Heat, air quality, insurance costs: how climate change is affecting our homes – and our health
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This year, ten days of extreme heat in Europe killed roughly 2,300 people, severe flooding on the New South Wales coast left more than 48,000 stranded, and wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed at least 16,000 homes and other buildings.
Events such as these signal what climate scientists have long warned: climate-related extremes are becoming more frequent and intense.
Poor housing can leave us more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. So in today’s warming world, it’s increasingly important our homes and our housing system are climate resilient. This means they must protect us from heatwaves, floods and bushfires, and keep out air pollutants. And the housing system must function to provide affordable and secure housing.
Location is important too. Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, released this week, estimates 8.7% of residential buildings are in very high-risk areas (prone to hazards). This proportion is projected to increase to 13.5% by 2090 in a scenario with a high global warming level.
Housing and health are inextricably linked. In a new paper published in the Lancet Public Health, my colleagues and I identify several ways climate change affects our homes, and in turn, our health.
On a basic level, housing shields us from the elements. But when we look at the bigger picture, resilient housing and housing systems have a key role to play in helping us face the challenges of climate change.
How does climate change affect our homes and our health?
Climate change can lead to deterioration in the indoor conditions in our homes.
For example, extreme temperatures can compromise air quality by making building materials more likely to degrade and generate pollutants. Particulate matter and other hazardous air pollutants from bushfire smoke can infiltrate indoor environments. Both of these processes can contribute to poor indoor air quality. This is not to mention that extreme heat outside can lead to unbearable temperatures indoors.
Meanwhile, floods, storms and cyclones can cause structural and water damage to homes. This can expose occupants to toxins, for example from contaminated water, and increase the risk of allergic reactions, respiratory problems, and infectious diseases (such as water-borne and mosquito-borne diseases).
Climate change and housing security
The risks associated with climate change can also influence housing security and affordability.
Both housing insecurity and unaffordability are significant predictors of poor mental health and wellbeing, and both are already significant problems independent of climate change.
But a changing climate exacerbates these problems. Equally, the housing crisis leaves us more vulnerable to climate change.
Climate-related disasters put a strain on housing costs and general cost-of-living pressures. Residents may need to pay for maintenance and repairs alongside their mortgages and rental payments. Meanwhile, increasing extreme weather events push insurance premiums higher. All this puts pressure on housing affordability.
Extreme temperatures also increase the risk of energy poverty. Not being able to adequately heat or cool a home can negatively affect both physical and mental health for its occupants.
What’s more, climate-related disasters can drive forced relocation, with flow-on effects to health and wellbeing through disruption to family life, loss of income, gender-based violence, social disconnection, and reduced access to services.
Notably, the effects of climate change reduce the supply of affordable housing, especially affordable rentals, which are more likely to be damaged or lost from hazards, for example due to lower structural quality. Lower-income renters as a result find it harder to compete for the remaining stock.
There are also other examples showing the effects of climate change on housing are inequitable, with the consequences flowing disproportionately to less advantaged groups.
When areas with low climate risk become more desirable, this can drive up housing and other costs in an area. Climate “gentrification” can displace low-income households to higher risk and less protected areas. We’ve seen this happen in countries including the United States and Denmark.
What does climate-resilient housing look like?
Housing needs to protect people from the growing risks posed by climate change. In a physical sense, this means it must be robust enough to bear more intense weather conditions, be energy efficient, and have good thermal performance that allows for both ventilation and climate control.
To achieve this, climate-resilient housing should include features such as:
- well-constructed foundations, walls and roofs
- ventilation and insulation
- energy-efficient cooling and heating
- exterior shading and roof reflectivity
- building materials that are fire- and heat-resistant.
Building codes need to be cognisant of the changing climate, while existing housing may need to be upgraded.
We’ve seen some signs of progress. For example, updates to the National Construction Code in recent years have accounted for the increasing impact of climate change, by raising energy efficiency and thermal performance standards, among other measures.
There is also a need for stronger tenant protection policies. Rental housing is disproportionately of poor quality, yet it houses a large portion of the more vulnerable people in the population. Minimum standards for rental housing must be climate resilient.
But housing people well isn’t just a question of the physical construction of homes.
Climate-resilient housing should be affordable, secure and provide residents the chance to access opportunities for work, education and social connection that sustain wellbeing.
So much public discussion has focused on the need to meet housing supply targets, but we can’t forget that people need to be housed well to flourish.
This article is part of a series, Healthy Homes.
Ang Li, ARC DECRA and Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Is The 80:20 Rule Really A Good Idea?
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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 😎
❝What is your philsophy on eating 80% healthy and 20% not, is it better to try to eat 90% or 100% healthy?❞
Short answer: what works for you, works for you (if it works for you)!
More helpful answer: it depends on what each dietary approach ends up looking like for you. For example, there are important differences between:
- Someone who carefully measures their food to get 80% of calories from whole-foods plant-based nutrient-dense food, and the other 20% from anything they like, healthy or not
- Someone who eats what looks like a healthy diet for 80% of their diet, but falls for a lot of greenwashing and things that look healthier than they are, and then 20% things that look unhealthy (and probably are).
- Someone who considers that dessert is just one small part of the day’s eating, so that triple-chocolate ice cream caramel sundae with waffles and syrup and candy sprinkles must be fine (and then similar the next day, and the next, and…)
- Someone who works out their daily calories, and dutifully calculates “ok, I’m consuming 1600 kcal per day, so 1600/100 x20 = 320, so if I eat healthily the rest of the day, I can have 6 shots of vodka before bed daily
- Someone who applies the 80:20 rule in one of the above ways Monday to Friday, and then at the weekend, declares that 20% of the week and anything goes
As you may gather, some of those are definitely overly optimistic in their understanding of what will bring (and maintain) good health.
We’ll be clear: option 1 is not bad, 2 is next best, 3 and 4 are going wildly off-piste in similar but different ways and neither are doing their health* any favors, and 5 is using the 80:20 rule as an excuse to do whatever they want.
*The main problems with 3 and 4 are the damage to the gut microbiome, the damage to the liver (and associated metabolic problems, which will ultimately hit the heart and pancreas, amongst other organs), and the increased risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Depending on alcohol tolerance, there is also an increased risk of harm by accident/incident in the alcohol version.
Let us assume that you, dear reader, are not doing 3 or 4.
What about 5?
The thing with 5 is… If you want to eat that way, you don’t need an excuse. You don’t have to justify it to anyone, including yourself. Just, it might be better to make your peace with the fact that you have simply decided that eating healthily isn’t important to you. And that’s your choice!
Practical example: there are many people who, for one reason or another, have good cause to believe they will die soon regardless of what they eat. It could be because of a terminal diagnosis, or very advanced age, or some other reason, but the relevant thing is: in such a position, there really is a limit to the worst that can happen from eating that triple-chocolate ice cream caramel sundae with waffles and syrup and candy sprinkles, even with a side-serving of 6 shots of vodka, if they so choose.
If you, dear reader, are health-conscious and hoping (and reasonably expecting) to not die soon, then that leaves us with 1 and 2.
2 will put you—guestimating here; we don’t have hard figures—easily into the top quartile of healthy people. That’s not bad at all. It could be better, and if you’re in that position, we’d say that the best thing you can do is exactly what you’re doing: gradually build your knowledge of what is actually healthy vs what just looks healthy, and gradually adjust your grocery-shopping habits accordingly.
1 has a very wide range, but if you get about it in a smart way, it can be super-healthy. We say “it has a wide range” because technically, 1 in its broadest interpretation could include 4 (since the 6 shots of vodka will indeed fit in that 20%). But most people, hopefully, don’t do that.
To go about it “in a smart way”: remember that the “whatever you want” doesn’t have to be unhealthy. It just means that if you’re going out for dinner, ordering a thin-crust pizza with mostly vegetable toppings isn’t going to derail your health plan. You can take a flute of champagne at that wedding, if you find yourself so inclined. And so forth.
You don’t have to “fill” that 20% with unhealthy things. It’s just there if you need to dip into it to avoid inconveniencing yourself.
The best tip
Redefine what “treat” means for you. For this writer, for example, a treat on my birthday means I buy the more expensive coffee if I want to. On my last birthday (let’s just say, it was a number ending in zero, and thus merited extra attention) my main (and only) course of my birthday dinner was shchi ← Russian cabbage soup; sounds terrible, looks worse, yet is my favorite comfort food.
Perhaps you don’t care for coffee and are alarmed at the prospect of eating cabbage soup on a special day.
But, what do you love? For an ex of mine, it was prawn cocktail salad with pomegranate. How about you?
The only limit is your imagination—it doesn’t have to be unhealthy to be good!
Here be science
There is some merit to avoiding slippery slopes by declaring an entire category of food/drink forbidden, so that you’re not tempted to have just a bit, and then more, and then more, and before you know it it’s your new habit, again.
But there’s also merit to allowing wiggle-room for sustainability, because otherwise it’s easy to give up when things are difficult/inconvenient/unpleasant.
Previously at 10almonds, we’ve looked at two fairly opposing schools of thought when it comes to managing what we eat, and the relevant science for each of them.
First we looked at:
What Flexible Dieting Really Means
…and the notion of doing things imperfectly for greater sustainability, and reducing the cognitive load of dieting by measuring only the things that are necessary.
And then in opposition to that,
What Are The “Bright Lines” Of Bright Line Eating?
…and the notion of doing things perfectly so as to not go astray, and reducing the cognitive load of dieting by having hard-and-fast rules that one does not second-guess or reconsider later when hungry.
Either way, intuitive eating can be a very strong method. It means listening to one’s body, and responding to hunger signals, whether those signals are saying “time to eat” or “time to stop”.
A common recommendation is to “check in” with one’s body several times per meal, reflecting on such questions as:
- Do I have hunger pangs? Would I seek food now if I weren’t already at the table?
- If I hadn’t made more food than I’ve already eaten so far, would that have been enough, or would I have to look for something else to eat?
- Am I craving any of the foods that are still before me? Which one(s)?
- How much “room” do I feel I still have, really? Am I still in the comfort zone, and/or am I about to pass into having overeaten?
- Am I eating for pleasure only at this point? (This is not inherently bad, by the way—it’s ok to have a little more just for pleasure! But it is good to note that this is the reason we’re eating, and take it as a cue to slow down and remember to eat mindfully, and enjoy every bite)
- Have I, in fact, passed the point of pleasure, and I’m just eating because it’s in front of me, or so as to “not be wasteful”?
See also: Interoception: Improving Our Awareness Of Body Cues
And for that matter: Mindful Eating: How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate
Finally, you can combine even seemingly opposing methods!
For example, maybe you want to go with the WHO recommendation that “the only safe amount of alcohol is zero”, and consume no alcohol ever, but are happy to be flexible about other things.
So, ultimately—after a detour through the methods, and now some links in this last section to the science of various approaches—we come back to our short answer up top:
❝What works for you, works for you (if it works for you)!❞
So, just make sure that it does, and do it mindfully and with well-informed intent!
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Shoulder Mobility Hack (Measurable Results In 60 Seconds)
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Mobility usually improves with time and consistency, but there’s a quick hack that can enhance shoulder mobility in about 60 seconds:
Nerve-Gliding
This one’s a very specific technique, so we’re going to break it down a bit more than we usually do when talking about exercises.
First, assess your baseline mobility:
- Record yourself from the side.
- Lift your arm straight up with your palm facing inward.
- Keep your ribs down* and avoid arching your back.
- Make a note of your range, and any sensations.
*if you’re reading this and thinking “where else would my ribs go?”, if you try it you’ll understand
Radial nerve glide (back of arm to thumb):
- Start with your arm down, shoulder depressed.
- Internally rotate your arm (palm facing back/side).
- Flex your wrist (like accepting something being passed to you stealthily from behind).
- Lift your arm out and tilt your head in the opposite direction.
- Perform the nerve glide itself by straightening your wrist and head, then return.
- Repeat 10 times.
Musculocutaneous nerve glide (front of arm):
- Make a fist and depress your shoulder.
- Rock your wrist forwards/backwards, then hold it tilted back.
- Take your arm behind your back, extending your shoulder.
- Tilt your head to the opposite side.
- Perform the nerve glide itself by straightening your wrist and head, then return.
- Repeat 10 times.
For more on all of this plus—of course—visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Take care!
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The Bates Method for Better Eyesight Without Glasses − by Dr. William Bates
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This is a very popular book and method, albeit not a very new one. It was first published in 1920; self-published by Dr. Bates, as the American Medical Association (AMA) considered it quackery.
Of course, our understanding of eyesight has improved a lot in the past 100 years, so, with the benefit of an extra century of ophthalmological research, who was on the right side of history?
As it turns out, all of Dr. Bates’ ideas have been firmly disproven, and eyes simply do not work the way he thought they do (for example, he believed that rather than adjusting the lens for focus, the muscles around the eye elongate the eyeball; this absolutely is not how focusing works, and while how much those muscles squeeze the eye does vary depending on some physiological factors, there are no known exercises that can change them).
Nevertheless, for the interested, his techniques include such things as:
- putting pressure on one’s eyes with one’s hands (which can increase glaucoma risk)
- visualization, rather than actual viewing, of an eye chart (this is ironic, because the book cover promises that an eye chart is included; it is not; perhaps it was hoped that we would visualize it more vividly and thus see it?)
- sunning, which is not only directly looking at the sun, but also using a burning glass to increase the focus of the sunlight onto one’s eye (please do not do this under any circumstances)
His primary thesis in this work, though, is that eyesight problems of all kinds (from short- and long-sightedness, to more serious things like cataracts and glaucoma) are caused by the tension produced by reading books, so relaxation exercises are his prescription for this.
The style is characteristic of its era and then some; bold claims are made with no evidence, there are no references, and the text is (ironically, given his opinions on tension being produced by reading books) quite dense. It certainly doesn’t lend itself well to skimming, for example, because something critical can easily be buried in a wall of text of what is, honestly, mostly waffle.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your eyesight and reduce your dependency on glasses, then we absolutely cannot recommend this book, and would direct you instead to Vision for Life, Revised Edition – by Dr. Meir Schneider, which is much more consistent with actual science.
Click here if you are, nonetheless, curious about Dr. Bates’ book and wish to check it out!
PS: Dr. Bates certainly was an interesting fellow; he disappeared mysteriously, but was found working as a medical assistant a few weeks later by his wife, whom he now claimed to not recognize. Then he disappeared again two days later (his wife never found him, this time, despite trying for many years), only to show up again, 13 years later, shortly after his wife’s death, whereupon he remarried (to his long-time personal assistant). None of this has anything to do with his fascinating opinions on eyesight, but it’s a story worth mentioning.
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The Easiest Way To Slow Brain Aging By Up To 20%
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…and other items from this week’s health science news:
Help others, to help your brain
We’ll get straight to it: spending about 2–4 hours a week helping people outside your household is associated with a roughly 15%–20% slower rate of age-related cognitive decline over time.
Notably, both formal volunteering and informal helping show comparable cognitive benefits, so it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it just has to be helping people.
What seems most important is not the amount of time itself so much as the consistency—moderate, sustained engagement delivers the strongest and most consistent benefits, while heavier time commitments are not required. This shows itself to be particularly true as time goes on, since benefits accumulate year after year when helping becomes a stable routine, whereas withdrawing from helping is linked to worse cognitive function.
You may be wondering about the science behind this, and it was quite a big study: the analysis followed 31,303 people aged 51 and older for up to two decades, and yes, the results still held after accounting for wealth, education, and physical and mental health, suggesting the association is not explained by these factors alone.
As for how this happens, the researchers hypothesize that helping supports brain health by reducing stress-related inflammation and strengthening social connections that provide cognitive and emotional support.
So, how about you? If your first thought wasn’t “Oh, like my [thing that you regularly do and have consistently done over time]”, then now’s a great time to get started!
Read in full: Helping others for a few hours a week may slow brain aging
Related: 9 Little Habits To Have A Better Day
Whooping cough on the rise again in the US
The news is not good on this one. Whooping cough cases rose sixfold in 2024, and remain high in 2025, with more than 26,600 US cases reported by December 2025, over 4x the total for all of 2023.
Some parts of the US are doing worse than others, with some states are seeing levels not recorded for decades, including Oregon exceeding its 1950 annual record and Kentucky reporting three infant deaths in 2025 after none since 2018.
Unfortunately, public awareness is not strong: 30% of US adults do not know that pertussis is the same as whooping cough, and 35% do not know that a preventive vaccine exists. On which note, the CDC recommends the DTaP vaccine for young children in a 5-dose series, and Tdap for preteens, adults, and pregnant women during weeks 27–36 of pregnancy.
Nor do most know what the symptoms are: while 77% recognize coughing fits as a symptom, fewer identify low-grade fever, vomiting after coughing, or a runny nose.
So, to set yourself ahead of the crowd…
Read in full: Whooping cough cases rise sharply across the United States
Related: Vaccine Mythbusting
Mitochondria and mental health
Researchers (Dr. Lydia Wu-Chung et al.) tested the hypothesis that psychological and social experiences—such as stress, isolation, and trauma—affect mental health by altering mitochondrial function in brain cells. the proposed mechanism is that mitochondria act as a bridge between psychosocial experiences and physiological brain changes, helping explain how stress “gets under the skin.”
What they found was that altered mitochondrial function is associated with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. That’s a lot!
This is not too surprising, though, as the brain’s high energy demand makes it especially sensitive to mitochondrial inefficiency, which can impair neurotransmission, plasticity, mood regulation, and memory.
The relationship appears to be bidirectional also, as chronic stress can reduce mitochondrial efficiency over time, helping explain fatigue, cognitive difficulties, and mood disturbances seen in long-term stress.
Based on this research, she says that improving mitochondrial health may be a good option for many people to increase energy availability, reduce inflammation, and improve brain signaling.
As for how to do that? Endurance and aerobic exercise show the strongest and most consistent evidence for enhancing mitochondrial number and enzyme activity, while mindfulness programs and psychotherapy have shown changes in mitochondrial activity or number, but evidence for these latter associations is mixed and not always correlated with symptom improvement. So, exercise seems the main way to do it, for best results.
And in terms of things to avoid: social isolation can worsen mitochondrial function by reinforcing low energy, anxiety, and withdrawal, making recovery cycles harder to break.
So, maybe do that exercising with others, if you can!
Read in full: Mitochondria may be missing link between mental health and brain function
Related: 7 Ways To Boost Mitochondrial Health To Fight Disease
Take care!
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Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan – by Dr. Mark Williams & Dr. Danny Penman
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The authors, with their PhDs in psychology and biochemistry, respectively, bring the science that you might expect (and some that you might not!) to this book about mindfulness meditation and mindfulness in everyday life.
The book’s realism comes not just from studies, though, but also from a realistic perspective on modern life, in which many of us have sufficient responsibilities to afford us only limited downtime, and we certainly cannot all take time off for a mountaintop retreat.
What we can do, however, is enjoy this eight-week program for finding peace in a frantic world, while still going about our necessary business in that frantic world on a daily basis.
The eight weeks go as follows:
- Waking up to the autopilot
- Keeping the body in mind
- The mouse in the maze
- Moving beyond the rumor mill
- Turning toward difficulties
- Trapped in the past or living in the present?
- When did you stop dancing?
- Your wild and precious life
…with meditations, as well as reframes and other tools, for each.
The style is very easy-reading, with neither scientific jargon nor spiritual arcana, just clear explanations, instructions, and guidance.
Bottom line: if you’re the sort of person who tries to take each day as it comes, but sometimes several days gang up on you at once, then this book can help get things into order.
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Are You Stuck Playing These Three Roles in Love?
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The psychology of Transactional Analysis holds that our interpersonal dynamics can be modelled in the following fashion:
The roles
- Child: vulnerable, trusting, weak, and support-seeking
- Parent: strong, dominant, responsible—but also often exhausted and critical
- Adult: balanced, thoughtful, creative, and kind
Ideally we’d be able to spend most of our time in “Adult” mode, and occasionally go into “Child” or “Parent” mode when required, e.g. child when circumstances have rendered us vulnerable and we need help; parent when we need to go “above and beyond” in the pursuit of looking after others. That’s all well and good and healthy.
However, in relationships, often it happens that partners polarize themselves and/or each other, with one shouldering all of the responsibility, and the other willfully losing their own agency.
The problem lies in that either role can be seductive—on the one hand, it’s nice to be admired and powerful and it’s a good feeling to look after one’s partner; on the other hand, it’s nice to have someone who will meet your every need. What love and trust!
Only, it becomes toxic when these roles stagnate, and each forgets how to step out of them. Each can become resentful of the other (for not pulling their weight, on one side, and for not being able to effortlessly solve all life problems unilaterally and provide endlessly in both time and substance, on the other), digging in to their own side and exacerbating the less healthy qualities.
As to the way out? It’s about self-exploration and mutual honesty—and mutual support:
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Further reading
While we haven’t (before today) written about TA per se, we have previously written about AT (Attachment Theory), and on this matter, the two can overlap, where certain attachment styles can result in recreating parent/child/adult dynamics:
How To Leverage Attachment Theory In Your Relationship ← this is about understanding and recognizing attachment styles, and then making sure that both you and your partner(s) are armed with the necessary knowledge and understanding to meet each other’s needs.
Take care!
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