Dealing with Thirst!

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Busting The Myth of “Eight Glasses Of Water A Day”

Everyone knows we must drink 8 glasses of water a day, or else we’re going to get a failing grade at being a healthy human—like not flossing, or not using adequate sunscreen.

But… Do we? And does tea count? How about (we dare but whisper it) coffee? And soda drinks are mostly water, right? But aren’t some drinks dehydrating? Are special electrolyte drinks really better? There are so many things to consider, so many differing advices, and it’s easy to give up, or just choose what to believe in as a leap of faith.

A quick brain-teaser for you first, though:

If coffee and soda don’t count because they’re dehydrating, then what if you were to take:

– A concentrated tiny cup of espresso, and then a glass of water, would the glass of water count?

Or (we don’t relish the thought) what if you took a spoonful of soda syrup, and then a glass of water, would the glass of water count?

If your answer was “yes, it’s a glass of water”, then why would it not count if it were taken all at once (e.g. as an Americano coffee, or a regular soda)?

If your answer was “yes, but that water might only offset the dehydration caused by the coffee/syrup, so I might only be breaking even”, then you were thinking about this the right way:

How much water you need depends on many factors that can be affected by what else you are consuming and what else you are doing. Science loves averages, so eight glasses a day may be great if you are of average health, and average body size, in a temperate climate, doing moderate exercise, and so on and so on.

If you’re not the most average person of all time? You may need to take into account a lot of factors, ranging from what you ate for dinner to how much you perspired during your morning exercises. As you (probably) don’t live in laboratory conditions, this can become an impossible task—and if you missed (or guessed incorrectly) even one factor, the whole calculation will be thrown off. But is there any other way to know?

What of the infamous pee test? Drink enough to make your urine as clear as possible, and if it’s dark, you’re dehydrated, common wisdom says.

In reality, however, that tells you not what’s in your body, but rather, what got ejected from your body. If your urine is dark, it might mean you had too little water, but it also could just mean you had the right amount of water but too much sodium, for instance. A study of this was done on athletes, and found no correlation between urine color and actual bodily hydration when measured directly via a blood test.

So, if we can’t just have an app tell us “drink this many glasses of water”, and we can’t trust urine color, what can we do?

What we can do is trust that our body comes with (for free!) a wonderful homeostatic system and it will try to correct any imbalances. If you are thirsty, you’re dehydrated. Drink something with plenty of water in, if not plain water.

But what about special electrolyte drinks? If you need salts, you will crave them. Craving a salty snack? Go for it! Or if you prefer not to snack, do a salt lick test (just put a little salt on your finger, and taste it; if it tastes good, wait a minute or two, and then have a little more, and repeat until it doesn’t).

Bonus Tip:

  1. Make sure you always have a source of hydration (that you enjoy!) to hand. Maybe it’s chilled water, maybe it’s a pot of tea, maybe it’s a sports drink, it doesn’t matter too much. Even coffee is actually fine, by the way (but don’t overdo it).
  2. Make a personal rule: “I will always make time for hydration”. That means, if you’re thirsty, have something with water in it now. Not when you’ve finished what you’re doing (unless you really can’t stop, because you are a racecar driver mid-race, or a surgeon mid-operation, or something), but now. Do not postpone it until after you’ve done some other thing first; you will forget and it will keep getting postponed. Always make time for water.

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  • Rewire Your OCD Brain – by Dr. Catherine Pittman & Dr. William Youngs

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    OCD is just as misrepresented in popular media as many other disorders, and in this case, it’s typically not “being a neat freak” or needing to alphabetize things, so much as having uncontrollable obsessive intrusive thoughts, and often in response to those, unwanted compulsions. This can come from unchecked spiralling anxiety, and/or PTSD, for example.

    What Drs. Pittman & Young offer is an applicable set of solutions, to literally rewire the brain (insofar as synapses can be considered neural wires). Leveraging neuroplasticity to work with us rather than against us, the authors talk us through picking apart the crossed wires, and putting them back in more helpful ways.

    This is not, by the way, a book of CBT, though it does touch on that too.

    Mostly, the book explains—clearly and simply and sometimes with illustrationswhat is going wrong for us neurologically, and how to neurologically change that.

    Bottom line: whether you have OCD or suffer from anxiety or just need help dealing with obsessive thoughts, this book can help a lot in, as the title suggests, rewiring that.

    Click here to check out Rewire Your OCD Brain, and banish obsessive thoughts!

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  • Eat to Beat Disease – by Dr. William Li

    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.

    Dr. William Li asks the important question: is your diet feeding disease, or defeating it?

    Because everything we put in our bodies makes our health just a little better—or just a little worse. Ok, sometimes a lot worse.

    But for most people, when it comes to diet, it’s a death of a thousand cuts of unhealthy food. And that’s what he looks to fix with this book.

    The good news: Dr. Li (while not advocating for unhealthy eating, of course), focuses less on what to restrict, and more on what to include. This book covers hundreds of such healthy foods, and ideas (practical, useful ones!) on incorporating them daily, including dozens of recipes.

    He mainly looks at five ways our food can help us with…

    1. Angiogenesis (blood vessel replacement)
    2. Regeneration (of various bodily organs and systems)
    3. Microbiome health (and all of its knock-on effects)
    4. DNA protection (and thus slower cellular aging)
    5. Immunity (defending the body while also reducing autoimmune problems)

    The style is simple and explanatory; Dr. Li is a great educator. Reading this isn’t a difficult read, but you’ll come out of it feeling like you just did a short course in health science.

    Bottom line: if you’d like an easy way to improve your health in an ongoing and sustainable way, then this book can help you do just that.

    Click here to check out Eat To Beat Disease, and eat to beat disease!

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  • Tasty Tabbouleh with Tahini

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    Tabbouleh is a salad, but it’s not “just a salad”. It’s a special kind of salad that’s as exciting for the tastebuds as it is healthy for the body and brain. Its core ingredients have been traditional for about a dozen generations, and seasonings are always a personal matter (not to mention that Lebanese tabbouleh-makers centuries ago might not have used miso and nooch, as we will today), but the overall feel of the Gestalt of tabbouleh seasonings remains the same, and this recipe is true to that.

    You will need

    For the tabbouleh:

    • 1 cup bulgur wheat
    • 1 cup plum tomatoes, chopped
    • 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped (add the peel to a jug of water and put it in the fridge; this will be refreshing cucumber water later!)
    • 1 cup chickpeas, cooked without salt
    • 1/2 cup parsley, chopped
    • 1/2 cup mint, chopped
    • 2 spring onions, finely chopped
    • 2oz fresh lemon juice
    • 1 tsp white miso paste
    • 1 tsp garlic powder
    • 1 tsp ground cumin
    • 1 tsp ground celery seeds
    • 1 tsp ground nigella seeds
    • 1 tsp ground black pepper
    • 1 tsp MSG, or 1/2 tsp low sodium salt (you can find it in supermarkets, the sodium chloride is cut with potassium chloride to make it have less sodium and more potassium)
    • 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (nooch), ground (it comes in flakes; you will have to grind it in a spice grinder or with a pestle and mortar)

    For the tahini sauce:

    • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
    • 3 tbsp tahini
    • 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
    • 1 tbsp white miso paste
    • 1 tsp ground cumin

    To serve:

    • A generous helping of leafy greens; we recommend collard greens, but whatever works for you is good; just remember that dark green is best. Consider cavolo nero, or even kale if that’s your thing, but to be honest this writer doesn’t love kale
    • 1 tsp coarsely ground nigella seeds
    • Balsamic vinegar, ideally aged balsamic vinegar (this is thicker and sweeter, but unlike most balsamic vinegar reductions, doesn’t have added sugar).

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Rinse the bulgur wheat and then soak it in warm water. There is no need to boil it; the warm water is enough to soften it and you don’t need to cook it (bulgur wheat has already been parboiled before it got to you).

    2) While you wait, take a small bowl and mix the rest of the ingredients from the tabbouleh section (so, the lemon juice, miso paste, and all those ground spices and MSG/salt and ground nutritional yeast); you’re making a dressing out of all the ingredients here.

    3) When the bulgur wheat is soft (expect it to take under 15 minutes), drain it and put it in a big bowl. Add the tomatoes, cucumber, chickpeas, parsley, mint, and spring onions. This now technically qualifies as tabbouleh already, but we’re not done.

    4) Add the dressing to the tabbouleh and mix thoroughly but gently (you don’t want to squash the tomatoes, cucumber, etc). Leave it be for at least 15 minutes while the flavors blend.

    5) Take the “For the tahini sauce” ingredients (all of them) and blend them with 4 oz water, until smooth. You’re going to want to drizzle this sauce, so if the consistency is too thick for drizzling, add a little more water and/or lemon juice (per your preference), 1 tbsp at a time.

    6) Roughly chop the leafy greens and put them in a bowl big enough for the tabbouleh to join them there. The greens will serve as a bed for the tabbouleh itself.

    7) Drizzle the tahini over the tabbouleh, and drizzle a little of the aged balsamic vinegar too.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    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

    ❝Great newsletter. Am taking turmeric for inflammation of hips and feet. Works like magic. Would like to know how it works, and what tumeric is best combined with – also whether there any risks in longterm use.❞

    Glad you’re enjoying! As for turmeric, it sure is great, isn’t it? To answer your questions in a brief fashion:

    • How it works: it does a lot of things, but perhaps its most key feature is its autoxidative metabolites that mediate its anti-inflammatory effect. This, it slows or inhibits oxidative stress that would otherwise cause inflammation, increase cancer risk, and advance aging.
    • Best combined with: black pepper
    • Any risks in long-term use: there are no known risks in long-term use ← that’s just one study, but there are lots. Some studies were prompted by reported hepatotoxicity of curcumin supplements, but a) the reports themselves seem to be without evidence b) the reported hepatoxicity was in relation to contaminants in the supplements, not the curcumin itself c) clinical trials were unable to find any hepatotoxicity (or other) risks anyway. Here’s an example of such a study.

    You might also like our previous main feature: Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold

    ❝This push for longevity is appealing but watching my mother in her nineties is a life I’m not looking forward to. Healthy longevity, yes, but longevity for the sake of a longer life? No thank you.❞

    Yes, you’re quite right, that’s exactly the point! Assuming we live to die of age-related conditions (i.e., we do not suffer a fatal accident or incident in our younger years), those unfun last years are coming whether they come at 75 or 95. Or earlier or later, because that can absolutely happen too!

    For example: nearly 10% of Americans over 65 have difficulty with self-care

    As a rule, and we’ve covered some of the science of this previously, having at least 4 out of 5 of the “big 5” lifestyle factors (diet, exercise, sleep, low-or-zero alcohol, not smoking) not only extends life, but specifically extends the healthspan, i.e. the count of healthy life-years that precedes final age-related decline.

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  • Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? – by Dr. Julie Smith

    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.

    Superficially, this can be called a “self-help” book, but that undersells it rather. It’s a professionally-written (as in, by a professional psychologist) handbook full of resources. Its goal? Optimizing your mental health to help you stay resilient no matter what life throws your way.

    While the marketing of this book is heavily centered around Dr. Smith’s Internet Celebrity™ status, a lot of her motivation for writing it seems to be precisely so that she can delve deeper into the ideas that her social media “bites” don’t allow room for.

    Many authors of this genre pad their chapters with examples; there are no lengthy story-telling asides here, and her style doesn’t need them. She knows her field well, and knows well how to communicate the ideas that may benefit the reader.

    The main “meat” of the book? Tips, tricks, guides, resources, systems, flowcharts, mental frameworks, and “if all else fails, do this” guidance. The style of the book is clear and simple, with very readable content that she keeps free from jargon without “dumbing down” or patronizing the reader.

    All in all, a fine set of tools for anyone’s “getting through life” toolbox.

    Get Your Personal Copy Of “Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?” on Amazon Now!

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  • 5 Ways To Naturally Boost The “Ozempic Effect”

    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.

    Dr. Jason Fung is perhaps most well-known for his work in functional medicine for reversing diabetes, and he’s once again giving us sound advice about metabolic hormone-hacking with dietary tweaks:

    All about incretin

    As you may gather from the thumbnail, this video is about incretin, a hormone group (the most well-known of which is GLP-1, as in GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, etc) that slows down stomach emptying, which means a gentler blood sugar curve and feeling fuller for longer. It also acts on the hypothalmus, controlling appetite via the brain too (signalling fullness and reducing hunger).

    Dr. Fung recommends 5 ways to increase incretin levels:

    • Enjoy dietary fat: healthy kinds, please (e.g. nuts, seeds, eggs, etc—not fried foods), but this increases incretin levels more than carbs
    • Enjoy protein: again, prompts higher incretin levels of promotes satiety
    • Enjoy fiber: this is more about slowing digestion, but when it’s fermented in the gut into short-chain fatty acids, those too increase incretin secretion
    • Enjoy bitter foods: these don’t actually affect incretin levels, but they can bind to incretin receptors, making the body “believe” that you got more incretin (think of it like a skeleton key that fits the lock that was designed to be opened by a different key)
    • Enjoy turmeric: for its curcumin content, which increases GLP-1 levels specifically

    For more information on each of these, here’s Dr. Fung himself:

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

    Want to learn more?

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    Take care!

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