Healthy Brain, Happy Life – by Dr. Wendy Suzuki
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 talked about Dr. Wendy Suzuki’s research in the category of exercise and brain-benefits in our main feature the other day. But she has more to say than we can fit into an article!
This book chronicles her discoveries, through her work in memory and neuroplasticity, to her discoveries about exercise, and her dive into broader neurology-based mental health. So what does neurology-based mental health look like?
The answer is: mitigating brain-busters such as stress and anxiety, revitalizing a fatigued brain, boosting creativity, and other such benefits.
Does she argue that exercise is a cure-all? No, not quite. Sometimes there are other things she’s recommending (such as in her chapter on challenging the neurobiology of the stress response, or her chapter on meditation and the brain).
The writing style is mostly casual, interspersed with occasional mini-lectures (complete with diagrams and other illustrations), and is very readable and informative throughout.
Bottom line: if you’d like the more in-depth details of Dr. Suzuki’s work, this book is a very accessible way to get 320 pages of that!
Click here to check out Healthy Brain, Happy Life, and give yours the best!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
If You’re Not Flexible, These Are The Only 3 Stretches You Need, To Fix That
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 can’t put your leg behind your head while standing, try doing the splits against a wall first, and progress from there! ← text version of an item from a “if you can’t do this yet, try this first” picture set this writer saw on Instagram once upon a time
So, what if you’re more at the point of not quite being able to touch your toes yet?
From zero to…
Liv, of LivInLeggings fame, has these three starter-stretches that are actually starter-stretches:
Stretch 1: Reverse Tabletop with Foot Tuck Variation
- Sit on the floor, feet slightly wider than your hips, lean back onto your hands (fingertips pointing outward).
- Lift your hips towards a reverse tabletop, engage your glutes, and flatten the front of your hips.
- Add a foot tuck variation by stepping one foot back and pressing your weight forward.
Benefits:
- Stretches multiple muscles, including the soles of the feet.
- Improves foot arches, balance, and stability.
- Loosens fascia, enhancing flexibility in subsequent stretches.
Stretch 2: Squat to Forward Fold
- Start in a low squat (feet wider than your hips, toes mostly forward).
- Alternate between a low squat and a forward fold, keeping your hands on the floor or your toes.
Benefits:
- Stretches hamstrings, glutes, and lower back.
- Maintains good form and avoids overstraining.
Stretch 3: Side Lunge with Side Body Reach
- Begin in a tall kneeling position, step one foot out to the side (toes pointing outward).
- Lunge your hips towards your front ankle, keeping your tailbone tucked.
- Add a side body reach by resting your forearm on your thigh and reaching the other arm overhead.
- For a deeper stretch, cradle the back of your head with your hand, pressing lightly for a tricep stretch.
Benefits:
- Stretches inner thighs, lats, and triceps.
- Improves posture, shoulder mobility, and low squat ability.
For more on each of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Test For Whether You Will Be Able To Achieve The Splits
Take care!
Share This Post
-
3 Surprises: Yoga, Nut Milk, & Gluten
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 week in the world of health science news, not everything is as it might seem…
Yoga: not so good for the heart?
To be clear: it’s not bad for the health either.
Researchers (Dr. Poovitha Paramashiva et al.) found that yoga does, on balance, improve vascular health somewhat, but is significantly less effective than other structured exercise such as tai chi, Pilates, or HIIT.
One of the notable problems is that prolonged sitting stiffens arteries—sometimes described as “the new smoking”, which steals years from vascular health.
Of course, not every kind of yoga involves prolonged sitting, and some involve more movement than others. Dr. Paramashiva and her team conclude that yoga has many benefits, and/but should be supplemented with more dynamic exercise for full heart protection.
Read in full: Yoga isn’t as heart-healthy as you think, new study reveals
Related: Which Style Of Yoga Is Best For You?
Nut milks: not a poor imitation
Often thought it as poor imitations of milk from other mammals such as cows, nut milks have, on balance, more to offer healthwise.
Nut milks provide healthy fats with a much better lipids profile than cows’ milk, and all are usually fortified with calcium, vitamin D, and often even vitamin B12.
When it comes to fermented products (kefir, yogurts, cheeses), lactic acid bacteria improve safety, texture, antioxidant activity, and mineral bioavailability while producing bioactive peptides and probiotics; some strains also add natural thickening and prebiotic effects. All of this goes for plant-based products just the same as animal-based products.
In terms of safety, in all cases traditional heat treatments (HTST, UHT) extend shelf life; advanced non-thermal methods (HPH, UHPH, HHP, PEF, HC, ohmic heating) improve microbial safety while preserving flavor and nutrients. In any case, you will certainly not get bird flu from nut milk, either way.
One thing animal-based dairy products do have over nut-based equivalents is that they are usually higher in protein, so that’s one thing in their favor, to perhaps set against the usually poor lipids profiles in animal milks.
Read in full: Can nut-based milks match dairy for safety, nutrition and flavor?
Related: Which Plant Milk?
The other side of gluten
Everybody these days knows about the possibility of food allergies, sensitivities, and intolerances, and gluten is high on the public awareness list.
However, sometimes one thing can be easily mistaken for another, and assuming a gluten sensitivity or similar can lead one to miss the real problem—which could be a matter of a serious medical condition going undiagnosed, or it could be like one commenter mentioned under the video we shared today, saying:
❝I think my biggest mistake was deciding my gut issues were gluten sensitivity rather than “crap food” sensitivity. Most GF products are highly processed so now I’m back on wheat at least I can eat real bread, sourdough wholemeal with added seeds.❞
So that’s something that can happen.
Furthermore, gluten may be better than merely harmless! As the below-linked science shows, gluten peptides can act as antioxidants, lower blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, improve blood sugar control, and favorably modulate immune function. Some opioid-like peptides (exorphins) can even influence mood, appetite, and gut function.
This latter is in part because fermentation with lactic acid bacteria and fungal proteases (all of which normally live in our gut) can reduce harmful gluten fragments while releasing beneficial peptides.
And if you do have a sensitivity? Protease supplements (like latiglutenase) aim to break down gluten in the gut to protect sensitive individuals from accidental exposure, but clinical results remain inconsistent, so don’t count on that one just yet.
Similarly, in cases of Celiac disease, enzyme-based methods, such as prolyl endopeptidases, are being tested to neutralize toxic peptides—but this is a work in progress and the science is young so far.
Read in full: How gluten harms some people but helps others
Related: Why Going Gluten-Free Could Be A Bad Idea
Take care!
Share This Post
-
The Wrist-Worn Device That Detects Depression!
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.
Fitness trackers are great—in some regards. There are things they do well, and things they do badly, and those things are not always the way around you might expect!
We wrote about this, here: What Your Fitness Tracker Is Best & Worst At
In that article, we mentioned that one of the things it’s best at is tracking and establishing patterns.
Can you guess where this is going today?
Actionable actigraphy
Researchers (Dr. Adile Nexha et al.) looked at whether actigraphy*-derived sleep and rest-activity rhythms are associated with relapse in major depressive disorder (MDD).
*actigraphy = activity as plotted on a graph
What they did: 93 adults in remission from MDD across Canada wore a research-grade wrist actigraphy device for 1–2 years, generating approximately 32,000 days of sleep and activity data.
And what did that data tell Dr. Nexha and her team?
In few words: people with more irregular sleep and weaker day–night activity contrast had about a twofold higher risk of depressive relapse, often detectable weeks to months before symptoms returned.
In more words:
- Most important factor: lower relative amplitude—meaning less difference between daytime activity and nighttime rest—remained predictive even after adjusting for concurrent Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale scores.
- Other predictors: lower sleep regularity and sleep efficiency, higher wake after sleep onset, higher nighttime activity, and increasingly erratic sleep schedules before relapse.
This is a huge breakthrough because it shows that passive (easy!) continuous monitoring can flag risk earlier than symptom-based check-ins between appointments and could help people get the timely care they need.
Which is especially meaningful in cases of depression, where people struggling with depression are famously one of the hardest demographics to get to actively do something (including: tests).
You can find the paper itself, here: One-Year Actigraphy Study of Sleep and Rest-Activity Rhythms as Markers of Relapse in Depression
Another reason this is particularly important is that depression is sometimes astonishingly well-hidden. A person can be very very depressed, but they’re still switching into “performance mode” for things, sometimes even having a semblance of happiness while doing stuff in the company of others, but it’s all empty inside and lost in an instant once the mask can be allowed to slip, as it must, because keeping up appearances is very draining to someone who already doesn’t have a lot of energy due to the depression.
You can read more about that, here: How To Recognize Perfectly Hidden Depression
Want to learn more?
Some important reads:
- How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To) ← this one’s about as serious as it can get, and we mean it.
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← no, we’re not going to ask you to name 5 things you can see and all that. That’s more to do with anxiety and disassociative disorders in any case. But what this article does have, is a lot of genuinely practical advice that actually works, and yes, even when your motivation is through the floor.
- Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety ← this one builds on the previous one, and can make use of your health tracker too 😎
Take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
It’s Not Hysteria – by Dr. Karen Tan
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.
Firstly, who this book is aimed at: in case it wasn’t clear, this book assumes you have, or at least have had, a uterus. If that’s not you, then well, it’ll still be an interesting read but it won’t be about your reproductive health.
Secondly, about that “reproductive health”: it’s mostly not actually about reproductive health literally, but rather, the health of one’s reproductive organs and the things that they affect—which is a lot more than the ability to reproduce!
Dr. Tang takes us on a (respectably in-depth) tour of the relevant anatomy, before moving on to physiology, before continuing to pathology (i.e. things that can go wrong, and often do), and finally various treatment options, including elective procedures, and the pros and cons thereof.
She also talks the reader through talking about things with gynecologists and other healthcare providers, and making sure concerns are not dismissed out-of-hand (something that happens a lot, of course).
The style throughout is quite detailed prose, but without being difficult at all to read, and (assuming one is interested in the topic) it’s very engaging.
Bottom line: if you would like to know more about uteri and everything that is (or commonly/unfortunately) can be attached to them, the effects they have on the rest of the body and health, and what can be done about things not being quite right, then this is a good book for that.
Click here to check out It’s Not Hysteria, and understand more of what’s going on down there!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
How The Arts Slow Biological Aging
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’ve previous discussed some specific health benefits (especially brain health) of some specific arts, for example:
- The Music That Keeps Dementia At Bay
- Dancing vs Parkinson’s Depression ← this article is about a rather fun study, and the results were very predictable (i.e: it helps), and/but the mechanism of action is not necessarily something that people might think of in advance!
- How To Engage Your Whole Brain
…as well as occasional guest articles, such as: Lost for words? Research shows art therapy brings benefits for mental health
But what of the arts in general, as a category, and healthy aging beyond “just” brain health?
Artfully dodging aging
Researchers (Dr. Daisy Fancourt et al.) analyzed data from 3,556 UK adults and found that more frequent and more diverse arts and cultural engagement—such as reading, listening to music, or visiting museums—was associated with slower biological aging based on DNA methylation markers.
And yes, Dr. Fancourt and her team did control for such things as wealth, income, educational level, and other potential confounding variables that may have otherwise caused misleading results of the kind that lead to headlines such as “Horse-riding found to be the sport that most extends longevity”. Should we all take up horse-riding to increase our lifespans? Probably not; the reality is that people who can afford horses can probably afford better than average healthcare, and lead easier, less stressful lives overall. The fact that people with horses typically have wealthier lifestyles than those without, is the confounding variable here.
You can learn more about this sort of thing here: How Science News Outlets Can Lie To You (Yes, Even If They Cite Studies!)
Back to Dr. Fancourt’s study that did better than that and did control for the confounding variables (and yes, in this case, the associations held regardless of those other factors, indicating it really was the arts engagement that made a difference), she and her team found the following outcomes:
- Those who engaged in arts activities at least weekly appeared to age4% more slowly (a benefit comparable to exercising at least weekly versus doing no exercise).
- On the PhenoAge clock (see link below for more on that),weekly arts engagement was associated with being biologically about one year younger on average than rare engagement, while weekly exercise was linked to being just over half a year younger.
- These associations were most pronounced in people aged 40 and older, suggesting arts engagement becomes especially relevant in midlife and later years.
As for how it works, it’s not known for sure, but hypotheses so far include that arts engagement, especially if varied, combines cognitive, emotional, social, and sometimes physical stimulation, reducing stress, inflammation, and cardiovascular risk—all of which have big implications for health and healthy aging, of course.
You can read this paper in full, here: Does leisure activity matter for epigenetic ageing? Analyses of arts engagement and physical activity in the UK Household Longitudinal Study
Want to learn more?
You might like this book we reviewed a while back:
This Is Your Brain on Music – by Dr. Daniel Levitin
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
The Seven Sins Of Memory – by Dr. Daniel Schacter
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 we get older, we often become more forgetful—despite remembering many things clearly from decades past. Why?
Dr. Daniel Shacter takes us on a tour of the brain, and also through evolution, to show how memory is not just one thing, but many. And furthermore, it’s not just our vast memory that’s an evolutionary adaptation, but also, our capacity to forget.
He does also discusses disease that affect memory, including Alzheimer’s, and explores the biological aspects of memory too.
The “seven sins” of the title are seven ways our (undiseased, regular) memory “lets us down”, and why, and how that actually benefits us as individuals and as a species, and/but also how we can modify that if we so choose.
The book’s main strength is in how it separates—or bids us separate for ourselves—what is important to us and our lives and what is not. How and why memory and information processing are often at odds with each other (and what that means for us). And, on a practical note, how we can tip the scales for or against certain kinds of memory.
Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand human memory in all its glorious paradoxes, and put into place practical measures to make it work for you the way you want, this is a fine book for you.
Click here to check out The Seven Sins of Memory, and get managing yours!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
