Awakening Your Ikigai – by Dr. Ken Mogi
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It’s been well-established in supercentenarian studies that one of the key factors beyond diet or exercise or suchlike (important as those things definitely are), is having a purpose to one’s life.
Neuroscientist Dr. Ken Mogi explains in this very easy-to-read book, how we can bring ikigai into our lives.
From noticing the details of the small things in life, to reorienting one’s life around what’s most truly most important to us, Dr. Mogi gives us not just a “this is ikigai” exposé, but rather, a practical and readily applicable how-to guide.
Bottom line: if you’ve so far been putting off ikigai as “I’ll get to that”, the time to start is today.
Click here to check out Awakening Your Ikigai, and actually awaken yours!
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What’s behind rising heart attack rates in younger adults
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Deaths from heart attacks have been in decline for decades, thanks to improved diagnosis and treatments. But, among younger adults under 50 and those from communities that have been marginalized, the trend has reversed.
More young people have suffered heart attacks each year since the 2000s—and the reasons why aren’t always clear.
Here’s what you need to know about heart attack trends in younger adults.
Heart attack deaths began declining in the 1980s
Heart disease has been a leading cause of death in the United States for more than a century, but rates have declined for decades as diagnosis and treatments improved. In the 1950s, half of all Americans who had heart attacks died, compared to one in eight today.
A 2023 study found that heart attack deaths declined 4 percent a year between 1999 and 2020.
The downward trend plateaued in the 2000s as heart attacks in young adults rose
In 2012, the decline in heart disease deaths in the U.S. began to slow. A 2018 study revealed that a growing number of younger adults were suffering heart attacks, with women more affected than men. Additionally, younger adults made up one-third of heart attack hospitalizations, with one in five heart attack patients being under 40.
The following year, data showed that heart attack rates among adults under 40 had increased steadily since 2006. Even more troubling, young patients were just as likely to die from heart attacks as patients more than a decade older.
Why are more younger adults having heart attacks?
Heart attacks have historically been viewed as a condition that primarily affects older adults. So, what has changed in recent decades that puts younger adults at higher risk?
Higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure
Several leading risk factors for heart attacks are rising among younger adults.
Between 2009 and 2020, diabetes and obesity rates increased in Americans ages 20 to 44.During the same period, hypertension, or high blood pressure, rates did not improve in younger adults overall and worsened in young Hispanic people. Notably, young Black adults had hypertension rates nearly twice as high as the general population.
Hypertension significantly increases the risk of heart attack and cardiovascular death in young adults.
Increased substance use
Substance use of all kinds increases the risk of cardiovascular issues, including heart attacks. A recent study found that cardiovascular deaths associated with substance use increased by 4 percent annually between 1999 and 2019.
The rise in substance use-related deaths has accelerated since 2012 and was particularly pronounced among women, younger adults (25-39), American Indians and Alaska Natives, and those in rural areas.
Alcohol was linked to 65 percent of the deaths, but stimulants (like methamphetamine) and cannabis were the substances associated with the greatest increase in cardiovascular deaths during the study period.
Poor mental health
Depression and poor mental health have been linked to cardiovascular issues in young adults. A 2023 study of nearly 600,000 adults under 50 found that depression and self-reported poor mental health are a risk factor for heart disease, regardless of socioeconomic or other cardiovascular risk factors.
Adults under 50 years consistently report mental health conditions at around twice the rate of older adults. Additionally, U.S. depression rates have trended up and reached an all-time high in 2023, when 17.8 percent of adults reported having depression.
Depression rates are rising fastest among women, adults under 44, and Black and Hispanic populations.
COVID-19
COVID-19 can cause real, lasting damage to the heart, increasing the risk of certain cardiovascular diseases for up to a year after infection. Vaccination reduces the risk of heart attack and other cardiovascular events caused by COVID-19 infection.
The first year of the pandemic marked the largest single-year spike in heart-related deaths in five years, including a 14 percent increase in heart attacks. In the second year of the pandemic, heart attacks in young adults increased by 30 percent.
Heart attack prevention
Not every heart attack is preventable, but everyone can take steps to reduce their risks. The American Heart Association recommends managing health conditions that increase heart disease risk, including diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure.
Lifestyle changes like improving diet, reducing substance use, and increasing physical activity can also help reduce heart attack risk.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Beyond Balancing The Books – by George Marino, CPA, CFP
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We hear a lot about the importance of mindfulness, yet how can Zen-like non-attachment to the material world go well with actually surviving (let alone thriving) in a Capitalist society?
Books that try to connect the two often end up botching it badly to the level of early 2000s motivational posters.
So, what does this book do differently? Mostly it’s because rather than a motivational speech with exhortations to operate on a higher plain and manifest your destiny and all that, it gives practical, down-to-earth advice and offers small simple things you can do or change to mindfully engage with the world of business rather than operating on auto-pilot.
Basically: how to cut out the stress without cutting out your performance.
All in all, we think both your health and your productivity will thank you for it!
Take Your Business (and Brain) “Beyond Balancing The Books” Today
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Sometimes, Perfect Isn’t Practical!
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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
❝10 AM breakfast is not realistic for most. What’s wrong with 8 AM and Evening me at 6. Don’t quite understand the differentiation.❞
(for reference, this is about our “Breakfasting For Health?” main feature)
It’s not terrible to do it the way you suggest It’s just not optimal, either, that’s all!
Breakfasting at 08:00 and then dining at 18:00 is ten hours apart, so no fasting benefits between those. Let’s say you take half an hour to eat dinner, then eat nothing again until breakfast, that’s 18:30 to 08:00, so that’s 13½ hours fasting. You’ll recall that fasting benefits start at 12 hours into the fast, so that means you’d only get 1½ hours of fasting benefits.
As for breakfasting at 08:00 regardless of intermittent fasting considerations, the reason for the conclusion of around 10:00 being optimal, is based on when our body is geared up to eat breakfast and get the most out of that, which the body can’t do immediately upon waking. So if you wake and get sunlight at 08:30, get a little moderate exercise, then by 10:00 your digestive system will be perfectly primed to get the most out of breakfast.
However! This is entirely based on you waking and getting sunlight at 08:30.
So, iff you wake and get sunlight at 06:30, then in that case, breakfasting at 08:00 would give the same benefits as described above. What’s important is the 1½ hour priming-time.
Writer’s note: our hope here is always to be informational, not prescriptive. Take what works for you; ignore what doesn’t fit your lifestyle.
I personally practice intermittent fasting for about 21hrs/day. I breakfast (often on nuts and perhaps a little salad) around 16:00, and dine at around 18:00ish, giving myself a little wiggleroom. I’m not religious about it and will slide it if necessary.
As you can see: that makes what is nominally my breakfast practically a pre-dinner snack, and I clearly ignore the “best to eat in the morning” rule because that’s not consistent with my desire to have a family dinner together in the evening while still practicing the level of fasting that I prefer.
Science is science, and that’s what we report here. How we apply it, however, is up to us all as individuals!
Enjoy!
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10,000 Steps, 30 Days, 4 Changes
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Ariel wasn’t the most active person, and took on a “30 day challenge” to do the commonly-prescribed 10,000 steps per day—without adjusting her diet or doing any other exercise. How much of a difference does it make, really?
Stepping onwards
The 4 main things that she found changed for her weren’t all what she expected:
- Weight loss yes, but only marginally: she lost 3 lbs in a month, which did nevertheless make a visible difference. We might hypothesize that part of the reason for the small weight loss and yet visible difference is that she gained a little muscle, and the weight loss was specifically shifting away from a cortisol-based fat distribution, to a more healthy fat distribution.
- Different eating habits: she felt less hungry and craved less sugar. This likely has less to do with calorie consumption, and more to do with better insulin signalling.
- Increased energy and improved mood: these are going together in one item, because she said “4 things”, but really they are two related things. So, consider one of them a bonus item! In any case, she felt more energized and productive, and less reliant on caffeine.
- Improved sleep: or rather, at first, disrupted sleep, and then slept better and stayed better. A good reminder that changes for the better don’t always feel better in the first instance!
To hear about it in her own words, and see the before and after pictures, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
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Daily, Weekly, Monthly: Habits Against Aging
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Dr. Anil Rajani has advice on restoring/retaining youthfulness. Two out of three of the sections are on skincare specifically, which may seem a vanity, but it’s also worth remembering that our skin is a very large and significant organ, and makes a big difference for the rest of our physical health, as well as our mental health. So, it’s worthwhile to look after it:
The recommendations
Daily: meditation practice
Meditation reduces stress, which reduction in turn protects telomere length, slowing the overall aging process in every living cell of the body.
Weekly: skincare basics
Dr. Rajani recommends a combination of retinol and glycolic acid. The former to accelerate cell turnover, stimulate collagen production, and reduce wrinkles; the latter, to exfoliate dead cells, allowing the retinol to do its job more effectively.
We at 10almonds would like to add: wearing sunscreen with SPF50 is a very good thing to do on any day that your phone’s weather app says the UV index is “moderate” or higher.
Monthly: skincare extras
Here are the real luxuries; spa visits, microneedling (stimulates collagen production), and non-ablative laser therapy. He recommends creating a home spa if possible for monthly skincare treatments, investing in high-quality devices for long-term benefits.
For more on all of these things, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
- No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
- The Evidence-Based Skincare That Beats Product-Specific Hype
Take care!
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The Silent Struggle – by L. William Ross-Child, MLC
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The vast majority of literature out there about ADHD is about children. And fair enough, there are enough popular misunderstandings of ADHD in children so it’s good those works exist… but what about adults?
Adults face different challenges than children, and have different responsibilities. People have different expectations. And even if you say you have ADHD… If you’re not behaving like a squirrel, they will often not accept this, much less understand it, because half the actual symptoms are not what most people think they are.
Ross-Child first lays out the neurobiological underpinnings of ADHD. This is a good place to start, because the physiology of it explains a lot of the other parts of it that can otherwise seem quite mystifying.
Thereafter, he looks one-by-one at the various cognitive and behavioral aspects of ADHD in adults, which will surely help the reader to better understand themself (or perhaps a loved one).
The next part of the book is given over to an exploration of ADHD and the differences it can make in the workplace, relationships (incl. ADHD and sex), as well as parenting, and how these things can all be navigated better by all concerned.
The style throughout is light and very readable, peppered with science made comprehensible. If there’s any flaw, it’s that there are only two pages of references in the bibliography—we’d have liked to have seen more.
All in all though, a really useful guide if you or a loved one has ADHD and you’d like strategies for working with (or around) this condition in a world not made to be kind to such.
Order your copy of “The Silent Struggle: Taking Charge of ADHD in Adults” from Amazon today!
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