Radical Longevity – by Dr. Ann Gittleman
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Dr. Gittleman takes a comprehensive approach, advising us about avoiding AGEs, freeing up fascia, stimulating cellular rejuvenation, the mind-gut connection, keeping the immune system healthy, and more.
The “plan” promised by the subtitle involves identifying the key factors of nutrition and lifestyle most impactful to you, and adjusting them accordingly, in a multistep, author-walks-the-reader-by-the-hand process.
There’s also, for those who prefer it, a large section (seven chapters) on a body part/system by body part/system approach, e.g. brain health, heart health, revitalizing skin, reversing hair loss, repairing bones, muscles, joints, etc.
The writing style is quite casual,butalso with a mind to education, with its call-out boxes, bullet-point summaries, and so forth. There is a “select references” section, but if one wants to find studies, it’s often necessary to go looking, as there aren’t inline citations.
Bottom line: we’d love to see better referencing, but otherwise this is a top-tier anti-aging book, and a lot more accessible than most, without skimping on depth and breadth.
Click here to check out Radical Longevity, and get rejuvenating radically!
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State of Slim – by Dr. James Hill & Dr. Holly Wyatt
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The premise of this book is “people in Colorado are on average the slimmest in the US”, and sets about establishing why, and then doing what Coloradans are doing. As per the subtitle (drop 20 pounds in 8 weeks), this is a weight loss book and does assume that you want to lose weight—specifically, to lose fat. So if that’s not your goal, you can skip this one already.
The authors explain, as many diet and not-diet-but-diet-adjacent book authors do, that this is not a diet—and then do refer to it as the Colorado Diet throughout. So… Is it a diet?
The answer is a clear “yes, but”—and the caveat is “yes, but also some associated lifestyle practices”.
The diet component is basically a very low-carb diet to start with (with the day’s ration of carbs being a small amount of oats and whatever you can get from some non-starchy vegetables such as greens, tomatoes, etc), and then reintroducing more carbohydrate centric foods one by one, stopping after whole grains. If you are vegan or vegetarian, you can also skip this one already, because this advises eating six animal protein centric meals per day.
The non-diet components are very general healthy-living advices mixed in with popular “diet culture” advices, such as practice mindful eating, don’t eat after 8pm, exercise more, use small plates, enjoy yourself, pre-portion your snacks, don’t drink your calories, get 8 hours sleep, weigh all your food, etc.
Bottom line: this is a very mixed bag, even to the point of being a little chaotic. It gives sometimes contradictory advice, and/but this results in a very “something for everyone” cafeteria approach to dieting. The best recommendation we can give for this book is “it has very many ideas for you to try and see if they work for you”.
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The Dark Side Of Memory (And How To Make Your Life Better)
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How To Stop Revisiting Those Memories
We’ve talked before about putting the brakes on negative thought spirals (and that’s a really useful technique, so if you weren’t with us yet for that one, we do recommend hopping back and reading it!).
We’ve also talked about optimizing memory, to include making moments unforgettable.
But what about the moments we’d rather forget?
First, a quick note: we have no pressing wish or need to re-traumatize any readers, so if you’ve a pressing reason to think your memories you’d rather forget are beyond the scope of a few hundred words “one quick trick” in a newsletter, feel free to skip this section today.
One more quick note: it is generally not considered healthy to repress important memories. Some things are best worked through consciously in therapy with a competent professional.
Today’s technique is more for things in the category of “do you really need to keep remembering that one time you did something embarrassing 20 years ago?”
That said… sometimes, even when it does come to the management of serious PTSD, therapy can (intentionally, reasonably) throw in the towel on processing all of something big, and instead seek to simply look at minimizing its effect on ongoing life. Again, that’s best undertaken with a well-trained professional, however.
For more trivial annoyances, meanwhile…
Two Steps To Forgetting
The first step:
You may remember that memories are tied to the senses, and the more senses are involved, the more easily and fully we remember a thing. To remember something, therefore, we make sure to pay full attention to all the sensory experience of the memory, bringing in all 5 senses if possible.
To forget, the reverse is true. Drain the memory of color, make it black and white, fuzzier, blurrier, smaller, further away, sterile, silent, gone.
You can make a habit of doing this automatically whenever your unwanted memory resurfaces.
The
secondmissing step:This is the second step, but it’s going to be a missing step. Memories, like paths in a forest, are easier to access the more often we access them. A memory we visit every day will have a well-worn path, easy to follow. A memory we haven’t visited for decades will have an overgrown, sometimes nearly impossible-to-find path.
To labor the metaphor a little: if your memory has literal steps leading to it, we’re going to remove one of the steps now, to make it very difficult to access accidentally. Don’t worry, you can always put the step back later if you want to.
Let’s say you want to forget something that happened once upon a time in a certain workplace. Rather than wait for the memory in question to come up, we’re going to apply the first step that we just learned, to the entire workplace.
So, in this example, you’d make the memory of that workplace drained of color, made black and white, fuzzier, blurrier, smaller, further away, sterile, silent, gone.
Then, you’d make a habit of doing that whenever that workplace nearly comes to mind.
The result? You’re unlikely to accidentally access a memory that occurred in that workplace, if even mentally wandering to the workplace itself causes it to shrivel up and disappear like paper in fire.
Important reminder
The above psychological technique is to psychological trauma what painkillers are to physical pain. It can ease the symptom, while masking the cause. If it’s something serious, we recommend enlisting the help of a professional, rather than “self-medicating” in this fashion.
If it’s just a small annoying thing, though, sometimes it’s easier to just be able to refrain from prodding and poking it daily, forget about it, and enjoy life.
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Seeds: The Good, The Bad, And The Not-Really-Seeds!
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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
❝Doctors are great at saving lives like mine. I’m a two time survivor of colon cancer and have recently been diagnosed with Chron’s disease at 62. No one is the health system can or is prepared to tell me an appropriate diet to follow or what to avoid. Can you?❞
Congratulations on the survivorship!
As to Crohn’s, that’s indeed quite a pain, isn’t it? In some ways, a good diet for Crohn’s is the same as a good diet for most other people, with one major exception: fiber
…and unfortunately, that changes everything, in terms of a whole-foods majority plant-based diet.
What stays the same:
- You still ideally want to eat a lot of plants
- You definitely want to avoid meat and dairy in general
- Eating fish is still usually* fine, same with eggs
- Get plenty of water
What needs to change:
- Consider swapping grains for potatoes or pasta (at least: avoid grains)
- Peel vegetables that are peelable; discard the peel or use it to make stock
- Consider steaming fruit and veg for easier digestion
- Skip spicy foods (moderate spices, like ginger, turmeric, and black pepper, are usually fine in moderation)
Much of this latter list is opposite to the advice for people without Crohn’s Disease.
*A good practice, by the way, is to keep a food journal. There are apps that you can get for free, or you can do it the old-fashioned way on paper if prefer.
But the important part is: make a note not just of what you ate, but also of how you felt afterwards. That way, you can start to get a picture of patterns, and what’s working (or not) for you, and build up a more personalized set of guidelines than anyone else could give to you.
We hope the above pointers at least help you get going on the right foot, though!
❝Why do baked goods and deep fried foods all of a sudden become intolerable? I used to b able to ingest bakery foods and fried foods. Lately I developed an extreme allergy to Kiwi… what else should I “fear”❞
About the baked goods and the deep-fried foods, it’s hard to say without more information! It could be something in the ingredients or the method, and the intolerance could be any number of symptoms that we don’t know. Certainly, pastries and deep-fried foods are not generally substantial parts of a healthy diet, of course!
Kiwi, on the other hand, we can answer… Or rather, we can direct you to today’s “What’s happening in the health world” section below, as there is news on that front!
We turn the tables and ask you a question!
We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:
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Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?
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Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?
We’ve written about osteoporosis before, so here’s a quick recap first in case you missed these:
- The Bare-bones Truth About Osteoporosis
- Exercises To Do (And Exercises To Avoid) If You Have Osteoporosis
- We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
- Vit D + Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing?
All of those look and diet and/or exercise, with “diet” including supplementation. But what of medications?
So many choices (not all of them right for everyone)
The UK’s Royal Osteoporosis Society says of the very many osteoporosis meds available:
❝In terms of effectiveness, they all reduce your risk of broken bones by roughly the same amount.
Which treatment is right for you will depend on a number of things.❞
…before then going on to list a pageful of things it will depend on, and giving no specific information about what prescriptions or proscriptions may be made based on those factors.
Source: Royal Osteoporosis Society | Which medication should I take?
We’ll try to do better than that here, though we have less space. So let’s get down to it…
First line drug offerings
After diet/supplementation and (if applicable) hormones, the first line of actual drug offerings are generally biphosphates.
Biphosphates work by slowing down your osteoclasts—the cells that break down your bones. They may sound like terrible things to have in the body at all, but remember, your body is always rebuilding itself and destruction is a necessary act to facilitate creation. However, sometimes things can get out of balance, and biphosphates help tip things back into balance.
Common biphosphates include Alendronate/Fosamax, Risedronate/Actonel, Ibandronate/Boniva, and Zolendronic acid/Reclast.
A common downside is that they aren’t absorbed well by the stomach (despite being mostly oral administration, though IV versions exist too) and can cause heartburn / general stomach upset.
An uncommon downside is that messing with the body’s ability to break down bones can cause bones to be rebuilt-in-place slightly incorrectly, which can—paradoxically—cause fractures. But that’s rare and is more common if the drugs are taken in much higher doses (as for bone cancer rather than osteoporosis).
Bone-builders
If you already have low bone density (so you’re fighting to rebuild your bones, not just slow deterioration), then you may need more of a boost.
Bone-building medications include Teriparatide/Forteo, Abaloparatide/Tymlos, and Romosozumab/Evenity.
These are usually given by injection, usually for a course of one or two years.
Once the bone has been built up, it’ll probably be recommended that you switch to a biphosphate or other bone-stabilizing medication.
Estrogen-like effects, without estrogen
If your osteoporosis (or osteoporosis risk) comes from being post-menopausal, estrogen is a very common (and effective!) prescription. However, some people may wish to avoid it, if for example you have a heightened breast cancer risk, which estrogen can exacerbate.
So, medications that have estrogen-like effects post-menopause, but without actually increasing estrogen levels, include: Raloxifene/Evista, and also all the meds we mentioned in the bone-building category above.
Raloxifene/Evista specifically mimics the action of estrogen on bones, while at the same time blocking the effect of estrogen on other tissues.
Learn more…
Want a more thorough grounding than we have room for here? You might find the following resource useful:
List of 82 Osteoporosis Medications Compared (this has a big table which is sortable by various variables)
Take care!
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How to Fall Asleep Faster: CBT-Insomnia Treatment
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Insomnia affects a lot of people, and is even more common as we get older. Happily, therapist Emma McAdam is here with a drug-free solution that will work for most people most of the time.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI)
While people think of causes of insomnia as being things such as stress, anxiety, overthinking, disturbances, and so forth, these things affect sleep in the short term, but don’t directly cause chronic insomnia.
We say “directly”, because chronic insomnia is usually the result of the brain becoming accustomed to the above, and thus accidentally training itself to not sleep.
The remedy: cut the bad habit of staying in bed while awake. Lying in bed awake trains the brain to associate lying in bed with wakefulness (and any associated worrying, etc). In essence, we lie down, and the brain thinks “Aha, we know this one; this is the time and place for worrying, ok, let’s get to work”.
So instead: if you’re in bed and not asleep within 15 minutes, get up and do something non-stimulating until you feel sleepy, then return to bed. This may cause some short term tiredness, but it will usually correct the chronic insomnia within a week.
For more details, tips, and troubleshooting with regard to the above, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How to Fall Back Asleep After Waking Up in the Middle of the Night
Take care!
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What are ‘collarium’ sunbeds? Here’s why you should stay away
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Reports have recently emerged that solariums, or sunbeds – largely banned in Australia because they increase the risk of skin cancer – are being rebranded as “collarium” sunbeds (“coll” being short for collagen).
Commercial tanning and beauty salons in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria are marketing collariums, with manufacturers and operators claiming they provide a longer lasting tan and stimulate collagen production, among other purported benefits.
A collarium sunbed emits both UV radiation and a mix of visible wavelength colours to produce a pink or red light. Like an old-school sunbed, the user lies in it for ten to 20 minute sessions to quickly develop a tan.
But as several experts have argued, the providers’ claims about safety and effectiveness don’t stack up.
Why were sunbeds banned?
Commercial sunbeds have been illegal across Australia since 2016 (except for in the Northern Territory) under state-based radiation safety laws. It’s still legal to sell and own a sunbed for private use.
Their dangers were highlighted by young Australians including Clare Oliver who developed melanoma after using sunbeds. Oliver featured in the No Tan Is Worth Dying For campaign and died from her melanoma at age 26 in 2007.
Sunbeds lead to tanning by emitting UV radiation – as much as six times the amount of UV we’re exposed to from the summer sun. When the skin detects enough DNA damage, it boosts the production of melanin, the brown pigment that gives you the tanned look, to try to filter some UV out before it hits the DNA. This is only partially successful, providing the equivalent of two to four SPF.
Essentially, if your body is producing a tan, it has detected a significant amount of DNA damage in your skin.
Research shows people who have used sunbeds at least once have a 41% increased risk of developing melanoma, while ten or more sunbed sessions led to a 100% increased risk.
In 2008, Australian researchers estimated that each year, sunbeds caused 281 cases of melanoma, 2,572 cases of squamous cell carcinoma (another common type of skin cancer), and $3 million in heath-care costs, mostly to Medicare.
How are collarium sunbeds supposed to be different?
Australian sellers of collarium sunbeds imply they are safe, but their machine descriptions note the use of UV radiation, particularly UVA.
UVA is one part of the spectrum of UV radiation. It penetrates deeper into the skin than UVB. While UVB promotes cancer-causing mutations by discharging energy straight into the DNA strand, UVA sets off damage by creating reactive oxygen species, which are unstable compounds that react easily with many types of cell structures and molecules. These damage cell membranes, protein structures and DNA.
Evidence shows all types of sunbeds increase the risk of melanoma, including those that use only UVA.
Some manufacturers and clinics suggest the machine’s light spectrum increases UV compatibility, but it’s not clear what this means. Adding red or pink light to the mix won’t negate the harm from the UV. If you’re getting a tan, you have a significant amount of DNA damage.
Collagen claims
One particularly odd claim about collarium sunbeds is that they stimulate collagen.
Collagen is the main supportive tissue in our skin. It provides elasticity and strength, and a youthful appearance. Collagen is constantly synthesised and broken down, and when the balance between production and recycling is lost, the skin loses strength and develops wrinkles. The collagen bundles become thin and fragmented. This is a natural part of ageing, but is accelerated by UV exposure.
Sun-protected skin (top) has thick bands of pink collagen (arrows) in the dermis, as seen on microscopic examination. Chronically sun-damaged skin (bottom) has much thinner collagen bands.
Katie Lee/UQThe reactive oxygen species generated by UVA light damage existing collagen structures and kick off a molecular chain of events that downgrades collagen-producing enzymes and increases collagen-destroying enzymes. Over time, a build-up of degraded collagen fragments in the skin promotes even more destruction.
While there is growing evidence red light therapy alone could be useful in wound healing and skin rejuvenation, the UV radiation in collarium sunbeds is likely to undo any benefit from the red light.
What about phototherapy?
There are medical treatments that use controlled UV radiation doses to treat chronic inflammatory skin diseases like psoriasis.
The anti-collagen effects of UVA can also be used to treat thickened scars and keloids. Side-effects of UV phototherapy include tanning, itchiness, dryness, cold sore virus reactivation and, notably, premature skin ageing.
These treatments use the minimum exposure necessary to treat the condition, and are usually restricted to the affected body part to minimise risks of future cancer. They are administered under medical supervision and are not recommended for people already at high risk of skin cancer, such as people with atypical moles.
So what happens now?
It looks like many collariums are just sunbeds rebranded with red light. Queensland Health is currently investigating whether these salons are breaching the state’s Radiation Safety Act, and operators could face large fines.
As the 2024 Australians of the Year – melanoma treatment pioneers Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer – highlighted in their acceptance speech, “there is nothing healthy about a tan”, and we need to stop glamorising tanning.
However, if you’re desperate for the tanned look, there is a safer and easy way to get one – out of a bottle or by visiting a salon for a spray tan.
Katie Lee, PhD Candidate, Dermatology Research Centre, The University of Queensland and Anne Cust, Professor of Cancer Epidemiology, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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