Ready… Set… Flow!

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The 10almonds Team

Time to make your new year plans? Or maybe you’ve already made a list, and you’re checking it twice. If so, now’s the time to make sure that your new year’s plans will flow:

“Flow”, as you may be aware, is the psychological state generally defined as “a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it, at a peak performance level”; the term was coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and has risen to popularity since.

We wrote about it a little before, here:

Morning Routines That Just Flow

The above article details how to start the perfect day, but how to start the perfect year? Firstly, it’s good to get the jump on the new year a little; see:

The Science Of New Year’s Pre-Resolutions

…and we also agree with Dr. Faye Bate, who preaches taking the path of least resistance when it comes to healthy habits:

How To Actually Start A Healthy Lifestyle In The New Year

Because…

Getting into the flow

The most hydrating drink is the one that [contains adequate water and] you will actually drink. The best exercise is the one you’ll do. The best sleep is the sleep you can actually get. And so on.

We see this—or rather its evil counterpoint—a lot in diet culture. People frame their willpower against the temptations of donuts and whatever, and make Faustian bargains whereby they will eat food they find boring in the hopes it will bring them good health. And it won’t. Because, they’ll give up quickly.

Instead, each part of our healthy life has to be engaged with with a sense of flow. Again, that’s: “a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it, at a peak performance level”

So we need to find healthy recipes we like (check out our recipe section!), we need to find exercise that we like, we need to find an approach to sleep that the Geneva Convention wouldn’t consider a kind a torture, and so forth. And, ideally, not just “like” in the sense of “this is tolerable” but “like” in the sense of “I am truly passionate about this thing”.

And that’s going to look different for each of us.

Running is a great example of something that some people truly love, whereas others will do almost anything to avoid.

And food? We’ve written before about the usefulness of a “to don’t” list; it’s like a “to do” list, but it’s things we’re not going to even try to do. For example, a person with two addictions is usually advised to quit one at a time, so quitting the other would go on a “to don’t” list for now. The same goes for food; you need to enjoy what you’re eating or you won’t “feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it”, per flow. So, do not deprive yourself; it won’t work anyway; just pick one healthy change to make, and then queue up any other changes for once the first one has started feeling natural to you.

For more on “to don’t” lists and other such tricks, see: How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!

Staying in the flow

…is not usually a problem, you would think, because “…and just keep doing it, at peak performance level” but the fact is, sometimes we get kicked out of our flow by something external. We covered some of that in the above-linked “How To Keep On Keeping On” article, such as figuring out showstoppers in advance (for example, “if I get an injury, I will rest until it is healed”) and ideally, back-up plans.

For example, let’s say you have your dietary plan all worked out, then you are invited to someone’s birthday celebration a couple of weeks in, and you don’t want to rain on their parade, so you figure out for yourself in advance how you are going to mitigate any harm to your plans, e.g. “I will simply choose the healthiest option available, and not worry if it doesn’t meet my usual standards” or “I will simply fast” if that’s an appropriate thing for you (for some it might be, for some it might not be).

For more on this, see:

How To Avoid Slipping Into (Bad) Old Habits

Take care!

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  • How To Make Disease Disappear – by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    We’ve previously reviewed a number of other books by Dr. Chatterjee, all of them good. This one’s perhaps his most generalized book that we’ve read, though it has a lot of overlap with his “Four Pillar Plan”, and indeed, each of those four pillars (relax, eat, move, sleep) gets a section in this book, each section getting 5 chapters on how to optimize the thing in question.

    You may be wondering why “relax” and “sleep” don’t get one section between them; the idea of “relax” is about stress management, mindfulness (especially mindful eating), and so forth. Thus, it does connect to the other sections, but is very much its own topic also.

    The premise is, as per the title, to “make disease disappear”. The way to do that, he argues, is through engaging in progressively healthy habits to accumulate chronic good health. With the 20 things you will be doing from the first four sections of 5 chapters each, you will be soon be well on your way, and he finishes up with “finding your balance”—because the trick, he says, is not to focus unduly on one, two, or even three of the pillar(s) as the expense of the other(s), but to ensure a good balance between them.

    The style is light pop-science with a focus on readability; there are many personal accounts and examples, but nothing brash or self-serving, simply, illustrative. Indeed, he shows his mistakes as much as his successes, that we may learn from them.

    Bottom line: this is, in essence, a rehash of his Four Pillar Plan, but tailored for an American audience. As such, American readers may find it more easily applicable than the previous book. Either way, the quality is just as good, so by all means take your pick between them.

    Click here to check out How To Make Disease Disappear, and make disease disappear!

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  • Healthy Tiramisu

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    Tiramisu (literally “pick-me-up”, “tira-mi-su”) is a delightful dish that, in its traditional form, is also a trainwreck for the health, being loaded with inflammatory cream and sugar, not to mention the cholesterol content. Here we recreate the dish in healthy fashion, being loaded with protein, fiber, and healthy fats, not to mention that the optional sweetener is an essential amino acid. The coffee and cocoa, of course, are full of antioxidants too. All in all, what’s not celebrate?

    You will need

    • 2 cups silken tofu (no need to press it) (do not substitute with any firmer tofu or it will not work)
    • 1 cup oat cream (you can buy this ready-made, or make it yourself by blending oats in water until you get the desired consistency) (you can also just use dairy cream, but that will be less healthy)
    • 1 cup almond flour (also simply called “ground almonds”)
    • 1 cup espresso ristretto, or otherwise the strongest black coffee you have facility to make
    • ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for dusting
    • 1 pack savoiardi biscuits, also called “ladyfinger” biscuits (this was the only part we couldn’t make healthy—if you figure out a way to make it healthy, let us know!) (if vegan, obviously use a vegan substitute biscuit; this writer uses Lotus/Biscoff biscuits, which work well)
    • 1 tsp vanilla essence
    • ½ tsp almond essence
    • Optional: glycine, per taste
    • Garnish: roasted coffee beans

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Add glycine to the coffee first if you want the overall dish to be sweeter. Glycine has approximately the same sweetness as sugar, and can be used as a 1:1 substitution. Use that information as you see fit.

    2) Blend the tofu and the oat cream together in a high-speed blender until smooth. It should have a consistency like cake-batter; if it is too liquidy, add small amounts of almond flour until it is thicker. If it’s too thick, add oat cream until it isn’t. If you want it to be sweeter than it is, add glycine to taste. When happy with its taste and consistency, divide it evenly into two bowls.

    3) Add the vanilla essence and almond essence to one bowl, and the cocoa powder to the other, mixing well (in a food processor, or just by using a whisk)

    4) Coat the base of a glass dish (such as a Pyrex oven dish, but any dish is fine, and any glass dish will allow for viewing the pretty layers we’ll be making) with a very thin layer of almond flour (if you want sweetness there, you can mix some glycine in with the almond flour first).

    4) One by one, soak the biscuits briefly in the coffee, and use them to line to base of the dish.

    5) Add a thin layer of chocolate cream, ensuring the surface is as flat as possible. Dust it with cocoa powder, to increase the surface tension.

    6) Add a thin layer of vanilla-and-almond cream, ensuring the surface is as flat as possible. Dust it with cocoa powder, to increase the surface tension.

    7) Stop and assess: do you have enough ingredients left to repeat these layers? It will depend on the size and shape dish you used. If you do, repeat them, finishing with a vanilla-and-almond cream layer.

    8) Dust the final layer with cocoa powder if you haven’t already, and add the coffee bean garnish, if using.

    9) Refrigerate for at least 8 hours, and if you have time to prepare it the day before you will eat it, that is best of all.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Unbreakable: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power – by Dr. Vonda Wright

    The 10almonds Team

    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 author, an orthopedic surgeon and longevity specialist, puts the focus on a) women b) musculoskeletal health.

    Because, while when thinking about hormones and health a lot of people focus on visible things like hair and nails and such, when it comes to the effects of untreated menopause, let’s face it: more people die from the consequences of a broken hip than from a broken nail.

    So, she wants us to avoid the train of sarcopenia → osteopenia → osteoporosis → fractures → infections → death, by reducing our risk factors early, and staying more robust and biologically younger.

    She advises doing this in four main ways:

    • Exercise: because stronger muscles mean stronger bones, and the impact on metabolic health is important too
    • Nutrition: nourishing our muscles and bones, looking after our gut microbiome, and eliminating inflammation
    • Supplements: mostly things we can’t reasonably get from diet, such as senolytics that tackle aging on a cellular level
    • Lifestyle: in ways not already covered by the above three methods, so now we’re adding such things as sleep, stress management, and so forth.
      • This may sound like an optional add-on, but the reality is that our body can’t do the other things properly if we don’t also have this in hand.

    With these things in order, she argues, we can reasonably expect to go from strength to strength, rather than the decline that most people experience in later years.

    The style is light and personable easy-reading pop-science, with minimal jargon, and any necessary terms explained. After a respectable bibliography, there are also appendices with exercise protocols, recipes, and a how-to guide for managing pain and injury.

    Bottom line: if you are a woman and/or care about a woman, the contents of this book are something you should know inside-out, because it’s that important.

    Click here to check out Unbreakable, and make yourself as unbreakable as humanly possible!

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

    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 10almonds Team

    Gut Health 101

    We have so many microorganisms inside us, that by cell count, their cells outnumber ours more than ten-to-one. By gene count, we have 23,000 and they have more than 3,000,000. In effect, we are more microbe than we are human. And, importantly: they form a critical part of what keeps our overall organism ticking on.

    Read all about it: The role of the gut microbiota in nutrition and health

    Our trillions of tiny friends keep us alive, so it really really pays to return the favor.

    But how?

    Probiotics and fermented foods

    You probably guessed this one, but it’d be remiss not to mention it first. It’s no surprise that probiotics help; the clue is in the name. In short, they help add diversity to your microbiome (that’s a good thing).

    Read from the NIH: Probiotics: What You Need To Know

    As for fermented foods, not every fermented food will boost your microbiota, but great options include…

    • Fermented vegetables (sauerkraut, pickles, etc)
      • You’ll often hear kimchi mentioned; that is also pickled vegetables, usually mostly cabbage. It’s just the culinary experience that differs. Unlike sauerkraut, kimchi is usually spiced, for example.
    • Kombucha (a fermented sweet tea)
    • Miso & tempeh (different preparations of fermented soy)

    The health benefits vary based on the individual strains of bacteria involved in the fermentation, so don’t get too caught up on which is best.

    The best one is the one you enjoy, because then you’ll have it regularly!

    Feed them plenty of prebiotic fibers

    Those probiotics you took? The bacteria in them eat the fiber that you can’t digest without them. So, feed them those sorts of fibers.

    Great options include:

    • Bananas
    • Garlic
    • Onions
    • Whole grains

    Read more: Effects of Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics on Human Health

    Don’t feed them sugar and sweeteners

    Sugar and (and, counterintuitively, aspartame) can cause unfortunate gut microbe imbalances. Put simply, they kill some of your friends and feed some of your enemies. For example…

    Candida, which we all have in us to some degree, feeds on sugar (including the sugar formed from breaking down alcohol, by the way) and refined carbs. Then it grows, and puts its roots through your intestinal walls, linking with your neural system. Then it makes you crave the very things that will feed it and allow it to put bigger holes in your intestinal walls.

    Do not feed the Candida.

    Don’t believe us? Read: Candida albicans-Induced Epithelial Damage Mediates Translocation through Intestinal Barriers

    (That’s scientist-speak for “Candida puts holes in your intestines, and stuff can then go through those holes”)

    And as for how that comes about, it’s like we said:

    ❝Colonization of the intestine and translocation through the intestinal barrier are fundamental aspects of the processes preceding life-threatening systemic candidiasis. In this review, we discuss the commensal lifestyle of C. albicans in the intestine, the role of morphology for commensalism, the influence of diet, and the interactions with bacteria of the microbiota.❞

    Source: Candida albicans as a commensal and opportunistic pathogen in the intestine

    The usual five things

    1. Good diet (Mediterranean Diet is good; plant-based version of it is by far the best for this)
    2. Good exercise (yes, really)
    3. Good sleep (helps them, and they’ll help you get better sleep in return)
    4. Limit or eliminate alcohol consumption (what a shocker)
    5. Don’t smoke (it’s bad for everything, including gut health)

    One last thing you should know:

    If you’re used to having animal products in your diet, and make a sudden change to all plants, your gut will object very strongly. This is because your gut microbiome is used to animal products, and a plant-based diet will cause many helpful microbes to flourish in great abundance, and many less helpful microbes will starve and die. And they will make it officially Not Fun™ for you.

    So, you have two options to consider:

    1. Do it anyway, and sit it out (and believe us, you’ll be sitting), get the change over with quickly, and enjoy the benefits and much happier gut that follows.
    2. Make the change gradual. Reduce portions of animal products slowly, have “Meatless Mondays” etc, and slowly make the change over. This—for most people—is pretty comfortable, easy, and effective.

    And remember: the effects of these things we’ve talked about today compound when you do more than one of them, but if you don’t want to take probiotics or really hate kombucha or absolutely won’t consider a plant-based diet or struggle to give up sugar or alcohol, etc… Just do what you can do, and you’ll still have a net improvement!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • How to Think More Effectively – by Alain de Botton

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    The 10almonds Team

    Our brain is our most powerful organ, and our mind is an astonishing thing. So why do we sometimes go off-piste?

    The School of Life‘s Alain de Botton lays out for us a framework of cumulative thinking, directions for effort, and unlikely tools for cognitive improvement.

    The book especially highlights the importance of such things as…

    • making time for cumulative thinking
    • not, however, trying to force it
    • working with, rather than in spite of, distractions
    • noting and making use of our irrationalities
    • taking what we think/do both seriously and lightly, at once
    • practising constructive self-doubt

    The style is as clear and easy as you may have come to expect from Alain de Botton / The School of Life, and yet, its ideas are still likely to challenge every reader in some (good!) way.

    Bottom line: if you would like what you think, say, do to be more meaningful, this book will help you to make the most of your abilities!

    Click here to check out How To Think More Effectively, and upgrade your thought processes!

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  • What’s The Healthiest Sweetener?

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    The 10almonds Team

    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 😎

    ❝What sweetners are healthy and which will give us brain cancer etc?❞

    Short answer: none are great, and the science is very mixed

    More helpful answer: some are definitely better or worse than others, and there are strategies that can be employed to limit harm

    Firstly, there is a problem with sweeteners for simply being sweet to the taste, so that’s going to bring down the overall healthiness of literally any sweetener.

    The problem, in few words, is that we can build tolerance to sweetness, and thus we will gradually need more of it to get the same experience. This occurs especially in the case of artificial sweeteners, because many sugar substitutes are many times (in some cases, hundreds of times) sweeter than sugar. This leads to other sweet foods tasting more bland, causing people to crave sweeter and sweeter foods for the same satisfaction level.

    With this in mind…

    The World Health Organization has released a report offering guidance regards the use of sugar-free sweeteners.

    In a nutshell, the guidance is: don’t

    Let’s take some popular ones one-by-one

    We answered a question about sugar a little while back:

    Is Sugar The New Smoking? ← the answer is: no it isn’t, but it’s still very bad

    For more detail on different kinds of sugars, though, see: From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    Sucralose is a popular one, because it’s “a sugar that isn’t processed as a sugar” (although as new research has discovered, it might be at least partially metabolized as sugar after all), and it does have other problems too:

    • The Sucralose News: Scaremongering Or Serious? ← this is about genotoxicity, but the science is as yet unclear
    • The Sweetener That Interferes With Hunger/Satiety Signals ← specifically, sucralose prolongs hunger, and can even boost cravings, which makes it excellent in culinary terms, but (for most people, at least) not fabulous for the health. Why “for most people”? Well, some people struggle with eating enough, so something that chemically tricks people into eating more could contextually be beneficial. But most people aren’t in that boat, and are more likely to have the opposite problem.

    We’ve also talked about: The Fascinating Truth About Aspartame, Cancer, & Neurotoxicity

    …which covers how the most popular beliefs about aspartame are myths, and in large part stemming from a single viral hoax chain letter in the 90s.

    Erythritol is increasingly common these days, perhaps because of others getting negative press. It has its own specific issues:

    Erythritol & Brain Damage: Is The Science As Scary As It Sounds?

    …and the answer is that while erythritol was linked to a higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and early death in vivo, and in vitro, exposing brain blood vessel cells to erythritol levels similar to a typical sugar-free drink caused:

    • increased reactive oxygen species (which age and inflame tissues)
    • reduced nitric oxide (leading to less vessel relaxation)
    • increased endothelin-1 (causing more vessel constriction)
    • impaired production of t-PA (reducing the ability to break down clots)

    …all of which increase stroke risk. That said, this latter study was about what happens in a petri dish, so it could be that it’s not what happens in a living human being; we don’t know yet. Either way, the higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and early death is compelling as that was from data in real live (prior to early death, anyway) humans, We talked about that here:

    Xylitol vs Erythritol – Which is Healthier?

    The answer we came to in that head-to-head was:

    ❝The one thing that sets them apart is their respective safety profiles. Xylitol is prothrombotic and associated with major adverse cardiac events (CI=95, adjusted hazard ratio=1.57, range=1.12-2.21). Erythritol is also prothrombotic and more strongly associated with major adverse cardiac events (CI=95, adjusted hazard ratio=2.21, range=1.20-4.07).

    So, xylitol is bad and erythritol is worse, which means the relatively “healthier” is xylitol. We don’t recommend either, though.❞

    (we showed studies for this, linked in the “This or That” page here)

    As a quick aside: readers with good memories may recall that we’ve sometimes recommended xylitol for good oral health (it’s not just “not too bad as sweeteners go”, it actively does good things too; the crux is that it’s being used in the mouth (such as with xylitol-sweetened gum) but not actually ingested in meaningful amounts.

    You can learn more about that here: Xylitol: Cavity Fighter Or Gut Disruptor? The Dose Makes the Poison

    Now for some more positive news…

    Stevia‘s mostly been found to be “not bad”, see: Stevia vs Acesulfame Potassium – Which is Healthier?

    …which found that moderate consumption of stevia improves gut microdiversity, whereas acesulfame potassium harms gut microdiversity:

    Lastly, one we’re not aware of any downsides of beyond the sweetness tolerance spiral problem we mentioned up top…

    Glycine is about as sweet as sugar (sucrose), but it’s an amino acid that’s important for a good number of things, including collagen synthesis:

    The Sweet Truth About Glycine

    So if you’re going to go with some kind of non-sugar sweetener, we’d recommend that 😎

    Enjoy (in moderation though please, because of the sweetness tolerance problem)!

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