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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The Cancer Journey – by Dr. Chadi Nabhan
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After a brief introduction of what cancer actually is and what causes it, the layout of the rest of the book is in chronological order of patient experience, that is to say, what to expect during the journey from screening and diagnosis, to one’s first oncology visit (the author being an oncologist himself), how cancer staging works, getting second opinions, and a chapter-by-chapter review of many different treatment options, ranging from surgery and chemotherapy, to radiation and hormonal therapies, and even more modern targeted therapies, immunotherapy, cellular therapies, and yes, complementary and alternative therapies, amongst others we haven’t listed for the sake of brevity.
He doesn’t leave it there though; he also talks managing side effects, monitoring for recurrence, and even caring for the caregiver(s), along with eventual survivorship and that emotional journey, or if it comes down to it, palliative and hospice care.
Finishing on a hopeful note, he also brings attention to novel approaches that are being trialled presently, and the prospects for the near future of cancer care.
The style is very human and readable, notwithstanding that the author has hundreds of peer-reviewed publications to his name, the content here is presented in a much more approachable, less clinical way, while still conveying all the information that needs to be conveyed.
Bottom line: if you or a loved one is facing cancer, this book will be an invaluable resource.
Click here to check out The Cancer Journey, and understand each part of it!
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How To Set Anxiety Aside
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How To Set Anxiety Aside
We’ve talked previously about how to use the “release” method to stop your racing mind.
That’s a powerful technique, but sometimes we need to be calm enough to use it. So first…
Breathe
Obviously. But, don’t underestimate the immediate power of focusing on your breath, even just for a moment.
There are many popular breathing exercises, but here’s one of the simplest and most effective, “4–4 breathing”:
- Breathe in for a count of four
- Hold for a count four
- Breathe out for a count of four
- Hold for a count of four
- Repeat
Depending on your lung capacity and what you’re used to, it may be that you need to count more quickly or slowly to make it feel right. Experiment with what feels comfortable for you, but the general goal should breathing deeply and slowly.
Identify the thing that’s causing you anxiety
We’ve also talked previously about how to use the RAIN technique to manage difficult emotions, and that’s good for handling anxiety too.
Another powerful tool is journaling.
Read: How To Use Journaling to Challenge Anxious Thoughts
If you don’t want to use any of those (very effective!) methods, that’s fine too—journaling isn’t for everyone.
You can leverage some of the same benefits by simply voicing your worries, even to yourself:
There’s an old folk tradition of “worry dolls”; these are tiny little dolls so small they can be kept in a pocket-size drawstring purse. Last thing at night, the user whispers their worries to the dolls and puts them back in their bag, where they will work on the person’s problem overnight.
We’re a health and productivity newsletter, not a dealer of magic and spells, but you can see how it works, right? It gets the worries out of one’s head, and brings about a helpful placebo effect too.
Focus on what you can control
- Most of what you worry about will not happen.
- Some of what you worry about may happen.
- Worrying about it will not help.
In fact, in some cases it may bring about what you fear, by means of the nocebo effect (like the placebo effect, but bad). Additionally, worrying drains your body and makes you less able to deal with whatever life does throw at you.
So while “don’t worry; be happy” may seem a flippant attitude, sometimes it can be best. However, don’t forget the other important part, which is actually focusing on what you can control.
- You can’t control whether your car will need expensive maintenance…
- …but you can control whether you budget for it.
- You can’t control whether your social event will go well or ill…
- …but you can control how you carry yourself.
- You can’t control whether your loved one’s health will get better or worse…
- …but you can control how you’re there for them, and you can help them take what sensible precautions they may.
…and so forth.
Look after your body as well!
Your body and mind are deeply reliant on each other. In this case, just as anxiety can drain your body’s resources, keeping your body well-nourished, well-exercised, and well-rested and can help fortify you against anxiety. For example, when it comes to diet, exercise, and sleep:
- Read: Fruit and vegetable intake is inversely associated with perceived stress across the adult lifespan
- Read: Exercise and anxiety: physical activity appears to be protective against anxiety disorders in clinical and non-clinical populations
- Read: Sleep problems predict and are predicted by generalized anxiety/depression
Don’t know where to start? How about the scientifically well-researched, evidence-based, 7-minute workout?
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Could Just Two Hours Sleep Per Day Be Enough?
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Polyphasic Sleep… Super-Schedule Or An Idea Best Put To Rest?
What is it?
Let’s start by defining some terms:
- Monophasic sleep—sleeping in one “chunk” per day. For example, a good night’s “normal” sleep.
- Biphasic sleep—sleeping in two “chunks” per day. Typically, a shorter night’s sleep, with a nap usually around the middle of the day / early afternoon.
- Polyphasic sleep—sleeping in two or more “chunks per day”. Some people do this in order to have more hours awake per day, to do things. The idea is that sleeping this way is more efficient, and one can get enough rest in less time. The most popular schedules used are:
- The Überman schedule—six evenly-spaced 20-minute naps, one every four hours, throughout the 24-hour day. The name is a semi-anglicized version of the German word Übermensch, “Superman”.
- The Everyman schedule—a less extreme schedule, that has a three-hours “long sleep” during the night, and three evenly-spaced 20-minute naps during the day, for a total of 4 hours sleep.
There are other schedules, but we’ll focus on the most popular ones here.
Want to learn about the others? Visit: Polyphasic.Net (a website by and for polyphasic sleep enthusiasts)
Some people have pointed to evidence that suggests humans are naturally polyphasic sleepers, and that it is only modern lifestyles that have forced us to be (mostly) monophasic.
There is at least some evidence to suggest that when environmental light/dark conditions are changed (because of extreme seasonal variation at the poles, or, as in this case, because of artificial changes as part of a sleep science experiment), we adjust our sleeping patterns accordingly.
The counterpoint, of course, is that perhaps when at the mercy of long days/nights at the poles, or no air-conditioning to deal with the heat of the day in the tropics, that perhaps we were forced to be polyphasic, and now, with modern technology and greater control, we are free to be monophasic.
Either way, there are plenty of people who take up the practice of polyphasic sleep.
Ok, But… Why?
The main motivation for trying polyphasic sleep is simply to have more hours in the day! It’s exciting, the prospect of having 22 hours per day to be so productive and still have time over for leisure.
A secondary motivation for trying polyphasic sleep is that when the brain is sleep-deprived, it will prioritize REM sleep. Here’s where the Überman schedule becomes perhaps most interesting:
The six evenly-spaced naps of the Überman schedule are each 20 minutes long. This corresponds to the approximate length of a normal REM cycle.
Consequently, when your head hits the pillow, you’ll immediately begin dreaming, and at the end of your dream, the alarm will go off.
Waking up at the end of a dream, when one hasn’t yet entered a non-REM phase of sleep, will make you more likely to remember it. Similarly, going straight into REM sleep will make you more likely to be aware of it, thus, lucid dreaming.
Read: Sleep fragmentation and lucid dreaming (actually a very interesting and informative lucid dreaming study even if you don’t want to take up polyphasic sleep)
Six 20-minute lucid-dreaming sessions per day?! While awake for the other 22 hours?! That’s… 24 hours per day of wakefulness to use as you please! What sorcery is this?
Hence, it has quite an understandable appeal.
Next Question: Does it work?
Can we get by without the other (non-REM) kinds of sleep?
According to Überman cycle enthusiasts: Yes! The body and brain will adapt.
According to sleep scientists: No! The non-REM slow-wave phases of sleep are essential
Read: Adverse impact of polyphasic sleep patterns in humans—Report of the National Sleep Foundation sleep timing and variability consensus panel
(if you want to know just how bad it is… the top-listed “similar article” is entitled “Suicidal Ideation”)
But what about, for example, the Everman schedule? Three hours at night is enough for some non-REM sleep, right?
It is, and so it’s not as quickly deleterious to the health as the Überman schedule. But, unless you are blessed with rare genes that allow you to operate comfortably on 4 hours per day (you’ll know already if that describes you, without having to run any experiment), it’s still bad.
Adults typically need 7–9 hours of sleep per night, and if you don’t get it, you’ll accumulate a sleep debt. And, importantly:
When you accumulate sleep debt, you are borrowing time at a very high rate of interest!
And, at risk of laboring the metaphor, but this is important too:
Not only will you have to pay it back soon (with interest), you will be hounded by the debt collection agents—decreased cognitive ability and decreased physical ability—until you pay up.
In summary:
- Polyphasic sleep is really very tempting
- It will give you more hours per day (for a while)
- It will give the promised lucid dreaming benefits (which is great until you start micronapping between naps, this is effectively a mini psychotic break from reality lasting split seconds each—can be deadly if behind the wheel of a car, for instance!)
- It is unequivocally bad for the health and we do not recommend it
Bottom line:
Some of the claimed benefits are real, but are incredibly short-term, unsustainable, and come at a cost that’s far too high. We get why it’s tempting, but ultimately, it’s self-sabotage.
(Sadly! We really wanted it to work, too…)
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When Science Brings Hope
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There’s a lot of bad news out there at present, including in the field of healthcare. So as some measure of respite from that, here’s some good news from the world of health science, including some actionable things to do:
Run for your life! Or casually meander for your life; that’s fine too.
Those who enjoy the equivalent of an average of 160mins slow (3mph) walking per day also enjoy the greatest healthspan. Now, there may be an element of two-way causality here (moving more means we live longer, but also, sometimes people move less because of having crippling disabilities, which are themselves not great for healthspan, as well as having the knock-on effect of reducing movement, and so such conditions yield and anti-longevity double-whammy), but for any who are able to, increasing the amount of time per day spend moving, ultimately results (on average) in a lot of extra days in life that we’ll then get to spend moving.
Depending on how active or not you are already, every extra 1 hour walked could add two hours and 49 minutes to life expectancy:
Read in full: Americans over 40 could live extra 5 years if they were all as active as top 25% of population, modeling study suggests
Related: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
Re-teaching your brain to heal itself
Cancer is often difficult to treat, and brain tumors can be amongst the most difficult with which to contend. Not only is everything in there very delicate, but also it’s the hardest place in the body to get at—not just surgically, but even chemically, because of the blood-brain barrier. To make matters worse, brain tumors such as glioblastoma weaken the function of T-cells (whose job it is to eliminate the cancer) by prolonged exposure.
Research has found a way to restore the responsiveness of these T-cells to immune checkpoint inhibitors, allowing them to go about their cancer-killing activities unimpeded:
Read in full: New possibilities for treating intractable brain tumors unveiled
Related: 5 Ways To Beat Cancer (And Other Diseases)
Here’s to your good health!
GLP-1 receptor agonists, originally developed to fight diabetes and now enjoying popularity as weight loss adjuvants, work in large part by cutting down food cravings by interfering with the chemical messaging about such.
As a bonus, it seems that they also can reduce alcohol cravings, especially by targetting the brain’s reward center; this was based on a large review of studies looking at how GLP-1RA use affects alcohol use, alcohol-related health problems, hospital visits, and brain reactions to alcohol cues:
Read in full: Diabetes medication may be effective in helping people drink less alcohol, research finds
Related: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
Take care!
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Makkō-Hō – by Haruka Nagai
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We’ve all heard the claims, “Fluent in 3 Months!”, “Russian in Two Weeks!”, “Overnight Mandarin Chinese”, “15-Minute Arabic!”, “Instant Italian!”.
We see the same in the world of health and fitness too. So how does this one’s claim of “five minutes’ physical fitness” hold up?
Well, it is 5 minutes per day. And indeed, the author writes:
❝The total time [to do these exercises], then, is only one minute and thirty seconds. This series I call one round. When it has been completed, execute another complete round. You should find the exercises easier to do the second time. Executed this way, the exercsies will prove very effective, though they take only three minutes in all. After you have leaned back into the final position, you must remain in that posture for one minute. That brings the total time to four minutes. Even when [some small additions] are added, it takes only five minutes at most.❞
The exercises themselves are from makkō-hō, which is a kind of Japanese dynamic yoga. They involve repetitions of (mostly) moving stretches with good form, and are excellent for mobility and general health, keeping us supple and robust as we get older.
The text descriptions are clear, as are the diagrams and photos. The language is a little dated, as this book was written in the 1970s, but the techniques themselves are timeless.
Bottom line: consider it a 5-minute anti-aging regimen. And, as Nagai says, “the person who cannot find 5 minutes out of 24 hours, was never truly interested in their health”.
Click here to check out Makkō-Hō and schedule your five minutes!
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Healthy Homemade Flatbreads
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Our recipes sometimes call for the use of flatbreads, or suggest serving with flatbreads. But we want you to be able to have healthy homemade ones! So here’s a very quick and easy recipe. You’ll probably need to order some of the ingredients in, but it’s worth it, and then if you keep a stock of the ingredients, you can whip these up in minutes anytime you want them.
You will need
- 1 cup garbanzo bean flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 cup quinoa flour
- 2 tbsp ground/milled flaxseed
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
- ½ tsp MSG, or 1 tsp low-sodium salt, with MSG being the healthier and preferable option
- ½ tsp onion powder
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp dried cumin
- ½ tsp dried thyme
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Mix the flaxseed with ⅓ cup of water and set aside for at least 5 minutes.
2) Combine the rest of the ingredients in a big bowl, plus the flax mixtures we just made, and an extra ½ cup of water. Knead this into a dough, adding a touch more water if it becomes necessary, but be sparing with it.
3) Divide the dough into 6 equal portions, shaping each into a ball. Dust a clean surface with the extra garbanzo bean flour, and roll each dough ball into in a thin 6″ circle.
4) Heat a skillet and add some olive oil for frying; when hot enough, place a dough disk in the pan and cook for a few minutes on each side until golden brown. Repeat with the other 5.
5) Serve! If you’re looking for a perfect accompaniment to these, try our Hero Homemade Hummus
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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