Healthy Kids, Happy Kids – by Dr. Elisa Song

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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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  • Eat Move Sleep – by Tom Rath

    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 subtitle of this book, “how small choices lead to big changes“, is very much the idea that a lot of what we do here at 10almonds is about.

    And the title itself, “Eat Move Sleep”? Well, that’s 3/5 of The Usual Five Things™ that we promote here (the other two being: reduce or eliminate alcohol, and don’t smoke). So, naturally this book got our attention.

    One of the key ideas that Rath presents is that every action we take leads to a net gain or loss in health. The question then is: what are the biggest point-swingers? In other words, what are the places in our life where the smallest changes can make the biggest difference?

    Rath looks at what parts of diet make the biggest difference to our health, and the findings there alone probably make reading the book worthwhile.

    When it comes to movement, he actually flips this! For Rath, it’s less about how much exercise you get, and more about minimizing how long we spend not moving… And especially, minimizing how long we spend sitting. So, lots of little tweaks for that.

    In the category of sleep: a key idea is that quality is as important as quantity, and there’s an aspect of bringing together as a synergistic routine. To finish off a productive day with good rest, and power up ready for the next morning.

    In short: tying these items together—and focusing on the smallest choices that lead to the biggest changes—makes for quite a manifesto that we could describe as “Atomic Habits, for health specifically”.

    Click here to check out Eat Move Sleep on Amazon!

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  • From Painkillers To Hunger-Killers

    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.

    Here’s this week’s selection of health news discoveries, the science behind them, what they mean for you, and where you can go from there:

    Killing more than pain

    It’s well-known that overuse of opioids can lead to many problems, and here’s another one: messing with the endocrine system. This time, mostly well-evidenced in men—however, the researchers are keen to point out that absence of evidence is very much not evidence of absence, hence “the hidden effects” in the headline below. It’s not that the effects are hard to see—it’s that a lot of the research has yet to be done. For now, though, we know at the very least that there’s an association between opioid use and hyperprolactinemia in men. The same research also begins to shine a light on the effects of opioid use on the hypothalamic-pituitary system and bone health, too:

    Read in full: The hidden effects of opioid use on the endocrine system

    Related: The 7 Approaches To Pain Management

    Gut microbiome dysbiosis may lead to slipping disks

    These things sound quite unconnected, but the association is strong. The likely mechanism of action is that the gut dysbiosis influences systemic inflammation, and thus spinal health—because the gut-spine axis cannot really be disconnected (while you’re alive, at least). It’s especially likely if you’re over 50 and female:

    Read in full: Are back problems influenced by your gut?

    Related: Is Your Gut Leading You Into Osteoporosis?

    The Internet is really really great (for brains)

    It’s common to see many articles on the Internet telling us, paradoxically, that we should spend less time on the Internet. However… Remember when in the 90s, it was all about “the information superhighway”? It turns out, the fact that it’s more like “the information spaghetti junction” these days doesn’t change the fact that stimulation is good for our brains, and daily Internet use improves memory, because of the different way that we index and store information that came from a virtual source. While there are parts of your brain for “things at home” and “things at the local supermarket”, there are also parts for “things at 10almonds” and “things at Facebook” and so forth. You are, in effect, building a vast mental library as you surf:

    Read in full: Daily internet use supercharges your memory!

    Related: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health

    Fall back

    Around this time of year in many places in the Northern Hemisphere, the clocks go back an hour (it’s next weekend in the US and Canada, by the way, and this weekend in most of Europe). Many enjoy this as the potential for an extra hour’s sleep, but for night owls, it can be more of a nuisance than a benefit—throwing out what’s often an already difficult relationship with the clock, and presenting challenges both practical and physiological (different processing of melatonin, for instance). Here be science:

    Read in full: Why night owls struggle more when the clocks go back

    Related: Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment

    Can you outrun your hunger?

    It seems so, though benefits are strongest in women. We say “outrun”, though this study did use stationary cycling. To put it in few words, intense exercise (but not moderate exercise) significantly reduced acylated ghrelin (hunger hormone) levels, and subjective reports of hunger, especially in women:

    Read in full: Study finds intense exercise may suppress appetite in healthy humans

    Related: 3 Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic

    Take care!

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  • The Inflamed Mind – by Dr. Edward Bullmore

    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, let’s note that this book was published in 2018, so the “radical new” approach is more like “tried and tested and validated” now.

    Of course, inflammation in the brain is also linked to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative disorders, but that’s not the main topic here.

    Dr. Bullmore, a medical doctor, psychiatrist, and neuroscientist with half the alphabet after his name, knows his stuff. We don’t usually include author bio information here, but it’s also relevant that he has published more than 500 scientific papers and is one of the most highly cited scientists worldwide in neuroscience and psychiatry.

    What he explores in this book, with a lot of hard science made clear for the lay reader, is the mechanisms of action of depression treatments that aren’t just SSRIs, and why anti-inflammatory approaches can work for people with “treatment-resistant depression”.

    The book was also quite prescient in its various declarations of things he expects to happen in the field in the next five years, because they’ve happened now, five years later.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to understand how the mind and body affect each other in the cases of inflammation and depression, with a view to lessening either or both of those things, this is a book for you.

    Click here to check out The Inflamed Mind, and take good care of yours!

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  • Water-based Lubricant vs Silicon-based Lubricant – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing water-based lubricant to silicon-based lubricant, we picked the silicon-based.

    Why?

    First, some real talk about vaginas, because this is something not everyone knows, so let’s briefly cover this before moving onto the differences:

    Yes, vaginas are self-lubricating, but a) not always and b) not always sufficiently, especially as we get older. Much like with penile hardness (or lack thereof), there’s a lot of stigma associated with vaginal dryness, and there really needn’t be, because the simple reality is that we don’t live in the fictitious world of porn, and here in the real world, anatomy and physiology can be quite arbitrary at times.

    It is this writer’s firm opinion that everyone (or: everyone who is sexual, anyway) should have good quality lube at home—regardless of one’s gender, relationship status, or anything else.

    Ok, with that in mind, onwards:

    The water-based lube has nine ingredients: water, glycerin, cytopentasioxane, propylene glycol, xantham gum, phenoxyethanol, dimethiconol, triethanolamine, and ethylhexylglycerine.

    All of these ingredients are considered body-safe in the doses present, and/but most of them will be absorbed into the skin, especially via the relatively permeable membrane that is the inside of the vagina (or anus—while the microbiome is very different, tissue-wise these are very similar).

    While this is not meaningfully toxic, there’s a delicate balance going on in there, and this can upset that balance a little.

    Also, because the lube is absorbed into the skin, you’ll then need more, which means either a moment’s inconvenience to add more, or else the risk of chafing, which isn’t fun.

    The silicon lube has four ingredients: dimethicone, dimethiconol, cyclomethicone, and tocopheryl acetate.

    Note: “tocopheryl acetate” is vitamin E

    …which reminds us: just because something is hard to spell, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad for us.

    What are the other three ingredients, though? They are all silicon compounds, all inert, and all with molecules too big to be absorbed into our skin. Basically they all slide right off, which is entirely the point of lube, after all.

    It not being absorbed into our skin is good for our health; it’s also convenient as it means a tiny bit of lube goes a long way.

    Any downsides to silicon-based lube?

    There are two, and neither are health-related:

    • It can damage silicon toys if not cleaned quickly and thoroughly, the silicon of the lube may bond with the silicon of the toy after a while.
    • Because it doesn’t just disappear like water-based lube, you might want to put a towel down if you don’t want your bed to be slippy afterwards! The towel can then be put in the laundry as normal.

    Want to try it out? Here it is on Amazon

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  • 50 Ways To Rewire Your Anxious Brain – by Dr. Catherine Pittman & Dr. Maha Zayed-Hoffman

    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 book is divided into sections:

    1. Calming the amygdala
    2. Rewiring the amygdala
    3. Calming the cortex
    4. Resisting cortex traps

    …each with a dozen or so ways to do exactly what it says in the title: rewire your anxious brain.

    The authors take the stance that since our brain is changing all the time, we might as well choose the direction we prefer. They then set out to provide the tools for the lay reader to do that, and (in that fourth section we mentioned) how to avoid accidentally doing the opposite, no matter how tempting doing the opposite may be.

    For a book written by two PhD scientists where a large portion of it is about neuroscience, the style is very light pop science (just a few in-line citations every few pages, where they couldn’t resist the urge), and the focus is on being useful to the reader throughout. This all makes for reassuringly science-based but accessibly readable book.

    The fact that the main material comes in the form of 50 very short chapters also makes it a lot more readable for those for whom sitting down to read a lot at a time can be off-putting.

    Bottom line: if you experience anxiety and would like to experience it less, this book will guide you through how to get there.

    Click here to check out 50 Ways To Rewire Your Anxious Brain, and rewire your anxious brain!

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  • Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science

    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.

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

    Mitochondrial management

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

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

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

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

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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