Falling: Is It Due To Age Or Health Issues?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
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 😎
❝What are the signs that a senior is falling due to health issues rather than just aging?❞
Superficial answer: having an ear infection can result in a loss of balance, and is not particularly tied to age as a risk factor
More useful answer: first, let’s consider these two true statements:
- The risks of falling (both the probability and the severity of consequences) increase with age
- Health issues (in general) tend to increase with age
With this in mind, it’s difficult to disconnect the two, as neither exist in a vacuum, and each is strongly associated with the other.
So the question is easier to answer by first flipping it, to ask:
❝What are the health issues that typically increase with age, that increase the chances of falling?❞
A non-exhaustive list includes:
- Loss of strength due to sarcopenia (reduced muscle mass)
- Loss of mobility due to increased stiffness (many causes, most of which worsen with age)
- Loss of risk-awareness due to diminished senses (for example, not seeing an obstacle until too late)
- Loss of risk-awareness due to reduced mental focus (cognitive decline producing absent-mindedness)
Note that in the last example there, and to a lesser extent the third one, reminds us that falls also often do not happen in a vacuum. There is (despite how it may sometimes feel!) no actual change in our physical relationship with gravity as we get older; most falls are about falling over things, even if it’s just one’s own feet:
The 4 Bad Habits That Cause The Most Falls While Walking
Disclaimer: sometimes a person may just fall down for no external reason. An example of why this may happen is if a person’s joint (for example an ankle or a knee) has a particular weakness that means it’ll occasionally just buckle and collapse under one’s own weight. This doesn’t even have to be a lot of weight! The weakness could be due to an old injury, or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (with its characteristic joint hypermobility symptoms), or something else entirely.
Now, notice how:
- all of these things can happen at any age
- all of these things are more likely to happen the older we get
- none of these things have to happen at any age
That last one’s important to remember! Aging is often viewed as an implacable Behemoth, but the truth is that it is many-faceted and every single one of those facets can be countered, to a greater or lesser degree.
Think of a room full of 80-year-olds, and now imagine that…
- One has the hearing of a 20-year-old
- One has the eyesight of a 20-year-old
- One has the sharp quick mind of a 20-year-old
- One has the cardiovascular fitness of a 20-year-old
…etc. Now, none of those things in isolation is unthinkable, so remember, there is no magic law of the universe saying we can’t have each of them:
Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
Which means: that goes for the things that increase the risk of falling, too. In other words, we can combat sarcopenia with protein and resistance training, maintain our mobility, look after our sensory organs as best we can, nourish our brain and keep it sharp, etc etc etc:
Train For The Event Of Your Life! (Mobility As A Long-Term “Athletic” Goal For Personal Safety)
Which doesn’t mean: that we will necessarily succeed in all areas. Your writer here, broadly in excellent health, and whose lower body is still a veritable powerhouse in athletic terms, has a right ankle and left knee that will sometimes just buckle (yay, the aforementioned hypermobility).
So, it becomes a priority to pre-empt the consequences of that, for example:
- being able to fall with minimal impact (this is a matter of knowing how, and can be learned from “soft” martial arts such as aikido), and
- ensuring the skeleton can take a knock if necessary (keeping a good balance of vitamins, minerals, protein, etc; keeping an eye on bone density).
See also:
Fall Special ← appropriate for the coming season, but it’s about avoiding falling, and reducing the damage of falling if one does fall, including some exercises to try at home.
Take care!
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A Planet of Viruses – by Carl Zimmer
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We’ve reviewed numerous books on the immune system before, and this one’s mostly not about that.
Instead, this one focuses on the viruses themselves, and the part they play in our world, for good and for ill. Popular awareness tends to focus on the ill, of course.
But, there’s a lot that viruses do for us too, including:
- Weak/harmless viruses that keep our immune systems on their toes and ready
- Bacteriophage viruses that kill and consume pathogens that, left unchecked, would do the same to us
- Endogenous retroviruses that have become symbiotic with the human organism, without which our species would quickly go extinct
He also talks about biological warfare, and how we cannot bury our heads in the sand by avoiding research on those grounds, because someone will always do it anyway, so (as the motto of the immune system itself might say), best to be prepared.
The author is a science journalist, by the way, and has no PhD, but does have a flock of Fellowships and assorted scientific awards and honors, so he appears to be doing good work so far as the scientific community is concerned.
Bottom line: if you’d like to know more about viruses than “they’re very small and can cause harm”, then this book will open a whole new world.
Click here to check out A Planet of Viruses, and upgrade your knowledge!
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9 Reasons To Avoid Mobility Training
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Why might someone not want to do mobility training? Here are some important reasons:
Make an informed choice
Here’s Liv’s hit-list of reasons to skip mobility training:
- Poor Circulation: Avoid mobility training if you don’t want to improve or maintain good blood circulation, which aids muscle recovery and reduces soreness.
- Low Energy Levels: Mobility training increases oxygen flow to the brain and muscles, boosting energy. Skip it if you prefer feeling sluggish!
- Digestive Health: Stretches that rotate the torso aid digestion and relieve bloating. Definitely best to avoid it if you’re uninterested in improving digestive health.
- Joint Health: Mobility work stimulates synovial fluid production, reducing joint friction and promoting longevity. You can skip it if you don’t care about comfortable movement.
- Sleep Quality: Gentle stretching triggers relaxation, aiding restful sleep. Avoid it if you enjoy restless nights!
- Pain Tolerance: Stretching trains the nervous system to handle discomfort better. Skip it if you prefer suffering 🙂
- Headache Reduction: Mobility work relieves tension in the neck and shoulders, reducing the occurrence and severity of headaches. No need to do it if you’re fine with frequent headaches.
- Immune System Support: Mobility training boosts lymphatic circulation, aiding the immune system. Avoid it if you prefer your immune system to get exciting in a bad way.
- Stress Reduction: Mobility exercises release endorphins and lower cortisol levels, reducing stress. So, it is certainly best to skip it if you prefer feeling stressed and enjoy the many harmful symptoms of high cortisol levels!
For more on all of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Mobility As Though A Sporting Pursuit: Train For The Event Of Your Life!
Take care!
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Heavy Metal Detox In A Pill?
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.
We have previous discussed assorted approaches to “detoxing”:
Detox: What’s Real, What’s Not, What’s Useful, What’s Dangerous?
Today we’re going to be looking at one we didn’t cover there, which is zeolite.
What is zeolite?
Zeolite is a mineral that occurs naturally and can also be synthesized, and it’s famous for absorbing other stuff from around it. Because of this property, it’s used in many things, including:
- Petrochemical catalysis
- Water treatment
- Nuclear waste reprocessing
- Cat litter
- Supplements (for detox purposes)
That’s, uh… An interesting list, isn’t it? So, we were curious as to whether this mineral that’s also used in fish tank filters is, in fact, overpriced gravel being sold to the gullible as a health supplement.
We had to do some digging on this one
Our journey didn’t start well, with this very dubious-looking paper being cited by a company selling zeolite supplements:
This immediately prompted two questions:
- Who is eating graphene?!* That stuff does not occur in nature (or at least; it hasn’t ever been found; the universe is a big place so it might exist elsewhere), has only relatively recently been synthesized, is very difficult to produce, is two-dimensional while being hard as diamonds, and exists only in truly tiny lab-made quantities worldwide. It would be orders of magnitude easier to find and eat uranium.
- Is this a reputable journal? Which question was easier to answer than the former one, and the answer is “no”; we hadn’t heard of this journal (ACTA Scientific), and neither it seems had most of the Internet, but we did find it on a list of predatory journals, here.
*The citation given in the above paper should by rights answer the question of who is eating graphene, since by rights they must have demonstrated it somehow, but it just doesn’t. Instead, it links to what it claims is a paper titled “Oxygenated Zeolite (Clinoptilite) Efficiently Removes Aluminum & Graphene Oxide”, but is in reality just someone’s blog post with a screenshot of an actual paper entitled “Novel, oxygenated clinoptilolite material efficiently removes aluminium from aluminium chloride-intoxicated rats in vivo”). Looking up this real paper in its real journal, it does not mention graphene.
All this to say: sometimes, unscrupulous people will just plain lie to you, which is why peer review is important, as is sourcing data from reputable journals. Which is what we do for you so that you don’t have to 🙂
It does, actually, work though (for heavy metal detox)
Notwithstanding the aforementioned bunk, we found this from a more reputable publisher:
❝In this study, we have presented clinical evidence supporting the use of an activated clinoptilolite (zeolite) suspension to safely and effectively increase the urinary excretion of potentially toxic heavy metals in healthy volunteers without negatively impacting the electrolyte profiles of the participants.
Significant increases in the urinary excretion of aluminum, antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, lead, mercury, nickel and tin were observed in the subjects participating in the two study groups as compared to placebo controls.❞
Also good for the gut and against inflammation
Specifically, it’s good for gut barrier integrity, i.e., against “leaky gut syndrome”:
❝Twelve weeks of zeolite supplementation exerted beneficial effects on intestinal wall integrity as indicated via decreased concentrations of the tight junction modulator zonulin.
This was accompanied by mild anti-inflammatory effects in this cohort of aerobically trained subjects.❞
May also be good against neurodegenerative diseases
If it is (which is plausible), it’ll probably because of removing heavy metals and improving gut barrier integrity—in other words, the things we just looked at in the two reputable peer-reviewed studies we examined above.
But the science is young for this one; here’s the current state of things:
Zeolite and Neurodegenerative Diseases
Is it safe?
Safety reviews have found it to be safe, for example:
Critical Review on Zeolite Clinoptilolite Safety and Medical Applications in vivo
However, if you are taking regular medications, we recommend checking with your pharmacist or doctor to ensure that zeolite will not also remove those medications from your system!
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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Master Your Core – by Dr. Bohdanna Zazulak
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.
In the category of “washboard abs”, this one isn’t particularly interested in how much or how little fat you have. What it’s more interested in is a strong, resilient, and stable core. Including your abs yes, but also glutes, hips, and back.
Nor is the focus on superhuman feats of strength, though certainly one could use these exercises to work towards that. Rather, here we see importance placed on functional performance, mobility, and stability.
Lest mobility and stability seem at odds with each other, understand:
- By mobility we mean the range of movement we are able to accomplish.
- By stability, we mean that any movement we make is intentional, and not because we lost our balance.
Functional performance, meanwhile, is a function of those two things, plus strength.
How does the book deliver on this?
There are exercises to do. Exercises of the athletic kind you might expect, and also exercises including breathing exercises, which gets quite a bit of attention too. Not just “do abdominal breathing”, but quite an in-depth examination of such. There are also habits to form, and lifestyle tweaks to make.
Of course, you don’t have to do all the things she suggests. The more you do, the better results you are likely to get, but if you adopt even some of the practices she recommends, you’re likely to see some benefits. And, perhaps most importantly, reduce age-related loss of mobility, stability, and strength.
Bottom line: a great all-rounder book of core strength, mobility, and stability.
Click here to check out Master Your Core and enjoy the more robust health that comes with it!
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Food Expiration Dates Don’t Mean What Most People Think They Mean
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Have you ever wondered why rock salt that formed during the Precambrian era has a label on it saying that it expires next month? To take something more delicate, how about eggs that expire next Thursday; isn’t that oddly specific for something that is surely affected by many variables? What matters, and what doesn’t?
Covering their assets
The US in particular wastes huge amounts of food, with 37% of food waste coming from households. Confusion over date labels is a major contributor, accounting for 20% of household food waste. Many people misinterpret these labels, often discarding food that is still safe to eat—which is good for the companies selling the food, because then they get to sell you more.
Date labels were introduced in the 70s with the “open dating” system to indicate optimal freshness, not safety. These dates are often conservative, set by manufacturers to ensure food is consumed at its best quality and encourage repeat purchases. However, many foods remain safe well past their labeled dates, including shelf-stable items like pasta, rice, and canned goods, as well as frozen foods stored properly.
Some foods do pose safety risks, especially meat and dairy products, as well as many grain-based foods, all of which which can harbor harmful bacteria. Infant formula labels are strictly regulated for safety. However, most date labels are not linked to health risks, leading to unnecessary waste.
When it comes down to it, our senses of sight, smell, and taste are more reliable than dates on packaging. Some quick pointers and caveats:
- If it has changed color in some way that’s not associated with a healthily ripening fruit or vegetable, that’s probably bad
- If it is moldy, that’s probably bad (but the degree of badness varies from food to food; see the link beneath today’s video for more on that)
- If a container has developed droplets of water on the inside when it didn’t have those before, that’s probably bad (it means something is respiring, and is thus alive, that probably shouldn’t be)
- If it smells bad, that’s probably bad—however this is not a good safety test, because a bad smell may often mean you are inhaling mold spores, which are not good for your lungs.
- If it tastes different than that food usually does, that’s probably bad (especially if it became bitter, pungent, tangy, sour, or cheesy, and does nor normally taste that way).
Some places have trialled clearer labelling, for example a distinction between “expires” and merely “best before”, but public awareness about the distinction is low. Some places have trialled removing dates entirely, to oblige the consumer to use their own senses instead. This is good for the seller in a different way than household food waste is, because it means the seller will have less in-store waste (because they can still sell something that might previously have been labelled as expired).
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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How Healers Heal – by Dr. Shilpi Pradhan
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.
First note: the listed author here is in fact the compiler, with the authors being a collection of no fewer than 33 board-certified lifestyle medicine physicians. So, we’re not getting just a single person’s opinions/bias here!
But what is lifestyle medicine? This book holds the six pillars of lifestyle medicine to be:
- Nutrition
- Physical activity
- Stress management
- Restorative sleep
- Social connections
- Avoidance of risky substances
…and those things are what we read about throughout the book, both in highly educational mini-lecture form, and sometimes highly personal storytelling.
It’s not just a “do these things” book, though yes, there’s a large part of that. It also covers wide topics, from COVID to alopecia, burnout to grief, immune disorders to mysterious chest pains (and how such mysteries are unravelled, when taken seriously).
One of the greatest strengths of this book is that it’s very much “medicine, as it should be”, so that the reader knows how to recognize the difference.
Bottom line: this book doesn’t fit into a very neat category, but it’s a very worthwhile book to read, and one that could help inform a decision that changes the entire path of your life or that of a loved one.
Click here to check out How Healers Heal, and learn to recognize the healthcare you deserve!
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