Insomnia? High blood pressure? Try these!
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Your Questions, Our Answers!
Q: Recipes for insomnia and high blood pressure and good foods to eat for these conditions?
A: Insomnia can be caused by many things, and consequently can often require a very multi-vector approach to fixing it. But, we’ll start by answering the question you asked (and probably address the rest of dealing with insomnia in another day’s edition!):
- First, you want food that’s easy to digest. Broadly speaking, this means plant-based. If not plant-based, fish (unless you have an allergy, obviously) is generally good and certainly better than white meat, which is better than red meat. In the category of dairy, it depends so much on what it is, that we’re not going to try to break it down here. If in doubt, skip it.
- You also don’t want blood sugar spikes, so it’s good to lay off the added sugar and white flour (or white flour derivatives, like white pasta), especially in your last meal of the day.
- Magnesium supports healthy sleep. A fine option would be our shchi recipe, but using collard greens rather than cabbage. Cabbage is a wonderful food, but collard greens are much higher in magnesium. Remember to add plenty of mushrooms (unless you don’t like them), as they’re typically high in magnesium too.
As for blood pressure, last month we gave tips (and a book recommendation) for heart health. The book, Dr. Monique Tello’s “Healthy Habits for Your Heart: 100 Simple, Effective Ways to Lower Your Blood Pressure and Maintain Your Heart’s Health”, also has recipes!
Here’s one from the “mains” section:
Secret Ingredient Baltimore-Style Salmon Patties with Not-Oily Aioli
❝This is a family favorite, and no one knows that it features puréed pumpkin! Most salmon cake recipes all for eggs and bread crumbs as binders, but puréed pumpkin and grated carrot work just as well, lend a beautiful color, and add plenty of fiber and plant nutrients. Canned salmon is way cheaper than fresh and has just as much omega-3 PUFAs and calcium. Serve this alongside a salad (the Summer Corn, Tomato, Spinach, and Basil Salad would go perfectly) for a well-rounded meal.❞
Serves 4 (1 large patty each)
Secret Ingredient Baltimore-Style Salmon Patties:
- 1 (15-oz) can pink salmon, no salt added
- ½ cup puréed pumpkin
- ½ cup grated carrot (I use a handheld box grater)
- 2 tablespoons minced chives (Don’t have chives? Minced green onions or any onions will do)
- 2 teaspoons Old Bay Seasoning
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ large lemon, sliced, for serving
Not-Oily Aioli:
- ½ cup plain low-fat Greek yogurt
- Juice and zest from ½ large lemon
- 1 clove garlic, crushed and minced fine
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
- For the patties: mix all the ingredients for the salmon patties together in a medium bowl
- Form patties with your hands and set on a plate or tray (you should have 4 burger-sized patties)
- Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
- Set patties in a skillet and brown for 4 minutes, then carefully flip.
- Brown the other side, then serve hot.
- For the Aioli: mix all the ingredients for the aioli together in a small bowl.
- Plop a dollop alongside or on top of each salmon patty and serve with a spice of lemon.
Per serving: Calories: 367 | Fat: 13.6g | Saturated Fat: 4.4g | Protein: 46g | Sodium: 519mg | Carbohydrates: 13.2g | Fiber: 1.3g | Sugars: 9g | Calcium: 505mg | Iron: 1mg | Potassium 696mg
Notes from the 10almond team:
- If you want to make it plant-based, substitute cooked red lentils (no salt added) for the tinned salmon, and plant-based yogurt for the Greek yogurt
- We recommend adding more garlic. Seriously, who uses 1 clove of garlic for anything, let alone divided between four portions?
- The salads mentioned are given as recipes elsewhere in the same book. We strongly recommend getting her book, if you’re interested in heart health!
Do you have a question you’d like to see answered here? Hit reply or use the feedback widget at the bottom; we’d love to hear from you!
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How Useful Are Our Dreams
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What’s In A Dream?
We were recently asked:
❝I have a question or a suggestion for coverage in your “Psychology Sunday”. Dreams: their relevance, meanings ( if any) interpretations? I just wondered what the modern psychological opinions are about dreams in general.❞
~ 10almonds subscriber
There are two main schools of thought, and one main effort to reconcile those two. The third one hasn’t quite caught on so far as to be considered a “school of thought” yet though.
The Top-Down Model (Psychoanalysts)
Psychoanalysts broadly follow the theories of Freud, or at least evolved from there. Freud was demonstrably wrong about very many things. Most of his theories have been debunked and ditched—hence the charitable “or at least evolved from there” phrasing when it comes to modern psychoanalytic schools of thought. Perhaps another day, we’ll go into all the ways Freud went wrong. However, for today, one thing he wasn’t bad at…
According to Freud, our dreams reveal our subconscious desires and fears, sometimes directly and sometimes dressed in metaphor.
Examples of literal representations might be:
- sex dreams (revealing our subconscious desires; perhaps consciously we had not thought about that person that way, or had not considered that sex act desirable)
- getting killed and dying (revealing our subconscious fear of death, not something most people give a lot of conscious thought to most of the time)
Examples of metaphorical representations might be:
- dreams of childhood (revealing our subconscious desires to feel safe and nurtured, or perhaps something else depending on the nature of the dream; maybe a return to innocence, or a clean slate)
- dreams of being pursued (revealing our subconscious fear of bad consequences of our actions/inactions, for example, responsibilities to which we have not attended, debts are a good example for many people; or social contact where the ball was left in our court and we dropped it, that kind of thing)
One can read all kinds of guides to dream symbology, and learn such arcane lore as “if you dream of your teeth crumbling, you have financial worries”, but the truth is that “this thing means that other thing” symbolic equations are not only highly personal, but also incredibly culture-bound.
For example:
- To one person, bees could be a symbol of feeling plagued by uncountable small threats; to another, they could be a symbol of abundance, or of teamwork
- One culture’s “crow as an omen of death” is another culture’s “crow as a symbol of wisdom”
- For that matter, in some cultures, white means purity; in others, it means death.
Even such classically Freudian things as dreaming of one’s mother and/or father (in whatever context) will be strongly informed by one’s own waking-world relationship (or lack thereof) with same. Even in Freud’s own psychoanalysis, the “mother” for the sake of such analysis was the person who nurtured, and the “father” was the person who drew the nurturer’s attention away, so they could be switched gender roles, or even different people entirely than one’s parents.
The only real way to know what, if anything, your dreams are trying to tell you, is to ask yourself. You can do that…
- by reflection and personal interrogation (see for example: The Easiest Way To Take Up Journaling)
- or by externalising parts of your subconscious (as in Internal Family Systems therapy)
- or by talking directly to your subconscious where it is, by means of lucid dreaming.
The idea with lucid dreaming is that since any dream character is a facet of your subconscious generated by your own mind, by talking to that character you can ask questions directly of your subconscious (the popular 2010 movie “Inception” was actually quite accurate in this regard, by the way).
To read more about how to do this kind of self-therapy through lucid dreaming, you might want to check out this book we reviewed previously; it is the go-to book of lucid dreaming enthusiasts, and will honestly give you everything you need in one go:
Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life – by Dr. Stephen LaBerge
The Bottom-Up Model (Neuroscientists)
This will take a lot less writing, because it’s practically a null hypothesis (i.e., the simplest default assumption before considering any additional evidence that might support or refute it; usually some variant of “nothing unusual going on here”).
The Bottom-Up model holds that our brains run regular maintenance cycles during REM sleep (a biological equivalent of defragging a computer), and the brain interprets these pieces of information flying by and, because of the mind’s tendency to look for patterns, fills in the rest (much like how modern generative AI can “expand” a source image to create more of the same and fill in the blanks), resulting in the often narratively wacky, but ultimately random, vivid hallucinations that we call dreams.
The Hybrid Model (per Cartwright, 2012)
This is really just one woman’s vision, but it’s an incredibly compelling one, that takes the Bottom-Up model and asks “what if we did all that bio-stuff, and then our subconscious mind influenced the interpretation of the random patterns, to create dreams that are subjectively meaningful, and thus do indeed represent our subconscious?
It’s best explained in her own words, though, so it’s time for another book recommendation (we’ve reviewed this one before, too):
Enjoy!
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The No-Nonsense Meditation Book – by Dr. Steven Laureys
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We’ve reviewed books about meditation before, and when we review books, we try to pick ones that have something that make them stand out from the others. So, what stands out in this case?
The author is a medical doctor and neurologist, with decades of experience focusing on neuronal plasticity and multimodel neural imaging. So, a little beyond “think happy thoughts”-style woo.
The style of the book is pop-science in tone, but with a lot of hard clinical science underpinning it and referenced throughout, as one would expect of a scientist of Dr. Laurey’s stature (with hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in top-level journals).
You may be wondering: is this a “how-to” book or a “why-to” book or a “what-happens” book? It’s all three.
The “how-to” is also, as the title suggests, no-nonsense. We are talking maximum results for minimum mystery here.
Bottom line: if you’d like to be able to take up a meditative practice and know exactly what it’s doing to your brain (quietening these parts, stimulating and physically growing those parts, etc) then this is the book for you.
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With all this bird flu around, how safe are eggs, chicken or milk?
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Enzo Palombo, Swinburne University of Technology
Recent outbreaks of bird flu – in US dairy herds, poultry farms in Australia and elsewhere, and isolated cases in humans – have raised the issue of food safety.
So can the virus transfer from infected farm animals to contaminate milk, meat or eggs? How likely is this?
And what do we need to think about to minimise our risk when shopping for or preparing food?
AS Foodstudio/Shutterstock How safe is milk?
Bird flu (or avian influenza) is a bird disease caused by specific types of influenza virus. But the virus can also infect cows. In the US, for instance, to date more than 80 dairy herds in at least nine states have been infected with the H5N1 version of the virus.
Investigations are under way to confirm how this happened. But we do know infected birds can shed the virus in their saliva, nasal secretions and faeces. So bird flu can potentially contaminate animal-derived food products during processing and manufacturing.
Indeed, fragments of bird flu genetic material (RNA) were found in cow’s milk from the dairy herds associated with infected US farmers.
However, the spread of bird flu among cattle, and possibly to humans, is likely to have been caused through contact with contaminated milking equipment, not the milk itself.
The test used to detect the virus in milk – which uses similar PCR technology to lab-based COVID tests – is also highly sensitive. This means it can detect very low levels of the bird flu RNA. But the test does not distinguish between live or inactivated virus, just that the RNA is present. So from this test alone, we cannot tell if the virus found in milk is infectious (and capable of infecting humans).
It’s best to stick with pasteurised milk. Amnixia/Shutterstock Does that mean milk is safe to drink and won’t transmit bird flu? Yes and no.
In Australia, where bird flu has not been reported in dairy cattle, the answer is yes. It is safe to drink milk and milk products made from Australian milk.
In the US, the answer depends on whether the milk is pasteurised. We know pasteurisation is a common and reliable method of destroying concerning microbes, including influenza virus. Like most viruses, influenza virus (including bird flu virus) is inactivated by heat.
Although there is little direct research on whether pasteurisation inactivates H5N1 in milk, we can extrapolate from what we know about heat inactivation of H5N1 in chicken and eggs.
So we can be confident there is no risk of bird flu transmission via pasteurised milk or milk products.
However, it’s another matter for unpasteurised or “raw” US milk or milk products. A recent study showed mice fed raw milk contaminated with bird flu developed signs of illness. So to be on the safe side, it would be advisable to avoid raw milk products.
How about chicken?
Bird flu has caused sporadic outbreaks in wild birds and domestic poultry worldwide, including in Australia. In recent weeks, there have been three reported outbreaks in Victorian poultry farms (two with H7N3 bird flu, one with H7N9). There has been one reported outbreak in Western Australia (H9N2).
The strains of bird flu identified in the Victorian and Western Australia outbreaks can cause human infection, although these are rare and typically result from close contact with infected live birds or contaminated environments.
Therefore, the chance of bird flu transmission in chicken meat is remote.
Nonetheless, it is timely to remind people to handle chicken meat with caution as many dangerous pathogens, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter, can be found on chicken carcasses.
Always handle chicken meat carefully when shopping, transporting it home and storing it in the kitchen. For instance, make sure no meat juices cross-contaminate other items, consider using a cool bag when transporting meat, and refrigerate or freeze the meat within two hours.
Avoid washing your chicken before cooking to prevent the spread of disease-causing microbes around the kitchen.
Finally, cook chicken thoroughly as viruses (including bird flu) cannot survive cooking temperatures.
Are eggs safe?
The recent Australian outbreaks have occurred in egg-laying or mixed poultry flocks, so concerns have been raised about bird flu transmission via contaminated chicken eggs.
Can flu viruses contaminate chicken eggs and potentially spread bird flu? It appears so. A report from 2007 said it was feasible for influenza viruses to enter through the eggshell. This is because influenza virus particles are smaller (100 nanometres) than the pores in eggshells (at least 200 nm).
So viruses could enter eggs and be protected from cleaning procedures designed to remove microbes from the egg surface.
Therefore, like the advice about milk and meat, cooking eggs is best.
The US Food and Drug Administration recommends cooking poultry, eggs and other animal products to the proper temperature and preventing cross-contamination between raw and cooked food.
In a nutshell
If you consume pasteurised milk products and thoroughly cook your chicken and eggs, there is nothing to worry about as bird flu is inactivated by heat.
The real fear is that the virus will evolve into highly pathogenic versions that can be transmitted from human to human.
That scenario is much more frightening than any potential spread though food.
Enzo Palombo, Professor of Microbiology, Swinburne University of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Yes, you do need to clean your tongue. Here’s how and why
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Has your doctor asked you to stick out your tongue and say “aaah”? While the GP assesses your throat, they’re also checking out your tongue, which can reveal a lot about your health.
The doctor will look for any changes in the tongue’s surface or how it moves. This can indicate issues in the mouth itself, as well as the state of your overall health and immunity.
But there’s no need to wait for a trip to the doctor. Cleaning your tongue twice a day can help you check how your tongue looks and feels – and improve your breath.
luisrsphoto/Shutterstock What does a healthy tongue look like?
Our tongue plays a crucial role in eating, talking and other vital functions. It is not a single muscle but rather a muscular organ, made up of eight muscle pairs that help it move.
The surface of the tongue is covered by tiny bumps that can be seen and felt, called papillae, giving it a rough surface.
These are sometimes mistaken for taste buds – they’re not. Of your 200,000-300,000 papillae, only a small fraction contain taste buds. Adults have up to 10,000 taste buds and they are invisible to the naked eye, concentrated mainly on the tip, sides and back of the tongue. https://www.youtube.com/embed/uYvpUl7li9Y?wmode=transparent&start=0
A healthy tongue is pink although the shade may vary from person to person, ranging from dark to light pink.
A small amount of white coating can be normal. But significant changes or discolouration may indicate a disease or other issues.
How should I clean my tongue?
Cleaning your tongue only takes around 10-15 seconds, but it’s is a good way to check in with your health and can easily be incorporated into your teeth brushing routine.
Build-up can occur if you stop brushing or scraping your tongue even for a few days. Anthony Shkraba/Pexels You can clean your tongue by gently scrubbing it with a regular toothbrush. This dislodges any food debris and helps prevent microbes building up on its rough textured surface.
Or you can use a special tongue scraper. These curved instruments are made of metal or plastic, and can be used alone or accompanied by scrubbing with your toothbrush.
Your co-workers will thank you as well – cleaning your tongue can help combat stinky breath. Tongue scrapers are particularly effective at removing the bacteria that commonly causes bad breath, hidden in the tongue’s surface.
What’s that stuff on my tongue?
So, you’re checking your tongue during your twice-daily clean, and you notice something different. Noting these signs is the first step. If you observe any changes and they worry you, you should talk to your GP.
Here’s what your tongue might be telling you.
White coating
Developing a white coating on the tongue’s surface is one of the most common changes in healthy people. This can happen if you stop brushing or scraping the tongue, even for a few days.
In this case, food debris and microbes have accumulated and caused plaque. Gentle scrubbing or scraping will remove this coating. Removing microbes reduces the risk of chronic infections, which can be transferred to other organs and cause serious illnesses.
Scrubbing or scraping your tongue only takes around ten seconds and can be done while brushing your teeth. Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels Yellow coating
This may indicate oral thrush, a fungal infection that leaves a raw surface when scrubbed.
Oral thrush is common in elderly people who take multiple medications or have diabetes. It can also affect children and young adults after an illness, due to the temporary suppression of the immune system or antibiotic use.
If you have oral thrush, a doctor will usually prescribe a course of anti-fungal medication for at least a month.
Black coating
Smoking or consuming a lot of strong-coloured food and drink – such as tea and coffee, or dishes with tumeric – can cause a furry appearance. This is known as a black hairy tongue. It’s not hair, but an overgrowth of bacteria which may indicate poor oral hygiene.
Smoking can add to poor oral hygiene and make the tongue look black. Sophon Nawit/Shutterstock Pink patches
Pink patches surrounded by a white border can make your tongue look like a map – this is called “geographic tongue”. It’s not known what causes this condition, which usually doesn’t require treatment.
Pain and inflammation
A red, sore tongue can indicate a range of issues, including:
- nutritional deficiencies such as folic acid or vitamin B12
- diseases including pernicious anaemia, Kawasaki disease and scarlet fever
- inflammation known as glossitis
- injury from hot beverages or food
- ulcers, including cold sores and canker sores
- burning mouth syndrome.
Dryness
Many medications can cause dry mouth, also called xerostomia. These include antidepressants, anti-psychotics, muscle relaxants, pain killers, antihistamines and diuretics. If your mouth is very dry, it may hurt.
What about cancer?
White or red patches on the tongue that can’t be scraped off, are long-standing or growing need to checked out by a dental professional as soon as possible, as do painless ulcers. These are at a higher risk of turning into cancer, compared to other parts of the mouth.
Oral cancers have low survival rates due to delayed detection – and they are on the rise. So checking your tongue for changes in colour, texture, sore spots or ulcers is critical.
Dileep Sharma, Professor and Head of Discipline – Oral Health, University of Newcastle
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Younger You – by Kara Fitzgerald
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First, a note about the author: she is a naturopathic doctor, a qualification not recognized in most places. Nevertheless, she clearly knows a lot of stuff, and indeed has been the lead research scientist on a couple of studies, one of which was testing the protocol that would later go into this book.
Arguably, there’s a conflict of interest there, but it’s been peer reviewed and the science seems perfectly respectable. After an 8-week interventional trial, subjects enjoyed a reversal of DNA methylation (one of various possible markers of biological aging) comparable to being 3 years younger.
Where the value of this book lies is in optimizing one’s diet in positive fashion. In other words, what to include rather than what to exclude, but the “include” list is quite extensive so you’re probably not going to be reaching for a donut by the time you’ve eaten all that. In particular, she’s optimized the shopping list for ingredients that contain her DNA methylation superstars most abundantly; those nutrients being: betaine choline, curcumin, epigallocatechin gallate, quercetin, rosmarinic acid, and vitamins B9 and B12.
To make this possible, she sets out not just shopping list but also meal plans, and challenges the reader to do an 8-week intervention of our own.
Downside: it is quite exacting if you want to follow it 100%.
Bottom line: this is a very informative, science-based book. It can make you biologically younger at least by DNA methylation standards, if the rather specific diet isn’t too onerous for you.
Click here to check out Younger You, and enjoy a younger you!
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Young Forever – by Dr. Mark Hyman
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A lot of work on the topic of aging looks at dealing with symptoms of aging, rather than the causes. And, that’s worthy too! Those symptoms often do need addressing. But this book is about treating the causes.
Dr. Hyman outlines:
- How and why we age
- The root causes of aging
- The ten hallmarks of aging
From there, we go on to learn about the foundations of longevity, and balancing our seven core biological systems:
- Nutrition, digestion, and the microbiome
- Immune and inflammatory system
- Cellular energy
- Biotransformation and elimination/detoxification*
- Hormones, neurotransmitters, and other signalling molecules
- Circulation and lymphatic flow
- Structural health, from muscle and bones to cells and tissues
*This isn’t about celery juice fasts and the like; this talking about the work your kidneys, liver, and other organs do
The book goes on to detail how, precisely, with practical actionable advices, to optimize and take care of each of those systems.
All in all: if you want a great foundational understanding of aging and how to slow it to increase your healthy lifespan, this is a very respectable option.
Click here to get your copy of “Young Forever” from Amazon today!
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