Healthy Habits For Your Heart – by Monique Tello
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Did you guess we’d review this one today? Well, you’ve already had a taste of what Dr. Tello has to offer, but if you want to take your heart health seriously, this incredibly accessible guide is excellent.
Because Dr. Tello doesn’t assume prior knowledge, the first part of the book (the first three chapters) are given over to “heart and habit basics”—heart science, the effect your lifestyle can have on such, and how to change your habits.
The second part of the book is rather larger, and addresses changing foundational habits, nutrition habits, weight loss/maintenance, healthy activity habits, and specifically addressing heart-harmful habits (especially drinking, smoking, and the like).
She then follows up with a section of recipes, references, and other useful informational appendices.
The writing style throughout is super simple and clear, even when giving detailed clinical information. This isn’t a dusty old doctor who loves the sound of their own jargon, this is good heart health rendered as easy and accessible as possible to all.
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CBD Against Diabetes!
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝CBD for diabetes! I’ve taken CBD for body pain. Did no good. Didn’t pay attention as to diabetes. I’m type 1 for 62 years. Any ideas?❞
Thanks for asking! First up, for reference, here’s our previous main feature on the topic of CBD:
CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say?
There, we touched on CBD’s effects re diabetes:
in mice / in vitro / in humans
In summary, according to the above studies, it…
- lowered incidence of diabetes in non-obese diabetic mice. By this they mean that pancreatic function improved (reduced insulitis and reduced inflammatory Th1-associated cytokine production). Obviously this has strong implications for Type 1 Diabetes in humans—but so far, just that, implications (because you are not a mouse).
- attenuated high glucose-induced endothelial cell inflammatory response and barrier disruption. Again, this is promising, but it was an in vitro study in very controlled lab conditions, and sometimes “what happens in the Petri dish, stays in the Petri dish”—in order words, these results may or may not translate to actual living humans.
- Improved insulin response ← is the main take-away that we got from reading through their numerical results, since there was no convenient conclusion given. Superficially, this may be of more interest to those with type 2 diabetes, but then again, if you have T1D and then acquire insulin resistance on top of that, you stand a good chance of dying on account of your exogenous insulin no longer working. In the case of T2D, “the pancreas will provide” (more or less), T1D, not so much.
So, what else is there out there?
The American Diabetes Association does not give a glowing review:
❝There’s a lot of hype surrounding CBD oil and diabetes. There is no noticeable effect on blood glucose (blood sugar) or insulin levels in people with type 2 diabetes. Researchers continue to study the effects of CBD on diabetes in animal studies. ❞
~ American Diabetes Association
Source: ADA | CBD & Diabetes
Of course, that’s type 2, but most research out there is for type 2, or else have been in vitro or rodent studies (and not many of those, at that).
Here’s a relatively more recent study that echoes the results of the previous mouse study we mentioned; it found:
❝CBD-treated non-obese diabetic mice developed T1D later and showed significantly reduced leukocyte activation and increased FCD in the pancreatic microcirculation.
Conclusions: Experimental CBD treatment reduced markers of inflammation in the microcirculation of the pancreas studied by intravital microscopy. ❞
~ Dr. Christian Lehmann et al.
Read more: Experimental cannabidiol treatment reduces early pancreatic inflammation in type 1 diabetes
…and here’s a 2020 study (so, more recent again) that was this time rats, and/but still more promising, insofar as it was with rats that had full-blown T1D already:
Read in full: Two-weeks treatment with cannabidiol improves biophysical and behavioral deficits associated with experimental type-1 diabetes
Finally, a paper in July 2023 (so, since our previous article about CBD), looked at the benefits of CBD against diabetes-related complications (so, applicable to most people with any kind of diabetes), and concluded:
❝CBDis of great value in the treatment of diabetes and its complications. CBD can improve pancreatic islet function, reduce pancreatic inflammation and improve insulin resistance. For diabetic complications, CBD not only has a preventive effect but also has a therapeutic value for existing diabetic complications and improves the function of target organs❞
…before continuing:
❝However, the safety and effectiveness of CBD are still needed to prove. It should be acknowledged that the clinical application of CBD in the treatment of diabetes and its complications has a long way to go.
The dissecting of the pharmacology and therapeutic role of CBD in diabetes would guide the future development of CBD-based therapeutics for treating diabetes and diabetic complications❞
~ Ibid.
Now, the first part of that is standard ass-covering, and the second part of that is standard “please fund more studies please”. Nevertheless, we must also not fail to take heed—little is guaranteed, especially when it comes to an area of research where the science is still very young.
In summary…
It seems well worth a try, and with ostensibly nothing to lose except the financial cost of the CBD.
If you do, you might want to keep careful track of a) your usual diabetes metrics (blood sugar levels before and after meals, insulin taken), and b) when you took CBD, what dose, etc, so you can do some citizen science here.
Lastly: please remember our standard disclaimer; we are not doctors, let alone your doctors, so please do check with your endocrinologist before undertaking any such changes!
Want to read more?
You might like our previous main feature:
How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes ← obviously this will not prevent or reverse Type 1 Diabetes, but avoiding insulin resistance is good in any case!
If you’re not diabetic and you’ve perhaps been confused throughout this article, then firstly thank you for your patience, and secondly you might like this quick primer:
The Sweet Truth About Diabetes: Debunking Diabetes Myths! ← this gives a simplified but fair overview of types 1 & 2
(for space, we didn’t cover the much less common types 3 & 4; perhaps another time we will)
Meanwhile, take care!
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Women’s Strength Training Anatomy – by Frédéric Delavier
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Fitness guides for women tend to differ from fitness guides for men, in the wrong ways:
“Do some squats and jumping jacks, and here’s a exercise for your abs; you too can look like our model here”
In those other books we are left wonder: where’s the underlying information? Where are the explanations that aren’t condescending? Where, dare we ask, is the understanding that a woman might ever lift something heavier than a baby?
Delavier, in contrast, delivers. With 130 pages of detailed anatomical diagrams for all kinds of exercises to genuinely craft your body the way you want it for you. Bigger here, smaller there, functional strength, you decide.
And rest assured: no, you won’t end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger unless you not only eat like him, but also have his genes (and possibly his, uh, “supplement” regime).
What you will get though, is a deep understanding of how to tailor your exercise routine to actually deliver the personalized and specific results that you want.
Pick Up Today’s Book on Amazon!
Not looking for a feminine figure? You may like the same author’s book for men:
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Sun, Sea, And Sudden Killers To Avoid
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Stay Safe From Heat Exhaustion & Heatstroke!
For most of us, summer is upon us now. Which can be lovely… and also bring new, different health risks. Today we’re going to talk about heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
What’s the difference?
Heat exhaustion is a milder form of heatstroke, but the former can turn into the latter very quickly if left untreated.
Symptoms of heat exhaustion include:
- Headache
- Nausea
- Cold sweats
- Light-headedness
Symptoms of heatstroke include the above and also:
- Red/flushed-looking skin
- High body temperature (104ºF / 40ºC)
- Disorientation/confusion
- Accelerated heart rate
Click here for a handy downloadable infographic you can keep on your phone
What should we do about it?
In the case of heatstroke, call 911 or the equivalent emergency number for the country where you are.
Hopefully we can avoid it getting that far, though:
Prevention first
Here are some top tips to avoid heat exhaustion and thus also avoid heatstroke. Many are common sense, but it’s easy to forget things—especially in the moment, on a hot sunny day!
- Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate
- (Non-sugary) iced teas, fruit infusions, that sort of thing are more hydrating than water alone
- Avoid alcohol
- If you really want to imbibe, rehydrate between each alcoholic drink
- Time your exercise with the heat in mind
- In other words, make any exercise session early or late in the day, not during the hottest period
- Use sunscreen
- This isn’t just for skin health (though it is important for that); it will also help keep you cooler, as it blocks the UV rays that literally cook your cells
- Keep your environment cool
- Shade is good, air conditioning / cooling fans can help.
- A wide-brimmed hat is portable shade just for you
- Wear loose, breathable clothing
- We write about health, not fashion, but: light breathable clothes that cover more of your body are generally better healthwise in this context, than minimal clothes that don’t, if you’re in the sun.
- Be aware of any medications you’re taking that will increase your sensitivity to heat.
- This includes medications that are dehydrating, and includes most anti-depressants, many anti-nausea medications, some anti-allergy medications, and more.
- Check your labels/leaflets, look up your meds online, or ask your pharmacist.
Treatment
If prevention fails, treatment is next. Again, in the case of heatstroke, it’s time for an ambulance.
If symptoms are “only” of heat exhaustion and are more mild, then:
- Move to a cooler location
- Rehydrate again
- Remove clothing that’s confining or too thick
- What does confining mean? Clothing that’s tight and may interfere with the body’s ability to lose heat.
- For example, you might want to lose your sports bra, but there is no need to lose a bikini, for instance.
- What does confining mean? Clothing that’s tight and may interfere with the body’s ability to lose heat.
- Use ice packs or towels soaked in cold water, applied to your body, especially wear circulation is easiest to affect, e.g. forehead, wrists, back of neck, under the arms, or groin.
- A cool bath or shower, or a dip in the pool may help cool you down, but only do this if there’s someone else around and you’re not too dizzy.
- This isn’t a good moment to go in the sea, no matter how refreshing it would be. You do not want to avoid heatstroke by drowning instead.
If full recovery doesn’t occur within a couple of hours, seek medical help.
Stay safe and have fun!
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The Inflammation Spectrum – by Dr. Will Cole
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Cole’s other book “Gut Feelings”, and now he’s back, this time to tackle inflammation.
The focus here is on understanding what things trigger inflammation in your body—personally yours, not someone else’s—by something close to the usual elimination process yes, but he offers a way of sliding into it gently instead of simply quitting all the things and gradually adding everything back in.
The next step he takes the reader through is eating not just to avoid triggering inflammation, but to actively combat it. From there, it should be possible for the reader to build an anti-inflammatory cookbook, that’s not only one’s own personal repertoire of cooking, but also specifically tailored to one’s own personal responses to different ingredients.
The style of this book is very pop-science, helpful, walking-the-reader-by-the-hand through the processes involved. Dr. Cole wants to make everything as easy as possible.
Bottom line: if your diet could use an anti-inflammatory revamp, this is a top-tier guidebook for doing just that.
Click here to check out The Inflammation Spectrum, find your food triggers and reset your system!
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Random Acts of Medicine – by Dr. Anupam Jena & Dr. Christopher Worsham
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We talked recently of small things that can change how productive your doctor’s appointment is, and this book is a more scientific version of that, and on a grander scale.
The author use what they call “natural experiments”, essentially observational studies, to determine what factors beyond the obvious affect health outcomes. With this approach, they address such questions as why kids with summer birthdays are more likely to get the flu, and why heart attack outcomes improve when there’s a cardiologists’ convention elsewhere. And many more such things that can seem like non-causal correlation, until one examines the causative factors, and controls (in the statistical analysis; remember this is still entirely observational, so no interventions are made) for other potential confounding factors.
They also look at what factors influence doctors’ decisions in ways they certainly shouldn’t, but they do, because doctors are as prone to biases as everyone else. And, for that matter, what factors influence patients’ decisions in ways they certainly shouldn’t—for the same reason. The authors acknowledge that they themselves are not immune, and you, dear reader, are not immune either.
Nevertheless, the practical value in this book comes from trying to at least be more aware of such things, the better to either leverage them, or at least ensure you don’t fall foul of them.
The style is conversational pop-science, making for quite light reading, albeit with many footnotes and a respectable bibliography.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand more about the machinations that decide who lives and who dies (especially when sometimes it will be you or a loved one who lives or dies), then this is a fascinating book that that delves deeply into that.
Click here to check out Random Acts Of Medicine, and be aware!
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Hospitals worldwide are short of saline. We can’t just switch to other IV fluids – here’s why
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Last week, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration added intravenous (IV) fluids to the growing list of medicines in short supply. The shortage is due to higher-than-expected demand and manufacturing issues.
Two particular IV fluids are affected: saline and compound sodium lactate (also called Hartmann’s solution). Both fluids are made with salts.
There are IV fluids that use other components, such as sugar, rather than salt. But instead of switching patients to those fluids, the government has chosen to approve salt-based solutions by other overseas brands.
So why do IV fluids contain different chemicals? And why can’t they just be interchanged when one runs low?
Pavel Kosolapov/Shutterstock We can’t just inject water into a vein
Drugs are always injected into veins in a water-based solution. But we can’t do this with pure water, we need to add other chemicals. That’s because of a scientific principle called osmosis.
Osmosis occurs when water moves rapidly in and out of the cells in the blood stream, in response to changes to the concentration of chemicals dissolved in the blood plasma. Think salts, sugars, nutrients, drugs and proteins.
Too high a concentration of chemicals and protein in your blood stream leads it to being in a “hypertonic” state, which causes your blood cells to shrink. Not enough chemicals and proteins in your blood stream causes your blood cells to expand. Just the right amount is called “isotonic”.
Mixing the drug with the right amount of chemicals, via an injection or infusion, ensures the concentration inside the syringe or IV bag remains close to isotonic.
Australia is currently short on two salt-based IV fluids. sirnength88/Shutterstock What are the different types of IV fluids?
There are a range of IV fluids available to administer drugs. The two most popular are:
- 0.9% saline, which is an isotonic solution of table salt. This is one of the IV fluids in short supply
- a 5% solution of the sugar glucose/dextrose. This fluid is not in short supply.
There are also IV fluids that combine both saline and glucose, and IV fluids that have other salts:
- Ringer’s solution is an IV fluid which has sodium, potassium and calcium salts
- Plasma-Lyte has different sodium salts, as well as magnesium
- Hartmann’s solution (compound sodium lactate) contains a range of different salts. It is generally used to treat a condition called metabolic acidosis, where patients have increased acid in their blood stream. This is in short supply.
What if you use the wrong solution?
Some drugs are only stable in specific IV fluids, for instance, only in salt-based IV fluids or only in glucose.
Putting a drug into the wrong IV fluid can potentially cause the drug to “crash out” of the solution, meaning patients won’t get the full dose.
Or it could cause the drug to decompose: not only will it not work, but it could also cause serious side effects.
An example of where a drug can be transformed into something toxic is the cancer chemotherapy drug cisplatin. When administered in saline it is safe, but administration in pure glucose can cause life-threatening damage to a patients’ kidneys.
What can hospitals use instead?
The IV fluids in short supply are saline and Hartmann’s solution. They are provided by three approved Australian suppliers: Baxter Healthcare, B.Braun and Fresenius Kabi.
The government’s solution to this is to approve multiple overseas-registered alternative saline brands, which they are allowed to do under current legislation without it going through the normal Australian quality checks and approval process. They will have received approval in their country of manufacture.
The government is taking this approach because it may not be effective or safe to formulate medicines that are meant to be in saline into different IV fluids. And we don’t have sufficient capacity to manufacture saline IV fluids here in Australia.
The Australian Society of Hospital Pharmacists provides guidance to other health staff about what drugs have to go with which IV fluids in their Australian Injectable Drugs Handbook. If there is a shortage of saline or Hartmann’s solution, and shipments of other overseas brands have not arrived, this guidance can be used to select another appropriate IV fluid.
Why don’t we make it locally?
The current shortage of IV fluids is just another example of the problems Australia faces when it is almost completely reliant on its critical medicines from overseas manufacturers.
Fortunately, we have workarounds to address the current shortage. But Australia is likely to face ongoing shortages, not only for IV fluids but for any medicines that we rely on overseas manufacturers to produce. Shortages like this put Australian lives at risk.
In the past both myself, and others, have called for the federal government to develop or back the development of medicines manufacturing in Australia. This could involve manufacturing off-patent medicines with an emphasis on those medicines most used in Australia.
Not only would this create stable, high technology jobs in Australia, it would also contribute to our economy and make us less susceptible to future global drug supply problems.
Nial Wheate, Professor and Director Academic Excellence, Macquarie University and Shoohb Alassadi, Casual academic, pharmaceutical sciences, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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