
Blueberry & Banana Collagen Baked Oats
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Good news for vegans/vegetarians! While we include an optional tablespoon of collagen powder in this recipe, the whole recipe is already geared around collagen synthesis, so it’s very collagen-boosting even with just the plants, providing collagen’s building blocks of protein, zinc, and vitamins C and D (your miraculous body will use these to assemble the collagen inside you).
You will need
- 2 cups oats, whence the protein and zinc
- 1 cup milk (your preference what kind; we recommend almond for flavor; whether you choose plant or animal though, it should be fortified with vitamin D)
- 2 bananas, peeled and mashed
- 4 oz blueberries, whence the vitamin C (frozen is fine) (chopped dried apricots are also a fine substitute if that’s more convenient)
- 1 oz flaked almonds, whence the protein and zinc
- 1 tbsp pumpkin seeds, whence the protein and zinc
- 1 tbsp flax seeds, whence the protein and zinc
- Optional: 1 tbsp maple syrup
- Optional: 1 tbsp collagen powder, dissolved in 1 oz hot water
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.
2) Mix the oats with 2 cups boiling water; allow to stand for 10–15 minutes, and then drain any excess water.
3) Mix the mashed bananas with the remaining ingredients except the milk and blueberries, stirring thoroughly.
4) Add the softened oats, and stir those in thoroughly too.
5) Add the milk and blueberries, in that order, stirring gently if using fresh blueberries, lest they get crushed.
6) Pour the mixture into an 8″ square cake tin that you have lined with baking paper, and smooth the top.
7) Bake for about 40 minutes or until firm and golden brown. Allow to cool; it will firm up more while it does.
8) Cut into squares or bars, and serve or store for later.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of ← our main feature about collagen
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Change Your Brain, Change Your Life – by Dr. Daniel G. Amen
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To what extent can we change our brains, and to what extent are we stuck with what we have?
Dr. Amen tells us that being mindful of both ends of this is critical:
- Neuroplasticity means we can, indeed, change our brains
- We do, however, have fundamental “brain types” based on our neurochemistry and physical brain structure
He argues for the use of brain imaging technology to learn more about the latter… In order to better go about doing what we can with the former.
The book looks at how these different brain types can lead to situations where what works as a treatment for one person can often not work for another. It’s also prescriptive, about what sorts of treatments (and lifestyle adjustments) are more likely to do better for each.
Where the book excels is in giving ideas and pointers for exploration… Things to take to one’s doctor, and—for example—request certain tests, and then what to do with those.
Where the book is a little light is on including hard science in the explanations. The hard science is referred to, but is considered beyond the scope of the book, or perhaps beyond the interest of the reader. That’s unfortunate, as we’d have liked to have seen more of it, rather than taking claims at face value without evidence.
Bottom line: this is distinctly “pop science” in presentation, but can give a lot of great ideas for learning more about our own brains and brain health… And then optimizing such.
Click here to check out “Change Your Brain; Change Your Life” on Amazon today!
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Carrots vs Red Cabbage – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing carrots to red cabbage, we picked the red cabbage.
Why?
It’s very close!
In terms of macros, these two vegetables are pretty much equal on all metrics. By official numbers, carrots have a tiny bit more fiber and red cabbage has a tiny bit more protein, but realistically, the difference are so small that they’re within the margin of variation (i.e. while we look at official average values, in reality one plant’s figures will differ very slightly from another’s; it could depend on what the soil was like or which plant got more sun, etc). So, a tie here.
In the category of vitamins, carrots have more of vitamins A, B3, B5, and E, while red cabbage has more of vitamins B2, B6, C, K, and choline. So, both have their merits, but red cabbage enjoys a measurable marginal victory here.
Looking at minerals, carrots have more copper, phosphorus, and potassium, while red cabbage has more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, and selenium. So, another marginal win for red cabbage here.
When it comes to phytochemicals, they’re about equal on polyphenols and other relevant phytonutrients not otherwise mentioned above.
Adding up the sections makes for a win for red cabbage, but it was close, and carrots are certainly great too. Enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Enjoy!
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Professional-Style Dental Cleaning At Home?
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You know the scene: your dentist is rummaging around inside your mouth with an implement that looks like a medieval torture device; you wince at a sudden sharp pain, only to be told “if you flossed, you wouldn’t be bleeding now”.
For most of us, going to the dentist isn’t near the top of our “favorite things to do” list, but it is of course a necessity of (healthy) life.
So, what can we do to minimize suffering in the dentist’s chair?
First, the basics
Of course, good oral hygiene is the absolute baseline, but with so many choices out there, which is best? We examined an array of options in this three-part series:
- Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
- Flossing Without Flossing?
- Less Common Oral Hygiene Options ← we recommend the miswak! Not only does it clean the teeth as well as or better than traditional brushing, but also it changes the composition of saliva to improve the oral microbiome, effectively turning your saliva into a biological mouthwash that kills unwanted microbes and is comfortable for the ones that should be there.
In fact, caring for the composition of one’s saliva, and thus one’s oral microbiome, is so important that we did a main feature on that, a little later:
Make Your Saliva Better For Your Teeth ← this is especially important if you take any meds that affect the composition of your saliva (scroll down to the table of meds). Your medications’ leaflets won’t tell you that it does that directly, but they will list “dry mouth” as one of the potential side effects (and you’ll probably know if you have a medication that gives you a dry mouth).
Next, level up
For this one, we’ll drop some links to some videos we’ve featured (for those who prefer text, worry not, your faithful writer has added text-based overviews):
- How To Regrow Receding Gums
- Tooth Remineralization: How To Heal Your Teeth Naturally
- Tartar Removal At Home & How To Prevent Tartar
Now, that last one sounds slightly more exciting than it is—it is about using chemical processes to gradually lessen the tartar over time, with a six-month timeframe.
So, what if you want to do one better than that?
Finally… Buckle up, this one’s fun
Ok, so “fun” and “dental care” don’t usually go hand-in-hand, and maybe your sense of fun differs from this writer’s, but hey. The thing is, we’re going to get hands-on with dental tools.
Specifically, these dental tools:
👆 these are literally the tools this writer has; if you look in the specula (the round mirror bits), you can see the reflection of the fluffy gray bathrobe I was wearing when I took the picture!
You can get tools like these easily online; here’s an example product on Amazon; do also shop around of course, and we recommend checking the reviews to ensure good quality.
Writer’s story on why I have these: once upon a time, a wisdom tooth came through at 45°, ploughing through the molar next to it, which then needed removing.
However, my teeth have the interesting anatomical quirk that I have hooked/barbed roots, which does not make tooth extraction easy; it had to come out sidewise, and the process was somewhat bungled by an inexperienced dental surgeon.
When the anesthetic wore off, it was the most pain I’ve ever been in in my life.
After that, I wasn’t a very regular returner to the dentist, and in 2013, I fell into a very deep depression for unrelated reasons, and during that period, I got some plaque/tartar buildup on some of my teeth due to lack of care, that then just stayed until I decided to take care of it more recently, which I am happy to say, I’ve now done (my teeth are the happiest and healthiest they’ve ever been), and I’m going to share how, with you.
So, here’s how to do it… First, you’ll need those tools, of course.
You will also want a good quality backlit magnifying mirror. Again, here’s an example product on Amazon ← this is the exact kind this writer has, and it’s very good.
You may be thinking: “wait a minute, this is scary, those are dangerous and I’m not a dentist!”
If so, then a few quick things to bear in mind:
- If you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t do it. As ever, our medical/legal disclaimer applies, and we share information for your interest only, and not as an exhortation to take any particular action. By all means confer with your dentist, too, and see whether they support the idea.
- These things do look scarier than they are once you get used to them. Do you use metal silverware when eating? Technically you could stab yourself with a fork any time, or damage your teeth with it, but when was the last time you did that?
- With regard to manual dexterity, if you have the manual dexterity required to paint your nails, floss your teeth, sew by hand, or write with a pen, then you have the manual dexterity to do this, too.
Now, about the tools:
- Speculum / magnifying speculum: the one with the mirror. This is useful for looking at the backs of teeth.
- Tweezers: the one with the gold grip in the photo above. You probably won’t need to use these, but we’re sure you know how to use tweezers in general.
- Dental explorer: the one with the big wicked-looking hook on one end, and a tiny (almost invisible in the photo) hook on the other end. This is for examining cavities, not for manipulating things. Best leave that to your dentist if you have cavities.
- Dental pick: this is the one to the right of the dental explorer, and it is for cleaning in the crevices between teeth. One end is quite blunt; the other is pointier, and you can choose which end to use depending on what fits into the shape of the crevice between your teeth.
- Dental scraper: this is the one with chisel ends. One end curves very slightly to the left, the other, very slightly to the right. This is for ergonomics depending on which hand you’re using, and which side you’re scraping (you’ll become very aware that your teeth, even if they look straight, curve very slightly at the edges.
You’ll be using these last two for the actual tartar removal, selecting the tool appropriate to cleaning the flat surface of a tooth, or the crevice where the teeth meet (not like flossing! That part, yes, but under no circumstances is this thing going all the way through to the other side, it’s just for getting into to nook that the scraper can’t so easily clean, that’s all).
A word on using metal against your teeth: a scary prospect, initially! However…
While steel is indeed harder than the enamel of your teeth, the enamel of your teeth is much harder than the plaque/tartar/calculus that you will be removing. Therefore, the technique to use is very gently scrape, starting as gently as humanly possible until you get a feel for it.
Unlike the dentist, you will have an advantage here in that you have biofeedback, and bone conduction of the sounds in your mouth, so you can exercise much more restraint than your dentist can. With the correct minimum of pressure, the tool should glide smoothly down enamel, but when it’s scraping tartar, it should make a very fine sandpapery noise.
This is why “or write with a pen” was one of the skills we mentioned earlier; it’s the same thing; you don’t press with a pen so hard that it goes through the paper, so don’t press so hard with the tool that it damages your enamel, that’s all.
Because of the differential in hardness between the tartar and the enamel, it’s really very easy to remove the tartar without harming the enamel, provided one is gentle.
Final word of warning; we’ll repeat: If you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t do it. As ever, our medical/legal disclaimer applies, and we share information for your interest only, and not as an exhortation to take any particular action. By all means confer with your dentist, too, and see whether they support the idea.
Also, while this kind of cleaning can be done safely at home, we recommend against doing anything more complicated than that.
See for example: Can You Repair Your Own Teeth At Home? ← the short answer is “no”, or not beyond tooth remineralization, anyway, and kits that say otherwise are potentially misleading, or stop-gap solutions at best.
One last time: always consult with a professional and get their advice (ours is not advice; it’s just information).
Take care!
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The surprising ways ‘swimming off’ a hangover can be risky, even if alcohol has left your system
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It’s the morning after a big night and you’re feeling the effects of too much alcohol.
So it can be tempting to “refresh” and take the edge off a hangover with a swim at the beach, or a dip in the cool waters of your local river or pool.
But you might want to think twice.
The day after heavy drinking can affect your body, energy levels and perception of risk in many ways. This means you’re more likely to drown or make careless decisions – even without high levels of alcohol in your blood.
Wanderlust Media/Shutterstock Alcohol + water + summer = drowning
Alcohol is one of the main reasons why someone’s more likely to die due to drowning. And Australians consume a lot of it, including around the water.
The risk of drowning, and injury, including incidents involving alcohol, dramatically increases over the summer festive period – in particular on public holidays and long weekends.
Among people aged 18 and over who drowned in rivers where alcohol was involved, we found some 40% had a blood alcohol concentration of at least 0.20%. That’s four times the upper legal limit of 0.05% when driving a car on a full licence.
When we breathalysed people at four Australian rivers, we found higher levels of blood alcohol with higher temperatures, and particularly on public holidays.
At the beach, intoxication due to alcohol and/or drugs is involved in 23% of drowning deaths with an average blood alcohol concentration of 0.19%.
How about if you’re hungover?
Getting alcohol out of your body is a relatively slow process. On average, alcohol is metabolised at a rate of 0.015% per hour. So if someone stops drinking at 2am with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.20%, their alcohol levels don’t drop to zero until 4pm the next day.
Although hangovers can vary from person to person, typical symptoms include headache, muscle aches, fatigue, weakness, thirst, nausea, stomach pain, vertigo, irritability, sensitivity to light and sound, anxiety, sweating and increased blood pressure.
As well as feeling a bit dusty, the day after an evening of heavy drinking, you’re not so good at identifying risks and reacting to them.
In a pool, this might mean not noticing it’s too shallow to dive safely. In natural waterways, this might mean not noticing a strong river current or a rip current at the beach. Or someone might notice these hazards but swim or dive in anyway.
You don’t have to have alcohol in your blood to be affected. Fatigue can set in, leading you to make careless decisions. tismaja/Shutterstock In one study, we found that after a four-day Australian music festival where people drank heavily, even people who were sober (no longer had alcohol in their blood) were still affected.
Compared to baseline tests in the lab we ran three weeks before the festival, people who were sober the day after the festival had faster reaction times in a test to gauge their attention. But they made more mistakes. This suggests hangovers coupled with fatigue lead to quicker but more careless behaviour.
In and around water this could be the difference between life and death.
Positive blood alcohol readings, including of alcohol from the night before, are commonly implicated in drowning deaths as a result of risky behaviours such as jumping into the water, both at a river and along the coast. Jumping can cause physical injury or render you unconscious, leading to drowning.
Alcohol, including the day after drinking, can also make drowning more likely for a number of other reasons. It also reduces people’s coordination and reaction times.
What else is going on?
Alcohol makes the blood vessels near your skin open up (dilate). So more blood flows into them, making you feel hot. This means you may stay in colder water for longer, increasing your risk of hypothermia.
Alcohol can even make CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) less effective, should you need to be resuscitated.
Normally, your body controls levels of certain minerals (or electrolytes) in the blood. But electrolyte imbalance is common after heavy drinking, including the day after. It’s the reason why hangover symptoms such as muscle pain can lead to cramps in your arms or legs. This can become dangerous when being in or on the water.
Low blood sugar levels the day after drinking is also common. This can lead to people becoming exhausted more quickly when doing physical activities, including swimming.
Other hazards include cold water, high waves and deep water, all of which your body may not be capable of dealing with if you’re feeling the effects of a big night.
What can we do about it?
Authorities regularly warn about the dangers of alcohol intoxication and being near the water. Young people and men are often targeted because these are the groups more likely to drown where alcohol is involved.
Beaches may have alcohol-free zones. Rivers rarely have the same rules, despite similar dangers. https://www.youtube.com/embed/5Salt-kkGUo?wmode=transparent&start=0 Royal Life Saving urges men to ‘make the right call’ and avoid alcohol around the water.
How to stay safe around water if you’re drinking
So take care this summer and stay out of the water if you’re not feeling your best:
- do your swimming before your drinking
- look out for your mates, especially ones who may have had a few too many or are hungover
- avoid getting back into the water after you’ve drunk alcohol or if you’re not feeling your best the next day.
Amy Peden, NHMRC Research Fellow, School of Population Health & co-founder UNSW Beach Safety Research Group, UNSW Sydney; Emmanuel Kuntsche, Director of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University, and Jasmin C. Lawes, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, UNSW Beach Safety Research Group, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Rise Of The Machines
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In this week’s health science news, several pieces of technology caught our eye. Let’s hope these things roll out widely!
When it comes to UTIs, antimicrobial resistance is taking the p—
This has implications far beyond UTIs—though UTIs can be a bit of a “canary in the coal mine” for antimicrobial resistance. The more people are using antibiotics (intentionally, or because they are in the food chain), the more killer bugs are proliferating instead of dying when we give them something to kill them. And yes: they do proliferate sometimes when given antibiotics, not because the antibiotics did anything directly good for them, but because they killed their (often friendly bacteria) competition. Thus making for a double-whammy of woe.
This development tackles that, by using AI modelling to crunch the numbers of a real-time data-driven personalized approach to give much more accurate treatment options, in a way that a human couldn’t (or at least, couldn’t at anything like the same speed, and most family physicians don’t have a mathematician locked in the back room to spend the night working on a patient’s data).
Read in full: AI can help tackle urinary tract infections and antimicrobial resistance
Related: AI: The Doctor That Never Tires?
When it comes to CPR and women, people are feint of heart
When CPR is needed, time is very much of the essence. And yet, bystanders are much less likely to give CPR to a woman than to a man. Not only that, but CPR-training is part of what leads to this reluctance when it comes to women: the mannequins used are very homogenous, being male (94%) and lean (99%). They’re also usually white (88%) even in countries where the populations are not, but that is less critical. After all, a racist person is less likely to give CPR to a person of color regardless of what color the training mannequin was.
However, the mannequins being male and lean is an issue, because it means people suddenly lack confidence when faced with breasts and/or abundant body fat. Both can prompt the bystander to wonder if some different technique is needed (it isn’t), and breasts can also prompt the bystander to fear doing something potentially “improper” (the proper course of action is: save a person’s life; do not get distracted by breasts).
Read in full: Women are less likely to receive CPR than men. Training on manikins with breasts could help ← there are also CPR instructions (and a video demonstration) there, for anyone who wants a refresher, if perhaps your last first-aid course was a while ago!
Related: Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)
When technology is a breath of fresh air
A woman with COPD and COVID has had her very damaged lungs replaced using a da Vinci X robot to perform a minimally-invasive surgery (which is quite a statement, when it comes to replacing someone’s lungs).
Not without human oversight though—surgeon Dr. Stephanie Chang was directing the transplant. Surgery is rarely fun for the person being operated on, but advances like this make things go a lot more smoothly, so this kind of progress is good to see.
Read in full: Woman receives world’s first robotic double-lung transplant
Related: Why Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Is More Likely Than You Think
Take care!
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Escape Self-Sabotage
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Stop Making The Same Mistakes
It’s easy to think that a self-destructive cycle is easy to avoid if you have no special will to self-destruction. However, the cycle is sneaky.
It’s sneaky because it can be passive, and/or omissions rather than actions, procrastinations rather than obvious acts of impulse, and so forth.
So, they’re often things that specifically aren’t there to see.
How to catch them
How often do you think “I wish I had [done xyz]” or “I wish I had [done yxz] sooner”?
Now, how often have you thought that about the same thing more than once? For example, “I should have kept up my exercise”.
For things like this, habit-trackers are a great way to, well, keep track of habits. If for example you planned to do a 10-minute exercise session daily but you’ve been postponing it since you got distracted on January the 2nd, then it’ll highlight that. See also:
How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
Speaking of habits, this goes for other forms of procrastination, too. For example, if you are always slow to get medical check-ups, or renew your prescriptions, or get ready for some regularly-occurring thing in your schedule, then set a reminder in your preferred way (phone app, calendar on the wall, whatever) and when the appointed time arrives (to book the check-up, renew the prescription, do your taxes, whatever), do it on the day you set your reminder for, as a personal rule for you that you keep to, barring extreme calamity.
By “extreme calamity” we mean less “running late today” and more “house burned down”.
Digital traps
Bad habits can be insidious in other ways too, like getting sucked into social media scrolling (it is literally designed to do that to you; you are not immune modern programming hijacking evolutionary dopamine responses).
Setting a screentime limit (you can specify “just these apps” if you like) will help with this. On most devices, this feature includes a sticky notification in the notification bar, that’ll remind you “27 out of 30 minutes remaining” or whatever you set it for. That’ll remind you to do what you went there to do, instead of getting caught in the endless scroll (and if you went there to just browse, to do so briefly).
Here’s how to set that:
Instructions for iOS devices | Instructions for Android devices
Oh, and on the topic of social media? If you find yourself getting caught up in unproductive arguments on the Internet, try the three-response rule:
- You reply; they reply (no progress made)
- You reply; they reply (still no progress made)
- You reply; they reply (still yet no progress made)
You reply just one more time: “I have a personal rule that if I’m arguing on the Internet and no progress has been made after three replies, I don’t reply further—I find this is helpful to avoid a lot of time lost to pointless arguing that isn’t going anywhere. Best wishes.”
(and then stick to it, no matter how they try to provoke you; best is to just not look until at least the next day)
When “swept up in love” gets to one of those little whirlpools…
The same works in personal relationships, by the way. If for example you are arguing with a loved one and not making progress, it can be good if you both have a pre-arranged agreement that either of you can, up to once on any given day, invoke a “time-out” (e.g. 30 minutes, but you agree the time between you when you first make this standing policy) during which you will both keep out of the other’s way, and come back with a more productive head on (remembering that things go best when it’s you both vs the problem, rather than vs each other).
See also:
Seriously Useful Communication Skills: Conflict Resolution
What if the self-sabotaging cycle is active and apparent?
Well, that is less sneaky, but certainly no less serious, and sometimes moreso. An obvious example is drinking too much; this is often cyclical in nature. We wrote about this one previously:
That article’s alcohol-specific, but the same advices go for other harmful activities, including other substance abuse (which in turn includes binge-eating), as well psychological addictions (such as gambling, for example).
Finally…
If your destructive cycle is more of a rut you’ve got stuck in, a common advice is to change something, anything, to get out of the rut.
That can be very bad advice! Because sometimes the change you go for is absolutely not the change that was needed, and is rather just cracking under pressure and doing something impulsive.
Here’s one way to actively get out of a slump:
Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
Note: you do not have to be depressed or anxious to do this. But the point is, it’s a tool you can use even if you are depressed and/or anxious, so it’s a good thing to try for getting out of most kinds of slumps.
And really finally, here’s a resource for, well, the title speaks for itself:
When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)
Take care!
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