Easing Lower Back Pain

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Lower back pain often originates from an unexpected culprit: your pelvis. Similar to how your psoas can contribute to lower back pain, when your pelvis tilts forward due to tight hip flexors, it can misalign your spine, leading to discomfort and pain. As WeShape shows us in the below video, one simple stretch can help realign your pelvis and significantly ease lower back pain.

Why Your Pelvis Matters

Sitting for long periods causes your hip flexors to shorten, leading to an anterior pelvic tilt. This forward tilt puts pressure on your spine and SI joint, causing pain and discomfort in the lower back. To help resolve this, you can work on correcting your pelvic alignment, helping to significantly reduce this pressure and alleviate related pain. And no, this doesn’t require any spinal cord stimulation.

Easy Variations for All

A lot of you recognise the stretch in this video; it’s quite a well-known kneeling stretch. But, unlike other guides, WeShape also provides a fantastic variation for those who aren’t mobile enough for the kneeling variation

So, if you can’t comfortably get down on the ground, WeShape outlines a brilliant standing variation. So, regardless of your mobility, there’s an option for you!

See both variations here:

Excited to reduce your lower back pain? We hope so! Let us know if you have any tips that you’d like to share with us.

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  • Building Psychological Resilience (Without Undue Hardship)

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    What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

    When we talk about the five lifestyle factors that make the biggest difference to health, stress management would be a worthy addition as number six. We haven’t focused explicitly on that for a while, so let’s get ready to start the New Year on a good footing…

    You’re not going to have a stress-free 2024

    What a tender world that would be! Hopefully your stressors will be small and manageable, but rest assured, things will stress you.

    And that’s key: “rest assured”. Know it now, prepare for it, and build resilience.

    Sounds grim, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be, though.

    When the forecast weather is cold and wet, you’re not afraid of it when you have a warm dry house. When the heating bill comes for that warm dry house, you’re not afraid of it when you have money to pay it. If you didn’t have the money and the warm dry house, the cold wet weather could be devastating to you.

    The lesson here is: we can generally handle what we’re prepared for.

    Negative visualization and the PNS

    This is the opposite of what a lot of “think and grow rich”-style gurus would advise. And indeed, it’s not helpful to slide into anxious worrying.

    If you do find yourself spiralling, here’s a tool for getting out of that spiral:

    RAIN: an intervention for dealing with difficult emotions

    For now, however, we’re going to practice Radical Acceptance.

    First, some biology: you may be aware that your Central Nervous System (CNS) branches into the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS).

    The PNS is the part that cues our body to relax, and suppresses our fight/flight response. We’re going to activate it.

    Activating the PNS is easy for most people in comfortable circumstances (e.g., you are not currently exposed to stressful stimuli). It may well be activated already, and if it’s not, a few deep breaths is usually all it takes.

    If you’d like a quick and easy Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) technique, here you go:

    No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

    Activating the PNS is hard for most people in difficult circumstances (e.g., you either are currently exposed to stressful stimuli, or you are in one of the emotional spirals we discussed earlier).

    However, we can trick our bodies and brains by—when we are safe and unstressed—practicing imagining those stressful stimuli. Taking a moment to not just imagine it experientially, but immersively. This, in CBT and DBT, is the modern equivalent to the old samurai who simply accepted, before battle, that they were already dead—and thus went into battle with zero fear of death.

    A less drastic example is the zen master who had a favorite teacup, and feared it would get broken. So he would tell himself “the cup is already broken”. One day, it actually broke, and he simply smiled ruefully and said “Of course”.

    How this ties together: practice the mindfulness-based stress reduction we linked above, while imagining the things that do/would stress you the most.

    Since it’s just imagination, this is a little easier than when the thing is actually happening. Practicing this way means that when and if the thing actually happens (an unfortunate diagnosis, a financial reversal, whatever it may be), our CNS is already well-trained to respond to stress with a dose of PNS-induced calm.

    You can also leverage hormesis, a beneficial aspect of (in this case, optional and chosen by you) acute stress:

    Dr. Elissa Epel | The Stress Prescription

    Psychological resilience training

    This (learned!) ability to respond to stress in an adaptive fashion (without maladaptive coping strategies such as unhelpful behavioral reactivity and/or substance use) is a key part of what in psychology is called resilience:

    Psychological resilience: an update on definitions, a critical appraisal, and research recommendations

    And yes, the CBT/DBT/MBSR methods we’ve been giving you are the evidence-based gold standard.

    Only the best for 10almonds subscribers! 😎

    Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions

    ❝That was helpful, but not cheery; can we finish the year on a cheerier note?❞

    We can indeed:

    How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)

    Take care!

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  • Vitamin C (Drinkable) vs Vitamin C (Chewable) – 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 vitamin C (drinkable) to vitamin C (chewable), we picked the drinkable.

    Why?

    First let’s look at what’s more or less the same in each:

    • The usable vitamin C content is comparable
    • The bioavailability is comparable
    • The additives to hold it together are comparable

    So what’s the difference?

    With the drinkable, you also drink a glass of water

    If you’d like to read more about how to get the most out of the vitamins you take, you can do so here:

    Are You Wasting Your Vitamins? Maybe, But You Don’t Have To

    If you’d like to get some of the drinkable vitamin C, here’s an example product on Amazon

    Enjoy!

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  • PCOS Repair Protocol – by Tamika Woods

    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.

    PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) affects about 1 in 5 women, and the general position of the medical establishment is “Oh dear, how sad; never mind”.

    …which leaves a lot of people suffering with symptoms with little to no help.

    This book looks to address that, and while it doesn’t claim to cure PCOS, it offers a system for managing (including: reducing) the symptoms. The author, a clinical nutritionist by academic background, tackles this in large part via being mindful about what one eats, in the context of the gut and endocrine system specifically.

    It’s not just “have a gut healthy diet and eat foods with these nutrients”, though (although yes: also that). Rather, the author walks us through in-depth quizzes and lab testing advice, to advise the reader on how to understand the root cause of your PCOS symptoms, and then address each of those with an individualized management plan.

    The style is on the low-end of pop-science, notwithstanding the clinically-informed content. For those who like a very chatty informal approach, you’ll find this one perfect. For those who don’t, well, you won’t find this one perfect, but you will most likely find it informative all the same.

    Bottom line: if you or someone you care about (do you know 5 women?) has PCOS, the information in here could make a difference.

    Click here to check out PCOS Repair Protocol, and suffer less!

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  • The Metabolism Reset Diet – by Alan Christianson

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    The liver is an incredible organ that does a very important job, but what’s not generally talked about is how we can help it… Beyond the obvious “try to not poison it too much with alcohol, tobacco, etc”. But what can we do that’s actually positive for it?

    That’s what Alan Christianson offers in this book.

    Now, usually when someone speaks of a “four week cleanse” as this book advertises on its front cover, it’s a lot of bunk. The liver cleanses itself, and the liver and kidneys between them (along with some other organs and processes) detoxify your body for you. No amount of celery juice will do that. However, this book does better than that:

    What it’s about, is not really about trying to do a “detox” at all, so much as supporting your liver function by:

    • Giving your liver what it needs to regenerate (mostly: protein)
    • Not over-taxing your liver while it does so

    The liver is a self-regenerating organ (the mythological story of Prometheus aside, here in real life it can regenerate up to 80% of itself, given the opportunity), so whatever the current state of your liver, it’s probably not too late to fix it.

    Maybe you’ve been drinking a little too much, or maybe you’ve been taking some meds that have hobbled it a bit (some medications strain the liver rather), or maybe your diet hasn’t been great. Christianson invites you to draw a line under that, and move forwards:

    The book gives an overview of the science involved, and explains about the liver’s role in metabolism (hence the promised weight loss benefits) and our dietary habits’ impact on liver function. This is about what we eat, and also about when we eat it, and how and when our body metabolizes that.

    Christianson also provides meal ideas and recipes. If we’re honest (and we always are), the science/principles part of the book are worth a lot more than the meal-plan part of the book, though.

    In short: a great book for understanding how the liver works and how we can help it do its job effectively.

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  • Reinventing Your Life – by Dr. Jeffrey Young & Dr. Janet Klosko

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    This book is quite unlike any other broadly-CBT-focused books we’ve reviewed before. How so, you may wonder?

    Rather than focusing on automatic negative thoughts and cognitive distortions with a small-lens focus on an immediate problem, this one zooms out rather and tackles the cause rather than the symptom.

    The authors outline eleven “lifetraps” that we can get stuck in:

    1. Abandonment
    2. Mistrust & abuse
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    4. Dependence
    5. Emptional deprivation
    6. Social exclusion
    7. Defectiveness
    8. Failure
    9. Subjugation
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    They then borrow from other areas of psychology, to examine where these things came from, and how they can be addressed, such that we can escape from them.

    The style of the book is very reader-friendly pop-psychology, with illustrative (and perhaps apocryphal, but no less useful for it if so) case studies.

    The authors then go on to give step-by-step instructions for dealing with each of the 11 lifetraps, per 6 unmet needs we probably had that got us into them, and per 3 likely ways we tried to cope with this using maladaptive coping mechanisms that got us into the lifetrap(s) we ended up in.

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    Click here to check out “Reinventing Your Life” and break free from any lifetrap(s) of your own!

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  • Do We Simply Not Care About Old People?

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    The covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call for America, advocates for the elderly predicted: incontrovertible proof that the nation wasn’t doing enough to care for vulnerable older adults.

    The death toll was shocking, as were reports of chaos in nursing homes and seniors suffering from isolation, depression, untreated illness, and neglect. Around 900,000 older adults have died of covid-19 to date, accounting for 3 of every 4 Americans who have perished in the pandemic.

    But decisive actions that advocates had hoped for haven’t materialized. Today, most people — and government officials — appear to accept covid as a part of ordinary life. Many seniors at high risk aren’t getting antiviral therapies for covid, and most older adults in nursing homes aren’t getting updated vaccines. Efforts to strengthen care quality in nursing homes and assisted living centers have stalled amid debate over costs and the availability of staff. And only a small percentage of people are masking or taking other precautions in public despite a new wave of covid, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.

    In the last week of 2023 and the first two weeks of 2024 alone, 4,810 people 65 and older lost their lives to covid — a group that would fill more than 10 large airliners — according to data provided by the CDC. But the alarm that would attend plane crashes is notably absent. (During the same period, the flu killed an additional 1,201 seniors, and RSV killed 126.)

    “It boggles my mind that there isn’t more outrage,” said Alice Bonner, 66, senior adviser for aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “I’m at the point where I want to say, ‘What the heck? Why aren’t people responding and doing more for older adults?’”

    It’s a good question. Do we simply not care?

    I put this big-picture question, which rarely gets asked amid debates over budgets and policies, to health care professionals, researchers, and policymakers who are older themselves and have spent many years working in the aging field. Here are some of their responses.

    The pandemic made things worse. Prejudice against older adults is nothing new, but “it feels more intense, more hostile” now than previously, said Karl Pillemer, 69, a professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University.

    “I think the pandemic helped reinforce images of older people as sick, frail, and isolated — as people who aren’t like the rest of us,” he said. “And human nature being what it is, we tend to like people who are similar to us and be less well disposed to ‘the others.’”

    “A lot of us felt isolated and threatened during the pandemic. It made us sit there and think, ‘What I really care about is protecting myself, my wife, my brother, my kids, and screw everybody else,’” said W. Andrew Achenbaum, 76, the author of nine books on aging and a professor emeritus at Texas Medical Center in Houston.

    In an environment of “us against them,” where everybody wants to blame somebody, Achenbaum continued, “who’s expendable? Older people who aren’t seen as productive, who consume resources believed to be in short supply. It’s really hard to give old people their due when you’re terrified about your own existence.”

    Although covid continues to circulate, disproportionately affecting older adults, “people now think the crisis is over, and we have a deep desire to return to normal,” said Edwin Walker, 67, who leads the Administration on Aging at the Department of Health and Human Services. He spoke as an individual, not a government representative.

    The upshot is “we didn’t learn the lessons we should have,” and the ageism that surfaced during the pandemic hasn’t abated, he observed.

    Ageism is pervasive. “Everyone loves their own parents. But as a society, we don’t value older adults or the people who care for them,” said Robert Kramer, 74, co-founder and strategic adviser at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care.

    Kramer thinks boomers are reaping what they have sown. “We have chased youth and glorified youth. When you spend billions of dollars trying to stay young, look young, act young, you build in an automatic fear and prejudice of the opposite.”

    Combine the fear of diminishment, decline, and death that can accompany growing older with the trauma and fear that arose during the pandemic, and “I think covid has pushed us back in whatever progress we were making in addressing the needs of our rapidly aging society. It has further stigmatized aging,” said John Rowe, 79, professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

    “The message to older adults is: ‘Your time has passed, give up your seat at the table, stop consuming resources, fall in line,’” said Anne Montgomery, 65, a health policy expert at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. She believes, however, that baby boomers can “rewrite and flip that script if we want to and if we work to change systems that embody the values of a deeply ageist society.”

    Integration, not separation, is needed. The best way to overcome stigma is “to get to know the people you are stigmatizing,” said G. Allen Power, 70, a geriatrician and the chair in aging and dementia innovation at the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging in Canada. “But we separate ourselves from older people so we don’t have to think about our own aging and our own mortality.”

    The solution: “We have to find ways to better integrate older adults in the community as opposed to moving them to campuses where they are apart from the rest of us,” Power said. “We need to stop seeing older people only through the lens of what services they might need and think instead of all they have to offer society.”

    That point is a core precept of the National Academy of Medicine’s 2022 report Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity. Older people are a “natural resource” who “make substantial contributions to their families and communities,” the report’s authors write in introducing their findings.

    Those contributions include financial support to families, caregiving assistance, volunteering, and ongoing participation in the workforce, among other things.

    “When older people thrive, all people thrive,” the report concludes.

    Future generations will get their turn. That’s a message Kramer conveys in classes he teaches at the University of Southern California, Cornell, and other institutions. “You have far more at stake in changing the way we approach aging than I do,” he tells his students. “You are far more likely, statistically, to live past 100 than I am. If you don’t change society’s attitudes about aging, you will be condemned to lead the last third of your life in social, economic, and cultural irrelevance.”

    As for himself and the baby boom generation, Kramer thinks it’s “too late” to effect the meaningful changes he hopes the future will bring.

    “I suspect things for people in my generation could get a lot worse in the years ahead,” Pillemer said. “People are greatly underestimating what the cost of caring for the older population is going to be over the next 10 to 20 years, and I think that’s going to cause increased conflict.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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