Undo It! – by Dr. Dean Ornish & Anne Ornish
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.
Of course, no lifestyle changes will magically undo Type 1 Diabetes or Cerebral Palsy. But for many chronic diseases, a lot can be done. The question is,how does one book cover them all?
As authors Dr. Dean Ornish and Anne Ornish explain, very many chronic diseases are exacerbated, or outright caused, by the same factors:
- Gene expression
- Inflammation
- Oxidative stress
This goes for chronic disease from heart disease to type 2 diabetes to cancer and many autoimmune diseases.
We cannot change our genes, but we can change our gene expression (the authors explain how). And certainly, we can control inflammation and oxidative stress.
Then first part of the book is given over to dietary considerations. If you’re a regular 10almonds reader, you won’t be too surprised at their recommendations, but you may enjoy the 70 recipes offered.
Attention is also given to exercising in ways optimized to beat chronic disease, and to other lifestyle factors.
Limiting stress is important, but the authors go further when it comes to psychological and sociological factors. Specifically, what matters most to health, when it comes to intimacy and community.
Bottom line: this is a very good guide to a comprehensive lifestyle overhaul, especially if something recently has given you cause to think “oh wow, I should really do more to avoid xyz disease”.
Click here to check out Undo It, and better yet, prevent it in advance!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
The Disordered Mind – by Dr. Eric Kandel
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 don’t generally include author bios in these reviews, but it’s worth mentioning that Dr. Kandel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, for studies related to the topics in this book.
The premise in this book is as per the subtitle: what unusual brains tell us about ourselves. He assumes that the reader has a “usual” brain, but if you don’t, then all is not lost, and in fact he probably talks about your brain in the book too.
Examining the brains of people with conditions ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia to Parkinson’s, or even such common things as depression and anxiety and addiction, tells us a lot about what in our brain (anatomically and physiologically) is responsible for what, and how those things can be thrown out of balance.
By inference, that also tells us how to keep things from being thrown out of balance. Even if the genetic deck is stacked against you, there are still things that can be done to avoid actual disease. After all, famously, “genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger”.
Dr. Kandel writes in a clear and lucid fashion, such that even the lay reader can quite comfortably learn about such things as prion-folding and inhibitory neurons and repressed transcription factors and more.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand more about what goes wrong and how and why and what it means for your so-far-so-good healthy brain, this is the book for that.
Click here to check out The Disordered Mind, and understand more!
Share This Post
-
Green Coffee Bean Extract: Coffee Benefits Without The Coffee?
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 is, on balance, very good for the health in moderation. We wrote about it here:
The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
Some quick facts before moving on:
- Coffee is the world’s biggest source of antioxidants
- 65% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s for coffee-drinkers
- 67% reduced risk of type 2 diabetes for coffee-drinkers
- 43% reduced risk of liver cancer for coffee-drinkers
- 53% reduced suicide risk for coffee-drinkers
Those are some compelling statistics!
But what about the caffeine content?
Assuming one doesn’t have a caffeine sensitivity, caffeine is also healthy in moderation—but it is easy to accidentally become dependent on it, so it can be good to take a “tolerance break” once in a while, and then reintroduce it with more modest moderation:
Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?
We also, for that matter, have discussed its impact on the gut:
Coffee & Your Gut ← surprise, it’s a positive impact
What if I don’t like coffee?
We suspect that, having seen the title of this article, you know what the answer’s going to be here:
Green coffee bean extract is the extract from green (i.e. unroasted) coffee beans. It has one or two advantages over drinking coffee:
- For those who do not like drinking coffee, this supplement sidesteps that neatly
- Roasting coffee beans destroys a lot (sometimes almost all; it depends on the temperature and duration) of their chlorogenic acid, a highly beneficial polyphenol; using unroasted (i.e. green) coffee beans avoids that
See: Role of roasting conditions in the level of chlorogenic acid content in coffee beans
All about GCE and CGA
That’s “green coffee extract” and “chlorogenic acid”, respectively, bearing in mind that the latter is found generously in the former.
As to what it does:
❝CGA is an important and biologically active dietary polyphenol, playing several important and therapeutic roles such as antioxidant activity, antibacterial, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, neuroprotective, anti-obesity, antiviral, anti-microbial, anti-hypertension, free radicals scavenger and a central nervous system (CNS) stimulator. Furthermore, CGA causes hepatoprotective effects.❞
👆 Those are the things we know for sure that it does. And it may do even more things:
❝In addition, it has been found that CGA could modulate lipid metabolism and glucose in both genetically and healthy metabolic related disorders. It is speculated that CGA can perform crucial roles in lipid and glucose metabolism regulation and thus help to treat many disorders such as hepatic steatosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity as well.❞
Read in full: Chlorogenic acid (CGA): A pharmacological review and call for further research
About lipid metabolism…
- Green coffee extract supplementation significantly reduces serum total cholesterol levels.
- Green coffee extract supplementation significantly reduces serum LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels.
- Increases in HDL (“good” cholesterol) after green coffee bean extract consumption are significant in green coffee bean extract dosages ≥400mg/day.
About blood glucose and insulin…
- Green coffee extract supplementation significantly improved fasting blood sugar levels
- Green coffee extract supplementation at ≥400 mg/day significantly lowered postprandial insulin levels (that’s good)
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
Share This Post
-
Healing Arthritis – by Dr. Susan Blum
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 previously reviewed another book by this author, her Immune System Recovery Plan, and today it’s more specific: healing arthritis
Of course, not all arthritis is rooted in immune dysfunction, but a) all of it is made worse by immune dysfunction and b) rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease, affects 1% of the population.
This book tackles all kinds of arthritis, by focusing on addressing the underlying causes and treating those, and (whether it was the cause or not) reducing inflammation without medication, because that will always help.
The “3 steps” mentioned in the subtitle are three stages of a plan to improve the gut microbiome in such a way that it not only stops worsening your arthritis, but starts making it better.
The style here is on the hard end of pop-science, so if you want something more conversational/personable, then this won’t be so much for you, but if you just want the information and explanation, then this does it just fine, and it has frequent references to the science to back it up, with a reassuringly extensive bibliography.
Bottom line: if you have arthritis and want a book that will help you to get either symptom-free or as close to that as is possible from your current condition (bearing in mind that arthritis is generally degenerative), then this is a great book for that.
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Ending Aging – by Dr. Aubrey de Grey
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 know about how to slow aging. We know about diet, exercise, sleep, intermittent fasting, and other lifestyle tweaks to make. But how much can we turn back the clock, according to science?
Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s foundational principle is simple: the body is a biological machine, and aging is fundamentally an engineering problem.
He then outlines the key parts to that problem: the princple ways in which cells (and DNA) get damaged, and what we need to do about that in each case. Car tires get damaged over time; our approach is to replace them within a certain period of time so that they don’t blow out. In the body, it’s a bit similar with cells so that we don’t get cancer, for example.
The book goes into detail regards each of the seven main ways we accumulate this damage, and highlights avenues of research looking to prevent it, and in at least some cases, the measures already available to so.
Bottom line: if you want a hard science overview of actual rejuvenation research in biogerontology, this is a book that presents that comprehensively, without assuming prior knowledge.
Click here to check out Ending Aging and never stop learning!
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:
-
What is HRT? HRT and Hormones Explained
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.
In this short video, Dr. Sophie Newton explains how menopausal HRT, sometimes called just MHT, is the use of exogenous (didn’t come from your body) to replace/supplement the endogenous hormones (made in your body) that aren’t being made in the quantities that would result in ideal health.
Bioidentical hormones are, as the name suggests, chemically identical to those made in the body; there is no difference, all the way down to the atomic structure.
People are understandably wary of “putting chemicals into the body”, but in fact, everything is a chemical and those chemicals are also found in your body, just not in the numbers that we might always like.
In the case of hormones, these chemical messengers are simply there to tell cells what to do, so having the correct amount of hormones ensures that all the cells that need to get a certain message, get it.
In the case of estrogen specifically, while it’s considered a sex hormone (and it is), it’s responsible for a lot more than just the reproductive system, which is why many people without correct estrogen levels (such as peri- or post-menopause, though incorrect levels can happen earlier in life for other reasons too) can severely feel their absence in a whole stack of ways.
What ways? More than we can list here, but some are discussed in the video:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to know more?
You might like our previous main features:
- What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
- What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
- Menopausal HRT: Bioidentical vs Animal
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:
-
Grapefruit vs Orange – 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 grapefruit to orange, we picked the orange.
Why?
It’s easy, when guessing which is the healthier out of two things, to guess that the more expensive or perhaps less universally available one is the healthier. But it’s not always so, and today is one of those cases!
In terms of macros, they are very similar fruits, with almost identical levels of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, as well as water. Looking more carefully, we find that grapefruit’s sugars contain a slightly high proportion of fructose; not enough to make it unhealthy by any means (indeed, no whole unprocessed fruit is unhealthy unless it’s literally poisonous), but it is a thing to note if we’re micro-analysing the macronutrients. Also, oranges have slightly more fiber, which is always a plus.
When it comes to vitamins, oranges stand out with more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, and E, while grapefruit boasts more vitamin A (hence its color). Still, we’re calling this category another win for oranges.
In the category of minerals, oranges again sweep with more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, and selenium, while grapefruit has just a little more phosphorus. So, another easy win for oranges.
One final consideration that’s not shown in the nutritional values, is that grapefruit contains furanocoumarin, which can inhibit cytochrome P-450 3A4 isoenzyme and P-glycoptrotein transporters in the intestine and liver—slowing down their drug metabolism capabilities, thus effectively increasing the bioavailability of many drugs manifold. It can also be found in lower quantities in Seville (sour) oranges, and it’s not present (or at least, if it is, it’s in truly tiny quantities) in most oranges.
This may sound superficially like a good thing (improving bioavailability of things we want), but in practice it means that in the case of many drugs, if you take them with (or near in time to) grapefruit or grapefruit juice, then congratulations, you just took an overdose. This happens with a lot of meds for blood pressure, cholesterol (including statins), calcium channel-blockers, anti-depressants, benzo-family drugs, beta-blockers, and more. Oh, and Viagra, too. Which latter might sound funny, but remember, Viagra’s mechanism of action is blood pressure modulation, and that is not something you want to mess around with unduly. So, do check with your pharmacist to know if you’re on any meds that would be affected by grapefruit or grapefruit juice!
All in all, today’s sections add up to an overwhelming win for oranges!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
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:
