Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science

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Chronic fatigue is on the rise. A lot of it appears to be Long COVID-related, but whether that’s the case for you or not, one thing that will make a big difference to your energy levels is something that French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé is here to explain:

Mitochondrial management

Inchauspé explains it in terms of a steam train; to keep running, it must have coal burning in its furnace. However, if more coal is delivered to the engine room faster than it can be put in the furnace and burned, and the coal just keeps on coming, the worker there will soon be overwhelmed trying to find places to put it all; the engine room will be full of coal, and the furnace will sputter and go out because the worker can’t even reach it on account of being buried in coal.

So it is with our glucose metabolism also. If we get spikes of glucose faster than our body can deal with them, it will overload the body’s ability to process that energy at all. Just like the steam train worker, our body will try! It’ll stuff that extra glucose wherever it can (storing as glycogen in the liver is a readily available option that’s easy to do and/but also gives you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and isn’t quickly broken down into useable energy), and meanwhile, your actual mitochondria aren’t getting what they need (which is: a reliable, but gentle, influx of glucose).

You can imagine that the situation we described in the steam train isn’t good for the engine’s longevity, and the corresponding situation in the human body isn’t good for our mitochondria either (or our pancreas, or our liver, or… the list goes on). Indeed, damaged mitochondria affect exercise capacity and stress resilience—as well as being a long-term driver of cancer.

The remedy, of course, is blood sugar management. Specifically, avoiding glucose spikes. She has a list of 10 ways to do this (small changes to how we eat; what things to eat with what, in which order, etc) that make a huge measurable difference. For your convenience, we’ve linked those ten ways below; first though, if you’d like to hear it from Inchauspé directly (her style is very pleasant), enjoy:

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  • Wholesome Threesome Protein Soup

    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 soup has two protein– and fiber-rich pseudo-grains, one real wholegrain, and nutrient-dense cashews for yet even more protein, and all of the above are full of many great vitamins and minerals. All in all, a well-balanced and highly-nutritious light meal!

    You will need

    • ⅓ cup quinoa
    • ⅓ cup green lentils
    • ⅓ cup wholegrain rice
    • 5 cups low-sodium vegetable stock (ideally you made this yourself from offcuts of vegetables, but failing that, low-sodium stock cubes can be bought in most large supermarkets)
    • ¼ cup cashews
    • 1 tbsp dried thyme
    • 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt

    Optional topping:

    • ⅓ cup pine nuts
    • ⅓ cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves
    • 2 tbsp coconut oil

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Rinse the quinoa, lentils, and rice.

    2) Boil 4 cups of the stock and add the grains and seasonings (MSG/salt, pepper, thyme); simmer for about 25 minutes.

    3) Blend the cashews with the other cup of vegetable stock, until smooth. Add the cashew mixture to the soup, stirring it in, and allow to simmer for another 5 minutes.

    4) Heat the coconut oil in a skillet and add the pine nuts, stirring until they are golden brown.

    5) Serve the soup into bowls, adding the mint and pine nuts to each.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • 6 Lifestyle Factors To Measurably Reduce Biological Age

    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.

    Julie Gibson Clark competes on a global leaderboard of people actively fighting aging (including billionaire Bryan Johnson, who is famously very focused on such). She’s currently ahead of him on that leaderboard, so what’s she doing?

    Top tips

    We’ll not keep the six factors a mystery; they are:

    • Exercise: her weekly exercise includes VO2 Max training, strength training, balance work, and low-intensity cardio. She exercises outdoors on Saturdays and takes rest days on Fridays and Sundays.
    • Diet: she follows a 16-hour intermittent fasting schedule (eating between 09:00–17:00), consumes a clean omnivore diet with an emphasis on vegetables and adequate protein, and avoids junk food.
    • Brain: she meditates for 20 minutes daily, prioritizes mental health, and ensures sufficient quality sleep, helped by morning sunlight exposure and time in nature.
    • Hormesis: she engages in 20-minute sauna sessions followed by cold showers four times per week to support recovery and longevity.
    • Supplements: she takes longevity supplements and bioidentical hormones to optimize her health and aging process.
    • Testing: she regularly monitors her biological age and health markers through various tests, including DEXA scans, VO2 Max tests, lipid panels, and epigenetic aging clocks, allowing her to adjust her routine accordingly.

    For more on all of these, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

    Take care!

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  • Gut – by Dr. Giulia Enders

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    On account of being an organ (or rather, a system of organs) whose functions are almost entirely autonomic, most of us don’t think about our gut much. We usually know there’s acid in the stomach, and we usually know there are “good and bad” gut bacteria. But what of the rest of what goes on?

    For anyone who has a hazy half-remembered knowledge from school, this will serve as not only a reminder, but a distinct upgrade in knowledge.

    Dr. Giuliua Enders talks us through not just the processes of what goes on, but, as a medical doctor, also many instances of what can go wrong, for example:

    • Why do some people’s bodies mistake nuts for a deadly threat (and consequently, accidentally elevate them to the status of actually becoming a deadly threat)?
    • Why are some people lactose-intolerant, and why do food intolerances often pop up later with age?
    • Why do constipation and diarrhoea happen?
    • Why is it that stress can cause stomach ulcers?

    The style of writing is light and easy-reading, and the illustrations are clear too. This is a very accessible book that doesn’t assume prior knowledge, and also doesn’t skimp on the scientific explanations—there’s no dumbing down here.

    Bottom line: knowing what goes on in our gut as akin to knowing what goes on under the hood of a car. A lot of the time we don’t need to know, but knowing can make a big difference from time to time, and that’s when you’ll wish you’d learned!

    Click here to check out Gut and be prepared!

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Related Posts

  • 6 Kinds Of Drinks That Hasten Dementia
  • The Gut Bacteria That Improve Your General Decision-Making In Life

    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.

    As one YouTube commenter said, “Trust your gut, but make sure you have a trustworthy gut first”!

    Dr. Tracey Marks, psychiatrist, explains how:

    Gut feelings and more

    As you probably know, the gut and brain communicate via the vagus nerve, making gut bacteria highly influential.

    How influential? Here are some key points from the video:

    • Healthier gut bacteria are linked to more cautious risk-taking and future-oriented decisions.
    • Gut bacteria influence serotonin (95% produced in the gut), dopamine, and neurotransmitters essential for decision-making.
    • People with good gut health prioritize fairness in decision-making.
    • The gut influences decision-making via neurotransmitter production, vagus nerve signaling, and inflammation control.

    Gut bacteria produce metabolites (beyond the neurotransmitters mentioned above!) that affect nerve circuits for emotion and executive function. These postbiotics (postbiotics = byproducts of gut bacteria fermenting prebiotics) play a crucial role in brain health. Examples of things they make include short-chain fatty acids (butyrate), enzymes, peptides, and vitamins, which between them strengthen gut lining, reduce inflammation, regulate serotonin, and support immune function. Scientists are even exploring postbiotics for treating metabolic and inflammatory diseases.

    Timeline of brain-gut axis health improvements

    • Days 4–14: gut bacterial composition starts changing (you probably won’t notice anything brainwise, but you may get gas; this is normal and temporary)
    • Weeks 2–6: mood and mental clarity improve (you’ll start feeling it here, most likely first in an abstract “life seems more beautiful” sort of way, plus less brain fog)
    • Months 2–3: long-term neural adaptations form (this is where the decision-making improvements come in, so you’ll need some patience about this, but the mood boost you’ve now had since weeks 2–6 should make the next bit even easier).

    Dr. Marks’ suggestions, to make the most of this:

    1. Diversify diet: aim for 30* different plant-based foods per week!
    2. Try fermented foods: start with small amounts of kimchi, kefir, etc.
    3. Increase fiber intake: add chia seeds or flaxseeds to meals!
    4. Limit artificial sweeteners: many of them disrupt gut bacteria.
    5. Maintain regular meal times: supports bacterial circadian rhythms.
    6. Don’t rely solely on supplements; whole foods are more effective!

    *this is not a random number out of a hat; there is science behind the number! Here’s the science.

    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:

    Genius Gut: 10 New Gut-Brain Hacks to Revolutionise Your Energy, Mood, and Brainpower – by Dr. Emily Leeming

    Take care!

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  • An Underrated Tool Against Alzheimer’s

    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.

    Dementia in general, and Alzheimer’s in particular, affects a lot of people, and probably even more than the stats show, because some (estimated to be: about half) will go undiagnosed and thus unreported:

    Alzheimer’s: The Bad News And The Good

    At 10almonds, we often talk about brain health, whether from a nutrition standpoint or other lifestyle factors. For nutrition, by the way, check out:

    Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!

    Today we’ll be looking at some new science for an underrated tool:

    Bilingualism as protective factor

    It’s well-known that bilingualism offers brain benefits, but most people would be hard-pressed to name what, specifically, those brain benefits are.

    As doctors Kristina Coulter and Natalie Phillips found in a recent study, one of the measurable benefits may be a defense against generalized (i.e. not necessarily language-related) memory loss Alzheimer’s disease.

    Specifically,

    ❝We used surface-based morphometry methods to measure cortical thickness and volume of language-related and AD-related brain regions. We did not observe evidence of brain reserve in language-related regions.

    However, reduced hippocampal volume was observed for monolingual, but not bilingual, older adults with AD. Thus, bilingualism is hypothesized to contribute to reserve in the form of brain maintenance in the context of AD.❞

    Read in full: Bilinguals show evidence of brain maintenance in Alzheimer’s disease

    This is important, because while language is processed in various parts of the brain beyond the scope of this article, the hippocampi* are where memory is stored.

    *usually mentioned in the singular as “hippocampus”, but you have one on each side, unless some terrible accident or incident befell you.

    What this means in practical terms: these results suggest that being bilingual means we will retain more of our capacity for memory, even if we get Alzheimer’s disease, than people who are monolingual.

    Furthermore, while we’re talking practicality:

    ❝…our subsample may be characterized as mostly late bilinguals (i.e., learning an L2 after age 5), having moderate self-reported L2 ability, and relatively few participants reporting daily L2 use (33 out of 119)❞

    (L2 = second language)

    This is important, because it means you don’t have to have grown up speaking multiple languages, you don’t even have to speak it well, and you don’t have to be using your second language(s) on a daily basis, to enjoy benefits. Merely having them in your head appears to be sufficient to trigger the brain to go “oh, we need to boost and maintain the hippocampal volume”.

    We would hypothesize that using second language(s) regularly and/or speaking second language(s) well offers additional protection, and the data would support this if it weren’t for the fact that the sample sizes for daily and high-level speakers are a bit small to draw conclusions.

    But the important part is: simply knowing another language, including if you literally just learned it later in life, is already protective of hippocampal volume in the context of Alzheimer’s disease.

    Here’s a pop-science article about the study, that goes into it in more detail than we have room to here:

    Bilingualism linked to greater brain resilience in older adults

    Want to learn a new language?

    Here are some options where you can get going right away:

    Duolingo | Babbel | Lernu

    If you are thinking “sounds good, but learning a language is too much work”, then that is why we included that third option there. It’s specifically for one language, and that language is Esperanto, arguably the world’s easiest language and specifically designed to be super quick and easy to get good at. Also, it’s free!

    Do, kial ne lerni novan lingvon rapide kaj facile? 😉

    Want to know more?

    For ways to reduce your overall Alzheimer’s risk according to science, check out:

    Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

    Take care!

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  • Life After Death? (Your Life; A Loved One’s Death)

    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.

    The Show Must Go On

    We’ve previously written about the topics of death and dying. It’s not cheery, but it is important to tackle.

    Sooner is better than later, in the case of:

    Preparations For Managing Your Own Mortality

    And for those who are left behind, of course it is hardest of all:

    What Grief Does To Your Body (And How To Manage It)

    But what about what comes next? For those who are left behind, that is.

    Life goes on

    In cases when the death is that of a close loved one, the early days after death can seem like a surreal blur. How can the world go ticking on as normal when [loved one] is dead?

    But incontrovertibly, it does, so we can only ask again: how?

    And, we get to choose that, to a degree. The above-linked article about grief gives a “101” rundown, but it’s (by necessity, for space) a scant preparation for one of the biggest challenges in life that most of us will ever face.

    For many people, processing grief involves a kind of “saying goodbye”. For others, it doesn’t, as in the following cases of grieving the loss of one’s child—something no parent should ever have to face, but it happens:

    Dr. Ken Druck | The Love That Never Dies

    (with warning, the above article is a little heavy)

    In short: for those who choose not to “say goodbye” in the case of the death of a loved one, it’s more often not a case of cold neglect, but rather the opposite—a holding on. Not in the “denial” sense of holding on, but rather in the sense of “I am not letting go of this feeling of love, no matter how much it might hurt to hold onto; it’s all I have”.

    What about widows, and love after death?

    Note: we’ll use the feminine “widow” here as a) it’s the most common and b) most scientific literature focuses on widows, but there is no reason why most of the same things won’t also apply to widowers.

    We say “most”, as society does tend to treat widows and widowers differently, having different expectations about a respectful mourning period, one’s comportment during same, and so on.

    As an aside: most scientific literature also assumes heterosexuality, which is again statistically reasonable, and for the mostpart the main difference is any extra challenges presented by non-recognition of marriages, and/or homophobic in-laws. But otherwise, grief is grief, and as the saying goes, love is love.

    One last specificity before we get into the meat of this: we are generally assuming marriages to be monogamous here. Polyamorous arrangements will likely sidestep most of these issues completely, but again, they’re not the norm.

    Firstly, there’s a big difference between remarrying (or similar) after being widowed, and remarrying (or similar) after a divorce, and that largely lies in the difference of how they begin. A divorce is (however stressful it may often be) more often seen as a transition into a new period of freedom, whereas bereavement is almost always felt as a terrible loss.

    The science, by the way, shows the stats for this; people are less likely to remarry, and slower to remarry if they do, in instances of bereavement rather than divorce, for example:

    Timing of Remarriage Among Divorced and Widowed Parents

    Love after death: the options

    For widows, then, there seem to be multiple options:

    • Hold on to the feelings for one’s deceased partner; never remarry
    • Grieve, move on, find new love, relegating the old to history
    • Try to balance the two (this is tricky but can be done*)

    *Why is balancing the two tricky, and how can it be done?

    It’s tricky because ultimately there are three people’s wishes at hand:

    • The deceased (“they would want me to be happy” vs “I feel I would be betraying them”—which two feelings can also absolutely come together, by the way)
    • Yourself (whether you actually want to get a new partner, or just remain single—this is your 100% your choice either way, and your decision should be made consciously)
    • The new love (how comfortable are they with your continued feelings for your late love, really?)

    And obviously only two of the above can be polled for opinions, and the latter one might say what they think we want to hear, only to secretly and/or later resent it.

    One piece of solid advice for the happily married: talk with your partner now about how you each would feel about the other potentially remarrying in the event of your death. Do they have your pre-emptive blessing to do whatever, do you ask a respectable mourning period first (how long?), would the thought just plain make you jealous? Be honest, and bid your partner be honest too.

    One piece of solid advice for everyone: make sure you, and your partner(s), as applicable, have a good emotional safety net, if you can. Close friends or family members that you genuinely completely trust to be there through thick and thin, to hold your/their hand through the emotional wreck that will likely follow.

    Because, while depression and social loneliness are expected and looked out for, it’s emotional loneliness that actually hits the hardest, for most people:

    Longitudinal Examination of Emotional Functioning in Older Adults After Spousal Bereavement

    …which means that having even just one close friend or family member with whom one can be at one’s absolute worst, express emotions without censure, not have to put on the socially expected appearance of emotional stability… Having that one person (ideally more, but having at least one is critical) can make a huge difference.

    But what if a person has nobody?

    That’s definitely a hard place to be, but here’s a good starting point:

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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