Women’s Strength Training Anatomy Workouts – by Frédéric Delavier
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We’ve previously reviewed another book of Delavier’s, “Women’s Strength Training Anatomy“, which itself is great. This book adds a lot of practical advice to that one’s more informational format, but to gain full benefit of this one does not require having read that one.
A common reason that many women avoid strength-training is because they do not want to look muscular. Largely this is based on a faulty assumption, since you will never look like a bodybuilder unless you also eat like a bodybuilder, for example.
However, for those for whom the concern remains, today’s book is an excellent guide to strength-training with aesthetics in mind as well as functionality.
The exercises are divided into sections, thus: round your glutes / tone your quadriceps / shape your hamstrings / trim your calves / flatten your abs / curve your shoulders / develop a pain-free upper back / protect your lower back / enhance your chest / firm up your arms.
As you can see, a lot of these are mindful of aesthetics, but there’s nothing here that’s antithetical to function, and some (especially for example “develop a pain-free upper back” and “protect your lower back“) are very functional indeed.
Bottom line: Delavier’s anatomy and exercise books are top-tier, and this one is no exception. If you are a woman and would like to strength-train (or perhaps you already do, and would like to refine your training), then this book is an excellent choice.
Click here to check out Women’s Strength Training Anatomy Workouts, and have the body you want!
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Ridged Nails: What Are They Telling You?
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Dr. Yaseen Arsalan, a Doctor of Pharmacy, has advice on the “nutraceutical” side of things:
Onychorrhexis
Sounds like the name of a dinosaur, but it’s actually the condition that creates the vertical ridges that sometimes appear on nails. It’s especially likely in the case of thinner nails, and/or certain nutritional deficiencies. Overuse of certain chemicals (including nail polish remover, hair products that get on your hands a lot, and cleaning fluids) can also cause it. It can also be worsened by various conditions, including eczema, psoriasis, hypothyroidism, anemia, and amyloidosis, but it won’t usually be outright caused by those alone.
There are two main kinds of ridges on nails:
- Vertical ridges: associated with hypothyroidism, anemia, and aging. Often an indicator of low iron.
- Horizontal ridges (Beau’s lines): caused by interrupted nail growth, brute force trauma, chemotherapy, acrylic nails, and gel nail polishes. Can also be an indicator of low zinc.
There are an assortment of medical treatments available, which Dr. Arsalan discusses in the video, but for home remedy treatment, he recommends:
- Nail-strengthening creams (look for coconut oil, shea butter, beeswax, vitamin E)
- Hydration (this is about overall hydration e.g. water intake)
- Careful nail trimming (fingernails with a curved shape and toenails straight across)
- Nail ridge filler (he recommends the brand Barrielle, for not containing formaldehyde or formalin)
- Moisturization (with cuticle oil or hand creams, because that hydration we talked about earlier is important, and we want it to stay inside the nail)
For more on those things, plus the medical treatments plus other “how to avoid this” measures, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- The Counterintuitive Dos and Don’ts of Nail Health
- Regular Nail Polish vs Gel Nail Polish – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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How to Fall Back Asleep After Waking Up in the Middle of the Night
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Dr. Michael Bruce, the Sleep Doctor, addresses a common concern: waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to fall back asleep.
Understanding the Wake-Up
Firstly, why are we waking up during the night?
Waking up between 2 AM and 3 AM is said to be normal, and linked to your core body temperature. As your body core temperature drops, to trigger melatonin release, and then rises again, you get into a lighter stage of sleep. This lighter stage of sleep makes you more prone to waking up.
Note, there are also some medical conditions (such as sleep apnea) that can cause you to wake up during the night.
But, what can we do about it? Aside from constantly shifting sleeping position (Should I be sleeping on my back? On my left? Right?)
Avoid the Clock
The first step is to resist the urge to check the time. It’s easy to be tempted to have a look at the clock, however, doing so can increase anxiety, making it harder to fall back asleep. As Dr. Bruce says, sleep is like love—the less you chase it, the more it comes.
It may be useful to point your alarm clock (if you still have one of those) the opposite direction to your bed.
Embracing Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR)
Whilst this may not help you fall back asleep, it’s worth pointing out that just lying quietly in the dark without moving still offers rejuvenation. This revujenating stage is called Non-Sleep Deep Rest (otherwise known as NSDR)
If you’re not familiar with NSDR, check out our overview of Andrew Huberman’s opinions on NSDR here.
So, you can reassure yourself that whilst you may not be asleep, you are still resting.
Keep Your Heart Rate Down
To fall back asleep, it’s best if your heart rate is below 60 bpm. So, Dr. Bruce advises avoiding void getting up unnecessarily, as moving around can elevate your heart rate.
On a similar vain, he introduces the 4-7-8 breathing technique, which is designed to lower your heart rate. The technique is simple:
- Breathe in for 4 seconds.
- Hold for 7 seconds.
- Exhale for 8 seconds.
Repeat this cycle gently to calm your body and mind.
As per any of our Video Breakdowns, we only try to capture the most important pieces of information in text; the rest can be garnered from the video itself:
Wishing you a thorough night’s rest!
Do you know any other good videos on sleep? Send them to us via email!
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The Telomere Effect – by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel
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Telomeres can be pretty mystifying to the person with a lay interest in longevity. Beyond “they’re the little caps that sit on the end of your DNA, and longer is better, and when they get short, damage occurs, and aging”, how do they fit into the big picture?
Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel excel at explaining the marvelous world of telomeres…
- how they work
- what affects them
- and how and why
…and the extent to which changes are or aren’t reversible.
For some of us, the ship has sailed on avoiding a lot of early-life damage to our telomeres, and now we have a damage-mitigation task ahead. That’s where the authors get practical.
Indeed, the whole third part of the book is titled “Help Your Body Protect Its Cells“, and indeed covers not just “from now on” protection, but undoing some of the damage already done (yes, telomeres can be lengthened—it gets harder as we get older, but absolutely can be done).
In short: if you’d like to avoid further damage to your telomeres where possible, and reverse some of the damage done already, this book will set you on the right track.
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Tasty Tabbouleh with Tahini
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Tabbouleh is a salad, but it’s not “just a salad”. It’s a special kind of salad that’s as exciting for the tastebuds as it is healthy for the body and brain. Its core ingredients have been traditional for about a dozen generations, and seasonings are always a personal matter (not to mention that Lebanese tabbouleh-makers centuries ago might not have used miso and nooch, as we will today), but the overall feel of the Gestalt of tabbouleh seasonings remains the same, and this recipe is true to that.
You will need
For the tabbouleh:
- 1 cup bulgur wheat
- 1 cup plum tomatoes, chopped
- 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped (add the peel to a jug of water and put it in the fridge; this will be refreshing cucumber water later!)
- 1 cup chickpeas, cooked without salt
- 1/2 cup parsley, chopped
- 1/2 cup mint, chopped
- 2 spring onions, finely chopped
- 2oz fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp white miso paste
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground celery seeds
- 1 tsp ground nigella seeds
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp MSG, or 1/2 tsp low sodium salt (you can find it in supermarkets, the sodium chloride is cut with potassium chloride to make it have less sodium and more potassium)
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (nooch), ground (it comes in flakes; you will have to grind it in a spice grinder or with a pestle and mortar)
For the tahini sauce:
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 3 tbsp tahini
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tbsp white miso paste
- 1 tsp ground cumin
To serve:
- A generous helping of leafy greens; we recommend collard greens, but whatever works for you is good; just remember that dark green is best. Consider cavolo nero, or even kale if that’s your thing, but to be honest this writer doesn’t love kale
- 1 tsp coarsely ground nigella seeds
- Balsamic vinegar, ideally aged balsamic vinegar (this is thicker and sweeter, but unlike most balsamic vinegar reductions, doesn’t have added sugar).
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Rinse the bulgur wheat and then soak it in warm water. There is no need to boil it; the warm water is enough to soften it and you don’t need to cook it (bulgur wheat has already been parboiled before it got to you).
2) While you wait, take a small bowl and mix the rest of the ingredients from the tabbouleh section (so, the lemon juice, miso paste, and all those ground spices and MSG/salt and ground nutritional yeast); you’re making a dressing out of all the ingredients here.
3) When the bulgur wheat is soft (expect it to take under 15 minutes), drain it and put it in a big bowl. Add the tomatoes, cucumber, chickpeas, parsley, mint, and spring onions. This now technically qualifies as tabbouleh already, but we’re not done.
4) Add the dressing to the tabbouleh and mix thoroughly but gently (you don’t want to squash the tomatoes, cucumber, etc). Leave it be for at least 15 minutes while the flavors blend.
5) Take the “For the tahini sauce” ingredients (all of them) and blend them with 4 oz water, until smooth. You’re going to want to drizzle this sauce, so if the consistency is too thick for drizzling, add a little more water and/or lemon juice (per your preference), 1 tbsp at a time.
6) Roughly chop the leafy greens and put them in a bowl big enough for the tabbouleh to join them there. The greens will serve as a bed for the tabbouleh itself.
7) Drizzle the tahini over the tabbouleh, and drizzle a little of the aged balsamic vinegar too.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
Take care!
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Hair Growth: Caffeine and Minoxidil Strategies
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Questions and Answers 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!
This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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
Hair growth strategies for men combing caffeine and minoxidil?
Well, the strategy for that is to use caffeine and minoxidil! Some more specific tips, though:
- Both of those things need to be massaged (gently!) into your scalp especially around your hairline.
- In the case of caffeine, that boosts hair growth. No extra thought or care needed for that one.
- In the case of minoxidil, it reboots the hair growth cycle, so if you’ve only recently started, don’t be surprised (or worried) if you see more shedding in the first three months. It’s jettisoning your old hairs because new ones were just prompted (by the minoxidil) to start growing behind them. So: it will get briefly worse before it gets better, but then it’ll stay better… provided you keep using it.
- If you’d like other options besides minoxidil, finasteride is a commonly prescribed oral drug that blocks the conversion of testosterone to DHT, which latter is what tells your hairline to recede.
- If you’d like other options besides prescription drugs, saw palmetto performs comparably to finasteride (and works the same way).
- You may also want to consider biotin supplementation if you don’t already enjoy that
- Consider also using a dermaroller on your scalp. If you’re unfamiliar, this is a device that looks like a tiny lawn aerator, with many tiny needles, and you roll it gently across your skin.
- It can be used for promoting hair growth, as well as for reducing wrinkles and (more slowly) healing scars.
- It works by breaking up the sebum that may be blocking new hair growth, and also makes the skin healthier by stimulating production of collagen and elastin (in response to the thousands of microscopic wounds that the needles make).
- Sounds drastic, but it doesn’t hurt and doesn’t leave any visible marks—the needles are that tiny. Still, practise good sterilization and ensure your skin is clean when using it.
See: How To Use A Dermaroller ← also explains more of the science of it
PS: this question was asked in the context of men, but the information goes the same for women suffering from androgenic alepoceia—which is a lot more common than most people think!
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- Both of those things need to be massaged (gently!) into your scalp especially around your hairline.
What I Wish People Knew About Dementia – by Dr. Wendy Mitchell
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We hear a lot from doctors who work with dementia patients; sometimes we hear from carers too. In this case, the author spent 20 years working for the NHS, before being diagnosed with young-onset dementia, at the age of 58. Like many health industry workers who got a life-changing diagnosis, she quickly found it wasn’t fun being on the other side of things, and vowed to spend her time researching, and raising awareness about, dementia.
Many people assume that once a person has dementia, they’re basically “gone before they’re gone”, which can rapidly become a self-fulfilling prophecy as that person finds themself isolated and—though this word isn’t usually used—objectified. Talked over, viewed (and treated) more as a problem than a person. Cared for hopefully, but again, often more as a patient than a person. If doctors struggle to find the time for the human side of things with most patients most of the time, this is only accentuated when someone needs more time and patience than average.
Instead, Dr. Mitchell—an honorary doctorate, by the way, awarded for her research—writes about what it’s actually like to be a human with dementia. Everything from her senses, how she eats, the experience of eating in care homes, the process of boiling an egg… To relationships, how care changes them, to the challenges of living alone. And communication, confusion, criticism, the language used by professionals, or how things are misrepresented in popular media. She also talks about the shifting sense of self, and brings it all together with gritty optimism.
The style is deeply personal, yet lucid and clear. While dementia is most strongly associated with memory loss and communication problems, this hasn’t affected her ability to write well (7 years into her diagnosis, in case you were wondering).
Bottom line: if you’d like to read a first-person view of dementia, then this is an excellent opportunity to understand it from the view of, as the subtitle goes, someone who knows.
Click here to check out What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, and then know those things!
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