Infections Here, Infections There…
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This week in health news, let’s take a look at infections outside and in, and how to walk away from it all (in a good way):
The bird that flu away
This one cannot be described as good news. Basically, bird flu is now already epidemic amongst cows in the US, with 845 herds (not 845 cows; 845 herds) testing positive across 16 states. The US Department of Agriculture earlier this month announced a federal order to test milk nationwide. Researchers welcomed the news, but said it should have happened months ago—before the virus was so entrenched. It currently has a fatality rate of 2–5% in cows; we don’t have enough data to reasonably talk about its fatality rate in humans—yet.
❝It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the COVID-19 crisis re-emerge❞
~ Tom Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations
Read in full: How America lost control of the bird flu, setting the stage for another pandemic
Related: Cows’ Milk, Bird Flu, & You
Alzheimer’s from the gut upwards
Alzheimer’s is generally thought of as being a purely brain thing, but there’s a link between a [specific] chronic gut infection, and the development of Alzheimer’s disease. This infection is called human cytomegalovirus, or HCMV for short, and usually we’ve all been exposed to it by young adulthood. However, for some people, it lingers in an active state in the gut, wherefrom it may travel to the brain via the vagus nerve “gut-brain highway”. And once there, well, you can guess the rest:
Read in full: The surprising role of gut infection in Alzheimer’s disease
Related: How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
Walking back to happiness
Analyzing data from 96,138 adults around the world, showed that more steps meant less depression for participants.
You may be thinking “well yes, depressed people walk less”, but more specifically, increases in activity showed increases in anti-depressive benefits, with even small incremental increases showing correspondingly incremental benefits. Specifically, each additional 1,000 steps per day corresponded to a 9% reduction in depression:
Read in full: Higher daily step counts associated with fewer depressive symptoms
Related: Walking… Better.
Take care!
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Want to sleep longer? Adding mini-bursts of exercise to your evening routine can help – new study
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Exercising before bed has long been discouraged as the body doesn’t have time to wind down before the lights go out.
But new research has found breaking up a quiet, sedentary evening of watching television with short bursts of resistance exercise can lead to longer periods of sleep.
Adults spend almost one third of the 24-hour day sleeping. But the quality and length of sleep can affect long-term health. Sleeping too little or waking often in the night is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Physical activity during the day can help improve sleep. However, current recommendations discourage intense exercise before going to bed as it can increase a person’s heart rate and core temperature, which can ultimately disrupt sleep.
Nighttime habits
For many, the longest period of uninterrupted sitting happens at home in the evening. People also usually consume their largest meal during this time (or snack throughout the evening).
Insulin (the hormone that helps to remove sugar from the blood stream) tends to be at a lower level in the evening than in the morning.
Together these factors promote elevated blood sugar levels, which over the long term can be bad for a person’s health.
Our previous research found interrupting evening sitting every 30 minutes with three minutes of resistance exercise reduces the amount of sugar in the bloodstream after eating a meal.
But because sleep guidelines currently discourage exercising in the hours before going to sleep, we wanted to know if frequently performing these short bursts of light activity in the evening would affect sleep.
Activity breaks for better sleep
In our latest research, we asked 30 adults to complete two sessions based in a laboratory.
During one session the adults sat continuously for a four-hour period while watching streaming services. During the other session, they interrupted sitting by performing three minutes of body-weight resistance exercises (squats, calf raises and hip extensions) every 30 minutes.
After these sessions, participants went home to their normal life routines. Their sleep that evening was measured using a wrist monitor.
Our research found the quality of sleep (measured by how many times they woke in the night and the length of these awakenings) was the same after the two sessions. But the night after the participants did the exercise “activity breaks” they slept for almost 30 minutes longer.
Identifying the biological reasons for the extended sleep in our study requires further research.
But regardless of the reason, if activity breaks can extend sleep duration, then getting up and moving at regular intervals in the evening is likely to have clear health benefits.
Time to revisit guidelines
These results add to earlier work suggesting current sleep guidelines, which discourage evening exercise before bed, may need to be reviewed.
As the activity breaks were performed in a highly controlled laboratory environment, future research should explore how activity breaks performed in real life affect peoples sleep.
We selected simple, body-weight exercises to use in this study as they don’t require people to interrupt the show they may be watching, and don’t require a large space or equipment.
If people wanted to incorporate activity breaks in their own evening routines, they could probably get the same benefit from other types of exercise. For example, marching on the spot, walking up and down stairs, or even dancing in the living room.
The key is to frequently interrupt evening sitting time, with a little bit of whole-body movement at regular intervals.
In the long run, performing activity breaks may improve health by improving sleep and post-meal blood sugar levels. The most important thing is to get up frequently and move the body, in a way the works best for a person’s individual household.
Jennifer Gale, PhD candidate, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago and Meredith Peddie, Senior Lecturer, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Tinnitus: Quieting The Unwanted Orchestra In Your Ears
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Tinnitus—When a “minor” symptom becomes disruptive
Tinnitus (typically: ringing in the ears) is often thought of less as a condition in and of itself, and more a symptom related to other hearing-related conditions. Paradoxically, it can be associated with hearing loss as well as with hyperacusis (hearing supersensitivity, which sounds like a superpower, but can be quite a problem too).
More than just ringing
Tinnitus can manifest not just as ringing, but also as whistling, hissing, pulsing, buzzing, hooting, and more.
For those who don’t suffer from this, it can seem very trivial; for those who do… Sometimes it can seem trivial too!
But sometimes it’s hard to carry on a conversation when at random moments it suddenly sounds like someone is playing a slide-whistle directly into your earhole, or like maybe a fly got stuck in there.
It’s distracting, to say the least.
What causes it?
First let’s note, tinnitus can be acute or chronic. So, some of these things may just cause tinnitus for a while, whereas some may give you tinnitus for life. In some cases, it depends on how long the thing in question persisted for.
A lot of things can cause it, but common causes include:
- Noise exposure (e.g. concerts, some kinds of industrial work, war)
- High blood pressure
- Head/neck injuries
- Ear infection
- Autoimmune diseases (e.g. Type 1 Diabetes, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis)
So what can be done about it?
Different remedies will work (or not) for different people, depending on the cause and type of tinnitus.
Be warned also: some things that will work for one person’s tinnitus will make another person’s worse, so you might need to try a degree of experimentation and some of it might not be fun!
That in mind, here are some things you might want to try if you haven’t already:
- Earplugs or noise-canceling headphones—while tinnitus is an internal sound, not external, it often has to do with some part(s) of your ears being unduly sensitive, so giving them less stimulus may ease the tinnitus that occurs in reaction to external noise.
- A great option (that this writer uses personally and considers a life-changer) is silicon earplugs that live in a little case on a keyring when not in use—no more heart-racing fleeing from supermarket checkout boops or pedestrian crossing bips or traffic noises or babies crying or (etc)
- White noise—if you also have hyperacusis, a lower frequency range will probably not hurt the way a higher range might. If you don’t also have hyperacusis, you have more options here and this is a popular remedy. Either way, white noise outperforms “relaxing” soundscapes.
- Hearing aids—counterintuitively, for some people whose tinnitus has developed in response to hearing loss, hearing aids can help bring things “back to normal” and eliminate tinnitus in the process.
- Customized sound machines—if you have the resources to get fancy, science currently finds this to be best of all. They work like white noise, but are tailored to your specific tinnitus.
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Once-A-Week Strategy to Stop Procrastination – by Brad Meir
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Procrastination is perhaps the most frustrating bad habit to kick!
We know we should do the things. We know why we should do the things. We want to do the things. We’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t do the things. And then we… don’t do the things? What is going on?!
Brad Meir has answers, and—what a relief—solutions. But enough about him, because first he wants to focus a little on you:
Why do you procrastinate? No, you’re probably not “just lazy”, and he’ll guide you through figuring out what it is that makes you procrastinate. There’s an exploration of various emotions here, as well as working out: what type of procrastinator are you?
Then, per what you figured out with his guidance, exercises, and tests, it’s time for an action plan.
But, importantly: one you can actually do, because it won’t fall foul of the problems you’ve been encountering so far. The exact mechanism you’ll use may vary a bit based on you, but some tools here are good for everyone—as well as an outline of the mistakes you could easily make, and how to avoid falling into those traps. And, last but very definitely not least, his “once a week plan”, per the title.
All in all, a highly recommendable and potentially life-changing book.
Grab Your Copy of “Once-A-Week Strategy to Stop Procrastination” NOW (don’t put it off!)
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Simple, 10-Minute Hip Opening Routine
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Hips Feeling Stiff?
If so, Flow with Adee’s video (below) has just the solution with a quick 10-minute hip-opening routine. Designed for intermediates but open to all, we love Adee’s work and recommend that you reach out to her to tell her what you’d like to see next.
Other Methods
If you’re a book lover, we’ve reviewed a fantastic book on reducing hip pain. Alternatively, learn stretching from a ballerina with Jasmine McDonald’s ballet stretching routine.
Otherwise, enjoy today’s video:
How was the 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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Reduce Caffeine’s Impact on Kidneys
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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
❝Avid coffee drinker so very interested in the results Also question Is there something that you could take or eat that would prevent the caffeine from stimulating the kidneys? I tried to drink decaf from morning to night not a good result! Thanks❞
That is a good question! The simple answer is “no” (but keep reading, because all is not lost)
There’s no way (that we yet know of) to proof the kidneys against the stimulating effect of caffeine. This is especially relevant because part of caffeine’s stimulating effect is noradrenergic, and that “ren” in the middle there? It’s about the kidneys. This is just because the adrenal gland is situated next to them (actually, it’s pretty much sitting on top of them), hence the name, but it does mean that the kidneys are about the hardest thing in the body to have not effected by caffeine.
However! The effects of caffeine in general can be softened a little with l-theanine (found in tea, or it can be taken as a supplement). It doesn’t stop it from working, but it makes the curve of the effect a little gentler, and so it can reduce some unwanted side effects.
You can read more about l-theanine here:
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Semaglutide for Weight Loss?
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Semaglutide for weight loss?
Semaglutide is the new kid on the weight-loss block, but it’s looking promising (with some caveats!).
Most popularly by brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, it was first trialled to help diabetics*, and is now sought-after by the rest of the population too. So far, only Wegovy is FDA-approved for weight loss. It contains more semaglutide than Ozempic, and was developed specifically for weight loss, rather than for diabetes.
*Specifically: diabetics with type 2 diabetes. Because it works by helping the pancreas to make insulin, it’s of no help whatsoever to T1D folks, sadly. If you’re T1D and reading this though, today’s book of the day is for you!
First things first: does it work as marketed for diabetes?
It does! At a cost: a very common side effect is gastrointestinal problems—same as for tirzepatide, which (like semaglutide) is a GLP-1 agonist, meaning it works the same way. Here’s how they measure up:
- Head-to-head study: Effects of subcutaneous tirzepatide versus placebo or semaglutide on pancreatic islet function and insulin sensitivity in adults with type 2 diabetes
- Head-to-head systematic review: Semaglutide for the treatment of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of safety and efficacy outcomes
As you can see, both of them work wonders for pancreatic function and insulin sensitivity!
And, both of them were quite unpleasant for around 20% of participants:
❝Tirzepatide, oral and SC semaglutide has a favourable efficacy in treating T2DM. Gastrointestinal adverse events were highly recorded in tirzepatide, oral and SC semaglutide groups.❞
What about for weight loss, if not diabetic?
It works just the same! With just the same likelihood of gastro-intestinal unpleasantries, though. There’s a very good study that was done with 1,961 overweight adults; here it is:
Once-Weekly Semaglutide in Adults with Overweight or Obesity
The most interesting things here are the positive results and the side effects:
❝The mean change in body weight from baseline to week 68 was −14.9% in the semaglutide group as compared with −2.4% with placebo, for an estimated treatment difference of −12.4 percentage points (95% confidence interval [CI], −13.4 to −11.5; P<0.001).❞
In other words: if you take this, you’re almost certainly going to get something like 6x better weight loss results than doing the same thing without it.
❝Nausea and diarrhea were the most common adverse events with semaglutide; they were typically transient and mild-to-moderate in severity and subsided with time. More participants in the semaglutide group than in the placebo group discontinued treatment owing to gastrointestinal events (59 [4.5%] vs. 5 [0.8%])❞
~ ibid.
In other words: you have about a 3% chance of having unpleasant enough side effects that you don’t want to continue treatment (contrast this with the 20%ish chance of unpleasant side effects of any extent)!
Any other downsides we should know about?
If you stop taking it, weight regain is likely. For example, a participant in one of the above-mentioned studies who lost 22% of her body weight with the drug’s help, says:
❝Now that I am no longer taking the drug, unfortunately, my weight is returning to what it used to be. It felt effortless losing weight while on the trial, but now it has gone back to feeling like a constant battle with food. I hope that, if the drug can be approved for people like me, my [doctor] will be able to prescribe the drug for me in the future.❞
~ Jan, a trial participant at UCLH
Is it injection-only, or is there an oral option?
An oral option exists, but (so far) is on the market only in the form of Rybelsus, another (slightly older) drug containing semaglutide, and it’s (so far) only FDA-approved for diabetes, not for weight loss. See:
A new era for oral peptides: SNAC and the development of oral semaglutide for the treatment of type 2 diabetes ← for the science
FDA approves first oral GLP-1 treatment for type 2 diabetes ← For the FDA statement
Where can I get these?
Availability and prescribing regulations vary by country (because the FDA’s authority stops at the US borders), but here is the website for each of them if you’d like to learn more / consider if they might help you:
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