How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
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Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
Alzheimer’s is just one cause of dementia, but it’s a very notable one, not least of all because it’s
- a) the most common cause of dementia, and
- b) a measurably terminal disease.
For that reason we’re focusing on Alzheimer’s today, although most of the advice will go for avoiding dementia in general.
First, some things not everyone knows about Alzheimer’s:
- Alzheimer’s is a terminal disease.
- People who get a diagnosis at age 60 are typically given 4–8 years to live.
- Some soldier on for as many as 20, but those are rare outliers.
- Alzheimer’s begins 20 years or more before other symptoms start to develop.
- This makes this information very relevant for younger people approaching 40, for example.
- Alzheimer’s accounts for 60–80% of dementia, and affects around 6% of people over 60.
- By the age of 65, that figure is 10%. By the age of 70, however, the percentage is still about the same—this is because of the mortality rate preventing the accumulation of Alzheimer’s patients over time.
Want to know more? Read: 2023 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts And Figures Special Report ← this is a very comprehensive downloadablereference, by the way, including a lot of information about diagnosis, treatmentpathways, and earlyinterventions.
Speaking of diagnosis…
Know what the symptoms are… and aren’t!
Forgetting your car keys can be frustrating. Forgetting them frequently can be worrying.
But: there’s a difference between forgetting your car keys, and forgetting what car keys are used for. The latter is the kind of memory loss that’s more of a red flag for Alzheimer’s.
Similarly: forgetting someone’s name can be embarrassing. Forgetting someone’s name, asking them, forgetting asking them, asking them again, forgetting again (lather rinse repeat) is more of a red flag for Alzheimer’s.
There are other symptoms too, some of them less commonly known:
❝Difficulty remembering recent conversations, names or events; apathy; and depression are often early symptoms. Communication problems, confusion, poor judgment and behavioral changes may occur next. Difficulty walking, speaking, and swallowing are common in the late stages of the disease❞
If you or a loved one are experiencing worrying symptoms: when it comes to diagnosis and intervention, sooner is a lot better than later, so do talk to your doctor.
As for reducing your risk? First, the obvious stuff:
The usual 5 things that go for almost everything:
- Have a good diet—the Mediterranean Diet is once again recommended (we expect this will not be a surprise to regular readers!)
- Get regular exercise—in the case of avoiding Alzheimer’s and other dementias, typically the most important thing here is heart health, so getting regular cardiovascular exercise, such walking, running, or dancing is great. Cycling too. Swimming, not so much. Not that swimming’s bad or anything, it’s just that when your body is horizontal, the heart has less work to do, especially in the upper part of the body, because it’s not defying gravity. Similarly, yoga is great for the health but won’t particularly help with this, nor will weight training.
- Get good sleep—as we get older, we tend to need less sleep, and tend more towards the lower end of the standard “7–9 hours” prescription, but getting at least those 7 hours makes a huge difference.
- Cut down (or eliminate) alcohol consumption—and especially avoid binge-drinking. While “binge-drinking” is typically associated with young people, that Christmas party where that one uncle gets very drunk is also binge-drinking, for example. Plus, heavy drinking in early life has also been correlated with higher risk of Alzheimer’s later.
- Don’t smoke. It’s bad for everything, and Alzheimer’s risk is no exception.
How much do lifestyle changes alone make a difference?
They make a big difference. This 2022 population-based cohort study (so: huge sample size) looked at people who had 4–5 of the healthy lifestyle factors being studied, vs people who had 0–1 of them. They found:
❝A healthy lifestyle was associated with a longer life expectancy among men and women, and they lived a larger proportion of their remaining years without Alzheimer’s dementia.❞
The numbers of years involved by the way ranged between 3 and 20 years, in terms of life expectancy and years without or with Alzheimer’s, with the average increase of healthy life years being approximately the same as the average increase in years. This is important, because:
A lot of people think “well if I’m going to go senile, I might as well [unhealthy choice that shortens lifespan]”, but they misunderstand a critical factor:
The unhealthy choices will reduce their healthy life years, and simply bring the unhealthy ones (and subsequent death) sooner. If you’re going to spend your last few years in ill-health, it’s better to do so at 90 than 50.
The other thing you may already know… And a thing about it that not everyone considers:
Keeping cognitively active is important. This much is broadly known by the general public, and to clinicians, this was the fourth “healthy factor” in the list of five (instead of the sleep that we put there, because we were listing the 5 things that go for most preventable health issues).
Everyone leaps to mention sudoku at this point, so if that’s your thing, great, enjoy it! (This writer personally enjoys chess, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; if it yours though, you can come join her on Chess.com and we’ll keep sharp together)
But the more parts of your mental faculties you keep active, the better. Remember, brainpower (as with many things in health and life) is a matter of “use it or lose it” and this is on a “per skill” basis!
What this means: doing sudoku (a number-based puzzle game) or chess (great as it may be) won’t help as much for keeping your language skills intact, for example. Given that language skills are one of the most impactful and key faculties to get lost to Alzheimer’s disease, neglecting such would be quite an oversight!
Some good ways to keep your language skills tip-top:
- Read—but read something challenging, if possible. It doesn’t have to be Thomas Scanlon’s What We Owe To Each Other, but it should be more challenging than a tabloid, for example. In fact, on the topic of examples:
- This newsletter is written to be easy to read, while not shying away from complex ideas or hard science. Our mission is literally to “make [well-sourced, science-based] health and productivity crazy simple”.
- But the academic papers that we link? Those aren’t written to be easy to read. Go read them, or at least the abstracts (in academia, an abstract is essentially an up-front summary, and is usually the first thing you’ll see when you click a link to a study or such). Challenge yourself!
- Write—compared to reading/listening, producing language is a (related, but) somewhat separate skill. Just ask any foreign language learner which is more challenging: reading or writing!
- Journaling is great, but writing for others is better (as then you’ll be forced to think more about it)
- Learn a foreign language—in this case, what matters it that you’re practicing and learning, so in the scale of easy to hard, or doesn’t matter if it’s Esperanto or Arabic. Duolingo is a great free resource that we recommend for this, and they have a wide range of extensive courses these days.
Now for the least obvious things…
Social contact is important.
Especially in older age, it’s easy to find oneself with fewer remaining friends and family, and getting out and about can be harder for everyone. Whatever our personal inclinations (some people being more introverted or less social than others), we are fundamentally a social species, and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have built us around the idea that we will live our lives alongside others of our kind. And when we don’t, we don’t do as well.
See for example: Associations of Social Isolation and Loneliness With Later Dementia
If you can’t get out and about easily:
- Online socialising is still socializing.
- Online community is still community.
- Online conversations between friends are still conversations between friends.
If you don’t have much (or anyone) in the category of friends and family, join Facebook groups related to your interests, for example.
Berries are surprisingly good
^This may read like a headline from 200,000 BCE, but it’s relevant here!
Particularly recommended are:
- blueberries
- blackberries
- raspberries
- strawberries
- cranberries
We know that many of these berries seem to have a shelf-life of something like 30 minutes from time of purchase, but… Frozen and dried are perfectly good nutritionally, and in many cases, even better nutritionally than fresh.
Read: Effect of berry-based supplements and foods on cognitive function: a systematic review
Turmeric’s health benefits appear to include protecting against Alzheimer’s
Again, this is about risk reduction, and turmeric (also called curcumin, which is not the same as cumin) significantly reduces the build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain. Amyloid plaques are part of the progression of Alzheimer’s.
See for yourself: Protective Effects of Indian Spice Curcumin Against Amyloid Beta in Alzheimer’s Disease
If you don’t like it as a spice (and even if you do, you probably don’t want to put it in your food every day), you can easily get it as a supplement in capsule form.
Lower your homocysteine levels
Lower our what now? Homocysteine is an amino acid used for making certain proteins, and it’s a risk factor for Alzheimer’s.
Foods high in folate (and possible other B-vitamins) seem to lower homocysteine levels. Top choices include:
- Leafy greens
- Cruciferous vegetables
- Tomatoes
Get plenty of lutein
We did a main feature about specifically this a little while ago, so we’ll not repeat our work here, but lutein is found in, well, the same things we just listed above, and lower levels of lutein are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not a proven causative factor—we don’t know entirely what causes Alzheimer’s, just a lot of factors that have a high enough correlation that it’d be remiss to ignore them.
Catch up on our previous article: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It
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Foods For Managing Hypothyroidism (incl. Hashimoto’s)
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Foods for Managing Hypothyroidism
For any unfamiliar, hypothyroidism is the condition of having an underactive thyroid gland. The thyroid gland lives at the base of the front of your neck, and, as the name suggests, it makes and stores thyroid hormones. Those are important for many systems in the body, and a shortage typically causes fatigue, weight gain, and other symptoms.
What causes it?
This makes a difference in some cases to how it can be treated/managed. Causes include:
- Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition
- Severe inflammation (end result is similar to the above, but more treatable)
- Dietary deficiencies, especially iodine deficiency
- Secondary endocrine issues, e.g. pituitary gland didn’t make enough TSH for the thyroid gland to do its thing
- Some medications (ask your pharmacist)
We can’t do a lot about those last two by leveraging diet alone, but we can make a big difference to the others.
What to eat (and what to avoid)
There is nuance here, which we’ll go into a bit, but let’s start by giving the
one-linetwo-line summary that tends to be the dietary advice for most things:- Eat a nutrient-dense whole-foods diet (shocking, we know)
- Avoid sugar, alcohol, flour, processed foods (ditto)
What’s the deal with meat and dairy?
- Meat: avoid red and processed meats; poultry and fish are fine or even good (unless fried; don’t do that)
- Dairy: limit/avoid milk; but unsweetened yogurt and cheese are fine or even good
What’s the deal with plants?
First, get plenty of fiber, because that’s important to ease almost any inflammation-related condition, and for general good health for most people (an exception is if you have Crohn’s Disease, for example).
If you have Hashimoto’s, then gluten (as found in wheat, barley, and rye) may be an issue, but the jury is still out, science-wise. Here’s an example study for “avoid gluten” and “don’t worry about gluten”, respectively:
- The Effect of Gluten-Free Diet on Thyroid Autoimmunity in Women with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
- Doubtful Justification of the Gluten-Free Diet in the Course of Hashimoto’s Disease
So, you might want to skip it, to be on the safe side, but that’s up to you (and the advice of your nutritionist/doctor, as applicable).
A word on goitrogens…
Goitrogens are found in cruciferous vegetables and soy, both of which are very healthy foods for most people, but need some extra awareness in the case of hypothyroidism. This means there’s no need to abstain completely, but:
- Keep serving sizes small, for example a 100g serving only
- Cook goitrogenic foods before eating them, to greatly reduce goitrogenic activity
For more details, reading even just the abstract (intro summary) of this paper will help you get healthy cruciferous veg content without having a goitrogenic effect.
(as for soy, consider just skipping that if you suffer from hypothyroidism)
What nutrients to focus on getting?
- Top tier nutrients: iodine, selenium, zinc
- Also important: vitamin B12, vitamin D, magnesium, iron
Enjoy!
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Laugh Often, To Laugh Longest!
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Putting The Abs Into Absurdity
We’ve talked before about the health benefits of a broadly positive outlook on life:
Optimism Seriously Increases Longevity!
…and we’re very serious about it, but that’s about optimistic life views in general, and today we’re about not just keeping good humor in questionable circumstances, but actively finding good humor in the those moments—even when the moments in question might not be generally described as good!
After all, laughter really can be the best medicine, for example:
From the roots
First a quick recap on de-toothing the psychological aspect of threats, no matter how menacing they may be:
Hello, Emotions: Time For Radical Acceptance!
…which we can then take a step further:
What’s The Worst That Could Happen?
Choose your frame
Do you remember when that hacker hacked and publicized the US Federal no-fly list, after already hacking a nationwide cloud-based security camera company, getting access to more than 150,000 companies’ and private individuals’ security cameras, amongst various other cyber crimes, mostly various kinds of fraud and data theft?
Imagine how she (age 21) must have felt, when being indicted. What do you suppose this hacker had to say for itself under such circumstances?
❝congress is investigating now 🙂
but i stay silly :3 ❞
…the latter half of which, usually rendered “but I stay silly” or “but we stay silly” has since entered popular Gen-Z parlance, usually after expressing some negative thing, often in a state of powerlessness.
Which is an important life skill if powerlessness is something that is often likely.
It’s important for many Gen-Zs with negligible life prospects economically; it’s equally important for 60-somethings getting cancer diagnoses (statistically the most likely decade to find out one has cancer, by the way), and many other kinds of people younger, older, and in between.
Because at the end of the day, we all start powerless and we all end powerless.
Learned helplessness (two kinds)
In psychology, “learned helplessness” occurs when a person or creature gives up after learning that all and any attempts to resist a Bad Thing™ fail, perhaps even badly. A lab rat may just shut down and sit there getting electroshocked, for example. A person subjected to abuse may stop trying to improve their situation, and just go with the path of least resistance.
But, there’s another kind, wherein someone in a position of absolute powerlessness not only makes their peace with that, but also, decides that the one thing the outside world can’t control, is how they take it. Like the hacker we mentioned earlier.
Sometimes the gallows humor is even more literal, laughing at one’s own impending death. Not as a matter of bravado, but genuinely seeing the funny side.
But how?
Unfortunately, fortunately
The trick here is to “find a silver lining” that is nowhere near enough to compensate for the bad thing—and it may even be worse! But that’s fine:
“Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do the dishes before leaving for my vacation. Fortunately, I also forgot to turn the oven off, so the house burning down covered up my messy kitchen”
Writer’s personal less drastic example: today I set my espresso machine to press me an espresso; it doesn’t have an auto-off and I got distracted and it overflowed everywhere; my immediate reaction was “Oh! I have been blessed with an abundance of coffee!”
This kind of silly little thing, on a daily basis, builds a very solid habit for life that allows one to see the funny side in even the most absurd situations, even matters of life and death (can confirm: been there enough times personally—so far so good, still alive to find the remembered absurdity silly).
The point is not to genuinely value the “silver lining”, because half the time it isn’t even one, really, and it is useless to pretend, in seriousness.
But to pretend in silliness? Now we’re onto something, and the real benefit is in the laughs we had along the way.
Because those worst moments? Are probably when we need it the most, so it’s good to get some practice in!
Want more ways to find the funny and make it a life habit?
We reviewed a good book recently:
The Humor Habit: Rewire Your Brain To Stress Less, Laugh More, And Achieve More’er – by Paul Osincup
Stay silly!
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Herbs For Evidence-Based Health & Healing
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Herbs have been used since prehistoric times to treat injuries and illnesses, but which ones actually work, as opposed to being “old wives’ tales”?
Even today, in pharmacies herbals products may come with a disclaimer “based on traditional use only”, which, in scientific terms, means it likely performs no better than placebo.
This is a “Saturday Life Hacks” edition, not a “Research Review Monday”, so we won’t be doing any deep-dives today, and will instead keep things short and snappy. We’ll also spotlight one main benefit, rather than trying to cover all bases, as we often have room to do on a Monday!
Basil
Helps boost immunity:
Chamomile
Significantly reduces symptoms of osteoarthritis:
(This one challenged your writer’s resolve as it does so many things, it was hard to pick just one. So, she went with one that’s less known that “settling the stomach” and “relieving PMS” and “relaxation” and so forth)
Echinacea
Significantly reduces the risk of catching a cold (but won’t help once you’ve caught it):
Echinacea for preventing and treating the common cold
Elderberry
Significantly hastens recovery from upper respiratory viral infections:
Evening Primrose
Fights neuropathy, along with many other benefits:
An updated review on pharmacological activities and phytochemical constituents of evening primrose
Fennel
Antinflammatory, along with many other benefits:
Ginkgo biloba
Antioxidant effects provide anti-aging benefits:
Advances in the Studies of Ginkgo Biloba Leaves Extract on Aging-Related Diseases
Ginseng
Combats fatigue:
Ginseng as a Treatment for Fatigue: A Systematic Review
Lavender
Enjoyed for its sedative effects, which is really does have:
Evidence for Sedative Effects of the Essential Oil of Lavender after Inhalation
Sage
Helps fight HIV type 1 and Herpes simplex type 2 (and probably other viruses, but that’s what we have the science for right now):
Aqueous extracts from peppermint, sage and lemon balm leaves display potent anti-HIV-1 activity
Valerian
Inconclusive data; “traditional use only” for restful sleep.
Can’t have everything!
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Stretching to Stay Young – by Jessica Matthews
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A lot of stretching gurus (especially the Instagrammable kind) offer advices like “if you can’t do the splits balanced between two chairs to start with, that’s fine… just practise by doing the splits against a wall first!”
Jessica Matthews, meanwhile, takes a more grounded approach. A lot of this is less like yoga and more like physiotherapy—it’s uncomplicated and functional. There’s nothing flashy here… just the promise of being able to thrive in your body; supple and comfortable, doing the activities that matter to you.
On which note: the book gives advices about stretches for before and after common activities, for example:
- a bedtime routine set
- a pre-gardening set
- a post-phonecall set
- a level-up-your golf set
- a get ready for dancing set
…and many more. Whether “your thing” is cross-country skiing or knitting, she’s got you covered.
The book covers the whole body from head to toe. Whether you want to be sure to stretch everything, or just work on a particular part of your body that needs special attention, it’s there… with beautifully clear illustrations (the front cover illustration is indicative of the style—note how the muscle being stretched is highlighted in orange, too) and simple, easy-to-understand instructions.
All in all, we’re none of us getting any younger, but we sure can take some of our youth into whatever years come next. This is the stuff that life is made of!
Get your copy of “Stretching To Stay Young” from Amazon today!
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What causes the itch in mozzie bites? And why do some people get such a bad reaction?
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Are you one of these people who loathes spending time outdoors at dusk as the weather warms and mosquitoes start biting?
Female mosquitoes need blood to develop their eggs. Even though they take a tiny amount of our blood, they can leave us with itchy red lumps that can last days. And sometimes something worse.
So why does our body react and itch after being bitten by a mosquito? And why are some people more affected than others?
Arthur Poulin/Unsplash What happens when a mosquito bites?
Mosquitoes are attracted to warm blooded animals, including us. They’re attracted to the carbon dioxide we exhale, our body temperatures and, most importantly, the smell of our skin.
The chemical cocktail of odours from bacteria and sweat on our skin sends out a signal to hungry mosquitoes.
Some people’s skin smells more appealing to mosquitoes, and they’re more likely to be bitten than others.
Once the mosquito has made its way to your skin, things get a little gross.
The mosquito pierces your skin with their “proboscis”, their feeding mouth part. But the proboscis isn’t a single, straight, needle-like tube. There are multiple tubes, some designed for sucking and some for spitting.
Once their mouth parts have been inserted into your skin, the mosquito will inject some saliva. This contains a mix of chemicals that gets the blood flowing better.
There has even been a suggestion that future medicines could be inspired by the anti-blood clotting properties of mosquito saliva.
A common pest mosquito around the world, Culex quinquefasciatus. Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), CC BY It’s not the stabbing of our skin by the mosquito’s mouth parts that hurts, it’s the mozzie spit our bodies don’t like.
Are some people allergic to mosquito spit?
Once a mosquito has injected their saliva into our skin, a variety of reactions can follow. For the lucky few, nothing much happens at all.
For most people, and irrespective of the type of mosquito biting, there is some kind of reaction. Typically there is redness and swelling of the skin that appears within a few hours, but often more quickly, after just a few minutes.
Occasionally, the reaction can cause pain or discomfort. Then comes the itchiness.
Some people do suffer severe reactions to mosquito bites. It’s a condition often referred to as “skeeter syndrome” and is an allergic reaction caused by the protein in the mosquito’s saliva. This can cause large areas of swelling, blistering and fever.
The chemistry of mosquito spit hasn’t really been well studied. But it has been shown that, for those who do suffer allergic reactions to their bites, the reactions may differ depending on the type of mosquito biting.
We all probably get more tolerant of mosquito bites as we get older. Young children are certainly more likely to suffer more following mosquito bites. But as we get older, the reactions are less severe and may pass quickly without too much notice.
How best to treat the bites?
Research into treating bites has yet to provide a single easy solution.
There are many myths and home remedies about what works. But there is little scientific evidence supporting their use.
The best way to treat mosquito bites is by applying a cold pack to reduce swelling and to keep the skin clean to avoid any secondary infections. Antiseptic creams and lotions may also help.
There is some evidence that heat may alleviate some of the discomfort.
It’s particularly tough to keep young children from scratching at the bite and breaking the skin. This can form a nasty scab that may end up being worse than the bite itself.
Applying an anti-itch cream may help. If the reactions are severe, antihistamine medications may be required.
To save the scratching, stop the bites
Of course, it’s better not to be bitten by mosquitoes in the first place. Topical insect repellents are a safe, effective and affordable way to reduce mosquito bites.
Covering up with loose fitted long sleeved shirts, long pants and covered shoes also provides a physical barrier.
Mosquito coils and other devices can also assist, but should not be entirely relied on to stop bites.
There’s another important reason to avoid mosquito bites: millions of people around the world suffer from mosquito-borne diseases. More than half a million people die from malaria each year.
In Australia, Ross River virus infects more than 5,000 people every year. And in recent years, there have been cases of serious illnesses caused by Japanese encephalitis and Murray Valley encephalitis viruses.
Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Superfood Energy Balls
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They are healthy, they are tasty, they are convenient! Make some of these and when you need an energizing treat at silly o’clock when you don’t have time to prepare something, here they are, full of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, good for blood sugars too, and ready to go:
You will need
- 1 cup pitted dates
- 1 cup raw mixed nuts
- ¼ cup goji berries
- 1 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 tsp chili flakes
Naturally, you can adjust the spice level if you like! But this is a good starter recipe.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Blend all the ingredients in a good processor to make a dough
2) Roll the dough into 1″ balls; you should have enough dough for about 16 balls. If you want them to be pretty, you can roll them in some spare dry ingredients (e.g. chopped nuts, goji berries, chili flakes, seeds of some kind, whatever you have in your kitchen that fits the bill).
3) Refrigerate for at least 1–2 hours, and serve! They can also be kept in the fridge for at least a good while—couldn’t tell you how long for sure though, because honestly, they’ve never stayed that long in the fridge without being eaten.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Dates vs Figs – Which is Healthier?
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Goji Berries: Which Benefits Do They Really Have?
- The Sugary Food That Lowers Blood Sugars
- Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
- Capsaicin’s Hot Benefits
Take care!
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