Nutrivore – by Dr. Sarah Ballantyne
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The core idea of this book is that foods can be assigned a numerical value according to their total nutritional value, and that this number can be used to guide a person’s diet such that we will eat, in aggregate, a diet that is more nutritious. So far, so simple.
What Dr. Ballantyne also does, besides explaining and illustrating this system (there are chapters explaining the calculation system, and appendices with values), is also going over what to consider important and what we can let slide, and what things we might need more of to address a wide assortment of potential health concerns. And yes, this is definitely a “positive diet” approach, i.e. it focuses on what to add in, not what to cut out.
The premise of the “positive diet” approach is simple, by the way: if we get a full set of good nutrients, we will be satisfied and not crave unhealthy food.
She also offers a lot of helpful “rules of thumb”, and provides a variety of cheat-sheets and suchlike to make things as easy as possible.
There’s also a recipes section! Though, it’s not huge and it’s probably not necessary, but it’s just one more “she’s thinking of everything” element.
Bottom line: if you’d like a single-volume “Bible of” nutrition-made-easy, this is a very usable tome.
Click here to check out Nutrivore, and start filling up your diet!
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5 Steps To Beat Overwhelm
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Dealing With Overwhelm
Whether we live a hectic life in general, or we usually casually take each day as it comes but sometimes several days gang up on us at once, everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes.
Today we’re going to look at how to deal with it healthily.
Step 1: Start anywhere
It’s easy to get stuck in “analysis paralysis” and not know how to tackle an unexpected large problem. An (unhealthy) alternative is to try to tackle everything at once, and end up doing nothing very well.
Even the most expert juggler will not successfully juggle 10 random things thrown unexpectedly at them.
So instead, just pick any part of the the mountain of to-dos, and start.
If you do want a little more finesse though, check out:
Procrastination, And How To Pay Off The To-Do List Debt
Step 2: Accept what you’re capable of
This one works both ways. It means being aware of your limitations yes, but also, of your actual abilities:
- Is the task ahead of you really beyond what you are capable of?
- Could you do it right now without hesitation if a loved one’s life depended on it?
- Could you do it, but there’s a price to pay (e.g. you can do it but it’ll wipe you out in some other life area)?
Work out what’s possible and acceptable to you, and make a decision. And remember, it could be that someone else could do it, but everyone has taken the “if you want something doing, give it to someone busy” approach. It’s flattering that people have such confidence in our competence, but it is also necessary to say “no” sometimes, or at least enlisting help.
Step 3: Listen to your body
…like a leader listening to an advisory council. Your perception of tiredness, pain, weakness, and all your emotions are simply messengers. Listen to the message! And then say “thank you for the information”, and proceed accordingly.
Sometimes that will be in the way the messengers seem to be hoping for!
Sometimes, however, maybe we (blessed with a weighty brain and not entirely a slave to our limbic system) know better, and know when it’s right to push through instead.
Similarly, that voice in your head? You get to decide where it goes and doesn’t. On which note…
Step 4: Be responsive, not reactive
We wrote previously on the difference between these:
A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It
Measured responses will always be better than knee-jerk reactions, unless it is literally a case of a split-second making a difference. 99% of our problems in life are not so; usually the problem will still be there unchanged after a moment’s mindful consideration, so invest in that moment.
You’ve probably heard the saying “give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe”. In this case, that can be your mind. Here’s a good starting point:
No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
And if your mental state is already worse than that, mind racing with threats (real or perceived) and doom-laden scenarios, here’s how to get out of that negative spiral first, so that you can apply the rest of this:
Do remember to turn it on again afterwards, though
Step 5: Transcend discomfort
This is partly a callback to step 3, but it’s now coming from a place of a clear ready mind, so the territory should be looking quite different now. Nevertheless, it’s entirely possible that your clear view shows discomfort ahead.
You’re going to make a conscious decision whether or not to proceed through the discomfort (and if you’re not, then now’s the time to start calmly and measuredly looking at alternative plans; delegating, ditching, etc).
If you are going to proceed through discomfort, then it can help to frame the discomfort as simply a neutral part of the path to getting where you want. Maybe you’re going to be going way out of your comfort zone in order to deal with something, and if that’s the case, make your peace with it now, in advance.
“Certainly it hurts” / “Well, what’s the trick then?” / “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts”
(lines from a famous scene from the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia)
It’s ok to say to yourself (if it’s what you decide is the right thing to do) “Yep, this experience is going to suck terribly, but I’m going to do it anyway”.
See also (this being about Radical Acceptance):
What’s The Worst That Could Happen?
Take care!
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Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)
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Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)
Credit Steve Fisch This is Dr. Anna Lembke. She’s a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic—as well as running her own clinical practice, and serving on the board of an array of state and national addiction-focused organizations.
Today we’re going to look at her work on dopamine management…
Getting off the hedonic treadmill
For any unfamiliar with the term, the “hedonic treadmill” is what happens when we seek pleasure, enjoy the pleasure, the pleasure becomes normalized, and now we need to seek a stronger pleasure to get above our new baseline.
In other words, much like running on a reciprocal treadmill that just gets faster the faster we run.
What Dr. Lembke wants us to know here: pleasure invariably leads to pain
This is not because of some sort of extrinsic moral mandate, nor even in the Buddhist sense. Rather, it is biology.
Pleasure and pain are processed by the same part of the brain, and if we up one, the other will be upped accordingly, to try to keep a balance.
Consequently, if we recklessly seek “highs”, we’re going to hit “lows” soon enough. Whether that’s by drugs, sex, or just dopaminergic habits like social media overuse.
Dr. Lembke’s own poison of choice was trashy romance novels, by the way. But she soon found she needed more, and more, and the same level wasn’t “doing it” for her anymore.
So, should we just give up our pleasures, and do a “dopamine fast”?
Not so fast!
It depends on what they are. Dopamine fasting, per se, does not work. We wrote about this previously:
Short On Dopamine? Science Has The Answer
However, when it comes to our dopaminergic habits, a short period (say, a couple of weeks) of absence of that particular thing can help us re-find our balance, and also, find insight.
Lest that latter sound wishy-washy: this is about realizing how bad an overuse of some dopaminergic activity had become, the better to appreciate it responsibly, going forwards.
So in other words, if your poison is, as in Dr. Lembke’s case, trashy romance novels, you would abstain from them for a couple of weeks, while continuing to enjoy the other pleasures in life uninterrupted.
Substances that create a dependency are a special case
There’s often a popular differentiation between physical addictions (e.g. alcohol) and behavioral addictions (e.g. video games). And that’s fair; physiologically speaking, those may both involve dopamine responses, but are otherwise quite different.
However, there are some substances that are physical addictions that do not create a physical dependence (e.g. sugar), and there are substances that create a physical dependence without being addictive (e.g. many antidepressants)
See also: Addiction and physical dependence are not the same thing
In the case of anything that has created a physical dependence, Dr. Lembke does not recommend trying to go “cold turkey” on that without medical advice and supervision.
Going on the counterattack
Remember what we said about pleasure and pain being processed in the same part of the brain, and each rising to meet the other?
While this mean that seeking pleasure will bring us pain, the inverse is also true.
Don’t worry, she’s not advising us to take up masochism (unless that’s your thing!). But there are very safe healthy ways that we can tip the scales towards pain, ultimately leading to greater happiness.
Cold showers are an example she cites as particularly meritorious.
As a quick aside, we wrote about the other health benefits of these, too:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?
Further reading
Want to know more? You might like her book:
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Enjoy!
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Healthy Cook’s Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Cookbook – by Dr. Albert Orbinati
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Chronic inflammation is a root cause of very many illnesses, and exacerbates almost all the ones it doesn’t cause. So, reducing inflammation is a very good way to stay well in general, reducing one’s risk factors for very many other diseases.
Dr. Orbinati starts by giving advice for adjusting to an anti-inflammatory diet, including advice on trying an elimination diet, if you suspect an undiagnosed allergy/intolerance.
Thereafter, he gives guidance on pantry-stocking—not just what anti-inflammatory foods to include and what inflammatory foods to skip, but also, what food and nutrient pairings are particularly beneficial, like how black pepper and turmeric are both anti-inflammatory by themselves, but the former greatly increases the bioavailability of the latter if consumed together.
The rest of the book—aside from assorted appendices, such as 8 pages of scientific references—is given over to the recipes.
The recipes themselves are, obviously, anti-inflammatory in focus. As one might expect, therefore, most are vegetarian and many are vegan, but we do find many recipes with chicken and fish as well; there’s also some use of eggs and fermented dairy in some of the recipes too.
The book certainly does deliver on its promise of flavorful healthy food; that’s what happens when one includes a lot of herbs and spices in one’s cooking, as well as the fact that many other polyphenol-rich foods are, by nature, tasty in and of themselves.
Bottom line: if you’d like to expand your anti-inflammatory culinary repertoire, this book is a top-tier choice for that.
Click here to check out Healthy Cook’s Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Cookbook, and spice up your kitchen!
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10 Unexpected Benefits Of Slow Jogging
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Sometimes, less is more:
Slow and steady wins the race?
Here’s the rundown… Slowly:
- You burn more body fat: running at 50-60% of max heart rate primarily burns fat without having the usual compensatory metabolic slump afterwards, unless you go for a very long time.
- You can build more muscle: lower-intensity workouts improve muscle recovery, which is essential too.
- You can reduce muscle soreness: light jogging helps clear lactic acid faster (10almonds note: muscle soreness after exercise isn’t about lactic acid)
- You avoid injuries: less impact on joints reduces injury risk.
- You learn the proper form: running slowly allows better focus on technique.
- You can enjoy it more: slower pace lets you take in surroundings and boosts mood.
- You still improve your cardiorespiratory fitness: strengthens heart and lungs over time.
- You’ll burn more calories than you think: can burn 200–400 calories per 30 minutes.
- You’ll improve your mobility: gentle movement supports joint health and collagen production.
- You can improve your performance: builds endurance and strength for faster running
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Take care!
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Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science
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Chronic fatigue is on the rise. A lot of it appears to be Long COVID-related, but whether that’s the case for you or not, one thing that will make a big difference to your energy levels is something that French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé is here to explain:
Mitochondrial management
Inchauspé explains it in terms of a steam train; to keep running, it must have coal burning in its furnace. However, if more coal is delivered to the engine room faster than it can be put in the furnace and burned, and the coal just keeps on coming, the worker there will soon be overwhelmed trying to find places to put it all; the engine room will be full of coal, and the furnace will sputter and go out because the worker can’t even reach it on account of being buried in coal.
So it is with our glucose metabolism also. If we get spikes of glucose faster than our body can deal with them, it will overload the body’s ability to process that energy at all. Just like the steam train worker, our body will try! It’ll stuff that extra glucose wherever it can (storing as glycogen in the liver is a readily available option that’s easy to do and/but also gives you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and isn’t quickly broken down into useable energy), and meanwhile, your actual mitochondria aren’t getting what they need (which is: a reliable, but gentle, influx of glucose).
You can imagine that the situation we described in the steam train isn’t good for the engine’s longevity, and the corresponding situation in the human body isn’t good for our mitochondria either (or our pancreas, or our liver, or… the list goes on). Indeed, damaged mitochondria affect exercise capacity and stress resilience—as well as being a long-term driver of cancer.
The remedy, of course, is blood sugar management. Specifically, avoiding glucose spikes. She has a list of 10 ways to do this (small changes to how we eat; what things to eat with what, in which order, etc) that make a huge measurable difference. For your convenience, we’ve linked those ten ways below; first though, if you’d like to hear it from Inchauspé directly (her style is very pleasant), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- 10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars ← this is the longer list she’s referring to in the video!
- How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver ← also relevant
Take care!
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Gut Health 2.0
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Gene Expression & Gut Health
This is Dr. Tim Spector. After training in medicine and becoming a consultant rheumatologist, he’s turned his attention to medical research, and is these days a specialist in twin studies, genetics, epigenetics, microbiome, and diet.
What does he want us to know?
For one thing: epigenetics are for more than just getting your grandparents’ trauma.
More usefully: there are things we can do to improve epigenetic factors in our body
DNA is often seen as the script by which our body does whatever it’s going to do, but it’s only part of the story. Thinking of DNA as some kind of “magical immutable law of reality” overlooks (to labor the metaphor) script revisions, notes made in the margins, directorial choices, and ad-lib improvizations, as well as the quality of the audience’s hearing and comprehension.
Hence the premise of one of Dr. Spector’s older books, “Identically Different: Why We Can Change Our Genes”
(*in fact, it was his first, from all the way back in 2013, when he’d only been a doctor for 34 years)
Gene expression will trump genes every time, and gene expression is something that can often be changed without getting in there with CRISPR / a big pair of scissors and some craft glue.
How this happens on the micro level is beyond the scope of today’s article; part of it has to do with enzymes that get involved in the DNA transcription process, and those enzymes in turn are despatched or not depending on hormonal messaging—in the broadest sense of “hormonal”; all the body’s hormonal chemical messengers, not just the ones people think of as hormones.
However, hormonal messaging (of many kinds) is strongly influenced by something we can control relatively easily with a little good (science-based) knowledge: the gut.
The gut, the SAD, and the easy
In broad strokes: we know what is good for the gut. We’ve written about it before at 10almonds:
Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
This is very much in contrast with what in scientific literature is often abbreviated “SAD”, the Standard American Diet, which is very bad for the gut.
However, Dr. Spector (while fully encouraging everyone to enjoy an evidence-based gut-healthy diet) wanted to do one better than just a sweeping one-size-fits-all advice, so he set up a big study with 15,000 identical twins; you can read about it here: TwinsUK
The information that came out of that was about a lot more than just gene expression and gut health, but it did provide the foundation for Dr. Spector’s next project, ZOE.
ZOE crowdsources huge amounts of data including individual metabolic responses to standardized meals in order to predict personalized food responses based on individual biology and unique microbiome profile.
In other words, it takes the guesswork out of a) knowing what your genes mean for your food responses b) tailoring your food choices with your genetic expression in mind, and c) ultimately creating a positive feedback loop to much better health on all levels.
Now, this is not an ad for ZOE, but if you so wish, you can…
- Get the free ZOE gut health guide (this is good, but generic, gut health information)
- Take the ZOE home gut health test (quiz followed by offers of lab tests)
- Browse the ZOE Health Academy, its education wing
Want to know more?
Dr. Spector has a bunch of books out, including some that we’ve reviewed previously:
- Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong
- The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat
- Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well
You can also check out our own previous main feature, which wasn’t about Dr. Spector’s work but was very adjacent:
The Brain-Gut Highway: A Two-Way Street
Enjoy!
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