Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book – by Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum

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The book is divided into three parts:

  1. What you should know
  2. What you should do
  3. All about you

This is a very useful format, since it lays out all the foundational knowledge, before offering practical advice and “how to” explanations, before finally wrapping up with personalizing things.

The latter is important, because while our basic risk factors can be assembled in a few lines of data (age, sex, race, genes, diet, exercise habits, etc) there’s a lot more to us than that, and oftentimes the data that doesn’t make the cut, makes the difference. Hormones on high on this list; we can say that a person is a 65-year-old woman and make a guess, but that’s all it is: a guess. Very few of us are the “average person” that statistical models represent accurately. And nor are social and psychological factors irrelevant; in fact often they are deciding factors!

So, it’s important to be able to look at ourselves as the whole persons we are, or else we’ll get a heart-healthy protocol that works on paper but actually falls flat in application, because the mathematical model didn’t take into account that lately we have been very stressed about such-and-such a thing, and deeply anxious about so-and-so, and a hopefully short-term respiratory infection has reduced blood oxygen levels, and all these kinds of things need to be taken into account too, for an overall plan to work.

The greatest strength of this book is that it attends to that.

The style of the book is a little like a long sales pitch (when all that’s being sold, by the way, is the ideas the book is offering; she wants you to take her advice with enthusiasm), but there’s plenty of very good information all the way through, making it quite worth the read.

Bottom line: if you’re a woman and/or love at least one woman, then you can benefit from this important book for understanding heart health that’s not the default.

Click here to check out Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book, and enjoy a heart-healthy life!

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Recommended

  • The Spectrum of Hope – by Dr. Gayatri Devi
  • Moore’s Clinically Oriented Anatomy – by Dr. Anne Argur & Dr. Arthur Dalley
    “Ditch the dense text and Latin overload. Embrace a colorful, easy-to-read anatomy guide with practical insights on the human form’s diverse reality—it’s Moore’s Clinically Oriented Anatomy.”

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  • TED-x | Sugar Is Not A Treat

    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.

    Dr. Jody Stanislaw offers a reframe:

    Not so sweet

    The pancreas isn’t an organ that most people think about a lot, but it regulates blood sugar levels by releasing insulin as needed. Overworking the beta cells in the pancreas that do this, can lead to their burnout, which contributes to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.

    If, like Dr. Stanislaw, you already have Type 1 Diabetes (an autoimmune condition usually diagnosed in early childhood and unrelated to what one has or hasn’t been eating), then your pancreas is already not doing much, or rather, it’s too busy fighting itself to actually do its job. This means that taking exogenous insulin (i.e., from the pharmacy rather than from your dysfunctional pancreas) will be necessary for survival. Most people with T1D will have an insulin pump if possible, to provide insulin as needed. Others will rely on injections.

    So, does that mean that T1D is a free pass on the diabetes-related health risks of sugar, since after all, you already have diabetes anyway?

    Nope, no such luck. Because in the case of T1D, if you then get insulin resistance on top of the fact you don’t make your own insulin, then the insulin that you are taking will stop working, and ultimately you will die. So, that’s pretty important to avoid!

    Thus, Dr. Stanislaw has strong opinions on diet in this regard, and she recommends her own protocol regardless of whether you are diabetic or not:

    • Avoid refined carbs (e.g. bread, pasta, or foods with added sugars).
    • Start the day with protein-rich foods for balanced blood sugar.
    • Drink water to curb sugar cravings caused by dehydration.
    • Use low-carb substitutes (e.g. cauliflower pizza crust, zucchini noodles, etc).

    While Dr. Stanislaw does recommend an 80:20 approach to eating in general (80% healthy foods, 20% indulgences), she does strongly suggest not putting sugar even into the “indulgences” 20%, because a) a diet of 20% sugar is not at all good, and b) the dangers of sugar consumption are particularly high, so it is better reframed not as a treat to be enjoyed, but rather as a threat to be avoided.

    For more on all of this, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    5 Steps To Quit Sugar Easily

    Take care!

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  • Staying Healthy and Active After 60

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    Questions and Answers 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!

    This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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

    Q: How to be your best self after 60: Self motivation / Avoiding or limiting salt, sugar & alcohol: Alternatives / Ways to sneak in more movements/exercise

    …and, from a different subscriber…

    Q: Inflammation & over 60 weight loss. Thanks!

    Here are some of our greatest hits on those topics:

    Also, while we’ve recommended a couple of books on stopping (or reducing) drinking, we’ve not done a main feature on that, so we definitely will one of these days!

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  • Yoga For Stiff Birds – by Marion Deuchars

    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.

    Quick show of hands, who here practices yoga in some fashion, but does not necessarily always look Instagrammable while doing it? Yep, same here.

    This book is a surprisingly practical introduction to yoga for newcomers, and inspirational motivator for those of us who feel like we should do more.

    Rather than studio photography of young models in skimpy attire, popular artist (and well-practised yogi) Marion Deuchars offers in a few brushstrokes what we need to know for each asana, and how to approach it if we’re not so supple yet as we’d like to be.

    Bottom line: whether for yourself or as a gift for a loved one (or both!) this is a very charming introduction to (or refresher of) yoga.

    Click here to check out Yoga For Stiff Birds, and get yours going!

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Related Posts

  • The Spectrum of Hope – by Dr. Gayatri Devi
  • How To Kill Laziness

    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.

    Laziness Is A Scooby-Doo Villain.

    Which means: to tackle it requires doing a Scooby-Doo unmasking.

    You know, when the mystery-solving gang has the “ghost” or “monster” tied to a chair, and they pull the mask off, to reveal that there was no ghost etc, and in fact it was a real estate scammer or somesuch.

    Social psychologist Dr. Devon Price wrote about this (not with that metaphor though) in a book we haven’t reviewed yet, but will one of these days:

    Laziness Does Not Exist – by Dr. Devon Price (book)

    In the meantime, and perhaps more accessibly, he gave a very abridged summary for Medium:

    Medium | Laziness Does Not Exist… But unseen barriers do (11mins read)

    Speaking of barriers, Medium added a paywall to that (the author did not, in fact, arrange the paywall as Medium claim), so in case you don’t have an account, he kindly made the article free on its own website, here:

    Devon Price | Laziness Does Not Exist… But unseen barriers do (same article; no paywall)

    He details problems that people get into (ranging from missed deadlines to homelessness), that are easily chalked up to laziness, but in fact, these people are not lazily choosing to suffer, and are usually instead suffering from all manner of unchosen things, ranging from…

    • imposter syndrome / performance anxiety,
    • perfectionism (which can overlap a lot with the above),
    • social anxiety and/or depression (these also can overlap for some people),
    • executive dysfunction in the brain, and/or
    • just plain weathering “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune [and] the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”, to borrow from Shakespeare, in ways that aren’t always obviously connected—these things can be great or small, it could be a terminal diagnosis of some terrible disease, or it could be a car breakdown, but the ripples spread.

    And nor are you, dear reader, choosing to suffer (even if sometimes it appears otherwise)

    Unless you’re actually a masochist, at least, in which case, you do you. But for most of us, what can look like laziness or “doing it to oneself” is usually a case of just having one or more of the above-mentioned conditions in place.

    Which means…

    That grace we just remembered above to give to other people?

    Yep, we should give that to ourselves too.

    Not as a free pass, but in the same way we (hopefully) would with someone else, and ask: is there some problem I haven’t considered, and is there something that would make this easier?

    Here are some tools to get you started:

    Take care!

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  • The Painkilling Power Of Opioids, Without The Harm?

    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 it comes to painkilling medications, they can generally be categorized into two kinds:

    • non-opioids (e.g. ibuprofen, paracetamol/acetaminophen, aspirin)
    • ones that actually work for something more serious than a headache

    That’s an oversimplification, but broadly speaking, when there is serious painkilling to be done, that’s when doctors consider it’s time to break out the opioids.

    Nor are all opioids created equal—there’s a noteworthy difference between codeine and morphine, for instance—but the problems of opioids are typically the same (tolerance, addiction, and eventual likelihood of overdose when one tries to take enough to make it work after developing a tolerance), and it becomes simply a matter of degree.

    See also: I’ve been given opioids after surgery to take at home. What do I need to know?

    So, what’s the new development?

    A team of researchers have found that the body can effectively produce its own targetted painkilling peptides, similar in function to benzodiazepines (an opioid drug), but—and which is a big difference—confined to the peripheral nervous system (PNS), meaning that it doesn’t enter the brain.

    • The peptides killing the pain before it can reach the brain is obviously good because that means the pain is simply not experienced
    • The peptides not having any effect on the brain, however, means that the mechanism of addiction of opioids simply does not apply here
    • The peptides not having any effect on the brain also means that the CNS can’t be “put to sleep” by these peptides in the same way it can if a high dose of opioids is taken (this is what typically causes death in opioid overdoses; the heart simply beats too slowly to maintain life)

    The hope, therefore, is to now create medications that target the spinal ganglia that produce these peptides, to “switch them on” at will.

    Obviously, this won’t happen overnight; there will need to be first a lot of research to find a drug that does that (likely this will involve a lot of trial and error and so many mice/rats), and then multiple rounds of testing to ascertain that the drug is safe and effective for humans, before it can then be rolled out commercially.

    But, this is still a big breakthrough; there arguably hasn’t been a breakthrough this big in pain research since various opioid-related breakthroughs in the 70s and 80s.

    You can see a pop-science article about it here:

    Chronic pain, opioids and natural benzos: Researchers discover how body can make its own “sleeping pills”

    And you can see the previous research (from earlier this year) that this is now building from, about the glial cells in the spinal ganglia, here:

    Peripheral gating of mechanosensation by glial diazepam binding inhibitor

    But wait, there’s more!

    Remember what we said about affecting the PNS without affecting the CNS, to kill the pain without killing the brain?

    More researchers are already approaching the same idea to deal with the same problem, but from the angle of gene therapy, and have already had some very promising results with mice:

    Structure-guided design of a peripherally restricted chemogenetic system

    …which you can read about in pop-science terms (with diagrams!) here:

    New gene therapy could alleviate chronic pain, researchers find

    While you’re waiting…

    In the meantime, approaches that are already available include:

    Take care!

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  • Overcoming Gravity – by Steven Low

    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.

    The author, a professional gymnast and coach with a background in the sciences, knows his stuff here. This is what it says on the tin: it’s rigorously systematic. It’s also the most science-based calisthenics book this reviewer has read to date.

    If you just wanted to know how to do some exercises, then this book would be very much overkill, but if you want to be able to go from no knowledge to expert knowledge, then the nearly 600 pages of this weighty tome will do that for you.

    This is a textbook, it’s a “the bible of…” style book, it’s the one that if you’re serious, will engage you thoroughly and enable you to craft the calisthenics-forged body you want, head to toe.

    As if it weren’t already overdelivering, it also has plenty of information on injury avoidance (or injury/condition management if you have some existing injury or chronic condition), and building routines in a dynamic fashion that avoids becoming a grind, because it’s going from strength to strength while cycling through different body parts.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to get serious about calisthenics, then this is the book for you.

    Click here to check out Overcoming Gravity, and do just that!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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