The Daily Stoic – by Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman

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What’s this, a philosophy book in a health and productivity newsletter? Well, look at it this way: Aristotle basically wrote the “How To Win Friends And Influence People” of his day, and Plato before him wrote a book about management.

In this (chiefly modern!) book, we see what the later Stoic philosophers had to say about getting the most out of life—which is also what we’re about, here at 10almonds!

We tend to use the word “stoic” in modern English to refer to a person who is resolute in the face of hardship. The traditional meaning does encompass that, but also means a lot more: a whole, rounded, philosophy of life.

Philosophy in general is not an easy thing into which to “dip one’s toe”. No matter where we try to start, it seems, it turns out there were a thousand other things we needed to read first!

This book really gets around that. The format is:

  • There’s a theme for each month
  • Each month has one lesson per day
  • Each daily lesson starts with some words from a renowned stoic philosopher, and then provides commentary on such
  • The commentary provides a jumping-off point and serves as a prompt to actually, genuinely, reflect and apply the ideas.

Unlike a lot of “a year of…” day-by-day books, this is not light reading, by the way, and you are getting a weighty tome for your money.

But, the page-length daily lessons are indeed digestible—which, again, is what we like at 10almonds!

Get your copy of The Daily Stoic at Amazon today!

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    Heal your psyche with Internal Family Systems therapy by integrating your inner ‘family’ of Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters for a harmonious whole.

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  • Wise Old Fool

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    How old is this dish? Well, let’s put it this way, it used to be called ” ” and remnants of it have been found at neolithic burial sites in Egypt. Nowadays it’s called “فول مدمس”, which gets rendered a lot of different ways in the Latin alphabet, but “fūl mudammas” is one option. For short, it’s just called “fūl”, which is pronounced like the English word “fool”, and it’s about the beans.

    From chana masala with poori to frijoles refritos to beans on toast, lots of cultures have some version of this breakfast food, and all can be great (yes, even the beans on toast). But today we’re about this particular kind of morning protein, fiber, fats, and healthful spices.

    You will need

    • 2x 14 oz cans fava beans (other kinds of beans work as substitute; kidney beans are common substitution, but this writer prefers black beans personally if she doesn’t have fava in), drained
    • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
    • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
    • 1 teaspoon cinnamon (or ½ cinnamon stick)
    • 1 tsp cumin seeds
    • 1 tsp chili flakes
    • 1 tsp paprika
    • 1 tsp black pepper
    • Juice of ½ lemon
    • For the relish: 1 medium tomato, finely chopped; 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil; 2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
    • To serve: 4 pitta breads, 2 eggs (omit if vegan), and a selection of pickled vegetables, drained

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Add the olive oil to a saucepan over a medium heat; add the garlic, cumin seeds, and cinnamon. Keep these moving for a minute or two before moving to the next step.

    2) Add the fava beans, as well as the other seasonings (chili flakes, paprika, black pepper), and mix thoroughly

    3) Add 1 cup boiling water, and keep everything on a simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring often. Add the lemon juice while it’s simmering; when the beans start to break down and the mixture starts to thicken, it’s ready.

    4) Mix the relish ingredients (finely chopped tomato, olive oil, parsley) thoroughly in a small bowl

    5) Toast the pitta breads, and if using, soft-boil the eggs.

    6) Serve! We suggest: fūl in a bowl, with one half of a soft-boiled egg per bowl, topped with the relish, and served with the pitta bread and pickled vegetables on the side.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load vs Insulin Index

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    How To Actually Use Those Indices

    Carbohydrates are essential for our life, and/but often bring about our early demise. It would be a very conveniently simple world if it were simply a matter of “enjoy in moderation”, but the truth is, it’s not that simple.

    To take an extreme example, for the sake of clearest illustration: The person who eats an 80% whole fruit diet (and makes up the necessary protein and fats etc in the other 20%) will probably be healthier than the person who eats a “standard American diet”, despite not practising moderation in their fruit-eating activities. The “standard American diet” has many faults, and one of those faults is how it promotes sporadic insulin spikes leading to metabolic disease.

    If your breakfast is a glass of orange juice, this is a supremely “moderate” consumption, but an insulin spike is an insulin spike.

    Quick sidenote: if you’re wondering why eating immoderate amounts of fruit is unlikely to cause such spikes, but a single glass of orange juice is, check out:

    Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    Glycemic Index

    The first tool in our toolbox here is glycemic index, or GI.

    GI measures how much a carb-containing food raises blood glucose levels, also called blood sugar levels, but it’s just glucose that’s actually measured, bearing in mind that more complex carbs will generally get broken down to glucose.

    Pure glucose has a GI of 100, and other foods are ranked from 0 to 100 based on how they compare.

    Sometimes, what we do to foods changes its GI.

    • Some is because it changed form, like the above example of whole fruit (low GI) vs fruit juice (high GI).
    • Some is because of more “industrial” refinement processes, such as whole grain wheat (medium GI) vs white flour and white flour products (high GI)
    • Some is because of other changes, like starches that were allowed to cool before being reheated (or eaten cold).

    Broadly speaking, a daily average GI of 45 is considered great.

    But that’s not the whole story…

    Glycemic Load

    Glycemic Load, or GL, takes the GI and says “ok, but how much of it was there?”, because this is often relevant information.

    Refined sugar may have a high GI, but half a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee isn’t going to move your blood sugar levels as much as a glass of Coke, say—the latter simply has more sugar in, and just the same zero fiber.

    GL is calculated by (grams of carbs / 100) x GI, by the way.

    But it still misses some important things, so now let’s look at…

    Insulin Index

    Insulin Index, which does not get an abbreviation (probably because of the potentially confusing appearance of “II”), measures the rise in insulin levels, regardless of glucose levels.

    This is important, because a lot of insulin response is independent of blood glucose:

    • Some is because of other sugars, some some is in response to fats, and yes, even proteins.
    • Some is a function of metabolic base rate.
    • Some is a stress response.
    • Some remains a mystery!

    Another reason it’s important is that insulin drives weight gain and metabolic disorders far more than glucose.

    Note: the indices of foods are calculated based on average non-diabetic response. If for example you have Type 1 Diabetes, then when you take a certain food, your rise in insulin is going to be whatever insulin you then take, because your body’s insulin response is disrupted by being too busy fighting a civil war in your pancreas.

    If your diabetes is type 2, or you are prediabetic, then a lot of different things could happen depending on the stage and state of your diabetes, but the insulin index is still a very good thing to be aware of, because you want to resensitize your body to insulin, which means (barring any urgent actions for immediate management of hyper- or hypoglycemia, obviously) you want to eat foods with a low insulin index where possible.

    Great! What foods have a low insulin index?

    Many factors affect insulin index, but to speak in general terms:

    • Whole plant foods are usually top-tier options
    • Lean and/or white meats generally have lower insulin index than red and/or fatty ones
    • Unprocessed is generally lower than processed
    • The more solid a food is, generally the lower its insulin index compared to a less solid version of the same food (e.g. baked potatoes vs mashed potatoes; cheese vs milk, etc)

    But do remember the non-food factors too! This means where possible:

    • reducing/managing stress
    • getting frequent exercise
    • getting good sleep
    • practising intermittent fasting

    See for example (we promise you it’s relevant):

    Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science

    …as are (especially recommendable!) the two links we drop at the bottom of that page; do check them out if you can

    Take care!

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  • 52 Small Changes – by Brett Blumenthal

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    We see a lot of books that exhort us to get a six-pack in a month, change our life in 7 days, learn Japanese in 24 hours. The reality is, things take time!

    Brett Blumenthal is more realistic while being just as motivational:

    The idea is simple… Make one small change per week for 52 weeks, and at the end of the year, you’ll be healthier and happier.

    At 10almonds, we’re big fans of small changes that add up (or rather: compound!) to make big differences, so this one’s absolutely our style!

    Best of all, she offers us not just “do this” advice, but also “and here’s the information and resources you’ll need to make this change work the best it can for you”

    The advices range in topic from nutrition to exercise to sleep to mental wellness to interpersonal stuff and more. The biggest focus is on personal health, though, with small changes to exercise and nutrition making up the lion’s share of the changes.

    Bottom line: this is a book you’ll want to grab once a week. Consider setting a reminder on your phone to check in with it each Sunday, for example!

    Take the first step and order “52 Small Changes” from Amazon today!

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Related Posts

  • Eat to Your Heart’s Content – by Dr. Sat Bains
  • The Lymphatic System Against Cancer & More

    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.

    Ask Not What Your Lymphatic System Can Do For You…

    Just kidding; we’ll cover that first, as it’s definitely not talked about enough.

    The lymphatic system is the system in the body that moves lymph around. It’s made of glands, nodes, and vessels:

    • The glands (such as the tonsils and the adenoids) and nodes filter out bacteria and produce white blood cells. Specific functions may be, well, specialized—beyond the scope of today’s article—but that’s the broad function.
    • The vessels are the tubes that allow those things to be moved around, suspended in lymph.

    What’s lymph? It’s a colorless water-like liquid that transports immune cells, nutrients (and waste) around the body (through the lymphatic system).

    Yes, it works alongside your vasculature; when white blood cells aren’t being deployed en masse into your bloodstream to deal with some threat, they’re waiting in the wings in the lymphatic system.

    While your blood is pumped around by your heart, lymph moves based on a variety of factors, including contractions of small specialized lymphatic muscles, the pressure gradient created by the combination of those and gravity, and the movements of your body itself.

    Here’s a larger article than we have room for, with diagrams we also don’t have room for:

    Modelling the lymphatic system

    To oversimplify it in few words for the sake of moving on: you can most of the time: think of it as an ancillary network supporting your circulatory system that unlike blood, doesn’t deal with oxygen or sugars, but does deal with a lot of other things, including:

    • water and salt balance
    • immune cells and other aspects of immune function
    • transports fats (and any fat-soluble vitamins in them) into circulation
    • cleans up stuff that gets stuck between cells
    • general detoxification

    There’s a lot that can go wrong if lymph isn’t flowing as it should

    Too much to list here, but to give an idea:

    • Arthritis and many autoimmune diseases
    • Cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome
    • Obesity, diabetes, and organ failure
    • Alzheimer’s and other dementias
    • Lymphadenitis, lymphangitis, and lymphedenopathy
    • Lymphomas and Hodgkin’s disease (both are types of lymphatic cancer)
    • Cancers of other kinds, because of things not being cleaned up where and when they should be

    Yikes! That’s a lot of important things for a mostly-forgotten system to be taking care of protecting us from!

    What you can do for your lymphatic system, to avoid those things!

    Happily, there are easy things we can do to give our lymph some love, such as:

    Massage therapy (and foam rolling)

    This is the go-to that many people/publications recommend. It’s good! It’s certainly not the most important thing to do, but it’s good.

    You can even use a simple gadget like this one to help move the lymph around, without needing to learn arcane massage techniques.

    Exercise (move your body!)

    This is a lot more important. The more we move our body, the more lymph moves around. The more lymph moves around today, the more easily it will move around tomorrow. A healthy constant movement of lymph throughout the lymphatic system is key to keeping everything running smoothly.

    If you pick only one kind of exercise, make it High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT):

    How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)

    If for some reason you really can’t do that, just spend as much of your waking time as reasonably possible, moving, per:

    Exercise Less; Move More

    For ideas on how to do that, check out…

    No-Exercise Exercise!

    Get thee to a kitchen

    This is about getting healthy food that gives your body’s clean-up crew (the lymphatic system) an easier time of it.

    Rather than trying to “eat clean” which can be a very nebulous term and it’s often not at all clear (and/or hotly debated) what counts as “clean”, instead, stick to foods that constitute an anti-inflammatory diet:

    Eat To Beat Inflammation

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • This Is Your Brain on Food – by Dr. Uma Naidoo

    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.

    “Diet will fix your brain” is a bold claim that often comes from wishful thinking and an optimistic place where anecdote is louder than evidence. But, diet does incontrovertibly also affect brain health. So, what does Dr. Naidoo bring to the table?

    The author is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a professional chef who graduated with her culinary school’s most coveted award, and a trained-and-certified nutritionist. Between those three qualifications, it’s safe to she knows her stuff when it comes to the niche that is nutritional psychiatry. And it shows.

    She takes us through the neurochemistry involved, what chemicals are consumed, made, affected, inhibited, upregulated, etc, what passes through the blood-brain barrier and what doesn’t, what part the gut really plays in its “second brain” role, and how we can leverage that—as well as mythbusting a lot of popular misconceptions about certain foods and moods.

    There’s hard science in here, but presented in quite a pop-science way, making for a very light yet informative read.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand what your food is doing to your brain (and what it could be doing instead), then this is a top-tier book for you!

    Click here to check out This Is Your Brain On Food, and get to know yours!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Feeding You Lies – by Vani Hari

    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.

    When it comes to advertising, we know that companies will often be as misleading as they can get away with. But just how misleading is it?

    Vani Hari, of “Food Babe” fame, is here to unravel it all.

    The book covers many areas of food and drink advertising and marketing, and gives particular attention to:

    • Sodas (with and without sugar), and how deleterious they are to the health—as well as not even helping people lose weight, but actively hindering
    • Nutritionally fortified foods, and what we may or may not actually get from them by the time the processing is done
    • Organic food, and what that may or may not mean

    She also covers a lot of what happens outside of supermarkets, way back in universities and corporate boardrooms. In short, who is crossing whose palms with silver for a seal of approval… And what that means for us as consumers.

    A strength of this book that sets it apart from many of its genre, by the way, is that while being deeply critical of certain institutions’ practices, it doesn‘t digress into tinfoil-hat pseudoscientific scaremongering, either. Here at 10almonds we love actual science, so that was good to see too.

    Bottom line: is you’d like to know “can they say that and get away with it if it’s not true?” and make decisions based on the actual nutritional value of things, this is a great book for you.

    Click here to check out “Feeding You Lies” on Amazon and make your shopping healthier!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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