Build Strong Feet: Exercises To Strengthen Your Foot & Ankle
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A lot depends on the health of our feet, especially when it comes to their strength and stability. But they often get quite neglected, when it comes to maintenance. Here’s how to help your feet keep the rest of your body in good condition:
On a good footing
The foot-specific exercises recommended here include:
- Active toe flexion/extension: curl and extend your toes
- Active toe adduction/abduction: use a towel for feedback this time as you spread your toes
- “Short foot” exercise: create an arch by bringing the base of your big toe towards your heel
- Resisted big toe flexion: use resistance bands; flex your big toe while controlling the others.
- Standing big toe flexion (isometric): press your big toe against an inclined surface as forcefully as you can
- Foot bridge exercise: hold your position with the front part of your feet on an elevated surface, to strengthen the arch.
- Heel raises: which can be progressed from basic to more advanced variations, increasing difficulty
- Ankle movements: dorsiflexion, inversion, etc, to increase mobility
It’s important to also look after your general lower body strength and stability, including (for example) single-leg deadlifts, step-downs, and lunges
Balance and proprioceptive exercises are good too, such as a static or dynamic one-leg balances, progressing to doing them with your eyes closed and/or on unstable surfaces (be careful, of course, and progress to this only when confident).
For more on all of these, an explanation of the anatomy, some other exercises too, and visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Steps For Keeping Your Feet A Healthy Foundation
Take care!
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Brussels Sprouts vs Spirulina – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing Brussels sprouts to spirulina, we picked the sprouts.
Why?
Pitting these two well-known superfoods against each other, we get the following:
Looking at the macros first, spirulina has a little more protein, while sprouts have more carbs and nearly 10x the fiber. So, we call this a win for sprouts.
In terms of vitamins, sprouts have a lot more of vitamins A, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while spirulina has a little more of vitamins B1, B2, and B3. An easy win for sprouts.
In the category of minerals, sprouts have more calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while spirulina has more copper and iron. Another clear win for sprouts.
Adding up the sections makes the winner very clear: Brussels sprouts enjoy a well-earned victory.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
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How We Age: The Science of Longevity – by Dr. Coleen Murphy
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The author is not a glossy “name brand” and has nothing to sell (besides her book). This shows, because it’s clearly not a book that was rushed out as a marketing ploy. Indeed, she begins with the words:
❝This book took me several years to write and is largely based on information I gathered while teaching my class, “Molecular Mechanisms of Longevity: The Genetics, Genomics, and Cell Biology of Aging,” at Princeton University.❞
~ Dr. Coleen Murphy
Thus, as you may imagine, it’s a thorough book, thoughtful, with conscientious attention to detail. As a reader, you are essentially getting the knowledge of a Princeton genomics class.
She covers what’s going on in our genes, in our cells, and in our bodies, when we age; why some animals don’t, and what things affect that. She talks biomarkers of aging and the industry gold standard “Health-Related Quality of Life” metrics. We learn about insulin signalling and FOXO targets; the role of caloric restriction or intermittent fasting, topics such as molecular homeostasis in the regulation of longevity (hello senolytics and chaperone-mediated autophagy), the microbiome and epigenetics, as well as mitochondrial management, cell replacement (including induced pluripotent stem cells), and even DNA repair. And yes, a lot about cognitive aging and how to slow it too.
The style is academic and/but perfectly readable; she explains everything as we go. We’ll note, though, that it’s not dry academic—her personality comes through throughout, in a good way that makes it a pleasant read as well as an informative one.
Bottom line: if you’d like a much deeper understanding of the mechanics of aging than we have room to get into in our articles at 10almonds, this book is a highly recommendable perfect opportunity.
Click here to check out How We Age, and learn about the science of longevity!
PS: we’ve reviewed a few books about the science of aging/longevity recently, and they’ve each been good, but if you’re going to get only one, we recommend this one, as in this reviewer’s opinion, it’s the best 😎
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Increase Your Muscle Mass Boost By 26% (No Extra Effort, No Supplements)
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You’ve probably seen this technology advertised, but the trick is in how it’s used (which is not how most people use it).
It’s about neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), also called electrical muscle stimulation (EMS); in other words, those squid-like electrode kits that promise “six-pack abs without exercise”, by stimulating the muscles for you—using the exact same tech as for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), for pain relief.
Do they work for pain relief? Yes, for many people in any case. But that’s beyond the scope of today’s article.
Do they work for building muscles as advertised? No. The limiting factor is that they can’t fully exert the muscles in the same way actual exercise can, because of the limitations to how much electrical current can safely be applied.
However…
The cyborgization of your regular workout
A meta-analysis of 13 studies compared two [meta-]groups of exercisers:
- Group 1 doing conventional resistance training
- Group 2 doing the same resistance training, plus NMES at the same time (specifically: NMES of the same muscles being used in the workout)
The analysis had two output variables: strength and muscle mass
What they found: group 2 enjoyed more than 31% greater strength gains, and 26% greater muscle mass gains, from the same training over the same period of time.
Of course, one of the biggest challenges to strength gain and muscle mass gain is hitting a plateau, so it’s worth noting that when they looked at training periods ranging from 2 weeks to 16 weeks, longer durations yielded better results—it is, it seems, the gift that keeps on giving.
You can find the paper here (which also explains how they analysed data from 13 different studies to get one coherent set of results):
How it works and why it matters
While the paper itself does not go into how it works, a reasonable hypothesis is that it works by “confusing” the muscles—because they are receiving mixed signals (one set from your brain, one set from the electrodes), with fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers both working at the same time.
Another way to “confuse” the muscles is by High Intensity [Interval] Resistance Training (HIRT)—which is basically High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), but for resistance training specifically.
See: How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body) and HIIT, But Make It HIRT
Now, we want to confuse our muscles, not our readers, so if that’s all too much to juggle at once, just pick one and go with it. But today’s article is about the RT+NEMS combination, so perhaps you’ll pick that.
Why it matters: as we get older, sarcopenia (the loss of muscle mass) becomes more of an issue, and even if we’re not inclined to a career in bodybuilding, we do still need to at least maintain a healthy muscle mass because:
- Strong muscles improve our stability and make us less likely to fall
- Strong muscles force the body to build strong bones to hold them on, which means lower risk of fractures or worse
- Muscle mass itself improves the body’s basal metabolic rate, which means systemic benefits to the whole body (including against metabolic diseases especially)
See also: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Want to try it?
If you don’t already have a NMES/EMS/TENS kit lying around the house, here’s an example product on Amazon—remember to use it simultaneously with your regular resistance training workout, on the same muscles at the same time, to get the benefit we talked about! 😎
Enjoy!
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How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
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Rethinking Drinking
When we’re looking at certain health risks, there are often five key lifestyle factors that have a big impact; they are:
- Have a good diet
- Get good exercise
- Get good sleep
- Reduce (or eliminate) alcohol
- Don’t smoke
Today, we’re focussing the alcohol bit. Maybe you’d like to quit, maybe just cut down, maybe the topic just interests you… So, here’s a quick rundown of some things that will help make that a lot easier:
With a big enough “why”, you can overcome any “how”
Research and understand the harm done by drinking, including:
And especially as we get older, memory problems:
Alcohol-related dementia: an update of the evidence
And as for fear of missing out, or perhaps even of no longer being relaxed/fun… Did you ever, while sober, have a very drunk person try to converse with you, and you thought “I wish that were me”?
Probably not
Know your triggers
Why do you drink? If your knee-jerk response is “because I like it”, dig deeper. What events prompt you to have a drink?
- Some will be pure habit born of convention—perhaps with a meal, for example
- Others may be stress-management—after work, perhaps
- Others may be pseudo-medicinal—a nightcap for better* sleep, for instance
*this will not work. Alcohol may make us sleepy but it will then proceed to disrupt that very sleep and make it less restorative
Become mindful
Now that you know why you’d like to drink less (or quit entirely), and you know what triggers you to drink, you can circumvent that a little, by making deals with yourself, for example
- “I can drink alcohol, if and only if I have consumed a large glass of water first” (cuts out being thirsty as a trigger to drink)
- “I can drink alcohol, if and only if I meditate for at least 5 minutes first” (reduces likelihood of stress-drinking)
- “I can drink alcohol, if and only if it is with the largest meal of the day” (minimizes total alcohol consumption)
Note that these things also work around any FOMO, “Fear Of Missing Out”. It’s easier to say “no” when you know you can have it later if you still want it.
Get a good replacement drink
There are a lot of alcohol-free alcohol-like drinks around these days, and many of them are very good. Experiment and see. But!
It doesn’t even have to be that. Sometimes what we need is not even an alcohol-like drink, but rather, drinkable culinary entertainment.
If you like “punch-in-the-face” flavors (as this writer does), maybe strong black coffee is the answer. If you like “crisp and clear refreshment” (again, same), maybe your favorite herbal tea will do it for you. Or maybe for you it’ll be lemon-water. Or homemade ginger ale.
Whatever it is… make it fun, and make it yours!
Bonus item: find replacement coping strategies
This one goes if you’ve been using alcohol to cope with something. Stress, depression, anxiety, whatever it may be for you.
The thing is, it feels like it helps briefly in the moment, but it makes each of those things progressively worse in the long-run, so it’s not sustainable.
Consider instead things like therapy, exercise, and/or a new hobby to get immersed in; whatever works for you!
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Mythbusting Cookware Materials
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In Wednesday’s newsletter, we asked you what kind of cookware you mostly use, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 45% said stainless steel
- About 21% said cast iron
- About 15% said non-stick (e.g. Teflon)
- About 9% said enamel
- About 6% said aluminum
- And 1 person selected “something else”, but then commented to the contrary, writing “I use all of the above”
So, what does the science say about these options?
Stainless steel cookware is safe: True or False?
True! Assuming good quality and normal use, anyway. There really isn’t a lot to say about this, because it’s very unexciting. So long as it is what it is labelled as: there’s nothing coating it, nothing comes out of it unless you go to extremes*, and it’s easy to clean.
*If you cook for long durations at very high temperatures, it can leach nickel and chromium into food. What this means in practical terms: if you are using stainless steel to do deep-frying, then maybe stop that, and also consider going easy on deep-frying in general anyway, because obviously deep-frying is unhealthy for other reasons.
Per normal use, however: pretty much the only way (good quality) stainless steel cookware will harm you is if you touch it while it’s hot, or if it falls off a shelf onto your head.
That said, do watch out for cheap stainless steel cookware that can contain a lot of impurities, including heavy metals. Since you probably don’t have a mass spectrometer and/or chemistry lab at home to check for those impurities, your best guard here is simply to buy from a reputable brand with credible certifications.
Ceramic cookware is safe: True or False?
True… Most of the time! Ceramic pans usually have metal parts and a ceramic cooking surface coated with a very thin layer of silicon. Those metal parts will be as safe as the metals used, so if that’s stainless steel, you’re just as safe as the above. As for the silicon, it is famously inert and body-safe (which is why it’s used in body implants).
However: ceramic cookware that doesn’t have an obvious metal part and is marketed as being pure ceramic, will generally be sealed with some kind of glaze that can leach heavy metals contaminants into the food; here’s an example:
Lead toxicity from glazed ceramic cookware
Copper cookware is safe: True or False?
False! This is one we forgot to mention in the poll, as one doesn’t see a lot of it nowadays. The copper from copper pans can leach into food. Now, of course copper is an important mineral that we must get from our diet, but the amount of copper that that can leach into food from copper pans is far too much, and can induce copper toxicity.
In addition, copper cookware has been found to be, on average, highly contaminated with lead:
Non-stick cookware contaminates the food with microplastics: True or False?
True! If we were to discuss all the common non-stick contaminants here, this email would no longer fit (there’s a size limit before it gets clipped by most email services).
Suffice it to say: the non-stick coating, polytetrafluoroethylene, is itself a PFAS, that is to say, part of the category of chemicals considered environmental pollutants, and associated with a long list of health issues in humans (wherein the level of PFAS in our bloodstream is associated with higher incidence of many illnesses):
You may have noticed, of course, that the “non-stick” coating doesn’t stick very well to the pan, either, and will tend to come off over time, even if used carefully.
Also, any kind of wet cooking (e.g. saucepans, skillets, rice cooker inserts) will leach PFAS into the food. In contrast, a non-stick baking tray lined with baking paper (thus: a barrier between the tray and your food) is really not such an issue.
We wrote about PFAS before, so if you’d like a more readable pop-science article than the scientific paper above, then check out:
PFAS Exposure & Cancer: The Numbers Are High
Aluminum cookware contaminates the food with aluminum: True or False?
True! But not usually in sufficient quantities to induce aluminum toxicity, unless you are aluminum pans Georg who eats half a gram of aluminum per day, who is a statistical outlier and should not be counted.
That’s a silly example, but an actual number; the dose required for aluminum toxicity in blood is 100mg/L, and you have about 5 liters of blood.
Unless you are on kidney dialysis (because 95% of aluminum is excreted by the kidneys, and kidney dialysis solution can itself contain aluminum), you will excrete aluminum a lot faster than you can possibly absorb it from cookware. On the other hand, you can get too much of it from it being a permitted additive in foods and medications, for example if you are taking antacids they often have a lot of aluminum oxide in them—but that is outside the scope of today’s article.
However, aluminum may not be the real problem in aluminum pans:
❝In addition, aluminum (3.2 ± 0.25 to 4.64 ± 0.20 g/kg) and copper cookware (2.90 ± 0.12 g/kg) were highly contaminated with lead.
The time and pH-dependent study revealed that leaching of metals (Al, Pb, Ni, Cr, Cd, Cu, and Fe, etc.) into food was predominantly from anodized and non-anodized aluminum cookware.
More metal leaching was observed from new aluminum cookware compared to old. Acidic food was found to cause more metals to leach during cooking.❞
~ the same paper we cited when talking about copper
Cast iron cookware contaminates the food with iron: True or False?
True, but unlike with the other metals discussed, this is purely a positive, and indeed, it’s even recommended as a good way to fortify one’s diet with iron:
The only notable counterpoint we could find for this is if you have hemochromatosis, a disorder in which the body is too good at absorbing iron and holding onto it.
Thinking of getting some new cookware?
Here are some example products of high-quality safe materials on Amazon, but of course feel free to shop around:
Stainless Steel | Ceramic* | Cast Iron
*it says “non-stick” in the description, but don’t worry, it’s ceramic, not Teflon etc, and is safe
Bonus: rice cooker with stainless steel inner pot
Take care!
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When “Normal” Health Is Not What You Want
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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
❝When going to sleep, I try to breathe through my nose (since everyone says that’s best). But when I wake I often find that I am breathing through my mouth. Is that normal, or should I have my nose checked out?❞
It is quite normal, but when it comes to health, “normal” does not always mean “optimal”.
- Good news: it is correctable!
- Bad news: it is correctable by what may be considered rather an extreme practice that comes with its own inconveniences and health risks.
Some people correct this by using medical tape to keep their mouth closed at night, ensuring nose-breathing. Advocates of this say that after using it for a while, nose-breathing in sleep will become automatic.
We know of no hard science to confirm this, and cannot even offer a personal anecdote on this one. Here are some pop-sci articles that do link to the (very few) studies that have been conducted:
- Mouth taping may be a trending sleep hack, but the science behind it is slim
- Mouth Taping for Sleep: Does it Work? And What are the Side Effects?
This writer’s personal approach is simply to do breathing exercises when going to sleep and first thing upon awakening, and settle for imperfection in this regard while asleep.
Meanwhile, take care!
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