Anti-Aging Risotto With Mushrooms, White Beans, & Kale
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This risotto is made with millet, which as well as being gluten-free, is high in resistant starch that’s great for both our gut and our blood sugars. Add the longevity-inducing ergothioneine in the shiitake and portobello mushrooms, as well as the well-balanced mix of macro- and micronutrients, polyphenols such as lutein (important against neurodegeneration) not to mention more beneficial phytochemicals in the seasonings, and we have a very anti-aging dish!
You will need
- 3 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
- 3 cups chopped fresh kale, stems removed (put the removed stems in the freezer with the vegetable offcuts you keep for making low-sodium vegetable stock)
- 2 cups thinly sliced baby portobello mushrooms
- 1 cup thinly sliced shiitake mushroom caps
- 1 cup millet, as yet uncooked
- 1 can white beans, drained and rinsed (or 1 cup white beans, cooked, drained, and rinsed)
- ½ cup finely chopped red onion
- ½ bulb garlic, finely chopped
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp white miso paste
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat a little oil in a sauté or other pan suitable for both frying and volume-cooking. Fry the onion for about 5 minutes until soft, and then add the garlic, and cook for a further 1 minute, and then turn the heat down low.
2) Add about ¼ cup of the vegetable stock, and stir in the miso paste and MSG/salt.
3) Add the millet, followed by the rest of the vegetable stock. Cover and allow to simmer for 30 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed and the millet is tender.
4) Meanwhile, heat a little oil to a medium heat in a skillet, and cook the mushrooms (both kinds), until lightly browned and softened, which should only take a few minutes. Add the vinegar and gently toss to coat the mushrooms, before setting side.
5) Remove the millet from the heat when it is done, and gently stir in the mushrooms, nutritional yeast, white beans, and kale. Cover, and let stand for 10 minutes (this will be sufficient to steam the kale in situ).
6) Uncover and fluff the risotto with a fork, sprinkling in the black pepper as you do so.
7) Serve. For a bonus for your tastebuds and blood sugars, drizzle with aged balsamic vinegar.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- The Magic Of Mushrooms: The “Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
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Are You Taking PIMs?
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Getting Off The Overmedication Train
The older we get, the more likely we are to be on more medications. It’s easy to assume that this is because, much like the ailments they treat, we accumulate them over time. And superficially at least, that’s what happens.
And yet, almost half of people over 65 in Canada are taking “potentially inappropriate medications”, or PIMs—in other words, medications that are not needed and perhaps harmful. This categorization includes medications where the iatrogenic harms (side effects, risks) outweigh the benefits, and/or there’s a safer more effective medication available to do the job.
You may be wondering: what does this mean for the US?
Well, we don’t have the figures for the US because we’re working from Canadian research today, but given the differences between the two country’s healthcare systems (mostly socialized in Canada and mostly private in the US), it seems a fair hypothesis that if it’s almost half in Canada, it’s probably more than half in the US. Socialized healthcare systems are generally quite thrifty and seek to spend less on healthcare, while private healthcare systems are generally keen to upsell to new products/services.
The three top categories of PIMs according to the above study:
- Gabapentinoids (anticonvulsants also used to treat neuropathic pain)
- Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs)
- Antipsychotics (especially, to people without psychosis)
…but those are just the top of the list; there are many many more.
The list continues: opioids, anticholinergics, sulfonlyurea, NSAIDs, benzodiazepines and related rugs, and cholinesterase inhibitors. That’s where the Canadian study cuts off (although it also includes “others” just before NSAIDs), but still, you guessed it, there are more (we’re willing to bet statins weigh heavily in the “others” section, for a start).
There are two likely main causes of overmedication:
The side effect train
This is where a patient has a condition and is prescribed drug A, which has some undesired side effects, so the patient is prescribed drug B to treat those. However, that drug also has some unwanted side effects of its own, so the patient is prescribed drug C to treat those. And so on.
For a real-life rundown of how this can play out, check out the case study in:
The Hidden Complexities of Statins and Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)
The convenience factor
No, not convenient for you. Convenient for others. Convenient for the doctor if it gets you out of their office (socialized healthcare) or because it was easy to sell (private healthcare). Convenient for the staff in a hospital or other care facility.
This latter is what happens when, for example, a patient is being too much trouble, so the staff give them promazine “to help them settle down”, notwithstanding that promazine is, besides being a sedative, also an antipsychotic whose common side effects include amenorrhea, arrhythmias, constipation, drowsiness and dizziness, dry mouth, impotence, tiredness, galactorrhoea, gynecomastia, hyperglycemia, insomnia, hypotension, seizures, tremor, vomiting and weight gain.
This kind of thing (and worse) happens more often towards the end of a patient’s life; indeed, sometimes precipitating that end, whether you want it or not:
Mortality, Palliative Care, & Euthanasia
How to avoid it
Good practice is to be “open-mindedly skeptical” about any medication. By this we mean, don’t reject it out of hand, but do ask questions about it.
Ask your prescriber not only what it’s for and what it’ll do, but also what the side effects and risks are, and an important question that many people don’t think to ask, and for which doctors thus don’t often have a well-prepared smooth-selling reply, “what will happen if I don’t take this?”
And look up unbiased neutral information about it, from reliable sources (Drugs.com and The BNF are good reference guides for this—and if it’s important to you, check both, in case of any disagreement, as they function under completely different regulatory bodies, the former being American and the latter being British. So if they both agree, it’s surely accurate, according to best current science).
Also: when you are on a medication, keep a journal of your symptoms, as well as a log of your vitals (heart rate, blood pressure, weight, sleep etc) so you know what the medication seems to be helping or harming, and be sure to have a regular meds review with your doctor to check everything’s still right for you. And don’t be afraid to seek a second opinion if you still have doubts.
Want to know more?
For a more in-depth exploration than we have room for here, check out this book that we reviewed not long back:
To Medicate or Not? That is the Question! – by Dr. Asha Bohannon
Take care!
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When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)
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When knowing what to do isn’t the problem
Often, we know what we need to do. Sometimes, knowing isn’t the problem!
The topic today is going to be a technique used by therapeutic service providers to help people to enact positive changes in their lives.
While this is a necessarily dialectic practice (i.e., it involves a back-and-forth dialogue), it’s still perfectly possible to do it alone, and that’s what we’ll be focussing on in this main feature.
What is Motivational Interviewing?
❝Motivational interviewing (MI) is a technique that has been specifically developed to help motivate ambivalent patients to change their behavior.❞
Read in full: Motivational Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Approach for Use in Medical Practice
It’s mostly used for such things as helping people reduce or eliminate substance abuse, or manage their weight, or exercise more, things like that.
However, it can be employed for any endeavour that requires motivation and sustained willpower to carry it through.
Three Phases
Motivational Interviewing traditionally has three phases:
- Exploring and understanding the issue at hand
- Guiding and deciding importance and goals
- Choosing and setting an action plan
In self-practice, maybe you can already know and understand what it is that you want/need to change.
If not, consider asking yourself such questions as:
- What does a good day look like? What does a bad day look like?
- If things are not good now, when were they good? What changed?
- If everything were perfect now, what would that look like? How would you know?
Once you have a clear idea of where you want to be, the next thing to know is: how much do you want it? And how confident are you in attaining it?
This is a critical process:
- Give your answers numerically on a scale from 0 to 10
- Whatever your score, ask yourself why it’s not lower. For example, if you scored your motivation 4 and your confidence 2, what factors made your motivation not a lower number? What factors made your confidence not a lower number?
- In the unlikely event that you gave yourself a 0, ask whether you can really afford to scrap the goal. If you can’t, find something, anything, to bring it to at least a 1.
- After you’ve done that, then you can ask yourself the more obvious question of why your numbers aren’t higher. This will help you identify barriers to overcome.
Now you’re ready to choose what to focus on and how to do it. Don’t bite off more than you can chew; it’s fine to start low and work up. You should revisit this regularly, just like you would if you had a counsellor helping you.
Some things to ask yourself at this stage of the motivational self-interviewing:
- What’s a good SMART goal to get you started?
- What could stop you from achieving your goal?
- How could you overcome that challenge?
- What is your backup plan, if you have to scale back your goal for some reason?
A conceptual example: if your goal is to stick to a whole foods Mediterranean diet, but you are attending a wedding next week, then now is the time to decide in advance 1) what personal lines-in-the-sand you will or will not draw 2) what secondary, backup plan you will make to not go too far off track.
The same example in practice: wedding menus often offer meat/fish/vegetarian options, so you might choose the fish or vegetarian, and as for sugar and alcohol, you might limit yourself to “a small slice of wedding cake only; coffee/cheese option instead of dessert”, and “alcohol only for toasts”.
Giving yourself the permission well in advance for small (clearly defined and boundaried!) diversions from the plan, will stop you from falling into the trap of “well, since today’s a cheat-day now…”
Secret fourth stage
The secret here is to keep going back and reassessing at regular intervals. Set your own calendar; you might want to start out weekly and then move to monthly when you’re more strongly on-track.
For this reason, it’s good to keep a journal with your notes from your self-interview sessions, the scores you gave yourself, the goals and plans you set, etc.
When conducting your regular review, be sure to examine what worked for you, and what didn’t (and why). That way, you can practice trial-and-improvement as you go.
Want to learn more?
We only have so much room here, but there are lots of resources out there.
Here’s a high-quality page that:
- explains motivational interviewing in more depth than we have room for here
- offers a lot of free downloadable resource packs and the like
Check it out: Motivational Interviewing Theory & Resources
Enjoy!
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These Signs Often Mean These Nutrient Deficiencies (Do You Have Any?)
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These are not a necessary “if this then this” equation, but rather a “if this, then probably this”, and it’s a cue to try upping that thing in your diet, and if that doesn’t quickly fix it, get some tests done:
- White bumps on the skin: vitamin A, omega 3
- Craving sour foods: vitamin C
- Restless leg syndrome: iron, magnesium
- Cracked lips: vitamin B2
- Tingling hands and feet: vitamin B12
- Easy bruising: vitamin K and vitamin C
- Canker sores: vitamin B9 (folate), vitamin B12, iron
- Brittle or misshapen nails: vitamin B7 (biotin)
- Craving salty foods: sodium, potassium
- Prematurely gray hair: copper, vitamin B9 (folate), vitamin B12
- Dandruff: omega 3, zinc, vitamin B6
- Craving ice: iron
Dr. LeGrand Peterson has more to say about these though, as well as a visual guide to symptoms, so do check out the video:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to know more?
You might like this previous main feature about supplements vs nutrients from food
Do We Need Supplements, And Do They Work?
Enjoy!
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Kidney Beans vs White Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing kidney beans to white beans, we picked the white.
Why?
It was close, and each has its strengths! Bear in mind, these are very closely-related beans. But as we say, there are distinguishing factors…
In terms of macros, kidney beans have very slightly more fiber and white beans have very slightly more protein. But both are close enough in both of those things to call this a tie in this category.
When it comes to vitamins, there are two ways of looking at this:
- kidney beans have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, and K, while white beans have more vitamin B5, E, and choline
- kidney beans have slightly more of some vitamins that don’t usually see a deficiency, while white beans have 31x more vitamin E
Nevertheless, we’re sticking by our usual method of noting that this is a 7:3 win for kidney beans in this category; we just wanted to note that in practical health terms, an argument can be made for white beans on the vitamin front too.
In the category of minerals, kidney beans have slightly more phosphorus, while white beans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, selenium, and zinc. An easy win for white beans this time.
(In case you’re wondering about the margin on phosphorus, it was 0.2x more, so we’re not seeing a situation like white beans’ 31x more vitamin E)
In short: both are great and both have their strengths. Enjoy both, together if you like! But if we have to pick one, we’re going with white beans.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
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Don’t Forget…
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When Your Brain’s “Get-Up-And-Go” Has Got Up And Gone…
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Sometimes, there are days when the body feels heavy, the brain feels sluggish, and even the smallest tasks feel Herculean.
When these days stack up, this is usually a sign of depression, and needs attention. Unfortunately, when one is in such a state, taking action about it is almost impossible.
Almost, but not quite, as we wrote about previously:
The Mental Health First-Aid You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← this is about as close to true mental health bootstrapping as actually works
Today though, we’re going to assume it’s just an off-day or such. So, what to do about it?
Try turning it off and on again
Sometimes, a reboot is all that’s needed, and if napping is an option, it’s worth considering. However, if you don’t do it right, you can end up groggy and worse off than before, so do check out:
How To Be An Expert Nap-Artist (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
If your exhaustion is nevertheless accompanied by stresses that are keeping you from resting, then there’s another “turn it off and on again” process for that:
Fuel in the tank
Our brain is an energy-intensive organ, and cannot run on empty for long. Thus, lacking energy can sometimes simply be a matter of needing to supply some energy. Simple, no? Except, a lot of energy-giving foods can cause a paradoxical slump in energy, so here’s how to avoid that:
Eating For Energy (In Ways That Actually Work)
There are occasions when exhausted, when preparing food seems like too much work. If you’re not in a position to have someone else do it for you, how can you get “most for least” in terms of nutrition for effort?
Many of the above-linked items can help (a bowl of nuts and/or dried fruit is probably not going to break the energy-bank, for instance), but beyond that, there are other considerations too:
How To Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue (While Chronically Fatigued) ← as the title tells, this is about chronic fatigue, but the advice therein definitely goes for acute fatigue also.
The lights aren’t on
Sometimes it may be that your body is actually fine, but your brain is working in a clunky fashion at best. Assuming there is no more drastic underlying cause for this, a lack of motivation is often as simple as a lack of appropriate dopamine response. When that’s the case…
Lacking Motivation? Science Has The Answer
If, instead, the issue is more serotonin-based than dopamine based, then green places with blue skies are ideal. Depending on geography and season, those things may be in short supply, but the brain is easily tricked with artificial plants and artificial sunlight. Is it as good as a walk in the park on a pleasant summer morning? Probably not, but it’s many times better than nothing, so get those juices flowing:
Neurotransmitter Cheatsheet ← four for the price of one, here!
Schedule time for rest, or your body/brain will schedule it for you
There’s a saying in the field of engineering that “if you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you”, and the same is true of our body/brain. If you’re struggling to get good quantity, here’s how to at least get good quality:
How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)
And, importantly,
7 Kinds Of Rest When Sleep Is Not Enough
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
What You Don’t Know Can Kill You
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Knowledge Is Power!
This is Dr. Simran Malhotra. She’s triple board-certified (in lifestyle medicine, internal medicine, and palliative care), and is also a health and wellness coach.
What does she want us to know?
Three things:
Wellness starts with your mindset
Dr. Malhotra shifted her priorities a lot during the initial and perhaps most chaotic phase of the COVID pandemic:
❝My husband, a critical care physician, was consumed in the trenches of caring for COVID patients in the ICU. I found myself knee-deep in virtual meetings with families whose loved ones were dying of severe COVID-related illnesses. Between the two of us, we saw more trauma, suffering, and death, than we could have imagined.
The COVID-19 pandemic opened my eyes to how quickly life can change our plans and reinforced the importance of being mindful of each day. Harnessing the power to make informed decisions is important, but perhaps even more important is focusing on what is in our control and taking action, even if it is the tiniest step in the direction we want to go!❞
~ Dr. Simran Malhotra
We can only make informed decisions if we have good information. That’s one of the reasons we try to share as much information as we can each day at 10almonds! But a lot will always depend on personalized information.
There are one-off (and sometimes potentially life-saving) things like health genomics:
The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing
…but also smaller things that are informative on an ongoing basis, such as keeping track of your weight, your blood pressure, your hormones, and other metrics. You can even get fancy:
Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health
Lifestyle is medicine
It’s often said that “food is medicine”. But also, movement is medicine. Sleep is medicine. In short, your lifestyle is the most powerful medicine that has ever existed.
Lifestyle encompasses very many things, but fortunately, there’s an “80:20 rule” in play that simplifies it a lot because if you take care of the top few things, the rest will tend to look after themselves:
These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Overall Health
Gratitude is better than fear
If we receive an unfavorable diagnosis (and let’s face it, most diagnoses are unfavorable), it might not seem like something to be grateful for.
But it is, insofar as it allows us to then take action! The information itself is what gives us our best chance of staying safe. And if that’s not possible e.g. in the worst case scenario, a terminal diagnosis, (bearing in mind that one of Dr. Malhotra’s three board certifications is in palliative care, so she sees this a lot), it at least gives us the information that allows us to make the best use of whatever remains to us.
See also: Managing Your Mortality
Which is very important!
…and/but possibly not the cheeriest note on which to end, so when you’ve read that, let’s finish today’s main feature on a happier kind of gratitude:
How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
Want to hear more from Dr. Malhotra?
Showing how serious she is about how our genes do not determine our destiny and knowledge is power, here she talks about her “previvor’s journey”, as she puts it, with regard to why she decided to have preventative cancer surgery in light of discovering her BRCA1 genetic mutation:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically
Take care!
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
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
