Indistractable – by Nir Eyal

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Have you ever felt that you could accomplish anything you wanted/needed, if only you didn’t get distracted?

This book lays out a series of psychological interventions for precisely that aim, and it goes a lot beyond the usual “download/delete these apps to help you stop checking social media every 47 seconds”.

Some you’ll have heard of before, some you won’t have, and if even one method works for you, it’ll have been well worth your while reading this book. This reviewer, for example, enjoyed the call to identity-based strength, e.g. adopting an “I am indistractable*” perspective going into tasks. This is akin to the strength of, for example, “I don’t drink” over “I am a recovering alcoholic”.

*the usual spelling of this, by the way, is “undistractable”, but we use the author’s version here for consistency. It’s a great marketing gimmick, as all searches for the word “indistractable” will bring up his book.

Nor is the book just about maximizing productivity to the detriment of everything else; this is not about having a 25 hours per day “grindset”. Rather, it even makes sure to cover such things as focusing on one’s loved ones, for instance.

Bottom line: if you’ve tried blocking out the distractions but still find you can’t focus, this book offers next-level solutions

Click here to check out Indistractible, and become indeed indistractable!

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  • Life Is in the Transitions – by Bruce Feiler
    Change is inevitable. Learn from others’ experiences and make better decisions in navigating life’s major “lifequakes”. Check out Life Is In The Transitions.

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  • Bird Flu Is Bad for Poultry and Dairy Cows. It’s Not a Dire Threat for Most of Us — Yet.

    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.

    Headlines are flying after the Department of Agriculture confirmed that the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected dairy cows around the country. Tests have detected the virus among cattle in nine states, mainly in Texas and New Mexico, and most recently in Colorado, said Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a May 1 event held by the Council on Foreign Relations.

    A menagerie of other animals have been infected by H5N1, and at least one person in Texas. But what scientists fear most is if the virus were to spread efficiently from person to person. That hasn’t happened and might not. Shah said the CDC considers the H5N1 outbreak “a low risk to the general public at this time.”

    Viruses evolve and outbreaks can shift quickly. “As with any major outbreak, this is moving at the speed of a bullet train,” Shah said. “What we’ll be talking about is a snapshot of that fast-moving train.” What he means is that what’s known about the H5N1 bird flu today will undoubtedly change.

    With that in mind, KFF Health News explains what you need to know now.

    Q: Who gets the bird flu?

    Mainly birds. Over the past few years, however, the H5N1 bird flu virus has increasingly jumped from birds into mammals around the world. The growing list of more than 50 species includes seals, goats, skunks, cats, and wild bush dogs at a zoo in the United Kingdom. At least 24,000 sea lions died in outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu in South America last year.

    What makes the current outbreak in cattle unusual is that it’s spreading rapidly from cow to cow, whereas the other cases — except for the sea lion infections — appear limited. Researchers know this because genetic sequences of the H5N1 viruses drawn from cattle this year were nearly identical to one another.

    The cattle outbreak is also concerning because the country has been caught off guard. Researchers examining the virus’s genomes suggest it originally spilled over from birds into cows late last year in Texas, and has since spread among many more cows than have been tested. “Our analyses show this has been circulating in cows for four months or so, under our noses,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

    Q: Is this the start of the next pandemic?

    Not yet. But it’s a thought worth considering because a bird flu pandemic would be a nightmare. More than half of people infected by older strains of H5N1 bird flu viruses from 2003 to 2016 died. Even if death rates turn out to be less severe for the H5N1 strain currently circulating in cattle, repercussions could involve loads of sick people and hospitals too overwhelmed to handle other medical emergencies.

    Although at least one person has been infected with H5N1 this year, the virus can’t lead to a pandemic in its current state. To achieve that horrible status, a pathogen needs to sicken many people on multiple continents. And to do that, the H5N1 virus would need to infect a ton of people. That won’t happen through occasional spillovers of the virus from farm animals into people. Rather, the virus must acquire mutations for it to spread from person to person, like the seasonal flu, as a respiratory infection transmitted largely through the air as people cough, sneeze, and breathe. As we learned in the depths of covid-19, airborne viruses are hard to stop.

    That hasn’t happened yet. However, H5N1 viruses now have plenty of chances to evolve as they replicate within thousands of cows. Like all viruses, they mutate as they replicate, and mutations that improve the virus’s survival are passed to the next generation. And because cows are mammals, the viruses could be getting better at thriving within cells that are closer to ours than birds’.

    The evolution of a pandemic-ready bird flu virus could be aided by a sort of superpower possessed by many viruses. Namely, they sometimes swap their genes with other strains in a process called reassortment. In a study published in 2009, Worobey and other researchers traced the origin of the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic to events in which different viruses causing the swine flu, bird flu, and human flu mixed and matched their genes within pigs that they were simultaneously infecting. Pigs need not be involved this time around, Worobey warned.

    Q: Will a pandemic start if a person drinks virus-contaminated milk?

    Not yet. Cow’s milk, as well as powdered milk and infant formula, sold in stores is considered safe because the law requires all milk sold commercially to be pasteurized. That process of heating milk at high temperatures kills bacteria, viruses, and other teeny organisms. Tests have identified fragments of H5N1 viruses in milk from grocery stores but confirm that the virus bits are dead and, therefore, harmless.

    Unpasteurized “raw” milk, however, has been shown to contain living H5N1 viruses, which is why the FDA and other health authorities strongly advise people not to drink it. Doing so could cause a person to become seriously ill or worse. But even then, a pandemic is unlikely to be sparked because the virus — in its current form — does not spread efficiently from person to person, as the seasonal flu does.

    Q: What should be done?

    A lot! Because of a lack of surveillance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies have allowed the H5N1 bird flu to spread under the radar in cattle. To get a handle on the situation, the USDA recently ordered all lactating dairy cattle to be tested before farmers move them to other states, and the outcomes of the tests to be reported.

    But just as restricting covid tests to international travelers in early 2020 allowed the coronavirus to spread undetected, testing only cows that move across state lines would miss plenty of cases.

    Such limited testing won’t reveal how the virus is spreading among cattle — information desperately needed so farmers can stop it. A leading hypothesis is that viruses are being transferred from one cow to the next through the machines used to milk them.

    To boost testing, Fred Gingrich, executive director of a nonprofit organization for farm veterinarians, the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, said the government should offer funds to cattle farmers who report cases so that they have an incentive to test. Barring that, he said, reporting just adds reputational damage atop financial loss.

    “These outbreaks have a significant economic impact,” Gingrich said. “Farmers lose about 20% of their milk production in an outbreak because animals quit eating, produce less milk, and some of that milk is abnormal and then can’t be sold.”

    The government has made the H5N1 tests free for farmers, Gingrich added, but they haven’t budgeted money for veterinarians who must sample the cows, transport samples, and file paperwork. “Tests are the least expensive part,” he said.

    If testing on farms remains elusive, evolutionary virologists can still learn a lot by analyzing genomic sequences from H5N1 viruses sampled from cattle. The differences between sequences tell a story about where and when the current outbreak began, the path it travels, and whether the viruses are acquiring mutations that pose a threat to people. Yet this vital research has been hampered by the USDA’s slow and incomplete posting of genetic data, Worobey said.

    The government should also help poultry farmers prevent H5N1 outbreaks since those kill many birds and pose a constant threat of spillover, said Maurice Pitesky, an avian disease specialist at the University of California-Davis.

    Waterfowl like ducks and geese are the usual sources of outbreaks on poultry farms, and researchers can detect their proximity using remote sensing and other technologies. By zeroing in on zones of potential spillover, farmers can target their attention. That can mean routine surveillance to detect early signs of infections in poultry, using water cannons to shoo away migrating flocks, relocating farm animals, or temporarily ushering them into barns. “We should be spending on prevention,” Pitesky said.

    Q: OK it’s not a pandemic, but what could happen to people who get this year’s H5N1 bird flu?

    No one really knows. Only one person in Texas has been diagnosed with the disease this year, in April. This person worked closely with dairy cows, and had a mild case with an eye infection. The CDC found out about them because of its surveillance process. Clinics are supposed to alert state health departments when they diagnose farmworkers with the flu, using tests that detect influenza viruses, broadly. State health departments then confirm the test, and if it’s positive, they send a person’s sample to a CDC laboratory, where it is checked for the H5N1 virus, specifically. “Thus far we have received 23,” Shah said. “All but one of those was negative.”

    State health department officials are also monitoring around 150 people, he said, who have spent time around cattle. They’re checking in with these farmworkers via phone calls, text messages, or in-person visits to see if they develop symptoms. And if that happens, they’ll be tested.

    Another way to assess farmworkers would be to check their blood for antibodies against the H5N1 bird flu virus; a positive result would indicate they might have been unknowingly infected. But Shah said health officials are not yet doing this work.

    “The fact that we’re four months in and haven’t done this isn’t a good sign,” Worobey said. “I’m not super worried about a pandemic at the moment, but we should start acting like we don’t want it to happen.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Building & Maintaining Mobility

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    Building & Maintaining Mobility!

    This is Juliet Starrett. She’s a CrossFit co-founder, and two-time white-water rafting world champion. Oh, and she won those after battling thyroid cancer. She’s now 50 years old, and still going strong, having put aside her career as a lawyer to focus on fitness. Specifically, mobility training.

    The Ready State

    Together with her husband Kelly, Starrett co-founded The Ready State, of which she’s CEO.

    It used to be called “Mobility WOD” (the “WOD” stands for “workout of the day”) but they changed their name as other companies took up the use of the word “mobility”, something the fitness world hadn’t previously focussed on much, and “WOD”, which was also hardly copyrightable.

    True to its origins, The Ready State continues to offer many resources for building and maintaining mobility.

    Why the focus on mobility?

    When was the last time you had to bench-press anything larger than a small child? Or squat more than your partner’s bodyweight? Or do a “farmer’s walk” with anything heavier than your groceries?

    For most of us, unless our lifestyles are quite extreme, we don’t need ridiculous strength (fun as that may be).

    You know what makes a huge difference to our quality of life though? Mobility.

    Have you ever felt that moment of panic when you reach for something on a high shelf and your shoulder or back twinges (been there!)? Or worse, you actually hurt yourself and the next thing you know, you need help putting your socks on (been there, too!)?

    And we say to ourselves “I’m not going to let that happen to me again”

    But how? How do we keep our mobility strong?

    First, know your weaknesses

    Starrett is a big fan of mobility tests to pinpoint areas that need more work.

    Most of her resources for this aren’t free, and we’re drawing heavily from her book here, so for your convenience, we’ll link to some third party sources for this:

    Next, eliminate those weaknesses

    Do mobility exercises in any weak areas, until they’re not weak:

    Want to train the full body in one session?

    Try out The Ready State’s 10-Minute Morning Mobility Routine

    Want to learn more?

    You might enjoy her book that we reviewed previously:

    Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully

    You might also enjoy The Ready State App, available for iOS and for Android:

    The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach

    Enjoy!

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  • The Only Exercise You Need To Strengthen Every Hip Muscle (Ages 50+)

    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 exercise, no equipment, and easy to do without even getting changed:

    You may be on the fence about this one

    Standing on one leg is great, of course, and then…

    Basic exercise:

    • Imagine stepping over an electric fence side to side.
    • Lift each leg high but slowly to engage hip muscles.
    • Adjust the height and speed based on ease/difficulty.

    Variations:

    • Step over an imaginary side fence.
    • Step over an imaginary front fence.
    • Step sideways in the opposite direction.
    • Step backward to complete a square.
    • Ensure both legs are worked evenly.

    As a bonus, it also improves balance!

    For more on all this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    How Tight Are Your Hips? Test (And Fix!) With This

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • An Elegant Defense – by Matt Richtel
  • Forks Over Knives: Flavor! – by Darshana Thacker

    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.

    It’s important to not have to choose too much between health and flavor, because the outcome will never be a good one, either for your health or your happiness. And what’s bad for your happiness will ultimately not work out and thus will be bad for your general health, so, the question becomes: how to get both?

    This book handles that nicely, delivering plant-based dishes that are also incidentally oil-free, and also either gluten-free or else there’s an obvious easy substitution to make it such. The flavor here comes from the ingredients as a whole, including the main ingredients as well as seasonings.

    On the downside, occasionally those ingredients may be a little obscure if you don’t live in, say, San Francisco, and the ingredients weren’t necessarily chosen for cooking on a budget, either.

    However, in most cases for most people it will, at worse, inspire you to try using an ingredient you don’t usually use—so that’s a good result.

    The recipes are very clear and easy to follow, although not all are illustrated, and the “ready in…” times are about as accurate as they are for any cookbook, that is to say, it’s the time in which it conceivably can be done if (like the author, a head chef) you have a team of sous-chefs who have done a bunch of prep for you (e.g. sweet potato does not normally come in ½” dice; it comes in sweet potatoes) and laid everything out in little bowls mise-en-place style, and also you know the procedure well enough to not have to stop, hesitate, check anything, wash anything, wait for water to boil or anything else to heat up, or so forth. In other words, if you’re on your own in your home kitchen with normal domestic appliances, it’s going to take a little longer than for a professional in a professional kitchen with professional help.

    But don’t let that detract from the honestly very good recipes.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to level-up your plant-based cooking, this will definitely make your dishes that bit better!

    Click here to check out Forks Over Knives: Flavor!, and dig in!

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  • TED-x | Sugar Is Not A Treat

    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. Jody Stanislaw offers a reframe:

    Not so sweet

    The pancreas isn’t an organ that most people think about a lot, but it regulates blood sugar levels by releasing insulin as needed. Overworking the beta cells in the pancreas that do this, can lead to their burnout, which contributes to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.

    If, like Dr. Stanislaw, you already have Type 1 Diabetes (an autoimmune condition usually diagnosed in early childhood and unrelated to what one has or hasn’t been eating), then your pancreas is already not doing much, or rather, it’s too busy fighting itself to actually do its job. This means that taking exogenous insulin (i.e., from the pharmacy rather than from your dysfunctional pancreas) will be necessary for survival. Most people with T1D will have an insulin pump if possible, to provide insulin as needed. Others will rely on injections.

    So, does that mean that T1D is a free pass on the diabetes-related health risks of sugar, since after all, you already have diabetes anyway?

    Nope, no such luck. Because in the case of T1D, if you then get insulin resistance on top of the fact you don’t make your own insulin, then the insulin that you are taking will stop working, and ultimately you will die. So, that’s pretty important to avoid!

    Thus, Dr. Stanislaw has strong opinions on diet in this regard, and she recommends her own protocol regardless of whether you are diabetic or not:

    • Avoid refined carbs (e.g. bread, pasta, or foods with added sugars).
    • Start the day with protein-rich foods for balanced blood sugar.
    • Drink water to curb sugar cravings caused by dehydration.
    • Use low-carb substitutes (e.g. cauliflower pizza crust, zucchini noodles, etc).

    While Dr. Stanislaw does recommend an 80:20 approach to eating in general (80% healthy foods, 20% indulgences), she does strongly suggest not putting sugar even into the “indulgences” 20%, because a) a diet of 20% sugar is not at all good, and b) the dangers of sugar consumption are particularly high, so it is better reframed not as a treat to be enjoyed, but rather as a threat to be avoided.

    For more on all of this, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    5 Steps To Quit Sugar Easily

    Take care!

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  • Is chocolate milk a good recovery drink after a workout? A dietitian reviews the evidence

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    Whether you enjoy chocolate milk regularly, as a weekend treat, or as an occasional dose of childhood nostalgia, it probably wouldn’t be the first option you think of for post-workout recovery.

    Unless you’re on TikTok, perhaps. According to many people on the social media platform, chocolate milk is not only delicious, but it offers benefits comparable to sports drinks after a workout.

    So is there any evidence to support this? Let’s take a look.

    eldar nurkovic/Shutterstock

    Rehydrating after a workout is important

    Water accounts for somewhere between 50% and 60% of our body weight. Water has many important functions in the body, including helping to keep our body at the right temperature through sweating.

    We lose water naturally from our bodies when we sweat, as well as through our breathing and when we go to the toilet. So it’s important to stay hydrated to replenish the water we lose.

    When we don’t, we become dehydrated, which can put a strain on our bodies. Signs and symptoms of dehydration can range from thirst and dizziness to low blood pressure and confusion.

    Athletes, because of their higher levels of exertion, lose more water through sweating and from respiration (when their breathing rate gets faster). If they’re training or competing in hot or humid environments they will sweat even more.

    Dehydration impacts athletes’ performance and like for all of us, can affect their health.

    So finding ways to ensure athletes rehydrate quickly during and after they train or compete is important. Fortunately, sports scientists and dietitians have done research looking at the composition of different fluids to understand which ones rehydrate athletes most effectively.

    The beverage hydration index

    The best hydrating drinks are those the body retains the most of once they’ve been consumed. By doing studies where they give people different drinks in standardised conditions, scientists have been able to determine how various options stack up.

    To this end, they’ve developed something called the beverage hydration index, which measures to what degree different fluids hydrate a person compared to still water.

    According to this index beverages with similar fluid retention to still water include sparkling water, sports drinks, cola, diet cola, tea, coffee, and beer below 4% alcohol. That said, alcohol is probably best avoided when recovering from exercise.

    Beverages with superior fluid retention to still water include milk (both full-fat and skim), soy milk, orange juice and oral rehydration solutions.

    This body of research indicates that when it comes to rehydration after exercise, unflavoured milk (full fat, skim or soy) is better than sports drinks.

    But what about chocolate milk?

    A small study looked at the effects of chocolate milk compared to plain milk on rehydration and exercise performance in futsal players (futsal is similar to soccer but played on a court indoors). The researchers found no difference in rehydration between the two. There’s no other published research to my knowledge looking at how chocolate milk compares to regular milk for rehydration during or after exercise.

    But rehydration isn’t the only thing athletes look for in sports drinks. In the same study, drinking chocolate milk after play (referred to as the recovery period) increased the time it took for the futsal players to become exhausted in further exercise (a shuttle run test) four hours later.

    This was also shown in a review of several clinical trials. The analysis found that, compared to different placebos (such as water) or other drinks containing fat, protein and carbohydrates, chocolate milk lengthened the time to exhaustion during exercise.

    What’s in chocolate milk?

    Milk contains protein, carbohydrates and electrolytes, each of which can affect hydration, performance, or both.

    Protein is important for building muscle, which is beneficial for performance. The electrolytes in milk (including sodium and potassium) help to replace electrolytes lost through sweating, so can also be good for performance, and aid hydration.

    Compared to regular milk, chocolate milk contains added sugar. This provides extra carbohydrates, which are likewise beneficial for performance. Carbohydrates provide an immediate source of energy for athletes’ working muscles, where they’re stored as glycogen. This might contribute to the edge chocolate milk appears to have over plain milk in terms of athletic endurance.

    A birds-eye view of a glass of chocolate milk with a red straw.
    The added sugar in chocolate milk provides extra carbohydrates. Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

    Coffee-flavoured milk has an additional advantage. It contains caffeine, which can improve athletic performance by reducing the perceived effort that goes into exercise.

    One study showed that a frappe-type drink prepared with filtered coffee, skim milk and sugar led to better muscle glycogen levels after exercise compared to plain milk with an equivalent amount of sugar added.

    So what’s the verdict?

    Evidence shows chocolate milk can rehydrate better than water or sports drinks after exercise. But there isn’t evidence to suggest it can rehydrate better than plain milk. Chocolate milk does appear to improve athletic endurance compared to plain milk though.

    Ultimately, the best drink for athletes to consume to rehydrate is the one they’re most likely to drink.

    While many TikTok trends are not based on evidence, it seems chocolate milk could actually be a good option for recovery from exercise. And it will be cheaper than specialised sports nutrition products. You can buy different brands from the supermarket or make your own at home with a drinking chocolate powder.

    This doesn’t mean everyone should look to chocolate milk when they’re feeling thirsty. Chocolate milk does have more calories than plain milk and many other drinks because of the added sugar. For most of us, chocolate milk may be best enjoyed as an occasional treat.

    Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

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

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