our brains

    Openness

    Being curious about taking up ballroom dancing will do little for you, if you are not also open to actually trying it. But, openness is not just a tag-on to curiosity; it deserves its spot in its own right too.

    Sometimes, ideas and opportunities come to us unbidden, and we have to be able to be open to those too. This doesn’t mean being naïve, but it does mean having at least a position of open-minded skepticism.

    Basically, Dr. Levitin is asking us to be the opposite of the pejorative stereotype of “an old person stuck in their ways”.

    Associations

    People are complex, and so they bring complexities to our lives. Hopefully, positively stimulating ones. Without them to challenge us (again, hopefully in a positive way), we can get very stuck in a narrow field of experience.

    And of course, having at least a few good friends has numerous benefits to health. There’s been a lot of research on this; 5 appears to be optimal.

    • More than that, and the depth tends to tail off, and/or stresses ensue from juggling too many relationships
    • Fewer than that, and we might be only a calendar clash away from loneliness

    Friends provide social stimulation and mutual support; they’re good for our mental health and even our physiological immunity (counterintuitively, by means of shared germs).

    And, a strong secure romantic relationship is something that has been found time and again to extend healthy life.

    Note: by popular statistics, this benefit is conferred upon men partnered with women, men partnered with men, women partnered with women, but not women partnered with men.

    There may be a causative factor that’s beyond the scope of this article which is about cognitive science, not feminism, but there could also be a mathematical explanation for this apparent odd-one-out:

    Since women tend to live longer than men (who are also often older than their female partners), women who live the longest are often not in a relationship—precisely because they are widows. So these long-lived widows will tend to skew the stats, through no fault of their husbands.

    On the flipside of this, for a woman to predecease her (statistically older and shorter-lived) husband will often require that she die quite early (perhaps due to accident or illness unrelated to age), which will again skew the stats to “women married to men die younger”, without anything nefarious going on.

    Conscientiousness

    People who score highly in the character trait “conscientiousness” will tend to live longer. The impact is so great, that a child’s scores will tend to dictate who dies in their 60s or their 80s, for example.

    What does conscientiousness mean? It’s a broad character trait that’s scored in psychometric tests, so it can be things that have a direct impact on health, such as brushing one’s teeth, or things that are merely correlated, such as checking one’s work for typos (this writer does her best!).

    In short, if you are the sort of person who attends to the paperwork for your taxes on time, you are probably also the sort of person who remembers to get your flu vaccination and cancer screening.

    Healthy practices

    This means “the usual things”, such as:

    Want to learn more?

    You can check out his book, which we reviewed all so recently, and you can also enjoy this video, in which he talks about matters concerning healthy aging from a neuroscientist’s perspective, ranging from heart health and neurodegeneration, to the myth of failing memory, to music and lifespan and more:

    !

    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

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: