These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Health
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The Best Few Interventions For The Best Health
Writer’s note: I was going to do something completely different for today (so that can go out another week now), but when reflecting on my own “what should I focus on in the new year?” (in terms of my own personal health goals and such) it occured to me that I should look back on the year’s articles, to take our own advice myself, and see what most important things I should make sure to focus on.
In so doing for myself, it occured to me that you, our subscribers who like condensed information and simple interventions for big positive effects, might also find value in a similar once-over. And so, today’s main feature was born!
Sometimes at 10almonds we talk about “those five things that affect everything”. They are:
- Good diet
- Good exercise
- Good sleep
- Not drinking
- Not smoking
If we were to add a sixth in terms of things that make a huge difference, it would be “manage stress effectively” and a seventh, beyond the scope of our newsletter, would be “don’t be socioeconomically disadvantaged” (e.g. poor, and/or part of some disprivileged minority group).
But as for those five we listed, it still leaves the question: what are the few most effective things we can do to improve them? Where can we invest our time/energy/effort for greatest effect?
Good diet
Best current science consistently recommends the Mediterranean Diet:
The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For?
But it can be tweaked for specific desired health considerations:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
Other most-effective dietary tweaks that impact a lot of other areas of health include looking after your gut health and looking after your blood sugars:
Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
and
“Let Them Eat Cake”, She Said (10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars)
Good exercise
Most exercise is good, but two of the most beneficial things that are (for most people) easy to implement are walking, and High-Intensity Interval Training:
How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Good sleep
This means quality and quantity! We cannot skimp on either and expect good health:
Why You Probably Need More Sleep
and as for quality,
The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
Not drinking
According to the World Health Organization, the only safe amount of alcohol is zero.
See also:
Can We Drink To Good Health? (e.g. Red Wine & Heart Health)
and
Not smoking
We haven’t done a main feature on this! It’s probably not really necessary, as it’s not very contentious to say “smoking is bad for everything”.
WHO | Tobacco kills up to half its users who don’t quit
However, as a side-note, while cannabis is generally recognised as not as harmful as tobacco-based products, it has some fairly major drawbacks too. For some people, the benefits (e.g. pain relief) may outweigh the risks, though:
Final thoughts
Not sure where to start? We suggest this order of priorities, unless you have a major health condition that makes something else a higher priority:
- If you smoke, stop
- If you drink, reduce, or ideally stop
- Improve your diet
About that diet…
- Worry less about what to exclude, and instead focus on adding more variety of fruit/veg
- See also: Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
- That said, if you’re looking for things to cut, sugar is a top candidate (and red meat is in clear second place albeit some way below)
When it comes to exercise, get your 10,000 daily steps in (actually, science says 8,000 steps is fine), and consider adding HIIT per our above article, when you feel like adding that in. As for that about the steps:
When it comes to sleep, if you’re taking care of the above things, and set a regular early wake-up time that you do not deviate from, then this will probably take care of itself, if you don’t have a sleep-inconvenient lifestyle (e.g. shift work, just had a baby, etc) or a sleep disorder.
For further pointers, see: 10 Tips for Better Sleep: Starting In The Morning
Take care!
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Science of HIIT – by Ingrid Clay
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We previously reviewed another book in this series, Science of Yoga. This one’s about HIIT: High Intensity Interval Training!
We’ve written about HIIT before too, but our article doesn’t have the same amount of room as a book, so…
This one lays out 90 key HIIT exercises that you can do at home without special equipment. By “without special equipment”, we mean: there are a few exercises that use dumbbells, but if you don’t want to get/use dumbbells, you can improvize (e.g. with water bottles as weights) or skip those. All the rest require just your body!
The illustrations are clear and the explanations excellent. The book also dives into (as the title promises) the science of HIIT, and why it works the way it does to give results that can’t be achieved with other forms of exercise.
Bottom line: if you’ve been wanting to do HIIT but have not yet found a way of doing it that suits your lifestyle, this book gives many excellent options.
Click here to check out Science of HIIT, and level-up yours!
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Radiant Rebellion – by Karen Walrond
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In health terms, we are often about fighting aging here. But to be more specific, what we’re fighting in those cases is not truly aging itself, so much as age-related decline.
Karen Walrond makes a case that we’ve made from the very start of 10almonds (but she wrote a whole book about it), that there’s merit in looking at what we can and can’t control about aging, doing what we reasonably can, and embracing what we can’t.
And yes, embracing, not merely accepting. This is not a downer of a book; it’s a call to revolution. It asks us to be proud of our grey hairs, to see our smile-lines around our eyes as the sign of a lived-in body, and even to embrace some of the unavoidable “actual decline” things as part of the journey of life. Maybe we’re not as strong as we used to be and now need a grippety-doodah to open jars; not everyone gets to live long enough to experience that! How lucky we are.
Perhaps most importantly, she bids us be the change we want to see in the world, and inspire others with our choices and actions, and shake off ageist biases for good.
Bottom line: if you want to foster a better attitude to aging not only for yourself, but also those around you, then this is a top-tier book for that.
Click here to check out Radiant Rebellion, and reclaim aging!
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How To Avoid Slipping Into (Bad) Old Habits
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Treating Bad Habits Like Addictions
How often have you started a healthy new habit (including if it’s a “quit this previous thing” new habit), only to find that you slip back into your old ways?
We’ve written plenty on habit-forming before, so here’s a quick recap before we continue:
How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
…and even how to give them a boost:
How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!
But how to avoid the relapses that are most likely to snowball?
Borrowing from the psychology of addiction recovery
It’s well known that someone recovering from substance addiction should not have even a small amount of the thing they were addicted to. Not one sip of champagne at a wedding, not one drag of a cigarette, and so forth.
This can go for other bad habits too; make one exception, and suddenly you have a whole string of “exceptions”, and before you know it, it’s not the exception anymore; it’s the new rule—again.
Three things that can help guard against this are:
- Absolutely refuse to romanticize the bad habit. Do not fall for its marketing! And yes, everything has marketing even if not advertising; for example, consider the Platonic ideal of a junk-food-eating couch-potato who is humble, unassuming, agreeable, the almost-holy idea of homely comfort, and why shouldn’t we be comfortable after all, haven’t we earned our chosen hedonism, and so on. It’s seductive, and we need to make the choice to not be seduced by it. In this case for example, yes pleasure is great, but being sick tired and destroying our bodies is not, in fact, pleasurable in the long run. Which brings us to…
- Absolutely refuse to forget why you dropped that behavior in the first place. Remember what it did to you, remember you at your worst. Remember what you feared might become of you if you continued like that. This is something where journaling helps, by the way; remembering our low points helps us to avoid finding ourselves in the same situation again.
- Absolutely refuse to let your guard down due to an overabundance of self-confidence in your future self. We all can easily feel that tomorrow is a mystical land in which all productivity is stored, and also where we are strong, energized, iron-willed, and totally able to avoid making the very mistakes that we are right now in the process of making. Instead, be that strong person now, for the benefit of tomorrow’s you. Because after all, if it’s going to be easy tomorrow, it’s easy now, right?
The above is a very simple, hopefully practical, set of rules to follow. If you like hard science more though, Yale’s Dr. Steven Melemis offers five rules (aimed more directly at addiction recovery, so this may be a big “heavy guns” for some milder habits):
- change your life
- be completely honest
- ask for help
- practice self-care
- don’t bend the rules
You can read his full paper and the studies it’s based on, here:
Relapse Prevention and the Five Rules of Recovery
“What if I already screwed up?”
Draw a line under it, now, and move forwards in the direction you actually want to go.
Here’s a good article, that saves us taking up more space here; it’s very well-written so we do recommend it:
The Abstinence Violation Effect and Overcoming It
this article gives specific, practical advices, including CBT tools to use
Take care!
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Five Supplements That Actually Work Vs Arthritis
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This is Dr. Diana Girnita, a double board-certified physician (internal medicine & rheumatology) who, in addition to her MD, also has a PhD in immunology—bearing in mind that rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune condition.
Her mission is to help people with any form of arthritis (rheumatoid or otherwise) and those with many non-arthritic autoimmune conditions (ranging from tendonitis to lupus) to live better.
Today, we’ll be looking at her recommendations of 5 supplements that actually help alleviate arthritis:
Collagen
Collagen famously supports skin, nails, bones, and joint cartilage; Dr. Girnita advises that it’s particularly beneficial for osteoarthritis.
Specifically, she recommends either collagen peptides or hydrolyzed collagen, as they are most absorbable. However, collagen can also be sourced from foods like bone broth, fish with skin and bones, and gelatin-based foods.
If you’re vegetarian/vegan, then it becomes important to simply consume the ingredients for collagen, because like most animals, we can synthesize it ourselves provided we get the necessary nutrients. For more on that, see:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
Glucosamine & chondroitin
Technically two things, but almost always sold/taken together. Naturally found in joint cartilage, it can slow cartilage breakdown and reduce pain in osteoarthritis.
Studies show pain relief, especially in moderate-to-severe cases; best taken long-term. Additionally, it’s a better option than NSAIDs for patients with heart or gastrointestinal issues.
10almonds tip: something that’s tricker to find as a supplement than glucosamine and chondroitin, but you might want to check it out:
Cucumber Extract Beats Glucosamine & Chondroitin… At 1/135th Of The Dose?!
Omega-3 fatty acids
Dr. Girnita recommends this one because unlike the above recommendations that mainly help reduce/reverse the joint damage itself, omega-3 reduces inflammation, pain, and stiffness, and can decrease or eliminate the need for NSAIDs in rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis.
She recommends 2-4g EPA/DHA daily; ideally taken with a meal for better absorption.
She also recommends to look for mercury-free options—algae-derived are usually better than fish-derived, but check for certification either way! See also:
What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us
Boswellia serrata (frankincense)
Popularly enjoyed as an incense but also available in supplement form, it contains boswellic acid, which reduces inflammation and cartilage damage.
Dr. Girnita recommends 100 mg daily, but advises that it may interact with some antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, and NSAIDs—so speak with your pharmacist/doctor if unsure.
We also wrote about this one here:
Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief
Curcumin (turmeric)
Well-known for its potent anti-inflammatory properties, it’s comparable to NSAIDs in pain relief for most common forms of arthritis.
Dr. Girnita recommends 1–1.5g of curcumin daily, ideally combined with black pepper for better absorption:
Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold
Lastly…
Dr. Girnita advises to not blindly trust supplements, but rather, to test them for 2–3 months while keeping a journal of your symptoms. If it improves things for you, keep it up, if not, discontinue. Humans can be complicated and not everything will work exactly the same way for everyone!
For more on dealing with chronic pain specifically, by the way, check out:
Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
Take care!
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We’re the ‘allergy capital of the world’. But we don’t know why food allergies are so common in Australian children
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Australia has often been called the “allergy capital of the world”.
An estimated one in ten Australian children develop a food allergy in their first 12 months of life. Research has previously suggested food allergies are more common in infants in Australia than infants living in Europe, the United States or Asia.
So why are food allergies so common in Australia? We don’t know exactly – but local researchers are making progress in understanding childhood allergies all the time.
Miljan Zivkovic/Shutterstock What causes food allergies?
There are many different types of reactions to foods. When we refer to food allergies in this article, we’re talking about something called IgE-mediated food allergy. This type of allergy is caused by an immune response to a particular food.
Reactions can occur within minutes of eating the food and may include swelling of the face, lips or eyes, “hives” or welts on the skin, and vomiting. Signs of a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) include difficulty breathing, swelling of the tongue, swelling in the throat, wheeze or persistent cough, difficulty talking or a hoarse voice, and persistent dizziness or collapse.
Recent results from Australia’s large, long-running food allergy study, HealthNuts, show one in ten one-year-olds have a food allergy, while around six in 100 children have a food allergy at age ten.
A food allergy can present with skin reactions. comzeal images/Shutterstock In Australia, the most common allergy-causing foods include eggs, peanuts, cow’s milk, shellfish (for example, prawn and lobster), fish, tree nuts (for example, walnuts and cashews), soybeans and wheat.
Allergies to foods like eggs, peanuts and cow’s milk often present for the first time in infancy, while allergies to fish and shellfish may be more common later in life. While most children will outgrow their allergies to eggs and milk, allergy to peanuts is more likely to be lifelong.
Findings from HealthNuts showed around three in ten children grew out of their peanut allergy by age six, compared to nine in ten children with an allergy to egg.
Are food allergies becoming more common?
Food allergies seem to have become more common in many countries around the world over recent decades. The exact timing of this increase is not clear, because in most countries food allergies were not well measured 40 or 50 years ago.
We don’t know exactly why food allergies are so common in Australia, or why we’re seeing a rise around the world, despite extensive research.
But possible reasons for rising allergies around the world include changes in the diets of mothers and infants and increasing sanitisation, leading to fewer infections as well as less exposure to “good” bacteria. In Australia, factors such as increasing vitamin D deficiency among infants and high levels of migration to the country could play a role.
In several Australian studies, children born in Australia to parents who were born in Asia have higher rates of food allergies compared to non-Asian children. On the other hand, children who were born in Asia and later migrated to Australia appear to have a lower risk of nut allergies.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that having pet dogs and siblings as a young child may reduce the risk of food allergies. This might be because having pet dogs and siblings increases contact with a range of bacteria and other organisms.
This evidence suggests that both genetics and environment play a role in the development of food allergies.
We also know that infants with eczema are more likely to develop a food allergy, and trials are underway to see whether this link can be broken.
Can I do anything to prevent food allergies in my kids?
One of the questions we are asked most often by parents is “can we do anything to prevent food allergies?”.
We now know introducing peanuts and eggs from around six months of age makes it less likely that an infant will develop an allergy to these foods. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy introduced guidelines recommending giving common allergy-causing foods including peanut and egg in the first year of life in 2016.
Our research has shown this advice had excellent uptake and may have slowed the rise in food allergies in Australia. There was no increase in peanut allergies between 2007–11 to 2018–19.
Introducing other common allergy-causing foods in the first year of life may also be helpful, although the evidence for this is not as strong compared with peanuts and eggs.
Giving kids peanuts early can reduce the risk of a peanut allergy. Madame-Moustache/Shutterstock What next?
Unfortunately, some infants will develop food allergies even when the relevant foods are introduced in the first year of life. Managing food allergies can be a significant burden for children and families.
Several Australian trials are currently underway testing new strategies to prevent food allergies. A large trial, soon to be completed, is testing whether vitamin D supplements in infants reduce the risk of food allergies.
Another trial is testing whether the amount of eggs and peanuts a mother eats during pregnancy and breastfeeding has an influence on whether or not her baby will develop food allergies.
For most people with food allergies, avoidance of their known allergens remains the standard of care. Oral immunotherapy, which involves gradually increasing amounts of food allergen given under medical supervision, is beginning to be offered in some facilities around Australia. However, current oral immunotherapy methods have potential side effects (including allergic reactions), can involve high time commitment and cost, and don’t cure food allergies.
There is hope on the horizon for new food allergy treatments. Multiple clinical trials are underway around Australia aiming to develop safer and more effective treatments for people with food allergies.
Jennifer Koplin, Group Leader, Childhood Allergy & Epidemiology, The University of Queensland and Desalegn Markos Shifti, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Child Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Debunking the vitamin D fad
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Throughout the pandemic, many unproven miracle COVID-19 “cures” emerged, and vitamin D claims have been one of the most persistent. This is not new for the vitamin. It’s been touted in recent decades as a way to “boost” the immune system, improve overall health, prevent a host of diseases, and allegedly even substitute for vaccines.
But as with many internet-popular health “remedies,” the reality is far less flashy and far more nuanced.
What is vitamin D, and why is it important?
Vitamin D is a nutrient that helps the body absorb calcium, which is essential for bone health. In the sunlight, your skin naturally produces vitamin D that is then stored in fat cells until it is used.
The skin pigment melanin absorbs the UV rays necessary for vitamin D production, meaning that more highly pigmented or darker skin produces less vitamin D than lighter skin with the same amount of sun exposure. Thus, people with darker skin are at higher risk of vitamin D deficiency.
Most of our vitamin D comes from the sun. An additional 10 percent to 20 percent of our vitamin D comes from foods like fatty fish (such as salmon), eggs, and mushrooms. Vitamin D supplements are another source of the nutrient for people who are unable to get enough from sun exposure and diet.
Vitamin D deficiency is real, but there’s no epidemic
Some people who promote vitamin D supplements claim that vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic causing widespread health issues. There is little evidence to support this claim. A 2022 analysis of 2001-2018 data found that 2.6 percent of people in the U.S. had severe vitamin D deficiency.
Severe vitamin D deficiency can cause serious health issues, such as muscle weakness, bone loss in adults, and rickets (weak bones) in children. Some people are at higher risk for the deficiency, including individuals with certain disorders that prevent the body from absorbing or processing vitamin D or those with a family history of vitamin D deficiency.
Black Americans have the highest rates of severe vitamin D deficiency at nearly 12 percent. Severe vitamin D deficiency is also slightly higher in the U.S. during the winter when people get less sun exposure. Rates of moderate vitamin D deficiency are higher at 22 percent overall and are highest among Black Americans (49 percent) and Mexican Americans (35 percent).
Although severe vitamin D deficiency exists in the U.S., it is far from common. Most tellingly, conditions that are directly linked to vitamin D deficiency are not widespread. There is no epidemic of rickets, for example, or bone loss in adults.
There’s little evidence that vitamin D supplements improve overall health
Vitamin D supplements have clear, proven positive effects for people with vitamin D deficiency. Other health benefits of vitamin D supplements are less certain.
There is some evidence that the supplement may reduce the risk of fracture in adults with osteoporosis, a condition that causes weak, fragile bones. However, the benefit appears to be limited to people who have low vitamin D levels. In adults with normal vitamin D levels, supplements have no effect on fracture risk.
The largest randomized controlled trial of vitamin D, called VITAL, investigated the effects of vitamin D supplementation in people without an existing deficiency. The study found that vitamin D supplements had no effects on the risk of cancer, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke. The study concluded that more research is necessary to determine who may benefit from vitamin D supplements.
Independent analyses found that vitamin D supplementation may be associated with a long-term decrease in cancer mortality, but results are mixed and also require more investigation.
A 2021 analysis of past vitamin D trials found no overall health benefits from vitamin D supplements in people with normal vitamin D levels. Most large-scale studies have found no link between vitamin D supplements and lower all-cause mortality (deaths from any cause), except in older adults and those with vitamin D deficiency.
Vitamin D provides modest protection against respiratory infections
Vitamin D is important for immune function, but this is often misconstrued as vitamin D “boosting” the immune system.
Some people falsely believe that taking vitamin D supplements will keep them healthy and prevent infections like the flu or COVID-19. In reality, clinical trials and large-scale studies of vitamin D have found only minimal protective effects against respiratory infections.
A 2021 analysis of 46 trials found that 61.3 percent of participants who took daily vitamin D supplements got respiratory infections during the study periods—compared to 62.3 percent of people who did not take the supplements. A 2024 meta-analysis of 43 trials found no overall protective effect against respiratory infections, but it detected a slight decrease in risk among people who took specific doses daily.
In young children, there is some evidence that vitamin D supplementation may reduce the length of respiratory infections. However, it does not affect the number or severity of infections that children have.
Despite claims that taking vitamin D can protect against COVID-19, two clinical trials found that taking daily vitamin D supplements did not reduce the risk or severity of COVID-19 infections, even at high doses.
Context is key when considering vitamin D’s benefits
None of these studies contradict the well-established evidence that people with vitamin D deficiency benefit from vitamin D supplements. But it’s important to remember that many of the most popular health claims about vitamin D’s benefits are based on research in people with vitamin D deficiency.
Research in vitamin D-deficient populations is important, but it tells us little about how vitamin D will affect people with normal or close to normal vitamin D levels. A closer look at vitamin D research in people without low levels reveals little evidence to support the idea that the general population benefits from taking vitamin D supplements.
For more information, or to learn about your vitamin D levels, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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