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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Black Cohosh vs The Menopause
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Black Cohosh, By Any Other Name…
Black cohosh is a flowering plant whose extracts are popularly used to relieve menopausal (and postmenopausal) symptoms.
Note on terms: we’ll use “black cohosh” in this article, but if you see the botanical names in studies, the reason it sometimes appears as Actaea racemosa and sometimes as Cimicfuga racemosa, is because it got changed and changed back on account of some disagreements between botanists. It’s the same plant, in any case!
Read: Reclassification of Actaea to include Cimicifuga and Souliea (Ranunculaceae)
Does it work?
In few words: it works for physical symptoms, but not emotional ones, based on this large (n=2,310) meta-analysis of studies:
❝Black cohosh extracts were associated with significant improvements in overall menopausal symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.575, 95% CI = 0.283 to 0.867, P < 0.001), as well as in hot flashes (Hedges’ g = 0.315, 95% CIs = 0.107 to 0.524, P = 0.003), and somatic symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.418, 95% CI = 0.165 to 0.670, P = 0.001), compared with placebo.
However, black cohosh did not significantly improve anxiety (Hedges’ g = 0.194, 95% CI = -0.296 to 0.684, P = 0.438) or depressive symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.406, 95% CI = -0.121 to 0.932, P = 0.131)❞
~ Dr. Ryochi Sadahiro et al., 2023
Source: Black cohosh extracts in women with menopausal symptoms: an updated pairwise meta-analysis
Here’s an even larger (n=43,759) one that found similarly, and also noted on safety:
❝Treatment with iCR/iCR+HP was well tolerated with few minor adverse events, with a frequency comparable to placebo. The clinical data did not reveal any evidence of hepatotoxicity.
Hormone levels remained unchanged and estrogen-sensitive tissues (e.g. breast, endometrium) were unaffected by iCR treatment.
As benefits clearly outweigh risks, iCR/iCR+HP should be recommended as an evidence-based treatment option for natural climacteric symptoms.
With its good safety profile in general and at estrogen-sensitive organs, iCR as a non-hormonal herbal therapy can also be used in patients with hormone-dependent diseases who suffer from iatrogenic climacteric symptoms.❞
~ Dr. Castelo-Branco et al., 2020
(iCR = isopropanolic Cimicifuga racemosa)
So, is this estrogenic or not?
This is the question many scientists were asking, about 20 or so years ago. There are many papers from around 2000–2005, but here’s a good one that’s quite representative:
❝These new data dispute the estrogenic theory and demonstrate that extracts of black cohosh do not bind to the estrogen receptor in vitro, up-regulate estrogen-dependent genes, or stimulate the growth of estrogen-dependent tumors❞
Source: Is Black Cohosh Estrogenic?
(the abstract is a little vague, but if you click on the PDF icon, you can read the full paper, which is a lot clearer and more detailed)
The short answer: no, black cohosh is not estrogenic
Is it safe?
As ever, check with your doctor as everyone’s situation can vary, but broadly speaking, yes, it has a very good safety profile—including for breast cancer patients, at that. See for example:
- Black cohosh efficacy and safety for menopausal symptoms: the Spanish Menopause Society statement
- Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa): safety and efficacy for cancer patients
- The safety of black cohosh (Actaea racemosa, Cimicifuga racemosa)
Where can I get some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Time Smart – by Dr. Ashley Whillans
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First, what this is not: it’s not a productivity book.
What is rather: a book of better wellbeing.
There is a little overlap, insofar as getting “time smart” in the ways that Dr. Whillans recommends will give you more ability to also be more productive—if that’s what you want.
She talks us through time traps and the “time poverty epidemic”, as well as steps to finding time and funding time. Perhaps most critical idea-wise is the chapter on building a “time-affluence habit”, making decisions that prioritize your time-freedom where you can—which in turn will allow you to build yet more. Kind of like compound interest really, but for time.
The writing style is a conversational tone, but peppered with bullet-point lists and charts and the like from time to time, and often with citations to back up claims. It makes for a very readable book, and yet one that’s also inspiring of the confidence that it’s more than just one person’s opinion.
Bottom line: if you sometimes feel like you could do everything you want to if you could just find the time, this book can help you get there.
Click here to check out Time Smart, and live your most satisfying life!
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Lemon Balm For Stressful Times And More
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Balm For The Mind: In More Ways Than One!
Lemon balm(Melissa officinalis) is quite unrelated to lemons, and is actually a closer relative to mint. It does have a lemony fragrance, though!
You’ll find it in a lot of relaxing/sleepy preparations, so…
What does the science say?
Relaxation
Lemon balm has indeed been found to be a potent anti-stress herb. Laboratories that need to test anything to do with stress generally create that stress in one of two main ways:
- If it’s not humans: a forced swimming test that’s a lot like waterboarding
- If it is humans: cognitive tests completed under time-pressure while multitasking
Consequently, studies that have set out to examine lemon balm’s anti-stress potential in humans, have often ended up also highlighting its potential as a cognitive enhancer, like this one in which…
❝Both active lemon balm treatments were generally associated with improvements in mood and/or cognitive performance❞
~ Dr. Anastasia Ossoukhova et al.
Read in full: Anti-Stress Effects of Lemon Balm-Containing Foods
And this one, which found…
❝The results showed that the 600-mg dose of Melissa ameliorated the negative mood effects of the DISS, with significantly increased self-ratings of calmness and reduced self-ratings of alertness.
In addition, a significant increase in the speed of mathematical processing, with no reduction in accuracy, was observed after ingestion of the 300-mg dose.❞
The appropriately named “DISS” is the Defined Intensity Stress Simulation we talked about.
Sleep
There’s a lot less research for lemon balm’s properties in this regard than for stress/anxiety, and it’s probably because sleep studies are much more expensive than stress studies.
It’s not for a lack of popular academic interest—for example, typing “Melissa officinalis” into PubMed (the vast library of studies we often cite from) autosuggests “Melissa officinalis sleep”. But alas, autosuggestions do not Randomized Controlled Trials make.
There are some, but they’re often small, old, and combined with other things, like this one:
This is interesting, because generally speaking there is little to no evidence that valerian actually helps sleep, so if this mixture worked, we might reasonably assume it was because of the lemon balm—but there’s an outside chance it could be that it only works in the presence of valerian (unlikely, but in science we must consider all possibilities).
Beyond that, we just have meta-reviews to work from, like this one that noted:
❝M. officinalis contains several phytochemicals such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, terpenoids, and many others at the basis of its pharmacological activities. Indeed, the plant can have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antimicrobial, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, antinociceptive effects.
Given its consolidated use, M. officinalis has also been experimented with clinical settings, demonstrating interesting properties against different human diseases, such as anxiety, sleeping difficulties, palpitation, hypertension, depression, dementia, infantile colic, bruxism, metabolic problems, Alzheimer’s disease, and sexual disorders. ❞
You see why we don’t try to cover everything here, by the way!
But if you want to read this one in full, you can, at:
An Updated Review on The Properties of Melissa officinalis L.: Not Exclusively Anti-anxiety
Is it safe?
Lemon balm is generally recognized as safe, and/but please check with your doctor/pharmacist in case of any contraindications due to medicines you may be on or conditions you may have.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Want to know your other options?
You might like our previous main features:
What Teas To Drink Before Bed (By Science!)
and
Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Enjoy!
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Flossing Without Flossing?
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Flossing Without Flossing?
You almost certainly brush your teeth. You might use mouthwash. A lot of people floss for three weeks at a time, often in January.
There are a lot of options for oral hygiene; variations of the above, and many alternatives too. This is a big topic, so rather than try to squeeze it all in one, this will be a several-part series.
The first part was: Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
How important is flossing?
Interdental cleaning is indeed pretty important, even though it may not have the heart health benefits that have been widely advertised:
However! The health of our gums is very important in and of itself, especially as we get older:
Flossing Is Associated with Improved Oral Health in Older Adults
But! It helps to avoid periodontal (e.g. gum) disease, not dental caries:
Flossing for the management of periodontal diseases and dental caries in adults
And! Most certainly it can help avoid a stack of other diseases:
Interdental Cleaning Is Associated with Decreased Oral Disease Prevalence
…so in short, if you’d like to have happy healthy teeth and gums, flossing is an important adjunct, and/but not a one-stop panacea.
Is it better to floss before or after brushing?
As you prefer. A team of scientists led by Dr. Claudia Silva studied this, and found that there was “no statistical difference between brush-floss and floss-brush”:
Flossing is tedious. How do we floss without flossing?
This is (mostly) about water-flossing! Which does for old-style floss what sonic toothbrushes to for old-style manual toothbrushes.
If you’re unfamiliar, it means using a device that basically power-washes your teeth, but with a very narrow high-pressure jet of water.
Do they work? Yes:
As for how it stacks up against traditional flossing, Liang et al. found:
❝In our previous single-outcome analysis, we concluded that interdental brushes and water jet devices rank highest for reducing gingival inflammation while toothpick and flossing rank last.
In this multioutcome Bayesian network meta-analysis with equal weight on gingival inflammation and bleeding-on-probing, the surface under the cumulative ranking curve was 0.87 for water jet devices and 0.85 for interdental brushes.
Water jet devices and interdental brushes remained the two best devices across different sets of weightings for the gingival inflammation and bleeding-on-probing. ❞
~ Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice
You may be wondering how safe it is if you have had dental work done, and, it appears to be quite safe, for example:
BDJ | Water-jet flossing: effect on composites
Want to try water-flossing?
Here are some examples on Amazon:
- Waterpik Complete Care 9.0 ← example of a top-end water-flossing device
- Philips Sonicare Power Flosser 3000 ← top-tier not-Waterpik-brand device
- INSMART Cordless Water Dental Flosser ← very low price and still average 4.5 star reviews, so in our opinion, a fine first choice
Bonus: if you haven’t tried interdental brushes, here’s an example for that
Enjoy!
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Drug Metabolism (When You’re Not Average!)
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 Your Medications Run Out… Of You
Everybody knows that alcohol can affect medications’ effects, but what of smoking, and what of obesity? And how does the alcohol thing work anyway?
It’s all about the enzymes
Medicines that are processed by the liver (which is: most medicines) are metabolized there by specialist enzymes, and the things we do can increase or decrease the quantity of those enzymes—and/or how active they are.
Dr. Kata Wolff Pederson and her team of researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark examined the livers of recently deceased donors in ways that can’t (ethically) be done with live patients, and were able to find the associations between various lifestyle factors and different levels of enzymes responsible for drug metabolism.
And it’s not always how you might think!
Some key things they found:
- Smokers have twice as high levels of enzyme CYP1A2 than non-smokers, which results in the faster metabolism of a lot of drugs.
- Drinkers have 30% higher levels of enzyme CYP2E1, which also results in a faster metabolism of a lot of drugs.
- Patients with obesity have 50% lower levels of enzyme CYP3A4, resulting in slower metabolism of many drugs
This gets particularly relevant when we take into account the next fact:
- Of the individuals in the study, 40% died from poisoning from a mixture of drugs (usually: prescription and otherwise)
Read in full: Sex- and Lifestyle-Related Factors are Associated with Altered Hepatic CYP Protein Levels
Read a pop-sci article about it: Your lifestyle can determine how well your medicine will work
How much does the metabolism speed matter?
It can matter a lot! If you’re taking drugs and carefully abiding by the dosage instructions, those instructions were assuming they know your speed of metabolism, and this is based on an average.
- If your metabolism is faster, you can get too much of a drug too quickly, and it can harm you
- If your metabolism is faster, it also means that while yes it’ll start working sooner, it’ll also stop working sooner
- If it’s a painkiller, that’s inconvenient. If it’s a drug that keeps you alive, then well, that’s especially unfortunate.
- If your metabolism is slower, it can mean your body is still processing the previous dose(s) when you take the next one, and you can overdose (and potentially die)
We touched on this previously when we talked about obesity in health care settings, and how people can end up getting worse care:
As for alcohol and drugs? Obviously we do not recommend, but here’s some of the science of it with many examples:
Why it’s a bad idea to mix alcohol with some medications
Take care!
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Why We’re Called “10almonds”, And Other Questions
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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
❝Avid coffee drinker so very interested in the results Also question Is there something that you could take or eat that would prevent the caffeine from stimulating the kidneys? I tried to drink decaf from morning to night not a good result! Thanks❞
That is a good question! The simple answer is “no” (but keep reading, because all is not lost)
There’s no way (that we yet know of) to proof the kidneys against the stimulating effect of caffeine. This is especially relevant because part of caffeine’s stimulating effect is noradrenergic, and that “ren” in the middle there? It’s about the kidneys. This is just because the adrenal gland is situated next to them (actually, it’s pretty much sitting on top of them), hence the name, but it does mean that the kidneys are about the hardest thing in the body to have not affected by caffeine.
However! The effects of caffeine in general can be softened a little with l-theanine (found in tea, or it can be taken as a supplement). It doesn’t stop it from working, but it makes the curve of the effect a little gentler, and so it can reduce some unwanted side effects.
You can read more about l-theanine here:
❝How to jump start a inactive metabolism and keep it going? THANKYOU❞
The good news is, if you’re alive, your metabolism is active (it never stops!). So, it may just need perking up a little.
As for keeping it going, well, that’s what we’re here for! We’re all in favor of healthy longevity.
We’ll do a main feature soon on what we can do to influence our metabolism in either direction, but to give some quick notes here:
- A lot of our metabolism is influenced by genes and is unalterable (without modifying our genes, anyway)
- Metabolism isn’t just one thing—it’s many. And sometimes, parts of our metabolism can be much quicker or slower than others.
- When people talk about wanting a “faster metabolism”, they’re usually referring to fat-burning, and that’s just a small part of the picture, but we understand that it’s a focal point for many.
There really is enough material for a whole main feature on metabolic tweaks, though, so watch this space!
❝Why the name “10 Almonds?” Is this recommended by the Doctor? A daily dosage? And, if so, why? Thanks! Please answer me…I truly want to know!❞
Almonds are very nutritionally dense, and for example 20g of almonds (so, about 20 almonds) would give a 100% daily dose of zinc, amongst other nutrients.
We also do like to think that we give our readers an easily digestible dose of condensed “nutrition” in the form of health information.
However! That’s not actually the reason at all. It’s a reference to a viral Facebook hoax! There was a post going around that claimed:
❝HEADACHE REMEDY. Eat 10–12 almonds, the equivalent of two aspirins, next time you have a headache❞ ← not true!
It made us think about how much health-related disinformation there was circulating online! So, calling ourselves 10almonds was a bit of a nod to that story, but also a reminder to ourselves:
We must always publish information with good scientific evidence behind it!
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