Scattered Minds – by Dr. Gabor Maté
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This was not the first book that Dr. Maté sat down to write, by far. But it was the first that he actually completed. Guess why.
Writing from a position of both personal and professional experience and understanding, Dr. Maté explores the inaptly-named Attention Deficit Disorder (if anything, there’s often a surplus of attention, just, to anything and everything rather than necessarily what would be most productive in the moment), its etiology, its presentation, and its management.
This is a more enjoyable book than some others by the same author, as while this condition certainly isn’t without its share of woes (often, for example, a cycle of frustration and shame re “why can’t I just do the things; this is ruining my life and it would be so easy if I could just do the things!”), it’s not nearly so bleak as entire books about trauma, addiction, and so forth (worthy as those books also are).
Dr. Maté frames it specifically as a development disorder, and one whereby with work, we can do the development later that (story of an ADHDer’s life) we should have done earlier but didn’t. In terms of practical advice, he includes a program for effecting this change, including as an adult.
The style is easy-reading, in small chapters, with ADHD’d-up readers in mind, giving a strong sense of speeding pleasantly through the book.
Bottom line: when it’s a book by Dr. Gabor Maté, you know it’s going to be good, and this is no exception. Certainly read it if you, anyone you care about, or even anyone you just spend a lot of time around, has ADHD or similar.
Click here to check out Scattered Minds, and unscatter yours!
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Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment – by Dr. George Best
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Dr. Best is a doctor of chiropractic, but his work here is compelling. He starts by giving an overview of the relevant anatomy, and then the assorted possible causes of sciatica, before moving on to the treatments.
As is generally the case for chiropractic, nothing here will be “cured”, but it will give methods for ongoing management to keep you pain-free—which in the case of sciatica, is usually the single biggest thing that most people suffering from it most dearly want.
We get to read a lot about self-massage and exercises, of the (very well-evidenced; about the most well-evidenced thing there is for back pain) McKenzie technique exercises, as well as assorted acupressure-based techniques that are less well-evidenced but have good anecdotal support.
He also writes about preventing sciatica—which if you already have it, that doesn’t mean it’s too late; it just means, in that case do these things (along with the aforementioned exercises) to gradually reverse the harm done and get back to where you were pre-sciatica.
Lastly, he does also speak on when signs might point to your problems being beyond the scope of this book, and seeking professional examination if you haven’t already.
The style throughout is straight to the point, informative, and instructional. There is zero fluff or padding, and no sensationalization. There are diagrams and illustrative photos where appropriate.
Bottom line: if you have, or fear the threat of, sciatica, then this is an excellent book to have and use its exercises.
Click here to check out Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment, and live pain-free!
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How To Improve Your Heart Rate Variability
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How’s your heart rate variability?
The hallmarks of a good, strong cardiovascular system include a medium-to-low resting heart rate (for adults: under 60 beats per minute is good; under 50 is typical of athletes), and healthy blood pressure (for adults: under 120/80, while still above 90/60, is generally considered good).
Less talked-about is heart rate variability, but it’s important too…
What is heart rate variability?
Heart rate variability is a measure of how quickly and easily your heart responds to changes in demands placed upon it. For example:
- If you’re at rest and then start running your fastest (be it for leisure or survival or anything in between), your heart rate should be able to jump from its resting rate to about 180% of that as quickly as possible
- When you stop, your heart rate should be able to shift gears back to your resting rate as quickly as possible
The same goes, to a commensurately lesser extent, to changes in activity between low and moderate, or between moderate and high.
- When your heart can change gears quickly, that’s called a high heart rate variability
- When your heart is sluggish to get going and then takes a while to return to normal after exertion, that’s called a low heart rate variability.
The rate of change (i.e., the variability) is measured in microseconds per beat, and the actual numbers will vary depending on a lot of factors, but for everyone, higher is better than lower.
Aside from quick response to crises, why does it matter?
If heart rate variability is low, it means the sympathetic nervous system is dominating the parasympathetic nervous system, which means, in lay terms, your fight-or-flight response is overriding your ability to relax.
See for example: Stress and Heart Rate Variability: A Meta-Analysis and Review of the Literature
This has a lot of knock-on effects for both physical and mental health! Your heart and brain will take the worst of this damage, so it’s good to improve things for them impossible.
This Saturday’s Life Hacks: how to improve your HRV!
Firstly, the Usual Five Things™:
- A good diet (that avoids processed foods)
- Good exercise (that includes daily physical activity—more often is more important than more intense!)
- Good sleep (7–9 hours of good quality sleep per night)
- Reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption (this is dose-dependent; any reduction is an improvement)
- Don’t smoke (just don’t)
Additional regular habits that help a lot:
- Breathing exercises, mindfulness, meditation
- Therapy, especially CBT and DBT
- Stress-avoidance strategies, for example:
- Get (and maintain) your finances in good order
- Get (and maintain) your relationship(s) in good order
- Get (and maintain) your working* life in good order
*Whatever this means to you. If you’re perhaps retired, or otherwise a home-maker, or even a student, the things you “need to do” on a daily basis are your working life, for these purposes.
In terms of simple, quick-fix, physical tweaks to focus on if you’re already broadly leading a good life, two great ones are:
- Exercise: get moving! Walk to the store even if you buy nothing but a snack or drink to enjoy while walking back. If you drove, make more trips with the shopping bags rather than fewer. If you like to watch TV, consider an exercise bike or treadmill to use while watching. If you have a partner, double-up and make it a thing you do together! Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Take the scenic route when walking someplace. Go to the bathroom that’s further away. Every little helps!
- Breathe: even just a couple of times a day, practice mindful breathing. Start with even just a minute a day, to get the habit going. What breathing exercise you do isn’t so important as that you do it. Notice your breathing; count how long each breath takes. Don’t worry about “doing it right”—you’re doing great, just observe, just notice, just slowly count. We promise that regular practice of this will have you feeling amazing
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The Diabetes Code – by Dr. Jason Fung
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Cure this serious disease with diet!” is often a bold-claim that overreaches scientific rigor, but in this case, it’s well-established as scientifically valid.
Caveat up-front: the only known circumstance in which this won’t work is if you have comorbidities that prevent you from following the advice.
You may be wondering: is this just the Mediterranean diet again? The answer is that the Mediterreanean diet (or similar) is part of it. But there’s a lot more to this book than that.
Dr. Fung explains to us a lot of the physiology of type 2 diabetes; how insulin resistance occurs, how it becomes a vicious cycle that we get locked into, and how to escape it.
- We learn about the role of fructose, and why fruit is very healthful whereas high-fructose corn syrup and similars are very much not.
- We learn about the role of the liver in glycogen metabolism, and how to un-fatty a fatty liver. Good news: the liver has famously strong self-regenerative abilities, if we give it a break to allow it to do so!
- We learn why portion control doesn’t work, and why intermittent fasting does (here be science).
Dr. Fung’s very readable explanations are free from needless jargon while not dumbing down. The writing style is clear and direct: “this happens this way”, “do this, not that”, etc.
Bottom line: if you have type 2 diabetes and would like to not have that (or if you are pre-diabetic and would like to avoid diabetes) this is a book for you. If you are in great metabolic health and would like to stay that way as you get older, then this is a book for you too.
Click here to check out The Diabetes Code, and get/keep your metabolic health in order!
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Dealing with Thirst!
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Busting The Myth of “Eight Glasses Of Water A Day”
Everyone knows we must drink 8 glasses of water a day, or else we’re going to get a failing grade at being a healthy human—like not flossing, or not using adequate sunscreen.
But… Do we? And does tea count? How about (we dare but whisper it) coffee? And soda drinks are mostly water, right? But aren’t some drinks dehydrating? Are special electrolyte drinks really better? There are so many things to consider, so many differing advices, and it’s easy to give up, or just choose what to believe in as a leap of faith.
A quick brain-teaser for you first, though:
If coffee and soda don’t count because they’re dehydrating, then what if you were to take:
– A concentrated tiny cup of espresso, and then a glass of water, would the glass of water count?
– Or (we don’t relish the thought) what if you took a spoonful of soda syrup, and then a glass of water, would the glass of water count?
If your answer was “yes, it’s a glass of water”, then why would it not count if it were taken all at once (e.g. as an Americano coffee, or a regular soda)?
If your answer was “yes, but that water might only offset the dehydration caused by the coffee/syrup, so I might only be breaking even”, then you were thinking about this the right way:
How much water you need depends on many factors that can be affected by what else you are consuming and what else you are doing. Science loves averages, so eight glasses a day may be great if you are of average health, and average body size, in a temperate climate, doing moderate exercise, and so on and so on.
If you’re not the most average person of all time? You may need to take into account a lot of factors, ranging from what you ate for dinner to how much you perspired during your morning exercises. As you (probably) don’t live in laboratory conditions, this can become an impossible task—and if you missed (or guessed incorrectly) even one factor, the whole calculation will be thrown off. But is there any other way to know?
What of the infamous pee test? Drink enough to make your urine as clear as possible, and if it’s dark, you’re dehydrated, common wisdom says.
In reality, however, that tells you not what’s in your body, but rather, what got ejected from your body. If your urine is dark, it might mean you had too little water, but it also could just mean you had the right amount of water but too much sodium, for instance. A study of this was done on athletes, and found no correlation between urine color and actual bodily hydration when measured directly via a blood test.
So, if we can’t just have an app tell us “drink this many glasses of water”, and we can’t trust urine color, what can we do?
What we can do is trust that our body comes with (for free!) a wonderful homeostatic system and it will try to correct any imbalances. If you are thirsty, you’re dehydrated. Drink something with plenty of water in, if not plain water.
But what about special electrolyte drinks? If you need salts, you will crave them. Craving a salty snack? Go for it! Or if you prefer not to snack, do a salt lick test (just put a little salt on your finger, and taste it; if it tastes good, wait a minute or two, and then have a little more, and repeat until it doesn’t).
Bonus Tip:
- Make sure you always have a source of hydration (that you enjoy!) to hand. Maybe it’s chilled water, maybe it’s a pot of tea, maybe it’s a sports drink, it doesn’t matter too much. Even coffee is actually fine, by the way (but don’t overdo it).
- Make a personal rule: “I will always make time for hydration”. That means, if you’re thirsty, have something with water in it now. Not when you’ve finished what you’re doing (unless you really can’t stop, because you are a racecar driver mid-race, or a surgeon mid-operation, or something), but now. Do not postpone it until after you’ve done some other thing first; you will forget and it will keep getting postponed. Always make time for water.
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Buffed-Up Buffalo Cauliflower
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This is a tasty snack that also more protein than you’d think, because of the garbanzo bean flour. It also has plenty of health-giving spices, as well as blood-sugar-balancing vinegar, no added sugar, and very little salt.
You will need
- 1 medium head of cauliflower, cut into florets
- ½ cup garbanzo bean flour
- ½ cup water
- ⅓ cup hot sauce (we recommend a low-sugar kind; Nando’s hot sauce is good for this if available where you are, as it has no added sugar and its main ingredient by volume is vinegar, which is good for balancing blood sugars)
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- ½ tsp MSG, or 1 tsp low sodium salt
For the ranch sauce:
- ½ cup raw sunflower seeds
- ⅓ cup water
- ⅓ cup milk (plant milk being healthiest if you choose one that’s unsweetened)
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried dill
- ½ tsp MSG, or 1 tsp low sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 400℉/200℃.
2) Blend the ranch sauce ingredients until smooth, and set aside.
3) Mix the buffalo cauliflower ingredients except for the cauliflower, in a big bowl.
4) Add the cauliflower to the big bowl, mixing well to coat evenly.
5) Bake the buffalo cauliflower florets on a baking tray lined with baking paper, for about 25 minutes, turning gently if it seems they are at risk of cooking unevenly.
6) Serve hot, with the sunflower ranch on the side!
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- An Apple (Cider Vinegar) A Day…
- 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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How To Really Look After Your Joints
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The Other Ways To Look After Your Joints
When it comes to joint health, most people have two quick go-to items:
- Stretching
- Supplements like omega-3 and glucosamine sulfate
Stretching, and specifically, mobility exercises, are important! We’ll have to do a main feature on these sometime soon. But for today, we’ll just say: yes, gentle daily stretches go a long way, as does just generally moving more.
And, those supplements are not without their merits. For example:
- Effect of omega-3 on painful symptoms of patients with osteoarthritis of the synovial joints: systematic review and meta-analysis
- Glucosamine sulfate in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis symptoms: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study using acetaminophen as a side comparator
Of those, glucosamine sulfate may have an extra benefit in now just alleviating the symptoms, but also slowing the progression of degenerative joint conditions (like arthritis of various kinds). This is something it shares with chondroitin sulfate:
Effect of glucosamine or chondroitin sulfate on the osteoarthritis progression: a meta-analysis
An unlikely extra use for the humble cucumber…
As it turns out, cucumber extract beats glucosamine and chondroitin by 200%, at 1/135th of the dose.
You read that right, and it’s not a typo. See for yourself:
Reduce inflammation, have happier joints
Joint pain and joint degeneration in general is certainly not just about inflammation; there is physical wear-and-tear too. But combatting inflammation is important, and turmeric, which we’ve done a main feature on before, is a potent helper in this regard:
See also: Keep Inflammation At Bay
(a whole list of tips for, well, keeping inflammation at bay)
About that wear-and-tear…
Your bones and joints are made of stuff, and that stuff needs to be replaced. As we get older, the body typically gets worse at replacing it in a timely and efficient fashion. We can help it do its job, by giving it more of the stuff it needs.
And what stuff is that?
Well, minerals like calcium and phosphorus are important, but a lot is also protein! Specifically, collagen. We did a main feature on this before, which is good, as it’d take us a lot of space to cover all the benefits here:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
Short version? People take collagen for their skin, but really, its biggest benefit is for our bones and joints!
Wrap up warmly and… No wait, skip that.
Writer’s anecdote: when I was young, my mother—her body already wracked with arthritis, along with post-polio syndrome—warned me that if I did not dress warmly, I would end up like her. In her mind, the cause of her arthritis was having spent too much time exposed to the elements. This is a popular myth, doubtlessly resulting from the fact that barometric changes can worsen the symptoms of already-extant arthritis, so it’s not a stretch to believe that wind and rain caused it. But, while it’s not a stretch, it’s also not scientific.
If you have arthritis, you may indeed “feel it in your bones” when the weather changes. But the remedy for that is not to try to fight it, but rather, to strengthen your body’s ability to respond to it.
The answer? Cryotherapy, with ice baths ranking top:
- Effects of an Exercise Program and Cold-Water Immersion Recovery in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA): Feasibility Study
- Effectiveness of home-based conventional exercise and cryotherapy on daily living activities in patients with knee osteoarthritis: A randomized controlled clinical trial
- Local Cryotherapy, Comparison of Cold Air and Ice Massage on Pain and Handgrip Strength in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Note that this can be just localized, so for example if the problem joints are your wrists, a washing-up bowl with water and ice will do just nicely.
Note also that, per that last study, a single session will only alleviate the pain, not the disease itself. For that (per the other studies) more sessions are required.
We did a main feature about cryotherapy a while back, and it explains how and why it works:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?
Take care!
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