The Beautiful Cure – by Dr. Daniel Davis
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This one is not just a book about the history of immunology and a primer on how the immune system works. It is those things too, but it’s more:
Dr. Daniel Davis, a professor of immunology and celebrated researcher in his own right, bids us look at not just what we can do, but also what else we might.
This is not to say that the book is speculative; Dr. Davis deals in data rather than imaginings. He also cautions us against falling prey to sensationalization of the “beautiful cures” that the field of immunology is working towards. What, then, are these “beautiful cures”?
Just like our immune systems (in the plural; by Dr. Davis’ count, primarily talking about our innate and adaptive immune systems) can in principle deal with any biological threat, but in practice don’t always get it right, the same goes for our medicine.
He argues that in principle, we categorically can cure any immune-related disease (including autoimmune diseases, and tangentially, cancer). The theoretical existence of such cures is a mathematically known truth. The practical, contingent existence of them? That’s what takes the actual work.
The style of the book is accessible pop science, with a hard science backbone from start to finish.
Bottom line: if you’d like to know more about immunology, and be inspired with hope and wonder without getting carried away, this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Beautiful Cure, and learn about these medical marvels!
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Marrakesh Sorghum Salad
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As the name suggests, it’s a Maghreb dish today! Using sorghum, a naturally gluten-free whole grain with a stack of vitamins and minerals. This salad also comes with fruit and nuts (apricots and almonds; a heavenly combination for both taste and nutrients) as well as greens, herbs, and spices.
Note: to keep things simple today, we’ve listed ras el-hanout as one ingredient. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a spice blend; you can probably buy a version locally, but you might as well know how to make it yourself—so here’s our recipe for that!
You will need
- 1½ cups sorghum, soaked overnight in water (if you can’t find it locally, you can order it online (here’s an example product on Amazon), or substitute quinoa) and if you have time, soaked overnight and then kept in a jar with just a little moisture for a few days until they begin to sprout—this will be best of all. But if you don’t have time, don’t worry about it; overnight soaking is sufficient already.
- 1 carrot, grated
- ½ cup chopped parsley
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- ½ tbsp chopped chives
- 2 tbsp ras el-hanout
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 tbsp almond butter
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp white miso paste
- ½ cup sliced almonds
- 4 fresh apricots, pitted and cut into wedges
- 1 cup mint leaves, chopped
- To serve: your choice of salad greens; we suggest chopped romaine lettuce and rocket
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Cook the sorghum, which means boiling it for about 45 minutes, or 30 in a pressure cooker. If unsure, err on the side of cooking longer—even up to an hour will be totally fine. You have a lot of wiggle room, and will soon get used to how long it takes with your device/setup. Drain the cooked sorghum, and set it aside to cool. If you’re entertaining, we recommend doing this part the day before and keeping it in the fridge.
2) When it’s cool, add the carrot, the parsley, the chives, the vinegar, and 1 tbsp of the ras el-hanout. Toss gently but thoroughly to combine.
3) Make the dressing, which means putting ¼ cup water into a blender with the other 1 tbsp of the ras el-hanout, the garlic, the almond butter, the lemon juice, and the miso paste. Blend until smooth.
4) Assemble the salad, which means adding the dressing to sorghum-and-ingredients bowl, along with the almonds, apricots, and mint leaves. Toss gently, but sufficiently that everything is coated.
5) Serve on a bed of salad greens.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← including an anti-inflammatory version, which is functionally what we’re doing today. As an aside when people hear “Mediterranean” they often think “Italy and Greece”. Which, sure, but N. Africa (and thus Maghreb cuisine) is also very much Mediterranean, and it shows!
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
Take care!
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Cavolo Nero & Sweet Potato Hash
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🎶 Sweet potato hash? It’s a seasonal smash… Catches on in a flash… Let’s do the hash 🎶
You will need
- 6 oz cavolo nero, tough stems removed, chopped
- 1 large sweet potato, diced
- 1 large red onion, finely chopped
- 1 parsnip, grated
- 1 small red pepper, chopped
- 4 oz baby portobello mushrooms, chopped
- ½ cup fresh or thawed peas
- ¼ bulb garlic, thinly sliced
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tsp dried rosemary
- 1 tsp dried thyme (dried for convenience; fresh is also fine if you have it)
- 1 tsp red chili flakes (dried for convenience; fresh is also fine if you have it)
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 425℉ / 220℃.
2) Toss the diced sweet potato in 1 tbsp olive oil, as well as the nutritional yeast, ground turmeric, black pepper, and MSG/salt, ensuring an even distribution. Roast in the oven on a lined baking tray, for 30 minutes, turning at least once to get all sides of the potato. When it is done, remove from the oven and set aside.
3) Heat a little oil in a sauté pan or large skillet (either is fine; we’re not adding liquids today), and fry the onion, parsnip, and pepper until softened, which should take about 5 minutes (this is one reason why we grated the parsnip; the other is for the variation in texture).
4) Add the garlic, mushrooms, herbs, and chili flakes, and cook for a further 1 minute, while stirring.
5) Add the cavolo nero and peas, stir until the cavolo nero begins to wilt, and then…
6) Add the roasted sweet potato; cook for about 5 more minutes, pressing down with the spatula here and there to mash the ingredients together.
7) Turn the hash over when it begins to brown on the bottom, to lightly brown the other side too.
8) Serve hot.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
- Which Bell Peppers To Pick?
- Ergothioneine: “The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Take care!
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To Pee Or Not To Pee
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Is it “strengthening” to hold, or are we doing ourselves harm if we do? Dr. Heba Shaheed explains in this short video:
A flood of reasons not to hold
Humans should urinate 4–6 times daily, but for many people, the demands of modern life often lead to delaying urination, raising questions about its effects on the body.
So first, let’s look at how it all works: the bladder is part of the urinary system, which includes the kidneys, ureters, urethra, and sphincters. Urine is produced by the kidneys and transported via the ureters into the bladder, a hollow organ with a muscular wall. This muscle (called the detrusor) allows the bladder to inflate as it fills with urine (bearing in mind, the main job of any muscle is to be able to stretch and contract).
As the bladder fills, stretch receptors in that muscle signal fullness to the spinal cord. This triggers the micturition reflex, causing the detrusor to contract and the internal urethral sphincter to open involuntarily. Voluntary control over the external urethral sphincter allows a person to delay or release urine as needed.
So, at what point is it best to go forth and pee?
For most people, bladder fullness is first noticeable at around 150-200ml, with discomfort occurring at 400-500ml (that’s about two cups*). Although the bladder can stretch to hold up to a liter, exceeding this capacity can cause it to rupture, a rare but serious condition requiring surgical intervention.
*note, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that drinking two cups will result in two cups being in your bladder; that’s not how hydration works. Unless you are already perfectly hydrated, most if not all of the water will be absorbed into the rest of your body where it is needed. Your bladder gets filled when your body has waste products to dispose of that way, and/or is overhydrated (though overhydration is not very common).
Habitually holding urine and/or urinating too quickly (note: not “too soon”, but literally, “too quickly”, we’re talking about the velocity at which it exits the body) can weaken pelvic floor muscles over time. This can lead to bladder pain, urgency, incontinence, and/or a damaged pelvic floor.
In short: while the body’s systems are equipped to handle occasional delays, holding it regularly is not advisable. For the good of your long-term urinary health, it’s best to avoid straining the system and go whenever you feel the urge.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Keeping your kidneys happy: it’s more than just hydration!
Take care!
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Foods Linked To Urinary Incontinence In Middle-Age (& Foods That Avert It)
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Incontinence is an inconvenience associated with aging, especially for women. Indeed, as the study we’re going to talk about today noted:
❝Estrogen deficiency during menopause, aging, reproductive history, and factors increasing intra-abdominal pressure may lead to structural and functional failure in the pelvic floor.❞
However, that was just the “background”, before they got the study going, because…
❝Lifestyle choices, such as eating behavior, may contribute to pelvic floor disorders. The objective of the study was to investigate associations of eating behavior with symptoms of pelvic floor disorders, that is, stress urinary incontinence, urgency urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, and constipation or defecation difficulties among middle-aged women.❞
~ Ibid.
How the study went
The researchers examined 1,098 Finnish women aged 47–55. It was a cross-sectional observational study, so no intervention was made, just: gathering data and analysing it. They examined:
- Eating behavior (i.e. what one’s diet is like; their questionnaire was quite comprehensive and the simplified conclusion doesn’t do that justice)
- Food consumption frequency (i.e. temporal patterns of eating)
- Demographic variables (e.g. age, education, etc)
- Gynecological variables (e.g. menopause status, hysterectomy, etc)
- Physical activity variables (e.g. light, moderate, heavy, previous history of no exercise, regular, competitive sport, etc)
With those things taken into account, the researchers crunched the numbers to assess the associations of dietary factors with pelvic floor disorders.
What they found
Adjusting for possible confounding variables…
- those with disordered eating patterns (e.g. overeating, restrictive eating, swinging between the two behaviors) were 50% higher chance of developing urinary incontinence than the norm
- those who more frequently consumed ready-made foods got 50% higher chance of developing urinary incontinence than the norm
- those who ate fruits daily enjoyed a 20% lower chance of urinary incontinence than the norm
So, in practical terms:
- practice mindful eating
- avoid ready-made foods
- enjoy fruit
You can read the paper in full here (it obviously goes into a lot more detail, and also covers other things beyond the scope of this article, such as fecal incontinence or, conversely, constipation—needless to say, the same advice stands in any case):
As for why this works the way it does: the study focused on the association and only hypothesized the question of “how”, but they did write a bit about that too, and it is almost certainly mostly a matter of gut health vs inflammation.
We really only have room for that kind of one-line summary here, but do read the paper if you’re interested, as it also talks about other dietary factors that had an impact, with the above-listed items being the topmost impactful factors, but for example (to take just one snippet of many possible ones):
❝In particular, saturated fatty acids (SFA) and cholesterol increased the risk for symptoms❞
~ Ibid. ← so do read it, for many more snippets like this!
What else does and doesn’t work
We covered a little while back the question of whether it is strengthening to hold one’s pee, or better to go whenever one feels the urge, and the answer is clear:
Meanwhile, supplements on the other hand are a mixed bag; there are some that probably help, and others, not so much:
What’s in the supplements that claim to help you cut down on bathroom breaks? And do they work?
Want to do more?
Check out these previous articles of ours:
Pelvic Floor Exercises (Not Kegels!) To Prevent Urinary Incontinence
and
Keeping Your Kidneys Happy: It’s About More Than Just Hydration! ← important at all ages, but especially relevant after 60
Take care!
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Your Simplest Life – by Lisa Turner
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We probably know how to declutter, and perhaps even do a “unnecessary financial expenditures” audit. So, what does this offer beyond that?
A large portion of this book focuses on keeping our general life in a state of “flow”, and strategies include:
- How to make sure you’re doing the right part of the 80:20 split on a daily basis
- Knowing when to switch tasks, and when not to
- Knowing how to plan time for tasks
- No more reckless optimism, but also without falling foul of Parkinson’s Law (i.e. work expands to fill the time allotted to it)
- Decluttering your head, too!
When it comes to managing life responsibilities in general, Turner is very attuned to generational differences… Including the different challenges faced by each generation, what’s more often expected of us, what we’re used to, and how we probably initially learned to do it (or not).
To this end, a lot of strategies are tailored with variations for each age group. Not often does an author take the time to address each part of their readership like that, and it’s really helpful that she does!
All in all, a great book for simplifying your daily life.
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Which Gadgets Help, & Which Are A Waste Of Time?
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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 😎
❝I’m a 67- year old yoga teacher and runner. A lifelong runner, I started long distance running when I was 58. One of my friends loves rucking? I recently bought a rucking vest. Your thoughts? Any risks?
As a perk of my yoga instructor job I get cryotherapy, red light therapy, infrared sauna, and Normatec boots for a nominal fee. Even though they are almost free, I don’t take advantage of them as I can’t find evidence of their value and don’t want to waste my time. Do you recommend any of them?❞On rucking and rucking vests
First, for any unfamiliar, this is about walking/running/exercising in general, with a weighted backpack or weight vest.
As for whether this is beneficial, it depends on your goals. Once upon a very long time ago when this writer was a soldier, it was vitally important to for me be able to [fall from the sky and then] run about 2km carrying a certain (hefty) amount of weight and still be able to fight at the other end of it, or else I would die. Thus, between deployments, I’d often carry a sturdy rucksack with concrete slabs in it, to keep myself accustomed to that burden (funny story: someone once tried to steal that when I had put it down while doing something—the would-be thief fell over instantly and then ran away empty-handed). And, here’s the thing: this kind of training did for me what I needed it to do for me. As a 67-year-old yoga teacher, your needs are probably very different.
A common reason to use weight vests is in an effort against osteoporosis, but the evidence is lacking (or very weak, at best), as we wrote about a while back:
Weight Vests Against Osteoporosis: Do They Really Build Bone?
With regard to risks… Let’s put it this way: my old regiment, in addition to the usual soldierly problems like hearing damage and PTSD, has quite a reputation for producing veterans with spinal compression injuries. And that’s entirely because of the whole “running with a large amount of weight strapped to us” thing. So, you probably don’t want that.
If you are going to do that though, then:
- a weight best is a lot better than a backpack (better distribution of weight)
- start with low weight and work up, and don’t push your limits
We’re not the boss of you, so by all means do as you see fit, but unless there’s a special reason why being able to run with a heavy weight is important to you, then running with a light weight is already more than good enough.
About those job perks
Again, of course, it depends on what you hope to get out of them, but in some cases there is a lot of evidence for benefit.
On cryotherapy: Ice Baths: To Dip Or Not To Dip? ← there are definite benefits for most people!
On red light therapy: Red Light, Go! Casting Yourself In A Healthier Light ← there are some caveats re people who should not do this or at least should be very wary, but for most people, this does a lot of good, and is very well-evidenced to be beneficial
On infrared saunas: we’re unaware of any special evidence in favor of these. However, traditional saunas have plenty of well-evidenced benefits: Saunas: Health Benefits (& Caveats)
On Normatec boots: for the unfamiliar, this is a brand name for compression technology. Again, it depends on what you want to get out of it, though. If you are in good health, then what it’s generally being advertised for is to prevent/reduce exercise-induced muscle damage caused by the stress that endurance training can place on skeletal muscle. Just one problem—it doesn’t seem to work:
❝Athletes attempt to aid their recovery in various ways, one of which is through compression. Dynamic compression consists of intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) devices, such as the NormaTec Recovery System and Recovery Pump
Clinical Question: What are the effects of IPC on the reduction of Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage (EIMD) in endurance athletes following prolonged exercise? Summary of Key Findings: The current literature was searched to identify the effects of IPC, and 3 studies were selected: 2 randomized controlled trials and 1 randomized cross-over study. Two studies investigated the effect of IPC on delayed onset muscle soreness and plasma creatine kinase in ultramarathoners. The other looked at the impact of IPC on delayed onset muscle soreness in marathoners, ultramarathoners, triathletes, and cyclists.
All studies concluded IPC was not an effective means of improving the reduction of EIMD in endurance-trained athletes.❞
However! If you have lipedema and/or lymphedema and want to manage that, then compression gear may help:
Take care!
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