Nicotine Benefits (That We Don’t Recommend)!
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Does nicotine have any benefits at all? I know it’s incredibly addictive but if you exclude the addiction, does it do anything?❞
Good news: yes, nicotine is a stimulant and can be considered a performance enhancer, for example:
❝Compared with the placebo group, the nicotine group exhibited enhanced motor reaction times, grooved pegboard test (GPT) results on cognitive function, and baseball-hitting performance, and small effect sizes were noted (d = 0.47, 0.46 and 0.41, respectively).❞
Read in full: Acute Effects of Nicotine on Physiological Responses and Sport Performance in Healthy Baseball Players
However, another study found that its use as a cognitive enhancer was only of benefit when there was already a cognitive impairment:
❝Studies of the effects of nicotinic systems and/or nicotinic receptor stimulation in pathological disease states such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia show the potential for therapeutic utility of nicotinic drugs.
In contrast to studies in pathological states, studies of nicotine in normal-non-smokers tend to show deleterious effects.
This contradiction can be resolved by consideration of cognitive and biological baseline dependency differences between study populations in terms of the relationship of optimal cognitive performance to nicotinic receptor activity.
Although normal individuals are unlikely to show cognitive benefits after nicotinic stimulation except under extreme task conditions, individuals with a variety of disease states can benefit from nicotinic drugs❞
Read in full: Effects of nicotinic stimulation on cognitive performance
Bad news: its addictive qualities wipe out those benefits due to tolerance and thus normalization in short order. So you may get those benefits briefly, but then you’re addicted and also lose the benefits, as well as also ruining your health—making it a lose/lose/lose situation quite quickly.
As an aside, while nicotine is poisonous per se, in the quantities taken by most users, the nicotine itself is not usually what kills. It’s mostly the other stuff that comes with it (smoking is by far and away the worst of all; vaping is relatively less bad, but that’s not a strong statement in this case) that causes problems.
See also: Vaping: A Lot Of Hot Air?
However, this is still not an argument for, say, getting nicotine gum and thinking “no harmful effects” because then you’ll be get a brief performance boost yes before it runs out and being addicted to it and now being in a position whereby if you stop, your performance will be lower than before you started (since you now got used to it, and it became your new normal), before eventually recovering:
In summary
We recommend against using nicotine in the first place, and for those who are addicted, we recommend quitting immediately if not contraindicated (check with your doctor if unsure; there are some situations where it is inadvisable to take away something your body is dependent on, until you correct some other thing first).
For more on quitting in general, see:
Addiction Myths That Are Hard To Quit
Take care!
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Severe Complications for Pregnant Veterans Nearly Doubled in the Last Decade, a GAO Report Finds
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ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Series: Post-Roe America:Abortion Access Divides the Nation
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly 50 years of federal protection for abortion, some states began enforcing strict abortion bans while others became new havens for the procedure. ProPublica is investigating how sweeping changes to reproductive health care access in America are affecting people, institutions and governments.
Over the past decade, the rate of veterans suffering severe pregnancy complications has risen dramatically, a new federal report found.
Veterans have raced to the hospital with dangerous infections, kidney failure, aneurysms or blood loss. They’ve required hysterectomies, breathing machines and blood transfusions to save their lives. Between 2011 and 2020, 13 veterans died after such complications.
The report found that among people getting health care benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, the rate of severe complications nearly doubled during that time, from about 93 per 10,000 hospitalizations in 2011 to just over 184 per 10,000 hospitalizations in 2020. Black veterans had the highest rates.
The report, which was put together by the Government Accountability Office, also made recommendations for reducing the problem, which focus on conducting more routine screenings throughout pregnancy and in the postpartum period.
“It is imperative that the VA help ensure veterans have the healthiest pregnancy outcomes possible,” the report said, highlighting the increasing number of veterans using the agency’s maternity benefits as well as the troublesome complication rates faced by Black women.
The report’s findings are an unfortunate trend, said Alyssa Hundrup, director of health care at the GAO. The office analyzed data on 40,000 hospitalizations related to deliveries paid for by the VA. It captures a time period before 21 states banned or greatly restricted abortion and the military was thrust into a political battle over whether it would pay for active service members to travel for abortion care if a pregnancy was a risk to their health.
Hundrup, who led the review, said the analysis included hospital records from days after delivery to a year postpartum. The report was mandated after Congress passed a law in 2021 that aimed to address the maternal health crisis among veterans. The law led to a $15 million investment in maternity care coordination programs for veterans.
The report recommended that the VA analyze and collect more data on severe complications as well as data on the mental health, race and ethnicity of veterans who experience complications to understand the causes behind the increase and the reasons for the disparity. The report also states that oversight is needed to ensure screenings are being completed.
Studies show there’s a connection between mental health conditions and pregnancy-related complications, VA officials said.
The report recommended expanding the screening questions that providers ask patients at appointments to glean more information about their mental health, including anxiety and PTSD symptoms. It urged the VA to review the data more regularly.
“You don’t know what you don’t measure,” Hundrup said in an interview with ProPublica.
The VA health system, which historically served a male population, does not provide maternity care at its facilities. Instead, the agency has outsourced maternity care. But when patients were treated by those providers, the VA failed to track whether they were getting screened for other health issues and mental health problems.
Officials hope the improved data collection will help the VA study underlying issues that may lead to complications. For example, do higher rates of anxiety have a connection to rates of high blood pressure in pregnant people?
VA officials are working with a maternal health review committee to monitor the data as it is gathered. The agency recently conducted its first review of data going back five years about pregnancy-related complications, said Dr. Amanda Johnson, acting head of the VA’s Office of Women’s Health, who is overseeing the implementation of the report’s recommendations.
The VA has created a dashboard to monitor pregnant veterans’ health outcomes. The VA’s data analysis team will also examine the impact of veterans’ ages on complications and whether they differ for people who live in urban and rural areas.
VA officials will begin to review mental health screenings conducted by maternal care coordinators in March. The coordinators advocate for veterans, helping them between health care visits, whether their providers are inside or outside the VA.
Johnson said that reducing racial and ethnic disparities is a priority for the agency. In 2018, ProPublica published “Lost Mothers,” a series that shed light on the country’s maternal health crisis. Studies have shown that in the general population, Black women are three times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications. While deaths made up only a small portion of the bad outcomes for Black veterans cited in the report, VA care could not spare them from elevated rates of severe complications. Johnson said the maternal health crisis also persists within the VA.
“There is a disparity,” Johnson said. “We are not immune to that.”
Research shows pregnant people who have used the VA’s coverage have higher rates of trauma and mental conditions that can increase their risks of complications and bad outcomes.
This may be because many people who join the military enter it having already faced trauma, said Dr. Laura Miller, a psychiatrist and the medical director of reproductive mental health at the VA.
She said veterans with PTSD have higher rates of complications such as preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition related to high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and postpartum depression. If untreated during pregnancy, depression also increases the likelihood of preterm birth and lingering problems for babies.
Hundrup said she hopes this proactive work will improve maternal health.
“We want these numbers trending in the other direction,” Hundrup said.
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Save Your Back With Strong Glutes
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Your glutes really are the seat of your power, and without strong glutes, your back tries to pick up the slack. Unfortunately, without strong glutes, your back can only do that with questionable body mechanics, and guess who suffers for it?
So instead…
The brain-butt connection
It might sound funny, but it’s true! Most squats don’t train the glutes through a proper neural connection; they over-recruit the quads and other nearby muscles, meaning the glutes have no reason to get stronger.
This trainer (Elisi Wolf)’s own lower-back injury (sacroiliac joint ligament tear) forced a shift away from traditional squats. That injury led to years of experimenting, and she found that Bulgarian split squats are different in this regard.
How they’re different: Bulgarian split squats reduce distractions to the brain, letting it build stronger neural pathways to the glutes, in contrast to how traditional squats divide focus between multiple large muscle groups and turn the movement into a calorie-burning, full-body effort rather than isolated glute training.
Additionally, because Bulgarian split squats use lighter weight and one leg at a time, they allow better control, slower reps, and more focused muscle engagement—all key for glute hypertrophy (and thus: strengthening).
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Bulgarian Split Squats: How To Get The Best Glute Strength & Size ← this one details how, specifically, to do Bulgarian split squats correctly (and avoid common mistakes)
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5 Ways Your Pets Can Make You Sick
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Having a pet often improves one’s health, due to such things as the pleasant company and increased exercise (depending on the pet, of course).
But it’s not always so:
Watch out for…
None of these are fun:
- Cat scratch disease: infection with Bartonella bacteria transmitted through a bite or scratch from a cat—especially kittens carrying infected fleas—causing a bump at the wound followed weeks later by fever and swollen lymph nodes.
- Salmonella from reptiles: infection with Salmonella bacteria carried on the skin or shell of turtles, frogs, and other reptiles or amphibians, which can spread through contaminated surfaces like sinks or bathtubs used to clean their habitats.
- Fish tank infection: skin infection with Mycobacterium marinum can be acquired while cleaning a fish tank, producing a slowly spreading rash along the arm.
- Bird fancier’s lung: a form of hypersensitivity pneumonitis caused by inhaling proteins from bird feathers or droppings, leading to chronic cough, lung inflammation, and shortness of breath in people exposed to birds.
- cutaneous larva migrans (hookworm infection): parasitic larvae from dog or cat hookworms burrow into your skin after contact with contaminated soil or sand, producing an intensely itchy (and migrating) rash.
For more on each of these, plus illustrative case studies of how bad it gets with each, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
If you have a pet as a kid, does this lower your risk of asthma and eczema?
Take care!
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In Plain English…
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It’s Q&A Time!
This is the bit whereby each week, we respond to subscriber questions/requests/etc
Have something you’d like to ask us, or ask us to look into? Hit reply to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom, and a Real Human™ will be glad to read it!
Q: Love to have someone research all the additives in our medicines, (risk of birth control and breast cancer) and what goes in all of our food and beverages. So much info out there, but there are so many variations, you never know who to believe.
That’s a great idea! There are a lot of medicines and food and beverages out there, so that’s quite a broad brief, but! We could well do a breakdown of very common additives, and demystify them, sorting them into good/bad/neutral, e.g:
- Ascorbic acid—Good! This is Vitamin C
- Acetic acid—Neutral! This is vinegar
- Acetylsalicylic acid—Good or Bad! This is aspirin (a painkiller and blood-thinning agent, can be good for you or can cause more problems than it solves, depending on your personal medical situation. If in doubt, check with your doctor)
- Acesulfame K—Generally Neutral! This is a sweetener that the body can’t metabolize, so it’s also not a source of potassium (despite containing potassium) and will generally do nothing. Unless you have an allergy to it, which is rare but is a thing.
- Sucralose—Neutral! This is technically a sugar (as is anything ending in -ose), but the body can’t metabolize it and processes it as a dietary fiber instead. We’d list it as good for that reason, but honestly, we doubt you’re eating enough sucralose to make a noticeable difference to your daily fiber intake.
- Sucrose—Bad! This is just plain sugar
Sometimes words that sound the same can ring alarm bells when they need not, for example there’s a big difference between:
- Potassium iodide (a good source of potassium and iodine)
- Potassium cyanide (the famous poison; 300mg will kill you; half that dose will probably kill you)
- Cyanocobalamine (Vitamin B12)
Let us know if there are particular additives (or particular medications) you’d like us to look at!
While for legal reasons we cannot give medical advice, talking about common contraindications (e.g., it’s generally advised to not take this with that, as one will stop the other from working, etc) is definitely something we could do.
For example! St. John’s Wort, very popular as a herbal mood-brightener, is on the list of contraindications for so many medications, including:
- Antidepressants
- Birth control pills
- Cyclosporine, which prevents the body from rejecting transplanted organs
- Some heart medications, including digoxin and ivabradine
- Some HIV drugs, including indinavir and nevirapine
- Some cancer medications, including irinotecan and imatinib
- Warfarin, an anticoagulant (blood thinner)
- Certain statins, including simvastatin
Q: As I am a retired nurse, I am always interested in new medical technology and new ways of diagnosing. I have recently heard of using the eyes to diagnose Alzheimer’s. When I did some research I didn’t find too much. I am thinking the information may be too new or I wasn’t on the right sites.
(this is in response to last week’s piece on lutein, eyes, and brain health)
We’d readily bet that the diagnostic criteria has to do with recording low levels of lutein in the eye (discernible by a visual examination of macular pigment optical density), and relying on the correlation between this and incidence of Alzheimer’s, but we’ve not seen it as a hard diagnostic tool as yet either—we’ll do some digging and let you know what we find! In the meantime, we note that the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (which may be of interest to you, if you’re not already subscribed) is onto this:
See also:
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (mixture of free and paid content)
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports (open access—all content is free)
Q: As to specific health topics, I would love to see someone address all these Instagram ads targeted to women that claim “You only need to ‘balance your hormones’ to lose weight, get ripped, etc.” What does this mean? Which hormones are they all talking about? They all seem to be selling a workout program and/or supplements or something similar, as they are ads, after all. Is there any science behind this stuff or is it mostly hot air, as I suspect?
Thank you for asking this, as your question prompted yesterday’s main feature, What Does “Balancing Your Hormones” Even Mean?
That’s a great suggestion also about addressing ads (and goes for health-related things in general, not just hormonal stuff) and examining their claims, what they mean, how they work (if they work!), and what’s “technically true but may
be misleading* cause confusion”*We don’t want companies to sue us, of course.
Only, we’re going to need your help for this one, subscribers!
See, here at 10almonds we practice what we preach. We limit screen time, we focus on our work when working, and simply put, we don’t see as many ads as our thousands of subscribers do. Also, ads tend to be targeted to the individual, and often vary from country to country, so chances are good that we’re not seeing the same ads that you’re seeing.
So, how about we pull together as a bit of a 10almonds community project?
- Step 1: add our email address to your contacts list, if you haven’t already
- Step 2: When you see an ad you’re curious about, select “share” (there is usually an option to share ads, but if not, feel free to screenshot or such)
- Step 3: Send the ad to us by email
We’ll do the rest! Whenever we have enough ads to review, we’ll do a special on the topic.
We will categorically not be able to do this without you, so please do join in—Many thanks in advance!
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These 5 Muscles Make You Look Younger After 60 (& How To Work Them)
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Will Harlow, the over-50s specialist physio, explains:
It’s mostly not about size
The reality is that looking younger depends more on posture, movement, and body control than muscle size, and training these key areas consistently improves how you stand, walk, and carry yourself:
- Postural muscles: strengthening your rhomboids, latissimus dorsi, and trapezius improves posture by pulling your shoulder blades backwards and downwards, which reverses rounded shoulders, a forward “buzzard” neck, and a hunched appearance that makes you look older.
- Dumbbell bent-over row: hinge at your hips with a straight back, keep your knees slightly bent, pull the weights towards your lower stomach while squeezing your shoulder blades together, then lower under control (without moving your torso).
- Glutes: strong glutes improve your walking pattern by restoring hip extension, preventing a short, shuffling gait that looks (and is) slower and more fragile.
- Weighted glute bridge: lie on your back with a weight on your pelvis, press through your heels to lift your hips, squeeze your glutes at the top, then lower it back down without fully relaxing, to keep tension.
- Shoulders (deltoids): strengthening your deltoids restores shoulder width and positioning, helping your arms sit more open, and your upper body to look more upright and confident.
- Lateral raise: stand tall with weights at your sides, raise your arms out to shoulder height with control, then lower them slowly, keeping the movement smooth and avoiding shoulder discomfort.
- Thigh muscles: maintaining strength and size in your thighs supports walking, stair climbing, and overall independence while preventing a frail appearance too.
- Goblet box squat: hold a weight at your chest, hinge forwards with a straight back, lower slowly until you lightly touch a chair, then stand back up while keeping tension in your legs.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
5 Daily Exercises to Look & Feel 10 Years Younger
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
- Postural muscles: strengthening your rhomboids, latissimus dorsi, and trapezius improves posture by pulling your shoulder blades backwards and downwards, which reverses rounded shoulders, a forward “buzzard” neck, and a hunched appearance that makes you look older.
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Bulletproof Squat: Flow That Improves Depth & Stability
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Marina Sarenac, mobility coach, shows how to get there:
Let’s get down to it
First of all, we must register our astonishment about this:
❝A few months ago, I couldn’t even hit parallel in my squats. My hips felt tight, weak, and painful.❞
How did this happen? She is a mobility coach; what went wrong?! Was she injured? She doesn’t mention an explanation.
She does go on to say:
❝And honestly, I almost gave up on squats completely. But then I found a simple flow of four exercises that changed everything. My hips opened up, my depth improved, and now I feel stronger and even more stable than ever. And I’m going to show you exactly how you can do it, too.❞
So, maybe, notwithstanding the use of the word “honestly”, it’s possible there was actually a little dishonesty there; that is to say: perhaps she is telling a story she hopes will be relatable in order to get people on board and understand that they can do it too. This is sometimes called “the advertising hero’s journey”, as it’s often used in long-form ads for things, telling “I, dear reader, was just like you, and…” explaining what they were getting wrong, how they learned better, how it changed their life, and how you can do it too, for the low low price of whatever they’re selling.
However! Whether her story is true or not, the exercise are good, so here they are:
- Bear rock: you’ve heard of classic rock, glam rock, and punk rock; now here’s bear rock! Or rather, a bear rock-back. Focus on putting your hips backwards, like you’re rocking into the bottom of a squat. Feel the stretch in your adductors and keep your spine natural.
- “World’s greatest stretch” with a jump switch: step into a deep lunge, put your elbow on the floor, open your chest and put your hand up, then switch sides with a jump.
- Cossack squat with internal hip rotation: set your feet well part, and squat down with one leg or the other, creating a lung-like result, holding a weight in front you (a kettlebell is great for this, but any medium-sized manageable weight is fine) to work that internal hip rotation.
- Squat-knee-hinge flow: start in the lowest squat you can currently do, shift into a kneeling position, then hinge your hips back, and repeat.
For more on all of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
The Secret To Better Squats: Foot, Knee, & Ankle Mobility
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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