How Stress Affects Your Body
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Dr. Sharon Bergquist gives us a tour:
Stress, from the inside out
Stress is a natural physical and emotional response to challenges or being overwhelmed. It can be beneficial in short-term situations (e.g. escape from a tiger) but is harmful when prolonged or frequent (e.g. escape the rat-race).
Immediate physiological response: cortisol, adrenaline (epinephrine), and norepinephrine are released by the adrenal glands.
The effects this has (non-exhaustive list; we’re just citing what’s in the video here):
- Cortisol impairs blood vessel function, promoting atherosclerosis.
- Adrenaline increases heart rate and blood pressure, leading to hypertension.
- Stress disrupts the brain-gut connection, causing:
- Digestive issues like irritable bowel syndrome and heartburn.
- Changes in gut bacteria composition, potentially affecting overall health.
- Cortisol increases appetite and cravings for energy-dense “comfort foods”.
- This in turn promotes visceral fat storage, which raises the risk of heart disease and insulin resistance.
- Immune-specific effects:
- Stress hormones initially aid in healing and immune defense.
- Chronic stress weakens immune function (by over-working it constantly), increasing susceptibility to infections and slowing recovery.
- Other systemic effects:
- Chronic stress shortens telomeres, which protect chromosomes. Shortened telomeres accelerate cellular aging.
- Chronic stress can also cause acne, hair loss, sexual dysfunction, headaches, muscle tension, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty concentrating.
So, how to manage this? The video says that viewing stressful situations as controllable challenges, rather than insurmountable threats, leads to better short-term performance and long-term health.
Which would be wonderful, except that usually things are stressful precisely because they are not entirely within the field of our control, and the usual advice is to tend to what we can control, and accept what we can’t.
However… That paradigm still leaves out the very big set of “this might be somewhat within our control or it might not; we really don’t know yet; we can probably impact it but what if we don’t do enough, or take the wrong approach and do the wrong thing? And also we have 17 competing stressors, which ones should we prioritize tending to first, and…” and so on.
To that end, we suggest checking out the “Want to learn more?” link we drop below the video today, as it is about managing stress realistically, in a world that, if we’re honest about it, can sometimes be frankly unmanageable.
Meanwhile, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Heart Health vs Systemic Stress ← this is good in and of itself, and also links to other stress-related resources of ours
Take care!
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Stop Overthinking – by Nick Trenton
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This book is exactly what it says on the tin. We are given twenty-three techniques to relieve stress, stop negative spirals, declutter your mind, and focus on the present, in the calm pursuit of good mental health and productivity.
The techniques are things like the RAIN technique above, so if you liked that, you’ll love this. Being a book rather than a newsletter, it also takes the liberty of going into much more detail—hence the 200 pages for 23 techniques. Unlike many books, it’s not packed in fluff either. It’s that perfect combination of “to the point” and “very readable”.
If you’ve read this far into the review and you’re of two minds about whether or not this book could be useful to you, then you just might be overthinking it
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Kimchi Fried Rice
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Fried rice is not something that leaps to many people’s minds when one says “health food”. But it can be! Today’s recipe is great for many aspects of health, but especially the gut, because of its star ingredient, the kimchi—as well as the fiber in the rest of the dish, which is mostly a variety of vegetables, as well as the rice, which we are assuming you got wholegrain. An optional egg per person adds more healthy fats too!
You will need
- Avocado oil, for frying. We picked avocado oil for its healthy fats profile, neutral taste, and high smoke point (we’ll be working at very high temperatures today that might make olive oil or coconut oil smoke). We also recommend against seed oils (e.g. sunflower or canola) for health reasons.
- 1lb cooked and cooled rice—here’s our recipe for Tasty Versatile Rice if you don’t have leftovers you want to use
- 7oz kimchi, roughly chopped
- 4 spring onions, finely chopped
- 4oz white cabbage, finely shredded
- 3oz frozen peas, defrosted
- 1 bulb garlic, thinly sliced
- 1 carrot, grated
- ½ red pepper, finely diced
- 2 tbsp chili oil (or 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 1 red chili, very finely chopped) ← don’t worry about the smoke point of this; it’s going to be for drizzling
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- Optional: 1 egg per person
- Note: we didn’t forget to include salt; there’s simply enough already in the dish because of the kimchi and soy sauce.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Lightly oil a wok (or similar) and crank up the heat as high as your stove can muster. Add the garlic and spring onions; keep them moving. When they’re turning golden, add the cabbage, carrot, and red pepper. Add them one by one, giving the wok a chance to get back to temperature each time before adding the next ingredient.
2) When the vegetables are beginning to caramelize (if the temperature is good, this should only be a couple of minutes at most), add the rice, as well as the kimchi, peas, soy sauce, and black pepper. Toss everything ensure it’s all well-combined and evenly cooked. When it’s done (probably only another minute or two), take it off the heat.
3) Optional: if you’re adding eggs, fry them now. Serve a bowl of kimchi-fried rice per person, adding 1 fried egg on top of each.
4) Drizzle the chili oil as a colorful, tasty garnish that’s full of healthful polyphenols too.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- Tasty Polyphenols ← this is about how foods that are pungent, bitter, spicy, etc tend to have the highest polyphenol contents
- Eggs: All Things In Moderation?
Take care!
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You’re Not Forgetful: How To Remember Everything
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Elizabeth Filips, medical student busy learning a lot of information, explains how in today’s video:
Active processing
An important thing to keep in mind is that forgetting is an active process, not passive as once believed. It has its own neurotransmitters and pathways, and as such, to improve memory, it’s essential to understand and manage forgetting.
So, how does forgetting occur? Memories are stored with cues or tags, which help retrieve information. However, overloading cues with too much information can cause “transient forgetting”—that is to say, the information is still in there somewhere; you just don’t have the filing system required to retrieve the data. This is the kind of thing that you will try hard to remember at some point in the day when you need it, fail, and then wake up at 3am with an “Aha!” because your brain finally found what you were looking for. So, to avoid that, use unique and strong cues to help improve recall (mnemonics are good for this, as are conceptual anchors).
While memory does not appear to actually be finite, there is some practical truth in the “finite storage” model insofar as learning new information can overwrite previous knowledge, iff your brain mistakes it for an update rather than addition. So for that reason, it’s good to periodically go over old information—in psychology this is called rehearsal, which may conjure theatrical images, but it can be as simple as mentally repeating a phone number, a mnemonic, or visually remembering a route one used to take to go somewhere.
Self-perception affects memory performance. Negative beliefs about one’s memory can worsen performance (so don’t say “I have a bad memory”, even to yourself, and in contrast, find more positive affirmations to make about your memory), and mental health in general plays a significant role in memory. For example, if you have ever had an extended period of depression, then chances are good you have some huge gaps in your memory for that time in your life.
A lot of what we learned in school was wrong—especially what we learned about learning. Traditional (vertical) learning is harder to retain, whereas horizontal learning (connecting topics through shared characteristics) creates stronger, interconnected memories. In short, your memories should tell contextual stories, not be isolated points of data.
Embarking on a new course of study? Yes? (If not, then why not? Pick something!)
It may be difficult at first, but experts memorize things more quickly due to built-up intuition in their field. For example a chess master can glance at a chess board for about 5 seconds and memorize the position—but only if the position is one that could reasonably arise in a game; if the pieces are just placed at random, then their memorization ability plummets to that of the average person, because their expertise has been nullified.
What this means in practical terms: building a “skeleton” framework before learning can enhance memorization through logical connections. For this reason, if embarking on a serious course of study, getting a good initial overview when you start is critical, so that you have a context for the rest of what you learn to go into. For example, let’s say you want to learn a language; if you first quickly do a very basic bare-bones course, such as from Duolingo or similar, then even though you’ll have a very small vocabulary and a modest grasp of grammar and make many mistakes and have a lot of holes in your knowledge, you now have somewhere to “fit” every new word or idea you learn. Same goes for other fields of study; for example, a doctor can be told about a new drug and remember everything about it immediately, because they understand the systems it interacts with, understand how it does what it does, and can compare it mentally to similar drugs, and they thus have a “place” in that overall system for the drug information to reside. But for someone who knows nothing about medicine, it’s just a lot of big words with no meaning. So: framework first, details later.
For more on all this, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How To Boost Your Memory Immediately (Without Supplements)
Take care!
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Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight – by Dr. Neal Barnard
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 previously reviewed Dr. Barnard’s “The Power Foods Diet”, and this time his work is about weight loss.
This time there are more recipes (which take up most of the book, so this one could be reasonably described as a cookbook), but not until after nearly a hundred pages of concepts, principles, and tips.
The recipes themselves are again very respectable, even if some may be a little redundant (e.g. the double-page recipe for blueberry muffins is followed by a double-page recipe for banana and date muffins, instead of just saying “or substitute this”—things like that) and run the gamut from salad dressings to hearty main meals.
A strength of the book is that it’s about what you eat, not how much of it you eat, so if you love eating (which is a very healthy trait to have in general), then you’ll enjoy that aspect.
Bottom line: if you’d like to eat more and weigh less, then this is a top-tier book for you.
Click here to check out “Foods That Cause You To Lose Weight”, and enjoy eating!
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Lettuce vs Arugula – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing lettuce to arugula, we picked the arugula.
Why?
These two salad leaves that often fulfil quite similar culinary roles (base of a green salad) are actually of different families, and it shows…
In terms of macros, arugula is lower in carbs, and much higher in protein and fiber—to the point that the protein content in arugula is almost equal to the carb content, which for leaves, is not that common a thing to see.
When it comes to vitamins, things are more even: lettuce has more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B6, and K, while arugula has more of vitamins B5, B9, C, E, and choline. All in all, we can comfortably call it a tie on the vitamin front.
In the category of minerals, things are once again more decided: arugula has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. In contrast, lettuce boasts only more selenium. An easy win for arugula.
Both of these plants have plenty of health-giving phytochemicals, including flavonoids and carotenoids along with other less talked-about things, and while the profiles are quite different for each of them, they stack up about the same in terms of overall benefits in this category.
Taking the various categories into account, this of course adds up to an easy win for arugula, but do enjoy both, especially as lettuce brings benefits that arugula doesn’t in the two categories where they tied!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- How To Avoid Age-Related Macular Degeneration
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
- Spinach vs Kale – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Kiwi Fruit vs Pineapple – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing kiwi fruit to pineapple, we picked the kiwi.
Why?
In terms of macros, they’re mostly quite comparable, being fruits made of mostly water, and a similar carb count (slightly different proportions of sugar types, but nothing that throws out the end result, and the GI is low for both). Technically kiwi has twice the protein, but they are fruits and “twice the protein” means “0.5g difference per 100g”. Aside from that, and more meaningfully, kiwi also has twice the fiber.
When it comes to vitamins, kiwi has more of vitamins A, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pineapple has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, and B6. This would be a marginal (6:5) win for kiwi, but kiwi’s margins of difference are greater per vitamin, including 72x more vitamin E (with a cupful giving 29% of the RDA, vs a cupful of pineapple giving 0.4% of the RDA) and 57x more vitamin K (with a cupful giving a day’s RDA, vs a cupful of pineapple giving a little under 2% of the RDA). So, this is a fair win for kiwi.
In the category of minerals, things are clear: kiwi has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while pineapple has more manganese. An overwhelming win for kiwi.
Looking at their respective anti-inflammatory powers, pineapple has its special bromelain enzymes, which is a point in its favour, but when it comes to actual polyphenols, the two fruits are quite balanced, with kiwi’s flavonoids vs pineapple’s lignans.
Adding up the sections, it’s a clear win for kiwi—but pineapple is a very respectable fruit too (especially because of its bromelain content), so do enjoy both!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More
Take care!
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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