Random Acts of Medicine – by Dr. Anupam Jena & Dr. Christopher Worsham
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We talked recently of small things that can change how productive your doctor’s appointment is, and this book is a more scientific version of that, and on a grander scale.
The author use what they call “natural experiments”, essentially observational studies, to determine what factors beyond the obvious affect health outcomes. With this approach, they address such questions as why kids with summer birthdays are more likely to get the flu, and why heart attack outcomes improve when there’s a cardiologists’ convention elsewhere. And many more such things that can seem like non-causal correlation, until one examines the causative factors, and controls (in the statistical analysis; remember this is still entirely observational, so no interventions are made) for other potential confounding factors.
They also look at what factors influence doctors’ decisions in ways they certainly shouldn’t, but they do, because doctors are as prone to biases as everyone else. And, for that matter, what factors influence patients’ decisions in ways they certainly shouldn’t—for the same reason. The authors acknowledge that they themselves are not immune, and you, dear reader, are not immune either.
Nevertheless, the practical value in this book comes from trying to at least be more aware of such things, the better to either leverage them, or at least ensure you don’t fall foul of them.
The style is conversational pop-science, making for quite light reading, albeit with many footnotes and a respectable bibliography.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand more about the machinations that decide who lives and who dies (especially when sometimes it will be you or a loved one who lives or dies), then this is a fascinating book that that delves deeply into that.
Click here to check out Random Acts Of Medicine, and be aware!
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Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold
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Curcumin (Turmeric) is worth its weight in gold
Not financially! But, this inexpensive golden spice has an impressive list of well-studied health benefits, for something so freely available in any supermarket, and there’s a reason it gets a place in “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”, right up there with things like “leafy greens” and “berries” when it comes to superfoods.
Let’s do a quick run-down:
- It fights inflammation, and thus helps fight many diseases where inflammation is a factor (ranging from atherosclerosis to arthritis to Alzheimer’s and more)
- It has powerful antioxidant effects too
- It boosts brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and thus improves memory and attention
- It helps protect against heart disease…
- …and can give a 65% decreased risk of experiencing a heart attack
- It can help prevent cancer, and reduce cancerous lesions by 40%
- It’s also good against depression
- It even slows aging
In short, it’s—like we said—worth its weight in gold.
Quick advice though before we move on…
If you take curcumin with black pepper, it allows your body to use the curcumin around 2,000% better. This goes whether you’re cooking with both, or take them as a supplement (they’re commonly sold as a combo-capsule for this reason).
Want to get some?
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Diet Tips for Crohn’s Disease
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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
❝Doctors are great at saving lives like mine. I’m a two time survivor of colon cancer and have recently been diagnosed with Chron’s disease at 62. No one is the health system can or is prepared to tell me an appropriate diet to follow or what to avoid. Can you?❞
Congratulations on the survivorship!
As to Crohn’s, that’s indeed quite a pain, isn’t it? In some ways, a good diet for Crohn’s is the same as a good diet for most other people, with one major exception: fiber
…and unfortunately, that changes everything, in terms of a whole-foods majority plant-based diet.
What stays the same:
- You still ideally want to eat a lot of plants
- You definitely want to avoid meat and dairy in general
- Eating fish is still usually* fine, same with eggs
- Get plenty of water
What needs to change:
- Consider swapping grains for potatoes or pasta (at least: avoid grains)
- Peel vegetables that are peelable; discard the peel or use it to make stock
- Consider steaming fruit and veg for easier digestion
- Skip spicy foods (moderate spices, like ginger, turmeric, and black pepper, are usually fine in moderation)
Much of this latter list is opposite to the advice for people without Crohn’s Disease.
*A good practice, by the way, is to keep a food journal. There are apps that you can get for free, or you can do it the old-fashioned way on paper if prefer.
But the important part is: make a note not just of what you ate, but also of how you felt afterwards. That way, you can start to get a picture of patterns, and what’s working (or not) for you, and build up a more personalized set of guidelines than anyone else could give to you.
We hope the above pointers at least help you get going on the right foot, though!
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The 4 Bad Habits That Cause The Most Falls While Walking
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The risk of falling becomes greater (both in probability and in severity of consequences) as we get older. But, many people who do fall do so for the same reasons, some of which are avoidable. Dr. Doug Weiss has advice based on extensive second-hand experience:
Best foot forward!
If any of these prompt a “surely nobody does that” response, then, good for you to not have that habit, but Dr. Weiss has seen many patients who thusly erred. And if any of these do describe how you walk, then well, you’re not alone—time to fix it, though!
- Walking with Stiff Legs: walking with a hyperextended (straight) knee instead of a slight bend (5-15°) makes it harder to adjust balance, increasing the risk of falls. This can also put extra pressure on the joints, potentially leading to osteoarthritis.
- Crossing Legs While Turning: turning by crossing one leg over the other is a common cause of falls, particularly in the elderly. To avoid this, when turning step first with the foot that is on the side you are going to go. If you have the bad habit, this may feel strange at first, but you will soon adapt.
- Looking Down While Walking: focusing only on the ground directly in front of you can cause you to miss obstacles ahead, leading to falls. Instead, practice “scanning”, alternating between looking down at the ground and looking up to maintain awareness of your surroundings.
- Shuffling Instead of Tandem Walking: shuffling with feet far apart, rather than walking with one foot in front of the other, reduces balance and increases the risk of tripping. Tandem walking, where one foot is placed directly in front of the other, is the safer and more balanced way to walk.
It also helps disguise your numbers.
For more details on all of these, plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Fall Special (How To Not Fall, And How To Minimize Injury If You Do) ← this never seems like an urgent thing to learn, but trust us, it’s more fun to read it now, than from your hospital bed later
Take care!
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Break the Cycle – by Dr. Mariel Buqué
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Intergenerational trauma comes in two main varieties: epigenetic, and behavioral.
This book covers both. There’s a lot more we can do about the behavioral side than the epigenetic, but that’s not to say that Dr. Buqué doesn’t have useful input in the latter kind too.
If you’ve read other books on epigenetic trauma, then there’s nothing new here—though the refresher is always welcome.
On the behavioral side, Dr. Buqué gives a strong focus on practical techniques, such as specific methods of journaling to isolate trauma-generated beliefs and resultant behaviors, with a view to creating one’s own trauma-informed care, cutting through the cycle, and stopping it there.
Which, of course, will not only be better for you, but also for anyone who will be affected by how you are (e.g. now/soon, hopefully better).
As a bonus, if you see the mistakes your parents made and are pretty sure you didn’t pass them on, this book can help you troubleshoot for things you missed, and also to improve your relationship with your own childhood.
Bottom line: if you lament how things were, and do wish/hope to do better in terms of mental health for yourself now and generations down the line, this book is a great starting point.
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One More Resource Against Osteoporosis!
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Your Bones Were Made For Moving Too!
We know that to look after bone health, resistance training is generally what’s indicated. Indeed, we mentioned it yesterday, and we’ve talked about it before:
Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
We also know that if you have osteoporosis already, some exercises are a better or worse idea than others:
Osteoporosis & Exercises: Which To Do (And Which To Avoid)
However! New research suggests that also getting in your recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise slows bone density loss.
The study by Dr. Tiina Savikangas et al. looked at 299 people in their 70s (just over half being women) and found that, over the course of a year, bone mineral density loss was inversely correlated with moderate exercise as recorded by an accelerometer (as found in most fitness-tracking wearables and smartphones).
In other words: those who got more minutes of exercise, kept more bone mineral density.
As well as monitoring bone mineral density, the study also looked at cross-sectional area, but that remained stable throughout.
As for how much is needed:
❝Even short bursts of activity can be significant for the skeleton, so we also looked at movement in terms of the number and intensity of individual impacts. For example, walking and running cause impacts of different intensities.
We found that impacts that were comparable to at least brisk walking were associated with better preservation of bone mineral density.❞
Read more: Impacts during everyday physical activity can slow bone loss ← pop-science source, interviewing the lead researcher
On which note, we’ve a small bone to pick…
As a small correction, the pop-science source says that the subjects’ ages ranged from 70 to 85 years; the paper, meanwhile, clearly shows that the age-range was 74.4±3.9 years (shown in the “Results” table), rounded to 74.4 ± 4 years, in the abstract. So, certainly no participant was older than 78 years and four months.
Why this matters: the age range itself may be critical or it might not, but what is important is that this highlights how we shouldn’t just believe figures cited in pop-science articles, and it’s always good to click through to the source!
This paper is a particularly fascinating read if you have time, because—unlike a lot of studies—they really took great care to note what exactly can and cannot be inferred from the data, and how and why.
Especially noteworthy was the diligence with which they either controlled for, or recognized that they could not control for, far more variables than most studies even bother to mention.
This kind of transparency is critical for good science, and we’d love to see more of it!
Want to apply this to your life?
Tracking minutes-of-movement is one of the things that fitness trackers are best at, so connect your favourite app (one of these days we’ll do a fitness tracker comparison article) and get moving!
And as for the other things that fitness trackers do? As it turns out, they do have their strengths and weaknesses, which are good to bear in mind:
Take care!
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The Glucose Goddess Method – by Jessie Inchausspé
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We’ve previously reviewed Inchausspé’s excellent book “Glucose Revolution”. So what does this book add?
This book is for those who found that book a little dense. While this one still gives the same ten “hacks”, she focuses on the four that have the biggest effect, and walks the reader by the hand through a four-week programme of implementing them.
The claim of 100+ recipes is a little bold, as some of the recipes are things like vinegar, vinegar+water, vinegar+water but now we’re it’s in a restaurant, lemon+water, lemon+water but now it’s in a bottle, etc. However, there are legitimately a lot of actual recipes too.
Where this book’s greatest strength lies is in making everything super easy, and motivating. It’s a fine choice for being up-and-running quickly and easily without wading through the 300-odd pages of science in her previous book.
Bottom line: if you’ve already happily and sustainably implemented everything from her previous book, you can probably skip this one. However, if you’d like an easier method to implement the changes that have the biggest effect, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Glucose Goddess Method, and build it into your life the easy way!
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