Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

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Resistance Is Useful!

At 10almonds we talk a lot about the importance of regular moderate exercise (e.g. walking, gardening, housework, etc), and with good reason: getting in those minutes (at least 150 minutes per week, so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) is the exericise most consistently linked to better general health outcomes and reduced mortality risk.

We also often come back to mobility, because at the end of the day, being able to reach for something from a kitchen cabinet without doing oneself an injury is generally more important in life than being able to leg-press a car.

Today though, we’re going to talk about resistance training.

What is resistance training?

It can be weight-lifting, or it can be bodyweight exercises. In those cases, what you’re resisting is gravity. It can also be exercises with resistance bands or machines. In all cases, it’s about building and/or maintaining strength.

Why does it matter?

Let’s say you’re not an athlete, soldier, or laborer, and the heaviest thing you have to pick up is a bag of groceries. Strength still matters, for two main reasons:

  • Muscle strength correlates to bone strength. You can’t build (or maintain) strong muscles on weak bones, so if you take care of your muscles, then your body will keep your bones strong too.
    • That’s assuming you have a good diet as well—but today’s not about that. If you’d like to know more about eating for bone health though, do check out this previous article about that!
  • Muscle strength correlates to balance and stability. You can’t keep yourself from falling over if you are physically frail.

Both of those things matter, because falls and fractures often have terrible health outcomes (e.g., slower recovery and more complications) the older we get. So, we want to:

  • Ideally, not fall in the first place
  • If we do fall, have robust bones

See also: Effects of Resistance Exercise on Bone Health

How much should we do?

Let’s go to the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research on this one:

❝There is strong evidence to support the benefits of resistance exercise for countering many age-related processes of sarcopenia, muscle weakness, mobility loss, chronic disease, disability, and even premature mortality.

In addition, this Position Statement provides specific evidence-based practice recommendations to aid in the implementation of resistance exercise programs for healthy older adults and those with special considerations.

While there are instances where low-intensity, low-volume programs are appropriate (i.e., beginning programs for individuals with frailty or CVDs), the greatest benefits are possible with progression to moderate to higher intensity programs.❞

~ Fragala et al

Read the statement in full:

Resistance Training for Older Adults: Position Statement From the National Strength and Conditioning Association

There’s a lot of science there and it’s well worth reading if you have the time. It’s particularly good at delineating how much is not enough vs how much is too much, and the extent to which we should (or shouldn’t) train to exhaustion.

If you don’t fancy that, though, and/or just want to start with something accessible and work your way up, the below is a very good (and also evidence-based) start-up plan:

Healthline’s Exercise Plan For Seniors—For Strength, Balance, & Flexibility

(it has a weekly planner, step-by-step guides to the exercises, and very clear illustrative animations of each)

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  • Flossing Without Flossing?

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    Flossing Without Flossing?

    You almost certainly brush your teeth. You might use mouthwash. A lot of people floss for three weeks at a time, often in January.

    There are a lot of options for oral hygiene; variations of the above, and many alternatives too. This is a big topic, so rather than try to squeeze it all in one, this will be a several-part series.

    The first part was: Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?

    How important is flossing?

    Interdental cleaning is indeed pretty important, even though it may not have the heart health benefits that have been widely advertised:

    Periodontal Disease and Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease: Does the Evidence Support an Independent Association?

    However! The health of our gums is very important in and of itself, especially as we get older:

    Flossing Is Associated with Improved Oral Health in Older Adults

    But! It helps to avoid periodontal (e.g. gum) disease, not dental caries:

    Flossing for the management of periodontal diseases and dental caries in adults

    And! Most certainly it can help avoid a stack of other diseases:

    Interdental Cleaning Is Associated with Decreased Oral Disease Prevalence

    …so in short, if you’d like to have happy healthy teeth and gums, flossing is an important adjunct, and/but not a one-stop panacea.

    Is it better to floss before or after brushing?

    As you prefer. A team of scientists led by Dr. Claudia Silva studied this, and found that there was “no statistical difference between brush-floss and floss-brush”:

    Does flossing before or after brushing influence the reduction in the plaque index? A systematic review and meta-analysis

    Flossing is tedious. How do we floss without flossing?

    This is (mostly) about water-flossing! Which does for old-style floss what sonic toothbrushes to for old-style manual toothbrushes.

    If you’re unfamiliar, it means using a device that basically power-washes your teeth, but with a very narrow high-pressure jet of water.

    Do they work? Yes:

    Effects of interdental cleaning devices in preventing dental caries and periodontal diseases: a scoping review

    As for how it stacks up against traditional flossing, Liang et al. found:

    ❝In our previous single-outcome analysis, we concluded that interdental brushes and water jet devices rank highest for reducing gingival inflammation while toothpick and flossing rank last.

    In this multioutcome Bayesian network meta-analysis with equal weight on gingival inflammation and bleeding-on-probing, the surface under the cumulative ranking curve was 0.87 for water jet devices and 0.85 for interdental brushes.

    Water jet devices and interdental brushes remained the two best devices across different sets of weightings for the gingival inflammation and bleeding-on-probing.

    ~ Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice

    You may be wondering how safe it is if you have had dental work done, and, it appears to be quite safe, for example:

    BDJ | Water-jet flossing: effect on composites

    Want to try water-flossing?

    Here are some examples on Amazon:

    Bonus: if you haven’t tried interdental brushes, here’s an example for that

    Enjoy!

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  • The Brain-Skin Doctor

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    Of Brains And Breakouts

    Today’s spotlight is on Dr. Claudia Aguirre. She’s a molecular neuroscientist, and today she’s going to be educating us about skin.

    What? Why?

    When we say “neuroscience”, we generally think of the brain. And indeed, that’s a very important part of it.

    We might think about eyes, which are basically an extension of the brain.

    We don’t usually think about skin, which (just like our eyes) is constantly feeding us a lot of information about our surroundings, via a little under three million nerve endings. Guess where the other ends of those nerves lead!

    There’s a constant two-way communication going on between our brain and our skin.

    What does she want us to know?

    Psychodermatology

    The brain and the skin talk to each other, and maladies of one can impact the other:

    • Directly, e.g. stress prompting skin breakouts (actually this is a several-step process physiologically, but for the sake of brevity we’ll call this direct)
    • Indirectly, e.g. nervous disorders that result in people scratching or picking at their skin, which prompts a whole vicious cycle of one thing making the other worse

    Read more: Psychodermatology: The Brain-Skin Connection

    To address both kinds of problems, clearly something beyond moisturizer is needed!

    Mindfulness (meditation and beyond)

    Mindfulness is a well-evidenced healthful practice for many reasons, and Dr. Aguirra argues the case for it being good for our skin too.

    As she points out,

    ❝Cultural stress and anxiety can trigger or aggravate many skin conditions—from acne to eczema to herpes, psoriasis, and rosacea.

    Conversely, a disfiguring skin condition can trigger stress, anxiety, depression, and even suicide.

    Chronic, generalized anxiety can create chronic inflammation and exacerbate inflammatory skin conditions, such as those I mentioned previously.

    Chronic stress can result in chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, poor sleep, and a whole cascade of effects resulting in a constant breakdown of tissues and organs, including the skin.❞

    ~ Dr. Claudia Aguirra

    So, she recommends mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), for the above reasons, along with others!

    Read more: Mind Matters

    How to do it: No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

    And as for “and beyond?”

    Do you remember in the beginning of the pandemic, when people were briefly much more consciously trying to avoid touching their faces so much? That, too, is mindfulness. It may have been a stressed and anxious mindfulness for many*, but mindfulness nonetheless.

    *which is why “mindfulness-based stress reduction” is not a redundant tautology repeated more than once unnecessarily, one time after another 😉

    So: do try to keep aware of what you are doing to your skin, and so far as is reasonably practicable, only do the things that are good for it!

    The skin as an endocrine organ

    Nerves are not the only messengers in the body; hormones do a lot of our body’s internal communication too. And not just the ones everyone remembers are hormones (e.g. estrogen, testosterone, although yes, they do both have a big impact on skin too), but also many more, including some made in the skin itself!

    Dr. Aguirra gives us a rundown of common conditions, the hormones behind them, and what we can do if we don’t want them:

    Read more: Rethinking The Skin As An Endocrine Organ

    Take-away advice:

    For healthy skin, we need to do more than just hydrate, get good sleep, have good nutrition, and get a little sun (but not too much).

    • We should also practice mindfulness-based stress reduction, and seek help for more serious mental health issues.
    • We should also remember the part our hormones play in our skin, and not just the obvious ones.

    Did you know that vitamin D is also a hormone, by the way? It’s not the only hormone at play in your skin by a long way, but it is an important one:

    Society for Endocrinology | Vitamin D

    Want to know more?

    You might like this interview with Dr. Aguirre:

    The Brain in Our Skin: An Interview with Dr. Claudia Aguirre

    Take care!

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  • Does Your Butt…Wink?

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    What is a Butt Wink?

    A “butt wink” is a common issue that occurs during squatting exercises.

    Now, we’ve talked about the benefits of squatting countless times (see here or here for just a few examples). As with all exercises, using the correct technique is imperative, helping to both reduce injury and maximize gain.

    Given butt winks are a common issue when squatting, we thought it natural to devote an article to it.

    So, a butt wink happens when, at the bottom of your squat position, your pelvis tucks rotates backward (otherwise known as a “posterior pelvic tilt”) and the lower back rounds. This motion looks like a slight ‘wink’, hence the name.

    How to Avoid Butt Winking

    When the pelvis tucks under and the spine rounds, it can put undue pressure on the lumbar discs. This is especially risky when squatting with weights, as it can exacerbate the stress on the spine.

    To avoid a butt wink, it’s important to maintain a neutral spine throughout the squat and to work on flexibility and strength in the hips, glutes, and hamstrings. Adjusting the stance width or foot angle during squats can also help in maintaining proper form.

    A visual representation would likely work better than our attempt at describing what to do, so without further ado, here’s today’s video:

    How was the video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!

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  • Gut-Healthy Labneh Orecchiette

    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.

    Labneh (a sort of yogurt-cheese made from strained yogurt) is a great probiotic, and there’s plenty of resistant starch in this dish too, from how we cook, cool, and reheat the pasta. Add to this the lycopene from the tomatoes, the ergothioneine from the mushrooms, and the healthful properties of the garlic, black pepper, and red chili, and we have a very healthy dish!

    You will need

    • 10 oz labneh (if you can’t buy it locally, you can make your own by straining Greek yogurt through a muslin cloth, suspended over a bowl to catch the water that drips out, overnight—and yes, plant-based is also fine if you are vegan, and the gut benefits are similar because unlike vegan cheese, vegan yogurt is still fermented)
    • 6 oz wholegrain orecchiette (or other pasta, but this shape works well for this sauce)
    • ¼ bulb garlic, grated
    • Juice of ½ lemon
    • Large handful chopped parsley
    • Large handful chopped dill
    • 9 oz cherry tomatoes, halved
    • 9 oz mushrooms (your choice what kind), sliced (unless you went for shiitake or similar, which don’t need it due to already being very thin)
    • 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • 1 tsp red chili flakes
    • ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
    • Extra virgin olive oil

    Method

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

    1) Cook the pasta as you normally would. Drain, and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

    2) Combine the labneh with the garlic, black pepper, dill, parsley, and lemon juice, in a large bowl. Set aside.

    3) Heat a little olive oil in a skillet; add the chili flakes, followed by the mushrooms. Cook until soft and browned, then add the tomatoes and fry for a further 1 minute—we want the tomatoes to be blistered, but not broken down. Stir in the MSG/salt, and take off the heat.

    4) Refresh the pasta by passing a kettle of boiling water through it in a colander, then add the hot pasta to the bowl of labneh sauce, stirring to coat thoroughly.

    5) Serve, spooning the mushrooms and tomatoes over the labneh pasta.

    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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  • Elderberries vs Gooseberries – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing elderberries to gooseberries, we picked the elderberries.

    Why?

    These are both berries more likely found in your garden or local wood than in the supermarket, but if you have convenient access to them, they’re great options for eating!

    In terms of macros, elderberry has nearly 2x the carbs and/but also nearly 2x the fiber, which in glycemic index terms, mostly cancels out (although: elderberry has the slightly lower glycemic index of the two)

    In the category of vitamins, both are great but elderberries are winning with more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, and C, while gooseberries have more vitamin B5.

    When it comes to minerals, elderberries again lead with more calcium, iron, phosphorus, and potassium, while gooseberries have more magnesium.

    There is an extra category today, which is “extra medicinal properties”, and elderberries have extra immune-boosting qualities, whereas gooseberries—while being as polyphenol-laden as one usually expects berries to be—do not confer the same kind of benefit in this regard.

    You can check out the information about elderberry’s extra properties in the links section below; meanwhile, if you’re choosing between these berries, that’s the clear winner in every category today!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

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  • What you need to know about H5N1 bird flu

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    On May 30, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a Michigan dairy worker tested positive for H5N1 bird flu. It was the fourth person to test positive for H5N1 in the United States, following another recent case in Michigan, an April case in Texas, and an initial case in Colorado in 2022

    H5N1 bird flu has been spreading among bird species in the U.S. since 2021, killing millions of wild birds and poultry. In late March 2024, H5N1 bird flu was found in cows for the first time, causing an outbreak in dairy cows across several states. 

    U.S. public health officials and researchers are particularly concerned about this outbreak because the virus has infected cows and other mammals and has spread from a cow to a human for the first time. 

    This bird flu strain has shown to not only make wild mammals, including marine mammals and bears, very sick but to also cause high rates of death among species, says Jane Sykes, professor of small animal medicine at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. 

    “And now that it has been found in cattle, [it] raises particular concern for spread to all the animal species, including people,” adds Sykes.

    Even though the risk for human infection is low and there has never been human-to-human transmission of H5N1, there are several actions you can take to stay protected. Read on to learn more about H5N1 bird flu and the current outbreak. 

    What is H5N1? 

    H5N1 is a type of influenza virus that most commonly affects birds, causing them severe respiratory illness and death. 

    The H5N1 strain first emerged in China in the 1990s, and it has continued to spread around the world since then. In 1997, the virus spread from animals to humans in Hong Kong for the first time, infecting 18 people, six of whom died. 

    Since 2020, the H5N1 strain has caused “an unprecedented number of deaths in wild birds and poultry in many countries,” according to the World Health Organization

    Even though bird flu is rare in humans, an H5N1 infection can cause mild to severe illness and can be fatal in some cases. It can cause eye infection, upper respiratory symptoms, and pneumonia. 

    What do we know about the 2024 human cases of H5N1 in the U.S.?

    The Michigan worker who tested positive for H5N1 in late May is a dairy worker who was exposed to infected livestock. They were the first to experience respiratory symptoms—including a cough without a fever—during the current outbreak. They were given an antiviral and the CDC says their symptoms are resolving.

    The Michigan farm worker who tested positive earlier in May only experienced eye-related symptoms and has already recovered. And the dairy worker who tested positive for the virus in Texas in April only experienced eye redness as well, was treated with an antiviral medication for the flu, and is recovering. 

    Is H5N1 bird flu in the milk we consume?

    The Food and Drug Administration has found traces of H5N1 bird flu virus in raw or unpasteurized milk. However, pasteurized milk is safe to drink. 

    Pasteurization, the process of heating milk to high temperatures to kill harmful bacteria (which the majority of commercially sold milk goes through), deactivates the virus. In 20 percent of pasteurized milk samples, the FDA found small, inactive (not live nor infectious) traces of the virus, but these fragments do not make pasteurized milk dangerous.

    In a recent Infectious Diseases Society of America briefing, Dr. Maximo Brito, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, said that it’s important for people to avoid “drinking unpasteurized or raw milk [because] there are other diseases, not only influenza, that could be transmitted by drinking unpasteurized milk.” 

    What can I do to prevent bird flu?

    While the risk of H5N1 infection in humans is low, people with exposure to infected animals (like farmworkers) are most at risk. But there are several actions you can take to stay protected. 

    One of the most important things, according to Sykes, is taking the usual precautions we’ve taken with COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, including frequent handwashing, especially before eating. 

    “Handwashing and mask-wearing [are important], just as we learned from the pandemic,” Sykes adds. “And it’s not wearing a mask at all times, but thinking about high-risk situations, like when you’re indoors in a crowded environment, where transmission of respiratory viruses is much more likely to occur.” 

    There are other steps you can take to prevent H5N1, according to the CDC:

    • Avoid direct contact with sick or dead animals, including wild birds and poultry.
    • Don’t touch surfaces that may have been contaminated with animal poop, saliva, or mucus. 
    • Cook poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit to kill any bacteria or virus, including H5N1. Generally, avoid eating undercooked food. 
    • Avoid consuming unpasteurized or raw milk or products like cheeses made with raw milk. 
    • Avoid eating uncooked or undercooked food.
    • Poultry and livestock farmers and workers and bird flock owners should wear masks and other personal protective equipment “when in direct or close physical contact with sick birds, livestock, or other animals; carcasses; feces; litter; raw milk; or surfaces and water that might be contaminated with animal excretions from potentially or confirmed infected birds, livestock, or other animals.” (The CDC has more recommendations for this population here.)

    Is there a vaccine for H5N1?

    The CDC said there are two candidate H5N1 vaccines ready to be made and distributed in case the virus starts to spread from person to person, and the country is now moving forward with plans to produce millions of vaccine doses.

    The FDA has approved several bird flu vaccines since 2007. The U.S. has flu vaccines in stockpile through the National Pre-Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Stockpile program, which allows for quick response as strains of the flu virus evolve.  

    Could this outbreak become a pandemic?

    Scientists and researchers are concerned about the possibility of H5N1 spreading among people and causing a pandemic. “Right now, the risk is low, but as time goes on, the potential for mutation to cause widespread human infection increases,” says Sykes. 

    “I think this virus jumping into cows has shown the urgency to keep tracking [H5N1] a lot more closely now,” Peter Halfmann, research associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Influenza Research Institute tells PGN. “We have our eyes on surveillance now. … We’re keeping a much closer eye, so it’s not going to take us by surprise.”

    This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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