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:

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  • Women don’t have a ‘surge’ in fertility before menopause – but surprise pregnancies can happen, even after 45

    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.

    Every now and then we see media reports about celebrities in their mid 40s having surprise pregnancies. Or you might hear stories like these from friends or relatives, or see them on TV.

    Menopause signals the end of a woman’s reproductive years and happens naturally between age 45 and 55 (the average is 51). After 12 months with no periods, a woman is considered postmenopausal.

    While the chance of pregnancy is very low in the years leading up to menopause – the so called menopausal transition or perimenopause – the chance is not zero.

    So, what do we know about the chance of conceiving naturally after age 45? And what are the risks?

    IKO-studio/Shutterstock

    Is there a spike in fertility before menopause?

    The hormonal changes that accompany perimenopause cause changes to the menstrual cycle pattern, and some have suggested there can be a “surge” in fertility at perimenopause. But there’s no evidence this exists.

    In the years leading up to menopause, a woman’s periods often become irregular, and she might have some of the common symptoms of menopause such as hot flushes and night sweats.

    This might lead women to think they have hit menopause and can’t get pregnant anymore. But while pregnancy in a woman in her mid 40s is significantly less likely compared to a woman in her 20s or 30s, it’s still possible.

    The stats for natural pregnancies after age 45

    Although women in their mid- to late 40s sometimes have “miracle babies”, the chance of pregnancy is minimal in the five to ten years leading up to menopause.

    The monthly chance of pregnancy in a woman aged 30 is about 20%. By age 40 it’s less than 5% and by age 45 the chance is negligible.

    We don’t know exactly how many women become pregnant in their mid to late 40s, as many pregnancies at this age miscarry. The risk of miscarriage increases from 10% in women in their 20s to more than 50% in women aged 45 years or older. Also, for personal or medical reasons some pregnancies are terminated.

    According to a review of demographic data on age when women had their final birth across several countries, the median age was 38.6 years. But the range of ages reported for last birth in the reviewed studies showed a small proportion of women give birth after age 45.

    Having had many children before seems to increase the odds of giving birth after age 45. A study of 209 women in Israel who had conceived spontaneously and given birth after age 45 found 81% had already had six or more deliveries and almost half had had 11 or more previous deliveries.

    A couple outdoors smiling. The woman is pregnant.
    Conceiving naturally at age 45 plus is not unheard of. pixelheadphoto digitalskillet/Shutterstock

    There’s no reliable data on how common births after age 45 are in Australia. The most recent report on births in Australia show that about 5% of babies are born to women aged 40 years or older.

    However, most of those were likely born to women aged between 40 and 45. Also, the data includes women who conceive with assisted reproductive technologies, including with the use of donor eggs. For women in their 40s, using eggs donated by a younger woman significantly increases their chance of having a baby with IVF.

    What to be aware of if you experience a late unexpected pregnancy

    A surprise pregnancy late in life often comes as a shock and deciding what to do can be difficult.

    Depending on their personal circumstances, some women decide to terminate the pregnancy. Contrary to the stereotype that abortions are most common among very young women, women aged 40–44 are more likely to have an abortion than women aged 15–19.

    This may in part be explained by the fact older women are up to ten times more likely to have a fetus with chromosomal abnormalities.

    There are some extra risks involved in pregnancy when the mother is older. More than half of pregnancies in women aged 45 and older end in miscarriage and some are terminated if prenatal testing shows the fetus has the wrong number of chromosomes.

    This is because at that age, most eggs have chromosomal abnormalities. For example, the risk of having a pregnancy affected by Down syndrome is one in 86 at age 40 compared to one in 1,250 at age 20.

    A woman in hospital holding a newborn baby.
    There are some added risks associated with pregnancy when the mother is older. Natalia Deriabina/Shutterstock

    Apart from the increased risk of chromosomal abnormalities, advanced maternal age also increases the risk of stillbirth, fetal growth restriction (when the unborn baby doesn’t grow properly), preterm birth, pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and caesarean section.

    However, it’s important to remember that since the overall risk of all these things is small, even with an increase, the risk is still small and most babies born to older mothers are born healthy.

    Multiple births are also more common in older women than in younger women. This is because older women are more likely to release more than one egg if and when they ovulate.

    A study of all births in England and Wales found women aged 45 and over were the most likely to have a multiple birth.

    The risks of babies being born prematurely and having health complications are higher in twin than singleton pregnancies, and the risks are highest in women of advanced maternal age.

    What if you want to become pregnant in your 40s?

    If you’re keen to avoid pregnancy during perimenopause, it’s recommended you use contraception.

    But if you want to get pregnant in your 40s, there are some things you can do to boost your chance of conceiving and having a healthy baby.

    These include preparing for pregnancy by seeing a GP for a preconception health check, taking folic acid and iodine supplements, not smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly and having a nutritious diet.

    If you get good news, talking to a doctor about what to expect and how to best manage a pregnancy in your 40s can help you be prepared and will allow you to get personalised advice based on your health and circumstances.

    Karin Hammarberg, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Total Recovery – by Dr. Gary Kaplan

    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, know: Dr. Kaplan is an osteopath, and as such, will be mostly approaching things from that angle. That said, he is also board certified in other things too, including family medicine, so he’s by no means a “one-trick pony”, nor are there “when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail” problems to be found here. Instead, the scope of the book is quite broad.

    Dr. Kaplan talks us through the diagnostic process that a doctor goes through when presented with a patient, what questions need to be asked and answered—and by this we mean the deeper technical questions, e.g. “what do these symptoms have in common”, and “what mechanism was at work when the pain become chronic”, not the very basic questions asked in the initial debriefing with the patient.

    He also asks such questions (and questions like these get chapters devoted to them) as “what if physical traumas build up”, and “what if physical and emotional pain influence each other”, and then examines how to interrupt the vicious cycles that lead to deterioration of one’s condition.

    The style of the book is very pop-science and often narrative in its presentation, giving lots of anecdotes to illustrate the principles. It’s a “sit down and read it cover-to-cover” book—or a chapter a day, whatever your preferred pace; the point is, it’s not a “dip directly to the part that answers your immediate question” book; it’s not a textbook or manual.

    Bottom line: a lot of this work is about prompting the reader to ask the right questions to get to where we need to be, but there are many illustrative possible conclusions and practical advices to be found and given too, making this a useful read if you and/or a loved one suffers from chronic pain.

    Click here to check out Total Recovery, and solve your own mysteries!

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  • The Burden of Getting Medical Care Can Exhaust Older Patients

    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.

    Susanne Gilliam, 67, was walking down her driveway to get the mail in January when she slipped and fell on a patch of black ice.

    Pain shot through her left knee and ankle. After summoning her husband on her phone, with difficulty she made it back to the house.

    And then began the run-around that so many people face when they interact with America’s uncoordinated health care system.

    Gilliam’s orthopedic surgeon, who managed previous difficulties with her left knee, saw her that afternoon but told her “I don’t do ankles.”

    He referred her to an ankle specialist who ordered a new set of X-rays and an MRI. For convenience’s sake, Gilliam asked to get the scans at a hospital near her home in Sudbury, Massachusetts. But the hospital didn’t have the doctor’s order when she called for an appointment. It came through only after several more calls.

    Coordinating the care she needs to recover, including physical therapy, became a part-time job for Gilliam. (Therapists work on only one body part per session, so she has needed separate visits for her knee and for her ankle several times a week.)

    “The burden of arranging everything I need — it’s huge,” Gilliam told me. “It leaves you with such a sense of mental and physical exhaustion.”

    The toll the American health care system extracts is, in some respects, the price of extraordinary progress in medicine. But it’s also evidence of the poor fit between older adults’ capacities and the health care system’s demands.

    “The good news is we know so much more and can do so much more for people with various conditions,” said Thomas H. Lee, chief medical officer at Press Ganey, a consulting firm that tracks patients’ experiences with health care. “The bad news is the system has gotten overwhelmingly complex.”

    That complexity is compounded by the proliferation of guidelines for separate medical conditions, financial incentives that reward more medical care, and specialization among clinicians, said Ishani Ganguli, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

    “It’s not uncommon for older patients to have three or more heart specialists who schedule regular appointments and tests,” she said. If someone has multiple medical problems — say, heart disease, diabetes, and glaucoma — interactions with the health care system multiply.

    Ganguli is the author of a new study showing that Medicare patients spend about three weeks a year having medical tests, visiting doctors, undergoing treatments or medical procedures, seeking care in emergency rooms, or spending time in the hospital or rehabilitation facilities. (The data is from 2019, before the covid pandemic disrupted care patterns. If any services were received, that counted as a day of health care contact.)

    That study found that slightly more than 1 in 10 seniors, including those recovering from or managing serious illnesses, spent a much larger portion of their lives getting care — at least 50 days a year.

    “Some of this may be very beneficial and valuable for people, and some of it may be less essential,” Ganguli said. “We don’t talk enough about what we’re asking older adults to do and whether that’s realistic.”

    Victor Montori, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has for many years raised an alarm about the “treatment burden” that patients experience. In addition to time spent receiving health care, this burden includes arranging appointments, finding transportation to medical visits, getting and taking medications, communicating with insurance companies, paying medical bills, monitoring health at home, and following recommendations such as dietary changes.

    Four years ago — in a paper titled “Is My Patient Overwhelmed?” — Montori and several colleagues found that 40% of patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and neurological disorders “considered their treatment burden unsustainable.”

    When this happens, people stop following medical advice and report having a poorer quality of life, the researchers found. Especially vulnerable are older adults with multiple medical conditions and low levels of education who are economically insecure and socially isolated.

    Older patients’ difficulties are compounded by medical practices’ increased use of digital phone systems and electronic patient portals — both frustrating for many seniors to navigate — and the time pressures afflicting physicians. “It’s harder and harder for patients to gain access to clinicians who can problem-solve with them and answer questions,” Montori said.

    Meanwhile, clinicians rarely ask patients about their capacity to perform the work they’re being asked to do. “We often have little sense of the complexity of our patients’ lives and even less insight into how the treatments we provide (to reach goal-directed guidelines) fit within the web of our patients’ daily experiences,” several physicians wrote in a 2022 paper on reducing treatment burden.

    Consider what Jean Hartnett, 53, of Omaha, Nebraska, and her eight siblings went through after their 88-year-old mother had a stroke in February 2021 while shopping at Walmart.

    At the time, the older woman was looking after Hartnett’s father, who had kidney disease and needed help with daily activities such as showering and going to the bathroom.

    During the year after the stroke, both of Hartnett’s parents — fiercely independent farmers who lived in Hubbard, Nebraska — suffered setbacks, and medical crises became common. When a physician changed her mom’s or dad’s plan of care, new medications, supplies, and medical equipment had to be procured, and new rounds of occupational, physical, and speech therapy arranged.

    Neither parent could be left alone if the other needed medical attention.

    “It wasn’t unusual for me to be bringing one parent home from the hospital or doctor’s visit and passing the ambulance or a family member on the highway taking the other one in,” Hartnett explained. “An incredible amount of coordination needed to happen.”

    Hartnett moved in with her parents during the last six weeks of her father’s life, after doctors decided he was too weak to undertake dialysis. He passed away in March 2022. Her mother died months later in July.

    So, what can older adults and family caregivers do to ease the burdens of health care?

    To start, be candid with your doctor if you think a treatment plan isn’t feasible and explain why you feel that way, said Elizabeth Rogers, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. 

    “Be sure to discuss your health priorities and trade-offs: what you might gain and what you might lose by forgoing certain tests or treatments,” she said. Ask which interventions are most important in terms of keeping you healthy, and which might be expendable.

    Doctors can adjust your treatment plan, discontinue medications that aren’t yielding significant benefits, and arrange virtual visits if you can manage the technological requirements. (Many older adults can’t.)

    Ask if a social worker or a patient navigator can help you arrange multiple appointments and tests on the same day to minimize the burden of going to and from medical centers. These professionals can also help you connect with community resources, such as transportation services, that might be of help. (Most medical centers have staff of this kind, but physician practices do not.)

    If you don’t understand how to do what your doctor wants you to do, ask questions: What will this involve on my part? How much time will this take? What kind of resources will I need to do this? And ask for written materials, such as self-management plans for asthma or diabetes, that can help you understand what’s expected.

    “I would ask a clinician, ‘If I chose this treatment option, what does that mean not only for my cancer or heart disease, but also for the time I’ll spend getting care?’” said Ganguli of Harvard. “If they don’t have an answer, ask if they can come up with an estimate.”

    We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit http://kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Elderhood – by Dr. Louise Aronson

    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.

    Where does “middle age” end, and “old age” begin? By the United States’ CDC’s categorization, human life involves:

    • 17 stages of childhood, deemed 0–18
    • 5 stages of adulthood, deemed 18–60
    • 1 stage of elderhood, deemed 60+

    Isn’t there something missing here? Do we just fall off some sort of conveyor belt on our sixtieth birthdays, into one big bucket marked “old”?

    Yesterday you were 59 and enjoying your middle age; today you have, apparently, the same medical factors and care needs as a 114-year-old.

    Dr. Louise Aronson, a geriatrician, notes however that medical science tends to underestimate the differences found in more advanced old age, and underresearch them. That elders consume half of a country’s medicines, but are not required to be included in clinical trials. That side effects not only are often different than for younger adults, but also can cause symptoms that are then dismissed as “Oh she’s just old”.

    She explores, mostly through personal career anecdotes, the well-intentioned disregard that is frequently given by the medical profession, and—importantly—how we might overcome that, as individuals and as a society.

    Bottom line: if you are over the age of 60, love someone over the age of 60, this is a book for you. Similarly if you and/or they plan to live past the age of 60, this is also a book for you.

    Click here to check out Elderhood, and empower yours!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Supergreen Superfood Salad Slaw

    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.

    When it comes to “eating the rainbow”, in principle green should be the easiest color to get in, unless we live in a serious food desert (or serious food poverty). In practice, however, a lot of meals could do with a dash more green. This “supergreen superfood salad slaw” is remarkably versatile, and can be enjoyed as a very worthy accompaniment to almost any main.

    You will need

    For the bits:

    • ½ small green cabbage, finely diced
    • 7 oz tenderstem broccoli, finely chopped
    • 2 stalks celery, finely chopped (if allergic, simply omit)
    • ½ cucumber, diced into small cubes
    • 2 oz kale, finely shredded
    • 4 green (spring) onions, thinly sliced

    For the dressing:

    • 1 cup cashews (if allergic, substitute 1 cup roasted chickpeas)
    • ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
    • 2 oz baby spinach
    • 1 oz basil leaves
    • 1 oz chives
    • ¼ bulb garlic
    • 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
    • 1 tbsp chia seeds
    • Juice of two limes

    Method

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

    1) Combine the ingredients from the “bits” category in a bowl large enough to accommodate them comfortably

    2) Blend the ingredients from the “dressing” category in a blender until very smooth (the crux here is you do not want any stringy bits of spinach remaining)

    3) Pour the dressing onto the bits, and mix well to combine. Refrigerate, ideally covered, until ready to serve.

    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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  • Lifespan – by Dr. David Sinclair

    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.

    Some books on longevity are science-heavy and heavy-going; others are glorified manifestos with much philosophy but little practical.

    This one’s a sciencey-book written for a lay reader. It’s heavily referenced, but not a challenging read.

    This book is divided into three parts:

    1. What we know (the past)
    2. What we’re learning (the present)
    3. Where we’re going (the future)

    Let us quickly mention: the last part is principally sociology and economics, which are not the author’s wheelhouse. Some readers may enjoy his thoughts regardless, but we’re going to concentrate on where we found the real value of the book to be: in the first and second parts, where he brings his expertise to bear.

    The first part lays the foundational knowledge that’s critical for understanding why the second part is so important.

    Basically: aging is a genetic disease, and diseases can be cured. No disease has magical properties, even if sometimes it can seem for a while like they do, until we understand them better.

    The second part covers a lot of recent and contemporary research into aging. We learn about such things as NAD-agonists that make elderly mice biologically young again, and the Greenland shark that easily lives for 500 years or so (currently the record-holder for vertebrates). And of course, biologically immortal jellyfish.

    It’s not all animal studies though…

    We learn of how NAD-agonists such as NMN have been promising in human studies too, along with resveratrol and the humble diabetes drug, metformin. These things alone may have the power to extend healthy life by 20%

    Other recommendations pertain to lifestyle; the usual five things (diet, exercise, sleep, no alcohol, no smoking), as well as intermittent fasting and cryotherapy (cold showers/baths).

    Bottom line: this book is informative and inspiring, and if you’ve been looking for an “in” to understanding the world of biogerontology and/or anti-aging research, this is it.

    Get your copy of “Lifespan: Why We Age—And Why We Don’t Have To” from Amazon today!

    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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