Health & Happiness From Outside & In

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A friend in need…

In a recent large (n=3,486) poll across the US:

  • 90% of people aged 50 and older say they have at least one close friend
  • 75% say they have enough close friends
  • 70% of those with a close friend say they can definitely count on them to provide health-related support

However, those numbers shrink by half when it comes to people whose physical and/or mental health is not so great, resulting in a negative feedback loop of fewer close friends whom one sees less often, and progressively worse physical and/or mental health. In other words, the healthier you are, the more likely you are to have a friend who’ll support you in your health:

Read in full: Friendships promote healthier living in older adults, says new survey

Related: How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

Kindness makes a difference to healthcare outcomes

Defining kindness as action-oriented, positively focused, and purposeful in nature, this sets kindness apart from compassion and empathy, when it’s otherwise often been conflated with those, and thus overlooked. This also means that kindness can still be effected when clinicians are too burned-out to be compassionate, and/or when patients are not in a state of mind where empathy is useful.

Furthermore, unkindness (again, as defined by this review) was found in large studies to be the root cause of ¾ of patient harm events in hospital settings. This means that far from being a wishy-washy abstraction, kindness/unkindness can be a very serious factor when it comes to healthcare outcomes:

Read in full: Review suggests kindness could make for better health care

Related: The Human Touch vs AI, The Doctor That Never Tires

The gift of health?

🎵 Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
Which turned out to be a silly idea
This year, to save me from tears
I’ll just get you a Fitbit or something🎵

Health & happiness go hand in hand, so does that make health stuff a good gift? It can do! But there are also plenty of opportunities for misfires.

For example, getting someone a gym membership when they don’t have time for that may not help them at all, and sports equipment that they’ll use once and then leave to gather dust might not be great either. In contrast, the American Heart Association recommends to first consider what they enjoy doing, and work with that, and ideally make it something versatile and/or portable. Wearable gadgets are a fine option for many, but a gift doesn’t have to be fancy to be good—with a blood pressure monitoring cuff being a suggestion from Dr. Sperling (a professor of preventative cardiology):

Read in full: Oh, there’s no gift like health for the holidays

Related: Here’s Where Activity Trackers Help (And Also Where They Don’t)

How you use social media matters more than how much

A study commissioned by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre found that while the quantity of time one spends on social media is not associated (positively or negatively) with loneliness, they did find a correlation between passive (as opposed to engaged) use of social media, and loneliness. In other words, people who were chatting with friends less, were more lonely! Shocking news.

While the findings may seem obvious, it does present a call-to-action for anyone who is feeling lonely: to use social media not just to see what everyone else is up to, but also, to reach out to people.

Read in full: Unpacking the link between social media and loneliness

Related: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health Rather Than Against It

Gut-only antidepressants

Many antidepressants work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain; a new study suggests that targeting antidepressants to work only in the gut (which is where serotonin is made, not the brain) could not only be an effective treatment for mood disorders, but also cause fewer adverse side-effects:

Read in full: Antidepressants may act in gut to reduce depression and anxiety

Related: Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!

Take care!

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  • Hope Not Nope – by Dr. Dillon Caswell

    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 author a Doctor of Physical Therapy, writes from both professional expertise and personal experience, when it comes to the treatment of long term injury / disability / chronic illness.

    His position here is that while suffering is unavoidable, we don’t have to suffer as much or as long as many might tell us. We can do things to crawl and claw our way to a better position, and we do not have to settle for any outcome we don’t want. That doesn’t mean there’s always a miracle cure—we don’t get to decide that—but we do get to decide whether we keep trying.

    Dr. Caswell’s advice is based mostly in psychology—a lot of it in sports psychology, which is no surprise given his long history as an athlete as well as his medical career.

    The style is very easy-reading, and a combination of explanation, illustrative (often funny) anecdotes, and a backbone of actual research to keep everything within the realms of science rather than mere wishful thinking—he strikes a good balance.

    Bottom line: if your current health outlook is more of an uphill marathon, then this book can give you the tools to carry yourself through the healthcare system that’s been made for numbers, not people.

    Click here to check out Hope Not Nope, and keep going!

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  • A Tale Of Two Cinnamons

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    Cinnamon’s Health Benefits (But Watch Out!)

    Cinnamon is enjoyed for its sweet and punchy flavor. It also has important health properties!

    Let’s take a look at the science…

    A Tale Of Two Cinnamons

    In your local supermarket, there is likely “cinnamon” and if you’re lucky, also “sweet cinnamon”. The difference between these is critical to understand before we continue:

    “Cinnamon” = Cinnamomum cassia or Cinnamomum aromaticum. This is cheapest and most readily available. It has a relatively high cinnamaldehyde content, and a high coumarin content.

    “Sweet cinnamon” Cinnamomum verum or Cinnamomum zeylanicum. It has a lower cinnamaldehyde content, and/but a much lower (almost undetectable) coumarin content.

    You may be wondering: what’s with the “or” in both of those cases? Each simply has two botanical names in use. It’s inconvenient and confusing, but that’s how it is.

    Great! What’s cinnamaldehyde and what’s coumarin?

    Cinnamaldehyde is what gives cinnamon its “spice” aspect; it’s strong and fragrant. It also gives cinnamon most of its health benefits.

    As a quick aside: it’s also used as the flavoring element in cinnamon flavored vapes, and in that form, it can cause health problems. So do eat it, but we recommend not to vape it.

    Coumarin is toxic in large quantities.

    The recommended safe amount is 0.1mg/kg, so you could easily go over this with a couple of teaspoons of cassia cinnamon:

    Toxicology and risk assessment of coumarin: focus on human data

    …while in Sweet/True/Ceylon cinnamon, those levels are almost undetectable:

    Medicinal properties of ‘true’ cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum): a systematic review

    If you have a cinnamon sensitivity, it is likely, but not necessarily, tied to the coumarin content rather than the cinnamaldehyde content.

    Summary of this section before moving on:

    “Cinnamon”, or cassia cinnamon, has about 50% stronger health benefits than “Sweet Cinnamon”, also called Ceylon cinnamon.

    “Cinnamon”, or cassia cinnamon, has about 250% stronger health risks than “Sweet Cinnamon”, also called Ceylon cinnamon.

    The mathematics here is quite simple; sweet cinnamon is the preferred way to go.

    The Health Benefits

    We spent a lot of time/space today looking at the differences. We think this was not only worth it, but necessary. However, that leaves us with less time/space for discussing the actual benefits. We’ll summarize, with links to supporting science:

    “Those three things that almost always go together”:

    Heart and blood benefits:

    Neuroprotective benefits:

    The science does need more testing in these latter two, though.

    Where to get it?

    You may be able to find sweet cinnamon in your local supermarket, or if you prefer capsule form, here’s an example product on Amazon

    Enjoy!

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  • Next-Level Headache Hacks

    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.

    A Muscle With A Lot Of Therapeutic Value

    First, a quick anatomy primer, so that the rest makes sense. We’re going to be talking about your sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle today.

    To find it, there are two easy ways:

    • look in a mirror, turn your head to one side and it’ll stick out on the opposite side of your neck
    • look at this diagram

    (we’re going to talk about it in the singular, but you have one on each side)

    This muscle is interesting for very many reasons, but what we’re going to focus on today is that massaging/stretching it (correctly!) can benefit several things that are right next to it and/or behind it, namely:

    • The tenth cranial nerve
    • The eleventh cranial nerve
    • The carotid artery

    Why do we care about these?

    Well, we would die quickly without the first and last of those. However, more practically, massaging each has benefits:

    The tenth cranial nerve

    This one is also known by its superhero alter-ego name:

    The Vagus Nerve (And How You Can Make Use Of It)

    The eleventh cranial nerve

    This one’s not nearly so critical to life, but it does facilitate most of the motor functions in that general part of the body—including some mechanics of speech production, and maintaining posture of the shoulders/neck/head (which in turn strongly affects presence/absence of certain kinds of headaches).

    The carotid artery

    We suspect you know what this one does already; it supplies the brain (and the rest of your head, for that matter) with oxygenated blood.

    What is useful to know today, is that it can be massaged, via the SCM, in a way that brings about a gentler version of this “one weird trick” to cure a lot of kinds of headaches:

    Curing Headaches At Home With Actual Science

    How (And Why) To Massage Your SCM

    …to relieve many kinds of headache, migraine, eye-ache, and tension or pain the jaw. It’s not a magical cure all so this comes with no promises, but it can and will help with a lot of things.

    In few words: turn your ahead away from the side where it hurts (if both, just pick one and then repeat for the other side), and slightly downwards. When your SCM sticks out a bit on the other side, gently pinch and rub it, working from the bottom to the top.

    If you prefer videos, here is a demonstration:

    !

    How (And Why) To Stretch Your SCM

    The above already includes a little stretch, but you can stretch it in a way that specifically stimulates your vagus nerve (this is good for many things).

    In few words: stand (or sit) up straight, and interlace your fingers together. Put your hands on the back of your neck, thumbs-downwards, and (keeping your face forward) look to one side with your eyes only, and hold that until you feel the urge to yawn (it’ll probably take between about 3 seconds and 30 seconds). Then repeat on the other side.

    If you prefer videos, this one is a very slight variation of what we just described but works the same way:

    !

    Take care!

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  • Healthy Kids, Happy Kids – by Dr. Elisa Song

    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.

    If you have young children or perhaps grandchildren, you probably care deeply about those children and their wellbeing, but there can often be a lot more guesswork than would be ideal, when it comes to ensuring they be and remain healthy.

    Nevertheless, a lot of common treatments for children are based (whether parents know it or not—and often they dont) on what is most convenient for the parent, not necessarily what is best for the child. Dr. Song looks to correct that.

    Rather than dosing kids with acetaminophen or even antibiotics, assuming eczema can be best fixed with a topical cream (treating the symptom rather than the cause, much?), and that some things like asthma “just are”, and “that’s unfortunate”, Dr. Song takes us on a tour of pediatric health, centered around the gut.

    Why the gut? Well, it’s pretty central to us as adults, and it’s the same for kids, except one difference: their gut microbiome is changing even more quickly than ours (along with the rest of their body), and as such, is even more susceptible to little nudges for better or for worse, having a big impact in either direction. So, might as well make it a good one!

    After an explanatory overview, most of the book is given over to recognizing and correcting what things can go wrong, including the top 25 acute childhood conditions, and the most critical chronic ones, and how to keep things on-track as a team (the child is part of the team! An important part!).

    The style of the book is very direct and instructional; easy to understand throughout. It’s a lot like being in a room with a very competent pediatrician who knows her stuff and explains it well, thus neither patronizing nor mystifying.

    Bottom line: if there are kids in your life, be they yours or your grandkids or someone else, this is a fine book for giving them the best foundational health.

    Click here to check out Healthy Kids, Happy Kids, and take care of yours!

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  • Only walking for exercise? Here’s how to get the most out of it

    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’re living longer than in previous generations, with one in eight elderly Australians now aged over 85. But the current gap between life expectancy (“lifespan”) and health-adjusted life expectancy (“healthspan”) is about ten years. This means many of us live with significant health problems in our later years.

    To increase our healthspan, we need planned, structured and regular physical activity (or exercise). The World Health Organization recommends 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise – such as brisk walking, cycling and swimming – per week and muscle strengthening twice a week.

    Yet few of us meet these recommendations. Only 10% meet the strength-training recommendations. Lack of time is one of the most common reasons.

    Walking is cost-effective, doesn’t require any special equipment or training, and can be done with small pockets of time. Our preliminary research, published this week, shows there are ways to incorporate strength-training components into walking to improve your muscle strength and balance.

    Why walking isn’t usually enough

    Regular walking does not appear to work as muscle-strengthening exercise.

    In contrast, exercises consisting of “eccentric” or muscle-lengthening contractions improve muscle strength, prevent muscle wasting and improve other functions such as balance and flexibility.

    Typical eccentric contractions are seen, for example, when we sit on a chair slowly. The front thigh muscles lengthen with force generation.

    Woman sits on chair
    When you sit down slowly on a chair, the front thigh muscles lengthen.
    buritora/Shutterstock

    Our research

    Our previous research found body-weight-based eccentric exercise training, such as sitting down on a chair slowly, improved lower limb muscle strength and balance in healthy older adults.

    We also showed walking down stairs, with the front thigh muscles undergoing eccentric contractions, increased leg muscle strength and balance in older women more than walking up stairs. When climbing stairs, the front thigh muscles undergo “concentric” contractions, with the muscles shortening.

    It can be difficult to find stairs or slopes suitable for eccentric exercises. But if they could be incorporated into daily walking, lower limb muscle strength and balance function could be improved.

    This is where the idea of “eccentric walking” comes into play. This means inserting lunges in conventional walking, in addition to downstairs and downhill walking.

    In our new research, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, we investigated the effects of eccentric walking on lower limb muscle strength and balance in 11 regular walkers aged 54 to 88 years.

    The intervention period was 12 weeks. It consisted of four weeks of normal walking followed by eight weeks of eccentric walking.

    The number of eccentric steps in the eccentric walking period gradually increased over eight weeks from 100 to 1,000 steps (including lunges, downhill and downstairs steps). Participants took a total of 3,900 eccentric steps over the eight-week eccentric walking period while the total number of steps was the same as the previous four weeks.

    We measured the thickness of the participants’ front thigh muscles, muscle strength in their knee, their balance and endurance, including how many times they could go from a sitting position to standing in 30 seconds without using their arms. We took these measurements before the study started, at four weeks, after the conventional walking period, and at four and eight weeks into the eccentric walking period.

    We also tested their cognitive function using a digit symbol-substitution test at the same time points of other tests. And we asked participants to complete a questionnaire relating to their activities of daily living, such as dressing and moving around at home.

    Finally, we tested participants’ blood sugar, cholesterol levels and complement component 1q (C1q) concentrations, a potential marker of sarcopenia (muscle wasting with ageing).

    Person walks with small dog
    Regular walking won’t contract your muscles in the same way as eccentric walking.
    alexei_tm/Shutterstock

    What did we find?

    We found no significant changes in any of the outcomes in the first four weeks when participants walked conventionally.

    From week four to 12, we found significant improvements in muscle strength (19%), chair-stand ability (24%), balance (45%) and a cognitive function test (21%).

    Serum C1q concentration decreased by 10% after the eccentric walking intervention, indicating participants’ muscles were effectively stimulated.

    The sample size of the study was small, so we need larger and more comprehensive studies to verify our findings and investigate whether eccentric walking is effective for sedentary people, older people, how the different types of eccentric exercise compare and the potential cognitive and mental health benefits.

    But, in the meantime, “eccentric walking” appears to be a beneficial exercise that will extend your healthspan. It may look a bit eccentric if we insert lunges while walking on the street, but the more people do it and benefit from it, the less eccentric it will become. The Conversation

    Ken Nosaka, Professor of Exercise and Sports Science, Edith Cowan University

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

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  • Lobster vs Crab – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing lobster to crab, we picked the crab.

    Why?

    Generally speaking, most seafood is healthy in moderation (assuming it’s well-prepared, not poisonous, and you don’t have an allergy), and for most people, these two sea creatures are indeed considered a reasonable part of a healthy balanced diet.

    In terms of macros, they’re comparable in protein, and technically crab has about 2x the fat, but in both cases it’s next to nothing, so 2x almost nothing is still almost nothing. And, if we break down the lipids profiles, crab has a sufficiently smaller percentage of saturated fat (compared to monounsaturated and polyunsaturated), that crab actually has less saturated fat than lobster. In balance, the category of macros is either a tie or a slight win for crab, depending on your personal priorities.

    When it comes to vitamins, crab wins easily with more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B9, B12, and C, in most cases by considerable margins (we’re talking multiples of what lobster has). Lobster, meanwhile, has more of vitamin B3 (tiny margin) and vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid, as in, the vitamin that’s in basically everything edible, and thus almost impossible to be deficient in unless literally starving).

    The minerals scene is more balanced; lobster has more calcium, copper, manganese, and selenium, while crab has more iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. The margins are comparable from one creature to another, so all in all the 4:5 score means a modest win for crab.

    Both of these creatures are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids, but crab is better.

    Lobster and crab are both somewhat high in cholesterol, but crab is the relatively lower of the two.

    In short: for most people most of the time, both are fine to enjoy in moderation, but if picking one, crab is the healthier by most metrics.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Shrimp vs Caviar – Which is Healthier?

    Take care!

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