Lifespan – by Dr. David Sinclair
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Some books on longevity are science-heavy and heavy-going; others are glorified manifestos with much philosophy but little practical.
This one’s a sciencey-book written for a lay reader. It’s heavily referenced, but not a challenging read.
This book is divided into three parts:
- What we know (the past)
- What we’re learning (the present)
- Where we’re going (the future)
Let us quickly mention: the last part is principally sociology and economics, which are not the author’s wheelhouse. Some readers may enjoy his thoughts regardless, but we’re going to concentrate on where we found the real value of the book to be: in the first and second parts, where he brings his expertise to bear.
The first part lays the foundational knowledge that’s critical for understanding why the second part is so important.
Basically: aging is a genetic disease, and diseases can be cured. No disease has magical properties, even if sometimes it can seem for a while like they do, until we understand them better.
The second part covers a lot of recent and contemporary research into aging. We learn about such things as NAD-agonists that make elderly mice biologically young again, and the Greenland shark that easily lives for 500 years or so (currently the record-holder for vertebrates). And of course, biologically immortal jellyfish.
It’s not all animal studies though…
We learn of how NAD-agonists such as NMN have been promising in human studies too, along with resveratrol and the humble diabetes drug, metformin. These things alone may have the power to extend healthy life by 20%
Other recommendations pertain to lifestyle; the usual five things (diet, exercise, sleep, no alcohol, no smoking), as well as intermittent fasting and cryotherapy (cold showers/baths).
Bottom line: this book is informative and inspiring, and if you’ve been looking for an “in” to understanding the world of biogerontology and/or anti-aging research, this is it.
Get your copy of “Lifespan: Why We Age—And Why We Don’t Have To” from Amazon today!
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To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy
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How To Forgive (And Why)
There’s an old saying that holding onto a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. If only it were so simple and easy as just choosing to let go!
But it’s not, is it?
When people have wronged us and/or wronged our loved ones, it’s hard to forgive, especially if they have not changed. For that matter, it can be hard to forgive ourselves for mistakes that we made, too.
Either way, “drinking that poison” can be close to literal, in terms of what harboring such anger and resentment can do for our cortisol levels.
So, what to do about it?
If you have a dialogue with the person, our previous article on communication may help a lot.
If you don’t, there are various other angles that can be taken:
The Unsent Letter
You can even send it, if you like, but it’s not the point here. The idea is to write to the person, expressing your grievances. But, (as per the above-linked article on communication) try to focus at least as much on your feelings as their actions. “When you did/said x, I felt y”, etc.
This is important for helping you process your feelings. If you send the letter, it’s also important for the other person to be able to understand your feelings.
Sometimes, we feel the things we do so strongly because we don’t have an outlet for them. Pouring out our emotions in such a fashion, on the other hand, means (to labor the metaphor) they’re no longer bottled up. Even just in and of itself, that can provide us a lot of relief.
And when we the negative emotions are no longer such high pressure, it can be easier to let go of them.
Mindfulness
Following on from the above idea, a good strategy can be simply sitting and feeling everything you need to feel, noticing it without judgement, like a curious observer.
Sometimes what we need is just to be heard, and that starts with hearing ourselves.
Compassion
There’s a Buddhist exercise that involves actively feeling compassion for three people: a loved one, a stranger, and an enemy. Many people report that it’s actually harder to feel compassion for a random stranger, than an enemy. Why? Because we don’t know them; we don’t know what’s good and bad about them in our estimation.
If you’re reading this because you want to be able to gain the peace of being able to forgive someone (even if that someone is yourself), then in at least some respect right now, that person is in the “enemy” category. So how do we unpack that?
To err is human. Everybody screws up sometimes. And also, everyone has a reason (or a complex of reasons) for acting the way they do. This does not mean that those reasons excuse the behavior, but it can explain it.
You don’t get angry at a storm for soaking you through. Even if you might not understand the physics of it in the way a meteorologist might, you understand that there were things that led to that, and you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So why do we get angry at someone else for wronging us? Even if we might not understand the personal background of it in the way their psychologist or therapist might, we (hopefully) understand that there were things that caused them to be the way they were, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And ourselves? We probably know, when we made a mistake, why we made it. Maybe we were afraid, insecure, reactive, forgetful, or too focused on some other thing. Whatever it was, we did our best at the time and, apparently, our best wasn’t as good as we’d like.
If we didn’t deserve forgiveness, we wouldn’t be critical of our past selves in the first place.
And, the science is very clear that it’s important for our health for other reasons besides cortisol management, too.
And as for others? They did the best they knew how. Maybe they were afraid, insecure, reactive, forgetful, or too focused on some other thing. Same story, different character.
Remembering that can be key to “accepting the apology we never received”.
Forgiving without forgetting
Developing the ability to forgive is a useful tool for our own mental health. It doesn’t mean we must or even should make ourselves a doormat.
“I forgive you” does not have to mean a clean slate; it means remembering that the thing happened, and just not holding on to the anger/resentment associated with it.
It may be water under the bridge now, but it might have been a devastatingly destructive wave at the time, and continuing to acknowledge truth that is sensible. Just, from a position of peace now, hopefully.
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Be Your Future Self Now – by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
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Affirmations in the mirror are great and all, but they can only get you so far! And if you’re a regular reader of our newsletter, you probably know about the power of small daily habits adding up and compounding over time. So what does this book offer, that’s different?
“Be Your Future Self Now” beelines the route “from here to there”, with a sound psychological approach. On which note…
The book’s subtitle mentions “the science of intentional transformation”, and while Dr. Hardy is a psychologist, he’s an organizational psychologist (which doesn’t really pertain to this topic). It’s not a science-heavy book, but it is heavy on psychological rationality.
Where Dr. Hardy does bring psychology to bear, it’s in large part that! He teaches us how to overcome our biases that cause us to stumble blindly into the future… rather than intentfully creating our own future to step into. For example:
Most people (regardless of age!) acknowledge what a different person they were 10 years ago… but assume they’ll be basically the same person 10 years from now as they are today, just with changed circumstances.
Radical acceptance of the inevitability of change is the first step to taking control of that change.
That’s just one example, but there are many, and this is a book review not a book summary!
In short: if you’d like to take much more conscious control of the direction your life will take, this is a book for you.
Click here to get your copy of “Be Your Future Self Now” from Amazon!
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Nicotine Benefits (That We Don’t Recommend)!
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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
❝Does nicotine have any benefits at all? I know it’s incredibly addictive but if you exclude the addiction, does it do anything?❞
Good news: yes, nicotine is a stimulant and can be considered a performance enhancer, for example:
❝Compared with the placebo group, the nicotine group exhibited enhanced motor reaction times, grooved pegboard test (GPT) results on cognitive function, and baseball-hitting performance, and small effect sizes were noted (d = 0.47, 0.46 and 0.41, respectively).❞
Read in full: Acute Effects of Nicotine on Physiological Responses and Sport Performance in Healthy Baseball Players
However, another study found that its use as a cognitive enhancer was only of benefit when there was already a cognitive impairment:
❝Studies of the effects of nicotinic systems and/or nicotinic receptor stimulation in pathological disease states such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia show the potential for therapeutic utility of nicotinic drugs.
In contrast to studies in pathological states, studies of nicotine in normal-non-smokers tend to show deleterious effects.
This contradiction can be resolved by consideration of cognitive and biological baseline dependency differences between study populations in terms of the relationship of optimal cognitive performance to nicotinic receptor activity.
Although normal individuals are unlikely to show cognitive benefits after nicotinic stimulation except under extreme task conditions, individuals with a variety of disease states can benefit from nicotinic drugs❞
Read in full: Effects of nicotinic stimulation on cognitive performance
Bad news: its addictive qualities wipe out those benefits due to tolerance and thus normalization in short order. So you may get those benefits briefly, but then you’re addicted and also lose the benefits, as well as also ruining your health—making it a lose/lose/lose situation quite quickly.
As an aside, while nicotine is poisonous per se, in the quantities taken by most users, the nicotine itself is not usually what kills. It’s mostly the other stuff that comes with it (smoking is by far and away the worst of all; vaping is relatively less bad, but that’s not a strong statement in this case) that causes problems.
See also: Vaping: A Lot Of Hot Air?
However, this is still not an argument for, say, getting nicotine gum and thinking “no harmful effects” because then you’ll be get a brief performance boost yes before it runs out and being addicted to it and now being in a position whereby if you stop, your performance will be lower than before you started (since you now got used to it, and it became your new normal), before eventually recovering:
In summary
We recommend against using nicotine in the first place, and for those who are addicted, we recommend quitting immediately if not contraindicated (check with your doctor if unsure; there are some situations where it is inadvisable to take away something your body is dependent on, until you correct some other thing first).
For more on quitting in general, see:
Addiction Myths That Are Hard To Quit
Take care!
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Head Over Hips
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We’ve written before about managing osteoarthritis (or ideally: avoiding it, but that’s not always an option on the table, of course), so here’s a primer/refresher before we get into the meat of today’s article:
Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
When the head gets in the way
Research shows that the problem with recovery in cases of osteoarthritis of the hip is in fact often not the hip itself, but rather, the head:
❝In fact, the stronger your muscles are, the more protected your joint is, and the less pain you will experience.
Our research has shown that people with hip osteoarthritis were unable to activate their muscles as efficiently, irrespective of strength.
Basically, people with hip arthritis are unable to activate their muscles properly because the brain is actively putting on the brake to stop them from using the muscle.❞
This is a case of a short-term protective response being unhelpful in the long-term. If you injure yourself, your brain will try to inhibit you from exacerbating that injury, such as by (for example) disobliging you from putting weight on an injured joint.
This is great if you merely twisted an ankle and just need to sit back and relax while your body works its healing magic, but it’s counterproductive if it’s a chronic issue like osteoarthritis. In such (i.e. chronic) cases, avoidance of use of the joint will simply cause atrophy of the surrounding muscle and other tissues, leading to more of the very wear-and-tear that led to the osteoarthritis in the first place.
So… How to deal with that?
You probably can exercise
It’s easy to get caught between the dichotomy of “exercise and inflame your joints” vs “rest and your joints seize up”, which is not pleasant.
However, the trick lies in how you exercise, per joint type:
When Bad Joints Stop You From Exercising (5 Things To Change)
…which to be clear, isn’t a case of “avoid using the joint that’s bad”, but is rather “use it in this specific way, so that it gets stronger without doing it more damage in the process”.
Which is exactly what is needed!
Further resources
For those who like learning from short videos, here’s a trio of helpers (along with our own text-based overview for each):
- The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
- Overcome Front-Of-Hip Pain
- 10 Tips To Reduce Morning Pain & Stiffness With Arthritis
And for those who prefer just reading, here’s a book we reviewed on the topic:
11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips – by Melinda Wright
Take care!
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Wholesome Threesome Protein Soup
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This soup has two protein– and fiber-rich pseudo-grains, one real wholegrain, and nutrient-dense cashews for yet even more protein, and all of the above are full of many great vitamins and minerals. All in all, a well-balanced and highly-nutritious light meal!
You will need
- ⅓ cup quinoa
- ⅓ cup green lentils
- ⅓ cup wholegrain rice
- 5 cups low-sodium vegetable stock (ideally you made this yourself from offcuts of vegetables, but failing that, low-sodium stock cubes can be bought in most large supermarkets)
- ¼ cup cashews
- 1 tbsp dried thyme
- 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
Optional topping:
- ⅓ cup pine nuts
- ⅓ cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Rinse the quinoa, lentils, and rice.
2) Boil 4 cups of the stock and add the grains and seasonings (MSG/salt, pepper, thyme); simmer for about 25 minutes.
3) Blend the cashews with the other cup of vegetable stock, until smooth. Add the cashew mixture to the soup, stirring it in, and allow to simmer for another 5 minutes.
4) Heat the coconut oil in a skillet and add the pine nuts, stirring until they are golden brown.
5) Serve the soup into bowls, adding the mint and pine nuts to each.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Give Us This Day Our Daily Dozen
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Antibiotics? Think Thrice
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Antibiotics: Useful Even Less Often Than Previously Believed (And Still Just As Dangerous)
You probably already know that antibiotics shouldn’t be taken unless absolutely necessary. Not only does taking antibiotics frivolously increase antibiotic resistance (which is bad, and kills people), but also…
It’s entirely possible for the antibiotics to not only not help, but instead wipe out your gut’s “good bacteria” that were keeping other things in check.
Those “other things” can include fungi like Candida albicans.
Candida, which we all have in us to some degree, feeds on sugar (including the sugar formed from breaking down alcohol, by the way) and refined carbs. Then it grows, and puts its roots through your intestinal walls, linking with your neural system. Then it makes you crave the very things that will feed it and allow it to put bigger holes in your intestinal walls.
Don’t believe us? Read: Candida albicans-Induced Epithelial Damage Mediates Translocation through Intestinal Barriers
(That’s scientist-speak for “Candida puts holes in your intestines, and stuff can then go through those holes”)
And as for how that comes about, it’s like we said:
See also: Candida albicans as a commensal and opportunistic pathogen in the intestine
That’s not all…
And that’s just C. albicans, never mind things like C. diff. that can just outright kill you easily.
We don’t have room to go into everything here, but you might like to check out:
Four Ways Antibiotics Can Kill You
It gets worse (now comes the new news)
So, what are antibiotics good for? Surely, for clearing up chesty coughs, lower respiratory tract infections, right? It’s certainly one of the two things that antibiotics are most well-known for being good at and often necessary for (the other being preventing/treating sepsis, for example in serious and messy wounds).
But wait…
A large, nationwide (US) observational study of people who sought treatment in primary or urgent care settings for lower respiratory tract infections found…
(drumroll please)
…the use of antibiotics provided no measurable impact on the severity or duration of coughs even if a bacterial infection was present.
Read for yourself:
And in the words of the lead author of that study,
❝Lower respiratory tract infections tend to have the potential to be more dangerous, since about 3% to 5% of these patients have pneumonia. But not everyone has easy access at an initial visit to an X-ray, which may be the reason clinicians still give antibiotics without any other evidence of a bacterial infection.❞
So, what’s to be done about this? On a large scale, Dr. Merenstein recommends:
❝Serious cough symptoms and how to treat them properly needs to be studied more, perhaps in a randomized clinical trial as this study was observational and there haven’t been any randomized trials looking at this issue since about 2012.❞
This does remind us that, while not a RCT, there is a good ongoing observational study that everyone with a smartphone can participate in:
Dr. Peter Small’s medical AI: “The Cough Doctor”
In the meantime, he advises that when COVID and SARS have been ruled out, then “basic symptom-relieving medications plus time brings a resolution to most people’s infections”.
You can read a lot more detail here:
Antibiotics aren’t effective for most lower tract respiratory infections
In summary…
Sometimes, antibiotics really are a necessary and life-saving medication. But most of the time they’re not, and given their great potential for harm, they may be best simultaneously viewed as the very dangerous threat they also are, and used only when those “heavy guns” are truly what’s required.
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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