Younger Next Year – by Chris Crowley & Dr. Henry Lodge
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Is it diet and exercise? Well, of course that’s a component. Specific kinds of exercise, too. But, as usual when we feature a book, there’s more:
In this case, strong throughout is the notion of life being a marathon not a sprint—and training for it accordingly.
Doing the things now that you’ll really wish you’d started doing sooner, and finding ways to build them into daily life.
Not just that, though! The authors take a holistic approach to life and health, and thus also cover work life, social life, and so forth. Now, you may be thinking “I’m already in the 80 and beyond category; I don’t work” and well, the authors advise that you do indeed work. You don’t have to revamp your career, but science strongly suggests that people who work longer, live longer.
Of course that doesn’t have to mean going full-throttle like a 20-year-old determined to make their mark on the world (you can if you want, though). It could be volunteering for a charity, or otherwise just finding a socially-engaging “work-like” activity that gives you purpose.
About the blend of motivational pep talk and science—this book is heavily weighted towards the former. It has, however, enough science to keep it on the right track throughout. Hence the two authors! Crowley for motivational pep, and Dr. Lodge for the science (with extra input from brain surgeon Dr. Hamilton, too).
Bottom line: if you want to feel the most prepared possible for the coming years and decades, this is a great book that covers a lot of bases.
Click here to check out “Younger Next Year” and get de-aging!
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6 Ways To Look After Your Back
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Back To Back
When people think about looking after their back, often thought does not go much further than sitting with good posture, and perhaps even standing with good posture. And those things are important, but:
1) People’s efforts to have good posture often result in overcorrecting creating an anterior pelvic tilt that causes lower back problems.
Quick tip: if you’re sticking your butt out, you’re doing it wrong (no matter how great your butt is). Instead, to find the correct posture, go up on your tip-toes for a moment, then imagine a plumb-line down the center of your body, thus perpendicular to the floor, going all the way down to the ground. Now, slowly return your heels to the ground, but as you do so, keep your spine aligned to the plumb-line, so you’re not moving backwards as you drop, just directly down. This will land you in perfect posture.
Unless you have scoliosis. In which case, it’ll get you as close to good posture as is likely attainable from any quick tip.
2) There’s a lot more to looking after our back than just good posture!
Here are 5 other important things to do:
Be strong
Do strength-training for your back. How to do that is beyond the scope of today’s feature, but there are many good guides and also personal trainers that can be found.
Start off easy and work up, but do start. The stronger your back is, the less likely a momentary lapse in concentration is to throw out your back because you picked something up with imperfect form.
See also: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Stretch intentionally
Many back injuries occur as a result of stretching and/or twisting awkwardly, so if you ensure your basic mobility and range of motion is good, the less likely it is that unthinkingly twisting around 270° to see where that wasp was going will slip a disk.
The more you stretch intentionally (carefully, please), the more you will be able to stretch unintentionally without injury.
See also: Building & Maintaining Mobility
Stand when you can, walk when you can
We humans have outrun our evolution in a lot of ways, and/but one thing our bodies are definitely not well-adapted for is sitting. Unless we are sitting in a low squat the way you might often see an orang-utan sitting, sitting is not a good way of being for us. Even sitting seiza-style or cross-legged is passable for a short while, not for too long.
So, while there sure are times we need to sit (especially if you’re driving!) minimizing those times is ideal. There are a lot of activities that are traditionally done sitting, where there’s no need for it to be so. For example, your writer here sits for the day’s main meal, but takes any smaller meal standing (and when guests visit for a coffee or such, I’ll offer them the couch while I myself prop up the fireplace). Standing desks are also great if you spend a lot of time at the computer for any reason.
See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
Rest when you need to
You can’t stand all the time! But know this: if you want to rest your legs, lying down is a lot better for your back (and internal organs) than sitting.
Taking a 5 minute break lying on your couch, or bed, or floor, is a perfectly good option and only social convention says otherwise.
If you want a compromise option, though? A recliner chair, in the reclined position, is a better for your back than being scrunched up in the Economy Class Flight position.
PS: About that bed situation…
What Mattress Is Best, By Science?
Kill pain before it kills you
Painkillers aren’t great for the health per se, but pain (or rather, our bodily responses to such) can be worse. Half the time, when it comes to musculoskeletal problems, things get a lot worse a lot more quickly because of how we overcompensate due to the pain. So, take your pain seriously, and remember, the right amount of pain is zero.
If you’re thinking “but pain relief option xyz isn’t good for me”, we strongly recommend checking out:
The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
Take care!
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Soap vs Sanitizer – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing soap to sanitizer, we picked the soap.
Why?
Both are good at killing bacteria / inactivating viruses, but there are several things that set them apart:
- Soap doesn’t just kill them; it slides them off and away down the drain. That means that any it failed to kill are also off and down the drain, not still on your hands. This is assuming good handwashing technique, of course!
- Sanitizer gel kills them, but can take up to 4 minutes of contact to do so. Given that people find 20 seconds of handwashing laborious, 240 seconds of sanitizer gel use seems too much to hope for.
Both can be dehydrating for the hands; both can have ingredients added to try to mitigate that.
We recommend a good (separate) moisturizer in either case, but the point is, the dehydration factor doesn’t swing it far either way.
So, we’ll go with the one that gets rid of the germs the most quickly: the soap
10almonds tip: splash out on the extra-nice hand-soaps for your home—this will make you and others more likely to wash your hands more often! Sometimes, making something a more pleasant experience makes all the difference.
Want to know more?
Check out:
Take care!
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9 Little Habits To Have A Better Day
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Practically gift-wrapped, here are 9 key things to improve any day!
Mindfully does it
These are all things that seem obvious when you read them, but take a moment to consider: how many do you actually do on a daily basis, really? And could you implement the others?
- Remember to be thankful: train your brain to focus on the good in life, either in the morning to start the day positively or at night to unload stress. Or both!
- Change your scenery: visiting new places, even just a walk in the park, can refresh your mind and improve your mood.
- Do one thing at a time: multitasking leads to unfinished, low-quality work. Focusing on one task at a time all but ensures better results.
- Laugh: laughter releases feel-good hormones of various kinds, spreads joy, and relieves tension, making the day more enjoyable. It has longevity-boosting effects too!
- Help someone: helping others boosts happiness, enhances self-worth, and might even provide insights into your own problems. As a bonus, it actually helps the other person, too—so “pay it forward” and all that 🙂
- Prepare the night before: prepping ahead prevents morning stress, making for a smoother and more confident start to the day—which sets the tone of the rest of the day.
- Hype yourself up: even temporary self-belief can boost confidence and its effects are incrementally cumulative over time.
- Relaxation: establish an evening routine (like reading or listening to calming music) to de-stress and improve sleep quality.
- Take your time: being present in the moment enhances enjoyment, improves focus, and cultivates gratitude—which takes us back to #1!
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Are You Flourishing? (There’s a Scale)
Take care!
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Foods Linked To Urinary Incontinence In Middle-Age (& Foods That Avert It)
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.
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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Gut Renovation – by Dr. Roshini Raj, with Sheila Buff
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.
Unless we actually feel something going on down there, gut health is an oft-neglected part of overall health—which is unfortunate, because invisible as it may often be, it affects so much.
Gastroenterologist Dr. Roshini Raj gives us all the need-to-know information, explanations of why things happen the way they do with regard to the gut, and tips, tricks, and hacks to improve matters.
She also does some mythbusting along the way, and advises about what things don’t make a huge difference, including what medications don’t have a lot of evidence for their usefulness.
The style is easy-reading pop-science, with plenty of high-quality medical content.
Reading between the lines, a lot of the book as it stands was probably written by the co-author, Sheila Buff, who is a professional ghostwriter and specializes in working closely with doctors to produce works that are readable and informative to the layperson while still being full of the doctor’s knowledge and expertise. So a reasonable scenario is that Dr. Raj gave her extensive notes, she took it from there, passed it back to her for medical corrections, and they had a little back and forth until it was done. Whatever their setup, the end result was definitely good!
Bottom line: if you’d like a guide to gut health that’s practical and easy to read, while being quite comprehensive and certainly a lot more than “eat probiotics and fiber”, then this book is a fine choice.
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Reduce Caffeine’s Impact on Kidneys
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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
❝Avid coffee drinker so very interested in the results Also question Is there something that you could take or eat that would prevent the caffeine from stimulating the kidneys? I tried to drink decaf from morning to night not a good result! Thanks❞
That is a good question! The simple answer is “no” (but keep reading, because all is not lost)
There’s no way (that we yet know of) to proof the kidneys against the stimulating effect of caffeine. This is especially relevant because part of caffeine’s stimulating effect is noradrenergic, and that “ren” in the middle there? It’s about the kidneys. This is just because the adrenal gland is situated next to them (actually, it’s pretty much sitting on top of them), hence the name, but it does mean that the kidneys are about the hardest thing in the body to have not effected by caffeine.
However! The effects of caffeine in general can be softened a little with l-theanine (found in tea, or it can be taken as a supplement). It doesn’t stop it from working, but it makes the curve of the effect a little gentler, and so it can reduce some unwanted side effects.
You can read more about l-theanine here:
Don’t Forget…
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