Going for a bushwalk? 3 handy foods to have in your backpack (including muesli bars)

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This time of year, many of us love to get out and spend time in nature. This may include hiking through Australia’s many beautiful national parks.

Walking in nature is a wonderful activity, supporting both physical and mental health. But there can be risks and it’s important to be prepared.

You may have read the news about hiker, Hadi Nazari, who was recently found alive after spending 13 days lost in Kosciuszko National Park.

He reportedly survived for almost two weeks in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales by drinking fresh water from creeks, and eating foraged berries and two muesli bars.

So next time you’re heading out for a day of hiking, what foods should you pack?

Here are my three top foods to carry on a bushwalk that are dense in nutrients and energy, lightweight and available from the local grocery store.

Leah-Anne Thompson/Shutterstock

1. Muesli bars

Nazari reportedly ate two muesli bars he found in a mountain hut. Whoever left the muesli bars there made a great choice.

Muesli bars come individually wrapped, which helps them last longer and makes them easy to transport.

They are also a good source of energy. Muesli bars typically contain about 1,5001,900 kilojoules per 100 grams. The average energy content for a 35g bar is about 614kJ.

This may be a fraction of what you’d usually need in a day. However, the energy from muesli bars is released at a slow to moderate pace, which will help keep you going for longer.

Muesli bars are also packed with nutrients. They contain all three macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein and fat) that our body needs to function. They’re a good source of carbohydrates, in particular, which are a key energy source. An average Australian muesli bar contains 14g of whole grains, which provide carbohydrates and dietary fibre for long-lasting energy.

Muesli bars that contain nuts are typically higher in fat (19.9g per 100g) and protein (9.4g per 100g) than those without.

Fat and protein are helpful for slowing down the release of energy from foods and the protein will help keep you feeling full for longer.

There are many different types of muesli bars to choose from. I recommend looking for those with whole grains, higher dietary fibre and higher protein content.

2. Nuts

Nuts are nature’s savoury snack and are also a great source of energy. Cashews, pistachios and peanuts contain about 2,300-2,400kJ per 100g while Brazil nuts, pecans and macadamias contain about 2,700-3,000kJ per 100g. So a 30g serving of nuts will provide about 700-900kJ depending on the type of nut.

Just like muesli bars, the energy from nuts is released slowly. So even a relatively small quantity will keep you powering on.

Nuts are also full of nutrients, such as protein, fat and fibre, which will help to stave off hunger and keep you moving for longer.

When choosing which nuts to pack, almost any type of nut is going to be great.

Peanuts are often the best value for money, or go for something like walnuts that are high in omega-3 fatty acids, or a nut mix.

Whichever nut you choose, go for the unsalted natural or roasted varieties. Salted nuts will make you thirsty.

Nut bars are also a great option and have the added benefit of coming in pre-packed serves (although nuts can also be easily packed into re-usable containers).

If you’re allergic to nuts, roasted chickpeas are another option. Just try to avoid those with added salt.

Handful of natural nuts with other nuts on a dark background
Nuts are nature’s savoury snack and are also a great source of energy. Eakrat/Shutterstock

3. Dried fruit

If nuts are nature’s savoury snack, fruit is nature’s candy. Fresh fruits (such as grapes, frozen in advance) are wonderfully refreshing and perfect as an everyday snack, although can add a bit of weight to your hiking pack.

So if you’re looking to reduce the weight you’re carrying, go for dried fruit. It’s lighter and will withstand various conditions better than fresh fruit, so is less likely to spoil or bruise on the journey.

There are lots of varieties of dried fruits, such as sultanas, dried mango, dried apricots and dried apple slices.

These are good sources of sugar for energy, fibre for fullness and healthy digestion, and contain lots of vitamins and minerals. So choose one (or a combination) that works for you.

Don’t forget water

Next time you head out hiking for the day, you’re all set with these easily available, lightweight, energy- and nutrient-dense snacks.

This is not the time to be overly concerned about limiting your sugar or fat intake. Hiking, particularly in rough terrain, places demands on your body and energy needs. For instance, an adult hiking in rough terrain can burn upwards of about 2,000kJ per hour.

And of course, don’t forget to take plenty of water.

Having access to even limited food, and plenty of fresh water, will not only make your hike more pleasurable, it can save your life.

Margaret Murray, Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For?

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    More to the point: what isn’t it good for?

    What brought it to the attention of the world’s scientific community?

    Back in the 1950s, physiologist Ancel Keys wondered why poor people in Italian villages were healthier than wealthy New Yorkers. Upon undertaking studies, he narrowed it down to the Mediterranean diet—something he’d then take on as a public health cause for the rest of his career.

    Keys himself lived to the ripe old age of 100, by the way.

    When we say “Mediterranean Diet”, what image comes to mind?

    We’re willing to bet that tomatoes feature (great source of lycopene, by the way), but what else?

    • Salads, perhaps? Vegetables, olives? Olive oil, yea or nay?
    • Bread? Pasta? Prosciutto, salami? Cheese?
    • Pizza but only if it’s Romana style, not Chicago?
    • Pan-seared liver, with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?

    In reality, the diet is based on what was historically eaten specifically by Italian peasants. If the word “peasants” conjures an image of medieval paupers in smocks and cowls, and that’s not necessarily wrong, further back historically… but the relevant part here is that they were people who lived and worked in the countryside.

    They didn’t have money for meat, which was expensive, nor the industrial setting for refined grain products to be affordable. They didn’t have big monocrops either, which meant no canola oil, for example… Olives produce much more easily extractable oil per plant, so olive oil was easier to get. Nor, of course, did they have the money (or infrastructure) for much in the way of imports.

    So what foods are part of “the” Mediterranean Diet?

    • Fruits. These would be fruits grown locally, but no need to sweat that, dietwise. It’s hard to go wrong with fruit.
    • Tomatoes yes. So many tomatoes. (Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad)
    • Non-starchy vegetables (e.g. eggplant yes, potatoes no)
    • Greens (spinach, kale, lettuce, all those sorts of things)
    • Beans and other legumes (whatever was grown nearby)
    • Whole grain products in moderation (wholegrain bread, wholewheat pasta)
    • Olives and olive oil. Special category, single largest source of fat in the Mediterranean diet, but don’t overdo it.
    • Dairy products in moderation (usually hard cheeses, as these keep well)
    • Fish, in moderation. Typically grilled, baked, steamed even. Not fried.
    • Other meats as a rarer luxury in considerable moderation. There’s more than one reason prosciutto is so thinly sliced!

    Want to super-power this already super diet?

    Try: A Pesco-Mediterranean Diet With Intermittent Fasting: JACC Review Topic of the Week

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  • Stop Sabotaging Your Gut

    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 is Dr. Robynne Chutkan. She’s an integrative gastroenterologist, and founder of the Digestive Center for Wellness, in Washington DC, which for the past 20 years has been dedicated to uncovering the root causes of gastrointestinal disorders, while the therapeutic side of things has been focused on microbial optimization, nutritional therapy, mind-body techniques, and lifestyle changes.

    In other words, maximal health for minimal medicalization.

    So… What does she want us to know?

    Live dirty

    While attentive handwashing is important to avoid the spread of communicable diseases*, excessive cleanliness in general can result in an immune system that has no idea how to deal with pathogens when exposure does finally occur.

    *See also: The Truth About Handwashing

    This goes doubly for babies: especially those who were born by c-section and thus missed out on getting colonized by vaginal bacteria, and especially those who are not breast-fed, and thus miss out on nutrients given in breast milk that are made solely for the benefit of certain symbiotic bacteria (humans can’t even digest those particular nutrients, we literally evolved to produce some nutrients solely for the bacteria).

    See also: Breast Milk’s Benefits That Are (So Far) Not Replicable

    However, it still goes for the rest of us who are not babies, too. We could, Dr. Chutkan tells us, stand to wash less in general, and definitely ease up on antibacterial soaps and so forth.

    See also: Should You Shower Daily?

    Take antibiotics only if absolutely necessary (and avoid taking them by proxy)

    Dr. Chutkan describes antibiotics as the single biggest threat to our microbiome, not just because of overprescription, but also the antibiotics that are used in animal agriculture and thus enter the food chain (and thus, enter us, if we eat animal products).

    Still, while the antibiotics meat/dairy-enjoyers will get from food are better avoided, antibiotics actually taken directly are even worse, and are absolutely a “scorched earth” tactic against whatever they’re being prescribed for.

    See also: Antibiotics? Think Thrice ← which also brings up “Four Ways Antibiotics Can Kill You”; seriously, the risks of antibiotics are not to be underestimated, including the risks associated only with them working exactly as intended—let alone if something goes wrong.

    Probiotics won’t save you

    While like any gastroenterologist (or really, almost any person in general), she notes that probiotics can give a boost to health. However, she wants us to know about two shortcomings that are little-discussed:

    1) Your body has a collection of microbiomes each with their own needs, and while it is possible to take “generally good” bacteria in probiotics and assume they’ll do good, taking Lactobacillus sp. will do nothing for a shortage of Bifidobacteria sp, and even taking the correct genus can have similar shortcomings if a different species of that genus is needed, e.g. taking L. acidophilus will do nothing for a shortage of L. reuteri.

    It’d be like a person with a vitamin D deficiency taking vitamin B12 supplements and wondering why they’re not getting better.

    2) Probiotics are often wasted if not taken mindfully of their recipient environment. For example, most gut bacteria only live for about 20 minutes in the gut. They’re usually inactive in the supplement form, they’re activated in the presence of heat and moisture and appropriate pH etc, and then the clock is ticking for them to thrive or die.

    This means that if you take a supplement offering two billion strains of good gut bacteria, and you take it on an empty stomach, then congratulations, 20 minutes later, they’re mostly dead, because they had nothing to eat. Or if you take it after drinking a soda, congratulations, they’re mostly dead because not only were they starved, but also their competing “bad” microbes weren’t starved and changed the environment to make it worse for the “good” ones.

    For this reason, taking probiotics with (or immediately after) plenty of fiber is best.

    This is all accentuated if you’re recovering from using antibiotics, by the way.

    Imagine: a nuclear war devastates the population of the Earth. Some astronauts manage to safely return, finding a mostly-dead world covered in nuclear winter. Is the addition of a few astronauts going to quickly repopulate the world? No, of course not. They are few, the death toll is many, and the environment is very hostile to life. A hundred years later, the population will be pretty much the same—a few straggling survivors.

    It’s the same after taking antibiotics, just, generations pass in minutes instead of decades. You can’t wipe out almost everything beneficial in the gut, create a hostile environment there, throw in a couple of probiotic gummies, and expect the population to bounce back.

    That said, although “probiotics will not save you”, they can help provided you give them a nice soft bed of fiber to land on, some is better than none, and guessing at what strains are needed is better than giving nothing.

    See also: How Much Difference Do Probiotic Supplements Make, Really?

    What she recommends

    So to recap, we’ve had:

    • Wash less, and/or with less harsh chemicals
    • Avoid antibiotics like the plague, unless you literally have The Plague, for which the treatment is indeed antibiotics
    • Avoid antibiotic-contaminated foods, which in the US is pretty much all animal products unless it’s, for example, your own back-yard hens whom you did not give antibiotics. Do not fall for greenwashing aesthetics in the packaging of “happy cows” and their beef, milk, etc, “happy hens” and their meat, eggs, etc… If it doesn’t explicitly claim to be free from the use of antibiotics, then antibiotics were almost certainly used.
      • Dr. Chutkan herself is not even vegan, by the way, but very much wants us to be able to make informed choices about this, and does recommend at least a “plants-forward” diet, for the avoiding-antibiotics reason and for the plenty-of-fiber reason, amongst others.
    • Consider probiotics, but don’t expect them to work miracles by themselves; you’ve got to help them to help you.
      • Dr. Chutkan also recommends getting microbiome tests done if you think something might be amiss, and then you can supplement with probiotics in a more targetted fashion instead of guessing at what species is needed where.

    She also recommends, of course, a good gut-healthy diet in general, especially “leafy green things that were recently alive; not powders”, beans, and nuts, while avoiding gut-unhealthy things such as sugars-without-fiber, alcohol, or some gut-harmful additives (such as most artificial sweeteners, although stevia is a gut-healthy exception, and sucralose is ok in moderation).

    For more on gut-healthy eating, check out:

    Make Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

    Want to know more from Dr. Chutkan?

    We recently reviewed an excellent book of hers:

    The Anti-Viral Gut: Tackling Pathogens From The Inside Out – by Dr. Robynne Chutkan

    Enjoy!

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  • The Disordered Mind – by Dr. Eric Kandel

    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.

    We don’t generally include author bios in these reviews, but it’s worth mentioning that Dr. Kandel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, for studies related to the topics in this book.

    The premise in this book is as per the subtitle: what unusual brains tell us about ourselves. He assumes that the reader has a “usual” brain, but if you don’t, then all is not lost, and in fact he probably talks about your brain in the book too.

    Examining the brains of people with conditions ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia to Parkinson’s, or even such common things as depression and anxiety and addiction, tells us a lot about what in our brain (anatomically and physiologically) is responsible for what, and how those things can be thrown out of balance.

    By inference, that also tells us how to keep things from being thrown out of balance. Even if the genetic deck is stacked against you, there are still things that can be done to avoid actual disease. After all, famously, “genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger”.

    Dr. Kandel writes in a clear and lucid fashion, such that even the lay reader can quite comfortably learn about such things as prion-folding and inhibitory neurons and repressed transcription factors and more.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to understand more about what goes wrong and how and why and what it means for your so-far-so-good healthy brain, this is the book for that.

    Click here to check out The Disordered Mind, and understand more!

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  • Taking A Trip Through The Evidence On Psychedelics

    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.

    In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinions on the medicinal use of psychedelics, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

    • 32% said “This is a good, evidence-based way to treat many brain disorders”
    • 32% said “There are some benefits, but they don’t outweigh the risks”
    • 20% said “This can help a select few people only; useless for the majority”
    • 16% said “This is hippie hogwash and hearsay; wishful thinking at best”

    Quite a spread of answers, so what does the science say?

    This is hippie hogwash and hearsay; wishful thinking at best! True or False?

    False! We’re tackling this one first, because it’s easiest to answer:

    There are some moderately-well established [usually moderate] clinical benefits from some psychedelics for some people.

    If that sounds like a very guarded statement, it is. Part of this is because “psychedelics” is an umbrella term; perhaps we should have conducted separate polls for psilocybin, MDMA, ayahuasca, LSD, ibogaine, etc, etc.

    In fact: maybe we will do separate main features for some of these, as there is a lot to say about each of them separately.

    Nevertheless, looking at the spread of research as it stands for psychedelics as a category, the answers are often similar across the board, even when the benefits/risks may differ from drug to drug.

    To speak in broad terms, if we were to make a research summary for each drug it would look approximately like this in each case:

    • there has been research into this, but not nearly enough, as “the war on drugs” may well have manifestly been lost (the winner of the war being: drugs; still around and more plentiful than ever), but it did really cramp science for a few decades.
    • the studies are often small, heterogenous (often using moderately wealthy white student-age population samples), and with a low standard of evidence (i.e. the methodology often has some holes that leave room for reasonable doubt).
    • the benefits recorded are often small and transient.
    • in their favor, though, the risks are also generally recorded as being quite low, assuming proper safe administration*.

    *Illustrative example:

    Person A takes MDMA in a club, dances their cares away, has had only alcohol to drink, sweats buckets but they don’t care because they love everyone and they see how we’re all one really and it all makes sense to them and then they pass out from heat exhaustion and dehydration and suffer kidney damage (not to mention a head injury when falling) and are hospitalized and could die;

    Person B takes MDMA in a lab, is overwhelmed with a sense of joy and the clarity of how their participation in the study is helping humanity; they want to hug the researcher and express their gratitude; the researcher reminds them to drink some water.

    Which is not to say that a lab is the only safe manner of administration; there are many possible setups for supervised usage sites. But it does mean that the risks are often as much environmental as they are risks inherent to the drug itself.

    Others are more inherent to the drug itself, such as adverse cardiac events for some drugs (ibogaine is one that definitely needs medical supervision, for example).

    For those who’d like to see numbers and clinical examples of the bullet points we gave above, here you go; this is a great (and very readable) overview:

    NIH | Evidence Brief: Psychedelic Medications for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders

    Notwithstanding the word “brief” (intended in the sense of: briefing), this is not especially brief and is rather an entire book (available for free, right there!), but we do recommend reading it if you have time.

    This can help a select few people only; useless for the majority: True or False?

    True, technically, insofar as the evidence points to these drugs being useful for such things as depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, etc, and estimates of people who struggle with mental health issues in general is often cited as being 1 in 4, or 1 in 5. Of course, many people may just have moderate anxiety, or a transient period of depression, etc; many, meanwhile, have it worth.

    In short: there is a very large minority of people who suffer from mental health issues that, for each issue, there may be one or more psychedelic that could help.

    This is a good, evidence-based way to treat many brain disorders: True or False?

    True if and only if we’re willing to accept the so far weak evidence that we discussed above. False otherwise, while the jury remains out.

    One thing in its favor though is that while the evidence is weak, it’s not contradictory, insofar as the large preponderance of evidence says such therapies probably do work (there aren’t many studies that returned negative results); the evidence is just weak.

    When a thousand scientists say “we’re not completely sure, but this looks like it helps; we need to do more research”, then it’s good to believe them on all counts—the positivity and the uncertainty.

    This is a very different picture than we saw when looking at, say, ear candling or homeopathy (things that the evidence says simply do not work).

    We haven’t been linking individual studies so far, because that book we linked above has many, and the number of studies we’d have to list would be:

    n = number of kinds of psychedelic drugs x number of conditions to be treated

    e.g. how does psilocybin fare for depression, eating disorders, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, this, that, the other; now how does ayahuasca fare for each of those, and so on for each drug and condition; at least 25 or 30 as a baseline number, and we don’t have that room.

    But here are a few samples to finish up:

    In closing…

    The general scientific consensus is presently “many of those drugs may ameliorate many of those conditions, but we need a lot more research before we can say for sure”.

    On a practical level, an important take-away from this is twofold:

    • drugs, even those popularly considered recreational, aren’t ontologically evil, generally do have putative merits, and have been subject to a lot of dramatization/sensationalization, especially by the US government in its famous war on drugs.
    • drugs, even those popularly considered beneficial and potentially lifechangingly good, are still capable of doing great harm if mismanaged, so if putting aside “don’t do drugs” as a propaganda of the past, then please do still hold onto “don’t do drugs alone”; trained professional supervision is a must for safety.

    Take care!

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  • What is ‘breathwork’? And do I need to do it?

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    From “breathwork recipes” to breathing techniques, many social media and health websites are recommending breathwork to reduce stress.

    But breathwork is not new. Rather it is the latest in a long history of breathing techniques such as Pranayama from India and qigong from China. Such practices have been used for thousands of years to promote a healthy mind and body.

    The benefits can be immediate and obvious. Try taking a deep breath in through your nose and exhaling slowly. Do you feel a little calmer?

    So, what’s the difference between the breathing we do to keep us alive and breathwork?

    Taras Grebinets/Shutterstock

    Breathwork is about control

    Breathwork is not the same as other mindfulness practices. While the latter focus on observing the breath, breathwork is about controlling inhalation and exhalation.

    Normally, breathing happens automatically via messages from the brain, outside our conscious control. But we can control our breath, by directing the movement of our diaphragm and mouth.

    The diaphragm is a large muscle that separates our thoracic (chest) and abdominal (belly) cavities. When the diaphragm contracts, it expands the thoracic cavity and pulls air into the lungs.

    Controlling how deep, how often, how fast and through what (nose or mouth) we inhale is the crux of breathwork, from fire breathing to the humming bee breath.

    Breathwork can calm or excite

    Even small bits of breathwork can have physical and mental health benefits and complete the stress cycle to avoid burnout.

    Calming breathwork includes diaphragmatic (belly) breathing, slow breathing, pausing between breaths, and specifically slowing down the exhale.

    In diaphragmatic breathing, you consciously contract your diaphragm down into your abdomen to inhale. This pushes your belly outwards and makes your breathing deeper and slower.

    You can also slow the breath by doing:

    • box breathing (count to four for each of four steps: breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold), or
    • coherent breathing (controlled slow breathing of five or six breaths per minute), or
    • alternate nostril breathing (close the left nostril and breathe in slowly through the right nostril, then close the right nostril and breathe out slowly through the left nostril, then repeat the opposite way).

    You can slow down the exhalation specifically by counting, humming or pursing your lips as you breathe out.

    In contrast to these calming breathing practices, energising fast-paced breathwork increases arousal. For example, fire breathing (breathe in and out quickly, but not deeply, through your nose in a consistent rhythm) and Lion’s breath (breathe out through your mouth, stick your tongue out and make a strong “haa” sound).

    What is happening in the body?

    Deep and slow breathing, especially with a long exhale, is the best way to stimulate the vagus nerves. The vagus nerves pass through the diaphragm and are the main nerves of the parasympathetic nervous system.

    Simulating the vagus nerves calms our sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) stress response. This improves mood, lowers the stress hormone cortisol and helps to regulate emotions and responses. It also promotes more coordinated brain activity, improves immune function and reduces inflammation.

    Taking deep, diaphragmatic breaths also has physical benefits. This improves blood flow, lung function and exercise performance, increases oxygen in the body, and strengthens the diaphragm.

    Slow breathing reduces heart rate and blood pressure and increases heart rate variability (normal variation in time between heart beats). These are linked to better heart health.

    Taking shallow, quick, rhythmic breaths in and out through your nose stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. Short-term, controlled activation of the stress response is healthy and develops resilience to stress.

    Breathing in through the nose

    We are designed to inhale through our nose, not our mouth. Inside our nose are lots of blood vessels, mucous glands and tiny hairs called cilia. These warm and humidify the air we breathe and filter out germs and toxins.

    We want the air that reaches our airways and lungs to be clean and moist. Cold and dry air is irritating to our nose and throat, and we don’t want germs to get into the body.

    Nasal breathing increases parasympathetic activity and releases nitric oxide, which improves airway dilation and lowers blood pressure.

    Consistently breathing through our mouth is not healthy. It can lead to pollutants and infections reaching the lungs, snoring, sleep apnoea, and dental issues including cavities and jaw joint problems.

    person stands with diagrams of lungs superimposed on chest
    Breathing can be high and shallow when we are stressed. mi_viri/Shutterstock

    A free workout

    Slow breathing – even short sessions at home – can reduce stress, anxiety and depression in the general population and among those with clinical depression or anxiety. Research on breathwork in helping post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is also promising.

    Diaphragmatic breathing to improve lung function and strengthen the diaphragm can improve breathing and exercise intolerance in chronic heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. It can also improve exercise performance and reduce oxidative stress (an imbalance of more free radicals and/or less antioxidants, which can damage cells) after exercise.

    traffic light in street shows red signal
    Waiting at the lights? This could be your signal to do some breathwork. doublelee/Shutterstock

    A mind-body connection you can access any time

    If you feel stressed or anxious, you might subconsciously take shallow, quick breaths, but this can make you feel more anxious. Deep diaphragmatic breaths through your nose and focusing on strong exhalations can help break this cycle and bring calm and mental clarity.

    Just a few minutes a day of breathwork can improve your physical and mental health and wellbeing. Daily deep breathing exercises in the workplace reduce blood pressure and stress, which is important since burnout rates are high.

    Bottom line: any conscious control of your breath throughout the day is positive.

    So, next time you are waiting in a line, at traffic lights or for the kettle to boil, take a moment to focus on your breath. Breathe deeply into your belly through your nose, exhale slowly, and enjoy the benefits.

    Theresa Larkin, Associate professor of Medical Sciences, University of Wollongong and Judy Pickard, Senior Lecturer, Clinical Psychology, University of Wollongong

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Wildfires ignite infection risks, by weakening the body’s immune defences and spreading bugs in smoke

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    Over the past several days, the world has watched on in shock as wildfires have devastated large parts of Los Angeles.

    Beyond the obvious destruction – to landscapes, homes, businesses and more – fires at this scale have far-reaching effects on communities. A number of these concern human health.

    We know fire can harm directly, causing injuries and death. Tragically, the death toll in LA is now at least 24.

    But wildfires, or bushfires, can also have indirect consequences for human health. In particular, they can promote the incidence and spread of a range of infections.

    Effects on the immune system

    Most people appreciate that fires can cause burns and smoke inhalation, both of which can be life-threatening in their own right.

    What’s perhaps less well known is that both burns and smoke inhalation can cause acute and chronic changes in the immune system. This can leave those affected vulnerable to infections at the time of the injury, and for years to come.

    Burns induce profound changes in the immune system. Some parts go into overdrive, becoming too reactive and leading to hyper-inflammation. In the immediate aftermath of serious burns, this can contribute to sepsis and organ failure.

    Other parts of the immune system appear to be suppressed. Our ability to recognise and fight off bugs can be compromised after sustaining burns. Research shows people who have experienced serious burns have an increased risk of influenza, pneumonia and other types of respiratory infections for at least the first five years after injury compared to people who haven’t experienced burns.

    Wildfire smoke is a complex mixture containing particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, ozone, toxic gases, and microbes. When people inhale smoke during wildfires, each of these elements can play a role in increasing inflammation in the airways, which can lead to increased susceptibility to respiratory infections and asthma.

    Research published after Australia’s Black Summer of 2019–20 found a higher risk of COVID infections in areas of New South Wales where bushfires had occurred weeks earlier.

    We need more research to understand the magnitude of these increased risks, how long they persist after exposure, and the mechanisms. But these effects are thought to be due to sustained changes to the immune response.

    Microbes travel in smoky air

    Another opportunity for infection arises from the fire-induced movement of microbes from niches they usually occupy in soils and plants in natural areas, into densely populated urban areas.

    Recent evidence from forest fires in Utah shows microbes, such as bacteria and fungal spores, can be transported in smoke. These microbes are associated with particles from the source, such as burned vegetation and soil.

    There are thousands of different species of microbes in smoke, many of which are not common in background, non-smoky air.

    Only a small number of studies on this have been published so far, but researchers have shown the majority of microbes in smoke are still alive and remain alive in smoke long enough to colonise the places where they eventually land.

    How far specific microbes can be transported remains an open question, but fungi associated with smoke particles have been detected hundreds of miles downwind from wildfires, even weeks after the fire.

    So does this cause human infections?

    A subset of these airborne microbes are known to cause infections in humans.

    Scientists are probing records of human fungal infections in relation to wildfire smoke exposure. In particular, they’re looking at soil-borne infectious agents such as the fungi Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii which thrive in dry soils that can be picked up in dust and smoke plumes.

    These fungi cause valley fever, a lung infection with symptoms that can resemble the flu, across arid western parts of the United States.

    A study of wildland firefighters in California showed high rates of valley fever infections, which spurred occupational health warnings including recommended use of respirators when in endemic regions.

    A California-based study of the wider population showed a 20% increase in hospital admissions for valley fever following any amount of exposure to wildfire smoke.

    However, another found only limited evidence of excess cases after smoke exposure in wildfire-adjacent populations in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

    These contrasting results show more research is needed to evaluate the infectious potential of wildfire smoke from this and other fungal and bacterial causes.

    Staying safe

    Much remains to be learned about the links between wildfires and infections, and the multiple pathways by which wildfires can increase the risk of certain infections.

    There’s also a risk people gathering together after a disaster like this, such as in potentially overcrowded shelters, can increase the transmission of infections. We’ve seen this happen after previous natural disasters.

    Despite the gaps in our knowledge, public health responses to wildfires should encompass infection prevention (such as through the provision of effective masks) and surveillance to enable early detection and effective management of any outbreaks.

    Christine Carson, Senior Research Fellow, School of Medicine, The University of Western Australia and Leda Kobziar, Professor of Wildland Fire Science, University of Idaho

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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