Eat Better, Feel Better – by Giada de Laurentis

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In yesterday’s edition of 10almonds, we reviewed Dr. Aujla’s “The Doctor’s Kitchen“; today we’re reviewing a different book about healing through food—in this case, with a special focus on maintaining energy and good health as we get older.

De Laurentis may not be a medical doctor, but she is a TV chef, and not only holds a lot of influence, but also has access to a lot of celebrity doctors and such; that’s reflected a lot in her style and approach here.

The recipes are clear and easy to follow; well-illustrated and nicely laid-out.

This cookbook’s style is less “enjoy this hearty dish of rice and beans with these herbs and spices” and more “you can serve your steak salad with white beans and sweet shallot dressing on a bed of organic quinoa if you haven’t already had your day’s serving of grains, of course”.

It’s a little fancier, in short, and more focused on what to cut out, than what to include. On account of that, this could make it a good contrast to yesterday’s book, which had the opposite focus.

She also recommends assorted adjuvant practices; some that are evidence-based, like intermittent fasting and meditation, and some that are not, like extreme detox-dieting, and acupuncture (which has no bearing on gut health).

Bottom line: if you like the idea of eating for good health, and prefer a touch of celebrity lifestyle to your meals, this one’s a good book for you.

Click here to check out “Eat Better, Feel Better”, and enjoy her unique blend of quality and minimalism!

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Recommended

  • The Diet Compass – by Bas Kast
  • Loving Life at 50+ – by Maria Sabando
    Sabando’s book merges humor and depth on aging, offers yoga and recipes, and is backed by a doctor’s insight. A casual, engaging read full of thought-provoking wisdom for any age.

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  • Early Detection May Help Kentucky Tamp Down Its Lung Cancer Crisis

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    Anthony Stumbo’s heart sank after the doctor shared his mother’s chest X-ray.

    “I remember that drive home, bringing her back home, and we basically cried,” said the internal medicine physician, who had started practicing in eastern Kentucky near his childhood home shortly before his mother began feeling ill. “Nobody wants to get told they’ve got inoperable lung cancer. I cried because I knew what this meant for her.”

    Now Stumbo, whose mother died the following year, in 1997, is among a group of Kentucky clinicians and researchers determined to rewrite the script for other families by promoting training and boosting awareness about early detection in the state with the highest lung cancer death rate. For the past decade, Kentucky researchers have promoted lung cancer screening, first recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in 2013. These days the Bluegrass State screens more residents who are at high risk of developing lung cancer than any state except Massachusetts — 10.6% of eligible residents in 2022, more than double the national rate of 4.5% — according to the most recent American Lung Association analysis.

    The effort has been driven by a research initiative called the Kentucky LEADS (Lung Cancer Education, Awareness, Detection, and Survivorship) Collaborative, which in 2014 launched to improve screening and prevention, to identify more tumors earlier, when survival odds are far better. The group has worked with clinicians and hospital administrators statewide to boost screening rates both in urban areas and regions far removed from academic medical centers, such as rural Appalachia. But, a decade into the program, the researchers face an ongoing challenge as they encourage more people to get tested, namely the fear and stigma that swirl around smoking and lung cancer.

    Lung cancer kills more Americans than any other malignancy, and the death rates are worst in a swath of states including Kentucky and its neighbors Tennessee and West Virginia, and stretching south to Mississippi and Louisiana, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    It’s a bit early to see the impact on lung cancer deaths because people may still live for years with a malignancy, LEADS researchers said. Plus, treatment improvements and other factors may also help reduce death rates along with increased screening. Still, data already shows that more cancers in Kentucky are being detected before they become advanced, and thus more difficult to treat, they said. Of total lung cancer cases statewide, the percentage of advanced cases — defined as cancers that had spread to the lymph nodes or beyond — hovered near 81% between 2000 and 2014, according to Kentucky Cancer Registry data. By 2020, that number had declined to 72%, according to the most recent data available.

    “We are changing the story of families. And there is hope where there has not been hope before,” said Jennifer Knight, a LEADS principal investigator.

    Older adults in their 60s and 70s can hold a particularly bleak view of their mortality odds, given what their loved ones experienced before screening became available, said Ashley Shemwell, a nurse navigator for the lung cancer screening program at Owensboro Health, a nonprofit health system that serves Kentucky and Indiana.

    “A lot of them will say, ‘It doesn’t matter if I get lung cancer or not because it’s going to kill me. So I don’t want to know,’” said Shemwell. “With that generation, they saw a lot of lung cancers and a lot of deaths. And it was terrible deaths because they were stage 4 lung cancers.” But she reminds them that lung cancer is much more treatable if caught before it spreads.

    The collaborative works with several partners, including the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, and GO2 for Lung Cancer, and has received grant funding from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation. Leaders have provided training and other support to 10 hospital-based screening programs, including a stipend to pay for resources such as educational materials or a nurse navigator, Knight said. In 2022, state lawmakers established a statewide lung cancer screening program based in part on the group’s work.

    Jacob Sands, a lung cancer physician at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, credits the LEADS collaborative with encouraging patients to return for annual screening and follow-up testing for any suspicious nodules. “What the Kentucky LEADS program is doing is fantastic, and that is how you really move the needle in implementing lung screening on a larger scale,” said Sands, who isn’t affiliated with the Kentucky program and serves as a volunteer spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

    In 2014, Kentucky expanded Medicaid, increasing the number of lower-income people who qualified for lung cancer screening and any related treatment. Adults 50 to 80 years old are advised to get a CT scan every year if they have accumulated at least 20 pack years and still smoke or have quit within the past 15 years, according to the latest task force recommendation, which widened the pool of eligible adults. (To calculate pack years, multiply the packs of cigarettes smoked daily by years of smoking.) The lung association offers an online quiz, called “Saved By The Scan,” to figure out likely eligibility for insurance coverage.

    Half of U.S. patients aren’t diagnosed until their cancer has spread beyond the lungs and lymph nodes to elsewhere in the body. By then, the five-year survival rate is 8.2%.

    But regular screening boosts those odds. When a CT scan detects lung cancer early, patients have an 81% chance of living at least 20 years, according to data published in November in the journal Radiology.

    Some adults, like Lisa Ayers, didn’t realize lung cancer screening was an option. Her family doctor recommended a CT scan last year after she reported breathing difficulties. Ayers, who lives in Ohio near the Kentucky border, got screened at UK King’s Daughters, a hospital in far eastern Kentucky. The scan didn’t take much time, and she didn’t have to undress, the 57-year-old said. “It took me longer to park,” she quipped.

    She was diagnosed with a lung carcinoid tumor, a type of neuroendocrine cancer that can grow in various parts of the body. Her cancer was considered too risky for surgery, Ayers said. A biopsy showed the cancer was slow-growing, and her doctors said they would monitor it closely.

    Ayers, a lifelong smoker, recalled her doctor said that her type of cancer isn’t typically linked to smoking. But she quit anyway, feeling like she’d been given a second chance to avoid developing a smoking-related cancer. “It was a big wake-up call for me.”

    Adults with a smoking history often report being treated poorly by medical professionals, said Jamie Studts, a health psychologist and a LEADS principal investigator, who has been involved with the research from the start. The goal is to avoid stigmatizing people and instead to build rapport, meeting them where they are that day, he said.

    “If someone tells us that they’re not ready to quit smoking but they want to have lung cancer screening, awesome; we’d love to help,” Studts said. “You know what? You actually develop a relationship with an individual by accepting, ‘No.’”

    Nationally, screening rates vary widely. Massachusetts reaches 11.9% of eligible residents, while California ranks last, screening just 0.7%, according to the lung association analysis.

    That data likely doesn’t capture all California screenings, as it may not include CT scans done through large managed care organizations, said Raquel Arias, a Los Angeles-based associate director of state partnerships at the American Cancer Society. She cited other 2022 data for California, looking at lung cancer screening for eligible Medicare fee-for-service patients, which found a screening rate of 1%-2% in that population.

    But, Arias said, the state’s effort is “nowhere near what it needs to be.”

    The low smoking rate in California, along with its image as a healthy state, “seems to have come with the unintended consequence of further stigmatizing people who smoke,” said Arias, citing one of the findings from a 2022 report looking at lung cancer screening barriers. For instance, eligible patients may be reluctant to share prior smoking habits with their health provider, she said.

    Meanwhile, Kentucky screening efforts progress, scan by scan.

    At Appalachian Regional Healthcare, 3,071 patients were screened in 2023, compared with 372 in 2017. “We’re just scratching the surface of the potential lives that we can have an effect on,” said Stumbo, a lung cancer screening champion at the health system, which includes 14 hospitals, most located in eastern Kentucky.

    The doctor hasn’t shed his own grief about what his family missed after his mother died at age 51, long before annual screening was recommended. “Knowing that my children were born, and never knowing their grandmother,” he said, “just how sad is that?”

    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.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold

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    Curcumin (Turmeric) is worth its weight in gold

    Not financially! But, this inexpensive golden spice has an impressive list of well-studied health benefits, for something so freely available in any supermarket, and there’s a reason it gets a place in “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”, right up there with things like “leafy greens” and “berries” when it comes to superfoods.

    Let’s do a quick run-down:

    In short, it’s—like we said—worth its weight in gold.

    Quick advice though before we move on…

    If you take curcumin with black pepper, it allows your body to use the curcumin around 2,000% better. This goes whether you’re cooking with both, or take them as a supplement (they’re commonly sold as a combo-capsule for this reason).

    Want to get some?

    Click Here To Check It Out On Amazon

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  • You May Have More Air Pollution In Your Home Than In The Street

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    Certainly, gas stoves and heaters can cause indoor air pollution, with carbon monoxide (CO) being the main risk. Even if you have a CO alarm, the level at which it will go off is usually the “this will kill you tonight if you don’t do something about it soon” level, rather than the “this will slowly kill your brain cells but you’ll keep functioning otherwise, until one day you don’t” levels of CO.

    Still, do by all means have a CO alarm if you have anything in your house that can release CO!

    See also: Association Between Carbon Monoxide Intoxication and Incidence of Ischemic Stroke: A Retrospective Nested Case-Control Study in South Korea

    Fun fact about those stoves:

    ❝Just 1 kilogram of cooking fuel emits 10 quadrillion particles smaller than 3 nanometers, which matches or exceeds what’s emitted from cars with internal combustion engines.

    At that rate, you might be inhaling 10-100 times more of these sub-3 nanometer particles from cooking on a gas stove indoors than you would from car exhaust while standing on a busy street.❞

    ~ Ka‌yla Alb‌ert

    But today, we’re not here about that

    Rather, we are looking at some more innocent-seeming things, such as scented cleaning products and air fresheners. Notably, the biggest problem is often not even the cleaning chemicals themselves. Of course: please don’t breathe bleach fumes, etc.

    But that’s an obvious risk, and today we’re about the less obvious risks.

    So… What is the less obvious risk here?

    It’s the fragrances. The terpenes used to hold them react with ozone in the air, to create new nanoparticles. And, just like the nanoparticles from the stove, these can reach very high concentrations indoors, and suffice it to say, if you can smell the fragrance then you have the pollutants inside you.

    You can read about how badly different products score, here:

    Rapid Nucleation and Growth of Indoor Atmospheric Nanocluster Aerosol during the Use of Scented Volatile Chemical Products in Residential Buildings ← you’ll need to scroll down to the table with different cleaning products and air fresheners

    Further, the seemingly-harmless scented candle is, as it turns out, quite a menace too:

    ❝Full-scale emission experiments were conducted in the Purdue zEDGE Test House using a variety of scented candles (n = 5) and wax warmers/melts (n = 14) under different outdoor air exchange rates (AERs). Terpene concentrations were measured in real-time using a proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS). PTR-TOF-MS measurements revealed that scented candle and wax warmer/melt products emit a variety of monoterpenes (C10H16) and oxygen-containing monoterpenoids (C10H14O, C10H16O, C10H18O, C10H20O), with peak concentrations in the range of 10−1 to 102 ppb. Monoterpene EFs were much greater for scented wax warmers/melts (C10H16 EFs ∼ 102 mg per g wax consumed) compared to scented candles (C10H16 EFs ∼ 10−1 to 100 mg per g wax consumed). Significant emissions of reactive terpenes from both products, along with nitrogen oxides (NO, NO2) from candles, depleted indoor ozone (O3) concentrations. Terpene iFs were similar between the two products (iFs ∼ 103 ppm) and increased with decreasing outdoor AER. Terpene iFs during concentration decay periods were similar to, or greater than, iFs during active emission periods for outdoor AERs ≤ 3.0 h−1.

    Overall, scented wax warmers/melts were found to release greater quantities of monoterpenes compared to other fragranced consumer products used in the home, including botanical disinfectants, hair care products, air fresheners, and scented sprays.❞

    ~ Dr. Emily Reidy et al.

    Read in full: Rapid Nucleation and Growth of Indoor Atmospheric Nanocluster Aerosol during the Use of Scented Volatile Chemical Products in Residential Buildings

    Put in fewer words: scented candles are bad, and wax melts (the kind with no flame, that one might easily expect to thus produce fewer emissions) are at least as bad if not worse, and both are even worse than cleaning products.

    Some of the same research team conducted further studies, because of this this, finding:

    ❝We performed field measurements in a residential test house to investigate atmospheric nanoparticle formation from scented wax melt use. We employed a high-resolution particle size magnifier-scanning mobility particle sizer (PSMPS) and a proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS) for real-time monitoring of indoor atmospheric nanoparticle size distributions and terpene mixing ratios, respectively.

    Our findings reveal that terpenes released from scented wax melts react with indoor atmospheric ozone (O3) to initiate new particle formation (NPF) events, resulting in significant indoor atmospheric nanoparticle concentrations (>106 cm–3) comparable to those emitted by combustion-based scented candles, gas stoves, diesel engines, and natural gas engines.

    We show that scented wax melt-initiated NPF events can result in significant respiratory exposures, with nanoparticle respiratory tract deposited dose rates similar to those determined for combustion-based sources.

    Our results challenge the perception of scented wax melts as a safer alternative to combustion-based aromatherapy

    ~ Dr. Satya Patra et al.

    Read in full: Flame-Free Candles Are Not Pollution-Free: Scented Wax Melts as a Significant Source of Atmospheric Nanoparticles

    In short: you might want to ditch the fragranced products!

    Want to do more?

    Give your household hair a makeover with this multi-vector approach to deal with different risks:

    What’s Lurking In Your Household Air?

    For that matter, the air is a very important factor for the health of your lungs (and thus, for the health of everything that’s fed oxygen by your lungs), and there are more things we can do in that regard as well:

    Seven Things To Do For Good Lung Health!

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • The Diet Compass – by Bas Kast
  • Red Cabbage vs Cauliflower – 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 red cabbage to cauliflower, we picked the cabbage.

    Why?

    In terms of macros, there’s no meaningful difference between them; they’re both mostly water with just enough fiber to hold them together, a small amount of carbs, and an even more trivial amount of protein. So, a tie on macros.

    Looking at the vitamins, red cabbage has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C, E, and K, while cauliflower has more of vitamins B3, B5, B9, and choline. So, a 7:4 win for red cabbage.

    In the category of minerals, red cabbage has more calcium, manganese, and iron, while cauliflower has more copper, phosphorus, and potassium. The margins of difference are comparable too, thus, a 3:3 tie on minerals.

    It’s always worth taking a look at polyphenols for plants like these, but in this case, once again, there’s not much to set one above the other. However, it’s good to note also that despite them both being Brassica oleracea (same species, different cultivar), there isn’t much overlap in their polyphenol content, meaning they complement each other very well. In particular, red cabbage is a source of luteolin and quercetin, while cauliflower is a source of gallic acid and caffeic acid, for example.

    Adding up the three ties and the one win for red cabbage, gives the cabbage the victory today—but do enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them

    Enjoy!

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  • Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?

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    Toothpastes and mouthwashes: which kinds help, and which kinds harm?

    You almost certainly brush your teeth. You might use mouthwash. A lot of people floss for three weeks at a time, often in January.

    There are a lot of options for oral hygiene; variations of the above, and many alternatives too. This is a big topic, so rather than try to squeeze it all in one, this will be a several-part series.

    For today, let’s look at toothpastes and mouthwashes, to start!

    Toothpaste options

    Toothpastes may contain one, some, or all of the following, so here are some notes on those:

    Fluoride

    Most toothpastes contain fluoride; this is generally recognized as safe though is not without its controversies. The fluoride content is the reason it’s recommended not to swallow toothpaste, though.

    The fluoride in toothpaste can cause some small problems if overused; if you see unusually white patches on your teeth (your teeth are supposed to be ivory-colored, not truly white), that is probably a case of localized overcalcification because of the fluoride, and yes, you can have too much of a good thing.

    Overall, the benefits are considered to far outweigh the risks, though.

    Baking soda

    Whether by itself or as part of a toothpaste, baking soda is a safe and effective choice, not just for cosmetic purposes, but for boosting genuine oral hygiene too:

    Activated charcoal

    Activated charcoal is great at removing many chemicals from things it touches. That includes the kind you might see on your teeth in the form of stains.

    A topical aside on safety: activated charcoal is a common ingredient in a lot of black-colored Halloween-themed foods and drinks around this time of year. Beware, if you ingest these, there’s a good chance of it also cleaning out any meds you are taking. Ask your pharmacist about your own personal meds, but meds that (ingested) activated charcoal will usually remove include:

    • Oral HRT / contraceptives
    • Antidepressants (many kinds)
    • Heart medications (at least several major kinds)

    Toothpaste, assuming you are spitting-not-swallowing, won’t remove your medications though. Nor, in case you were worrying, will it strip tooth enamel, even if you have extant tooth enamel erosion:

    Source: Activated charcoal toothpastes do not increase erosive tooth wear

    However, it’s of no special extra help when it comes to oral hygiene itself, just removing stains.

    So, if you’d like to use it for cosmetic reasons, go right ahead. If not, no need.

    Hydrogen peroxide

    This is generally not a good idea, speaking for the health. For whitening, yes, it works. But for health, not so much:

    Hydrogen peroxide-based products alter inflammatory and tissue damage-related proteins in the gingival crevicular fluid of healthy volunteers: a randomized trial

    To be clear, when they say “alter”, they mean “in a bad way”. It increases inflammation and tissue damage.

    If buying commercially-available whitening toothpaste made with hydrogen peroxide, the academic answer is that it’s a lottery, because brands’ proprietorial compounding processes vary widely and constantly with little oversight and even less transparency:

    Is whitening toothpaste safe for dental health?: RDA-PE method

    Mouthwash options

    In the case of fluoride and hydrogen peroxide, the same advice (for and against) goes as per toothpaste.

    Alcohol

    There has been some concern about the potential carcinogenic effect of alcohol-based mouthwashes. According to the best current science, this one’s not an easy yes-or-no, but rather:

    • If there are no other cancer risk factors, it does not seem to increase cancer risk
    • If there are other cancer risk factors, it does make the risk worse

    Read more:

    Non-Alcohol

    Non-alcoholic mouthwashes are not without their concerns either. In this case, the potential problem is changing the oral microbiome (we are supposed to have one!), and specifically, that the spread of what it kills and what it doesn’t may result in an imbalance that causes a lowering of the pH of the mouth.

    Put differently: it makes your saliva more acidic.

    Needless to say, that can cause its own problems for teeth. The research on this is still emerging, with regard to whether the benefits outweigh the problems, but the fact that it has this effect seems to be a consensus. Here’s an example paper; there are others:

    Effects of Chlorhexidine mouthwash on the oral microbiome

    Flossing, scraping, and alternatives

    These are important (and varied, and interesting) enough to merit their own main feature, rather than squeezing them in at the end.

    So, watch this space for a main feature on these soon!

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  • The Good, The Bad, & The Vigorously Debated

    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.

    This week in health news sees some pretty varied topics:

    One more reason to care about the gut-brain axis

    Stroke is a top killer in much of the industrialized world, usually making it into the top-few list on a per-country basis. And, it’s rising in prevalence, too. This is partly because our longevity is increasing so age-related things kill us more often, statistically, than age-unrelated things. But that’s only part of the reason; another is that our lifestyle (on the national level) is becoming more conducive to stroke. Diet is a large contributor to that, and gut health has now been identified as a key factor.

    What recent research has shown is that minutes after a stroke occurs, normal gut anatomy is disrupted, and cells responsible for gut barrier integrity are eroded, and bugs from the gut get into the blood, and arrive at the (newly damaged) brain vasculature, where the blood-brain barrier is often also compromised on account of the stroke.

    Because of this, critical to reducing post-stroke neuroinflammation (something that makes stroke damage more severe and recovery a lot harder) is improving the gut’s ability to heal itself quickly.

    This can be helped with a dose of Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1), but there are other things that can help or hinder, and those other things are modifiable by us as individuals in our lifestyle choices (e.g. a gut-healthy diet with plenty of fiber, and avoiding gut-unhealthy things like sugar and alcohol that feed C. albicans growths that will put roots through your intestines and make holes as they do), because the better/worse your gut barrier integrity is to start with, the easier/harder it will be for your gut to repair itself quickly:

    Read in full: Healing the gut can reduce long-term impact of stroke

    Related: Stop Sabotaging Your Gut

    How about that seasonal lead-spiced hot drink?

    Lead contamination in ground spices has become a bit of an issue, ground turmeric has had quite some flak in this regard, and now the spotlight is on cinnamon.

    These reports, by the way, do not specify what kind of cinnamon (i.e. cassia vs Ceylon), however, clicking through to assorted sources and then doing our own digging finds that all cinnamon products we found listed as contaminated, were cassia cinnamon. This is unsurprising, as a) it’s cheaper b) it’s the kind most readily found on shelves in the US. That said, when it comes to Ceylon (sweet) cinnamon, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so that doesn’t mean they got the all-clear on lead contamination, but rather, that they haven’t received the same scrutiny as yet.

    It’s worth noting that cinnamon sticks have been found to have less contamination than ground cinnamon, though.

    It’s also worth noting that since some adulterated products have had lead added deliberately in increase the weight and darken the color, this is more likely to happen to cassia cinnamon than sweet cinnamon because cassia cinnamon is visibly darker, so adding a darkening agent to sweet cinnamon would just make it look like cassia (which no seller would want to do since cassia is the cheaper of the two).

    Read in full: Why lead-tainted cinnamon products have turned up on shelves, and what questions consumers should ask

    Related: Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier? ← this also covers toxicity issues, by the way

    A matter of life and death

    Assisted dying is currently legal in 10/40 US states, and Canada. Over in the UK, it’s being debated (and voted on) in Parliament today, at time of writing.

    While bodily autonomy discussions are usually quite straightforward arguments between the very separate camps of

    • “my body, my choice” vs
    • “they shouldn’t be allowed to do that”,

    …this one comes with a considerable middleground, because

    • “people should have to right to end things without extra suffering and on their own terms”, and
    • “many disabled people fear being placed in a position of having justify why they are not exercising their right to die when it might be cheaper and easier for others if they did”

    …are positions with a lot of potential overlap.

    In any case, we know most of our readers are in the US, but with a 10/40 split in US states (and some recent controversies in Canada), it’s likely a topic that’ll come up for most people at some point, so it’s good to understand it, and this is as good an opportunity as any:

    Read in full: How would the assisted dying bill work and what issues might it create?

    Related: Managing Your Mortality ← this talks about psychological/social considerations, as well as end-of-life care, palliative care (which is not quite the same thing!) and euthanasia in various forms, including the unofficial kind that you might want to be aware of if you want to avoid that happening.

    Take care!

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