Gut-Positive Pot Noodles

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The 10almonds Team

Everything we consume either improves our health a little or worsens it. Pot noodles aren’t generally the healthiest foods, but these ones sure are! There’s quite a range of fiber in this, including the soluble fiber of the noodles themselves (which are, in fact, mostly fiber and water). As a bonus, the glucomannan in the noodles promotes feelings of fullness, notwithstanding its negligible carb count. Of course, the protein in the edamame beans also counts for satiety!

You will need

  • ½ cup konjac noodles (also called shirataki), tossed in 1 tsp avocado oil (or sesame oil, if you don’t have avocado)
  • 2 oz mangetout, thinly sliced
  • 1 oz edamame beans
  • ¼ carrot, grated
  • 2 baby sweetcorn, cut in half lengthways
  • 1 scallion, finely diced
  • 1 heaped tsp crunchy peanut butter (omit if allergic)
  • 1 tsp miso paste
  • 1 tsp chili oil
  • 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
  • 1 tsp peeled-and-grated ginger

Method

(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

1) Layer a heat-resistant jar (mason jars are usually quite resistant to temperature changes) with the noodles and vegetables.

2) Combine the peanut butter, miso paste, and chili oil, black pepper, and ginger in a small bowl. Pour this dressing over the layered vegetables and noodles, and screw the lid on. Refrigerate until needed.

3) Add hot water to the jar and stir, to serve. If you prefer the vegetables to be more cooked, you can microwave (without the lid!) for a minute or two.

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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  • The Neuroscience of You – by Dr. Chantel Prat

    The 10almonds Team

    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 insides of people are rarely so standardized as one finds in a medical textbook, and that’s just as true of the brain as it is of any other organ—and often more so.

    Our brains all look quite different from each other’s. Of course there are similarities; a wobbly mass of white and grey matter with tiny blood vessels running through. The constituent parts are (usually!) all present and correct. But… what is “correct”?

    Dr. Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the anatomical features that we may have grown or shrunken over the course of our life, according to how we’ve used them, or not. She also looks at what’s going on when it comes to the smaller scale—from the neuronal to the neurochemical.

    We learn the truth (and myth) when it comes to left- and right-brainedness, and we learn how whether we saw that dress as black and blue or white and gold, depends on our circadian rhythm (and thus whether we have wired ourselves for perceiving colors more or less often under daylight or artificial light). And lots more.

    The style throughout is very accessible, for a book that goes beyond most “how the brain works” books.

    Bottom line: if you’re interested in the workings of your brain (as opposed to: a standardized Platonic ideal of what a brain might be), then this book will set you on the right track.

    Click here to check out The Neuroscience of You, and learn more about what makes you you!

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  • Why Adult ADHD Often Leads To Anxiety & Depression

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    ADHD’s Knock-On Effects On Mental Health

    We’ve written before about ADHD in adult life, often late-diagnosed because it’s not quite what people think it is:

    ADHD… As An Adult?

    In women in particular, it can get missed and/or misdiagnosed:

    Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women

    …but what we’re really here to talk about today is:

    It’s the comorbidities that get you

    When it comes to physical health conditions:

    • if you have one serious condition, it will (usually) be taken seriously
    • if you have two, they will still be taken seriously, but people (friends and family members, as well as yes, medical professionals) will start to back off, as it starts to get too complicated for comfort
    • if you have three, people will think you are making at least one of them up for attention now
    • if you have more than three, you are considered a hypochondriac and pathological liar

    Yet, the reality is: having one serious condition increases your chances of having others, and this chance-increasing feature compounds with each extra condition.

    Illustrative example: you have fibromyalgia (ouch) which makes it difficult for you to exercise much, shop around when grocery shopping, and do much cooking at home. You do your best, but your diet slips and it’s hard to care when you just want the pain to stop; you put on some weight, and get diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, which in time becomes diabetes with high cardiovascular risk factors. Your diabetes is immunocompromising; you get COVID and find it’s now Long COVID, which brings about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, when you barely had the spoons to function in the first place. At this point you’ve lost count of conditions and are just trying to get through the day.

    If this is you, by the way, we hope at least something in the following might ease things for you a bit:

    It’s the same for mental health

    In the case of ADHD as a common starting point (because it’s quite common, may or may not be diagnosed until later in life, and doesn’t require any external cause to appear), it is very common that it will lead to anxiety and/or depression, to the point that it’s perhaps more common to also have one or more of them than not, if you have ADHD.

    (Of course, anxiety and/or depression can both pop up for completely unrelated reasons too, and those reasons may be physiological, environmental, or a combination of the above).

    Why?

    Because all the good advice that goes for good mental health (and/or life in general), gets harder to actuate when one had ADHD.

    • “Strong habits are the core of a good life”, but good luck with that if your brain doesn’t register dopamine in the same way as most people’s do, making intentional habit-forming harder on a physiological level.
    • “Plan things carefully and stick to the plan”, but good luck with that if you are neurologically impeded from forming plans.
    • “Just do it”, but oops you have the tendency-to-overcommitment disorder and now you are seriously overwhelmed with all the things you tried to do, when each of them alone were already going to be a challenge.

    Overwhelm and breakdown are almost inevitable.

    And when they happen, chances are you will alienate people, and/or simply alienate yourself. You will hide away, you will avoid inflicting yourself on others, you will brood alone in frustration—or distract yourself with something mind-numbing.

    Before you know it, you’re too anxious to try to do things with other people or generally show your face to the world (because how will they react, and won’t you just mess things up anyway?), and/or too depressed to leave your depression-lair (because maybe if you keep playing Kingdom Vegetables 2, you can find a crumb of dopamine somewhere).

    What to do about it

    How to tackle the many-headed beast? By the heads! With your eyes open. Recognize and acknowledge each of the heads; you can’t beat those heads by sticking your own in the sand.

    Also, get help. Those words are often used to mean therapy, but in this case we mean, any help. Enlist your partner or close friend as your support in your mental health journey. Enlist a cleaner as your support in taking that one thing off your plate, if that’s an option and a relevant thing for you. Set low but meaningful goals for deciding what constitutes “good enough” for each life area. Decide in advance what you can safely half-ass, and what things in life truly require your whole ass.

    Here’s a good starting point for that kind of thing:

    When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)

    And this is an excellent way to “get the ball rolling” if you’re already in a bit of a prison of your own making:

    Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

    If things are already bad, then you might also consider:

    And if things are truly at the worst they can possibly be, then:

    How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

    Take care!

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  • Does Ginseng Increase Testosterone Levels?

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    ❓ Q&A With 10almonds Subscribers!

    Q: You talked about spearmint as reducing testosterone levels, what about ginseng for increasing them?

    A: Hormones are complicated and often it’s not a simple matter of higher or lower levels! It can also be a matter of…

    • how your body converts one thing into another
    • how your body responds (or not) to something according to how the relevant hormone’s receptors are doing
    • …and whether there’s anything else blocking those receptors.

    All this to say: spearmint categorically is an anti-androgen, but the mechanism of action remains uncertain.

    Panax ginseng, meanwhile, is one of the most well-established mysteries in herbal medicine.

    Paradoxically, it seems to improve both male and female hormonal regulation, despite being more commonly associated with the former.

    But it also…

    Bottom line: Panax ginseng is popularly taken to improve natural hormone function, a task at which it appears to excel.

    Scientists are still working out exactly how it does the many things it appears to do.

    Progress has been made, and it clearly is science rather than witchcraft, but there are still far more unanswered questions than resolved ones!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Superfood Broccoli Pesto

  • Gut-Healthy Spaghetti Chermoula

    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 10almonds Team

    Chermoula is a Maghreb relish/marinade (it’s used for both purposes); it’s a little like chimichurri but with distinctly N. African flavors. The gut-healthiness starts there (it’s easy to forget that olives—unless fresh—are a fermented food full of probiotic Lactobacillus sp. and thus great for the gut even beyond their fiber content), and continues in the feta, the vegetables, and the wholewheat nature of the pasta. The dish can be enjoyed at any time, but it’s perfect for warm summer evenings—perhaps dining outside, if you’ve place for that.

    You will need

    • 9oz wholewheat spaghetti (plus low-sodium salt for its water)
    • 10oz broccoli, cut into small florets
    • 3oz cilantro (unless you have the soap gene)
    • 3oz parsley (whether or not you included the cilantro)
    • 3oz green olives, pitted, rinsed
    • 1 lemon, pickled, rinsed
    • 1 bulb garlic
    • 3 tbsp pistachios, shelled
    • 2 tbsp mixed seeds
    • 1 tsp cumin
    • 1 tsp chili flakes
    • ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
    • For the garnish: 3oz feta (or plant-based equivalent), crumbled, 3oz sun-dried tomatoes, diced, 1 tsp cracked black pepper

    Note: why are we rinsing the things? It’s because while picked foods are great for the gut, the sodium can add up, so there’s no need to bring extra brine with them too. By doing it this way, there’ll be just the right amount for flavor, without overdoing it.

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Cook the spaghetti as you normally would, but when it’s a minute or two from being done, add the broccoli in with it. When it’s done, drain and rinse thoroughly to get rid of excess starch and salt, and also because cooling it even temporarily (as in this case) lowers its glycemic index.

    2) Put the rest of the ingredients into a food processor (except the olive oil and the garnish), and blitz thoroughly until no large coarse bits remain. When that’s done, add the olive oil, and pulse it a few times to combine. We didn’t add the olive oil previously, because blending it so thoroughly in that state would have aerated it in a way we don’t want.

    3) Put ⅔ of the chermoula you just made into the pan you used for cooking the spaghetti, and set it over a medium heat. When it starts bubbling, return the spaghetti and broccoli to the pan, mixing gently but thoroughly. If the pasta threatens to stick, you can add a little more chermoula, but go easy on it. Any leftover chermoula that you didn’t use today, can be kept in the fridge and used later as a pesto.

    4) Serve! Add the garnish as you do.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Take Care Of Your “Unwanted” Parts Too!

    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 10almonds Team

    Meet The Family…

    If you’ve heard talk of “healing your inner child” or similar ideas, then today’s featured type of therapy takes that to several extra levels, in a way that helps many people.

    It’s called Internal Family Systems therapy, often “IFS” for short.

    Here’s a quick overview:

    Psychology Today | Internal Family Systems Therapy

    Note: if you are delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic, or have some other related disorder*, then IFS would probably be a bad idea for you as it could worsen your symptoms, and/or play into them badly.

    *but bipolar disorder, in its various forms, is not usually a problem for IFS. Do check with your own relevant healthcare provider(s), of course, to be sure.

    What is IFS?

    The main premise of IFS is that your “self” can be modelled as a system, and its constituent parts can be examined, questioned, given what they need, and integrated into a healthy whole.

    For example…

    • Exile is the name given to parts that could be, for example, the “inner child” referenced in a lot of pop-psychology, but it could also be some other ignored and pushed-down part of oneself, often from some kind of trauma. The defining characteristic of an exile is that it’s a part of ourself that we don’t consciously allow ourselves to see as a current part of ourself.
    • Protector is the name given to a part of us that looks to keep us safe, and can do this in an adaptive (healthy) or maladaptive (unhealthy) way, for example:
      • Firefighter is the name given to a part of us that will do whatever is necessary in the moment to deal with an exile that is otherwise coming to the surface—sometimes with drastic actions/reactions that may not be great for us.
      • Manager is the name given to a part of us that has a more nurturing protective role, keeping us from harm in what’s often a more prophylactic manner.

    To give a simple illustration…

    A person was criticized a lot as a child, told she was useless, and treated as a disappointment. Consequently, as an adult she now has an exile “the useless child”, something she strives to leave well behind in her past, because it was a painful experience for her. However, sometimes when someone questions and/or advises her, she will get defensive as her firefighter “the hero” will vigorously speak up for her competence, like nobody did when she was a child. This vigor, however, manifests as rude abrasiveness and overcompensation. Finally, she has a manager, “the advocate”, who will do the same job, but in a more quietly confident fashion.

    This person’s therapy will look at transferring the protector job from the firefighter to the manager, which will involve examining, questioning, and addressing all three parts.

    The above example is fictional and created for simplicity and clarity; here’s a real-world case study if you’d like a more in-depth overview of how it can work:

    American Journal of Psychotherapy | The Teenager’s Confession: Regulating Shame in Internal Family Systems Therapy

    How it all fits together in practice

    IFS looks to make sure all the parts’ needs are met, even the “bad” ones, because they all have their functions.

    Good IFS therapy, however, can make sure a part is heard, and then reassure that part in a way that effectively allows that part to “retire”, safe and secure in the knowledge that it has done what it needed to, and/or the job is being done by another part now.

    That can involve, for example, thanking the firefighter for looking after our exile for all these years, but that our exile is safe and in good hands now, so it can put that fire-axe away.

    See also: On Being Reactive vs Being Responsive

    Questions you might ask yourself

    While IFS therapy is best given by a skilled practitioner, we can take some of the ideas of it for self-therapy too. For example…

    • What is a secret about yourself that you will take to the grave? And now, why did that part of you (now an exile) come to exist?
    • What does that exile need, that it didn’t get? What parts of us try to give it that nowadays?
    • What could we do, with all that information in mind, to assign the “protection” job to the part of us best-suited to healthy integration?

    Want to know more?

    We’ve only had the space of a small article to give a brief introduction to Family Systems therapy, so check out the “resources” tab at:

    IFS Institute | What Is Internal Family Systems Therapy?

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Sugar, Hazelnuts, Books & Brains

    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 10almonds Team

    It’s Q&A Day!

    Each Thursday, we respond to subscriber questions and requests! If it’s something small, we’ll answer it directly; if it’s something bigger, we’ll do a main feature in a follow-up day instead!

    So, no question/request to big or small; they’ll just get sorted accordingly

    Remember, you can always hit reply to any of our emails, or use the handy feedback widget at the bottom. We always look forward to hearing from you!

    Q: Interesting info, however, I drink hazelnut milk LOL so would have liked a review of that. But now I want to give hemp and pea milks a try. Thanks

    Aww! Here then just for you, is a quick rundown…

    • Pros: high in protein¹, vitamin B, and vitamin E
    • Cons: high in fat², low in calcium

    ¹Compared head-to-head with almond milk for example, it has double the protein (but also double the calories)

    ²However, is also has been found to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol (and incidentally, also reduce inflammation), and in a later systematic review, it was found to not correlate to weight gain, despite its high calorie-content.

    If you don’t already, and would like to try making your own…

    Click here for step-by-step instructions to make your own hazelnut milk! (very simple)

    Q: Wondering if you can evaluate CLA and using it to assist with weight loss. Thanks

    Will do! (Watch this space)

    Q: What’s the process behind the books you recommend? You seem to have a limitless stream of recommendations

    We do our best!

    The books we recommend are books that…

    • are on Amazon—it makes things tidy, consistent, and accessible. And if you end up buying one of the books, we get a small affiliate commission*.
    • we have read—we would say “obviously”, but you might be surprised how many people write about books without having read them.
    • pertain in at least large part to health and/or productivity.
    • are written by humans—bookish people (and especially Kindle Unlimited users) may have noticed lately that there are a lot of low quality AI-written books flooding the market, sometimes with paid 5-star reviews to bolster them. It’s frustrating, but we can tell the difference and screen those out.
    • are of a certain level of quality. They don’t have to be “top 5 desert-island books”, because well, there’s one every day and the days keep coming. But they do have to genuinely deliver the value that we describe, and merit a sincere recommendation.
    • are varied—we try to not give a run of “samey” books one after another. We will sometimes review a book that covers a topic another previously-reviewed book did, but it must have something about it that makes it different. It may be a different angle or a different writing style, but it needs something to set it apart.

    *this is from Amazon and isn’t product-specific, so this is not affecting our choice of what books to review at all—just that they will be books that are available on Amazon.

    Q: Great video on dopamine. Thumbs up on the book recommendation. Would you please consider doing a piece or two on inflammation? I live with Lupus and it is a constant struggle. Thanks for the awesome work you do. Have an excellent day.

    Great suggestion! We will do that, and thank you for the kind words!

    Q: Why is your newsletter called 10almonds? Maybe I missed it in the intro email, but my curiosity wants to know the significance. Thanks!”

    It’s a reference to a viral Facebook hoax! There was a post going around that claimed:

    ❝HEADACHE REMEDY. Eat 10–12 almonds, the equivalent of two aspirins, next time you have a headache❞ ← not true!

    It made us think about how much health-related disinformation there was online… So, calling ourselves 10almonds was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to that story… but also a reminder to ourselves:

    We must always publish information with good scientific evidence behind it!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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