7 Healthy Gut Habits For Women Over 40 – by Lara West

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With regard to the titular 7 healthy gut habits for women over 40, a chapter is devoted to each one of those habits, and she goes into quite some detail in each category, more than you might expect.

As for the 7 things, we’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:

  1. Intermittent fasting
  2. Prebiotics & probiotics
  3. Mindful eating
  4. Understanding ingredients
  5. Movement
  6. Sleep
  7. Stress management

Of course, all of these things are good regardless of one’s age or gender, but West is writing with women over 40 in mind, and as such, she will focus on things that are especially relevant to those of us who are indeed women over 40.

You may be wondering: what if I’m a long way over 40, and menopause is a distant memory? In that case, 90% of this will still be relevant to you; the only parts that won’t be, are those that pertain specifically to the menopausal transitional phase itself, rather than the post-menopause state.

You may also be wondering: what if I’m a man, and menopause is just not in the cards for me? In that case, maybe about 70% of this will still be relevant to you, because of the broad applicability of most of the advice. That said, if it’s just for yourself, you’d probably do better with a book of which 100% is relevant to you, rather than this one.

The style is conversational pop-science, with personal anecdotes mixed in with references to science. It’s definitely on the light/easy-reading end of books that we’ve reviewed on the topic.

Bottom line: if you’re a woman over 40 who would like to improve your gut health, this book was written for you.

Click here to check out 7 Healthy Gut Habits For Women Over 40, and rediscover vitality!

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    Fish beats chicken for heart health and longevity, say the latest studies! Choose wisely: your heart will thank you.

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  • Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Cheese (Or Are They?)

    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? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    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

    ❝In order to lose a little weight I have cut out cheese from my diet – and am finding that I am sleeping better. Would be interested in your views on cheese and sleep, and whether some types of cheese are worse for sleep than others. I don’t want to give up cheese entirely!❞

    In principle, there’s nothing in cheese that, biochemically, should impair sleep. If anything, its tryptophan content could aid good sleep.

    Tryptophan is found in many foods, including cheese, which (of common foods, anyway), for example cheddar cheese ranks second only to pumpkin seeds in tryptophan content.

    Tryptophan can be converted by the body into 5-HTP, which you’ve maybe seen sold as a supplement. Its full name is 5-hydroxytryptophan.

    5-HTP can, in turn, be used to make melatonin and/or serotonin. Which of those you will get more of, depends on what your body is being cued to do by ambient light/darkness, and other environmental cues.

    If you are having cheese and then checking your phone, for instance, or otherwise hanging out where there are white/blue lights, then your body may dutifully convert the tryptophan into serotonin (calm wakefulness) instead of melatonin (drowsiness and sleep).

    In short: the cheese will (in terms of this biochemical pathway, anyway) augment some sleep-inducing or wakefulness-inducing cues, depending on which are available.

    You may be wondering: what about casein?

    Casein is oft-touted as producing deep sleep, or disturbed sleep, or vivid dreams, or bad dreams. There’s no science to back any of this up, though the following research review is fascinating:

    Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: food and diet as instigators of bizarre and disturbing dreams

    (it largely supports the null hypothesis of “not a causal factor” but does look at the many more likely alternative explanations, ranging from associated actually casual factors (such as alcohol and caffeine) and placebo/nocebo effect)

    Finally, simple digestive issues may be the real thing at hand:

    Association between digestive symptoms and sleep disturbance: a cross-sectional community-based study

    Worth noting that around two thirds of all people, including those who regularly enjoy dairy products, have some degree of lactose intolerance:

    Lactose Intolerance in Adults: Biological Mechanism and Dietary Management

    So, in terms of what cheese may be better/worse for you in this context, you might try experimenting with lactose-free cheese, which will help you identify whether that was the issue!

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  • Pineapple vs Passion Fruit – 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 pineapple to passion fruit, we picked the passion fruit.

    Why?

    Both are certainly great, and both have won their respective previous comparisons! And this one’s close:

    In terms of macros, passion fruit has about 4x the protein, nearly 2x the carbs, and more than 7x the fiber. So, this one’s a clear and overwhelming win for passion fruit.

    Vitamins are quite close; pineapple has more of vitamins B1, B5, B6, B9, and C, while passion fruit has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, and choline. So, a 5:4 marginal win for pineapple.

    When it comes to minerals, pineapple has more calcium, copper, manganese, and zinc, while passion fruit has more iron, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium. Superficially, this would be a 5:5 tie, but looking at the numbers, passion fruit’s margins of difference are much greater, which means it gives the better overall mineral coverage, and thus wins the category.

    Looking at polyphenols, pineapple wins this category with its variety of lignans, while passion fruit has just secoisolariciresinol, of which pineapple has more anyway. Plus, not a polyphenol but doing much of the same job of same, pineapple has bromelain, which is unique to it. So pineapple wins on the phytochemicals reckoning.

    Adding up the sections and weighting them for importance (e.g. what a difference it makes to health) and statistical relevance (e.g. greater or smaller margins of difference) makes for a nominal passion fruit win, but like we say, both of these fruits are great, so enjoy both!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More

    Take care!

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  • Makkō-Hō – by Haruka Nagai

    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’ve all heard the claims, “Fluent in 3 Months!”, “Russian in Two Weeks!”, “Overnight Mandarin Chinese”, “15-Minute Arabic!”, “Instant Italian!”.

    We see the same in the world of health and fitness too. So how does this one’s claim of “five minutes’ physical fitness” hold up?

    Well, it is 5 minutes per day. And indeed, the author writes:

    ❝The total time [to do these exercises], then, is only one minute and thirty seconds. This series I call one round. When it has been completed, execute another complete round. You should find the exercises easier to do the second time. Executed this way, the exercsies will prove very effective, though they take only three minutes in all. After you have leaned back into the final position, you must remain in that posture for one minute. That brings the total time to four minutes. Even when [some small additions] are added, it takes only five minutes at most.❞

    The exercises themselves are from makkō-hō, which is a kind of Japanese dynamic yoga. They involve repetitions of (mostly) moving stretches with good form, and are excellent for mobility and general health, keeping us supple and robust as we get older.

    The text descriptions are clear, as are the diagrams and photos. The language is a little dated, as this book was written in the 1970s, but the techniques themselves are timeless.

    Bottom line: consider it a 5-minute anti-aging regimen. And, as Nagai says, “the person who cannot find 5 minutes out of 24 hours, was never truly interested in their health”.

    Click here to check out Makkō-Hō and schedule your five minutes!

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Related Posts

  • The Wim Hof Method – by Wim Hof
  • The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis – by Keith McCormick

    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.

    You probably already know to get enough calcium and vitamin D, and do some resistance training. What does this book offer beyond that advice?

    It’s pretty comprehensive, as it turns out. It covers the above, plus the wide range of medications available, what supplements help or harm or just don’t have enough evidence either way yet, things like that.

    Amongst the most important offerings are the signs and symptoms that can help monitor your bone health (things you can do at home! Like examinations of your fingernails, hair, skin, tongue, and so forth, that will reveal information about your internal biochemical make-up), as well as what lab tests to ask for. Which is important, as osteoporosis is one of those things whereby we often don’t learn something is wrong until it’s too late.

    The author is a chiropractor, which doesn’t always have a reputation as the most robustly science-based of physical therapy options, but he…

    • doesn’t talk about chiropractic
    • did confer with a flock of experts (osteopaths, nutritionists, etc) to inform/check his work
    • does refer consistently to good science, and explains it well
    • includes 16 pages of academic references, and yes, they are very reputable publications

    Bottom line: this one really does give what the subtitle promises: a whole body approach to avoiding (or reversing) osteoporosis.

    Click here to check out The Whole Body Approach To Osteoporosis; sooner is better than later!

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  • The Five Pillars Of Longevity

    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 Pillars Of Longevity

    This is Dr. Mark Hyman. He’s a medical doctor, and he’s the board president of clinical affairs of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He’s also the founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center!

    What he’d like you to know about is what he calls the “Five Pillars of Longevity”.

    Now, here at 10almonds, we often talk about certain things that science finds to be good for almost any health condition, and have made a habit of referencing what we call “The Usual Five Things™” (not really a trademark, by the way—just a figure of speech), which are:

    1. Have a good diet
    2. Get good exercise
    3. Get good sleep
    4. Reduce (or eliminate) alcohol consumption
    5. Don’t smoke

    …and when we’re talking about a specific health consideration, we usually provide sources as to why each of them are particularly relevant, and pointers as to the what/how associated with them (ie what diet is good, how to get good sleep, etc).

    Dr. Hyman’s “Five Pillars of Longevity” are based on observations from the world’s “Blue Zones”, the popular name for areas with an unusually high concentration of supercentenarians—Sardinia and Okinawa being famous examples, with a particular village in each being especially exemplary.

    These Five Pillars of Longevity partially overlap with ours for three out of five, and they are:

    1. Good nutrition
    2. Optimized workouts
    3. Reduce stress
    4. Get quality sleep
    5. Find (and live) your purpose

    We won’t argue against those! But what does he have to say, for each of them?

    Good nutrition

    Dr. Hyman advocates for a diet he calls “pegan”, which he considers to combine the paleo and vegan diets. Here at 10almonds, we generally advocate for the Mediterranean Diet because of the mountains of evidence for it, but his approach may be similar in some ways, since it looks to consume a majority plant diet, with some unprocessed meats/fish, limited dairy, and no grains.

    By the science, honestly, we stand by the Mediterranean (which includes whole grains), but if for example your body may have issues of some kind with grains, his approach may be a worthy consideration.

    Optimized workouts

    For Dr. Hyman, this means getting in three kinds of exercise regularly:

    • Aerobic/cardio, to look after your heart health
    • Resistance training (e.g. weights or bodyweight strength-training) to look after your skeletal and muscular health
    • Yoga or similar suppleness training, to look after your joint health

    Can’t argue with that, and it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking “I’m healthy because I do x” while forgetting y and/or z! Thus, a three-pronged approach definitely has its merits.

    Reduce stress

    Acute stress (say, a cold shower) is can confer some health benefits, but chronic stress is ruinous to our health and it ages us. So, reducing this is critical. Dr. Hyman advocates for the practice of mindfulness and meditation, as well as journaling.

    Get quality sleep

    Quality here, not just quantity. As well as the usual “sleep hygiene” advices, he has some more unorthodox methods, such as the use of binaural beats to increase theta-wave activity in the brain (and thus induce more restful sleep), and the practice of turning off Wi-Fi, on the grounds that Wi-Fi signals interfere with our sleep.

    We were curious about these recommendations, so we checked out what the science had to say! Here’s what we found:

    In short: probably not too much to worry about in those regards. On the other hand, worrying less, unlike those two things, is a well-established way improve sleep!

    (Surprised we disagreed with our featured expert on a piece of advice? Please know: you can always rely on us to stand by what the science says; we pride ourselves on being as reliable as possible!)

    Find (and live!) your purpose

    This one’s an ikigai thing, to borrow a word from Japanese, or finding one’s raison d’être, as we say in English using French, because English is like that. It’s about having purpose.

    Dr. Hyman’s advice here is consistent with what many write on the subject, and it’d be an interesting to have more science on, but meanwhile, it definitely seems consistent with commonalities in the Blue Zone longevity hotspots, where people foster community, have a sense of belonging, know what they are doing for others and keep doing it because they want to, and trying to make the world—or even just their little part of it—better for those who will follow.

    Being bitter, resentful, and self-absorbed is not, it seems a path to longevity. But a life of purpose, or even just random acts of kindness, may well be.

    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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  • Makkō-Hō – by Haruka Nagai

    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’ve all heard the claims, “Fluent in 3 Months!”, “Russian in Two Weeks!”, “Overnight Mandarin Chinese”, “15-Minute Arabic!”, “Instant Italian!”.

    We see the same in the world of health and fitness too. So how does this one’s claim of “five minutes’ physical fitness” hold up?

    Well, it is 5 minutes per day. And indeed, the author writes:

    ❝The total time [to do these exercises], then, is only one minute and thirty seconds. This series I call one round. When it has been completed, execute another complete round. You should find the exercises easier to do the second time. Executed this way, the exercsies will prove very effective, though they take only three minutes in all. After you have leaned back into the final position, you must remain in that posture for one minute. That brings the total time to four minutes. Even when [some small additions] are added, it takes only five minutes at most.❞

    The exercises themselves are from makkō-hō, which is a kind of Japanese dynamic yoga. They involve repetitions of (mostly) moving stretches with good form, and are excellent for mobility and general health, keeping us supple and robust as we get older.

    The text descriptions are clear, as are the diagrams and photos. The language is a little dated, as this book was written in the 1970s, but the techniques themselves are timeless.

    Bottom line: consider it a 5-minute anti-aging regimen. And, as Nagai says, “the person who cannot find 5 minutes out of 24 hours, was never truly interested in their health”.

    Click here to check out Makkō-Hō and schedule your five minutes!

    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: