But First, Inner Peace – by Case Kenny
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Thinking positively and vividly imagining a Ferrari parked in your driveway will not, in fact, cause it to manifest there.
You know what that method does work for, though? Feelings.
This book is essentially a guided thought-and-feeling modelling system that, consisting of 60 chapters to be taken one-per-day, aims to rewire your mind for inner peace.
This is not, however, just a matter of “imagine peacefulness”, or nice-sounding platitudes. Rather, at the end of each chapter there is an exercise and journaling prompts; effectively, work to do along the way.
Weighing in at 438 pages, this is a sizeable book, but part of that is because of the space to write answers to journaling prompts. Still, it’s not exactly a pamphlet, either—there is serious and extensive content here too.
Like any daily reader, you can zip through it all at once if you like, but a benefit to doing the chapter-a-day approach is that it sets a habit of mindful reflection, and gives you a chance to implement each thing, one per day, building up new habits in that regard, too. In contrast, reading it all in one sitting wouldn’t give that.
Bottom line: without inner peace, we don’t have much. Treat yourself—you deserve it.
Click here to check out But First, Inner Peace, and enjoy inner peace!
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Metabolic Health Roadmap – by Brenda Wollenberg
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The term “roadmap” is often used in informative books, but in this case, Wollenberg (a nutritionist with decades of experience) really does deliver what can very reasonably be described as a roadmap:
She provides chapters in the form of legs of a journey [to better metabolic health], and those legs are broadly divided into an “information center” to deliver new information, a “rest stop” for reflection, “roadwork” to guide the reader through implementing the information we just learned, in a practical fashion, and finally “traveller assistance” to give additional support / resources, as well as any potential troubleshooting, etc.
The information and guidance within are all based on very good science; a lot is what you will have read already about blood sugar management (generally the lynchpin of metabolic health in general), but there’s also a lot about leveraging epigenetics for our benefit, rather than being sabotaged by such.
There’s a little guidance that falls outside of nutrition (sleep, exercise, etc), but for the most part, Wollenberg stays within her own field of expertise, nutrition.
The style is idiosyncratic; it’s very clear that her goal is providing the promised roadmap, and not living up to any editor’s wish or publisher’s hope of living up to industry standard norms of book formatting. However, this pays off, because her delivery is clear and helpful while remaining personable and yet still bringing just as much actual science, and this makes for a very pleasant and informative read.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your metabolic health, as well as get held-by-the-hand through your health-improvement journey by a charming guide, this is very much the book for you!
Click here to check out the Metabolic Health Roadmap, and start taking steps!
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Are GMOs Good Or Bad For Us?
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Unzipping Our Food’s Genes
In yesterday’s newsletter, we asked you for your (health-related) views on GMOs.
But what does the science say?
First, a note on terms
Technically, we (humans) have been (g)enetically (m)odifying (o)rganisms for thousands of years.
If you eat a banana, you are enjoying the product of many generations of artificial selection, to change its genes to produce a fruit that is soft, sweet, high in nutrients, and digestible without cooking. The original banana plant would be barely recognizable to many people now (and also, barely edible). We’ve done similarly with countless other food products.
So in this article, we’re going to be talking exclusively about modern genetic modification of organisms, using exciting new (ish, new as in “in the last century”) techniques to modify the genes directly, in a copy-paste fashion.
For more details on the different kinds of genetic modification of organisms, and how they’re each done (including the modern kinds), check out this great article from Sciencing, who explain it in more words than we have room for here:
Sciencing | How Are GMOs Made?
(the above also offers tl;dr section summaries, which are great too)
GMOS are outright dangerous (cancer risks, unknown risks, etc): True or False?
False, so far as we know, in any direct* fashion. Obviously “unknown risks” is quite a factor, since those are, well, unknown. But GMOs on the market undergo a lot of safety testing, and have invariably passed happily.
*However! Glyphosate (the herbicide), on the other hand, has a terrible safety profile and is internationally banned in very many countries for this reason.
Why is this important? Because…
- in the US (and two out of ten Canadian provinces), glyphosate is not banned
- In the US (and we may hypothesize, those two Canadian provinces) one of the major uses of genetic modification of foodstuffs is to make it resistant to glyphosate
- Consequently, GMO foodstuffs grown in those places have generally been liberally doused in glyphosate
So… It’s not that the genetic modification itself makes the food dangerous and potentially carcinogenic (it doesn’t), but it is that the genetic modification makes it possible to use a lot more glyphosate without losing crops to glyphosate’s highly destructive properties.
Which results in the end-consumer eating glyphosate. Which is not good. For example:
❝Following the landmark case against Monsanto, which saw them being found liable for a former groundskeeper, 46 year old Dewayne Johnson’s cancer, 32 countries have to date banned the use of Glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer. The court awarded Johnson R4.2 billion in damages finding Monsanto “acted with malice or oppression”.❞
Source: see below!
You can read more about where glyphosate is and isn’t banned, here:
33 countries ban the use of Glyphosate—the key ingredient in Roundup
For the science of this (and especially the GMO → glyphosate use → cancer pipeline), see:
Use of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)-Containing Food Products in Children
GMOs are extra healthy because of the modifications (they were designed for that, right?): True or False?
True or False depending on who made them and why! As we’ve seen above, not all companies seem to have the best interests of consumer health in mind.
However, they can be! Here are a couple of great examples:
❝Recently, two genome-edited crops targeted for nutritional improvement, high GABA tomatoes and high oleic acid soybeans, have been released to the market.
Nutritional improvement in cultivated crops has been a major target of conventional genetic modification technologies as well as classical breeding methods❞
Source: Drs. Nagamine & Ezura
Read in full: Genome Editing for Improving Crop Nutrition
(note, they draw a distinction of meaning between genome editing and genetic modification, according to which of two techniques is used, but for the purposes of our article today, this is under the same umbrella)
Want to know more?
If you’d like to read more about this than we have room for here, here’s a great review in the Journal of Food Science & Nutrition:
Should we still worry about the safety of GMO foods? Why and why not? A review
Take care!
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How To Recover Quickly From A Stomach Bug
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How To Recover Quickly From A Stomach Bug
Is it norovirus, or did you just eat something questionable? We’re not doctors, let alone your doctors, and certainly will not try to diagnose from afar. And as ever, if unsure and/or symptoms don’t go away or do get worse, seek professional medical advice.
That out of the way, we can give some very good general-purpose tips for this one…
Help your immune system to help you
So far as you can, you want a happy healthy immune system. For the most part, we’d recommend the following things:
Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!
…but you probably don’t want to be exercising with a stomach bug, so perhaps sit that one out. Exercise is the preventative; what you need right now is rest.
Hydrate—but watch out
Hydration is critical for recovery especially if you have diarrhea, but drinking too much water too quickly will just make things worse. Great options for getting good hydration more slowly are:
- Peppermint tea
- (peppermint also has digestion-settling properties)
- Ginger tea
- See also: Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think
- Broths
- These will also help replenish your sodium and other nutrients, gently. Chicken soup for your stomach, and all that. A great plant-based option is sweetcorn soup.
- By broths, we mean clear(ish) water-based soups. This is definitely not the time for creamier soups.
❝Milk and dairy products should be avoided for 24 to 48 hours as they can make diarrhea worse.
Initial dietary choices when refeeding should begin with soups and broth.❞
Source: American College of Gastroenterology
Other things to avoid
Caffeine stimulates the digestion in a way that can make things worse.
Fat is more difficult to digest, and should also be avoided until feeling better.
To medicate or not to medicate?
Loperamide (also known by the brand name Imodium) is generally safe when used as directed.
Click here to see its uses, dosage, side effects, and contraindications
Antibiotics may be necessary for certain microbial infections, but should not be anyone’s first-choice treatment unless advised otherwise by your doctor/pharmacist.
Note that if your stomach bug is not something that requires antibiotics, then taking antibiotics can actually make it worse as the antibiotics wipe out your gut bacteria that were busy helping fight whatever’s going wrong in there:
- Facing a new challenge: the adverse effects of antibiotics on gut microbiota and host immunity
- Antibiotics as major disruptors of gut microbiota
- Microbiotoxicity: antibiotic usage and its unintended harm to the microbiome
A gentler helper
If you want to give your “good bacteria” a hand while giving pathogens a harder time of it, then a much safer home remedy is a little (seriously, do not over do it; we are talking 1–2 tablespoons, or around 20ml) apple cider vinegar, taken diluted in a glass of water.
❝Several studies indicate apple cider vinegar (ACV)’s usefulness in lowering postprandial glycemic response, specifically by slowing of gastric motility❞
(Slowing gastric motility is usually exactly what you want in the case of a stomach bug, and apple cider vinegar)
See also:
- Antimicrobial activity of apple cider vinegar against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans
- Antibacterial apple cider vinegar eradicates methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus and resistant Escherichia coli
Take care!
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- Peppermint tea
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The Five Invitations – by Frank Ostaseski
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This book covers exactly what its subtitle promises, and encourages the reader to truly live life fully, something that Ostaseski believes cannot be done in ignorance of death.
Instead, he argues from his experience of decades working at a hospice, we must be mindful of death not only to appreciate life, but also to make the right decisions in life—which means responding well to what he calls, as per the title of this book, “the five invitations”.
We will not keep them a mystery; they are:
- Don’t wait; do the important things now
- Welcome everything; push away nothing
- Bring your whole self to the experience
- Find a place in the middle of things
- Cultivate a “don’t know” mind
Note, for example, that “do the important things now” requires knowing what is important. For example, ensuring a loved one knows how you feel about them, might be more important than scratching some item off a bucket list. And “push away nothing” does mean bad things too; rather, of course try to make life better rather than worse, but accept the lessons and learnings of the bad too, and see the beauty that can be found in contrast to it. Enjoying the fullness of life without getting lost in it; carrying consciousness through the highs and lows. And yes, approaching the unknown (which means not only death, but also the large majority of life) with open-minded curiosity and wonder.
The style of the book is narrative and personal, without feeling like a collection of anecdotes, but rather, taking the reader on a journey, prompting reflection and introspection along the way.
Bottom line: if you’d like to minimize the regrets you have in life, this book is a fine choice.
Click here to check out The Five Invitations, and answer with a “yes” to the call of life!
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The Doctor’s Kitchen – by Dr. Rupy Aujla
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We’ve featured Dr. Aujla before as an expert-of-the-week, and now it’s time to review a book by him. What’s his deal, and what should you expect?
Dr. Aujla first outlines the case for food as medicine. Not just “eat nutritionally balanced meals”, but literally, “here are the medicinal properties of these plants”. Think of some of the herbs and spices we’ve featured in our Monday Research Reviews, and add in medicinal properties of cancer-fighting cruciferous vegetables, bananas with dopamine and dopamine precursors, berries full of polyphenols, hemp seeds that fight cognitive decline, and so forth.
Most of the book is given over to recipes. They’re plant-centric, but mostly not vegan. They’re consistent with the Mediterranean diet, but mostly Indian. They’re economically mindful (favoring cheap ingredients where reasonable) while giving a nod to where an extra dollar will elevate the meal. They don’t give calorie values etc—this is a feature not a bug, as Dr. Aujla is of the “positive dieting” camp that advocates for us to “count colors, not calories”. Which, we have to admit, makes for very stress-free cooking, too.
Dr. Aujla is himself an Indian Brit, by the way, which gives him two intersecting factors for having a taste for spices. If you don’t share that taste, just go easier on the pepper etc.
As for the medicinal properties we mentioned up top? Four pages of references at the back, for any who are curious to look up the science of them. We at 10almonds do love references!
Bottom line: if you like tasty food and you’re looking for a one-stop, well-rounded, food-as-medicine cookbook, this one is a top-tier choice.
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Blood and Water
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Q&A with the 10almonds Team
Q: I really loved the information about macular degeneration! I was wondering if you have any other advice about looking after eye health?
A: We may well do a full feature on it sometime! Meanwhile, some top tips include:
- Eat your greens (as you know from this last Tuesday’s edition of 10almonds)!
- Exercise! Generally. We’re not talking about eye exercises here, we’re talking about exercises that will support:
- Healthy heart rate
- Healthy blood pressure
- Healthy blood oxygenation
- Healthy blood sugar levels
- Healthy blood flow in general (so keep hydrated too! There’s a reason phlebotomists ask you to be well-hydrated before they take blood)
Eye health is a good indicator for a lot of other things, and that’s because whether or not the eyes are the window to your soul, they’re definitely the window to what your blood’s like, and that affects (and is affected by) so many other things.
- On that note, don’t smoke!
- Protect your eyes physically, too. This means:
- UV-blocking sunglasses when appropriate
- Protective eye-wear when appropriate
You think safety glasses are for laboratories and construction sites, then you go and do comparable tasks in your home? Your eyes are just as damageable in your kitchen or garden as they would be in a lab or workshop.
Some bits and bobs that can help:
- Safety sunglasses! Because a thing can do two jobs (useful in the garden now the days are brightening up!)
- Pulse oximeter! Check your own heart rate, pulse strength, and blood oxygenation at home!
- Blood pressure monitor! Because it’s so important for a lot of things and you really should have one.
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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