Elderly loss of energy

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

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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

❝Please please give some information on elderly loss of energy and how it can be corrected. Please!❞

A lot of that is the metabolic slump described above! While we certainly wouldn’t describe 60 as elderly, and the health impacts from those changes at 45–55 get a gentler curve from 60 onwards… that curve is only going in one direction if we don’t take exceptionally good care of ourselves.

And of course, there’s also a degree of genetic lottery, and external factors we can’t entirely control (e.g. injuries etc).

One factor that gets overlooked a lot, though, is really easy to fix: B-vitamins.

In particular, vitamins B1, B5, B6, and B12. Of those, especially vitamins B1 and B12.

(Vitamins B5 and B6 are critical to health too, but relatively few people are deficient in those, while many are deficient in B1 and/or B12, especially as we get older)

Without going so detailed as to make this a main feature: these vitamins are essential for energy conversion from food, and they will make a big big difference.

You might especially want to consider taking sulbutiamine, which is a synthetic version of thiamin (vitamin B1), and instead of being water-soluble, it’s fat-soluble, and it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier, which is a big deal.

As ever, always check with your doctor because your needs/risks may be different. Also, there can be a lot of reasons for fatigue and you wouldn’t want to overlook something important.

You might also want to check out yesterday’s sponsor, as they offer personalized at-home health testing to check exactly this sort of thing.

❝What are natural ways to lose weight after 60? Taking into account bad knees or ankles, walking may be out as an exercise, running certainly is.❞

Losing weight is generally something that comes more from the kitchen than the gym, as most forms of exercise (except HIIT; see below) cause the metabolism to slow afterwards to compensate.

However, exercise is still very important, and swimming is a fine option if that’s available to you.

A word to the wise: people will often say “gentle activities, like tai chi or yoga”, and… These things are not the same.

Tai chi and yoga both focus on stability and suppleness, which are great, but:

  • Yoga is based around mostly static self-support, often on the floor
  • Tai chi will have you very often putting most of your weight on one slowly-increasingly bent knee at a time, and if you have bad knees, we’ll bet you winced while reading that.

So, maybe skip tai chi, or at least keep it to standing meditations and the like, not dynamic routines. Qigong, the same breathing exercises used in tai chi, is also an excellent way to improve your metabolism, by the way.

Ok, back onto HIIT:

You might like our previous article: How To Do HIIT* (Without Wrecking Your Body)

*High-Intensity Interval Training (the article also explains what this is and why you want to do it)

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  • Butter vs Ghee – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing butter to ghee, we picked the butter.

    Why?

    Assuming a comparable source for each—e.g. butter from grass-fed cows, or ghee made from butter from grass-fed cows—both have a mostly comparable nutritional profile.

    Note: the above is not a safe assumption to make in the US, unless you’re paying attention. Grass-fed cows are not the norm in the US, so it’s something that has to be checked for. On the other hand, ghee is usually imported, and grass-fed cows are the norm in most of the rest of the world, including the countries that export ghee the most. So if “buying blind”, ghee will be the safer bet. However, checking labels can overcome this.

    Many of the Internet-popular health claims for ghee are exaggerated. For example, yes it contains butyrate… But at 1% or less. You’d be better off getting your butyrate from fibrous fruit and vegetables. Yes it contains medium-chain triglycerides (that’s also good), but in trace amounts. It even has conjugated linoleic acid, but you guessed it, the dose is insignificant.

    Meanwhile, both butter and ghee contain heart-unhealthy animal-based saturated fats (which are usually worse for the health than some, but not all, of their plant-based equivalents). However…

    • A tablespoon of butter contains about 7 grams of saturated fat
    • A tablespoon of ghee contains about 9 grams of saturated fat

    So, in this case, “ghee is basically butter, but purer” becomes a bad thing (and the deciding factor between the two).

    There is one reason to choose butter over ghee, but it’s not health-related—it simply has a higher smoke point, as is often the case for fats that have been more processed compared to fats that have been less processed.

    In short: either can be used in moderation, but even 2 tbsp of butter are taking an average person (because it depends on your metabolism, so we’ll say average) to the daily limit for saturated fats already, so we recommend to go easy even on that.

    Want to know more?

    Take care!

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  • Food and Nutrition – by Dr. P.K. Newby

    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.

    The “What Everyone Needs To Know” part of the title is the name of a series of books, of which this one, “Food and Nutrition”, is one.

    In this case, the title is apt, and/or could have been “What Everyone Really Should Know”, or “What Everyone Would Like To Think They Know But Have Often Just Been Bluffing Their Way Through The Supermarket Aisles”.

    The chapter and section headings are all in the forms of questions, such that all-together in such volume in the table of contents, they’re reminiscent of the “Jonathan Frakes Asks You Things” meme.

    But, this serves a dual purpose—for one, it makes the whole book one big FAQ, which is a very convenient format. Furthermore, it prompts a little thought on the part of the reader before each section, if we indeed question for ourselves:

    • Are fertilizers in farming friend or foe?
    • How have the Digital Revolution and Information Age impacted our diet?
    • Are canned and frozen foods inferior to fresh?
    • Does snacking or meal timing matter?
    • What are cereal grains and “pseudograins”?

    …And so many more. But what’s best about this is:

    Dr. Newby doesn’t reference her own preferences, or even have a particular way of eating she’d like us to adopt. She just lays out the science to answer each question, as discovered by high-quality studies and a general weight of evidence.

    Bottom line: this book can level-up your nutritional knowledge from bluffing to really knowing! A worthy addition to anyone’s bookshelf.

    Click here to check out Food and Nutrition on Amazon, to make the most informed decisions going forwards!

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  • Unleashing My Superpowers – by Dr. Patience Mpofu

    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.

    Dr. Patience Mpofu is on a mission to provide women and girls with the inside-information, knowledge, resources, and strategies to break through the glass ceiling. She writes from her experience in STEM, but her lessons are applicable in any field.

    Her advices range from the internal (how to deal with imposter syndrome) to the external (how to overcome cultural biases); she also explains and illustrates the importance of both role models and mentors.

    While a lot of the book is half instruction manual, half memoir of her incredible life and career (to illustrate her points), and is well-worth reading—and/or perhaps worth gifting to a girl you know with ambitions in STEM?

    Grab a copy of Unleashing My Superpowers now!

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  • Be A Plant-Based Woman Warrior – by Jane Esselstyn & Ann Esselstyn

    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.

    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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  • 20 Easy Ways To Lose Belly Fat (Things To *Not* Do)

    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.

    Waist circumference (and hip to waist ratio) has been found to be a much better indicator of metabolic health than BMI. So, while at 10almonds we generally advocate for not worrying too much about one’s BMI, there are good reasons why it can be good to trim up specifically the visceral belly fat. But how?

    What not to do…

    Autumn Bates is a nutritionist, and her tips include nutrition and other lifestyle factors; here are some that we agree with:

    For more, including to learn what she has against peanut butter, enjoy her video:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically

    Want to know more?

    Check out our previous main feature:

    Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

    Take care!

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  • End Your Carb Confusion – by Dr. Eric Westman & Amy Berger

    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.

    Carbs can indeed be confusing! We’ve written about it ourselves before, but there’s more to be said than fits in a single article, and sometimes a book is in order. This one is such a book.

    The authors (an MD and a nutritionist) explain the ins and outs of carbohydrates of various kinds, insulin responses, and what that means for the body. They also then look at the partly-similar, partly-different processes that occur with the metabolism of fats of various kinds, and what that means for the body, too.

    Ultimately they advocate for a simple and clear low-carb approach broadly consistent with keto diet macro principles, without getting too overly focused on “is this fruit/vegetable ok?” minutiae. This has the benefit of putting it well aside from the paleo diet, for example (which focuses more on pseudo-historical foods than it does on macros), and also makes it a lot easier on a practical level.

    The style is very textbook-like, which makes for an easy read with plenty of information that should stick easily in most reader’s minds, rather than details getting lost in wall-of-text formatting. So, we approve of this.

    There is not, by the way, a recipes section. It’s “here’s the information, now go forth and enjoy” and leaves us all to find/make our own recipes, rather than trying to guess our culinary preferences.

    Bottom line: if you’d like an easy-to-read primer on understanding how carbs work, what it means for you, and what to do about it, then this is a fine book.

    Click here to check out End Your Carb Confusion, and end your carb confusion!

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