Cold Weather Health Risks

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Many Are Cold; Few Are Frozen

Many of those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are getting hit with a cold spell around now. How severe that may be depends on more precisely where we are, but it’s affecting a lot of people. So, with apologies to our readers in Australia, we’re going to do a special on that today.

Acute cold is, for most people, good for the health:

A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

Persistent cold, not so much. Let’s look at the risks, and what can be done about them…

Hypothermia

It kills. Don’t let it kill you or your loved ones.

And, this is really important: it doesn’t care whether you’re on a mountain or not.

In other words: a lot of people understand (correctly!) that hypothermia is a big risk to hikers, climbers, and the like. But if the heating goes out in your house and the temperature drops for long enough before the heating is fixed, you can get hypothermia there too just the same if you’re not careful.

How cold is too cold? It doesn’t even have to be sub-zero. According to the CDC, temperatures of 4℃ (40℉) can be low enough to cause hypothermia if other factors combine:

CDC | Prevent Hypothermia & Frostbite you can also see the list of symptoms to watch out for, there!

Skin health

Not generally an existential risk, but we may as well stay healthy as not!

Cold air often means dry air, so use a moisturizer with an oil base (if you don’t care for fancy beauty products, ordinary coconut oil is top-tier).

Bonus if you do it after a warming bath/shower!

Heart health

Cold has a vasconstricting effect; that is to say, it causes the body’s vasculature to shrink, increasing localized blood pressure. If it’s a cold shower as above, that can be very invigorating. If it’s a week of sub-zero temperatures, it can become a problem.

❝Shoveling a little snow off your sidewalk may not seem like hard work. However, […] combined with the fact that the exposure to cold air can constrict blood vessels throughout the body, you’re asking your heart to do a lot more work in conditions that are diminishing the heart’s ability to function at its best.❞

Source: Snow shoveling, cold temperatures combine for perfect storm of heart health hazards

If you have a heart condition, please do not shovel snow. Let someone else do it, or stay put.

And if you are normally able to exercise safely? Unless you’re sure your heart is in good order, exercising in the warmth, not the cold, seems to be the best bet.

See also: Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)can you remember which symptoms are for which sex? If not, now’s a good time to refresh that knowledge.

Immune health

We recently discussed how cold weather indirectly increases the risk of respiratory viral infection:

The Cold Truth About Respiratory Infections

So, now’s the time to be extra on-guard about that.

See also: Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

Balance

Icy weather increases the risk of falling. If you think “having a fall” is something that happens to other/older people, please remember that there’s a first time for everything. Some tips:

  • Walk across icy patches with small steps in a flat-footed fashion like a penguin.
    • It may not be glamorous, but neither is going A-over-T and breaking (or even just spraining) things.
  • Use a handrail if available, even if you don’t think you need to.

You can also check out our previous article about falling (avoiding falling, minimizing the damage of falling, etc):

Fall Special: Some Fall-Themed Advice

Take care!

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    This book defies expectations, offering a refreshing take on boldness that emphasizes data, learning from others, and staying ahead of disaster.

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  • Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

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    From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs

    We asked you for your (health-related) policy on sugar. The trends were as follows:

    • About half of all respondents voted for “I try to limit sugar intake, but struggle because it’s in everything”
    • About a quarter of all respondents voted for “Refined sugar is terrible; natural sugars (e.g. honey, agave) are fine”
    • About a quarter of all respondents voted for “Sugar is sugar and sugar is bad; I avoid it entirely”
    • One (1) respondent voted for “Sugar is an important source of energy, so I consume plenty”

    Writer’s note: I always forget to vote in these, but I’d have voted for “I try to limit sugar intake, but struggle because it’s in everything”.

    Sometimes I would like to make my own [whatever] to not have the sugar, but it takes so much more time, and often money too.

    So while I make most things from scratch (and typically spend about an hour cooking each day), sometimes store-bought is the regretfully practical timesaver/moneysaver (especially when it comes to condiments).

    So, where does the science stand?

    There has, of course, been a lot of research into the health impact of sugar.

    Unfortunately, a lot of it has been funded by sugar companies, which has not helped. Conversely, there are also studies funded by other institutions with other agendas to push, and some of them will seek to make sugar out to be worse than it is.

    So for today’s mythbusting overview, we’ve done our best to quality-control studies for not having financial conflicts of interest. And of course, the usual considerations of favoring high quality studies where possible Large sample sizes, good method, human subjects, that sort of thing.

    Sugar is sugar and sugar is bad: True or False?

    False and True, respectively.

    • Sucrose is sucrose, and is generally bad.
    • Fructose is fructose, and is worse.

    Both ultimately get converted into glycogen (if not used immediately for energy), but for fructose, this happens mostly* in the liver, which a) taxes it b) goes very unregulated by the pancreas, causing potentially dangerous blood sugar spikes.

    This has several interesting effects:

    • Because fructose doesn’t directly affect insulin levels, it doesn’t cause insulin insensitivity (yay)
    • Because fructose doesn’t directly affect insulin levels, this leaves hyperglycemia untreated (oh dear)
    • Because fructose is metabolized by the liver and converted to glycogen which is stored there, it’s one of the main contributors to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (at this point, we’re retracting our “yay”)

    Read more: Fructose and sugar: a major mediator of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

    *”Mostly” in the liver being about 80% in the liver. The remaining 20%ish is processed by the kidneys, where it contributes to kidney stones instead. So, still not fabulous.

    Fructose is very bad, so we shouldn’t eat too much fruit: True or False?

    False! Fruit is really not the bad guy here. Fruit is good for you!

    Fruit does contain fructose yes, but not actually that much in the grand scheme of things, and moreover, fruit contains (unless you have done something unnatural to it) plenty of fiber, which mitigates the impact of the fructose.

    • A medium-sized apple (one of the most sugary fruits there is) might contain around 11g of fructose
    • A tablespoon of high-fructose corn syrup can have about 27g of fructose (plus about 3g glucose)

    Read more about it: Effects of high-fructose (90%) corn syrup on plasma glucose, insulin, and C-peptide in non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and normal subjects

    However! The fiber content (in fruit) mitigates the impact of the fructose almost entirely anyway.

    And if you take fruits that are high in sugar and/but high in polyphenols, like berries, they now have a considerable net positive impact on glycemic health:

    You may be wondering: what was that about “unless you have done something unnatural to it”?

    That’s mostly about juicing. Juicing removes much (or all) of the fiber, and if you do that, you’re basically back to shooting fructose into your veins:

    Natural sugars like honey, agave, and maple syrup, are healthier than refined sugars: True or False?

    TrueSometimes, and sometimes marginally.

    This is partly because of the glycemic index and glycemic load. The glycemic index scores tail off thus:

    • table sugar = 65
    • maple syrup = 54
    • honey = 46
    • agave syrup = 15

    So, that’s a big difference there between agave syrup and maple syrup, for example… But it might not matter if you’re using a very small amount, which means it may have a high glycemic index but a low glycemic load.

    Note, incidentally, that table sugar, sucrose, is a disaccharide, and is 50% glucose and 50% fructose.

    The other more marginal health benefits come from that fact that natural sugars are usually found in foods high in other nutrients. Maple syrup is very high in manganese, for example, and also a fair source of other minerals.

    But… Because of its GI, you really don’t want to be relying on it for your nutrients.

    Wait, why is sugar bad again?

    We’ve been covering mostly the more “mythbusting” aspects of different forms of sugar, rather than the less controversial harms it does, but let’s give at least a cursory nod to the health risks of sugar overall:

    That last one, by the way, was a huge systematic review of 37 large longitudinal cohort studies. Results varied depending on what, specifically, was being examined (e.g. total sugar, fructose content, sugary beverages, etc), and gave up to 200% increased cancer risk in some studies on sugary beverages, but 95% increased risk is a respectable example figure to cite here, pertaining to added sugars in foods.

    And finally…

    The 56 Most Common Names for Sugar (Some Are Tricky)

    How many did you know?

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  • Coconut vs Avocado – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing coconut to avocado, we picked the avocado.

    Why?

    In terms of macros, avocado is lower in carbs and also in net carbscoconut’s a little higher in fiber, but not enough to make up for the difference in carbs nor, when it comes to glycemic index and insulin index, the impact of coconut’s much higher fat content on insulin responses too. On which note, while coconut’s fats are broadly considered healthy (its impressive saturated fat content is formed of medium-chain triglycerides which, in moderation, are heart-healthy), avocado’s fats are even healthier, being mostly monounsaturated fat with some polyunsaturated (and about 15x less saturated fat). All in all, a fair win for avocado on the macros front, but coconut isn’t bad in moderation.

    When it comes to vitamins, avocados are higher in vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline. Most of those differences are by very large margins. Coconuts are not higher in any vitamins. A huge, easy, “perfect score” win for avocados.

    In the category of minerals, however, it’s coconut’s turn to sweep with more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, zinc, and selenium—though the margins are mostly not nearly as impressive as avocado’s vitamin margins. Speaking of avocados, they do have more potassium than coconuts do, but the margin isn’t very large. A compelling win for coconut’s mineral content.

    Adding up the sections, we get to a very credible win for avocados, but coconuts are also very respectable. So, as ever, enjoy both (although we do recommend exercising moderation in the case of coconuts, mainly because of the saturated fat content), and if you’re choosing between them for some purpose, then avocado will generally be the best option.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

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  • What are compound exercises and why are they good for you?

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    So you’ve got yourself a gym membership or bought a set of home weights. Now what? With the sheer amount of confusing exercise advice out there, it can be hard to decide what to include in a weights routine.

    It can help to know there are broadly two types of movements in resistance training (lifting weights): compound exercises and isolation exercises.

    So what’s the difference? And what’s all this got to do with strength, speed and healthy ageing?

    What’s the difference?

    Compound exercises involve multiple joints and muscle groups working together.

    In a push up, for example, your shoulder and elbow joints are moving together. This targets the muscles in the chest, shoulder and triceps.

    When you do a squat, you’re using your thigh and butt muscles, your back, and even the muscles in your core.

    It can help to think about compound movements by grouping them by primary movement patterns.

    For example, some lower body compound exercises follow a “squat pattern”. Examples include bodyweight squats, weighted squats, lunges and split squats.

    A woman does a Bulgarian split squat.
    A Bulgarian split squat is a type of compound movement exercise. Evelin Montero/Shutterstock

    We also have “hinge patterns”, where you hinge from a point on your body (such as the hips). Examples include deadlifts, hip thrusts and kettle bell swings.

    Upper body compounded exercises can be grouped into “push patterns” (such as vertical barbell lifts) or “pull patterns” (such as weighted rows, chin ups or lat pull downs, which is where you use a pulley system machine to lift weights by pulling a bar downwards).

    In contrast, isolation exercises are movements that occur at a single joint.

    For instance, bicep curls only require movement at the elbow joint and work your bicep muscles. Tricep extensions and lateral raises are other examples of isolation exercises.

    A woman sets up to lift a heavy weight while her trainer observes.
    Many compound exercises mimic movements we do every day. Photo by Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

    Compound exercises can make daily life easier

    Many compound exercises mimic movements we do every day.

    Hinge patterns mimic picking something off the floor. A vertical press mimics putting a heavy box on a high shelf. A squat mimics standing up from the couch or getting on and off the toilet.

    That might sound ridiculous to a young, fit person (“why would I need to practise getting on and off a toilet?”).

    Unfortunately, we lose strength and muscle mass as we age. Men lose about 5% of their muscle mass per decade, while for women the figure is about 4% per decade.

    When this decline begins can vary widely. However, approximately 30% of an adult’s peak muscle mass is lost by the time they are 80.

    The good news is resistance training can counteract these age-related changes in muscle size and strength.

    So building strength through compound exercise movements may help make daily life feel a bit easier. In fact, our ability to perform compound movements are a good indicator how well we can function as we age.

    A woman gets a box down from a shelf.
    Want to be able to get stuff down from high shelves when you’re older? Practising compound exercises like a vertical press could help. Galina_Lya/Shutterstock

    What about strength and athletic ability?

    Compound exercises use multiple joints, so you can generally lift heavier weights than you could with isolation exercises. Lifting a heavier weight means you can build muscle strength more efficiently.

    One study divided a group of 36 people into two. Three times a week, one group performed isolation exercises, while the other group did compound exercises.

    After eight weeks, both groups had lost fat. But the compound exercises group saw much better results on measures of cardiovascular fitness, bench press strength, knee extension strength, and squat strength.

    If you play a sport, compound movements can also help boost athletic ability.

    Squat patterns require your hip, knee, and ankle to extend at the same time (also known as triple extension).

    Our bodies use this triple extension trick when we run, sprint, jump or change direction quickly. In fact, research has found squat strength is strongly linked to being able to sprint faster and jump higher.

    Isolation exercises are still good

    What if you’re unable to do compound movements, or you just don’t want to?

    Don’t worry, you’ll still build strength and muscle with isolation exercises.

    Isolation exercises are also typically easier to learn as there is no skill required. They are an easy and low risk way to add extra exercise at the end of the workout, where you might otherwise be too tired to do more compound exercises safely and with correct form.

    In fact, both isolation and compound exercises seem to be equally effective in helping us lose body fat and increase fat-free muscle mass when total intensity and volume of exercises are otherwise equal.

    Some people also do isolation exercises when they want to build up a particular muscle group for a certain sport or for a bodybuilding competition, for example.

    An older man does bicep curls in the gym
    Isolation exercises have their role to play. Photo by Kampus Production/Pexels

    I just want a time efficient workout

    Considering the above factors, you could consider prioritising compound exercises if you’re:

    • time poor
    • keen to lift heavier weights
    • looking for an efficient way to train many muscles in the one workout
    • interested in healthy ageing.

    That said, most well designed workout programs will include both compound and isolation movements.

    Correction: This article has been amended to reflect the fact a weighted row is a pull pattern, not a push pattern.

    Mandy Hagstrom, Senior Lecturer, Exercise Physiology. School of Health Sciences, UNSW Sydney and Anurag Pandit, PhD Candidate in Exercise Physiology, UNSW Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Related Posts

  • How To Improve Your Heart Rate Variability
  • Can We Side-Step Age-Related Alienation?

    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 The World Moves Without Us…

    We’ve written before about how reduced social engagement can strike people of all ages, and what can be done about it:

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    …but today we’re going to talk more about a specific aspect of it, namely, the alienation that can come with old age—and other life transitions too, but getting older is something that (unless accident or incident befall us first) all of us will definitely do.

    What’s the difference?

    Loneliness is a status, alienation is more of a process. It can be the alienation in the sense of an implicit “you don’t belong here” message from the world that’s geared around the average person and thus alienates those who are not that (a lack of accessibility to people with disabilities can be an important and very active example of this), and it can also be an alienation from what we’ve previously considered our “niche” in the world—the loss of purpose many people feel upon retirement fits this bill. It can even be a more generalized alienation from our younger selves; it’s easy to have a self-image that doesn’t match one’s current reality, for instance.

    Read more: Estranged by Time: Alienation in the Aging Process

    So, how to “un-alienate”?

    To “un-alienate”, that is to say, to integrate/reintegrate, can be hard. Some things may even be outright impossible, but most will not be!

    Consider how, for example, former athletes become coaches—or for that matter, how former party-goers might become party-hosts (even if the kind of “party” might change with time, give or take the pace at which we like to live our lives).

    What’s important is that we take what matters the most to us, and examine how we can realistically still engage with that thing.

    This is different from trying to hold on grimly to something that’s no longer our speed.

    Letting go of the only thing we’ve known will always be scary; sometimes it’s for the best, and sometimes what we really need is just more of a pivot, like the examples above. The crux lies in knowing which:

    • Is our relationship with the thing (whatever it may be) still working for us, or is it just bringing strife now?
    • If it’s not working for us, is it because of a specific aspect that could be side-stepped while keeping the rest?
    • If we’re going to drop that thing entirely (or be dropped by it, which, while cruel, also happens in life), then where are we going to land?

    This latter is one where foresight is a gift, because if we bury our heads in the sand we’re going to land wherever we’re dropped, whereas if we acknowledge the process, we can make a strategic move and land on our feet.

    Here’s a good pop-science article about this—it’s aimed at people around retirement age, but honestly the advice is relevant for people of all ages, and facing all manner of life transitions, e.g. career transitions (of which retirement is of course the career transition to end all career transitions), relationship transitions (including B/B/B/B: births, betrothals/break-ups, and bereavements) health transitions (usually: life-changing illnesses and/or disabilities—which again, happens to most of us if something doesn’t get us first), etc. So with all that in mind, this becomes more of a “how to reassess your life at those times when it needs reassessing”:

    How to Reassess Your Life in Retirement

    But that doesn’t mean that letting go is always necessary

    Sometimes, the opposite! Sometimes, the age-old advice to “lean in” really is all the situation calls for, which means:

    • Be ready to say “yes” to things, and if nobody’s asking, be ready to “hey, do you wanna…?” and take a “build it and they will come” approach. This includes with people of different ages, too! Intergenerational friendships can be very rewarding for all concerned, if done right. Communities that span age-ranges can be great for this—they might be about special interests (this writer has friends ranging through four generations from playing chess, for instance), they could be religious communities if we be religious, LGBT groups if that fits for us, even mutual support groups such as for specific disabilities or chronic illness if we have such—notice how the very things that might isolate us can also bring us together!
    • Be open-minded to new experiences; it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of “I’ve never done that” and mistake that self-assessment for an uncritical assumption of “I’m not the kind of person who does that”. Sometimes, you really won’t be! But at least think about it and entertain the possibility, before dismissing it out of hand. And, here’s a life tip: it can be really good to (within the realms of safety, and one’s personal moral principles, of course) take an approach of “try anything once”. Even if we’re almost certain we won’t like it, and even if we then turn out to indeed not like it, it can be a refreshing experience—and now we can say “Yep, tried that, not doing that again” from a position of informed knowledge. That’s the only way we get to look back on a richly lived life of broad experiences, after all, and it is never too late for such.
    • Be comfortable prioritizing quality over quantity. This goes for friends, it goes for activities, it goes for experiences. The topic of “what’s the best number of friends to have?” has been a matter of discussion since at least ancient Greek times (Plato and Aristotle examined this extensively), but whatever number we might arrive at, it’s clear that quality is the critical factor, and quantity after that is just a matter of optimizing.

    In short: make sure you’re investing—in your relationships, in your areas of interest, in your community (whatever that may mean for you personally), and most of all, and never forget this: in yourself.

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Practical Programming for Strength Training – by Mark Rippetoe & Andy Baker

    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.

    Strength training is an important part of overall health maintenance, but it can be hard to find a good guide to progressive strength improvement that isn’t a bodybuilding book.

    This one gives a ground-upwards approach, explaining small details to even quite basic things, before taking the reader through to more advanced progressions, and how to get the most strength-building out of each exercise over time.

    As such, this is a good book for anyone of any level from beginner to quite experienced, and you can hop in at any point since there are always catch-up summaries and/or reiterations of the previous concepts that we’re now building on from.

    The authors do also talk nutrition, hormones, and so forth, but most of it is about the exercises and the progressions thereof.

    There is a slightly patronizing chapter towards the end, about “special populations”, for example offering “novice and intermediate training for women”, but it doesn’t take away from the majority of the book, as the exercises don’t care about your gender. Muscles are muscles, and we all start from wherever we are. Yes, testosterone boosts muscle mass, but let’s face it, there are a lot of women in the world who are stronger than a lot of men.

    One thing to bear in mind is that a lot of this is barbell training, so you will need a barbell (or access to one at a gym). If purely bodyweight training is your preference, or perhaps some other form of weightlifting (e.g. kettlebells or such) then this isn’t the book for that.

    Bottom line: if strength training is your focus and you like barbells, then this is a great book to take you quite a way along that road.

    Click here to check out Practical Programming For Strength Training, and get stronger!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Top 10 Early Warning Signs Of Dementia

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    What’s a harmless momentary mind-blank, and what’s a potential warning sign of dementia? Dementia Careblazers, a dementia care organization, has input:

    The signs

    With the caveat that this is a list of potential warning signs, not a diagnostic tool, the 10 signs are:

    • Memory loss: e.g. forgetting important or well-learned information, such as one’s home address
    • Challenges in planning or solving problems: e.g. difficulty with tasks such as paying bills (for organizational rather than financial reasons), following recipes, or managing medications
    • Difficulty completing familiar tasks: e.g. trouble remembering rules of a familiar game, or directions to a familiar place
    • Confusion with place or time: e.g. forgetting where one is, or making mistakes with the date, season, or other time-related details. Note that anyone can be momentarily unsure of today’s date, but if someone thinks it’s 1995, probably something wrong is not quite right. Similarly, being wrong about who is the current national leader is often used as a test, too—assuming countries with enough political stability to not have five different national leaders in the past four years, including one who did not outlast a lettuce *side-eyeing the UK*
    • Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships: e.g. increased clumsiness, difficulty parking, or bumping into objects
    • New problems with speaking or writing: e.g. losing track in conversations, or struggling to find the right words
    • Misplacing things: e.g. losing items and being unable to retrace one’s steps to find them
    • Decreased or poor judgment: e.g. falling for scams, giving out too much information or money without investigating appropriately first
    • Withdrawal from social activities or hobbies: e.g. losing interest in activities one used to enjoy or avoiding social interactions
    • Changes in mood and personality: e.g. increased irritability, anxiety, or other noticeable changes in behavior and personality

    For more information on each of these, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Dementia: Spot The Signs (Because None Of Us Are Immune)

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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