
Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook – by Sarah Raven
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Note: the US Amazon site currently (incorrectly) lists the author as “Jonathan Buckley”. The Canadian, British, and Australian sites all list the author correctly as Sarah Raven, and some (correctly) credit Jonathan Buckley as the photographer she used.
First, what it’s not: a gardening book. Beyond a few helpful tips, pointers, and “plant here, harvest here” instructions, this book assumes you are already capable of growing your own vegetables.
She does assume you are in a temperate climate, so if you are not, this might not be the book for you. Although! The recipes are still great; it’s just you’d have to shop for the ingredients and they probably won’t be fresh local produce for the exact same reason that you didn’t grow them.
If you are in a temperate climate though, this will take you through the year of seasonal produce (if you’re in a temperate climate but it’s in for example Australia, you’ll need to make a six-month adjustment for being in the S. Hemisphere), with many recipes to use not just one ingredient from your garden at a time, but a whole assortment, consistent with the season.
About the recipes: they (which are 450 in number) are (as you might imagine) very plant-forward, but they’re generally not vegan and often not vegetarian. So, don’t expect that you’ll produce everything yourself—just most of the ingredients!
Bottom line: if you like cooking, and are excited by the idea of growing your own food but are unsure how regularly you can integrate that, this book will keep you happily busy for a very long time.
Click here to check out Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook, and level-up your home cooking!
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What are compound exercises and why are they good for you?
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So you’ve got yourself a gym membership or bought a set of home weights. Now what? With the sheer amount of confusing exercise advice out there, it can be hard to decide what to include in a weights routine.
It can help to know there are broadly two types of movements in resistance training (lifting weights): compound exercises and isolation exercises.
So what’s the difference? And what’s all this got to do with strength, speed and healthy ageing?
What’s the difference?
Compound exercises involve multiple joints and muscle groups working together.
In a push up, for example, your shoulder and elbow joints are moving together. This targets the muscles in the chest, shoulder and triceps.
When you do a squat, you’re using your thigh and butt muscles, your back, and even the muscles in your core.
It can help to think about compound movements by grouping them by primary movement patterns.
For example, some lower body compound exercises follow a “squat pattern”. Examples include bodyweight squats, weighted squats, lunges and split squats.
A Bulgarian split squat is a type of compound movement exercise. Evelin Montero/Shutterstock We also have “hinge patterns”, where you hinge from a point on your body (such as the hips). Examples include deadlifts, hip thrusts and kettle bell swings.
Upper body compounded exercises can be grouped into “push patterns” (such as vertical barbell lifts) or “pull patterns” (such as weighted rows, chin ups or lat pull downs, which is where you use a pulley system machine to lift weights by pulling a bar downwards).
In contrast, isolation exercises are movements that occur at a single joint.
For instance, bicep curls only require movement at the elbow joint and work your bicep muscles. Tricep extensions and lateral raises are other examples of isolation exercises.
Many compound exercises mimic movements we do every day. Photo by Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels Compound exercises can make daily life easier
Many compound exercises mimic movements we do every day.
Hinge patterns mimic picking something off the floor. A vertical press mimics putting a heavy box on a high shelf. A squat mimics standing up from the couch or getting on and off the toilet.
That might sound ridiculous to a young, fit person (“why would I need to practise getting on and off a toilet?”).
Unfortunately, we lose strength and muscle mass as we age. Men lose about 5% of their muscle mass per decade, while for women the figure is about 4% per decade.
When this decline begins can vary widely. However, approximately 30% of an adult’s peak muscle mass is lost by the time they are 80.
The good news is resistance training can counteract these age-related changes in muscle size and strength.
So building strength through compound exercise movements may help make daily life feel a bit easier. In fact, our ability to perform compound movements are a good indicator how well we can function as we age.
Want to be able to get stuff down from high shelves when you’re older? Practising compound exercises like a vertical press could help. Galina_Lya/Shutterstock What about strength and athletic ability?
Compound exercises use multiple joints, so you can generally lift heavier weights than you could with isolation exercises. Lifting a heavier weight means you can build muscle strength more efficiently.
One study divided a group of 36 people into two. Three times a week, one group performed isolation exercises, while the other group did compound exercises.
After eight weeks, both groups had lost fat. But the compound exercises group saw much better results on measures of cardiovascular fitness, bench press strength, knee extension strength, and squat strength.
If you play a sport, compound movements can also help boost athletic ability.
Squat patterns require your hip, knee, and ankle to extend at the same time (also known as triple extension).
Our bodies use this triple extension trick when we run, sprint, jump or change direction quickly. In fact, research has found squat strength is strongly linked to being able to sprint faster and jump higher.
Isolation exercises are still good
What if you’re unable to do compound movements, or you just don’t want to?
Don’t worry, you’ll still build strength and muscle with isolation exercises.
Isolation exercises are also typically easier to learn as there is no skill required. They are an easy and low risk way to add extra exercise at the end of the workout, where you might otherwise be too tired to do more compound exercises safely and with correct form.
In fact, both isolation and compound exercises seem to be equally effective in helping us lose body fat and increase fat-free muscle mass when total intensity and volume of exercises are otherwise equal.
Some people also do isolation exercises when they want to build up a particular muscle group for a certain sport or for a bodybuilding competition, for example.
Isolation exercises have their role to play. Photo by Kampus Production/Pexels I just want a time efficient workout
Considering the above factors, you could consider prioritising compound exercises if you’re:
- time poor
- keen to lift heavier weights
- looking for an efficient way to train many muscles in the one workout
- interested in healthy ageing.
That said, most well designed workout programs will include both compound and isolation movements.
Correction: This article has been amended to reflect the fact a weighted row is a pull pattern, not a push pattern.
Mandy Hagstrom, Senior Lecturer, Exercise Physiology. School of Health Sciences, UNSW Sydney and Anurag Pandit, PhD Candidate in Exercise Physiology, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Dr. Kim Foster’s Method For Balancing Hormones Naturally
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Not just sex hormones, but also hormones like cortisol (the stress hormone), and thyroid hormones (for metabolism regulation) too! The body is most of the time self-regulating when it comes to hormones, but there are things that we can do to help our body look after us correctly.
In short, if we give our body what it needs, it will (usually, barring serious illness!) give us what we need.
Dr. Foster recommends…
Foods:
- Healthy fats (especially avocados and nuts)
- Lean proteins (especially poultry, fish, and legumes)
- Fruits & vegetables (especially colorful ones)
- Probiotics (especially fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, etc)
- Magnesium-rich foods (especially dark leafy greens, nuts, and yes, dark chocolate)
Teas:
- Camomile tea (especially beneficial against cortisol overproduction)
- Nettle tea (especially beneficial for estrogen production)
- Peppermint tea (especially beneficial for gut health, thus indirect hormone benefits)
Stress reduction:
- Breathing exercises (especially mindfulness exercises)
- Yoga (especially combining exercise with stretches)
- Spending time in nature (especially green spaces)
Dr. Foster explains more about all of these things, along with more illustrative examples, so if you can, do enjoy her video:
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Wondering how to spot the signs of postpartum depression?
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Postpartum depression, or PPD, is a debilitating, potentially life-threatening mental health condition that impacts about one in eight people who give birth in the U.S. While it’s normal to feel worried or stressed after becoming a parent, PPD can cause feelings of extreme sadness or anxiety that may lead to suicidal thoughts.
Read on to learn what PPD is, what causes it, how it’s treated, and more.
What is the difference between the baby blues and postpartum depression?
Postpartum blues, or the “baby blues,” impact up to 80 percent of new parents. The baby blues may cause bouts of crying, mood swings, anxiety, sadness, reduced concentration, irritability, changes in appetite, and trouble sleeping, but symptoms are fleeting.
“Baby blues are a transient period—hours to a few days—of emotionality that does not impair one’s functioning or cause severe symptoms like suicidality,” says Dr. Jennifer L. Payne, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia. “[Postpartum depression] can cause severe symptoms, including suicidality.”
In addition to causing more debilitating symptoms, PPD can last for months.
Some new parents also experience postpartum psychosis, which can cause hallucinations and delusions. However, unlike PPD, postpartum psychosis is rare.
What are the symptoms of postpartum depression?
PPD symptoms may include:
- Feeling depressed, irritable, angry, or hopeless
- Severe mood swings
- Difficulty bonding with your baby
- Withdrawing from family and friends
- Changes in appetite or sleeping patterns
- Extreme fatigue
- Difficulty concentrating
- Anxiety and panic attacks
- Thoughts of harming yourself or your baby
- Thoughts of death or suicide
If you are experiencing symptoms of PPD, Payne recommends seeking help from a primary care provider or obstetrician right away.
“It’s really important—not just for you, but for your baby,” Payne explains. “Babies exposed to significant PPD have slower language development, lower IQs, and more behavioral problems.”
Your health care provider will ask you a series of screening questions to determine if you are experiencing PPD.
What causes postpartum depression?
Research suggests that the drop in hormones that occurs after birth, genetics, and sleep deprivation may contribute to PPD.
You may be at higher risk of developing PPD if you have a history of mental health conditions like depression or bipolar disorder, have relatives who’ve experienced PPD, or experienced stressful events during or after pregnancy.
How is postpartum depression treated?
“PPD is usually treated with antidepressant medications—typically SSRIs and now with the new FDA-approved medication, zuranolone,” says Payne. Therapy has also been shown to help people manage PPD.
Your health care provider can help determine the best treatment options for you and can outline the risks and benefits of taking certain medications while breastfeeding.
For referrals to care, information about local support groups, and other mental health resources for new parents, call the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline or Postpartum Support International. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Can non-birthing parents have postpartum depression?
New parents who did not give birth, including cisgender men, may experience anxiety, depression, irritability, fatigue, and changes in appetite or sleeping patterns after a partner gives birth.
“Everyone knows that mothers’ hormones change a lot during and after pregnancy,” psychologist Scott Bea said in a 2019 Cleveland Clinic article. “But there’s evidence that fathers also experience real changes in their hormone levels after a baby is born.”
Adoptive parents may also show similar symptoms.
If you or anyone you know is considering suicide or self-harm or is anxious, depressed, upset, or needs to talk, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. For international resources, here is a good place to begin.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Greek Yogurt vs Cottage Cheese – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing Greek yogurt to cottage cheese, we picked the yogurt.
Why?
These are both dairy products popularly considered healthy, mostly for their high-protein, low-carb, low-fat profile. We’re going to assume that both were made without added sugars. Thus, their macro profiles are close to identical, and nothing between them there.
In the category of vitamins, both are a good source of some B vitamins, and neither are good source of much else. The B-vitamins they have most of, B2 and B12, Greek yogurt has more.
We’ll call this a small win for Greek yogurt.
As they are dairy products, you might have expected them to contain vitamin D—however (unless they have been artificially fortified, as is usually done with plant-based equivalents) they contain none or trace amounts only.
When it comes to minerals, both are reasonable sources of calcium, selenium, and phosphorus. Of these, they’re equal on the selenium, while cottage cheese has more phosphorus and Greek yogurt has more calcium.
Since it’s also a mineral (even if it’s usually one we’re more likely to be trying to get less of), it’s also worth noting here that cottage cheese is quite high in sodium, while Greek yogurt is not.
Another win for Greek yogurt.
Beyond those things, we’d be remiss not to mention that Greek yogurt contains plenty of probiotic bacteria, while cottage cheese does not.
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Bird Flu Is Bad for Poultry and Dairy Cows. It’s Not a Dire Threat for Most of Us — Yet.
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Headlines are flying after the Department of Agriculture confirmed that the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected dairy cows around the country. Tests have detected the virus among cattle in nine states, mainly in Texas and New Mexico, and most recently in Colorado, said Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a May 1 event held by the Council on Foreign Relations.
A menagerie of other animals have been infected by H5N1, and at least one person in Texas. But what scientists fear most is if the virus were to spread efficiently from person to person. That hasn’t happened and might not. Shah said the CDC considers the H5N1 outbreak “a low risk to the general public at this time.”
Viruses evolve and outbreaks can shift quickly. “As with any major outbreak, this is moving at the speed of a bullet train,” Shah said. “What we’ll be talking about is a snapshot of that fast-moving train.” What he means is that what’s known about the H5N1 bird flu today will undoubtedly change.
With that in mind, KFF Health News explains what you need to know now.
Q: Who gets the bird flu?
Mainly birds. Over the past few years, however, the H5N1 bird flu virus has increasingly jumped from birds into mammals around the world. The growing list of more than 50 species includes seals, goats, skunks, cats, and wild bush dogs at a zoo in the United Kingdom. At least 24,000 sea lions died in outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu in South America last year.
What makes the current outbreak in cattle unusual is that it’s spreading rapidly from cow to cow, whereas the other cases — except for the sea lion infections — appear limited. Researchers know this because genetic sequences of the H5N1 viruses drawn from cattle this year were nearly identical to one another.
The cattle outbreak is also concerning because the country has been caught off guard. Researchers examining the virus’s genomes suggest it originally spilled over from birds into cows late last year in Texas, and has since spread among many more cows than have been tested. “Our analyses show this has been circulating in cows for four months or so, under our noses,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Q: Is this the start of the next pandemic?
Not yet. But it’s a thought worth considering because a bird flu pandemic would be a nightmare. More than half of people infected by older strains of H5N1 bird flu viruses from 2003 to 2016 died. Even if death rates turn out to be less severe for the H5N1 strain currently circulating in cattle, repercussions could involve loads of sick people and hospitals too overwhelmed to handle other medical emergencies.
Although at least one person has been infected with H5N1 this year, the virus can’t lead to a pandemic in its current state. To achieve that horrible status, a pathogen needs to sicken many people on multiple continents. And to do that, the H5N1 virus would need to infect a ton of people. That won’t happen through occasional spillovers of the virus from farm animals into people. Rather, the virus must acquire mutations for it to spread from person to person, like the seasonal flu, as a respiratory infection transmitted largely through the air as people cough, sneeze, and breathe. As we learned in the depths of covid-19, airborne viruses are hard to stop.
That hasn’t happened yet. However, H5N1 viruses now have plenty of chances to evolve as they replicate within thousands of cows. Like all viruses, they mutate as they replicate, and mutations that improve the virus’s survival are passed to the next generation. And because cows are mammals, the viruses could be getting better at thriving within cells that are closer to ours than birds’.
The evolution of a pandemic-ready bird flu virus could be aided by a sort of superpower possessed by many viruses. Namely, they sometimes swap their genes with other strains in a process called reassortment. In a study published in 2009, Worobey and other researchers traced the origin of the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic to events in which different viruses causing the swine flu, bird flu, and human flu mixed and matched their genes within pigs that they were simultaneously infecting. Pigs need not be involved this time around, Worobey warned.
Q: Will a pandemic start if a person drinks virus-contaminated milk?
Not yet. Cow’s milk, as well as powdered milk and infant formula, sold in stores is considered safe because the law requires all milk sold commercially to be pasteurized. That process of heating milk at high temperatures kills bacteria, viruses, and other teeny organisms. Tests have identified fragments of H5N1 viruses in milk from grocery stores but confirm that the virus bits are dead and, therefore, harmless.
Unpasteurized “raw” milk, however, has been shown to contain living H5N1 viruses, which is why the FDA and other health authorities strongly advise people not to drink it. Doing so could cause a person to become seriously ill or worse. But even then, a pandemic is unlikely to be sparked because the virus — in its current form — does not spread efficiently from person to person, as the seasonal flu does.
Q: What should be done?
A lot! Because of a lack of surveillance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies have allowed the H5N1 bird flu to spread under the radar in cattle. To get a handle on the situation, the USDA recently ordered all lactating dairy cattle to be tested before farmers move them to other states, and the outcomes of the tests to be reported.
But just as restricting covid tests to international travelers in early 2020 allowed the coronavirus to spread undetected, testing only cows that move across state lines would miss plenty of cases.
Such limited testing won’t reveal how the virus is spreading among cattle — information desperately needed so farmers can stop it. A leading hypothesis is that viruses are being transferred from one cow to the next through the machines used to milk them.
To boost testing, Fred Gingrich, executive director of a nonprofit organization for farm veterinarians, the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, said the government should offer funds to cattle farmers who report cases so that they have an incentive to test. Barring that, he said, reporting just adds reputational damage atop financial loss.
“These outbreaks have a significant economic impact,” Gingrich said. “Farmers lose about 20% of their milk production in an outbreak because animals quit eating, produce less milk, and some of that milk is abnormal and then can’t be sold.”
The government has made the H5N1 tests free for farmers, Gingrich added, but they haven’t budgeted money for veterinarians who must sample the cows, transport samples, and file paperwork. “Tests are the least expensive part,” he said.
If testing on farms remains elusive, evolutionary virologists can still learn a lot by analyzing genomic sequences from H5N1 viruses sampled from cattle. The differences between sequences tell a story about where and when the current outbreak began, the path it travels, and whether the viruses are acquiring mutations that pose a threat to people. Yet this vital research has been hampered by the USDA’s slow and incomplete posting of genetic data, Worobey said.
The government should also help poultry farmers prevent H5N1 outbreaks since those kill many birds and pose a constant threat of spillover, said Maurice Pitesky, an avian disease specialist at the University of California-Davis.
Waterfowl like ducks and geese are the usual sources of outbreaks on poultry farms, and researchers can detect their proximity using remote sensing and other technologies. By zeroing in on zones of potential spillover, farmers can target their attention. That can mean routine surveillance to detect early signs of infections in poultry, using water cannons to shoo away migrating flocks, relocating farm animals, or temporarily ushering them into barns. “We should be spending on prevention,” Pitesky said.
Q: OK it’s not a pandemic, but what could happen to people who get this year’s H5N1 bird flu?
No one really knows. Only one person in Texas has been diagnosed with the disease this year, in April. This person worked closely with dairy cows, and had a mild case with an eye infection. The CDC found out about them because of its surveillance process. Clinics are supposed to alert state health departments when they diagnose farmworkers with the flu, using tests that detect influenza viruses, broadly. State health departments then confirm the test, and if it’s positive, they send a person’s sample to a CDC laboratory, where it is checked for the H5N1 virus, specifically. “Thus far we have received 23,” Shah said. “All but one of those was negative.”
State health department officials are also monitoring around 150 people, he said, who have spent time around cattle. They’re checking in with these farmworkers via phone calls, text messages, or in-person visits to see if they develop symptoms. And if that happens, they’ll be tested.
Another way to assess farmworkers would be to check their blood for antibodies against the H5N1 bird flu virus; a positive result would indicate they might have been unknowingly infected. But Shah said health officials are not yet doing this work.
“The fact that we’re four months in and haven’t done this isn’t a good sign,” Worobey said. “I’m not super worried about a pandemic at the moment, but we should start acting like we don’t want it to happen.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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52 Ways to Walk – by Annabel Streets
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Most of us learned to walk at a very young age and probably haven’t thought much about it since, except perhaps in a case where some injury made it difficult.
Annabel Streets provides a wonderful guide to not just taking up (or perhaps reclaiming) the joy of walking, but also the science of it in more aspects than most of us have considered:
- The physical mechanics of walking—what’s best?
- Boots or shoes? Barefoot?
- Roads, grass, rougher vegetation… Mud?
- Flora & fauna down to the microbiota that affect us
- How much walking is needed, to be healthy?
- Is there such a thing as too much walking?
- What are the health benefits (or risks) of various kinds of weather?
- Is it better to walk quickly or to walk far?
- What about if we’re carrying some injury?
- What’s going on physiologically when we walk?
- And so much more…
Streets writes with a captivating blend of poetic joie-de-vivre coupled with scientific references.
One moment the book is talking about neuroradiology reports of NO-levels in our blood, the impact of Mycobacterium vaccae, and the studied relationship between daily steps taken and production of oligosaccharide 3′-sialyllactose, and the next it’s all:
“As if the newfound lightness in our limbs has crept into our minds, loosening our everyday cares and constraints…”
And all in all, this book helps remind us that sometimes, science and a sense of wonder can and do (and should!) walk hand-in-hand.
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