Insomnia Decoded – by Dr. Audrey Porter

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We’ve written about sleep books before, so what makes this one different? Its major selling point is: most of the focus isn’t on the things that everyone already knows.

Yes, there’s a section on sleep hygiene and yes it’ll tell you to cut the caffeine and alcohol, but most of the advice here is beyond that.

Rather, it looks at finding out (if you don’t already know for sure) what is keeping you from healthy sleep, be it environmental, directly physical, or psychological, and breaking out of the stress-sleep cycle that often emerges from such.

The style is light and conversational, but includes plenty of science too; Dr. Porter knows her stuff.

Bottom line: if you feel like you know what you should be doing, but somehow life keeps conspiring to stop you from doing it, then this is the book that could help you break out that cycle.

Click here to check out Insomnia Decoded, and get regular healthy sleep!

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    Retired, isolated, and struggling with identity, older men face unique emotional challenges after leaving the workforce and living alone, often unnoticed.

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  • 5 Stretches To Relieve The Pain From Sitting & Poor Posture

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    Sitting is not good for the health, yes often it’s a necessity of modern life, especially if driving. To make things worse, it can often be difficult to remember to maintain good posture the rest of the time, if it’s not a habit. So, while reducing sitting and improving posture are both very good things to do, here are 5 stretches to mitigate the damage meanwhile:

    Daily doses:

    These are best done at a rate of 2–3 sets daily:

    Cat-Cow Stretch:

    • Benefits: eases spinal tension, boosts flexibility, improves posture.
    • How to: start on all fours, alternate between arching and rounding your back while syncing with your breath (10-15 times).

    Butterfly Stretch:

    • Benefits: loosens tight hips, improves lower back flexibility, and enhances mobility for activities like squats.
    • How to: sit with soles of feet together, let knees fall toward the floor, lean forward slightly, and hold for 30 seconds to 1 minute.

    Supine Twist:

    • Benefits: unlocks the spine, relieves post-workout tension, and relaxes the shoulders and hips.
    • How to: lie on your back, bend knees, twist to one side while keeping shoulders grounded, and hold for 30 seconds to 1 minute per side.

    Calf Stretch:

    • Benefits: improves ankle mobility, loosens tight calves, and prevents injuries like Achilles tendinitis.
    • How to: stand facing a wall, extend one leg back with the heel on the ground, lean into the stretch, or use a step for deeper stretches. Hold for 30 seconds to 1 minute per leg.

    Child’s Pose:

    • Benefits: decompresses the spine, relaxes hips, and relieves tension in back and thighs.
    • How to: start on hands and knees, sit back onto your heels, stretch arms forward, and rest forehead on the mat. Hold for 30 seconds to 1 minute.

    For more on each of these, plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    10 Tips To Reduce Morning Pain & Stiffness With Arthritis

    Take care!

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  • Beat Food Addictions!

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    When It’s More Than “Just” Cravings

    This is Dr. Nicole Avena. She’s a research neuroscientist who also teaches at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, as well as at Princeton. She’s done a lot of groundbreaking research in the field of nutrition, diet, and addition, with a special focus on women’s health and sugar intake specifically.

    What does she want us to know?

    Firstly, that food addictions are real addictions.

    We know it can sound silly, like the famous line from Mad Max:

    ❝Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you and you will resent its absence!❞

    ~ “Immortan Joe”

    As an aside, it is actually possible to become addicted to water; if one drinks it excessively (we are talking gallons every day) it does change the structure of the brain (no surprise; the brain is not supposed to have that much water!) causing structural damage that then results in dependency, and headaches upon withdrawal. It’s called psychogenic polydipsia:

    Primary polydipsia: Update

    But back onto today’s more specific topic, and by a different mechanism of addiction…

    Food addictions are dopaminergic addictions (as is cocaine)

    If you are addicted to a certain food (often sugar, but other refined carbs such as potato products, and also especially refined flour products, are also potential addictive substances), then when you think about the food in question, your brain lights up with more dopamine than it should, and you are strongly motivated to seek and consume the substance in question.

    Remember, dopamine functions by expectation, not by result. So until your brain’s dopamine-gremlin is sated, it will keep flooding you with motivational dopamine; that’s why the first bite tastes best, then you wolf down the rest before your brain can change its mind, and afterwards you may be left thinking/feeling “was that worth it?”.

    Much like with other addictions (especially alcohol), shame and regret often feature strongly afterwards, even accompanied by notions of “never again”.

    But, binge-eating is as difficult to escape as binge-drinking.

    You can break free, but you will probably have to take it seriously

    Dr. Avena recommends treating a food addiction like any other addiction, which means:

    1. Know why you want to quit (make a list of the reasons, and this will help you stay on track later!)
    2. Make a conscious decision to genuinely quit
    3. Learn about the nature of the specific addiction (know thy enemy!)
    4. Choose a strategy (e.g. wean off vs cold turkey, and decide what replacements, if any, you will use)
    5. Get support (especially from those around you, and/but the support of others facing, or who have successfully faced, the same challenge is very helpful too)
    6. Keep track of your success (build and maintain a streak!)
    7. Lean into how you will better enjoy life without addiction to the substance (it never really made you happy anyway, so enjoy your newfound freedom and good health!)

    Want more from Dr. Avena?

    You can check out her column at Psychology Today here:

    Psychology Today | Food Junkie ← it has a lot of posts about sugar addiction in particular, and gives a lot of information and practical advice

    You can also read her book, which could be a great help if you are thinking of quitting a sugar addiction:

    Sugarless: A 7-Step Plan to Uncover Hidden Sugars, Curb Your Cravings, and Conquer Your Addiction

    Enjoy!

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  • Apple vs Pear – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing apple to pear, we picked the pear.

    Why?

    Both are great! But there’s a category that puts pears ahead of apples…

    Looking at their macros first, pears contain more carbs but also more fiber. Both are low glycemic index foods, though.

    In the category of vitamins, things are moderately even: apples contain more of vitamins A, B1, B6, and E, while pears contain more of vitamins B3, B9, K, and choline. That’s a 4:4 split, and the two fruits are about equal in the other vitamins they both contain.

    When it comes to minerals, pears contain more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. A resounding victory for pears, as apples are not higher in any mineral.

    In short, if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, a pear should keep the doctor away for about a day and a half, based on the extra nutrients ← this is slightly facetious as medicine doesn’t work like that, but you get the idea: pears simply have more to offer. Apples are still great though! Enjoy both! Diversity is good.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    From Apples To Bees, And High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Food and Nutrition – by Dr. P.K. Newby
  • Triphala Against Cognitive Decline, Obesity, & More

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    Triphala is not just one thing, it is a combination of three plants being used together as one medicine:

    1. Alma (Emblica officinalis)
    2. Bibhitaki (Terminalia bellirica)
    3. Haritaki (Terminalia chebula)

    …generally prepared in a 1:1:1 ratio.

    This is a traditional preparation from ayurveda, and has enjoyed thousands of years of use in India. In and of itself, ayurveda is classified as a pseudoscience (literally: it doesn’t adhere to scientific method; instead, it merely makes suppositions that seem reasonable and acts on them), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have a lot to offer—because, simply put, a lot of ayurvedic medicines work (and a lot don’t).

    So, ayurveda’s unintended job has often been finding things for modern science to test.

    For more on ayurveda: Ayurveda’s Contributions To Science (Without Being Itself Rooted in Scientific Method)

    So, under the scrutiny of modern science, how does triphala stand up?

    Against cognitive decline

    It has most recently come to attention because one of its ingredients, the T. chebula, has been highlighted as effective against mild cognitive impairment (MCI) by several mechanisms of action, via its…

    ❝171 chemical constituents and 11 active constituents targeting MCI, such as flavonoids, which can alleviate MCI, primarily through its antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective properties. T. Chebula shows potential as a natural medicine for the treatment and prevention of MCI.

    Read in full: The potential of Terminalia chebula in alleviating mild cognitive impairment: a review

    The review was quite groundbreaking, to the extent that it got a pop-science article written about it:

    New review suggests evaluating Tibetan medicinal herb as potential treatment for mild cognitive impairment

    We’d like to talk about those 11 active constituents in particular, but we don’t have room for all of them, so we’ll mention that one of them is quercetin, which we’ve written about before:

    Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin

    For gut health

    It’s also been found to improve gut health by increasing transit time, that is to say, how slowly things move through your gut. Counterintuitively, this reduces constipation (without being a laxative), by giving your gut more time to absorb everything it needs to, and more time for your gut bacteria to break down the things we can’t otherwise digest:

    A comparative evaluation of intestinal transit time of two dosage forms of Haritaki [Terminalia chebula Retz.]

    For weight management

    Triphala can also aid with weight reduction, particularly in the belly area, by modulating our insulin responses to improve insulin sensitivity:

    Efficacy of [triphala], a combination of three medicinal plants in the treatment of obesity; A randomized controlled trial

    Want to try some?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎

    Enjoy!

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  • Why are tall people more likely to get cancer? What we know, don’t know and suspect

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    People who are taller are at greater risk of developing cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund reports there is strong evidence taller people have a higher chance of of developing cancer of the:

    • pancreas
    • large bowel
    • uterus (endometrium)
    • ovary
    • prostate
    • kidney
    • skin (melanoma) and
    • breast (pre- and post-menopausal).

    But why? Here’s what we know, don’t know and suspect.

    Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio
    A tall woman and her partner are silhoutted against the sunset.
    Height does increase your cancer risk – but only by a very small amount. Christian Vinces/Shutterstock

    A well established pattern

    The UK Million Women Study found that for 15 of the 17 cancers they investigated, the taller you are the more likely you are to have them.

    It found that overall, each ten-centimetre increase in height increased the risk of developing a cancer by about 16%. A similar increase has been found in men.

    Let’s put that in perspective. If about 45 in every 10,000 women of average height (about 165 centimetres) develop cancer each year, then about 52 in each 10,000 women who are 175 centimetres tall would get cancer. That’s only an extra seven cancers.

    So, it’s actually a pretty small increase in risk.

    Another study found 22 of 23 cancers occurred more commonly in taller than in shorter people.

    Why?

    The relationship between height and cancer risk occurs across ethnicities and income levels, as well as in studies that have looked at genes that predict height.

    These results suggest there is a biological reason for the link between cancer and height.

    While it is not completely clear why, there are a couple of strong theories.

    The first is linked to the fact a taller person will have more cells. For example, a tall person probably has a longer large bowel with more cells and thus more entries in the large bowel cancer lottery than a shorter person.

    Scientists think cancer develops through an accumulation of damage to genes that can occur in a cell when it divides to create new cells.

    The more times a cell divides, the more likely it is that genetic damage will occur and be passed onto the new cells.

    The more damage that accumulates, the more likely it is that a cancer will develop.

    A person with more cells in their body will have more cell divisions and thus potentially more chance that a cancer will develop in one of them.

    Some research supports the idea having more cells is the reason tall people develop cancer more and may explain to some extent why men are more likely to get cancer than women (because they are, on average, taller than women).

    However, it’s not clear height is related to the size of all organs (for example, do taller women have bigger breasts or bigger ovaries?).

    One study tried to assess this. It found that while organ mass explained the height-cancer relationship in eight of 15 cancers assessed, there were seven others where organ mass did not explain the relationship with height.

    It is worth noting this study was quite limited by the amount of data they had on organ mass.

    A tall older man leans against a wall while his bicycle is parked nearby.
    Is it because tall people have more cells? Halfpoint/Shutterstock

    Another theory is that there is a common factor that makes people taller as well as increasing their cancer risk.

    One possibility is a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). This hormone helps children grow and then continues to have an important role in driving cell growth and cell division in adults.

    This is an important function. Our bodies need to produce new cells when old ones are damaged or get old. Think of all the skin cells that come off when you use a good body scrub. Those cells need to be replaced so our skin doesn’t wear out.

    However, we can get too much of a good thing. Some studies have found people who have higher IGF-1 levels than average have a higher risk of developing breast or prostate cancer.

    But again, this has not been a consistent finding for all cancer types.

    It is likely that both explanations (more cells and more IGF-1) play a role.

    But more research is needed to really understand why taller people get cancer and whether this information could be used to prevent or even treat cancers.

    I’m tall. What should I do?

    If you are more LeBron James than Lionel Messi when it comes to height, what can you do?

    Firstly, remember height only increases cancer risk by a very small amount.

    Secondly, there are many things all of us can do to reduce our cancer risk, and those things have a much, much greater effect on cancer risk than height.

    We can take a look at our lifestyle. Try to:

    • eat a healthy diet
    • exercise regularly
    • maintain a healthy weight
    • be careful in the sun
    • limit alcohol consumption.

    And, most importantly, don’t smoke!

    If we all did these things we could vastly reduce the amount of cancer.

    You can also take part in cancer screening programs that help pick up cancers of the breast, cervix and bowel early so they can be treated successfully.

    Finally, take heart! Research also tells us that being taller might just reduce your chance of having a heart attack or stroke.

    Susan Jordan, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, The University of Queensland and Karen Tuesley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland

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

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  • Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)

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    Cortisol, or “the stress hormone” to its friends, is produced by your adrenal glands, and is generally considered “not fun”.

    It does serve a purpose, of course, just like almost everything else our body does. It serves as part of the “fight or flight” response, for example, and helps you to wake up in the morning.

    While you do need some cortisol (and a small percentage of people have too little), most of us have too much.

    Why? Simply put, modern life is not what 200,000* years of human evolution prepared us for:

    *the 200,000 years figure is conservative and doesn’t take into account the 200,000,000 years of pre-hominid mammalian evolution. Doing so, on the basis of the mammalian brain & physiology being what’s important here, means our modern stressors have been around for <0.0001% of the time we have.

    So guess what, our bodies haven’t caught up. As far as our bodies are concerned, we are supposed to be enjoying the sunshine of grassy plains and the shade of woodland while eating fruit.

    • When the alarm clock goes off, our body panics and prepares us to either flee or help fight the predator, because why else would we have been woken so?
    • When we have a pressing deadline for work, our brain processes this as “if we don’t do this, we will literally starve and die”.
    • When people are upset or angry with us, there’s a part of our brain that fears exile from the tribe and resultant death.

    …and so on.

    Health Risks of High Cortisol

    The long-term stressors are the biggest issue for health. Unless you have a heart condition or other relevant health problem, almost anyone can weather a brief unpleasant surprise. But if something persists? That prompts the body to try to protect you, bless it. The body’s attempts backfire, because…

    • One way it does this by making sure to save as much food as possible in the form of body fat
    • It’ll also increase your appetite, to make sure you eat anything you can while you still can
    • It additionally tries to protect you by keeping you on the brink of fight-or-flight readiness, e.g:
      • High blood pressure
      • High blood sugar levels
      • Rapid mood changes—gotta be able to do those heel-turns as necessary and react quickly to any possible threat!

    Suffice it to say, these things are not good for your long-term health.

    That’s the “Why”—now here’s the “How”:

    Lowering your cortisol levels mostly means lowering your stress and/or lowering your stress response. We previously gave some powerful tools for lowering anxiety, which for these purposes amounts to the same thing.

    However, we can also make nutritional and lifestyle changes that will reduce our cortisol levels, for example:

    • Reduce (ideally: eliminate from your lifestyle) caffeine
    • Reduce (ideally: eliminate from your lifestyle) alcohol
      • Yes, really. While many understandably turn to alcohol specifically to help manage stress, it only makes it worse long-term.
      • Additionally, alcohol directly stimulates cortisol production, counterintuitive as that may be.

    Read: Alcohol, Aging, and the Stress Response ← full article (with 37 sources of its own) from the NYMC covering how alcohol stimulates cortisol production and what that means for us

    As well as reductions/eliminations, are some things you can add into your lifestyle that will help!

    We’ve written previously about some:

    Read: Ashwagandha / Read: L-Theanine / Read: CBD Oil

    Other things include, no surprises here:

    Progressive Relaxation

    We’ll give this one its own section because we’ve not talked about it before. Maybe you’re familiar. If not, then in a nutshell: progressive relaxation means progressively tensing and then relaxing each part of your body in turn.

    Why does this work? Part of it is just a physical trick involving biofeedback and the natural function of muscles to contract and relax in turn, but the other part is even cleverer:

    It basically tricks the most primitive part of your brain, the limbic system, into thinking you had a fight and won, telling it “thank you very much for the cortisol but we don’t need it anymore”.

    Take a Hike! Or a Stroll… You Do You!

    Last but not least: go connect with your roots. Spend time in the park, or at least the garden. Have a picnic, if the weather suits. Go somewhere you can spend time around leafy green things under a blue sky (we realize the blue sky may be subject to availability in some locations, but do what you can!).

    Remember also: just as your body’s responses will be tricked by the alarm clock or the housework, they will also be easily tricked by blue and green stuff around you. If a sunny garden isn’t available in your location, a picture of one as your desktop background is the next best thing.

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