Anti-Inflammatory Piña Colada Baked Oats
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If you like piña coladas and getting songs stuck in your head, then enjoy this very anti-inflammatory, gut-healthy, blood-sugar-balancing, and frankly delicious dish:
You will need
- 9 oz pineapple, diced
- 7 oz rolled oats
- 3 oz desiccated coconut
- 14 fl oz coconut milk (full fat, the kind from a can)
- 14 fl oz milk (your choice what kind, but we recommend coconut, the kind for drinking)
- Optional: some kind of drizzling sugar such as honey or maple syrup
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.
2) Mix all the ingredients (except the drizzling sugar, if using) well, and put them in an ovenproof dish, compacting the mixture down gently so that the surface is flat.
3) Drizzle the drizzling sugar, if drizzling.
4) Bake in the oven for 30–40 minutes, until lightly golden-brown.
5) Serve hot or cold:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More ← as found (uniquely!) in pineapple
- Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy? ← coconut certainly can!
- The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health? ← it’s β-glucan, as found in abundance in oats
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What’s the difference between ‘strep throat’ and a sore throat? We’re developing a vaccine for one of them
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What’s the difference? is a new editorial product that explains the similarities and differences between commonly confused health and medical terms, and why they matter.
It’s the time of the year for coughs, colds and sore throats. So you might have heard people talk about having a “strep throat”.
But what is that? Is it just a bad sore throat that goes away by itself in a day or two? Should you be worried?
Here’s what we know about the similarities and differences between strep throat and a sore throat, and why they matter.
Prostock-studio/Shutterstock How are they similar?
It’s difficult to tell the difference between a sore throat and strep throat as they look and feel similar.
People usually have a fever, a bright red throat and sometimes painful lumps in the neck (swollen lymph nodes). A throat swab can help diagnose strep throat, but the results can take a few days.
Thankfully, both types of sore throat usually get better by themselves.
How are they different?
Most sore throats are caused by viruses such as common cold viruses, the flu (influenza virus), or the virus that causes glandular fever (Epstein-Barr virus).
These viral sore throats can occur at any age. Antibiotics don’t work against viruses so if you have a viral sore throat, you won’t get better faster if you take antibiotics. You might even have some unwanted antibiotic side-effects.
But strep throat is caused by Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, also known as strep A. Strep throat is most common in school-aged children, but can affect other age groups. In some cases, you may need antibiotics to avoid some rare but serious complications.
In fact, the potential for complications is one key difference between a viral sore throat and strep throat.
Generally, a viral sore throat is very unlikely to cause complications (one exception is those caused by Epstein-Barr virus which has been associated with illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis and certain cancers).
But strep A can cause invasive disease, a rare but serious complication. This is when bacteria living somewhere on the body (usually the skin or throat) get into another part of the body where there shouldn’t be bacteria, such as the bloodstream. This can make people extremely sick.
Invasive strep A infections and deaths have been rising in recent years around the world, especially in young children and older adults. This may be due to a number of factors such as increased social mixing at this stage of the COVID pandemic and an increase in circulating common cold viruses. But overall the reasons behind the increase in invasive strep A infections are not clear.
Another rare but serious side effect of strep A is autoimmune disease. This is when the body’s immune system makes antibodies that react against its own cells.
The most common example is rheumatic heart disease. This is when the body’s immune system damages the heart valves a few weeks or months after a strep throat or skin infection.
Around the world more than 40 million people live with rheumatic heart disease and more than 300,000 die from its complications every year, mostly in developing countries.
However, parts of Australia have some of the highest rates of rheumatic heart disease in the world. More than 5,300 Indigenous Australians live with it.
Strep throat is caused by Streptococcus bacteria and can be treated with antibiotics if needed. Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock Why do some people get sicker than others?
We know strep A infections and rheumatic heart disease are more common in low socioeconomic communities where poverty and overcrowding lead to increased strep A transmission and disease.
However, we don’t fully understand why some people only get a mild infection with strep throat while others get very sick with invasive disease.
We also don’t understand why some people get rheumatic heart disease after strep A infections when most others don’t. Our research team is trying to find out.
How about a vaccine for strep A?
There is no strep A vaccine but many groups in Australia, New Zealand and worldwide are working towards one.
For instance, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Telethon Kids Institute have formed the Australian Strep A Vaccine Initiative to develop strep A vaccines. There’s also a global consortium working towards the same goal.
Companies such as Vaxcyte and GlaxoSmithKline have also been developing strep A vaccines.
What if I have a sore throat?
Most sore throats will get better by themselves. But if yours doesn’t get better in a few days or you have ongoing fever, see your GP.
Your GP can examine you, consider running some tests and help you decide if you need antibiotics.
Kim Davis, General paediatrician and paediatric infectious diseases specialist, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; Alma Fulurija, Immunologist and the Australian Strep A Vaccine Initiative project lead, Telethon Kids Institute, and Myra Hardy, Postdoctoral Researcher, Infection, Immunity and Global Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Best Exercise to Stop Your Legs From Giving Out
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Dr. Doug Weiss, seniors-specialist physio, has an exercise that stops your knees from being tricked into collapsing (which is very common) by a misfiring (also common) reflex.
Step up…
Setup to step up thus:
- Use a sturdy support like a countertop or chair.
- Have an aerobic step or similar firm surface to step onto.
When you’re ready:
- Stand facing away from the step.
- Place one hand on the support for stability.
- Step backwards up onto the step with your right leg, then your left leg, so both feet are on the step.
- Step forward to come back down.
Once you’re confident of the series of movements, do it without the support, and do it for a few minutes each day. Don’t worry about how easy it becomes; this is not, first and foremost, a strength-training exercise; you don’t have to start adding weights or anything (although of course you can if you want).
How it works: there’s a part of you called the Golgi tendon organ, and it can trigger a Golgi tendon reflex, which is one of the body’s equivalents of a steam valve. However, instead of letting off steam to avoid a boiler explosion, it collapses a joint to save it from overload. However, if not exercised regularly, it can get overly sensitive, causing it to mistake your mere bodyweight for an overload. So, it collapses, thinking it is saving you from snapping a tendon, but it’s not. By exercising in the way described, the Golgi tendon reflex will go back to only being triggered by an actual overload, not the mere act of stepping.
Writer’s note: this one’s interesting to me as I have a) a strong lower body b) hypermobile joints that thus occasionally just fold like laundry regardless. Could it be that this will fix that? I guess I’ll find out 🙂
Meanwhile, for more on all of the above plus a visual demonstration, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
What Nobody Teaches You About Strengthening Your Knees
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What’s Your Personal Life Expectancy?
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.
Tick Tock… Goes the Death Clock?
This fun little test will ask a few questions about you and your lifestyle, and then make a prediction of your personal life expectancy, based on global statistics from the World Health Organisation.
And then the countdown starts… Literally, it generates a clock for you to see your life-seconds ticking away—this may or may not delight you, but it sure is a curiosity.
Their “Letters” page has a lot of reactions from people who just got their results (spoiler: people’s perspectives on life vary a lot)
Who mostly uses this service? According to their stats page, it’s mostly curious under-45s, with gradually less interest in knowing about it from 45 onwards… until the age of 70, when suddenly everyone wants to know about it again!
So Is It Possible To Pause The Clock On Aging? – Q&A Spotlight Interview
Life extension is sometimes viewed as the domain of the super-rich, and with less than half of Millennials (and almost none of Gen-Z) having retirement plans, often those of us who aren’t super-rich have more mundane (and immediate!) goals than living to 120.
And yet…
Middle class and working class life-extensionists do exist, even if not garnering the same media attention. We think that’s strange—after all, while the whimsies of the super-rich may be entertaining to read about, it’s not nearly as applicable to most people as more relatable stories:
- The twenty-something who gives up smoking and adds (healthier!) years to their life
- The thirty-something who adopts a plant-based diet and is less likely to die of heart disease
- The forty-something who stops drinking, and avoids health conditions and mishaps alike
- The fifty-something who reconsiders their health plan in light of their changing body
- The sixty-something who takes up yoga, or chess, or salsa dancing
- The seventy-something who gets asked what their secret is
- …and so on
But these are ideas, textbook examples. What if we make it more personal?
We interviewed 10 Almonds subscriber and longevity enthusiast Anastasia S., and here’s what she had to say:
Q: What does life extension mean to you, in your life?
A: To me, the key is healthy life extension. People often joke “I don’t want to live longer; the last years are the worst!” but they’re missing the point that after a certain age, those difficulties are coming whether they come at 50 or 70 or 90. Personally, I’d rather keep them at bay if I can.
Q: How do you do that?
A: Firstly, which won’t be a shock: good diet and exercise. Those two things are possibly the biggest active influences on my longevity. I’m vegan, which I don’t think is outright necessary for good health but done right, it can certainly be good. In this house we eat a lot of whole grains, beans, lentils, vegetables in general, nuts too. As for exercise, I do 30–60 minutes of Pilates daily; it’s nothing fancy and it’s just me in my pajamas at home, but it keeps me strong and fit and supple. I also walk everywhere; I don’t even own a car. Beyond that… I don’t drink or smoke (probably the biggest passive influences on my longevity, i.e., things that aren’t there to make it shorter), and I try to take my sleep seriously, making sure to schedule enough time and prepare properly for it.
Q: Take your sleep seriously? How so?
A: Good “sleep hygiene” as some call it—I schedule a little wind-down time before sleep, with no glaring screens or main lights, making a space between my busy day and restful sleep, kicking anything requiring brainpower to the morning, and making a conscious choice not to think more about those things in the meantime. I take care to make my sleeping environment as conducive as possible to good sleep too; I have a good mattress and pillows, I make sure the temperature is cool but cosy. I have a pot of herbal tea on my bedside table—I hydrate a lot.
Q: Do you take any supplements?
A: I do! They’re mostly quite general though, just “covering my bases”, so to speak. I take a daily nootropic stack (a collection of supplements specifically for brain health), too. I buy them in bulk, so they don’t cost so much.
Q: This seems quite a healthy lifestyle! Do you have any vices at all?
A: I definitely drink more coffee than I probably should! But hey, nobody’s perfect. I do love coffee, though, and as vices go, it’s probably not too bad.
Q: How’s it all working out for you? Do you feel younger?
A: I’m 38 and sometimes I feel like a teenager; sometimes I feel like an old lady. But the latter is usually for social reasons, not health-related reasons. I do have streaks of gray in my hair though, and I love that! If people don’t notice my grays, then they often think I’m in my 20s, rather than pushing 40. A little while back, I was stopped in the street by someone wanting to sell me a change of household utilities provider, then she stopped herself mid-sentence and said “Oh but wait, you look a bit too young, never mind”. Most general metrics of health would put me in my 20s.
Q: That’s interesting that you love your gray hairs, for someone who wants to stay young; is it an exception?
A: It’s more that I want to minimize the problems that come with age, and not everything’s a problem. Gray hairs are cool; joint pain, not so much. A long life rich with experiences is cool; memory loss, not so much. So, I try to keep healthy, and wear my years as best I can.
Q: Sounds good to us; good luck with it!
A: Thank you; I do my best!
Here at 10 Almonds, we love featuring what our readers are doing to improve their health; if you’re willing to be featured in our newsletter, let us know by replying to this email (where an actual human will read it, we promise!)
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How often should you wash your sheets and towels?
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.
Everyone seems to have a different opinion when it comes to how often towels and bed sheets should be washed. While many people might wonder whether days or weeks is best, in one survey from the United Kingdom, almost half of single men reported not washing their sheets for up to four months at a time.
It’s fairly clear that four months is too long to leave it, but what is the ideal frequency?
Bed linen and towels are quite different and so should be washed at different intervals. While every week or two will generally suffice for sheets, towels are best washed every few days.
Anyway, who doesn’t love the feeling of a fresh set of sheets or the smell of a newly laundered towel?
Why you should wash towels more often
When you dry yourself, you deposit thousands of skin cells and millions of microbes onto the towel. And because you use your towel to dry yourself after a shower or bath, your towel is regularly damp.
You also deposit a hefty amount of dead skin, microbes, sweat and oils onto your sheets every night. But unless you’re a prolific night sweater, your bedding doesn’t get wet after a night’s sleep.
Towels are also made of a thicker material than sheets and therefore tend to stay damp for longer.
So what is it about the dampness that causes a problem? Wet towels are a breeding ground for bacteria and moulds. Moulds especially love damp environments. Although mould won’t necessarily be visible (you would need significant growth to be able to see it) this can lead to an unpleasant smell.
As well as odours, exposure to these microbes in your towels and sheets can cause asthma, allergic skin irritations, or other skin infections.
People don’t always agree on how often to change the sheets.
http://rawpixel.com/ShutterstockSo what’s the ideal frequency?
For bedding, it really depends on factors such as whether you have a bath or shower just before going to bed, or if you fall into bed after a long, sweaty day and have your shower in the morning. You will need to wash your sheets more regularly in the latter case. As a rule of thumb, once a week or every two weeks should be fine.
Towels should ideally be washed more regularly – perhaps every few days – while your facecloth should be cleaned after every use. Because it gets completely wet, it will be wet for a longer time, and retain more skin cells and microbes.
Wash your towels at a high temperature (for example, 65°C) as that will kill many microbes. If you are conscious of saving energy, you can use a lower temperature and add a cup of vinegar to the wash. The vinegar will kill microbes and prevent bad smells from developing.
Clean your washing machine regularly and dry the fold in the rubber after every wash, as this is another place microbes like to grow.
Smelly towels
What if you regularly wash your towels, but they still smell bad? One of the reasons for this pong could be that you’ve left them in the washing machine too long after the wash. Especially if it was a warm wash cycle, the time they’re warm and damp will allow microbes to happily grow. Under lab conditions the number of these bacteria can double every 30 minutes.
It’s important to hang your towel out to dry after use and not to leave towels in the washing machine after the cycle has finished. If possible, hang your towels and bedding out in the sun. That will dry them quickly and thoroughly and will foster that lovely fresh, clean cotton smell. Using a dryer is a good alternative if the weather is bad, but outdoors in the sun is always better if possible.
Also, even if your towel is going to be washed, don’t throw a wet towel into the laundry basket, as the damp, dirty towel will be an ideal place for microbes to breed. By the time you get to doing your washing, the towel and the other laundry around it may have acquired a bad smell. And it can be difficult to get your towels smelling fresh again.
Towels should be washed more often than sheets.
New Africa/ShutterstockWhat about ‘self-cleaning’ sheets and towels?
Some companies sell “quick-dry” towels or “self-cleaning” towels and bedding. Quick-dry towels are made from synthetic materials that are weaved in a way to allow them to dry quickly. This would help prevent the growth of microbes and the bad smells that develop when towels are damp for long periods of time.
But the notion of self-cleaning products is more complicated. Most of these products contain nanosilver or copper, antibacterial metals that kill micro-organisms. The antibacterial compounds will stop the growth of bacteria and can be useful to limit smells and reduce the frequency with which you need to clean your sheets and towels.
However, they’re not going to remove dirt like oils, skin flakes and sweat. So as much as I would love the idea of sheets and towels that clean themselves, that’s not exactly what happens.
Also, excessive use of antimicrobials such as nanosilver can lead to microbes becoming resistant to them.
Rietie Venter, Associate professor, Clinical and Health Sciences, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How To Stop Binge-Eating: Flip This Switch!
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“The Big Eating Therapist” Sarah Dosanjh has insights from both personal and professional experience:
No “Tough Love” Necessary
Eating certain foods is often socially shamed, and it’s easy to internalize that, and feel guilty. While often guilt is considered a pro-social emotion that helps people to avoid erring in a way that will get us excluded from the tribe (bearing in mind that for most of our evolutionary history, exile would mean near-certain death), it is not good at behavior modification when it comes to addictions or anything similar to addictions.
The reason for this is that if we indulge in a pleasure we feel we “shouldn’t” and expect we’d be shamed for, we then feel bad, and we immediately want something to make us feel better. Guess what that something will be. That’s right: the very same thing we literally just felt ashamed about.
So guilt is not helpful when it comes to (for example) avoiding binge-eating.
Instead, Dosanjh points us to a study whereby dieters ate a donut and drank water, before being given candy for taste testing. The control group proceeded without intervention, while the experimental group had a self-compassion intervention between the donut and the candy. This meant that researchers told the participants not to feel bad about eating the donut, emphasizing self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity. The study found that those who received the intervention, ate significantly less candy.
What we can learn from this is: we must be kind to ourselves. Allowing ourselves, consciously and mindfully, “a little treat”, secures its status as being “little”, and “a treat”. Then we smile, thinking “yes, that was a nice little thing to do for myself”, and proceed with our day.
This kind of self-compassion helps avoid the “meta-binge” process, where guilt from one thing leads to immediately reaching for another.
For more on this, plus a link to the study she mentioned, enjoy:
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Dietary Changes for Artery Health
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It’s Q&A Day 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!
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
❝How does your diet change clean out your arteries of the bad cholesterol?❞
There’s good news and bad news here, and they can both be delivered with a one-word reply:
Slowly.
Or rather: what’s being cleaned out is mostly not the LDL (bad) cholesterol, but rather, the result of that.
When our diet is bad for cardiovascular health, our arteries get fatty deposits on their walls. Cholesterol gets stuck here too, but that’s not the main physical problem.
Our body’s natural defenses come into action and try to clean it up, but they (for example macrophages, a kind of white blood cell that consumes invaders and then dies, before being recycled by the next part of the system) often get stuck and become part of the buildup (called atheroma), which can lead to atherosclerosis and (if calcium levels are high) hardening of the arteries, which is the worst end of this.
This can then require medical attention, precisely because the body can’t remove it very well—especially if you are still maintaining a heart-unhealthy diet, thus continuing to add to the mess.
However, if it is not too bad yet, yes, a dietary change alone will reverse this process. Without new material being added to the arterial walls, the body’s continual process of rejuvenation will eventually fix it, given time (free from things making it worse) and resources.
In fact, your arteries can be one of the quickest places for your body to make something better or worse, because the blood is the means by which the body moves most things (good or bad) around the body.
All the more reason to take extra care of it, since everything else depends on it!
You might also like our previous main feature:
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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