Meals That Heal – by Dr. Carolyn Williams

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Inflammation is implicated as a contributory or casual factor in almost all chronic diseases (and still exacerbates the ones in which it’s not directly implicated causally), so if there’s one area of health to focus on with one’s diet, then reducing inflammation is a top candidate.

This book sets about doing exactly that.

You may be wondering whether, per the book’s subtitle, they can really all be done in 30 minutes or under. The answer is: no, not unless you have a team of sous-chefs to do all the prep work for you, and line up everything mise-en-place style for when you start the clock. If you do have that team of sous-chefs working for you, then you can probably do most of them in under 30 minutes. If you don’t have that team, then budget about an hour in total, sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on the recipe.

The recipes themselves are mostly Mediterranean-inspired, though you might want to do a few swaps where the author has oddly recommended using seed oils instead of olive oil, or plant milk in place of where she has used dairy milk in a couple of “recipes” for smoothies. You might also want to be a little more generous with the seasonings, if you’re anything like this reviewer.

Bottom line: if you’re looking for an anti-inflammatory starter cookbook, you could do worse than this. You could probably do better, too, such as starting with The Inflammation Spectrum – by Dr. Will Cole.

Alternatively, click here if you want to check out Meals That Heal, and dive straight in!

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Recommended

  • Quit Like a Woman – by Holly Whitaker
  • The Insider’s Guide To Making Hospital As Comfortable As Possible
    Dr. Chris Bonney, an anesthesiologist, shares tips for surgery patients to empower themselves and be proactive in their own care.

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  • Dogs Paired With Providers at Hospitals Help Ease Staff and Patient Stress

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    DENVER — Outside HCA HealthONE Rose medical center, the snow is flying. Inside, on the third floor, there’s a flurry of activity within the labor and delivery unit.

    “There’s a lot of action up here. It can be very stressful at times,” said Kristina Fraser, an OB-GYN in blue scrubs.

    Nurses wheel a very pregnant mom past.

    “We’re going to bring a baby into this world safely,” Fraser said, “and off we go.”

    She said she feels ready in part due to a calming moment she had just a few minutes earlier with some canine colleagues.

    A pair of dogs, tails wagging, had come by a nearby nursing station, causing about a dozen medical professionals to melt into a collective puddle of affection. A yellow Lab named Peppi showered Fraser in nuzzles and kisses. “I don’t know if a human baby smells as good as that puppy breath!” Fraser had said as her colleagues laughed.

    The dogs aren’t visitors. They work here, too, specifically for the benefit of the staff. “I feel like that dog just walks on and everybody takes a big deep breath and gets down on the ground and has a few moments of just decompressing,” Fraser said. “It’s great. It’s amazing.”

    Hospital staffers who work with the dogs say there is virtually no bite risk with the carefully trained Labradors, the preferred breed for this work.

    The dogs are kept away from allergic patients and washed regularly to prevent germs from spreading, and people must wash their hands before and after petting them.

    Doctors and nurses are facing a growing mental health crisis driven by their experiences at work. They and other health care colleagues face high rates of depression, anxiety, stress, suicidal ideation, and burnout. Nearly half of health workers reported often feeling burned out in 2022, an increase from 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the percentage of health care workers who reported harassment at work more than doubled over that four-year period. Advocates for the presence of dogs in hospitals see the animals as one thing that can help.

    That includes Peppi’s handler, Susan Ryan, an emergency medicine physician at Rose.

    Ryan said years working as an emergency room doctor left her with symptoms of PTSD. “I just was messed up and I knew it,” said Ryan, who isolated more at home and didn’t want to engage with friends. “I shoved it all in. I think we all do.”

    She said doctors and other providers can be good at hiding their struggles, because they have to compartmentalize. “How else can I go from a patient who had a cardiac arrest, deal with the family members telling them that, and go to a room where another person is mad that they’ve had to wait 45 minutes for their ear pain? And I have to flip that switch.”

    To cope with her symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, Ryan started doing therapy with horses. But she couldn’t have a horse in her backyard, so she got a Labrador. 

    Ryan received training from a national service dog group called Canine Companions, becoming the first doctor trained by the group to have a facility dog in an emergency room. Canine Companions has graduated more than 8,000 service dogs.

    The Rose medical center gave Ryan approval to bring a dog to work during her ER shifts. Ryan’s colleagues said they are delighted that a dog is part of their work life.

    “When I have a bad day at work and I come to Rose and Peppi is here, my day’s going to be made better,” EMT Jasmine Richardson said. “And if I have a patient who’s having a tough day, Peppi just knows how to light up the room.”

    Nursing supervisor Eric Vaillancourt agreed, calling Peppi “joyful.”

    Ryan had another dog, Wynn, working with her during the height of the pandemic. She said she thinks Wynn made a huge difference. “It saved people,” she said. “We had new nurses that had never seen death before, and now they’re seeing a covid death. And we were worried sick we were dying.”

    She said her hospital system has lost a couple of physicians to suicide in the past two years, which HCA confirmed to KFF Health News and NPR. Ryan hopes the canine connection can help with trauma. “Anything that brings you back to the present time helps ground you again. A dog can be that calming influence,” she said. “You can get down on the ground, pet them, and you just get calm.”

    Ryan said research has shown the advantages. For example, one review of dozens of original studies on human-animal interactions found benefits for a variety of conditions including behavioral and mood issues and physical symptoms of stress. 

    Rose’s president and CEO, Casey Guber, became such a believer in the canine connection he got his own trained dog to bring to the hospital, a black Lab-retriever mix named Ralphie.

    She wears a badge: Chief Dog Officer.

    Guber said she’s a big morale booster. “Phenomenal,” he said. “It is not uncommon to see a surgeon coming down to our administration office and rolling on the ground with Ralphie, or one of our nurses taking Ralphie out for a walk in the park.”

    This article is from a partnership that includes CPR News, NPR, and KFF Health News.

    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.

    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • Awakening Your Ikigai – by Dr. Ken Mogi

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    It’s been well-established in supercentenarian studies that one of the key factors beyond diet or exercise or suchlike (important as those things definitely are), is having a purpose to one’s life.

    Neuroscientist Dr. Ken Mogi explains in this very easy-to-read book, how we can bring ikigai into our lives.

    From noticing the details of the small things in life, to reorienting one’s life around what’s most truly most important to us, Dr. Mogi gives us not just a “this is ikigai” exposé, but rather, a practical and readily applicable how-to guide.

    Bottom line: if you’ve so far been putting off ikigai as “I’ll get to that”, the time to start is today.

    Click here to check out Awakening Your Ikigai, and actually awaken yours!

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  • 14 Powerful Strategies To Prevent Dementia

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    Dementia risk starts climbing very steeply after the age of 65, but it’s not entirely predetermined. Dr. Brad Stanfield, a primary care physician, has insights:

    The strategies

    We’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:

    • Cognitive stimulation: which means genuinely challenging mental activities using a variety of mental faculties. This will usually mean that anything that is just “same old, same old” all the time will stop giving benefits after a short while once it becomes rote, and you’ll need something harder and/or different.
    • Hearing health: being unable to participate in conversations increases dementia risk; hearing aids can help.
    • Eyesight health: similar to the above; regular eye tests are good, and the use of glasses where appropriate.
    • Depression management: midlife depression is linked to later life dementia, likely in large part due to social isolation and a lack of stimulation, but either way, treating depression earlier reduces later dementia risk.
    • Exercising regularly: what’s good for the heart is good for the brain; the brain is a hungry organ and the blood is what feeds it (and removes things that shouldn’t be there)
    • Head injury avoidance: even mild head injuries can cause problems down the road. Protecting one’s head in sports, and even while casually cycling, is important.
    • Smoking cessation: just don’t smoke; if you smoke, make it a top priority to quit unless you are given direct strong medical advice to the contrary (there are cases, few and far between, whereby quitting smoking genuinely needs to be deferred until after something else is dealt with first, but they are a lot rarer than a lot of people who are simply afraid of quitting would like to believe)
    • Cholesterol management: again, healthy blood means a healthy brain, and that goes for triglycerides too.
    • Weight management: obesity, especially waist to hip ratio (indicating visceral abdominal fat specifically) is associated with many woes, including dementia.
    • Diabetes management: once again, healthy blood means a healthy brain, and that goes for blood sugar management too.
    • Blood pressure management: guess what, healthy blood still means a healthy brain, and that goes for blood pressure too.
    • Alcohol reduction/cessation: alcohol is bad for pretty much everything, and for most people who drink, quitting is probably the top thing to do after quitting smoking.
    • Social engagement: while we all may have our different preferences on a scale of introversion to extroversion, we are fundamentally a social species and thrive best with social contact, even if it’s just a few people.
    • Air pollution reduction: avoiding pollutants, and filtering the air we breathe where pollutants are otherwise unavoidable, makes a measurable difference to brain health outcomes.

    For more information on all of these (except the last two, which really he only mentions in passing), enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk ← our own main feature on the topic

    Take care!

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  • Quit Like a Woman – by Holly Whitaker
  • Why do some young people use Xanax recreationally? What are the risks?

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    Anecdotal reports from some professionals have prompted concerns about young people using prescription benzodiazepines such as Xanax for recreational use.

    Border force detections of these drugs have almost doubled in the past five years, further fuelling the worry.

    So why do young people use them, and how do the harms differ to those used as prescribed by a doctor?

    Dragana Gordic/Shutterstock

    What are benzodiazepines?

    You might know this large group of drugs by their trade names. Valium (diazepam), Xanax (alprazolam), Normison (temazepam) and Rohypnol (flunitrazepam) are just a few examples. Sometimes they’re referred to as minor tranquillisers or, colloquially, as “benzos”.

    They increase the neurotransmitter gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA reduces activity in the brain, producing feelings of relaxation and sedation.

    Unwanted side effects include drowsiness, dizziness and problems with coordination.

    Benzodiazepines used to be widely prescribed for long-term management of anxiety and insomnia. They are still prescribed for these conditions, but less commonly, and are also sometimes used as part of the treatment for cancer, epilepsy and alcohol withdrawal.

    Long-term use can lead to tolerance: when the effect wears off over time. So you need to use more over time to get the same effect. This can lead to dependence: when your body becomes reliant on the drug. There is a very high risk of dependence with these drugs.

    When you stop taking benzodiazepines, you may experience withdrawal symptoms. For those who are dependent, the withdrawal can be long and difficult, lasting for several months or more.

    So now they are only recommended for a few weeks at most for specific short-term conditions.

    How do people get them? And how does it make them feel?

    Benzodiazepines for non-medical use are typically either diverted from legitimate prescriptions or purchased from illicit drug markets including online.

    Some illegally obtained benzodiazepines look like prescription medicines but are counterfeit pills that may contain fentanyl, nitazenes (both synthetic opioids) or other potent substances which can significantly increase the risk of accidental overdose and death.

    When used recreationally, benzodiazepines are usually taken at higher doses than those typically prescribed, so there are even greater risks.

    The effect young people are looking for in using these drugs is a feeling of profound relaxation, reduced inhibition, euphoria and a feeling of detachment from one’s surroundings. Others use them to enhance social experiences or manage the “comedown” from stimulant drugs like MDMA.

    There are risks associated with using at these levels, including memory loss, impaired judgement, and risky behaviour, like unsafe sex or driving.

    Some people report doing things they would not normally do when affected by high doses of benzodiazepines. There are cases of people committing crimes they can’t remember.

    When taken at higher doses or combined with other depressant drugs such as alcohol or opioids, they can also cause respiratory depression, which prevents your lungs from getting enough oxygen. In extreme cases, it can lead to unconsciousness and even death.

    Using a high dose also increases risk of tolerance and dependence.

    Is recreational use growing?

    The data we have about non-prescribed benzodiazepine use among young people is patchy and difficult to interpret.

    The National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2022–23 estimates around 0.5% of 14 to 17 year olds and and 3% of 18 to 24 year olds have used a benzodiazepine for non medical purposes at least once in the past year.

    The Australian Secondary Schools Survey 2022–23 reports that 11% of secondary school students they surveyed had used benzodiazepines in the past year. However they note this figure may include a sizeable proportion of students who have been prescribed benzodiazepines but have inadvertently reported using them recreationally.

    In both surveys, use has remained fairly stable for the past two decades. So only a small percentage of young people have used benzodiazepines without a prescription and it doesn’t seem to be increasing significantly.

    Reports of more young people using benzodiazepines recreationally might just reflect greater comfort among young people in talking about drugs and drug problems, which is a positive thing.

    Prescribing of benzodiazepines to adolescents or young adults has also declined since 2012.

    What can you do to reduce the risks?

    To reduce the risk of problems, including dependence, benzodiazepines should be used for the shortest duration possible at the lowest effective dose.

    Benzodiazepines should not be taken with other medicines without speaking to a doctor or pharmacist.

    You should not drink alcohol or take illicit drugs at the same time as using benzodiazepines.

    Person takes Xanax out of pack
    Benzodiazepines shouldn’t be taken with other medicines, without the go-ahead from your doctor or pharmacist. Cloudy Design/Shutterstock

    Counterfeit benzodiazepines are increasingly being detected in the community. They are more dangerous than pharmaceutical benzodiazepines because there is no quality control and they may contain unexpected and dangerous substances.

    Drug checking services can help people identify what is in substances they intend to take. It also gives them an opportunity to speak to a health professional before they use. People often discard their drugs after they find out what they contain and speak to someone about drug harms.

    If people are using benzodiazepines without a prescription to self manage stress, anxiety or insomnia, this may indicate a more serious underlying condition. Psychological therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy, including mindfulness-based approaches, are very effective in addressing these symptoms and are more effective long term solutions.

    Lifestyle modifications – such as improving exercise, diet and sleep – can also be helpful.

    There are also other medications with a much lower risk of dependence that can be used to treat anxiety and insomnia.

    If you or someone you know needs help with benzodiazepine use, Reconnexions can help. It’s a counselling and support service for people who use benzodiazepines.

    Alternatively, CounsellingOnline is a good place to get information and referral for treatment of benzodiazepine dependence. Or speak to your GP. The Sleep Health Foundation has some great resources if you are having trouble with sleep.

    Nicole Lee, Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne based), Curtin University and Suzanne Nielsen, Professor and Deputy Director, Monash Addiction Research Centre, Monash University

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

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  • Which Style Of Yoga Is Best For You?

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    For you personally, that is—so let’s look at some options, their benefits, and what kind of person is most likely to benefit from each.

    Yoga is, of course, an ancient practice, and like any ancient practice, especially one with so many practitioners (and thus also: so many teachers), there are very many branches to the tree of variations, that is to say, different schools and their offshoots.

    Since we cannot possibly cover all of them, we’ll focus on five broad types that are popular (and thus, likely available near to you, unless you live in a very remote place):

    Hatha Yoga

    This is really the broadest of umbrella categories for yoga as a physical practice of the kind that most immediately comes to mind in the west:

    • Purpose: energizes the practitioner through controlled postures and breath.
    • Practice: non-heated, slow asanas held for about a minute with intentional transitions
    • Benefits: reduces stress, improves flexibility, tones muscles, and boosts circulation.
    • Best for: beginners with an active lifestyle.

    Vinyasa Yoga

    You may also have heard of this called simply “Flow”, without reference to the Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi sense of the word. Rather, it is about a flowing practice:

    • Purpose: builds heat and strength through continuous, flowing movement paired with breath.
    • Practice: dynamic sequences of the same general kind as the sun salutation, leading to a final resting pose.
    • Benefits: enhances heart health, strengthens core, tones muscles, and improves flexibility.
    • Best for: beginner to intermediate yogis seeking a cardio-based practice.

    Hot Yoga

    This one’s well-known and the clue is in the name; it’s yoga practised in a very hot room:

    • Purpose: uses heat to increase heart rate, and loosen muscles.
    • Practice: heated studio (32–42℃, which is 90–108℉), often with vinyasa flows, resulting in heavy sweating*
    • Benefits: burns calories, improves mood, enhances skin, and builds bone density.
    • Best for: intermediate yogis comfortable with heat; not recommended for certain health conditions.

    *and also sometimes heat exhaustion / heat stroke. This problem arises most readily when the ambient temperature is higher than human body temperature, because that is the point at which sweating ceases to fulfil its biological function of cooling us down.

    Noteworthily, a study found that doing the same series of yoga postures in the same manner, but without the heat, produced the same health benefits without the risk:

    ❝The primary finding from this investigation is that the hatha yoga postures in the Bikram yoga series produce similar enhancements in endothelium-dependent vasodilatation in healthy, middle-aged adults regardless of environmental temperature. These findings highlight the efficacy of yoga postures in producing improvements in vascular health and downplay the necessity of the heated practice environment in inducing vascular adaptations.❞

    Source: Effects of yoga interventions practised in heated and thermoneutral conditions on endothelium-dependent vasodilatation: The Bikram yoga heart study

    (“Bikram yoga” is simply the brand name of a particular school of hot yoga)

    Yin Yoga

    This is a Chinese variation, and is in some ways the opposite of the more vigorous forms, being gentler in pretty much all ways:

    • Purpose: promotes deep tissue stretching and circulation by keeping muscles cool.
    • Practice: passive, floor-based asanas held for 5–20 minutes in a calming environment.
    • Benefits: increases flexibility, enhances circulation, improves mindfulness, and emotional release.
    • Best for: all levels, regardless of health or flexibility.

    Restorative Yoga

    This is often tailored to a specific condition, but it doesn’t have to be:

    • Purpose: encourages relaxation and healing through supported, restful poses.
    • Practice: reclined, prop-supported postures in a soothing, low-lit setting.
    • Benefits: relieves stress, reduces chronic pain, calms the nervous system, and supports healing.
    • Best for: those recovering from illness/injury or managing emotional stress.

    See for example: Yoga Therapy for Arthritis: A Whole-Person Approach to Movement and Lifestyle

    Want to know more?

    If you’re still unsure where to start, check out:

    Yoga Teacher: “If I wanted to get flexible (from scratch) in 2025, here’s what I’d do”

    Take care!

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  • The Gym For Your Mental Health

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    Getting The Most Out Of Therapy

    If you’ve never had therapy, what image do you have of it? Perhaps you imagine a bearded and bespectacled man in a suit, impassively making notes on a clipboard. Perhaps you imagine an empathetic woman, with tissues and camomile tea on standby.

    The reality is: the experience of therapy can vary, a lot.

    In its results, too! Sometimes we may try therapy and think “well that was a waste of time and money”. Sometimes we may try therapy and it’ll change our life.

    So… Is there any way to make it less of a lottery?

    First: knowledge is power

    And while the therapist-client relationship certainly shouldn’t be a power struggle, you do want to be empowered.

    So, read about different styles of therapy, and also, read some how-to guides for self-therapy. We’ve recommended some before in previous editions of 10almonds; you can check those books out here:

    This will serve two purposes:

    • You’ll know what to expect out of a therapist
    • You can more efficiently “get to work” in therapy

    It also, of course, could help you already, without even going to therapy!

    Second: begin with the end in mind

    A person who does not know what they want to get out of therapy, will likely not get much out of therapy. Or rather, their first task will be to figure that out. So, figure it out in advance, if you can.

    Maybe you have a problem that has a specific name, for example poor self-esteem, anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, neuroticism, phobia, etc.

    This isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous, and in this case you don’t want a lifetime of “Hello, my name is ______ and I have ______”, if you can help it.

    So, what do you want?

    • Maybe you want to be able to go to social events without feeling anxious
    • Maybe you want your relationship(s) to be more secure and fulfilling
    • Maybe you want to no longer have nightmares about that traumatic thing
    • Maybe you want to be able to greet each day’s tasks with confidence and without overwhelm

    …etc.

    A good therapist will help you to set such goals (if you haven’t already), and attain them.

    If you’re going the self-therapy route, then this is your job now!

    It will probably start with the question: imagine that everything currently troubling you is now healed.

    What would that look like, to you?

    Third: get a good match for you

    Unless you are going entirely the self-therapy route (which can work for some), you will want a therapist who’s a good match for you.

    It may take a degree of “suck it and see” trial runs before you find the right one, but that takes time and money, so you’ll want to streamline the process as much as you can. If you do this well, you may be able to find a good therapist for you first time.

    For this, personal recommendations (such as from friends) may help more than exmaining academic and institutional affiliations.

    Yes, you want a well-qualified therapist who is a member in good standing of a respectable regulated body… but whether your therapist is easy for you to “get on with” will matter at least as much as whether their approach is psychodynamic, or 4th wave CBT, or IFS, or whatever seems popular in your time and place.

    Bear in mind:

    • Some therapists are specialized in helping with some kinds of things and not others. It will obviously help if the therapist you choose is specialized in the thing you are seeking help for.
    • Some therapists may be able to relate to you better (or not), based on simple factors of who they are. To this end, while your therapist certainly doesn’t have to be a mirror image of you, factors like age, gender, race, etc can be relevant and may be worth considering, depending on what you are seeking help with, and what factors impact that thing.

    Prefer keeping things to yourself?

    Therapy isn’t for everyone, but having a good relationship with oneself definitely is. You might want to invest in one of the books whose reviews we linked above, and you might also get value from previous Psychology Sunday articles, which you can find in our archive (every seventh edition here has a Psychology Sunday main feature):

    Click Here To Check Out The 10almonds Archive

    To borrow the catchphrase of Dr. Kirk Honda (a therapist and therapy educator with decades of experience):

    ❝Take care of yourself, because you deserve it; you really, really do.❞

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