Coughing/Wheezing After Dinner?

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The After-Dinner Activities You Don’t Want

A quick note first: our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies here, and we are not here to diagnose you or treat you; we are not doctors, let alone your doctors. Do see yours if you have any reason to believe there may be cause for concern.

Coughing and/or wheezing after eating is more common the younger or older someone is. Lest that seem contradictory: it’s a U-shaped bell-curve.

It can happen at any age and for any of a number of reasons, but there are patterns to the distribution:

Mostly affects younger people:

Allergies, asthma

Young people are less likely to have a body that’s fully adapted to all foods yet, and asthma can be triggered by certain foods (for example sulfites, a common preservative additive):

Adverse reactions to the sulphite additives

Foods/drinks that commonly contain sulfites include soft drinks, wines and beers, and dried fruit

As for the allergies side of things, you probably know the usual list of allergens to watch out for, e.g: dairy, fish, crustaceans, eggs, soy, wheat, nuts.

However, that’s far from an exhaustive list, so it’s good to see an allergist if you suspect it may be an allergic reaction.

Affects young and old people equally:

Again, there’s a dip in the middle where this doesn’t tend to affect younger adults so much, but for young and old people:

Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing)

For children, this can be a case of not having fully got used to eating yet if very small, and when growing, can be a case of “this body is constantly changing and that makes things difficult”.

For older people, this can can come from a variety of reasons, but common culprits include neurological disorders (including stroke and/or dementia), or a change in saliva quality and quantity—a side-effect of many medications:

Hyposalivation in Elderly Patients

(particularly useful in the article above is the table of drugs that are associated with this problem, and the various ways they may affect it)

Managing this may be different depending on what is causing your dysphagia (as it could be anything from antidepressants to cancer), so this is definitely one to see your doctor about. For some pointers, though:

NHS Inform | Dysphagia (swallowing problems)

Affects older people more:

Gastroesophagal reflux disease (GERD)

This is a kind of acid reflux, but chronic, and often with a slightly different set of symptoms.

GERD has no known cure once established, but its symptoms can be managed (or avoided in the first place) by:

And of course, don’t smoke, and ideally don’t drink alcohol.

You can read more about this (and the different ways it can go from there), here:

NICE | Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease

Note: this above page refers to it as “GORD”, because of the British English spelling of “oesophagus” rather than “esophagus”. It’s the exact same organ and condition, just a different spelling.

Take care!

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  • Can you drink your fruit and vegetables? How does juice compare to the whole food?

    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.

    Do you struggle to eat your fruits and vegetables? You are not alone. Less than 5% of Australians eat the recommended serves of fresh produce each day (with 44% eating enough fruit but only 6% eating the recommended vegetables).

    Adults should aim to eat at least five serves of vegetables (or roughly 375 grams) and two serves of fruit (about 300 grams) each day. Fruits and vegetables help keep us healthy because they have lots of nutrients (vitamins, minerals and fibre) and health-promoting bioactive compounds (substances not technically essential but which have health benefits) without having many calories.

    So, if you are having trouble eating the rainbow, you might be wondering – is it OK to drink your fruits and vegetables instead in a juice or smoothie? Like everything in nutrition, the answer is all about context.

    Darina Belonogova/Pexels

    It might help overcome barriers

    Common reasons for not eating enough fruits and vegetables are preferences, habits, perishability, cost, availability, time and poor cooking skills. Drinking your fruits and vegetables in juices or smoothies can help overcome some of these barriers.

    Juicing or blending can help disguise tastes you don’t like, like bitterness in vegetables. And it can blitz imperfections such as bruises or soft spots. Preparation doesn’t take much skill or time, particularly if you just have to pour store-bought juice from the bottle. Treating for food safety and shipping time does change the make up of juices slightly, but unsweetened juices still remain significant sources of nutrients and beneficial bioactives.

    Juicing can extend shelf life and reduce the cost of nutrients. In fact, when researchers looked at the density of nutrients relative to the costs of common foods, fruit juice was the top performer.

    So, drinking my fruits and veggies counts as a serve, right?

    How juice is positioned in healthy eating recommendations is a bit confusing. The Australian Dietary Guidelines include 100% fruit juice with fruit but vegetable juice isn’t mentioned. This is likely because vegetable juices weren’t as common in 2013 when the guidelines were last revised.

    The guidelines also warn against having juice too often or in too high amounts. This appears to be based on the logic that juice is similar, but not quite as good as, whole fruit. Juice has lower levels of fibre compared to fruits, with fibre important for gut health, heart health and promoting feelings of fullness. Juice and smoothies also release the sugar from the fruit’s other structures, making them “free”. The World Health Organization recommends we limit free sugars for good health.

    But fruit and vegetables are more than just the sum of their parts. When we take a “reductionist” approach to nutrition, foods and drinks are judged based on assumptions made about limited features such as sugar content or specific vitamins.

    But these features might not have the impact we logically assume because of the complexity of foods and people. When humans eat varied and complex diets, we don’t necessarily need to be concerned that some foods are lower in fibre than others. Juice can retain the nutrients and bioactive compounds of fruit and vegetables and even add more because parts of the fruit we don’t normally eat, like the skin, can be included.

    blender and glass of orange juice
    Juicing or blending might mean you eat different parts of the fruit or vegetable. flyingv3/Shutterstock

    So, it is healthy then?

    A recent umbrella review of meta-analyses (a type of research that combines data from multiple studies of multiple outcomes into one paper looked at the relationship between 100% juice and a range of health outcomes.

    Most of the evidence showed juice had a neutral impact on health (meaning no impact) or a positive one. Pure 100% juice was linked to improved heart health and inflammatory markers and wasn’t clearly linked to weight gain, multiple cancer types or metabolic markers (such as blood sugar levels).

    Some health risks linked to drinking juice were reported: death from heart disease, prostate cancer and diabetes risk. But the risks were all reported in observational studies, where researchers look at data from groups of people collected over time. These are not controlled and do not record consumption in the moment. So other drinks people think of as 100% fruit juice (such as sugar-sweetened juices or cordials) might accidentally be counted as 100% fruit juice. These types of studies are not good at showing the direct causes of illness or death.

    What about my teeth?

    The common belief juice damages teeth might not stack up. Studies that show juice damages teeth often lump 100% juice in with sweetened drinks. Or they use model systems like fake mouths that don’t match how people drinks juice in real life. Some use extreme scenarios like sipping on large volumes of drink frequently over long periods of time.

    Juice is acidic and does contain sugars, but it is possible proper oral hygiene, including rinsing, cleaning and using straws can mitigate these risks.

    Again, reducing juice to its acid level misses the rest of the story, including the nutrients and bioactives contained in juice that are beneficial to oral health.

    groups of women outside drinking orange juice in cups
    Juice might be more convenient and could replace less healthy drinks. PintoArt/Shutterstock

    So, what should I do?

    Comparing whole fruit (a food) to juice (a drink) can be problematic. They serve different culinary purposes, so aren’t really interchangeable.

    The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating recommends water as the preferred beverage but this assumes you are getting all your essential nutrients from eating.

    Where juice fits in your diet depends on what you are eating and what other drinks it is replacing. Juice might replace water in the context of a “perfect” diet. Or juice might replace alcohol or sugary soft drinks and make the relative benefits look very different.

    On balance

    Whether you want to eat your fruits and vegetables or drink them comes down to what works for you, how it fits into the context of your diet and your life.

    Smoothies and juices aren’t a silver bullet, and there is no evidence they work as a “cleanse” or detox. But, with society’s low levels of fruit and vegetable eating, having the option to access nutrients and bioactives in a cheap, easy and tasty way shouldn’t be discouraged either.

    Emma Beckett, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Dietetics & Food Innovation – School of Health Sciences, UNSW Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The Daily Stoic – by Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman

    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.

    What’s this, a philosophy book in a health and productivity newsletter? Well, look at it this way: Aristotle basically wrote the “How To Win Friends And Influence People” of his day, and Plato before him wrote a book about management.

    In this (chiefly modern!) book, we see what the later Stoic philosophers had to say about getting the most out of life—which is also what we’re about, here at 10almonds!

    We tend to use the word “stoic” in modern English to refer to a person who is resolute in the face of hardship. The traditional meaning does encompass that, but also means a lot more: a whole, rounded, philosophy of life.

    Philosophy in general is not an easy thing into which to “dip one’s toe”. No matter where we try to start, it seems, it turns out there were a thousand other things we needed to read first!

    This book really gets around that. The format is:

    • There’s a theme for each month
    • Each month has one lesson per day
    • Each daily lesson starts with some words from a renowned stoic philosopher, and then provides commentary on such
    • The commentary provides a jumping-off point and serves as a prompt to actually, genuinely, reflect and apply the ideas.

    Unlike a lot of “a year of…” day-by-day books, this is not light reading, by the way, and you are getting a weighty tome for your money.

    But, the page-length daily lessons are indeed digestible—which, again, is what we like at 10almonds!

    Get your copy of The Daily Stoic at Amazon today!

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  • Do You Have A Personalized Health Plan? (Here’s How)

    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.

    “Good health” is quite a broad umbrella, and while we all have a general idea of what “healthy” looks like, it’s easy to focus on some areas and overlook others.

    Of course, how much one does this will still depend on one’s level of interest in health, which can change over the course of life, and (barring serious midlife health-related curveballs such as a cancer diagnosis or something) often looks like an inverse bell curve:

    • As small kids, we probably barely thought about health
    • As teenagers, we probably had a narrow view of health (often related to whatever is considered sexually attractive at the time)
    • In our 20s, may have a bit of a health kick in which we learn and apply a lot… Which often then gets to later take a bit of a back seat to work responsibilities and so forth
    • This is commonly followed by a few decades of just trying to make it to Friday by any means necessary (definite risk factor for substance abuse of various kinds), double if we have kids, triple if we have work, kids, and are also solely responsible for managing the household.
    • Then just as suddenly as it is predictably, we are ambushed when approaching retirement age by a cluster of age-related increased health risks that we now get to do our best to mitigate—the focus here is “not dying early”. A lot of health education occurs at this time.
    • Finally, upon retirement, we actually get the time to truly focus on our health again, and now it’s easier to learn about all aspects of health, even if now there’s a need to juggle many health issues all at once, most of which affect the others.

    See also: How Likely Are You To Live To 100? ← in which we can also see a graph of 10almonds subscribers’ ages, consistent with the above

    So, let’s recap, and personalize our health plan

    There are often things we wish we could have focused on sooner, so now’s the time to figure out what future-you in your next decade (or later!) is going to thank you for having done now.

    So, while 20-year-old us might have been focusing on fat levels or athletic performance, how much does that really help us now? (With apologies to any readers in their 20s, but also, with the bonus for you: now’s the perfect time to plan ahead!)

    At 10almonds, while we cover very many health topics, we often especially focus on:

    • Brain health
    • Heart health
    • Gut health

    …because they affect everything else so much. We’ve listed them there in the order they appear in the body, but in fact it can be useful to view them upside down, because:

    • Gut health is critical for good metabolic health (a happy efficient gut allows us to process nutrients, including energy, efficiently)
    • Metabolic health is critical for good heart health (a nicely ticking metabolism will not strain our heart)
    • Heart health is critical for good brain health (a strong heart will nourish the brain with well-oxygenated blood and the nutrients it also carries)

    So, this isn’t a catch-22 at all! There is a clear starting point:

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    “How do I do the other bits, though?”

    We have you covered here: Your Health Audit, From Head To Toe

    “Wait, where’s the personalization?”

    This comes once you’ve got those above things in order.

    Hopefully you know what particular health risks you have—as in, particular to you.

    First, you will have any current diagnoses, and a plan for treating those. Many chronic illnesses can be reversed or at least lessened with lifestyle changes, in particular, if we reduce chronic inflammation, which is implicated in countless chronic illnesses, and exacerbates most of the rest.

    So: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation

    The same goes for any heightened risks you have as a result of those current diagnoses.

    Next, you will have any genetic health risks—so here’s where genetic testing is a good one-shot tool, to get a lot of information all in one go.

    Learn more: The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing

    …and then, of course, take appropriate steps to avoid suffering the things of which you are at increased genetic risk.

    Finally, you will have any personal concerns or goals—in other words, what do you want to still be able to do, later in life? It’s easy to say “everything”, but what’s most important?

    This writer’s example: I want to remain mobile, free from pain, and sharp of mind.

    That doesn’t mean I’ll neglect the rest of my health, but it does mean that I will regularly weigh my choices against whether they are consistent with those three things.

    As for how to plan for that?

    Check out: Train For The Event Of Your Life! ← this one is mostly about the mobility aspect; staying free from pain is in large part a matter of avoiding inflammation which we already discussed, and staying sharp of mind relies on the gut-heart-brain pipeline we also covered.

    You can also, of course, personalize your diet per which areas of health are the most important for you:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean (most anti-inflammatory, gut-healthiest, heart-healthiest, brain-healthiest)

    Take care!

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  • Egg Noodles vs Soba Noodles – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing egg noodles to soba noodles, we picked the soba.

    Why?

    First of all, for any unfamiliar, soba noodles are made with buckwheat. Buckwheat, for any unfamiliar, is not wheat and does not contain gluten; it’s just the name of a flowering plant that gets used as though a grain, even though it’s technically not.

    In terms of macros, egg noodles have slightly more protein 2x the fat (of which, some cholesterol) while soba noodles have very slightly more carbs and 3x the fiber (and, being plant-based, no cholesterol). Given that the carbs are almost equal, it’s a case of which do we care about more: slightly more protein, or 3x the fiber? We’re going with 3x the fiber, and so are calling this category a win for soba.

    In the category of vitamins, egg noodles have more of vitamins A, B12, C, D, E, K, and choline, while soba noodles have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9. That’s a 6:6 tie. One could argue that egg noodles’ vitamins are the ones more likely to be a deficiency in people, but on the other hand, soba noodles’ vitamins have the greater margins of difference. So, still a tie.

    When it comes to minerals, egg noodles have more calcium and selenium, while soba noodles have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. So, this one’s not close; it’s an easy win for soba noodles.

    Adding up the sections makes for a clear win for soba noodles, but by all means, enjoy moderate portions of either or both (unless you are vegan or allergic to eggs, in which case, skip the egg noodles and just enjoy the soba!).

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Egg Noodles vs Rice Noodles – Which is Healthier?

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • What’s Your Personal Life Expectancy?

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    Tick Tock… Goes the Death Clock?

    This fun little test will ask a few questions about you and your lifestyle, and then make a prediction of your personal life expectancy, based on global statistics from the World Health Organisation.

    And then the countdown starts… Literally, it generates a clock for you to see your life-seconds ticking away—this may or may not delight you, but it sure is a curiosity.

    Their “Letters” page has a lot of reactions from people who just got their results (spoiler: people’s perspectives on life vary a lot)

    Who mostly uses this service? According to their stats page, it’s mostly curious under-45s, with gradually less interest in knowing about it from 45 onwards… until the age of 70, when suddenly everyone wants to know about it again!

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    Life extension is sometimes viewed as the domain of the super-rich, and with less than half of Millennials (and almost none of Gen-Z) having retirement plans, often those of us who aren’t super-rich have more mundane (and immediate!) goals than living to 120.

    And yet…

    Middle class and working class life-extensionists do exist, even if not garnering the same media attention. We think that’s strange—after all, while the whimsies of the super-rich may be entertaining to read about, it’s not nearly as applicable to most people as more relatable stories:

    • The twenty-something who gives up smoking and adds (healthier!) years to their life
    • The thirty-something who adopts a plant-based diet and is less likely to die of heart disease
    • The forty-something who stops drinking, and avoids health conditions and mishaps alike
    • The fifty-something who reconsiders their health plan in light of their changing body
    • The sixty-something who takes up yoga, or chess, or salsa dancing
    • The seventy-something who gets asked what their secret is
    • …and so on

    But these are ideas, textbook examples. What if we make it more personal?

    We interviewed 10 Almonds subscriber and longevity enthusiast Anastasia S., and here’s what she had to say:

    Q: What does life extension mean to you, in your life?

    A: To me, the key is healthy life extension. People often joke “I don’t want to live longer; the last years are the worst!” but they’re missing the point that after a certain age, those difficulties are coming whether they come at 50 or 70 or 90. Personally, I’d rather keep them at bay if I can.

    Q: How do you do that?

    A: Firstly, which won’t be a shock: good diet and exercise. Those two things are possibly the biggest active influences on my longevity. I’m vegan, which I don’t think is outright necessary for good health but done right, it can certainly be good. In this house we eat a lot of whole grains, beans, lentils, vegetables in general, nuts too. As for exercise, I do 30–60 minutes of Pilates daily; it’s nothing fancy and it’s just me in my pajamas at home, but it keeps me strong and fit and supple. I also walk everywhere; I don’t even own a car. Beyond that… I don’t drink or smoke (probably the biggest passive influences on my longevity, i.e., things that aren’t there to make it shorter), and I try to take my sleep seriously, making sure to schedule enough time and prepare properly for it.

    Q: Take your sleep seriously? How so?

    A: Good “sleep hygiene” as some call it—I schedule a little wind-down time before sleep, with no glaring screens or main lights, making a space between my busy day and restful sleep, kicking anything requiring brainpower to the morning, and making a conscious choice not to think more about those things in the meantime. I take care to make my sleeping environment as conducive as possible to good sleep too; I have a good mattress and pillows, I make sure the temperature is cool but cosy. I have a pot of herbal tea on my bedside table—I hydrate a lot.

    Q: Do you take any supplements?

    A: I do! They’re mostly quite general though, just “covering my bases”, so to speak. I take a daily nootropic stack (a collection of supplements specifically for brain health), too. I buy them in bulk, so they don’t cost so much.

    Q: This seems quite a healthy lifestyle! Do you have any vices at all?

    A: I definitely drink more coffee than I probably should! But hey, nobody’s perfect. I do love coffee, though, and as vices go, it’s probably not too bad.

    Q: How’s it all working out for you? Do you feel younger?

    A: I’m 38 and sometimes I feel like a teenager; sometimes I feel like an old lady. But the latter is usually for social reasons, not health-related reasons. I do have streaks of gray in my hair though, and I love that! If people don’t notice my grays, then they often think I’m in my 20s, rather than pushing 40. A little while back, I was stopped in the street by someone wanting to sell me a change of household utilities provider, then she stopped herself mid-sentence and said “Oh but wait, you look a bit too young, never mind”. Most general metrics of health would put me in my 20s.

    Q: That’s interesting that you love your gray hairs, for someone who wants to stay young; is it an exception?

    A: It’s more that I want to minimize the problems that come with age, and not everything’s a problem. Gray hairs are cool; joint pain, not so much. A long life rich with experiences is cool; memory loss, not so much. So, I try to keep healthy, and wear my years as best I can.

    Q: Sounds good to us; good luck with it!

    A: Thank you; I do my best!

    Here at 10 Almonds, we love featuring what our readers are doing to improve their health; if you’re willing to be featured in our newsletter, let us know by replying to this email (where an actual human will read it, we promise!)

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  • The Blood Sugar Solution – by Dr. Mark Hyman

    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 main purpose of this book is combating metabolic disease, the amalgam of what’s often prediabetes (sometimes fully-fledged diabetes) and cardiovascular disease (sometimes fully-fledged heart disease).

    To achieve this (after an introductory section explaining what the sociomedical problems are and why the sociomedical problems are happening), he offers a seven-step program; we’ll not keep those steps a mystery; they are:

    1. Boost your nutrition
    2. Regulate your hormones
    3. Reduce inflammation
    4. Improve your digestion
    5. Maximize detoxification
    6. Enhance energy metabolism
    7. Soothe your mind

    Thereafter, it’s all about leading the reader by the hand through the steps; he also offers a six-week action plan, and a six-week meal plan with recipes.

    The style is very sensationalist (too sensationalist for this reviewer’s personal taste) but nevertheless backed up with hard science when it comes to hard claims. So, if you don’t mind wading through (or skipping) some early chapters that are a bit “used car salesman” in feel, there’s actually a lot of good information, especially in the middle of the book, and useful practical guides in the middle and end.

    Bottom line: if you want a good comprehensive science-based practical guide to addressing the risk of metabolic disease, this is that.

    Click here to check out The Blood Sugar Solution, and look after yours!

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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