How to Prevent Dementia – by Dr. Richard Restak

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We’ve written about this topic here, we know. But there’s a lot more we can do to be on guard against, and pre-emptively strengthen ourselves against, dementia.

The author, a neurologist, takes us on a detailed exploration of dementia in general, with a strong focus on Alzheimer’s in particular, as that accounts for more than half of all dementia cases.

But what if you can’t avoid it? It could be that with the wrong genes and some other factor(s) outside of your control, it will get you if something else doesn’t get you first.

Rather than scaremongering, Dr. Restak tackles this head-on too, and discusses how symptoms can be managed, to make the illness less anxiety-inducing, and look to maintain quality of life as much as possible.

The style of the book is… it reads a lot like an essay compilation. Good essays, then organized and arranged in a sensible order for reading, but distinct self-contained pieces. There are ten or eleven chapters (depending on how we count them), each divided into few or many sections. All this makes for:

  • A very “read a bit now and a bit later and a bit the next day” book, if you like
  • A feeling of a very quick pace, if you prefer to sit down and read it in one go

Either way, it’s a very informative read.

Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand the many-headed beast that is dementia, this book gives a far more comprehensive overview than we could here, and also explains the prophylactic interventions available.

Click here to check out How To Prevent Dementia, because prevention is a lot more fun than wishing for a cure!

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    Fitness guides for women often lack substance and explanations. Delavier’s book provides detailed anatomical diagrams and personalized results without the fear of looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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  • How Healers Heal – by Dr. Shilpi Pradhan

    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.

    First note: the listed author here is in fact the compiler, with the authors being a collection of no fewer than 33 board-certified lifestyle medicine physicians. So, we’re not getting just a single person’s opinions/bias here!

    But what is lifestyle medicine? This book holds the six pillars of lifestyle medicine to be:

    1. Nutrition
    2. Physical activity
    3. Stress management
    4. Restorative sleep
    5. Social connections
    6. Avoidance of risky substances

    …and those things are what we read about throughout the book, both in highly educational mini-lecture form, and sometimes highly personal storytelling.

    It’s not just a “do these things” book, though yes, there’s a large part of that. It also covers wide topics, from COVID to alopecia, burnout to grief, immune disorders to mysterious chest pains (and how such mysteries are unravelled, when taken seriously).

    One of the greatest strengths of this book is that it’s very much “medicine, as it should be”, so that the reader knows how to recognize the difference.

    Bottom line: this book doesn’t fit into a very neat category, but it’s a very worthwhile book to read, and one that could help inform a decision that changes the entire path of your life or that of a loved one.

    Click here to check out How Healers Heal, and learn to recognize the healthcare you deserve!

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  • Exercises for Aging-Ankles

    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.

    Can Ankles Deterioration be Stopped?

    As we all know (or have experienced!), Ankle mobility deteriorates with age.

    We’re here to argue that it’s not all doom and gloom!

    (In fact, we’ve written about keeping our feet, and associated body parts, healthy here).

    This video by “Livinleggings” (below) provides a great argument that yes, ankle deterioration can be stopped, or even reversed. It’s a must-watch for anyone from yoga enthusiasts to gym warriors who might be unknowingly crippling their ankle-health.

    How We Can Prioritise Our Ankles

    Poor ankle flexibility isn’t just an inconvenience – it’s a direct route to knee issues, hip hiccups, and back pain. More importantly, ankle strength is a core component of building overall mobility.

    With 12 muscles in the ankle, it can be overwhelming to work out which to strengthen – and how. But fear not, we can prioritise three of the twelve: the calf duo (gastrocnemius and soleus) and the shin’s main muscle, the tibialis anterior.

    The first step is to test yourself! A simple wall test reveals any hidden truths about your ankle flexibility. Go to the 1:55 point in the video to see how it’s done.

    If you can’t do it, you’ve got work to be done.

    If you read the book we recommended on great functional exercises for seniors, then you may already be familiar with some super ankle exercises.

    Otherwise, these four ankle exercises are a great starting point:

    How did you find that video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!

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  • Can You Step Backwards Without Your Foot Or Torso Turning Out?

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    Walking backwards is often overlooked, but research shows it can enhance forward walking, especially in stroke patients; it has other benefits for everyone else, too. The physiotherapists at Fitness4Life Physical Therapy explain:

    …and one step back

    How it works: walking backwards heightens proprioception and stimulates muscles, improving balance and posture. Additionally, our daily lives tend to involve forward-leaning postures, causing upper back bending, and walking backwards helps counterbalance this.

    Extra benefits: training to walk backwards can reduce the risk of falls, as stepping back is a common movement that is often untrained.

    Exercise: try doing backwards lunges, to assess your skill and balance while moving backward. If foot rotation or torso rotation occurs during the exercise, then there’s room for improvement. Correcting these movements is then simply a matter of practicing backward lunges without turning.

    10almonds tip: any exercise is only as good as your will to actually do it. For this reason, dancing is a great exercise in this case, as almost all forms of dance involve stepping backwards (in order to have steps without travelling somewhere, forwards steps are usually balanced with backwards ones)

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

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Fall Special ← About how to avoid falling, and how to avoid (and failing that, at least minimize) injury if you do fall. If you think this only happens to other/older people, remember, there’s a first time for everything, so it is better to be prepared in advance!

    Take care!

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  • 8 Signs Of Iodine Deficiency You Might Not Expect

    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.

    Health Coach Kait (BSc Nutrition & Exercise) is a certified health and nutrition coach, and today she’s here to talk about iodine—which is important for many of our body functions, from thyroid hormone production to metabolic regulation to heart rate management, as well as more superficial-but-important-too things like our skin and hair.

    Kait’s hitlist

    Here’s what she recommends we look out for:

    • Swollen neck: even a slightly swollen neck might indicate low iodine levels (this is because that’s where the thyroid glands are)
    • Hair loss: iodine is needed for healthy hair growth, so a deficiency can lead to hair loss / thinning hair
    • Dry and flaky skin: with iodine’s role in our homeostatic system not being covered, our skin can dry out as a result
    • Feeling cold all the time: because of iodine’s temperature-regulating activities
    • Slow heart rate: A metabolic slump due to iodine deficiency can slow down the heart rate, leading to fatigue and weakness (and worse, if it persists)
    • Brain fog: trouble focusing can be a symptom of the same metabolic slump
    • Fatigue: this is again more or less the same thing, but she said eight signs, so we’re giving you the eight!
    • Irregular period (if you normally have such, of course): because iodine affects reproductive hormones too, an imbalance can disrupt menstrual cycles.

    For more on each of these, as well as how to get more iodine in your diet, enjoy:

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

    Further reading

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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  • Body on Fire – by Dr. Monica Aggarwal and Dr. Jyothi Rao

    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.

    There are times when you do really need a doctor, not a dietician. But there are also times when a doctor will prescribe something for the symptom, leaving the underlying issue untouched. If only there were a way to have the best of both worlds!

    That’s where Drs. Rao and Aggarwal come in. They’re both medical doctors… with a keen interest in nutrition and healthy lifestyle changes to make us less sick such that we have less need to go to the doctor at all.

    Best of all, they understand—while some things are true for everyone—there’s not a one-size-fits all diet or exercise regime or even sleep setup.

    So instead, they take us hand-in-hand (chapter by chapter!) through the various parts of our life (including our diet) that might need tweaking. Each of these changes, if taken up, promise a net improvement that becomes synergistic with the other changes. There’s a degree of biofeedback involved, and listening to your body, to be sure of what’s really best for you, not what merely should be best for you on paper.

    The writing style is accessible while science-heavy. They don’t assume prior knowledge, and/but they sure deliver a lot. The book is more text than images, but there are plenty of medical diagrams, explanations, charts, and the like. You will feed like a medical student! And it’s very much worth studying.

    Bottom line: highly recommendable even if you don’t have inflammation issues, and worth its weight in gold if you do.

    Get your copy of Body on Fire from Amazon today!

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • What Happened to You? – by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey

    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 very title “What Happened To You?” starts with an assumption that the reader has suffered trauma. This is not just a sample bias of “a person who picks up a book about healing from trauma has probably suffered trauma”, but is also a statistically safe assumption. Around 60% of adults report having suffered some kind of serious trauma.

    The authors examine, as the subtitle suggests, these matters in three parts:

    1. Trauma
    2. Resilience
    3. Healing

    Trauma can take many forms; sometimes it is a very obvious dramatic traumatic event; sometimes less so. Sometimes it can be a mountain of small things that eroded our strength leaving us broken. But what then, of resilience?

    Resilience (in psychology, anyway) is not imperviousness; it is the ability to suffer and recover from things.

    Healing is the tail-end part of that. When we have undergone trauma, displayed whatever amount of resilience we could at the time, and now have outgrown our coping strategies and looking to genuinely heal.

    The authors present many personal stories and case studies to illustrate different kinds of trauma and resilience, and then go on to outline what we can do to grow from there.

    Bottom line: if you or a loved one has suffered trauma, this book may help a lot in understanding and processing that, and finding a way forwards from it.

    Click here to check out “What Happened To You?” and give yourself what you deserve.

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