Fast-Pickled Cucumbers
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Pickled vegetables are great for the gut, and homemade is invariably better than store-bought. But if you don’t have pickling jars big enough for cucumbers, and don’t want to wait a couple of weeks for the results, here’s a great way to do it quickly and easily.
You will need
- 1 large cucumber, sliced
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1½ tbsp salt (do not omit or substitute)
- 3 cloves garlic, whole, peeled
- 3 large sprigs fresh dill
- 2 tsp whole black peppercorns
- ½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 bay leaf
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Mix the vinegar and salt with 1½ cups of water in a bowl.
2) Assemble the rest of the ingredients, except the cucumber, into a quart-size glass jar with an airtight lid.
3) Add the cucumber slices into the jar.
4) Add the pickling brine that you made, leaving ½” space at the top.
5) Close the lid, and shake well.
6) Refrigerate for 2 days, after which, serve at your leisure:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits? ← 3/5 of these spices are in this recipe!
Take care!
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How To Improve Your Heart Rate Variability
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How’s your heart rate variability?
The hallmarks of a good, strong cardiovascular system include a medium-to-low resting heart rate (for adults: under 60 beats per minute is good; under 50 is typical of athletes), and healthy blood pressure (for adults: under 120/80, while still above 90/60, is generally considered good).
Less talked-about is heart rate variability, but it’s important too…
What is heart rate variability?
Heart rate variability is a measure of how quickly and easily your heart responds to changes in demands placed upon it. For example:
- If you’re at rest and then start running your fastest (be it for leisure or survival or anything in between), your heart rate should be able to jump from its resting rate to about 180% of that as quickly as possible
- When you stop, your heart rate should be able to shift gears back to your resting rate as quickly as possible
The same goes, to a commensurately lesser extent, to changes in activity between low and moderate, or between moderate and high.
- When your heart can change gears quickly, that’s called a high heart rate variability
- When your heart is sluggish to get going and then takes a while to return to normal after exertion, that’s called a low heart rate variability.
The rate of change (i.e., the variability) is measured in microseconds per beat, and the actual numbers will vary depending on a lot of factors, but for everyone, higher is better than lower.
Aside from quick response to crises, why does it matter?
If heart rate variability is low, it means the sympathetic nervous system is dominating the parasympathetic nervous system, which means, in lay terms, your fight-or-flight response is overriding your ability to relax.
See for example: Stress and Heart Rate Variability: A Meta-Analysis and Review of the Literature
This has a lot of knock-on effects for both physical and mental health! Your heart and brain will take the worst of this damage, so it’s good to improve things for them impossible.
This Saturday’s Life Hacks: how to improve your HRV!
Firstly, the Usual Five Things™:
- A good diet (that avoids processed foods)
- Good exercise (that includes daily physical activity—more often is more important than more intense!)
- Good sleep (7–9 hours of good quality sleep per night)
- Reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption (this is dose-dependent; any reduction is an improvement)
- Don’t smoke (just don’t)
Additional regular habits that help a lot:
- Breathing exercises, mindfulness, meditation
- Therapy, especially CBT and DBT
- Stress-avoidance strategies, for example:
- Get (and maintain) your finances in good order
- Get (and maintain) your relationship(s) in good order
- Get (and maintain) your working* life in good order
*Whatever this means to you. If you’re perhaps retired, or otherwise a home-maker, or even a student, the things you “need to do” on a daily basis are your working life, for these purposes.
In terms of simple, quick-fix, physical tweaks to focus on if you’re already broadly leading a good life, two great ones are:
- Exercise: get moving! Walk to the store even if you buy nothing but a snack or drink to enjoy while walking back. If you drove, make more trips with the shopping bags rather than fewer. If you like to watch TV, consider an exercise bike or treadmill to use while watching. If you have a partner, double-up and make it a thing you do together! Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Take the scenic route when walking someplace. Go to the bathroom that’s further away. Every little helps!
- Breathe: even just a couple of times a day, practice mindful breathing. Start with even just a minute a day, to get the habit going. What breathing exercise you do isn’t so important as that you do it. Notice your breathing; count how long each breath takes. Don’t worry about “doing it right”—you’re doing great, just observe, just notice, just slowly count. We promise that regular practice of this will have you feeling amazing
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Let’s Get Letting Go (Of These Three Things)
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Let It Go…
This is Dr. Mitika Kanabar. She’s triple board-certified in addiction medicine, lifestyle medicine, and family medicine.
What does she want us to know?
Let go of what’s not good for you
Take a moment to release any tension you were holding, perhaps in your shoulders or jaw.
Now release the breath you might have been holding while doing that.
Dr. Kanabar is a keen yoga practitioner, and recommends it for alleviating stress, as well as its more general somatic benefits. And yes, stress is in large part somatic too!
One method she recommends for de-stressing quickly is to imagine holding a pin-wheel (the kind that whirls around when blown), and imagine slowly blowing it. The slowness of the exhalation here not only means we exhale more (shallow breathing starts with the out-breath!), but also gives us time to focus on the present moment.
Having done that, she recommends to ask yourself:
- What can you change right now?
- What about next time?
- How can you do better?
And then the much more relaxing questions:
- What can you not change?
- What can you let go?
- Whom can you ask for help?
Why did we ask the first questions first? It’s a lot like a psychological version of the physical process of progressive relaxation, involving first a deliberate tensing up, and then a greater relaxation:
How To Deal With The Body’s “Wrong” Stress Response
The diet that’s not good for you
Dr. Kanabar also recommends letting go of the diet that’s not good for you, too. In particular, she recommends dropping alcohol, sugar, and animal products.
Note: from a purely health perspective, general scientific consensus is that fermented dairy products are healthy in small amounts, as are well-sourced fish and poultry in moderation, assuming they’re not ultraprocessed or fried. However, we’re reporting Dr. Kanabar’s advice as it is.
Dr. Kanabar recommends either doing a 21-day challenge of abstention (and likely finding after 21 days that, in fact, you’re fine without), or taking a slow-and-gentle approach.
Some things will be easier one way or the other, and in particular if you drink heavily or use some other substance that gives withdrawal symptoms if withdrawn, the slow-and-gentle approach will be best:
Which Addiction-Quitting Methods Work Best?
If it’s sugar you’re quitting, you might like to check out:
Food Addictions: When It’s More Than “Just” Cravings
If it’s meat, though (in particular, quitting red meat is a big win for your health), the following can help:
The Whys and Hows of Cutting Meats Out Of Your Diet
Want more from Dr. Kanabar?
There’s one more thing she advises to let go of, and that’s excessive use of technology (the kind with screens) in the evening, and not just because of the blue light thing.
With full appreciation of the irony of a one-hour video about too much screentime:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically
Enjoy!
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8 Critical Signs Of Blood Clots That You Shouldn’t Ignore
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Blood clots can form as part of deep vein thrombosis or for other reasons; wherever they form (unless they are just doing their job healing a wound) they can cause problems. But how to know what’s going on inside our body?
Telltale signs
Our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies here, and we are not doctors, let alone your doctors, and even if we were we couldn’t diagnose from afar… But for educational purposes, here are the eight signs from the video:
- Swelling: especially if only on one leg (assuming you have no injury to account for it), which may feel tight and uncomfortable
- Warmness: does the area warmer to the touch? This may be because of the body’s inflammatory response trying to deal with a blood clot
- Tenderness: again, caused by the inflammation in response to the clot
- Discolored skin: it could be reddish, or bruise-like. This could be patchy or spread over a larger area, because of a clot blocking the flow of blood
- Shortness of breath: if a clot makes it to the lungs, it can cause extra problems there (pulmonary embolism), and shortness of breath is the first sign of this
- Coughing up blood: less common than the above but a much more serious sign; get thee to a hospital
- Chest pain: a sharp or stabbing pain, in particular. The pain may worsen with deep breaths or coughing. Again, seek medical attention.
For more on recognizing these signs (including helpful visuals), and more on what to do about them and how to avoid them in the first place, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Further reading
You might like to read:
Dietary Changes for Artery Health
Take care!
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Related Posts
How long does back pain last? And how can learning about pain increase the chance of recovery?
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Back pain is common. One in thirteen people have it right now and worldwide a staggering 619 million people will have it this year.
Chronic pain, of which back pain is the most common, is the world’s most disabling health problem. Its economic impact dwarfs other health conditions.
If you get back pain, how long will it take to go away? We scoured the scientific literature to find out. We found data on almost 20,000 people, from 95 different studies and split them into three groups:
- acute – those with back pain that started less than six weeks ago
- subacute – where it started between six and 12 weeks ago
- chronic – where it started between three months and one year ago.
We found 70%–95% of people with acute back pain were likely to recover within six months. This dropped to 40%–70% for subacute back pain and to 12%–16% for chronic back pain.
Clinical guidelines point to graded return to activity and pain education under the guidance of a health professional as the best ways to promote recovery. Yet these effective interventions are underfunded and hard to access.
More pain doesn’t mean a more serious injury
Most acute back pain episodes are not caused by serious injury or disease.
There are rare exceptions, which is why it’s wise to see your doctor or physio, who can check for signs and symptoms that warrant further investigation. But unless you have been in a significant accident or sustained a large blow, you are unlikely to have caused much damage to your spine.
Your doctor or physio can rule out serious damage.
DG fotostock/ShutterstockEven very minor back injuries can be brutally painful. This is, in part, because of how we are made. If you think of your spinal cord as a very precious asset (which it is), worthy of great protection (which it is), a bit like the crown jewels, then what would be the best way to keep it safe? Lots of protection and a highly sensitive alarm system.
The spinal cord is protected by strong bones, thick ligaments, powerful muscles and a highly effective alarm system (your nervous system). This alarm system can trigger pain that is so unpleasant that you cannot possibly think of, let alone do, anything other than seek care or avoid movement.
The messy truth is that when pain persists, the pain system becomes more sensitive, so a widening array of things contribute to pain. This pain system hypersensitivity is a result of neuroplasticity – your nervous system is becoming better at making pain.
Reduce your chance of lasting pain
Whether or not your pain resolves is not determined by the extent of injury to your back. We don’t know all the factors involved, but we do know there are things that you can do to reduce chronic back pain:
- understand how pain really works. This will involve intentionally learning about modern pain science and care. It will be difficult but rewarding. It will help you work out what you can do to change your pain
- reduce your pain system sensitivity. With guidance, patience and persistence, you can learn how to gradually retrain your pain system back towards normal.
How to reduce your pain sensitivity and learn about pain
Learning about “how pain works” provides the most sustainable improvements in chronic back pain. Programs that combine pain education with graded brain and body exercises (gradual increases in movement) can reduce pain system sensitivity and help you return to the life you want.
Some programs combine education with gradual increases in movement.
Halfpoint/ShutterstockThese programs have been in development for years, but high-quality clinical trials are now emerging and it’s good news: they show most people with chronic back pain improve and many completely recover.
But most clinicians aren’t equipped to deliver these effective programs – good pain education is not taught in most medical and health training degrees. Many patients still receive ineffective and often risky and expensive treatments, or keep seeking temporary pain relief, hoping for a cure.
When health professionals don’t have adequate pain education training, they can deliver bad pain education, which leaves patients feeling like they’ve just been told it’s all in their head.
Community-driven not-for-profit organisations such as Pain Revolution are training health professionals to be good pain educators and raising awareness among the general public about the modern science of pain and the best treatments. Pain Revolution has partnered with dozens of health services and community agencies to train more than 80 local pain educators and supported them to bring greater understanding and improved care to their colleagues and community.
But a broader system-wide approach, with government, industry and philanthropic support, is needed to expand these programs and fund good pain education. To solve the massive problem of chronic back pain, effective interventions need to be part of standard care, not as a last resort after years of increasing pain, suffering and disability.
Sarah Wallwork, Post-doctoral Researcher, University of South Australia and Lorimer Moseley, Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Foundation Chair in Physiotherapy, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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6 Ways To Look After Your Back
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Back To Back
When people think about looking after their back, often thought does not go much further than sitting with good posture, and perhaps even standing with good posture. And those things are important, but:
1) People’s efforts to have good posture often result in overcorrecting creating an anterior pelvic tilt that causes lower back problems.
Quick tip: if you’re sticking your butt out, you’re doing it wrong (no matter how great your butt is). Instead, to find the correct posture, go up on your tip-toes for a moment, then imagine a plumb-line down the center of your body, thus perpendicular to the floor, going all the way down to the ground. Now, slowly return your heels to the ground, but as you do so, keep your spine aligned to the plumb-line, so you’re not moving backwards as you drop, just directly down. This will land you in perfect posture.
Unless you have scoliosis. In which case, it’ll get you as close to good posture as is likely attainable from any quick tip.
2) There’s a lot more to looking after our back than just good posture!
Here are 5 other important things to do:
Be strong
Do strength-training for your back. How to do that is beyond the scope of today’s feature, but there are many good guides and also personal trainers that can be found.
Start off easy and work up, but do start. The stronger your back is, the less likely a momentary lapse in concentration is to throw out your back because you picked something up with imperfect form.
See also: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Stretch intentionally
Many back injuries occur as a result of stretching and/or twisting awkwardly, so if you ensure your basic mobility and range of motion is good, the less likely it is that unthinkingly twisting around 270° to see where that wasp was going will slip a disk.
The more you stretch intentionally (carefully, please), the more you will be able to stretch unintentionally without injury.
See also: Building & Maintaining Mobility
Stand when you can, walk when you can
We humans have outrun our evolution in a lot of ways, and/but one thing our bodies are definitely not well-adapted for is sitting. Unless we are sitting in a low squat the way you might often see an orang-utan sitting, sitting is not a good way of being for us. Even sitting seiza-style or cross-legged is passable for a short while, not for too long.
So, while there sure are times we need to sit (especially if you’re driving!) minimizing those times is ideal. There are a lot of activities that are traditionally done sitting, where there’s no need for it to be so. For example, your writer here sits for the day’s main meal, but takes any smaller meal standing (and when guests visit for a coffee or such, I’ll offer them the couch while I myself prop up the fireplace). Standing desks are also great if you spend a lot of time at the computer for any reason.
See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
Rest when you need to
You can’t stand all the time! But know this: if you want to rest your legs, lying down is a lot better for your back (and internal organs) than sitting.
Taking a 5 minute break lying on your couch, or bed, or floor, is a perfectly good option and only social convention says otherwise.
If you want a compromise option, though? A recliner chair, in the reclined position, is a better for your back than being scrunched up in the Economy Class Flight position.
PS: About that bed situation…
What Mattress Is Best, By Science?
Kill pain before it kills you
Painkillers aren’t great for the health per se, but pain (or rather, our bodily responses to such) can be worse. Half the time, when it comes to musculoskeletal problems, things get a lot worse a lot more quickly because of how we overcompensate due to the pain. So, take your pain seriously, and remember, the right amount of pain is zero.
If you’re thinking “but pain relief option xyz isn’t good for me”, we strongly recommend checking out:
The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
Take care!
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Marathons in Mid- and Later-Life
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
We had several requests pertaining to veganism, meatless mondays, and substitutions in recipes—so we’re going to cover those on a different day!
As for questions we’re answering today…
Q: Is there any data on immediate and long term effects of running marathons in one’s forties?
An interesting and very specific question! We didn’t find an overabundance of studies specifically for the short- and long-term effects of marathon-running in one’s 40s, but we did find a couple of relevant ones:
The first looked at marathon-runners of various ages, and found that…
- there are virtually no relevant running time differences (p<0.01) per age in marathon finishers from 20 to 55 years
- the majority of middle-aged and elderly athletes have training histories of less than seven years of running
From which they concluded:
❝The present findings strengthen the concept that considers aging as a biological process that can be considerably speeded up or slowed down by multiple lifestyle related factors.❞
See the study: Performance, training and lifestyle parameters of marathon runners aged 20–80 years: results of the PACE-study
The other looked specifically at the impact of running on cartilage, controlled for age (45 and under vs 46 and older) and activity level (marathon-runners vs sedentary people).
The study had the people, of various ages and habitual activity levels, run for 30 minutes, and measured their knee cartilage thickness (using MRI) before and after running.
They found that regardless of age or habitual activity level, running compressed the cartilage tissue to a similar extent. From this, it can be concluded that neither age nor marathon-running result in long-term changes to cartilage response to running.
Or in lay terms: there’s no reason that marathon-running at 40 should ruin your knees (unless you are doing something wrong).
That may or may not have been a concern you have, but it’s what the study looked at, so hey, it’s information.
Here’s the study: Functional cartilage MRI T2 mapping: evaluating the effect of age and training on knee cartilage response to running
Q: Information on [e-word] dysfunction for those who have negative reactions to [the most common medications]?
When it comes to that particular issue, one or more of these three factors are often involved:
- Hormones
- Circulation
- Psychology
The most common drugs (that we can’t name here) work on the circulation side of things—specifically, by increasing the localized blood pressure. The exact mechanism of this drug action is interesting, albeit beyond the scope of a quick answer here today. On the other hand, the way that they work can cause adverse blood-pressure-related side effects for some people; perhaps you’re one of them.
To take matters into your own hands, so to speak, you can address each of those three things we just mentioned:
Hormones
Ask your doctor (or a reputable phlebotomy service) for a hormone test. If your free/serum testosterone levels are low (which becomes increasingly common in men over the age of 45), they may prescribe something—such as testosterone shots—specifically for that.
This way, it treats the underlying cause, rather than offering a workaround like those common pills whose names we can’t mention here.
Circulation
Look after your heart health; eat for your heart health, and exercise regularly!
Cold showers/baths also work wonders for vascular tone—which is precisely what you need in this matter. By rapidly changing temperatures (such as by turning off the hot water for the last couple of minutes of your shower, or by plunging into a cold bath), your blood vessels will get practice at constricting and maintaining that constriction as necessary.
Psychology
[E-word] dysfunction can also have a psychological basis. Unfortunately, this can also then be self-reinforcing, if recalling previous difficulties causes you to get distracted/insecure and lose the moment. One of the best things you can do to get out of this catch-22 situation is to not worry about it in the moment. Depending on what you and your partner(s) like to do in bed, there are plenty of other equally respectable options, so just switch track!
Having a conversation about this in advance will probably be helpful, so that everyone’s on the same page of the script in that eventuality, and it becomes “no big deal”. Without that conversation, misunderstandings and insecurities could arise for your partner(s) as well as yourself (“aren’t I desirable enough?” etc).
So, to recap, we recommend:
- Have your hormones checked
- Look after your circulation
- Make the decision to have fun!
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