Nobody’s Sleeping – by Dr. Bijoy John
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Firstly, let’s mention: yes, for the sake of being methodical and comprehensive this book does give the same baseline advice as every other sleep book out there. However, it gives something else, too:
It goes beyond that baseline, to a) give more personalized advice for various demographics (e.g. per age, sex, health conditions, etc) and b) give direction for further personalizing one’s own sleep improvement journey, by troubleshooting and fixing things that may pertain to you very specifically and not to most people.
This means, that if you’re doing “all the right things” but still having sleep-related problems, there is hope and there are more approaches to try.
The style in which this is delivered is very readable, which is good, because if one hasn’t been sleeping well, then chances are that an intellectual challenge would be about as welcome as a physical challenge—that is to say: not at all.
Bottom line: if sleep is not your strength and you would like it to be and all the usual things haven’t yet worked, this book may well help you to overcome the hurdles between you and a good night’s sleep each night.
Click here to check out Nobody’s Sleeping, and refute that title!
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Black Bean Hummus Panini
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A recipe for a sandwich? Try it once, and you’ll see why. Welcome to your new favorite!
You will need
- 1 cup cooked-and-rinsed black beans (canned is fine)
- ⅓ cup hummus (you can use our Hero Homemade Hummus recipe)
- 4 thin slices of eggplant (or more if you like it meaty)
- 4 sun-dried tomatoes
- 2 slices of your favorite bread (you can use our Delicious Quinoa Avocado Bread recipe)
- A little olive oil, ideally sprayable
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Grill the eggplant slices until soft.
2) Spread hummus generously on one side of both slices of bread.
2) Add the black beans on top of one slice (the hummus will help them stay in place), followed by the sun-dried tomatoes and then the eggplant. Top with the other slice of bread, hummus-side down.
3) Coat (carefully, please) the inside of the panini press (both interior sides) with olive oil. If you don’t have sprayable oil, using a sheet of kitchen roll to apply the oil is a good way to do it without making a mess.
4) Grill the assembled sandwich, until the bread starts to brown and the insides are warm; this should take about 4 minutes.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Three Daily Servings of Beans?
- Chickpeas vs Black Beans – Which is Healthier?
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
Take care!
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Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory – by Dr. Andrew Budson & Dr. Maureen O’Connor
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.
First, what this is not: a “how to improve your memory” book of the kind marketed to students and/or people who want to do memory-themed party tricks.
What this book actually is: exactly what the title and subtitle claim it to be: seven steps to managing your memory: what’s normal, what’s not, and what to do about it.
Drs. Budson & O’Connor cover:
- which memory errors can (and usually do) happen at any age
- how memory changes with normal aging, and
- what kinds of memory problems are not normal.
One thing that sets this book aside from a lot of its genre is that it also covers which kinds of memory loss are reversible—and, where appropriate, what can be undertaken to effect such a reversal.
The authors talk about what things have (and what things haven’t!) been shown to strengthen memory and reduce cognitive decline, and in the worst case scenario, what medications can help against Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
The style is halfway between pop-science and a science textbook. The structure of the book, with its headings, subheadings, bullet points, summaries, etc, helps the reader to process and remember the information.
Bottom line: if you’d like to get on top of managing your memory before you forget, then this book is for you.
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Banana Bread vs Bagel – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing banana bread to bagel, we picked the bagel.
Why?
Unlike most of the items we compare in this section, which are often “single ingredient” or at least highly standardized, today’s choices are rather dependent on recipe. Certainly, your banana bread and your bagels may not be the same as your neighbor’s. Nevertheless, to compare averages, we’ve gone with the FDA’s Food Central Database for reference values, using the most default average recipes available. Likely you could make either or both of them a little healthier, but as it is, this is how we’ve gone about making it a fair comparison. With that in mind…
In terms of macros, bagels have more than 2x the protein and about 4x the fiber, while banana bread has slightly higher carbs and about 7x more fat. You may be wondering: are the fats healthy? And the answer is, it could be better, could be worse. The FDA recipe went with margarine rather than butter, which lowered the saturated fat to being only ¼ of the total fat (it would have been higher, had they used butter) whereas bagels have no saturated fat at all—which characteristic is quite integral to bagels, unless you make egg bagels, which is rather a different beast. All in all, the macros category is a clear win for bagels, especially when we consider the carb to fiber ratio.
In the category of vitamins, bagels have on average more vitamin B1, B3, B5, and B9, while banana bread has on average more of vitamins A and C. A modest win for bagels.
When it comes to minerals, bagels are the more nutrient dense with more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while banana bread is not higher in any minerals. An obvious and easy win for bagels.
Closing thoughts: while the micronutrient profile quite possibly differs wildly from one baker to another, something that will probably stay more or less the same regardless is the carb to fiber ratio, and protein to fat. As a result, we’d weight the macros category as the more universally relevant. Bagels won in all categories today, as it happened, but it’s fairly safe to say that, on average, a baker who makes bagels and banana bread with the same levels of conscientiousness for health (or lack thereof) will tend to make bagels that are healthier than banana bread, based on the carb to fiber ratio, and the protein to fat ratio.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
- Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)
- Wholewheat Bread vs Seeded White – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Three-Bean Chili & Cashew Cream
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A hearty classic with a twist! Delicious and filling and full of protein, fiber, and powerful phytonutrients (including heavy-hitters ergothioneine and lycopene), this recipe is also quite flexible, so you can always add in extra seasonal vegetables if you like (to get you started: cherry tomatoes in summer and sweet potato in fall are fine options)!
You will need
- 1 cup low-sodium vegetable stock (ideally you made it yourself from vegetable offcuts you kept in the freezer for this purpose, but if not, you should be able to find low-sodium stock cubes)
- 1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 2 cans chopped tomatoes
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1 carrot, diced
- 2 celery sticks, chopped
- 4 oz mushrooms, chopped
- ½ bulb garlic, crushed
- 2 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 red chili pepper, finely chopped (multiply per your heat preferences)
- 1 tbsp ground paprika
- 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 2 tsp fresh rosemary (or 1 tbsp dried)
- 2 tsp fresh thyme (or 1 tbsp dried)
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
For the cashew cream:
- 6 oz cashews, soaked in kettle-hot water for at least 15 minutes
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp lemon juice
To serve:
- Handful of chopped parsley
- Your carbohydrates of choice; we recommend our Tasty Versatile Rice recipe, and/or our Delicious Quinoa Avocado Bread recipe.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat some olive oil in a skillet and fry the onion for about 5 minutes, stirring as necessary.
2) Add the garlic and chili and cook for a further 1 minute.
3) Add the celery, carrot, and mushrooms and continue cooking for 1–2 minutes.
4) Add everything else from the main section, taking care to stir well to distribute the seasonings evenly. Reduce the heat and allow to simmer for around 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5) While you are waiting, drain the cashews, and add them to a high-speed blender with ½ cup (fresh) cold water, as well as the nutritional yeast and lemon juice. Blend on full power until smooth; this may take about 3 minutes, so we recommend doing it in 30-second bursts to avoid overheating the motor. You’ll also probably need to scrape it down the sides at least once. You can add a little more water if you want the cream to be thinner than it is appearing, but go slowly if you do.
6) Serve with rice, adding a dollop of the cream and garnishing with parsley, with bread on the side if you like.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
- Three Daily Servings of Beans?
- Kidney Beans or Black Beans – Which is Healthier?
- What Matters Most For Your Heart?
- “The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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Reinventing Your Life – by Dr. Jeffrey Young & Dr. Janet Klosko
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This book is quite unlike any other broadly-CBT-focused books we’ve reviewed before. How so, you may wonder?
Rather than focusing on automatic negative thoughts and cognitive distortions with a small-lens focus on an immediate problem, this one zooms out rather and tackles the cause rather than the symptom.
The authors outline eleven “lifetraps” that we can get stuck in:
- Abandonment
- Mistrust & abuse
- Vulnerability
- Dependence
- Emptional deprivation
- Social exclusion
- Defectiveness
- Failure
- Subjugation
- Unrelenting standards
- Entitlement
They then borrow from other areas of psychology, to examine where these things came from, and how they can be addressed, such that we can escape from them.
The style of the book is very reader-friendly pop-psychology, with illustrative (and perhaps apocryphal, but no less useful for it if so) case studies.
The authors then go on to give step-by-step instructions for dealing with each of the 11 lifetraps, per 6 unmet needs we probably had that got us into them, and per 3 likely ways we tried to cope with this using maladaptive coping mechanisms that got us into the lifetrap(s) we ended up in.
Bottom line: if you feel there’s something in your life that’s difficult to escape from (we cannot outrun ourselves, after all, and bring our problems with us), this book could well contain the key that you need to get out of that cycle.
Click here to check out “Reinventing Your Life” and break free from any lifetrap(s) of your own!
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Stop Trying To Lose Weight (And Do This Instead)
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“Lose weight” is a common goal of many people, and it’s especially a common goal handed down from medical authority figures, often as a manner of “kicking the can down the road” with regard to the doctor actually having to do some work. “Lose 20 pounds and then we’ll talk”, etc.
The thing is, it’s often not a very good or helpful goal… Even if it would be healthy for a given person to lose weight. Instead, biochemist Jessie Inchauspé argues, one should set a directly health-giving goal instead, and let any weight loss, if the body agrees it is appropriate, be a by-product of that
She recommends focusing on metabolic health, specifically, her own specialism is blood glucose maintenance. This is something that diabetics deal with (to one degree or another) every day, but it’s something whose importance should not be underestimated for non-diabetics too.
Keep our blood sugar levels healthy, she says, and a lot of the rest of good health will fall into place by itself—precisely because we’re not constantly sabotaging our body (first the pancreas and liver, then the rest of the body like dominoes).
To that end, she offers a multitude of “hacks” that really work.
Her magnum opus, “Glucose Revolution“, explains the science in great detail and does it very well! Not to be mistaken for her shorter, simpler, and entirely pragmatic “do this, then this”-style book, “The Glucose Goddess Method”, which is also great, but doesn’t go into the science more than absolutely necessary; it’s more for the “I’ll trust you; just tell me what I need to know” crowd.
In her own words:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Prefer text?
We’ve covered Inchauspé’s top 10 recommended hacks here:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
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