Meals That Heal – by Dr. Carolyn Williams
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Inflammation is implicated as a contributory or casual factor in almost all chronic diseases (and still exacerbates the ones in which it’s not directly implicated causally), so if there’s one area of health to focus on with one’s diet, then reducing inflammation is a top candidate.
This book sets about doing exactly that.
You may be wondering whether, per the book’s subtitle, they can really all be done in 30 minutes or under. The answer is: no, not unless you have a team of sous-chefs to do all the prep work for you, and line up everything mise-en-place style for when you start the clock. If you do have that team of sous-chefs working for you, then you can probably do most of them in under 30 minutes. If you don’t have that team, then budget about an hour in total, sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on the recipe.
The recipes themselves are mostly Mediterranean-inspired, though you might want to do a few swaps where the author has oddly recommended using seed oils instead of olive oil, or plant milk in place of where she has used dairy milk in a couple of “recipes” for smoothies. You might also want to be a little more generous with the seasonings, if you’re anything like this reviewer.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for an anti-inflammatory starter cookbook, you could do worse than this. You could probably do better, too, such as starting with The Inflammation Spectrum – by Dr. Will Cole.
Alternatively, click here if you want to check out Meals That Heal, and dive straight in!
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Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101 (What to Eat to Fight Inflammation)
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Chronic inflammation is a cause and/or exacerbating factor in very many diseases. Arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease are probably top of the list, but there are lots more where they came from. And, it’s good to avoid those things. So, how to eat to avoid inflammation?
Let food be thy medicine
The key things to keep in mind, the “guiding principles” are to prioritize whole, minimally-processed foods, and enjoy foods with plenty of antioxidants. Getting a healthy balance of omega fatty acids is also important, which for most people means getting more omega-3 and less omega-6.
Shopping list (foods to prioritize) includes:
- fruits and vegetables in a variety of colors (e.g. berries, leafy greens, beats)
- whole grains, going for the most fiber-rich options (e.g. quinoa, brown rice, oats)
- healthy fats (e.g. avocados, nuts, seeds)
- fatty fish (e.g. salmon, mackerel, sardines) ← don’t worry about this if you’re vegetarian/vegan though, as the previous category can already cover it
- herbs and spices (e.g. turmeric, garlic, ginger)
Noping list (foods to avoid) includes:
- refined carbohydrates
- highly processed and/or fried foods
- red meats and/or processed meats (yes, that does mean that organic grass-fed farmers’ pinky-promise-certified holistically-raised beef is also off the menu)
- dairy products, especially if unfermented
For more information on each of these, plus advice on transitioning away from an inflammatory diet, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Take care!
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The Truth About Vaccines
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The Truth About Vaccines
Yesterday we asked your views on vaccines, and we got an interesting spread of answers. Of those who responded to the poll, most were in favour of vaccines. We got quite a lot of comments this time too; we can’t feature them all, but we’ll include extracts from a few in our article today, as they raised interesting points!
Vaccines contain dangerous ingredients that will harm us more than the disease would: True or False?
False, contextually.
Many people are very understandably wary of things they know full well to be toxic, being injected into them.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are poison, and/or are some manner of conspiracy ” wrote:
❝I think vaccines from 50–60 years ago are true vaccines and were safer than vaccines today. I have not had a vaccine for many, many years, and I never plan to have any kind of vaccine/shot again.❞
They didn’t say why they personally felt this way, but the notion that “things were simpler back in the day” is a common (and often correct!) observation regards health, especially when it comes to unwanted additives and ultraprocessing of food.
Things like aluminum or mercury in vaccines are much like sodium and chlorine in table salt. Sodium and chlorine are indeed both toxic to us. But in the form of sodium chloride, it’s a normal part of our diet, provided we don’t overdo it.
Additionally, the amount of unwanted metals (e.g. aluminum, mercury) in vaccines is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount in dietary sources—even if you’re a baby and your “dietary sources” are breast milk and/or formula milk.
In the case of formaldehyde (an inactivating agent), it’s also the dose that makes the poison (and the quantity in vaccines is truly miniscule).
This academic paper alone cites more sources than we could here without making today’s newsletter longer than it already is:
Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation
I have a perfectly good immune system, it can handle the disease: True or False?
True! Contingently.
In fact, our immune system is so good at defending against disease, that the best thing we can do to protect ourselves is show our immune system a dead or deactivated version of a pathogen, so that when the real pathogen comes along, our immune system knows exactly what it is and what to do about it.
In other words, a vaccine.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are important but in some cases the side effects can be worse ” wrote:
❝In some ways I’m vacd out. I got COVid a few months ago and had no symptoms except a cough. I have asthma and it didn’t trigger a lot of congestion. No issues. I am fully vaccinated but not sure I’ll get one in fall.❞
We’re glad this subscriber didn’t get too ill! A testimony to their robust immune system doing what it’s supposed to, after being shown a recent-ish edition of the pathogen, in deactivated form.
It’s very reasonable to start wondering: “surely I’m vaccinated enough by now”
And, hopefully, you are! But, as any given pathogen mutates over time, we eventually need to show our immune system what the new version looks like, or else it won’t recognize it.
See also: Why Experts Think You’ll Need a COVID-19 Booster Shot in the Future
So why don’t we need booster shots for everything? Often, it’s because a pathogen has stopped mutating at any meaningful rate. Polio is an example of this—no booster is needed for most people in most places.
Others, like flu, require annual boosters to keep up with the pathogens.
Herd immunity will keep us safe: True or False?
True! Ish.
But it doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. For example, in the UK, “herd immunity” was the strategy promoted by Prime Minister of the hour, Boris Johnson. But he misunderstood what it meant:
- What he thought it meant: everyone gets the disease, then everyone who doesn’t die is now immune
- What it actually means: if most people are immune to the disease (for example: due to having been vaccinated), it can’t easily get to the people who aren’t immune
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are critical for our health; vax to the max! ” wrote:
❝I had a chiropractor a few years ago, who explained to me that if the general public took vaccines, then she would not have to vaccinate her children and take a risk of having side effects❞
Obviously, we can’t speak for this subscriber’s chiropractor’s children, but this raises a good example: some people can’t safely have a given vaccine, due to underlying medical conditions—or perhaps it is not available to them, for example if they are under a certain age.
In such cases, herd immunity—other people around having been vaccinated and thus not passing on the disease—is what will keep them safe.
Here’s a useful guide from the US Dept of Health and Human Services:
How does community immunity (a.k.a. herd immunity) work?
And, for those who are more visually inclined, here’s a graphical representation of a mathematical model of how herd immunity works (you can run a simulation)!
Stay safe!
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Altered Traits – by Dr. Daniel Goleman & Dr. Richard Davidson
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We know that meditation helps people to relax, but what more than that?This book explores the available science.
We say “explore the available science”, but it’d be remiss of us not to note that the authors have also expanded the available science, conducting research in their own lab.
From stress tests and EEGs to attention tests and fMRIs, this book looks at the hard science of what different kinds of meditation do to the brain. Not just in terms of brain state, either, but gradual cumulative anatomical changes, too. Powerful stuff!
The style is very pop-science in presentation, easily comprehensible to all. Be aware though that this is an “if this, then that” book of science, not a how-to manual. If you want to learn to meditate, this isn’t the book for that.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand more about how different kinds of meditation affect the brain differently, this is the book for you.
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Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers – by Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky
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The book does kick off with a section that didn’t age well—he talks of the stress induced globally by the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, and how that kind of thing just doesn’t happen any more. Today, we have much less existentially dangerous stressors!
However, the fact we went and had another pandemic really only adds weight to the general arguments of the book, rather than detracting.
We are consistently beset by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Shakespeare would put it, and there’s a reason (or twenty) why many people go grocery-shopping with the cortisol levels of someone being hunted for sport.
So, why don’t zebras get ulcers, as they actually are hunted for food?
They don’t have rent to pay or a mortgage, they don’t have taxes, or traffic, or a broken washing machine, or a project due in the morning. Their problems come one at a time. They have a useful stress response to a stressful situation (say, being chased by lions), and when the danger is over, they go back to grazing. They have time to recover.
For us, we are (usually) not being chased by lions. But we have everything else, constantly, around the clock. So, how to fix that?
Dr. Sapolsky comprehensively describes our physiological responses to stress in quite different terms than many. By reframing stress responses as part of the homeostatic system—trying to get the body back into balance—we find a solution, or rather: ways to help our bodies recover.
The style is “pop-science” and is very accessible for the lay reader while still clearly coming from a top-level academic who is neck-deep in neuroendocrinological research. Best of both worlds!
Bottom line: if you try to take very day at a time, but sometimes several days gang up on you at once, and you’d like to learn more about what happens inside you as a result and how to fix that, this book is for you!
Click here to check out “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” and give yourself a break!
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5 Ways To Beat Afternoon Energy Slumps
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This is Nisha Vora, of Rainbow Plant Life fame. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she realized she hated being a lawyer, and pivoted completely to become what she now is 12 years later, a chef and health coach.
Here are her tips for boosting energy through the day:
Caffeine timing
If you don’t do caffeine at all, no need to change that, but if you do, Vora advises that midday is the best time for it, with a very good rationale:
- of course it should not be too late in the day, because the elimination half-life of caffeine (4–8 hours to eliminate just half of the caffeine, depending on genes, call it 6 hours as an average though honestly for most people it will either be 4 or 8, not 6) is such that it can easily interfere with sleep for most people
- because caffeine is an adenosine blocker, not an adenosine inhibitor, taking caffeine in the morning means either there’s no adenosine to block, or it’ll just “save” that adenosine for later, i.e. when the caffeine is eliminated, then the adenosine will kick in, meaning that your morning sleepiness has now been deferred to the afternoon, rather than eliminated.
Another reminder that caffeine is the “payday loan” of energy. So, midday it is. No morning sleepiness to defer, and yet also not so late as to interfere with sleep.
See also: Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep
Simplify what can be simplified
This one’s not from a physiological basis, but rather, that a lot of the time most of us have much of our energy being taken by constant task-switching (what gets called multitasking, but as our brain is a single processor, it really means switching rapidly between different kinds of cognition, which is not efficient). In order to avoid that energy drain, try to streamline things and make a particular effort to not only single-task, but to do so without distractions.
Counterpoint: if you have unmedicated ADHD, then chances are you’ll do better with a single small distraction chosen by you, than trying to go without distractions, because your brain will find distractions anyway, so you might as well choose one (for many people it is background music, or a podcast or TV show that one doesn’t may attention to but it’s there) as a matter of harm reduction, and that way you’ll do better at focusing on your primary task than if your brain were reaching out for every and any possible distraction.
Manage your blood sugars
In particular, she advocates for avoiding sugary breakfasts, opting instead for protein, fat, and fiber-rich options. For more in this regard, see:
10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars
Walk after meals
You don’t have to don hiking boots and “I am just going outside and may be some time“; rather, even a 2–5 minute walk after a meal helps regulate digestion and glucose levels, avoiding postprandial energy slumps.
So,
- if you have a treadmill, after eating is a great time to use it for a few minutes
- if you have stairs, now’s a great time to go up and down them a few times
One last technique for when everything else fails
We’ll quote her directly on this one:
❝Despite my best efforts, soemtimes I just have one of those days. Maybe I didn’t sleep well or I’m distracted by my never ending thoughts. If I need to be productive or energized on those days, I will do something that I absolutely hate:
I will take a cold shower.
And I hate it because I’m already always cold all the time, so why would I want to get a cold shower?
Well, it’s because cold water immersion has been shown to dramatically boost your dopamine levels, which gives you more energy and motivation.
In the moment though, it’s mostly painful and I hate everything and everyone around me.
But I know that if I can suffer through two minutes of a cold shower, I will feel so refreshed.❞
There are more benefits than just that, though, see:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?
Want more from Nisha Vora?
We reviewed one of her books a while back:
The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook – by Nisha Vora
Enjoy!
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3 Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic
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Dr. Annette Bosworth gives her recommendations, and explains why:
What and how
We’ll get straight to it; the recommendations are:
- Coffee, black, unsweetened: not only suppresses the appetite but also boosts the metabolism, increasing fat burn.
- Salt: especially for when fasting (as under such circumstances we may lose salts without replenishing them), a small taste of this can help satisfy taste buds while replenishing sodium and—depending on the salt—other minerals. For example, if you buy “low-sodium salt” in the supermarket, this is generally sodium chloride cut with potassium chloride and/or occasionally magnesium sulfate.
- Ketones (MCT oil): ketones can suppress hunger, particularly when fasting causes blood sugar levels to drop. Supplementing with MCT oil promotes ketone production in the liver, training the body to produce more ketones naturally, thus curbing appetite.
For more on these including the science of them, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Ozempic vs Five Natural Supplements
- Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety
- The Fruit That Can Specifically Reduce Belly Fat
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
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