How To Keep Warm (Without Sweat Patches!)

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.

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 saw an advert on the subway for a pillow spray that guarantees a perfect night’s sleep. What does the science say about smells/sleep?❞

That is certainly a bold claim! Unless it’s contingent, e.g. “…or your money back”. Because otherwise, it absolutely cannot guarantee that.

There is some merit:

❝Odors can modulate the latency to sleep onset, as well as the quality and duration of sleep. Olfactory modulation of sleep may be mediated by direct synaptic interaction between the olfactory system and sleep control nuclei, and/or indirectly through odor modulation of arousal and respiration.

Such modulation appears most heavily influenced by past associations and expectations about the odor, beyond any potential direct physicochemical effect❞

Source: Reciprocal relationships between sleep and smell

Translating that from sciencese:

Sometimes we find pleasant smells relaxing, and placebo effect also helps.

That “any potential direct physiochemical effect”, though, when it does occur, is things like this…

Read: Odor blocking of stress hormone responses

…but that’s a mouse study, and those odors may only work to block three specific mouse stress responses to three specific stressors: physical restraint, predator odor, and male–male confrontation.

In other words: if, perchance, those three things are not what’s stressing you in bed at night (we won’t make assumptions), and/or you are not a mouse, it may not help.

(and this, dear readers, is why we must read articles, and not just headlines!)

But! If you are going to go for a pillow fragrance, something well-associated with being relaxing and soporific, such as lavender, is the way to go:

tl;dr = patients found lavender fragrances relaxing, experienced less anxiety, got better sleep (significantly or insignificantly, depending on the study) and enjoyed lower blood pressure (significantly or insignificantly, depending on the study).

PS: this writer uses a pillow spray like this one

Enjoy!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • Inhaled Eucalyptus’s Immunomodulatory and Antimicrobial Effects
  • The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value
    Dive into the superfood spotlight: Chia seeds! Boost your brain, heart, and overall health with this tiny nutritional titan.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Overcome Front-Of-Hip Pain

    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.

    Dr. Alyssa Kuhn, physiotherapist, demonstrates how:

    One, two, three…

    One kind of pain affects a lot of related things: hip pain has an impact on everything that’s connected to the pelvis, which is basically the rest of the body, but especially the spine itself. For this reason, it’s critical to keep it in as good condition as possible.

    Two primary causes of hip stiffness and pain:

    • Anterior pelvic tilt due to posture, weight distribution, or pain. This tightens the front muscles and weakens the back muscles.
    • Prolonged sitting, which tightens the hip muscles due to inactivity.

    Three exercises are recommended by Dr. Kuhn to relieve pain and stiffness:

    • Bridge exercise:
      • Lie on a firm surface with your knees bent.
      • Push through your feet, engage your hamstrings, and flatten your lower back.
      • Hold for 3–5 seconds, relax, and repeat (10–20 reps).
    • Wall exercise with arms:
      • Stand with your lower back against the wall, feet a step away.
      • Tilt your hips backwards, keeping your lower back in contact with the wall.
      • Alternate lifting one arm at a time while maintaining back contact with the wall (10–20 reps).
    • Wall exercise with legs:
      • Same stance as the previous exercise but wider now.
      • Lift one heel at a time while keeping your hips stable and your back against the wall.
      • Practice for 30–60 seconds, maintaining good form.

    As ever, consistency is key for long-term relief. Dr. Kuhn recommends doing these regularly, especially before any expected periods of prolonged sitting (e.g. at desk, or driving, etc). And of course, do try to reduce, or at least break up, those sitting marathons if you can.

    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 to read:

    How To Stop Pain Spreading

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • The Coffee-Cortisol Connection, And Two Ways To Tweak It For Health

    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.

    Health opinions on coffee vary from “it’s an invigorating, healthful drink” to “it will leave you a shaking frazzled wreck”. So, what’s the truth and can we enjoy it healthily? Dr. Alan Mandell weighs in:

    Enjoy it, but watch out!

    Dr. Mandell is speaking only for caffeinated coffee in this video, and to this end, he’s conflating the health effects of coffee and caffeine. A statistically reasonable imprecision, since most people drink coffee with its natural caffeine in, but we’ll make some adjustment to his comments below, to disambiguate which statements are true for coffee generally, and which are true for caffeine:

    • Drinking coffee caffeine first thing in the morning may not be ideal due to dehydration from overnight water loss.
    • Coffee caffeine is a diuretic, which means an increase in urination, thus further dehydrating the body.
    • Coffee contains great antioxidants, which are of course beneficial for the health in general.
    • Cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, is generally at its peak in the morning. This is, in and of itself, good and correct—it’s how we wake up.
    • Coffee caffeine consumption raises cortisol levels even more, leading to increased alertness and physical readiness, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and in this case, problems can arise because…
    • Elevated cortisol from early coffee caffeine drinking can build tolerance, leading to the need for more coffee caffeine over time.
    • It’s better, therefore, to defer drinking coffee caffeine until later in the morning when cortisol levels naturally drop.
    • All of this means that drinking coffee caffeine first thing can disrupt the neuroendocrine system, leading to fatigue, depression, and general woe.
    • Hydrate first thing in the morning before consuming coffee caffeine to keep the body balanced and healthy.

    What you can see from this is that coffee and caffeine are not, in fact, interchangeable words, but the basic message is clear and correct: while a little spike of cortisol in the morning is good, natural, and even necessary, a big spike is none of those things, and caffeine can cause a big spike, and since for most people caffeine is easy to build tolerance to, there will indeed consistently be a need for more, worsening the problem.

    In terms of hydration, it’s good to have water (or better yet, herbal tea) on one’s nightstand to drink when one wakes up.

    If coffee is an important morning ritual for you, consider finding a good decaffeinated version for at least your first cup (this writer is partial to Lavazza’s “Dek Intenso”—which is not the same as their main decaf line, by the way, so do hold out for the “Dek Intenso” if you want to try my recommendation).

    Decaffeinated coffee is hydrating and will not cause a cortisol spike (unless for some reason you find coffee as a concept very stressful in which case, yes, the stressor will cause a stress response).

    Anyway, 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 to read:

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Love Sense – by Dr. Sue Johnson

    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.

    Let’s quickly fact-check the subtitle:

    • Is it revolutionary? It has a small element of controversy, but mostly no
    • Is it new? No, it is based on science from the 70s that was expanded in the 80s and 90s and has been, at most, tweaked a little since.
    • Is it science? Yes! It is so much science. This book comes with about a thousand references to scientific studies.

    What’s the controversy, you ask? Dr. Johnson asserts, based on our (as a species) oxytocin responsiveness, that we are biologically hardwired for monogamy. This is in contrast to the prevailing scientific consensus that we are not.

    Aside from that, though, the book is everything you could expect from an expert on attachment theory with more than 35 years of peer-reviewed clinical research, often specifically for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which is her thing.

    The writing style is similar to that of her famous “Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations For A Lifetime Of Love”, a very good book that we reviewed previously. It can be a little repetitive at times in its ideas, but this is largely because she revisits some of the same questions from many angles, with appropriate research to back up her advice.

    Bottom line: if you are the sort of person who cares to keep working to improve your romantic relationship (no matter whether it is bad or acceptable or great right now), this book will arm you with a lot of deep science that can be applied reliably with good effect.

    Click here to check out Love Sense, and level-up yours!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Inhaled Eucalyptus’s Immunomodulatory and Antimicrobial Effects
  • These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Health

    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.

    The Best Few Interventions For The Best Health

    Writer’s note: I was going to do something completely different for today (so that can go out another week now), but when reflecting on my own “what should I focus on in the new year?” (in terms of my own personal health goals and such) it occured to me that I should look back on the year’s articles, to take our own advice myself, and see what most important things I should make sure to focus on.

    In so doing for myself, it occured to me that you, our subscribers who like condensed information and simple interventions for big positive effects, might also find value in a similar once-over. And so, today’s main feature was born!

    Sometimes at 10almonds we talk about “those five things that affect everything”. They are:

    1. Good diet
    2. Good exercise
    3. Good sleep
    4. Not drinking
    5. Not smoking

    If we were to add a sixth in terms of things that make a huge difference, it would be “manage stress effectively” and a seventh, beyond the scope of our newsletter, would be “don’t be socioeconomically disadvantaged” (e.g. poor, and/or part of some disprivileged minority group).

    But as for those five we listed, it still leaves the question: what are the few most effective things we can do to improve them? Where can we invest our time/energy/effort for greatest effect?

    Good diet

    Best current science consistently recommends the Mediterranean Diet:

    The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For?

    But it can be tweaked for specific desired health considerations:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

    Other most-effective dietary tweaks that impact a lot of other areas of health include looking after your gut health and looking after your blood sugars:

    Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

    and

    “Let Them Eat Cake”, She Said (10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars)

    Good exercise

    Most exercise is good, but two of the most beneficial things that are (for most people) easy to implement are walking, and High-Intensity Interval Training:

    How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)

    Good sleep

    This means quality and quantity! We cannot skimp on either and expect good health:

    Why You Probably Need More Sleep

    and as for quality,

    The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down

    Not drinking

    According to the World Health Organization, the only safe amount of alcohol is zero.

    See also:

    Can We Drink To Good Health? (e.g. Red Wine & Heart Health)

    and

    How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

    Not smoking

    We haven’t done a main feature on this! It’s probably not really necessary, as it’s not very contentious to say “smoking is bad for everything”.

    WHO | Tobacco kills up to half its users who don’t quit

    However, as a side-note, while cannabis is generally recognised as not as harmful as tobacco-based products, it has some fairly major drawbacks too. For some people, the benefits (e.g. pain relief) may outweigh the risks, though:

    Cannabis Myths vs Reality

    Final thoughts

    Not sure where to start? We suggest this order of priorities, unless you have a major health condition that makes something else a higher priority:

    1. If you smoke, stop
    2. If you drink, reduce, or ideally stop
    3. Improve your diet

    About that diet…

    When it comes to exercise, get your 10,000 daily steps in (actually, science says 8,000 steps is fine), and consider adding HIIT per our above article, when you feel like adding that in. As for that about the steps:

    Meta-analysis of 15 studies reports new findings on how many daily walking steps needed for longevity benefit

    When it comes to sleep, if you’re taking care of the above things, and set a regular early wake-up time that you do not deviate from, then this will probably take care of itself, if you don’t have a sleep-inconvenient lifestyle (e.g. shift work, just had a baby, etc) or a sleep disorder.

    For further pointers, see: 10 Tips for Better Sleep: Starting In The Morning

    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:

  • Feta or Parmesan – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing feta to parmesan, we picked the parmesan.

    Why?

    It’s close! Looking at the macros, parmesan has more protein and slightly less fat. Of the fat content, parmesan also has slightly less saturated fat, but neither of them are doing great in this category. Still, a relative win for parmesan.

    In the category of vitamins, feta is a veritable vitamin-B-fest with more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9. On the other hand, parmesan has more of vitamins A, B12, and choline. By strength of numbers, this is a win for feta.

    Minerals tell a different story; parmesan has a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Meanwhile, feta is not higher in any minerals. A clear win for parmesan.

    Both cheeses offer gut-healthy benefits (if consumed regularly in small portions), while neither are great for the heart.

    On balance, we say parmesan wins the day.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Feta Cheese vs Mozzarella – Which is Healthier?

    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:

  • The Drug & Supplement Combo That Reverses Aging

    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.

    So far, its effects have been dramatic (in a good way) in mice; human trials are now underway.

    How does it work?

    It builds from previous work, in which a Japanese research team created an “anti-aging vaccine”, that responded to a problem more specific than aging as a whole, namely atherosclerosis.

    They found that a certain* protein was upregulated (i.e., it was made at a greater rate resulting in greater quantities) in patients (mouse and human alike) with atherosclerosis. So, they immunized the mice against that protein, and long story short, everything improved for them, from their atherosclerosis to general markers of aging—including growing back fur that had been lost due to age-related balding (just like in humans). They also lived longer, as is to be expected of a mouse who is now biologically younger.

    *To avoid being mysterious: it was glycoprotein nonmetastatic melanoma protein B, known to its friends as GPNMB.

    You may be wondering: how can one be immunized against a protein? If so, do bear in mind, a virus is also a protein. In this case, they developed an RNA vaccine, that works in a similar way to the COVID vaccines we all know and love (albeit with a different target).

    You can read about this in abundant detail here: Senolytic vaccination improves normal and pathological age-related phenotypes and increases lifespan in progeroid mice

    Hot on the heels of that, new approaches were found, including…

    The combination

    We’ll not keep you waiting; the combination is dasatinib plus quercetin, or else fisetin alone.

    It’s about killing senescent (aging) “zombie cells” while sparing healthy cells, which that drug (dasatinib) and those supplements (quercetin and fisetin) do.

    The researchers noted:

    ❝Senescent cells are resistant to apoptosis, which is governed through the upregulation of senescent cell anti-apoptotic pathways (SCAPs). Compounds were subsequently identified that disrupted the SCAPs, inducing death of senescent cells while leaving healthy cells unaffected. Forty-six potential senolytic agents were discovered through this process. To advance translational efforts, the majority of research has focused on agents with known safety profiles and limited off-target effects (Kirkland and Tchkonia, 2020).

    The best characterized senolytic agents are dasatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor approved for use in humans for cancer treatment, and quercetin, a naturally occurring plant flavonoid. The agents have a synergistic effect, making their combination more potent for senescent cell clearance (Zhu et al., 2015). As senescent cells do not divide and accumulate over a period of weeks, they can be administered using an intermittent approach, which further serves to reduce the risk of side effects (Kirkland and Tchkonia, 2020).

    In preclinical trials, the combination of dasatinib and quercetin (D + Q) have been found to alleviate numerous chronic medical conditions including vascular stiffness, osteoporosis, frailty, and hepatic stenosis

    Source: A geroscience motivated approach to treat Alzheimer’s disease: Senolytics move to clinical trials

    As to how they expanded on this research:

    ❝In our study, oral D + Q were intermittently administered to tau transgenic mice with late-stage pathology (approximated to a 70-year-old human with advanced AD) (Musi et al., 2018). The treatment effectively reduced cellular senescence and associated senescence-associated secretory phenotype incidence. The 35 % reduction in neurofibrillary tangles was accompanied by enhanced neuron density, decreased ventricular enlargement, diminished tau accumulation, and restoration of aberrant cerebral blood flow. A subsequent preclinical study validated the findings, reporting that intermittently administered D + Q cleared senescent cells in the central nervous system, reduced amyloid-β plaques, attenuated neuroinflammation, and enhanced cognition❞

    Source: Ibid.

    And now taking it to humans:

    ❝The first clinical trial of D + Q for early-stage Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) has completed enrollment (Gonzales et al., 2021). The primary aim of the open-label pilot study was to examine the central nervous system penetrance of D and Q in a small sample of older adults with early-stage AD (NCT04063124). In addition, two placebo-controlled trials of D + Q for neurodegenerative disease are underway (NCT04685590 and NCT04785300).

    One of the trials in development is a multi-site, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study of senolytic therapy in older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or early-stage dementia (Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) Global 0.5–1) due to AD (elevated CSF total tau/Aβ42 ratio).

    The treatment regimen will consist of 12-weeks of intermittently administered oral D + Q.❞

    Source: Ibid.

    The study is actually completed now, but its results are not yet published (again, at time of writing). Which means: they have the data, and now they’re writing the paper.

    We look forward to providing an update about that, when the paper is published!

    In the meantime…

    Dasatinib is a drug usually prescribed to people with certain kinds of leukemia, and suffice it to say, it’s prescription-only. And unlike drugs that are often prescribed off-label (such as metformin for weight loss), getting your doctor to prescribe you an anticancer drug is unlikely unless you have the cancer in question.

    You may be wondering: how is an anticancer drug helpful against aging? And the answer is that cancer and aging are very interrelated, and both have to do with “these old cells just won’t die, and are using the resources needed for young healthy cells”. So in both cases, killing those “zombie cells” while sparing healthy ones, is what’s needed. However, your doctor will probably not buy that as a reason to prescribe you a drug that is technically chemotherapy.

    Quercetin, on the other hand, is a readily-available supplement, as is fisetin, and both have glowing (in a good way) safety profiles.

    Want to know more?

    You can read more about each of quercetin and fisetin (including how to get them), here:

    Enjoy!

    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: