Compression Socks: The #1 Mistake Most People Make
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Dr. John Chuback explains:
The joy of socks
How most* compression socks work: graduated compression is tighter at the ankle and looser as it moves upwards, which improves venous return towards your heart, reduces blood pooling, supports lymphatic drainage, and limits capillary leakage that contributes to swelling.
*there are also other kinds of compression socks, such as:
- those that don’t do that, and are really just tight socks (these don’t work very well)
- exciting bionic socks with a hydraulic peristaltic massage function (these work very well)
Assuming you have well-designed standard compression socks that work, then the way they help is slightly different for different things:
- How they help vs varicose veins and CVI: in chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), faulty vein valves allow blood to pool in your lower legs, and compression reduces venous pressure, relieves aching and heaviness, slows disease progression, and improves comfort but doesn’t repair damaged valves.
- How they help vs edema and lymphedema: compression limits fluid leakage into your tissues and supports lymphatic flow, with lymphedema often requiring higher grades such as 30–40 mmHg and combination therapy like manual lymphatic drainage or complete decongestive therapy.
- How they help for travel, standing, and surgery: compression reduces the risk of deep vein thrombosis during prolonged sitting or standing and supports healing, bruising reduction, and inflammation control after vein procedures, especially when combined with movement and hydration.
However! Dysfunction of specifically the great saphenous vein can cause heaviness, night cramps, and swelling, and while compression controls symptoms. In this case, proper diagnosis with vascular ultrasound mapping is critical, because it may need actual interventions (beyond merely controlling the symptoms).
Some tips to avoid erring in ways that many people indeed err:
- Choose the right compression level: mild support is typically 8–15 mmHg for travel or fatigue, moderate is 15–20 mmHg for mild swelling or small varicosities, medical grade is 20–30 mmHg for significant varicose veins and edema, and 30–40 mmHg is used for more advanced lymphedema or selected post-procedure cases.
- Make sure the fit is correct: this is about the dimensions, not just the compression level! You need to know a bunch of measurements, not just your shoe size. Get professionally fitted if you can, apply garments first thing in the morning when swelling is minimal, avoid rolling the top to prevent a tourniquet effect, ensure they feel snug but not painful, and watch for numbness or tingling.
- Watch out for warning signs/symptoms that merit urgent attention: unilateral leg swelling, skin thickening or darkening, cobblestone texture, severe itching, restless legs, night cramps, open wounds, ulcers, or worsening symptoms despite compression can be signs/symptoms of deep vein thrombosis or advanced venous disease; these do require specialist assessment.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Remedies To Reduce Varicose Veins (Or Avoid Them Entirely)
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Surprising New (Healthy!) Compounds Found In Cannabis Leaves
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…and other items from this week’s health science news:
The other cannabis chemicals
Researchers (Dr. Magriet Muller et al.) found the first evidence of rare flavoalkaloids in cannabis leaves, revealing previously overlooked medicinal compounds in plant material that’s often treated as waste.
In particular, Dr. Muller and her team identified 79 phenolic compounds across three cannabis strains, including 25 never before reported in cannabis and 16 rare flavoalkaloids that are seldom found in nature.
As regular 10almonds readers will know, flavonoids and related polyphenols are important for antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer reasons, so these newly-detected compounds look set to expand cannabis’s biomedical relevance beyond cannabinoids.
But it goes further than that in this case because of the rare flavoalkaloids, although those were concentrated mainly in the leaves of one strain, showing that chemical composition can differ dramatically even among a small number of cannabis varieties.
Read in full: Don’t toss cannabis leaves: Scientists found rare compounds with medical potential
Related: Cannabis Myths vs Reality
Back up your brain
Ok, so it’s not quite like in science fiction yet! These digital “brain twins” aren’t conscious or sentient replicas, but rather are used as predictive tools designed to model disease progression, test treatments virtually, and improve scientific understanding without direct risk to the person.
More specifically, they’re personalized computational models built from an individual’s brain data (including such things as MRI-scanned anatomy, functional activity, and connectivity maps) to simulate how that specific brain functions and changes over time. This means that instead of relying on broad population averages, clinicians can test interventions on a patient’s digital twin first, improving safety, precision, and treatment outcomes (and, once the tech is rolled out, saving costs, too).
A current example is how epilepsy research is already using patient-specific digital brain models to identify seizure origins and help guide surgery.
That said, the brain’s complexity across multiple spatial and temporal scales demands enormous computing power, making whole-brain high-resolution simulation extremely difficult for now.
Read in full: A virtual copy of your brain? Scientists say it’s closer than you think
Related: Are Brain Chips Safe?
What climate change will do to your brain health
A lot of older people consider that climate change is a younger people’s problem, if indeed a problem at all. However, researchers (Dr. Anna Ranta et al.) have found that climate change is becoming a major global brain health threat because environmental changes (especially increases in heat) raise both stroke risk and stroke mortality.
This is because increased heat can not only dehydrate your body, but also thicken your blood and increase clot formation, all of which raise the risk of ischemic stroke.
It’s not just the heat itself, though; many things that are becoming increasingly common as climate change progresses, such as rapid temperature swings, humidity shifts, barometric pressure changes, wildfires, and dust or sandstorms can elevate blood pressure, strain your cardiovascular system, and damage blood vessels, again raising stroke risk and increasing the severity when stroke does occur.
Notably, more than 20% of global strokes are attributed to air pollution, with wildfire smoke and particulate matter contributing by damaging blood vessel walls after entering your lungs and, from there, your bloodstream.
In other words, as the researchers show, climate change is increasingly a neurological and cardiovascular public health emergency, making stroke prevention partly dependent on climate change mitigation.
Read in full: Climate change a global threat to brain health, stroke experts say
Related: Stay Safe From Heat Exhaustion & Heatstroke!
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What is gingivitis? How do I know if I have it?
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Do your gums look red and often bleed when you brush them, but they’re not painful? If so, you could have the gum disease gingivitis.
Gingivitis is one of the most common inflammatory oral diseases. It affects an estimated 50–100% of adults and children at some point in their lives.
Luckily, gingivitis can be treated if caught in time. However, if left untreated, it can lead to more severe disease that could mean losing your teeth.
Here are some tell-tale signs of gingivitis and how you can work with a dental professional to treat it.
Helena Lopes/Pexels What does gingivitis look like?
The term gingivitis tells us what to expect. It’s when the gums (the gingiva) are inflamed (-itis). It’s essentially the body’s immune response to microbes in the sticky biofilm or plaque on the tooth surface.
You might notice subtle redness of the gums, close to where they meet the teeth, or of the part of the gums between the teeth. You might notice mild-to-moderate swelling of the gums. Or your gums might bleed when you brush or floss.
It can affect the gums close to a few or multiple teeth. Sometimes, it can lead to bad breath (halitosis).
Gingivitis generally develops over time. And you’ll see the most common form starting to develop if you haven’t brushed your teeth well (and have not removed the plaque) for a few days. Gingivitis is painless to start with.
But if it’s not treated it may lead to a more severe form of disease called periodontitis. This is when you also lose some of the bone that holds teeth in place. If periodontitis is left untreated, your teeth loosen and may fall out.
See how the gums are red and inflamed close to where they meet the bottom front teeth. This could be gingivitis. Ozkan Guner/Unsplash How did I get it?
Several factors increase the chances and severity of gingivitis, beyond poor oral hygiene.
For instance, changes in sex hormones during puberty, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and oral contraceptive use can increase the severity of gingivitis. This is due to increased blood flow or a change in plaque’s microbial composition.
Other conditions that can worsen gingivitis include diabetes, leukaemia, if you don’t produce much saliva, and certain medications.
An infectious disease could also be behind gingivitis. Bacterial infections (such as streptococcal disease, syphilis and tuberculosis); viral infections (herpes, human papillomavirus, hand-foot-and-mouth disease); and fungal infections (candida thrush) can all involve gingivitis. But unlike the more common type, gingivitis related to infectious disease can also come with fever and enlarged lymph nodes.
A new growth – whether benign (non-cancerous), precancerous (could develop into cancer) or cancer – can present as localised lesions with inflamed gums.
Finally, gingivitis can be traumatic. That is, if you brush your teeth too hard, use cocaine or other drugs, or burn your mouth while eating or drinking hot food and drink, you might see acute inflammation of the gums.
Can I manage it at home?
Only to a limited extent. If you get in at the early stage (one to three days of symptoms), brushing your teeth well will help remove plaque, and so some of the microbes that cause the inflammation.
But if you leave it any longer and the plaque begins to calcify, a dentist or a dental hygienist will need to remove these hardened, rough, surface deposits known as calculus.
They use tools called ultrasonic scalers or manual scalers to remove the calculus and overlying plaque. After this treatment, signs of gingivitis usually resolve.
However, if there are underlying health issues that contribute to gingivitis, they will need to be addressed to see any improvement.
For instance, this could be treating an infection before, during or after scaling. You might also be prescribed a special mouthwash to help healing or relieve symptoms.
If you have a growth, or are diagnosed with periodontitis, you’ll be referred for specialist treatment.
Can mouthwash help?
Mouthwash often helps reduce the bacterial load in plaque. But you can’t rely on it as your only treatment. It is, however, often recommended after your gingivitis has been treated professionally, during the healing phase.
Your dental health professional may recommend chlorhexidine mouthwash twice daily for up to two weeks. You can buy this in the supermarket or pharmacy.
But using mouthwash long term to manage gingivitis (or for other reasons) is not advised. Prolonged use of chlorhexidine mouthwash can lead to side effects such as staining of the teeth and an altered sense of taste.
Some mouthwash also contains a small percentage of alcohol, which might not be the best option for people with a dry mouth as alcohol can be dehydrating. You might also want to avoid these in children, who might not like the burning sensation. There are alcohol-free versions, which are just as effective.
How do I prevent gingivitis returning?
You can prevent gingivitis, and most oral diseases, by brushing your teeth well twice a day and flossing once a day.
Regular dental check-ups also give dental professionals a perfect opportunity to detect and manage most gingivitis (and tooth decay) before it progresses.
Dileep Sharma, Professor and Head of Discipline – Oral Health, University of Newcastle
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Cardiac Failure Explained – by Dr. Warrick Bishop
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The cover of this book makes it look like it’ll be a flashy semi-celebrity doctor keen to sell his personalized protocol, along with eleventy-three other books, but actually, what’s inside this one is very different:
We (hopefully) all know the basics of heart health, but this book takes it a lot further. Starting with the basics, then the things that it’s easy to feel like you should know but actually most people don’t, then into much more depth.
The format is much more like a university textbook than most pop-science books, and everything about the way it’s written is geared for maximum learning. The one thing it does keep in common with pop-science books as a genre is heavy use of anecdotes to illustrate points—but he’s just as likely to use tables, diagrams, callout boxes, emboldening of key points, recap sections, and so forth. And for the most part, this book is very information-dense.
Dr. Bishop also doesn’t just stick to what’s average, and talks a lot about aberrations from the norm, what they mean and what they do and yes, what to do about them.
On the one hand, it’s more information dense than the average reader can reasonably expect to need… On the other hand, isn’t it great to finish reading a book feeling like you just did a semester at medical school? No longer will you be baffled by what is going on in your (or perhaps a loved one’s) cardiac health.
Bottom line: if you’d like to know cardiac health inside out, this book is an excellent place to start.
Click here to check out Cardiac Failure Explained, and get to the heart of things!
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How To Feel 10 Years Younger
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Will Harlow, over-50s specialist physio, shows us how to turn back the clock:
Reach for youthfulness
Most of mobility is lost through lack of use. If we’re afraid of stretching fully, we’ll stop a little short, and then our body will adapt, and the shorter reach becomes our new maximum reach. This process continues until such a time as we are completely stiff.
So, never has “use it lose it” been so critical! With this in mind, here are 5 exercises to take your range of motion back to its previous levels:
- Open the gate: stand tall holding a wall or similar support, shift your weight onto one leg, lift your other knee, and move it up, out to the side, and around in a smooth circle before placing your foot back down; keep your back upright throughout to gently mobilize your hips and wake up the surrounding hip muscles, supporting long-term hip joint health.
- Dynamic hamstring sweep: stand with one foot forward and your heel on the floor, keep your front leg straight and your back knee slightly bent, then hinge down as you sweep your hands along your front leg and return upright; move in and out of the stretch in a controlled way to warm up your hamstrings before activity (but skip this one if you have sciatica, like we mentioned yesterday).
- Overhead reach: sit upright away from a chair back with your feet flat on the floor, interlace your fingers or stack them together, reach your arms overhead, turn your palms upwards, and push gently towards the ceiling; this opens your chest, improves your shoulder mobility, and helps counter stiffness from ergonomically unfriendly phone use, poorly angled typing, and other daily bad posture habits.
- Seated side bend: sit tall with your hands crossed over your chest, keep your head aligned with your shoulders, and slowly lean your whole torso to one side without lifting your hips, then return to center and switch sides; move slowly and with control to explore your spinal range of motion without forcing it.
- Towel shoulder stretch: hold a towel overhead with one hand and grasp it behind your back with your other hand, keeping your back upright as you gently pull upwards to lift your lower arm until you feel a stretch in the front of your shoulder, then lightly guide your elbow forwards; hold comfortably, ease off slowly, and repeat on the other side to improve shoulder range of motion for everyday reaching tasks.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Four Easy Ways To Better Shoulder Mobility
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How Much Does A Vegan Diet Affect Biological Aging?
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Slow Your Aging, One Meal At A Time
This one’s a straightforward one today, and the ““life hack” can be summed up:
Enjoy a vegan diet to enjoy younger biological age.
First, what is biological age?
Biological age is not one number, but a collection of numbers, as per different biomarkers of aging, including:
- Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)
- Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)
- Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)
- Cellular markers of aging (e.g. telomere length)
We wrote more about this here:
Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
A vegan diet may well impact multiple of those categories of aging, but today we’re highlighting a study (hot off the press; published only a few days ago!) that looks at its effect on that last category: cellular markers of aging.
There’s an interesting paradox here, because this category is:
- the most easily ignorable; because we all feel it if our knees are giving out or our skin is losing elasticity, but who notices if telomeres’ T/S ratio changed by 0.0407? ← the researchers, that’s who, as this difference is very significant
- the most far-reaching in its impact, because cellular aging in turn has an effect on all the other markers of aging
Second, how much difference does it make, and how do we know?
The study was an eight-week interventional identical twin study. This means several things, to start with:
- Eight weeks is a rather short period of time to accumulate cellular aging, let alone for an intervention to accumulate a significant difference in cellular aging—but it did. So, just imagine what difference it might make in a year or ten!
- Doing an interventional study with identical twin pairs already controlled for a lot of factors, that are usually confounding variables in population / cohort / longitudinal / observational studies.
Factors that weren’t controlled for by default by using identical twins, were controlled for in the experiment design. For example, twin pairs were rejected if one or more twin in a given pair already had medical conditions that could affect the outcome:
❝Inclusion criteria involved participants aged ≥18, part of a willing twin pair, with BMI <40, and LDL-C <190 mg/dL. Exclusions included uncontrolled hypertension, metabolic disease, diabetes, cancer, heart/renal/liver disease, pregnancy, lactation, and medication use affecting body weight or energy.
Eligibility was determined via online screening, followed by an orientation meeting and in-person clinic visit. Randomization occurred only after completing baseline visits, dietary recalls, and questionnaires for both twins❞
~ Dr. Varun Dwaraka et al. ← there’s a lot of “et al.” to this one; the paper had 16 collaborating authors!
As to the difference it made over the course of the 8 weeks…
❝Various measures of epigenetic age acceleration (PC GrimAge, PC PhenoAge, DunedinPACE) were assessed, along with system-specific effects (Inflammation, Heart, Hormone, Liver, and Metabolic).
Distinct responses were observed, with the vegan cohort exhibiting significant decreases in overall epigenetic age acceleration, aligning with anti-aging effects of plant-based diets. Diet-specific shifts were noted in the analysis of methylation surrogates, demonstrating the influence of diet on complex trait prediction through DNA methylation markers.❞
~ Ibid.
You can read the whole paper here (it goes into a lot more detail than we have room to here, and also gives infographics, charts, numbers, the works):
Were they just eating more healthily, though?
Well, arguably yes, as the results show, but to be clear:
The omnivorous diet compared to the vegan diet in this study was also controlled; both groups were given a healthy meal plan for their respective diet. So this wasn’t a case of “any omnivorous diet vs healthy vegan diet”, but rather “healthy omnivorous diet vs healthy vegan diet”.
Again, the paper itself has the full details—a short version is that it involved a healthy meal kit delivery service, followed by ongoing dietician involvement in an equal and carefully-controlled fashion.
So, aside from that one group had an omnivorous meal plan and the other vegan, both groups received the same level of “healthy eating” support, guidance, and oversight.
But isn’t [insert your preferred animal product here] healthy?
Quite possibly! For general health, general scientific consensus is that eating at least mostly plants is best, red meat is bad, poultry is neutral in moderation, fish is good in moderation, dairy is good in moderation if fermented, eggs are good in moderation if not fried.
This study looked at the various biomarkers of aging that we listed, and not every possible aspect of health—there’s more science yet to be done, and the researchers themselves are calling for it.
It also bears mentioning that for some (relatively few, but not insignificantly few) people, extant health conditions may make a vegan diet unhealthy or otherwise untenable. Do speak with your own doctor and/or dietician if unsure.
See also: Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
We would hypothesize, by the way, that the anti-aging benefits of a vegan diet are probably proportional to abstention from animal products—meaning that even if you simply have some “vegan days”, while still consuming animal products other days, you’ll still get benefit for the days you abstained. That’s just our hypothesis though.
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Gut-Healthy Tacos
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Full of prebiotics and probiotics, healthy fats, colorful salad boasting vitamins and minerals aplenty, and of course satisfying protein too, these tacos are also boasting generous flavors to keep you coming back for more…
You will need
- 24 sardines—canned is fine (if vegetarian/vegan, substitute tempeh and season generously; marinade if you have time)
- 12 small wholewheat tortillas
- 1 14oz/400g can black beans, drained
- 1 ripe avocado, stoned and cut into small chunks
- 1 red onion, thinly sliced
- 1 little gem lettuce, shredded
- 12 cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 bulb garlic, crushed
- 1 lemon, sliced
- 4 tbsp plain unsweetened yogurt (your choice what kind, but something with a live culture is best)
- 3oz pickled jalapeños, roughly chopped
- 1oz cilantro (or substitute parsley if you have the cilantro-tastes-like-soap gene), finely chopped
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- Juice of 1 lime
- Optional: Tabasco sauce, or similar hot sauce
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat your oven to a low temperature; 200℉ or just under 100℃ is fine
2) Place the lemon slices on top of the sardines on top of foil on a baking tray; you want the foil to be twice as much as you’d expect to need, because now you’re going to fold it over and make a sort of sealed envelope. You could use a dish with a lid yes, but this way is better because there’s going to be less air inside. Upturn the edges of the envelope slightly so that juices won’t run out, and make sure the foil is imperfectly sealed so a little steam can escape but not much at a time. This will ensure it doesn’t dry out, while also ensuring your house doesn’t smell of fish. Put all this into the oven on a middle shelf.
3) Mix the lime juice with the onion in a bowl, and add the avocado and tomatoes, mixing gently. Add half the cilantro, and set aside.
4) Put the black beans in a sieve and pour boiling water over them to refresh and slightly warm them. Tip them into a bowl and add the olive oil, black pepper, and paprika. Mix thoroughly with a fork, and no need to be gentle this time; in fact, deliberately break the beans a little in this case.
5) Mix the yogurt, jalapeños, garlic, and remaining cilantro in a small bowl.
6) Get the warmed sardines from the oven; discard the lemon slices.
7) Assemble! We recommend the order: tortilla, lettuce, fish (2 per taco), black bean mixture, salad mixture, garlic jalapeño yogurt mixture. You can also add a splash of the hot sauce per your preference, or if catering for more people, let people add their own.
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
- Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- Enjoy Pungent Polyphenols For Your Heart & Brain
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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