Here’s To Getting Assuredly Good Health

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An unusual amount of excitement in the health news world this week, with health insurance in the spotlight:

Deny, Delay, Depose?

Insurance company UnitedHealthcare, which used AI with a 90% error rate to deny insurance claims (of which, disproportionately denying insurance claims of the elderly), has come under extra public scrutiny this week for its recent-years business practices:

❝Nearly 1 in 5 insured adults experienced claim denials during a 12-month period.

Those with job-based insurance or Affordable Care Act policies ran into this problem about twice as often as those covered by Medicare or Medicaid❞

…although, the company has dramatically increased its care denials for Medicare Advantage enrollees, doubling the rate of denials as it implemented its new, automated denials process.

Anesthesiologist Dr. Brain Schmutzler noted:

❝We have a bigger issue with the insurance companies in general, who, essentially, it’s their job to make money, not to actually pay for health care❞

And in those cases where healthcare is not denied, it is often dangerously delayed, as insurance companies can stall for time to decide whether they’re going to pay or not.

One useful take-away from all of this is that if your insurance claim is denied, consider fighting it, as often they can be overturned.

Specifically, it can be good to insist on knowing who (named persons) was involved in the denial process, and their qualifications. Once upon a time, this was mostly unqualified interns, which prompted insurance companies to reverse the denial rather than admit that; nowadays it’s mostly AI, which many companies can hope will shield them from culpability—either way, fighting for one’s rights can often be successful.

Read in full: Killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO prompts flurry of stories on social media over denied insurance claims

Related: With Medical Debt Burdening Millions, a Financial Regulator Steps In to Help

Rest Easy

Health insurer Elevance Health (formerly Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield), had last month announced plans to limit its coverage for anesthesia used in operations, whereby they would pay for only a certain amount of anesthetic, and if the procedure was still ongoing when that amount had been used, then well, you were on your own.

However, on Thursday afternoon and allegedly completely coincidentally in the wake of the Wednesday assassination of the CEO who oversaw the denial of so many health insurance claims, this decision to limit paying for anesthesia was reversed, retracted, and they are now doing their best to downplay what the proposal would have meant for anesthesiologists and patients:

Read in full: Insurance company halts plan to put time limits on coverage for anesthesia during surgery

Related: The Insider’s Guide To Making Hospital As Comfortable As Possible ← an anesthesiologist’s tips

Getting a good grip of your health

What’s the best indicator of good health when it comes to age-related health issues? It’s not BMI! Could it be blood pressure? It could, but the news presently is about grip strength.

While training to have an amazing grip (and neglecting all else) will not necessarily increase your general healthspan, having a weak or strong grip is strongly associated with, respectively, having weak or strong general health in later years.

This is because unless someone has been training very unnaturally, grip strength is a good general measure of overall muscle strength, which in turn is a good indicator of metabolic health, as well as bodily robustness.

Read in full: Handgrip strength is a reliable predictor for age-related disease and disability, finds study

Related: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

Take care!

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  • The Kitchen Prescription – by Saliha Mahmood Ahmed

    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.

    One of the biggest challenges facing anyone learning to cook more healthily, is keeping it tasty. What to cook when your biggest comfort foods all contain things you “should” avoid?

    Happily for us, Dr. Ahmed is here with a focus on comfort food that’s good for your gut health. It’s incidentally equally good for the heart and good against diabetes… but Dr. Ahmed is a gastroenterologist, so that’s where she’s coming from with these.

    There’s a wide range of 101 recipes here, including many tagged vegetarian, vegan, and/or gluten-free, as appropriate.

    While this is not a vegetarian cookbook, Dr. Ahmed does consider the key components of a good diet to be, in order of quantity that should be consumed:

    1. Fruits and vegetables
    2. Whole grains
    3. Legumes
    4. Pulses
    5. Nuts and seeds

    …and as such, the recipes are mostly plant-based.

    The recipes are from all around the world, and/but the ingredients are mostly things that are almost universal. In the event that something might be hard-to-get, she suggests an appropriate substitution.

    The recipes are straightforward and clear, as well as being beautifully illustrated.

    All in all, a fine addition to anyone’s kitchen!

    Get your copy of The Kitchen Prescription from Amazon today!

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  • Altered Traits – by Dr. Daniel Goleman & Dr. Richard Davidson

    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 know that meditation helps people to relax, but what more than that?This book explores the available science.

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    The style is very pop-science in presentation, easily comprehensible to all. Be aware though that this is an “if this, then that” book of science, not a how-to manual. If you want to learn to meditate, this isn’t the book for that.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to understand more about how different kinds of meditation affect the brain differently, this is the book for you.

    Click here to check out Altered Traits, and alter yours!

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  • Aging Solo – by Ellen Dawson

    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.

    Many of us will face the challenge of “aging solo”, if indeed we’re not already. The premise of this book is that while it may indeed be a challenge, it can be an exciting challenge rather than a scary one.

    Thus, Dawson bids us empower ourselves to tackle it head on, proactively.

    To that end, she offers her “EMPOWER” framework:

    • Embrace the challenge of living solo
    • Manage money mindfully while welcoming desires
    • Prioritize vitality and live a vibrant life
    • Own your identity; build resilience and confidence
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    • Energize yourself and discover new passions
    • Renew yourself and create a joyful environment

    Now, as listed, those may seem a little vague, but rest assured she goes into great detail in the book, with a whole chapter for each.

    For example, prioritizing vitality and energizing oneself can seem like a double-up, but the former chapter is about healthy living in the context of the solo life, while the latter chapter is more about avocation lifelong learning, overcoming fear of the unknown, and making sure to actually live this one precious life, not just go through the motions.

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  • The Toe-Tapping Tip For Better Balance

    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.

    Balance is critical for health especially in older age, since it’s amazing how much else can go dramatically and suddenly wrong after a fall. So, here’s an exercise to give great balance and stability:

    How to do it

    You will need:

    • Something to hold onto, such as a countertop
    • A target on the floor, such as a mark or a coin

    The steps:

    • Lift one leg up, bring your foot forward, and tap the object in front of you.
    • Then, bring that foot back to where it started.
    • Next, switch to the other leg and tap.
    • Alternate between your right and left legs, shifting back and forth.
    • Your goal is to do this for 10 repetitions on each leg without holding on.

    How it works:

    Whenever you tap, you have to lift one leg up and reach it out in front of you. Doing this requires you to stand on one leg while moving a weight (namely: your other leg), which is something many people, especially upon getting older, are hesitant to do. If you’re unable to stand on one leg, let alone move your center of gravity (per the counterbalance of the other leg) while doing so, you may end up shuffling and walking with your feet sliding across the ground—something you really want to avoid.

    For more on all of this plus a visual demonstration, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Fall Special ← this is about not falling, or, failing that, minimizing injury if you do

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Brain Power – by Michael Gelb & Kelly Howell

    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.

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    Bottom line: if you’re looking for a one-stop-shop “look after your brain as you age” guide, then this is a good one.

    Click here to check out Brain Power, and improve your mind as you age!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

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  • What Flexible Dieting Really Means

    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.

    When Flexibility Is The Dish Of The Day

    This is Alan Aragon. Notwithstanding not being a “Dr. Alan Aragon”, he’s a research scientist with dozens of peer-reviewed nutrition science papers to his name, as well as being a personal trainer and fitness educator. Most importantly, he’s an ardent champion of making people’s pursuit of health and fitness more evidence-based.

    We’ll be sharing some insights from a book of his that we haven’t reviewed yet, but we will link it at the bottom of today’s article in any case.

    What does he want us to know?

    First, get out of the 80s and into the 90s

    In the world of popular dieting, the 80s were all about calorie-counting and low-fat diets. They did not particularly help.

    In the 90s, it was discovered that not only was low-fat not the way to go, but also, regardless of the diet in question, rigid dieting leads to “disinhibition”, that is to say, there comes a point (usually not far into a diet) whereby one breaks the diet, at which point, the floodgates open and the dieter binges unhealthily.

    Aragon would like to bring our attention to a number of studies that found this in various ways over the course of the 90s measuring various different metrics including rigid vs flexible dieting’s impacts on BMI, weight gain, weight loss, lean muscle mass changes, binge-eating, anxiety, depression, and so forth), but we only have so much room here, so here’s a 1999 study that’s pretty much the culmination of those:

    Flexible vs. Rigid Dieting Strategies: Relationship with Adverse Behavioral Outcomes

    So in short: trying to be very puritan about any aspect of dieting will not only not work, it will backfire.

    Next, get out of the 90s into the 00s

    …which is not only fun if you read “00s” out loud as “naughties”, but also actually appropriate in this case, because it is indeed important to be comfortable being a little bit naughty:

    In 2000, Dr. Marika Tiggemann found that dichotomous perceptions of food (e.g. good/bad, clean/dirty, etc) were implicated as a dysfunctional cognitive style, and predicted not only eating disorders and mood disorders, but also adverse physical health outcomes:

    Dieting and Cognitive Style: The Role of Current and Past Dieting Behaviour and Cognitions

    This was rendered clearer, in terms of physical health outcomes, by Dr. Susan Byrne & Dr. Emma Dove, in 2009:

    ❝Weight loss was negatively associated with pre-treatment depression and frequency of treatment attendance, but not with dichotomous thinking. Females who regard their weight as unacceptably high and who think dichotomously may experience high levels of depression irrespective of their actual weight, while depression may be proportionate to the degree of obesity among those who do not think dichotomously❞

    Read more: Effect of dichotomous thinking on the association of depression with BMI and weight change among obese females

    Aragon’s advice based on all this: while yes, some foods are better than others, it’s more useful to see foods as being part of a spectrum, rather than being absolutist or “black and white” about it.

    Next: hit those perfect 10s… Imperfectly

    The next decade expanded on this research, as science is wont to do, and for this one, Aragon shines a spotlight on Dr. Alice Berg’s 2018 study with obese women averaging 69 years of age, in which…

    Flexible Eating Behavior Predicts Greater Weight Loss Following a Diet and Exercise Intervention in Older Women

    In other words (and in fact, to borrow Dr. Berg’s words from that paper),

    ❝encouraging a flexible approach to eating behavior and discouraging rigid adherence to a diet may lead to better intentional weight loss for overweight and obese older women❞

    You may be wondering: what did this add to the studies from the 90s?

    And the key here is: rather than being observational, this was interventional. In other words, rather than simply observing what happened to people who thought one way or another, this study took people who had a rigid, dichotomous approach to food, and gave them a 6-month behavioral intervention (in other words, support encouraging them to be more flexible and open in their approach to food), and found that this indeed improved matters for them.

    Which means, it’s not a matter of fate or predisposition, as it could have been back in the 90s, per “some people are just like that; who’s to say which factor causes which”. Instead, now we know that this is an approach that can be adopted, and it can be expected to work.

    Beyond weight loss

    Now, so far we’ve talked mostly about weight loss, and only touched on other health outcomes. This is because:

    • weight loss a very common goal for many
    • it’s easy to measure so there’s a lot of science for it

    Incidentally, if it’s a goal of yours, here’s what 10almonds had to say about that, along with two follow-up articles for other related goals:

    Spoiler: we agree with Aragon, and recommend a relaxed and flexible approach to all three of these things

    Aragon’s evidence-based approach to nutrition has found that this holds true for other aspects of healthy eating, too. For example…

    To count or not to count?

    It’s hard to do evidence-based anything without counting, and so Aragon talks a lot about this. Indeed, he does a lot of counting in scientific papers of his own, such as:

    How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle-building? Implications for daily protein distribution

    and

    The effect of protein timing on muscle strength and hypertrophy: a meta-analysis

    …as well as non-protein-related but diet-related topics such as:

    Does Timing Matter? A Narrative Review of Intermittent Fasting Variants and Their Effects on Bodyweight and Body Composition

    But! For the at-home health enthusiast, Aragon recommends that the answer to the question “to count or not to count?” is “both”:

    • Start off by indeed counting and tracking everything that is important to you (per whatever your current personal health intervention is, so it might be about calories, or grams of protein, or grams of carbs, or a certain fat balance, or something else entirely)
    • Switch to a more relaxed counting approach once you get used to the above. By now you probably know the macros for a lot of your common meals, snacks, etc, and can tally them in your head without worrying about weighing portions and knowing the exact figures.
    • Alternatively, count moderately standardized portions of relevant foods, such as “three servings of beans or legumes per day” or “no more than one portion of refined carbohydrates per day”
    • Eventually, let habit take the wheel. Assuming you have established good dietary habits, this will now do you just fine.

    This latter is the point whereby the advice (that Aragon also champions) of “allow yourself an unhealthy indulgence of 10–20% of your daily food”, as a budget of “discretionary calories”, eventually becomes redundant—because chances are, you’re no longer craving that donut, and at a certain point, eating foods far outside the range of healthiness you usually eat is not even something that you would feel inclined to do if offered.

    But until that kicks in, allow yourself that budget of whatever unhealthy thing you enjoy, and (this next part is important…) do enjoy it.

    Because it is no good whatsoever eating that cream-filled chocolate croissant and then feeling guilty about it; that’s the dichotomous thinking we had back in the 80s. Decide in advance you’re going to eat and enjoy it, then eat and enjoy it, then look back on it with a sense of “that was enjoyable” and move on.

    The flipside of this is that the importance of allowing oneself a “little treat” is that doing so actively helps ensure that the “little treat” remains “little”. Without giving oneself permission, then suddenly, “well, since I broke my diet, I might as well throw the whole thing out the window and try again on Monday”.

    On enjoying food fully, by the way:

    Mindful Eating: How To Get More Nutrition Out Of The Same Food

    Want to know more from Alan Aragon?

    Today we’ve been working heavily from this book of his; we haven’t reviewed it yet, but we do recommend checking it out:

    Flexible Dieting: A Science-Based, Reality-Tested Method for Achieving and Maintaining Your Optimal Physique, Performance & Health – by Alan Aragon

    Enjoy!

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    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

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