No, beetroot isn’t vegetable Viagra. But here’s what else it can do
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Beetroot has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Supply issues in recent months have seen a shortage of tinned beetroot on Australian supermarket shelves. At one point, a tin was reportedly selling on eBay for more than A$65.
But as supplies increase, we turn our attention to beetroot’s apparent health benefits.
Is beetroot really vegetable Viagra, as UK TV doctor Michael Mosley suggests? What about beetroot’s other apparent health benefits – from reducing your blood pressure to improving your daily workout? Here’s what the science says.
What’s so special about beetroot?
Beetroot – alongside foods such as berries, nuts and leafy greens – is a “superfood”. It contains above-average levels per gram of certain vitamins and minerals.
Beetroot is particularly rich in vitamin B and C, minerals, fibre and antioxidants.
Most cooking methods don’t significantly alter its antioxidant levels. Pressure cooking does, however, lower levels of carotenoid (a type of antioxidant) compared to raw beetroot.
Processing into capsules, powders, chips or juice may affect beetroot’s ability to act as an antioxidant. However, this can vary between products, including between different brands of beetroot juice.
Is beetroot really vegetable Viagra?
The Romans are said to have used beetroot and its juice as an aphrodisiac.
But there’s limited scientific evidence to say beetroot improves your sex life. This does not mean it doesn’t. Rather, the vast number of scientific studies looking at the effect of beetroot have not measured libido or other aspects of sexual health.
How could it work?
When we eat beetroot, chemical reactions involving bacteria and enzymes transform the nitrate in beetroot into nitrite, then to nitric oxide. Nitric oxide helps dilate (widen) blood vessels, potentially improving circulation.
The richest sources of dietary nitric oxide that have been tested in clinical studies are beetroot, rocket and spinach.
Nitric oxide is also thought to support testosterone in its role in controlling blood flow before and during sex in men.
Beetroot’s ability to improve blood flow can benefit the circulatory system of the heart and blood vessels. This may positively impact sexual function, theoretically in men and women.
Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest there could be a modest link between beetroot and preparedness for sex, but don’t expect it to transform your sex life.
What else could it do?
Beetroot has received increasing attention over recent years due to its antioxidant and anti-tumour effect in humans.
Clinical trials have not verified all beetroot’s active ingredients and their effects. However, beetroot may be a potentially helpful treatment for various health issues related to oxidative stress and inflammation, such as cancer and diabetes. The idea is that you can take beetroot supplements or eat extra beetroot alongside your regular medicines (rather than replace them).
There is evidence beetroot juice can help lower systolic blood pressure (the first number in your blood pressure reading) by 2.73-4.81 mmHg (millimetres of mercury, the standard unit of measuring blood pressure) in people with high blood pressure. Some researchers say this reduction is comparable to the effects seen with certain medications and dietary interventions.
Other research finds even people without high blood pressure (but at risk of it) could benefit.
Beetroot may also improve athletic performance. Some studies show small benefits for endurance athletes (who run, swim or cycle long distances). These studies looked at various forms of the food, such as beetroot juice as well as beetroot-based supplements.
How to get more beetroot in your diet
There is scientific evidence to support positive impacts of consuming beetroot in whole, juice and supplement forms. So even if you can’t get hold of tinned beetroot, there are plenty of other ways you can get more beetroot into your diet. You can try:
- raw beetroot – grate raw beetroot and add it to salads or coleslaw, or slice beetroot to use as a crunchy topping for sandwiches or wraps
- cooked beetroot – roast beetroot with olive oil, salt and pepper for a flavour packed side dish. Alternatively, steam beetroot and serve it as a standalone dish or mixed into other dishes
- beetroot juice – make fresh beetroot juice using a juicer. You can combine it with other fruits and vegetables for added flavour. You can also blend raw or cooked beetroot with water and strain to make a juice
- smoothies – add beetroot to your favourite smoothie. It pairs well with fruits such as berries, apples and oranges
- soups – use beetroot in soups for both flavour and colour. Borscht is a classic beetroot soup, but you can also experiment with other recipes
- pickled beetroot – make pickled beetroot at home, or buy it from the supermarket. This can be a tasty addition to salads or sandwiches
- beetroot hummus – blend cooked beetroot into your homemade hummus for a vibrant and nutritious dip. You can also buy beetroot hummus from the supermarket
- grilled beetroot – slice beetroot and grill it for a smoky flavour
- beetroot chips – slice raw beetroot thinly, toss the slices with olive oil and your favourite seasonings, then bake or dehydrate them to make crispy beetroot chips
- cakes and baked goods – add grated beetroot to muffins, cakes, or brownies for a moist and colourful twist.
Are there any downsides?
Compared to the large number of studies on the beneficial effects of beetroot, there is very little evidence of negative side effects.
If you eat large amounts of beetroot, your urine may turn red or purple (called beeturia). But this is generally harmless.
There have been reports in some countries of beetroot-based dietary supplements contaminated with harmful substances, yet we have not seen this reported in Australia.
What’s the take-home message?
Beetroot may give some modest boost to sex for men and women, likely by helping your circulation. But it’s unlikely to transform your sex life or act as vegetable Viagra. We know there are many contributing factors to sexual wellbeing. Diet is only one.
For individually tailored support talk to your GP or an accredited practising dietitian.
Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland and Emily Burch, Lecturer, Southern Cross University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Water Fluoridation, Atheroma, & More
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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 😎
❝I watched a documentary recently on Fluoride in our drinking water & the dangers of it. Why are we poisoning our water?❞
This is a great question, and it certainly is controversial. It sounds like the documentary you watched was predominantly or entirely negative, but there’s a lot of science to back both sides of this, and it’s not even that the science is contradictory (it’s not). It’s that what differs is people’s opinions about whether benefiting one thing is worth creating a risk to another, and that means looking at:
- What is the risk associated with taking no action (error of omission)?
- What is the risk associated with taking an action (error of commission)?
The whole topic is worth a main feature, but to summarize a few key points:
- Water fluoridation is considered good for the prevention of dental cavities
- Water fluoridation aims to deliver fluoride and doses far below dangerous levels
- This requires working on consumer averages, though
- ”Where do we put the safety margins?” is to some extent a subjective question, in terms of trading off one aspect of health for another
- Too much fluoride can also be bad for the teeth (at least cosmetically, creating little white* spots)
- Detractors of fluoride tend to mostly be worried about neurological harm
- However, the doses in public water supplies are almost certainly far below the levels required to cause this harm.
- That said, again this is working on consumer averages, though.
- However, the doses in public water supplies are almost certainly far below the levels required to cause this harm.
- A good guide is: watch your teeth! Those white* spots will be “the canary in the coal mine” of more serious harm that could potentially come from higher levels due to overconsumption of fluorine.
*Teeth are not supposed to be pure white. The “Hollywood smile” is a lie. Teeth are supposed to be a slightly off-white, ivory color. Anything whiter than that is adding something else that shouldn’t be there, or stripping something off that should be there.
❝How does your diet change clean out your arteries of the bad cholesterol?❞
There’s good news and bad news here, and they can both be delivered with a one-word reply:
Slowly.
Or rather: what’s being cleaned out is mostly not the LDL (bad) cholesterol, but rather, the result of that.
When our diet is bad for cardiovascular health, our arteries get fatty deposits on their walls. Cholesterol gets stuck here too, but that’s not the main physical problem.
Our body’s natural defenses come into action and try to clean it up, but they (for example macrophages, a kind of white blood cell that consumes invaders and then dies, before being recycled by the next part of the system) often get stuck and become part of the buildup (called atheroma), which can lead to atherosclerosis and (if calcium levels are high) hardening of the arteries, which is the worst end of this.
This can then require medical attention, precisely because the body can’t remove it very well—especially if you are still maintaining a heart-unhealthy diet, thus continuing to add to the mess.
However, if it is not too bad yet, yes, a dietary change alone will reverse this process. Without new material being added to the arterial walls, the body’s continual process of rejuvenation will eventually fix it, given time (free from things making it worse) and resources.
In fact, your arteries can be one of the quickest places for your body to make something better or worse, because the blood is the means by which the body moves most things (good or bad) around the body.
All the more reason to take extra care of it, since everything else depends on it!
You might also like our previous main feature:
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Keep Cellulite At Bay
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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 anything actually get rid of cellulite? Nothing seems to❞
Let’s get the bad news over with in one go:
Nothing (that the scientific world currently knows of) can get rid of cellulite permanently, nor completely guard against it proactively. Which, given that it affects up to 98% of women to some degree, and often shows up not long after puberty (though it can appear at any time and often increases later in life), any pre-emptive health regime would need to be started as a child in any case.
As with many things that predominantly affect women, the world of medicine isn’t entirely sure what causes it, let alone how to effectively treat it.
Obviously hormones are implicated, namely estrogen.
Obviously adiposity is implicated, because one can’t have dimples in one’s fat if one doesn’t have enough fat to dimple.
Other hypothesized contributory factors include genetics, poor diet, inactivity, unhealthy lifestyle (in ways not previously mentioned, e.g. use of alcohol, tobacco, etc), accumulated toxins, and pregnancy.
Here’s an old paper (from 2004); today’s reviews say pretty much the same thing, but we love how succinctly (albeit, somewhat depressingly) this abstract states how little we know and how little we can do:
Cellulite: a review of its physiology and treatment
However, all is not lost!
There are some things that can affect how much cellulite we get, and there are some things that can reduce it, and even some things that can get rid of it completely—albeit temporarily.
First, a quick refresher on what it actually is, physiologically speaking: cellulite occurs when connective tissue bands pull the skin down in places, where fat tissue has been able to squeeze through. One of the reasons it is hypothesized women get this more than men is because our fat is not merely different in distribution and overall percentage, but also in how the fat cells stack up; we generally have have of a vertical stacking structure going on, while men generally have a more horizontal structure. This means that it can be easier for ours to get moved about differently, causing the connective tissue to pull on the skin unevenly in places.
With that in mind…
Prevention is, as we say, probably impossible if your body is running on estrogen. However, those contributory factors we mentioned above? Most of those are modifiable, including these things that it is hypothesized can reduce it:
Diet: as it seems to be worsened by inflammation (what isn’t?), an anti-inflammatory diet is recommended.
Exercise: there are three things here: 1) exercises to improve circulation and thus the body’s ability to sort things out by itself 2) HIIT exercise to reduce body fat percentage, if one has a high enough starting body fat percentage for that to be a healthy goal 3) mobility exercises, to ensure our connective tissues are the right amount of mobile.
Creams and lotions
These reduce the superficial appearance of cellulite, without actually treating the thing itself. Mostly they are caffeine-based, which when used topically increases blood flow and works as a local diuretic, reducing the water content of the fat cells, diminishing the appearance of the cellulite by making each fat cell physically smaller (while still containing the same amount of fat, and it’ll bounce back in size as soon as the body can restore osmotic balance).
Medical procedures
There are too many of these to discuss them all separately, but they all work on the principle of breaking up the tough bands of connective tissue to eliminate the dimpling of cellulite.
The methods they use vary from ultrasound to cryolipolysis to lasers to “vacuum-assisted precise tissue release”, which involves a suction pump and a multipronged robotic assembly with needles to administer anaesthetic as it goes and small blades to cut the connective tissues under the skin:
Tissue Stabilized–Guided Subcision for the Treatment of Cellulite
That last one definitely sounds like the least fun, but it’s also the only one that doesn’t take months to maybe see results.
Cellulite can and almost certainly will come back after all of these.
Home remedies
Aside from at-home versions of the above (not the robots with vacuum pumps and needles and microblades, hopefully, but for example homemade caffeine creams), and of course diet and exercise which can be considered “home remedies”, there are two more things worth mentioning:
Dry brushing: using a body brush to, as the name suggests, simply brush one’s skin. The “dry” aspect here is simply that it’s not done in the bath or shower; it’s done while dry. It can improve local circulation of blood and lymph, allowing for better detoxification and redistribution of needed bodily resources.
Here’s an example dry brushing body brush on Amazon; this writer has one and hates it, but I’ve also tried with other kinds of brush and hate them too, so it seems to be a me thing rather than a brush thing, and I have desisted in trying, now. Maybe you will like it better; many people do.
Self-massage: or massage by someone else, if that’s an option for you and you prefer. In this case, it works by a different mechanism than dry brushing; this time it’s working by the same principle as the medical techniques described in the previous section; it’s physically breaking down the toughened bits of connective tissue.
Here’s an example wooden massage roller on Amazon; this writer has one and loves it; it’s sooooooo good. I got it as a matter of general maintenance for my fascia, but it’s also very good if I get a muscular pain now and again. As for cellulite, I personally get just a little cellulite sometimes (in the backs of my thighs), and whenever I use this regularly, it goes away for at least a while.
A quick note in closing
Cellulite is normal for women and is not unhealthy. Much like gray hair for example, it’s something that can be increased by poor health, but the thing itself isn’t intrinsically unhealthy, and most of us get it to some degree at some point.
Nevertheless, aesthetic factors can also have a role to play in mental health, and we tend to feel best when we like the way our body looks. If for you that means wanting less/no cellulite, then the above are some ways towards that.
As a bonus, most of the nonmedical options are directly good for the physical health anyway, so doing them is of course good.
In particular that last one (the wooden massage roller), because that connective tissue we talked about? It matters for a lot more than just cellulite, and is heavily implicated in a lot of kinds of chronic pain, so it pays to keep it in good health:
Fascia: Why (And How) You Should Take Care Of Yours
(that article, also written by this same writer by the way, suggests a vibrating foam roller—those are very popular; I just really love my wooden one, and find it more effective)
Take care!
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Mythbusting The Mask Debate
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Mythbusting The Mask Debate
We asked you for your mask policy this respiratory virus season, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- A little under half of you said you will be masking when practical in indoor public places
- A little over a fifth of you said you will mask only if you have respiratory virus symptoms
- A little under a fifth of you said that you will not mask, because you don’t think it helps
- A much smaller minority of you (7%) said you will go with whatever people around you are doing
- An equally small minority of you said that you will not mask, because you’re not concerned about infections
So, what does the science say?
Wearing a mask reduces the transmission of respiratory viruses: True or False?
True…with limitations. The limitations include:
- The type of mask
- A homemade polyester single-sheet is not the same as an N95 respirator, for instance
- How well it is fitted
- It needs to be a physical barrier, so a loose-fitting “going through the motions” fit won’t help
- The condition of the mask
- And if applicable, the replaceable filter in the mask
- What exactly it has to stop
- What kind of virus, what kind of viral load, what kind of environment, is someone coughing/sneezing, etc
More details on these things can be found in the link at the end of today’s main feature, as it’s more than we could fit here!
Note: We’re talking about respiratory viruses in general in this main feature, but most extant up-to-date research is on COVID, so that’s going to appear quite a lot. Remember though, even COVID is not one beast, but many different variants, each with their own properties.
Nevertheless, the scientific consensus is “it does help, but is not a magical amulet”:
- 2021: Effectiveness of Face Masks in Reducing the Spread of COVID-19: A Model-Based Analysis
- 2022: Why Masks are Important during COVID‐19 Pandemic
- 2023: The mitigating effect of masks on the spread of COVID-19
Wearing a mask is actually unhygienic: True or False?
False, assuming your mask is clean when you put it on.
This (the fear of breathing more of one’s own germs in a cyclic fashion) was a point raised by some of those who expressed mask-unfavorable views in response to our poll.
There have been studies testing this, and they mostly say the same thing, “if it’s clean when you put it on, great, if not, then well yes, that can be a problem”:
❝A longer mask usage significantly increased the fungal colony numbers but not the bacterial colony numbers.
Although most identified microbes were non-pathogenic in humans; Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Cladosporium, we found several pathogenic microbes; Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Aspergillus, and Microsporum.
We also found no associations of mask-attached microbes with the transportation methods or gargling.
We propose that immunocompromised people should avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection.❞
Source: Bacterial and fungal isolation from face masks under the COVID-19 pandemic
Wearing a mask can mean we don’t get enough oxygen: True or False?
False, for any masks made-for-purpose (i.e., are by default “breathable”), under normal conditions:
- COVID‐19 pandemic: do surgical masks impact respiratory nasal functions?
- Performance Comparison of Single and Double Masks: Filtration Efficiencies, Breathing Resistance and CO2 Content
However, wearing a mask while engaging in strenuous best-effort cardiovascular exercise, will reduce VO₂max. To be clear, you will still have more than enough oxygen to function; it’s not considered a health hazard. However, it will reduce peak athletic performance:
…so if you are worrying about whether the mask will impede you breathing, ask yourself: am I engaging in an activity that requires my peak athletic performance?
Also: don’t let it get soaked with water, because…
Writer’s anecdote as an additional caveat: in the earliest days of the COVID pandemic, I had a simple cloth mask on, the one-piece polyester kind that we later learned quite useless. The fit wasn’t perfect either, but one day I was caught in heavy rain (I had left it on while going from one store to another while shopping), and suddenly, it fitted perfectly, as being soaked through caused it to cling beautifully to my face.
However, I was now effectively being waterboarded. I will say, it was not pleasant, but also I did not die. I did buy a new mask in the next store, though.
tl;dr = an exception to “no it won’t impede your breathing” is that a mask may indeed impede your breathing if it is made of cloth and literally soaked with water; that is how waterboarding works!
Want up-to-date information?
Most of the studies we cited today were from 2022 or 2023, but you can get up-to-date information and guidance from the World Health Organization, who really do not have any agenda besides actual world health, here:
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Masks | Frequently Asked Questions
At the time of writing this newsletter, the above information was last updated yesterday.
Take care!
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Lifestyle vs Multiple Sclerosis & More
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This is Dr. Saray Stancic. She’s another from the ranks of “doctors who got a serious illness and it completely changed how they view the treatment of serious illness”.
In her case, Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and wasn’t impressed with the results from the treatments offered, so (after 8 years of pain, suffering, and many medications, only for her condition to worsen) she set about doing better with an evidence-based lifestyle medicine approach.
After 7 years of her new approach, she would go on to successfully run a marathon and live symptom-free.
All this to say: her approach isn’t a magic quick fix, but it is a serious method for serious results, and after all, while it’d be nice to be magically in perfect health tomorrow, what’s important is being in good health for life, right?
If you’re interested in her impressive story, check out:
Doctor With Multiple Sclerosis On The Collapse Of US Healthcare
If you want to know what she did, then read on…
Six key lifestyle changes
Dr. Stancic credits her recovery to focus on the following evidence-based approaches:
The plant-centered plate
This is critical, and is the one she places most emphasis on. Most chronic diseases are exacerbated, if not outright caused, by chronic inflammation, and one cannot fix that without an anti-inflammatory diet.
An anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t have to be 100% plant-based, but broadly speaking, plants are almost always anti-inflammatory to a greater or lesser degree, while animal products are often pro-inflammatory—especially red meat and unfermented dairy.
For more details, see:
Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101 (What to Eat to Fight Inflammation)
Movement every day
While “exercise is good for you” is in principle not a shocker, remember that her starting point was being in terrible condition with badly flared-up MS.
Important to understand here is that excessive exercise can weaken the immune system and sometimes cause flare-ups of various chronic diseases.
Moving thoroughly and moving often, however, is best. So walking yes, absolutely, but also don’t neglect the rest of your body, do some gentle bodyweight squats (if you can; if you can’t, work up to them), stretch your arms as well as your legs, take all your joints through a full range of motion.
See also:
The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More
Mindful stress management
Stress in life is unavoidable, but how we manage it is up to us. Bad things will continue to happen, great and small, but we can take a deep breath, remember that those things aren’t the boss of us, and deal with it calmly and conscientiously.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is of course the evidence-based “gold standard” for this, but whatever (not substance-based) method works for you, works for you!
About MBSR:
No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
Good sleeping habits
Getting good sleep can be hard for anyone, let alone if you have chronic pain. However, Dr. Stancic advocates for doing whatever we can to get good sleep—which means not just duration (the famous “7–9 hours”), but also quality.
Learn more:
The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
Substance intake awareness
This one’s not so much of a “don’t do drugs, kids” as the heading makes it look. Dr. Stancic assumes we already know, for example, that smoking is bad for us in a long list of ways, and alcohol isn’t much better.
However, she also advises us that in our eagerness to do that plant-based diet, we would do better to go for whole foods plant-based, rather than the latest processed meat substitutes, for example.
And supplements? She bids us exercise caution, and to make sure to get good quality, as poor quality supplements can be worse than taking nothing (looking at you, cheap turmeric supplements that contain heavy metals).
And of course, that nutrients gained from diet will almost always be better than nutrients gained from supplements, as our body can usually use them better.
And see also, some commonly-made supplements mistakes:
Do You Know Which Supplements You Shouldn’t Take Together? (10 Pairs!)
Human connection
Lastly, we humans are a social species by evolution; as individuals, we may enjoy relatively more or less social contact, but having access to such is important not just for our mental health, but our physical health too—we will tend to deteriorate much more quickly when we have to deal with everything alone, all other things being equal.
It doesn’t mean you need a busy social life if that’s not in your nature, but it does mean it’s incredibly beneficial to have at least a small number of people that you trust and whose company you enjoy, at least relatively accessible to you (i.e., their life need not revolve around you, but they are the kind of people who will generally happily spend time with you and provide support when needed if they can).
As for how:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Want to know more from Dr. Stancic?
We recently reviewed this very good book of hers, which goes over each of these six things in much more detail than we have room for here:
What’s Missing from Medicine – by Dr. Saray Stancic
Enjoy!
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‘I can’t quite shut it off’: Prevalence of insomnia a growing concern for women
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Tasha Werner, 43, gets up at 3:30 a.m. twice a week for her part-time job at a fitness centre in Calgary. After a five-hour shift, she is back home by 9 a.m. to homeschool her two children, aged 9 and 12. The hardest part of her position – stay-at-home mom, homeschool teacher and part-time worker – is the downtime “lost from my life,” says Werner.A study by Howard M. Kravitz, a psychiatrist in Chicago, showed that up to 60 per cent of women experience sleep disorders due to hormonal changes linked to menopause. But there is an increasing prevalence of insomnia symptoms in women that may be attributed, in part, to societal changes.
“We live in a world that didn’t exist a generation ago. Now everyone is trying to figure it out,” says Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona.
While women are no longer expected to stay at home, many who are employed outside the home also have the primary responsibility for family matters. And women aged 40 to 60 commonly fall within the “sandwich generation,” caring for both children and parents.
As women juggle their responsibilities, these duties can take a toll, both emotionally and practically.
Both Werner and her husband were raised in traditional homes; their mothers stayed at home to oversee childcare, cooking, grocery shopping and household duties. Initially, Werner and her husband followed a similar path, mirroring their parents’ lives as homemakers. “I think we just fell into what we were used to,” says Werner.
However, a notable shift in their family dynamics occurred once she started working outside the home.
Her children’s physical needs and illnesses have had major consequences on her sleep. If one of the children is sick with the flu, that’s “a week of not a lot of sleep during the night,” she says, “because that’s my job.” Many nights, she finds herself waking up between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., worrying about how the kids are doing academically or behaviourally.
“We face a specific set of anxieties and a different set of pressures than men,” says Emma Kobil, who has been a therapist in Denver, Colo., for 15 years and is now an insomnia coach. There is so much pressure to be everything as a woman – to be an amazing homemaker and worker while maintaining a hot-rocking body and having a cool personality, to “be the cool mom but also the CEO, to follow your dreams and be the boss b****,” says Kobil.
And there’s an appeal to that concept. Daughters grow up viewing their moms as superwomen juggling responsibilities. But what isn’t always obvious are the challenges women face while managing their lives and the health issues they may encounter.
A study revealed that women are 41 per cent more at risk of insomnia than men.
A thorough study revealed that women are 41 per cent more at risk of insomnia than men. Beyond menopausal hormonal shifts, societal pressures, maternal concerns and the challenge of balancing multiple roles contribute to women’s increased susceptibility to insomnia.
Cyndi Aarrestad, 57, lives on a farm in Saskatchewan with her husband, Denis. Now an empty nester, Aarrestad fills her time working on the farm, keeping house, volunteering at her church and managing her small woodworking business. And she struggles with sleep.
Despite implementing some remedies, including stretching, drinking calming teas and rubbing her feet before bed, Aarrestad says achieving restful sleep has remained elusive for the past decade.
Two primary factors contribute to her sleep challenges — her inability to quiet her mind and hormonal hot flashes due to menopause. Faced with family and outside commitments, Aarrestad finds it challenging to escape night time’s mental chatter. “It’s a mom thing for me … I can’t quite shut it off.” Even as her children transitioned to young adulthood and moved out, the worries persisted, highlighting the lasting concerns moms have about their kids’ jobs, relationships and overall well-being.
Therapist Kobil says that every woman she’s ever worked with experiences this pressure to do everything, to be perfect. These women feel like they’re not measuring up. They’re encouraged to take on other people’s burdens; to be the confidante and the saviour in many ways; to sacrifice themselves. Sleep disruptions simply reflect the consequences of this pressure.
“They’re trying to fit 20 hours in a 24-hour day, and it doesn’t work,” says Grandner, the sleep specialist.
Grandner says that consistently sleeping six hours or less as an adult makes one 55 per cent more likely to become obese, 20 per cent more likely to develop high blood pressure, and 30 per cent more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes if you didn’t have it already. This lack of sleep makes you more likely to catch the flu. It makes vaccines less effective, and it increases your likelihood of developing depression and anxiety.
When is the time to change? Yesterday. Grandner warns that the sleep sacrifices made at a young age impact health later. But it’s never too late to make changes, he says, and “you do the best with what you’ve got.”
Kobil suggests a practical approach for women struggling with sleep. She emphasizes understanding that sleeplessness isn’t a threat and encourages a shift in mindset about being awake. Instead of fighting sleeplessness, she advises treating oneself kindly, recognizing the difficulty.
Kobil recommends creating a simple playbook with comforting activities for awake moments during the night. Just as you would comfort a child who’s afraid, she suggests being gentle with yourself, gradually changing the perception of wakefulness into a positive experience.
This article is republished from HealthyDebate under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Tech Bliss – by Clo S., MSc.
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The popular idea of a “digital detox” is simple enough, “just unplug!”, they say.
But here in the real world, not only is that often not practical for many of us, it may not always even be entirely desirable. The Internet (and our devices with all their bells and whistles) can be a source of education, joy, and connection!
So, how to find out what’s good for us and what’s not, in our daily digital practices? Clo. S. has answers… Or rather, experiments for us to do and find out for ourselves.
These experiments range from the purely practical “try this to streamline your experience” to the more personal “how does this thing make you feel?”. A lot of the experiments will be performed via your digital devices—some, without! Others are about online interpersonal dynamics, be they one-on-one or navigating a world in which it seems everyone is out to get us, our outrage, and/or our money. Still yet others are about optimizing what you do get from the parts of your digital experience that are enriching for you.
As the title suggests, there are 30 experiments, and it’s not a stretch to do them one per day for a month. But, as the author notes, it’s by no means necessary to do them like that; it’s a workbook and reference guide, not a to-do list!
(On the topic of it being a reference guide…There’s also an extensive tools directory towards the end!)
In short: this is a great book for optimizing your online experience—whatever that might mean for you personally; you can decide for yourself along the way!
Click here to get a copy of Tech Bliss: 30 Experiments For Your Digital Wellness today!
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