Fall Special
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Some fall-themed advice…
It is now, nominally at least, fall. We’re going to talk about the other kind of “fall” though, the kind that results in broken hips and more.
If you’re thinking “not me; that happens to older more infirm people”, rest assured, it can and statistically probably will happen to you at some point. So, how to play the odds?
First, be robust!
We may not be able to make ourselves like children who bounce easily, but we also don’t have to crumble into dust at the slightest knock, either. There are two important ways we can start to make ourselves robust from the inside out, and they are simple: diet and exercise.
- Diet: The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
- Exercise: Osteoporosis Exercises
“But I don’t have osteoporosis”—great! But osteoporosis is preceded by osteopenia, which is generally asymptomatic at first, and also if we’re not very careful about it, we will lose about 1% bone density per year from the age of about 35 onwards, with that rate of loss climbing sharply from the age of 50 onwards, and even more steeply in cases of untreated menopause.
So in other words, don’t take your bone strength for granted; there’s a first time for everything, and you don’t want to find out the hard (and yet, dare we say it, brittle) way.
Second, be dynamic!
Be able to fall and get up safely. If your later life is going to be a triathlon of things you need to train for now, then being able to fall and get up safely should be at the top of the list.
Being able to “deep squat” will help you a lot here, in being able to get up with minimal (or no) use of your hands. We shared a great instructional video about this last week.
It also means that the more your lower body can still take your weight while your torso is closer to the ground (without your legs buckling and collapsing, for instance), the softer and gentler you’ll hit the floor if you do fall, because the final “drop” will be from a lower height.
If at all possible, consider taking some classes of a martial art that involves safely falling—aikido is typically the softest and gentlest and is famously great for people of all ages, but judo or jujitsu will suffice if aikido isn’t available where you are. You don’t have to get a black belt (unless you want to), and any decent instructor will be happy to guide you through the basics of safely falling and then send you on your merry way, if that’s all you wanted.
The benefits of this are twofold:
- Obviously, if you fall, you will have better technique and thus be less likely to incur injury
- As you are falling, you will be less afraid, and thus less likely to tense up mid-fall (tensing up will exacerbate any falling injury)
Click here to find an aikido teacher near you (you can search by country, state, and city)
Third, be balanced!
Spending even just a few minutes each day working on your balance can go a long way.
Standing on one leg (and then the other) is a very good obvious starting point. Please, do so safely. The shower is not the best place to take up this practice, for instance. A nice safe grassy area is great. Your carpeted living room or bedroom is next-best.
Another great approach is the practice of bāguàzhǎng circle-walking.
Bāguà is tai chi’s lesser-known cousin, and those arts are two of the three main schools of wǔdāngquán. But, fear not, you don’t have to don orange robes and live atop the Wudang mountains to get what you need in this case.
To give a text-based summary: bāguàzhǎng circle-walking involves walking in a small circle, with a low center of gravity, moving one’s weight very purposefully from one leg to the other, keeping complete stability the whole time that one is (often!) on one leg.
Once you get good at this, you’ll see that this is essentially a super-enhanced version of the “standing on one leg” exercise, because it’s about keeping balance while on one leg, and/but while moving also.
Naturally, if you do get good at this, you’ll be very unlikely to fall in the first place.
Here’s a visual primer. This video will show the basic footwork, and the video that follows it (it’ll prompt you if you want to watch it) shows how to bring it up to a standard walking speed, without losing fluidity of movement:
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One Cause; Countless Aches
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What Is The Cause?
Zac Cupples’ video (below) makes an appealing claim: 90% of movement issues and discomforts we experience daily come from one source: reduced joint space due to increased muscle tension.
For Cupples, this could be causing anything from knee pain to foot pain to ankle pain to hip pain to generalized joint pain to…pretty much any sort of pain.
So, why do we describe this as “appealing”?
Well, if there’s just one cause, that means there is only one thing to fix
Can This Be True?
Whilst we normally stray away from oversimplifications, we found Cupples’ example quite powerful.
Cupples defends his thesis by illustrating it with a simple wrist movement experiment: try moving your wrist in a circle with your palm open, and then do the same with your fist clenched.
Did you notice a difference?
When you clench your fist, movement (normally) becomes restricted and uncomfortable, illustrating how increased tension limits joint space.
It’s a powerful analogy for understanding our body’s mechanics.
So How Do We Fix It?
To combat issues with reduced joint space, Cupples proposes a three-step solution: reducing muscle tension, increasing range of motion in commonly limited areas, and enhancing movement efficiency. He delves into strategies for achieving these, including adopting certain positions and breathing techniques.
There are also some elements of strategic muscle engagement, but we’ll leave that to him to describe:
How was the video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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Screaming at Screens?
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I Screen, You Screen, We All Screen For…?
Dr. Kathryn Birkenbach is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University, and Manager of Research at Early Medical in New York.
Kathryn has things to tell us about kids’ neurological development, and screen time spent with electronic devices including phones, tablets, computers, and TVs.
From the 1960s criticism of “the gogglebox” to the modern-day critiques of “iPad babies” as a watchword of parental neglect, there’s plenty people can say against screen time, but Dr. Birkenbach tells us the that the reality is more nuanced:
Context Is Key
On a positive note”: consistent exposure to age-appropriate educational material results in quicker language acquisition than media that’s purely for entertainment purposes, or not age-appropriate.
Contrary to popular belief, children do not in fact learn by osmosis!
Interaction Is Far More Valuable Than Inaction
Kathryn advises that while adults tend to quite easily grasp things from instructional videos, the same does not go for small children.
This means that a lot of educational programming can be beneficial to small children if and only if there is an adult with them to help translate the visual into the practical!
There’s a story that does the rounds on the Internet: a young boy wanted to train his puppy, but didn’t know how. He asked, and was told “search for puppy training on YouTube”. His parents came back later and found him with his iPad, earnestly showing the training videos to the puppy.
We can laugh at the child’s naïvety, knowing that’s not how it works and the puppy will not learn that way, so why make the same mistake in turn?
❝The phenomenon known as the “video deficit effect” can be overcome, when an on-screen guide interacts with the child or a parent is physically present and draws the child’s attention to relevant information.
In other words, interaction with others appears to enhance the perceived salience of on-screen information, unlocking a child’s ability to learn from a medium which would otherwise offer no real-world benefit.❞
Screens Can Supplement, But Can’t Replace, Live Learning & Play
Sci-fi may show us “education pods” in which children learn all they need to from their screen… but according to our most up-to-date science, Dr. Birkenbach says, that simply would not work at all.
Screen time without adult interactions will typically fail to provide small children any benefit.
There is one thing it’s good at, though… attracting and keeping attention.
Thus, even a mere background presence of a TV show in the room will tend to actively reduce the time a small child spends on other activities, including live learning and exploratory play.
The attention-grabbing abilities of TV shows don’t stop at children, though! Adult caregivers will also tend to engage in fewer interactions with their children… and the interactions will be shorter and of lower quality.
In Summary:
- Young children will tend not to learn from non-interactive screen time
- Interactive screen time, ideally with a caregiver, can be educational
- Interactive screen time, not with a carer, can be beneficial (but a weak substitute)
- Interactive screen time refers to shows such as Dora The Explorer, where Dora directly addresses the viewer and asks questions…But it’s reliant on the child caring to answer!
- It can also mean interactive educational apps, provided the child does consciously interact!
- Randomly pressing things is not conscious interaction! The key here is engaging with it intelligently and thoughtfully
- A screen will take a child’s time and attention away from non-screen things: that’s a genuine measurable loss to their development!
Absolute Bottom Line:
Screens can be of benefit to small children, if and only if the material is:
- Age-Appropriate
- Educational
- Interactive
If it’s missing one of those three, it’ll be of little to no benefit, and can even harm, as it reduces the time spent on more beneficial activities.
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Scarcity Brain – by Michael Easter
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After a brief overview of theevolutionary psychology underpinnings of the scarcity brain, the author grounds the rest of this book firmly in the present. He explains how the scarcity loop hooks us and why we crave more, and what factors can increase or lessen its hold over us.
As for what things we are wired to consider “potentially scarce any time now” no matter how saturated we are in them, he looks at an array of categories, each with their nuances. From the obvious such as “food” and “stuff“, to understandable “information” and “happiness“, to abstractions like “influence“, he goes to many sources—experts of various kinds from around the world—to explore how we can know “how much is enough”, and—which can be harder—act accordingly.
The key, he argues, is not in simply wanting less, but in understanding why we crave more in the first place, get rid of our worst habits, and use what we already have, better.
Bottom line: if you feel a gnawing sense of needing more “to be on the safe side”, this book can help you to be a little more strategic (and at the same time, less stressed!) about that.
Click here to check out Scarcity Brain, and manage yours more mindfully!
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Common Hospital Blood Pressure Mistake (Don’t Let This Happen To You Or A Loved One)
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There’s a major issue in healthcare, Dr. Suneel Dhand tells us, pertaining to the overtreatment of hypertension in hospitals. Here’s how to watch out for it and know when to question it:
Under pressure
When patients, particularly from older generations, are admitted to the hospital, their blood pressure often fluctuates due to illness, dehydration, and other factors. Despite this, they are often continued on their usual blood pressure medications, which can lead to dangerously low blood pressure.
Why does this happen? The problem arises from rigid protocols that dictate stopping blood pressure medication only if systolic pressure is below a certain threshold, often 100. However, Dr. Dhand argues that 100 is already low*, and administering medication when blood pressure is close to this can cause it to drop dangerously lower
*10almonds note: low for an adult, anyway, and especially for an older adult. To be clear: it’s not a bad thing! That is the average systolic blood pressure of a healthy teenager and it’s usually the opposite of a problem if we have that when older (indeed, this very healthy writer’s blood pressure averages 100/70, and suffice it to say, it’s been a long time since I was a teenager). But it does mean that we definitely don’t want to take medications to artificially lower it from there.
Low blood pressure from overtreatment can lead to severe consequences, requiring emergency interventions to stabilize the patient.
Dr. Dhand’s advice for patients and families is:
- Ensure medication accuracy: make sure the medical team knows the correct blood pressure medications and dosages for you or your loved one.
- Monitor vital signs: actively check blood pressure readings, especially if they are in the low 100s or even 110s, and discuss any medication concerns with the medical team.
- Watch for symptoms of low blood pressure: be alert for symptoms like dizziness or weakness, which could indicate dangerously low blood pressure.
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:
The Insider’s Guide To Making Hospital As Comfortable As Possible
Take care!
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Science of Yoga – by Ann Swanson
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There are a lot of yoga books out there to say “bend this way, hold this that way” and so forth, but few that really explain what is going on, how, and why. And understanding those things is of course key to motivation and adherence. So that’s what this book provides!
The book is divided into sections, and in the first part we have a tour of human anatomy and physiology. This may seem almost unrelated to yoga, but is valuable necessary-knowledge to get the most out of the next section:
The next few parts are given over to yoga asanas (stretches, positions, poses, call them what you will in English) and now we are given a clear idea of what it is doing: we get to understand exactly what’s being stretched, what blood flow is being increased and how, what organs are being settled into their correct place, and many other such things.
Importantly, this means we also understand why certain things are the way they are, and why they can’t be done in some other slightly different but perhaps superficially easier way.
The style of the book is like a school textbook, really, but without patronizing the reader. The illustrations, of which there are many, are simple enough to be clear while being detailed enough to be informative.
Bottom line: if you’re ever doing yoga at home and wondering if you should cut a certain corner, this is the book that will tell you why you shouldn’t.
Click here to check out Science of Yoga, and optimize your practice!
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Getting COMFY – by Jordan Gross
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It’s easy to see how good “morning people” seem to have it; it’s harder, it seems, to become one.
And, if we’re forced by circumstance to be the morning person we’re not? We all-too-easily find ourselves greeting each coming day without the joy that, in an ideal world, we might.
So, is it possible to learn this power? Jordan Gross has it mapped out for it us…
The “COMFY” of the title is indeed an acronym, and it stands for:
- Calm
- Openness
- Movement
- Funny
- You
There’s a chapter explaining each in detail, and they’re bookended with other chapters explaining more about the whys and the hows.
As you might expect, the key to a good morning starts the night before, but there’s also a formula to follow. Of course, you can change it up, mix and match if you like… but this book provides a base framework to build from, which is something that can make a huge difference!
Bottom line: it’s a highly enjoyable book to read, and also provides genuine powerful help to bring us the brighter happier mornings we deserve—the set-up to the perfect day!
Click here to check out “Getting COMFY” and perk up your mornings—you deserve it!
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