Atomic Habits – by James Clear
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James Clear’s Atomic Habits has become “the” go-to book about the power of habit-forming. And, there’s no shortage of competition out there, so that’s quite a statement. What makes this book stand out?
A lot of books start by assuming you want to build habits. That can seem a fair assumption; after all, we picked up the book! But an introductory chapter really hammers home the idea in a way that makes it a lot more motivational:
- Habits are the compound interest of productivity
- This means that progress is not linear, but exponential
- Habits can also be stacked, and thus become synergistic
- The more positive habits you add incrementally, the easier they become because each thing is making your life easier/better
For example:
- It’s easier to save money if you’re in good health
- It’s easier to sleep better if you do not have financial worries
- It’s easier to build your relationship with your loved ones if you’re not tired
…and so on.
For many people this presents a Catch-22 problem! Clear instead presents it as an opportunity… Start wherever you like, but just start small, with some two-minute thing, and build from there.
A lot of the book is given over to:
- how to form effective habits (using his “Four Laws”)
- how to build them into your life
- how to handle mishaps
- how to make sure your habits are working for you
- how to see habits as part of your identity, and not just a goal to be checked off
The last one is perhaps key—goals cease to be motivating once accomplished. Habits, on the other hand, keep spiralling upwards (if you guide them appropriately).
There’s lots more we could say, but it’s a one-minute book review, so we’ll just close by saying:
This book can help you to become the kind of person who genuinely gets a little better each day, and reaps the benefits over time.
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Rice vs Buckwheat – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing rice to buckwheat, we picked the buckwheat.
Why?
It’s a simple one today:
- The vitamin and mineral profiles are very similar, so neither of these are a swaying factor
- In terms of macros, rice is higher in carbohydrates while buckwheat is higher in fiber
- Buckwheat also has more protein, but not by much
- Buckwheat has the lower glycemic index, and a lower insulin index, too
While buckwheat cannot always be reasonably used as a substitute for rice (often because the texture would not work the same), in many cases it can be.
And if you love rice, well, so do we, but variety is also the spice of life indeed, not to mention important for good health. You know that whole “eat 30 different plants per week” thing? Grains count in that tally! So substituting buckwheat in place of rice sometimes seems like a very good bet.
Not sure where to buy it?
Here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Want to know more about today’s topic?
Check out: Carb-Strong or Carb-Wrong?
Enjoy!
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What Size Breakfast Is Best, By Science?
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“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, the popular wisdom goes. But, what should it consist of, and how much should we be eating for breakfast?
It has been previously established that it is good if breakfast is the largest meal of the day:
…with meals getting progressively smaller thereafter.
Of course, very many people do the inverse: small (or skipped) breakfast, moderate lunch, larger dinner. This, however, is probably more a result of when eating fits around the modern industrialized workday (and thus gets normalized), rather than actual health considerations.
So, what’s the latest science?
A plucky band of researchers led by Dr. Karla-Alejandra Pérez-Vega investigated the importance of breakfast in the context of heart health. This research was done as part of a larger study into the effects of the Mediterranean Diet on cardiovascular health, so if anyone wants a quick recap before we carry on, then:
The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For? ← the answer, by the way, is “pretty much everything”
…and there are also different versions that each use the Mediterranean Diet as the core, while focussing extra on a different area of health, including one to make it extra heart-healthy:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean ← most anti-inflammatory / gut-healthiest / heart-healthiest / brain-healthiest
What they found
In their sample population (n=383) of Spanish adults aged 55–75 with pre-diagnosed metabolic syndrome who, as part of the intervention of this 36-month interventional study, had now for the past 36 months been on a Mediterranean diet but without specific guidance on portion sizes:
- Participants with insufficient breakfast energy intake had the highest adiposity (which is a measure of body fat expressed as a percentage of total mass)
- Participants with low or high (but not moderate) breakfast energy intake had the larger BMI and waist circumference over time
- Participants with low or high (but not moderate) breakfast energy intake had higher triglyceride and lower HDL (good) cholesterol levels
- Participants who consumed 20–30% of their daily calories at breakfast enjoyed the greatest improvements in lipid profiles, with lower triglycerides and higher HDL (good) cholesterol levels
- Participants with lower breakfast quality (lower adherence to Mediterranean Diet) had higher blood pressure levels
- Participants with lower breakfast quality (lower adherence to Mediterranean Diet) had higher blood sugar levels
- Participants with lower breakfast quality (lower adherence to Mediterranean Diet) had lower estimated glomerular filtration rate (which is an indicator of kidney function)
- Participants with higher breakfast quality (higher adherence to Mediterranean Diet) had lower waist circumference, higher HDL cholesterol, and better kidney function
You can see the paper itself here in the Journal of Nutrition, Health, and Aging:
What this means
According to this research, the heart-healthiest breakfast is:
- not skipped
- Mediterranean Diet adherent
- within the range of of 20–30% of the total calories for the day
Want to make it even better?
Consider:
Before You Eat Breakfast: 3 Surprising Facts About Intermittent Fasting
Enjoy!
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Be A Plant-Based Woman Warrior – by Jane Esselstyn & Ann Esselstyn
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Notwithstanding the title, this book is not about being a woman or a warrior, but let us share what one reviewer on Amazon wrote:
❝I don’t want to become a plant based woman warrior. The sex change would be traumatic for me. However, as a man who proudly takes ballet classes and Pilates, I am old enough not to worry about stereotypes. When I see a good thing, I am going to use it❞
The authors, a mother-and-daughter team in their 80s and 50s respectively, do give a focus on things that disproportionally affect women, and rectifying those things with diet, especially in one of the opening chapters.
Most the book, however, is about preventing/reversing things that can affect everyone, such as heart disease, diabetes, inflammation and the autoimmune diseases associated with such, and cancer in general, hence the dietary advice being good for most people (unless you have an unusually restrictive diet).
We get an overview of the pantry we should cultivate and curate, as well as some basic kitchen skills that will see us well for the rest of the book, such as how to make oat flour and other similar mini-recipes, before getting into the main recipes themselves.
About the recipes: they are mostly quite simple, though often rely on having pre-prepared items from the mini-recipes we mentioned earlier. They’re all vegan, mostly but not all gluten-free, whole foods, no added sugar, and as for oil… Well, it seems to be not necessarily oil-free, but rather oil-taboo. You see, they just don’t mention it. For example, when they say to caramelize onions, they say to heat a skillet, and when it is hot, add the onions, and stir until browned. They don’t mention any oil in the ingredients or in the steps. It is a mystery. 10almonds note: we recommend olive oil, or avocado oil if you prefer a milder taste and/or need a higher smoke point.
Bottom line: the odd oil taboo aside, this is a good book of simple recipes that teaches some good plant-based kitchen skills while working with a healthy, whole food pantry.
Click here to check out Be A Plant-Based Woman Warrior, and be a plant-based woman warrior!
Or at the very least: be a plant-based cook regardless of gender, hopefully without war, and enjoy the additions to your culinary repertoire
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How To Avoid UTIs
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Psst… A Word To The Wise
Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) can strike at any age, but they get a lot more common as we get older:
- About 10% of women over 65 have had one
- About 30% of women over 85 have had one
Source: Urinary tract infection in older adults
Note: those figures are almost certainly very underreported, so the real figures are doubtlessly higher. However, we print them here as they’re still indicative of a disproportionate increase in risk over time.
What about men?
Men do get UTIs too, but at a much lower rate. The difference in average urethra length means that women are typically 30x more likely to get a UTI.
However! If a man does get one, then assuming the average longer urethra, it will likely take much more treatment to fix:
Case study: 26-Year-Old Man With Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections
Risk factors you might want to know about
While you may not be able to do much about your age or the length of your urethra, there are some risk factors that can be more useful to know:
Catheterization
You might logically think that having a catheter would be the equivalent of having a really long urethra, thus keeping you safe, but unfortunately, the opposite is true:
Read more: Review of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections
Untreated menopause
Low estrogen levels can cause vaginal tissue to dry, making it easier for pathogens to grow.
For more information on menopausal HRT, see:
What You Should Have Been Told About Menopause Beforehand
Sexual activity
Most kinds of sexual activity carry a risk of bringing germs very close to the urethra. Without wishing to be too indelicate: anything that’s going there should be clean, so it’s a case for washing your hands/partner(s)/toys etc.
For the latter, beyond soap and water, you might also consider investing in a UV sanitizer box ← This example has a 9” capacity; if you shop around though, be sure to check the size is sufficient!
Kidney stones and other kidney diseases
Anything that impedes the flow of urine can raise the risk of a UTI.
See also: Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Especially After 60)
Diabetes
How much you can control this one will obviously depend on which type of diabetes you have, but diabetes of any type is an immunocompromizing condition. If you can, managing it as well as possible will help many aspects of your health, including this one.
More on that:
How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes
Note: In the case of Type 1 Diabetes, the above advice will (alas) not help you to prevent or reverse it. However, reducing/avoiding insulin resistance is even more important in cases of T1D (because if your exogenous insulin stops working, you die), so the advice is good all the same.
How do I know if I have a UTI?
Routine screening isn’t really a thing, since the symptoms are usually quite self-evident. If it hurts/burns when you pee, the most likely reason is a UTI.
Get it checked out; the test is a (non-invasive) urinalysis test. In other words, you’ll give a urine sample and they’ll test that.
Anything else I can do to avoid it?
Yes! We wrote previously about the benefits of cranberry supplementation, which was found even to rival antibiotics:
❝…recommend cranberry ingestion to decrease the incidence of urinary tract infections, particularly in individuals with recurrent urinary tract infections. This would also reduce the [need for] administration of antibiotics❞
Read more: Health Benefits Of Cranberries
Take care!
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Mango vs Papaya – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing mango to papaya, we picked the mango.
Why?
Both are great! But there are some things to set them apart:
In terms of macros, this one’s not so big of a difference. They are equal in fiber, while mango has more protein and slightly more carbs. They are both low glycemic index, so we’ll call this one a tie, or the slenderest nominal win for papaya.
When it comes to vitamins, mango has more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B5, B7, B9, E, K, and choline, while papaya has more vitamin C. However, a cup of mango already gives the RDA of vitamin C, so at this point, it’s not even really much of a bonus that papaya has more. In any case, a clear and overwhelming win in the vitamins category for mango.
As for minerals, this one’s closer; mango has more copper, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, while papaya has more calcium, iron, and magnesium. Still, a 4:3 win for mango.
Adding these up makes for a clear win for mango. However, one extra thing to bear in mind about both:
Both of these fruits interact with warfarin and many other anticoagulants. So if you’re taking those, you might want to skip these, or at least consult with your doctor/pharmacist for input on your personal situation.
Aside from that; enjoy both; diversity is good! But mango is the more nutritionally dense, and thus the winner here.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
5 Ways To Make Your Smoothie Blood Sugar Friendly (Avoid the Spike!)
Take care!
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Guava vs Pineapple – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing guava to pineapple, we picked the guava.
Why?
Pineapple is great, but guava just beats it in most ways:
In terms of macros, guava has nearly 4x the fiber and nearly 5x the protein, for the same carbs, giving it the notably lower glycemic index. An easy win for guava in this category.
In the category of vitamins, guava has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pineapple has marginally more vitamin B1. Another clear win for guava.
When it comes to minerals, guava has more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while pineapple has more iron and manganese. One more win for guava.
One big thing in pineapple’s favor is that it contains bromelain, which is an enzyme* found in pineapple (and only in pineapple), that has many very healthful properties, some of them unique to bromelain (and thus: unique to pineapple)
*actually a combination of enzymes, but most often referred to collectively in the singular. But when you do see it referred to as “they”, that’s what that means.
However cool that is, we think it unfair to weight it against guava winning in every other category, so we still say guava gets the overall win.
Of course, enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Let’s Get Fruity: Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More
Enjoy!
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