Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment – by Dr. George Best
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Dr. Best is a doctor of chiropractic, but his work here is compelling. He starts by giving an overview of the relevant anatomy, and then the assorted possible causes of sciatica, before moving on to the treatments.
As is generally the case for chiropractic, nothing here will be “cured”, but it will give methods for ongoing management to keep you pain-free—which in the case of sciatica, is usually the single biggest thing that most people suffering from it most dearly want.
We get to read a lot about self-massage and exercises, of the (very well-evidenced; about the most well-evidenced thing there is for back pain) McKenzie technique exercises, as well as assorted acupressure-based techniques that are less well-evidenced but have good anecdotal support.
He also writes about preventing sciatica—which if you already have it, that doesn’t mean it’s too late; it just means, in that case do these things (along with the aforementioned exercises) to gradually reverse the harm done and get back to where you were pre-sciatica.
Lastly, he does also speak on when signs might point to your problems being beyond the scope of this book, and seeking professional examination if you haven’t already.
The style throughout is straight to the point, informative, and instructional. There is zero fluff or padding, and no sensationalization. There are diagrams and illustrative photos where appropriate.
Bottom line: if you have, or fear the threat of, sciatica, then this is an excellent book to have and use its exercises.
Click here to check out Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment, and live pain-free!
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Hearty Healthy Ukrainian Borscht
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In the West, borscht is often thought of as Russian, but it is Ukrainian in origin and popular throughout much of Eastern Europe, with many local variations. Today’s borscht is a vegetarian (and vegan, depending on your choice of cooking fat) borscht from Kyiv, and it’s especially good for the gut, heart, and blood sugars.
You will need
- 1 quart vegetable stock; ideally you made this yourself from vegetable offcuts you kept in the freezer, but failing that, your supermarket should have low-sodium stock cubes
- 4 large beets, peeled and cut into matchsticks
- 1 can white beans (cannellini beans are ideal), drained and rinsed
- 1 cup sauerkraut
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, roughly chopped
- 1 large russet potato, peeled and cut into large chunks
- 3 small carrots, tops removed and cut into large chunks
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- ½ bulb garlic, finely chopped
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 bunch fresh dill, chopped. If you cannot get fresh, substitute with parsley (1 bunch fresh, chopped, or 1 tbsp dried). Do not use dried dill; it won’t work.
- A little fat for cooking; this one’s a tricky and personal decision. Butter is traditional, but would make this recipe impossible to cook without going over the recommended limit for saturated fat. Avocado oil is healthy, relatively neutral in taste, and has a high smoke point, though that latter shouldn’t be necessary here if you are attentive with the stirring. Extra virgin olive oil is also a healthy choice, but not as neutral in flavor and does have a lower smoke point. Coconut oil has arguably too strong a taste and a low smoke point. Seed oils are very heart-unhealthy. All in all, avocado oil is a respectable choice from all angles except tradition.
- On standby: a little vinegar (your preference what kind)
Salt is conspicuous by its absence, but there should be enough already from the other ingredients, especially the sauerkraut.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat some oil in a large sauté pan (cast iron is perfect if you have it), add the onion and pepper, and stir until the onion is becoming soft.
2) Add the carrots and beets and stir until they are becoming soft. If you need to add a little more oil, that’s fine.
3) Add the tomato paste, and stir in well.
4) Add a little (about ½ cup) of the vegetable stock and stir in well until you get a consistent texture with the tomato paste.
5) Add the sauerkraut and the rest of the broth, and cook for about 20 minutes.
6) Add the potatoes and cook for another 10 minutes.
7) Add the beans and cook for another 5 minutes.
8) Add the garlic, black pepper, and herbs. Check that everything is cooked (poke a chunk of potato with a fork) and that the seasoning is to your liking. The taste should be moderately sour from the sauerkraut; if it is sweet, you can stir in a little vinegar now to correct that.
9) Serve! Ukrainian borscht is most often served hot (unlike Lithuanian borscht, which is almost always served cold), but if the weather’s warm, it can certainly be enjoyed cold too:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure
- No, Beetroot Isn’t Vegetable Viagra. But Here’s What It Can Do
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal
Take care!
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10 Ways To Self-Soothe That Don’t Involve Food Or Drink
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.
If one is accustomed to comfort-eating or drowning one’s sorrows, what are the alternatives that can actually work? Holistic nutritionist Selin Bilgin has a list:
Self-Care That’s Not Self-Sabotage
You might want to make a note of these 10 things, so they can be a sort of “menu” for you when you need them:
- Give your introversion or extroversion what it needs (e.g. alone time to decompress, or social activities)
- Treat your senses: often we don’t actually need food/drink so much as culinary entertainment. So, we can sate this sensory mood in other ways, for example pleasant candles, flowers, and so forth.
- Bathe/shower nicely: it’s cliché but some personal pampering can go a long way
- Beautify yourself: it’s also cliché, but a makeover evening has its place
- Move! Go for a walk, do some yoga, whatever suits you, but move your body.
- Make movie nights luxurious: instead of making it about food/drink, focus on creating an enjoyable atmosphere
- Physically release tension: at 10almonds we recommend progressive relaxation for this!
- Create something: whether it’s art, craft, baking, or something else, creativity feels good
- Tackle things you’ve been procrastinating: this one doesn’t seem like self-soothing from the front end, but from the back end (i.e., having done it), it makes a big difference!
- Journal: expressing your thoughts and feelings can help a lot—really.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
- Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)
- Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence
Take care!
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You can now order all kinds of medical tests online. Our research shows this is (mostly) a bad idea
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.
Elena.Katkova/Shutterstock Many of us have done countless rapid antigen tests (RATs) over the course of the pandemic. Testing ourselves at home has become second nature.
But there’s also a growing worldwide market in medical tests sold online directly to the public. These are “direct-to-consumer” tests, and you can access them without seeing a doctor.
While this might sound convenient, the benefits to most consumers are questionable, as we discovered in a recent study.
What are direct-to-consumer tests?
Let’s start with what they’re not. We’re not talking about patients who are diagnosed with a condition, and use tests to monitor themselves (for example, finger-prick testing to monitor blood sugar levels for people with diabetes).
We’re also not talking about home testing kits used for population screening, such as RATs for COVID, or the “poo tests” sent to people aged 50 and over for bowel cancer screening.
Direct-to-consumer tests are products marketed to anyone who is willing to pay, without going through their GP. They can include hormone profiling tests, tests for thyroid disease and food sensitivity tests, among many others.
Some direct-to-consumer tests allow you to complete the test at home, while self-collected lab tests give you the equipment to collect a sample, which you then send to a lab. You can now also buy pathology requests for a lab directly from a company without seeing a doctor.
We’ve all become accustomed to RATs during the pandemic.
Ground Picture/ShutterstockWhat we did in our study
We searched (via Google) for direct-to-consumer products advertised for sale online in Australia between June and December 2021. We then assessed whether each test was likely to provide benefits to those who use them based on scientific literature published about the tests, and any recommendations either for or against their use from professional medical organisations.
We identified 103 types of tests and 484 individual products ranging in price from A$12.99 to A$1,947.
We concluded only 11% of these tests were likely to benefit most consumers. These included tests for STIs, where social stigma can sometimes discourage people from testing at a clinic.
A further 31% could possibly benefit a person, if they were at higher risk. For example, if a person had symptoms of thyroid disease, a test may benefit them. But the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners does not recommend testing for thyroid disease in people without symptoms because evidence showing benefits of identifying and treating people with early thyroid disease is lacking.
Some 42% were commercial “health checks” such as hormone and nutritional status tests. Although these are legitimate tests – they may be ordered by a doctor in certain circumstances, or be used in research – they have limited usefulness for consumers.
A test of your hormone or vitamin levels at a particular time can’t do much to help you improve your health, especially because test results change depending on the time of day, month or season you test.
Most worryingly, 17% of the tests were outright “quackery” that wouldn’t be recommended by any mainstream health practitioner. For example, hair analysis for assessing food allergies is unproven and can lead to misdiagnosis and ineffective treatments.
More than half of the tests we looked at didn’t state they offered a pre- or post-test consultation.
Ordering medical tests online probably isn’t a good idea.
fizkes/ShutterstockProducts available may change outside the time frame of our study, and direct-to-consumer tests not promoted or directly purchasable online, such as those offered in pharmacies or by commercial health clinics, were not included.
But in Australia, ours is the first and only study we know of mapping the scale and variety of direct-to-consumer tests sold online.
Research from other countries has similarly found a lack of evidence to support the majority of direct-to-consumer tests.
4 questions to ask before you buy a test online
Many direct-to-consumer tests offer limited benefits, and could even lead to harms. Here are four questions you should ask yourself if you’re considering buying a medical test online.
1. If I do this test, could I end up with extra medical appointments or treatments I don’t need?
Doing a test yourself might seem harmless (it’s just information, after all), but unnecessary tests often find issues that would never have caused you problems.
For example, someone taking a diabetes test may find moderately high blood sugar levels see them labelled as “pre-diabetic”. However, this diagnosis has been controversial, regarded by many as making patients out of healthy people, a large number of whom won’t go on to develop diabetes.
2. Would my GP recommend this test?
If you have worrying symptoms or risk factors, your GP can recommend the best tests for you. Tests your GP orders are more likely to be covered by Medicare, so will cost you a lot less than a direct-to-consumer test.
3. Is this a good quality test?
A good quality home self-testing kit should indicate high sensitivity (the proportion of true cases that will be accurately detected) and high specificity (the proportion of people who don’t have the disease who will be accurately ruled out). These figures should ideally be in the high 90s, and clearly printed on the product packaging.
For tests analysed in a lab, check if the lab is accredited by the National Association of Testing Authorities. Avoid tests sent to overseas labs, where Australian regulators can’t control the quality, or the protection of your sample or personal health information.
4. Do I really need this test?
There are lots of reasons to want information from a test, like peace of mind, or just curiosity. But unless you have clear symptoms and risk factors, you’re probably testing yourself unnecessarily and wasting your money.
Direct-to-consumer tests might seem like a good idea, but in most cases, you’d be better off letting sleeping dogs lie if you feel well, or going to your GP if you have concerns.
Patti Shih, Senior Lecturer, Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values, University of Wollongong; Fiona Stanaway, Associate Professor in Clinical Epidemiology, University of Sydney; Katy Bell, Associate Professor in Clinical Epidemiology, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, and Stacy Carter, Professor and Director, Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values, University of Wollongong
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Coconut vs Avocado – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing coconut to avocado, we picked the avocado.
Why?
In terms of macros, avocado is lower in carbs and also in net carbs—coconut’s a little higher in fiber, but not enough to make up for the difference in carbs nor, when it comes to glycemic index and insulin index, the impact of coconut’s much higher fat content on insulin responses too. On which note, while coconut’s fats are broadly considered healthy (its impressive saturated fat content is formed of medium-chain triglycerides which, in moderation, are heart-healthy), avocado’s fats are even healthier, being mostly monounsaturated fat with some polyunsaturated (and about 15x less saturated fat). All in all, a fair win for avocado on the macros front, but coconut isn’t bad in moderation.
When it comes to vitamins, avocados are higher in vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline. Most of those differences are by very large margins. Coconuts are not higher in any vitamins. A huge, easy, “perfect score” win for avocados.
In the category of minerals, however, it’s coconut’s turn to sweep with more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, zinc, and selenium—though the margins are mostly not nearly as impressive as avocado’s vitamin margins. Speaking of avocados, they do have more potassium than coconuts do, but the margin isn’t very large. A compelling win for coconut’s mineral content.
Adding up the sections, we get to a very credible win for avocados, but coconuts are also very respectable. So, as ever, enjoy both (although we do recommend exercising moderation in the case of coconuts, mainly because of the saturated fat content), and if you’re choosing between them for some purpose, then avocado will generally be the best option.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy? ← defying Betteridge’s Law here!
- Avocado, Coconut & Lime Crumble Pots ← if you do want to enjoy both, here’s a fabulous way to do so in style
Take care!
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Vitamin C (Drinkable) vs Vitamin C (Chewable) – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing vitamin C (drinkable) to vitamin C (chewable), we picked the drinkable.
Why?
First let’s look at what’s more or less the same in each:
- The usable vitamin C content is comparable
- The bioavailability is comparable
- The additives to hold it together are comparable
So what’s the difference?
With the drinkable, you also drink a glass of water
If you’d like to read more about how to get the most out of the vitamins you take, you can do so here:
Are You Wasting Your Vitamins? Maybe, But You Don’t Have To
If you’d like to get some of the drinkable vitamin C, here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Why do disinfectants only kill 99.9% of germs? Here’s the science
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Have you ever wondered why most disinfectants indicate they kill 99.9% or 99.99% of germs, but never promise to wipe out all of them? Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind mid-way through cleaning your kitchen or bathroom.
Surely, in a world where science is able to do all sorts of amazing things, someone would have invented a disinfectant that is 100% effective?
The answer to this conundrum requires understanding a bit of microbiology and a bit of mathematics.
Davor Geber/Shutterstock What is a disinfectant?
A disinfectant is a substance used to kill or inactivate bacteria, viruses and other microbes on inanimate objects.
There are literally millions of microbes on surfaces and objects in our domestic environment. While most microbes are not harmful (and some are even good for us) a small proportion can make us sick.
Although disinfection can include physical interventions such as heat treatment or the use of UV light, typically when we think of disinfectants we are referring to the use of chemicals to kill microbes on surfaces or objects.
Chemical disinfectants often contain active ingredients such as alcohols, chlorine compounds and hydrogen peroxide which can target vital components of different microbes to kill them.
Diseinfectants can contain a range of ingredients. Maridav/Shutterstock The maths of microbial elimination
In the past few years we’ve all become familiar with the concept of exponential growth in the context of the spread of COVID cases.
This is where numbers grow at an ever-accelerating rate, which can lead to an explosion in the size of something very quickly. For example, if a colony of 100 bacteria doubles every hour, in 24 hours’ time the population of bacteria would be more than 1.5 billion.
Conversely, the killing or inactivating of microbes follows a logarithmic decay pattern, which is essentially the opposite of exponential growth. Here, while the number of microbes decreases over time, the rate of death becomes slower as the number of microbes becomes smaller.
For example, if a particular disinfectant kills 90% of bacteria every minute, after one minute, only 10% of the original bacteria will remain. After the next minute, 10% of that remaining 10% (or 1% of the original amount) will remain, and so on.
Because of this logarithmic decay pattern, it’s not possible to ever claim you can kill 100% of any microbial population. You can only ever scientifically say that you are able to reduce the microbial load by a proportion of the initial population. This is why most disinfectants sold for domestic use indicate they kill 99.9% of germs.
Other products such as hand sanitisers and disinfectant wipes, which also often purport to kill 99.9% of germs, follow the same principle.
You might have noticed none of the cleaning products in your laundry cupboard kill 100% of germs. Africa Studio/Shutterstock Real-world implications
As with a lot of science, things get a bit more complicated in the real world than they are in the laboratory. There are a number of other factors to consider when assessing how well a disinfectant is likely to remove microbes from a surface.
One of these factors is the size of the initial microbial population that you’re trying to get rid of. That is, the more contaminated a surface is, the harder the disinfectant needs to work to eliminate the microbes.
If for example you were to start off with only 100 microbes on a surface or object, and you removed 99.9% of these using a disinfectant, you could have a lot of confidence that you have effectively removed all the microbes from that surface or object (called sterilisation).
In contrast, if you have a large initial microbial population of hundreds of millions or billions of microbes contaminating a surface, even reducing the microbial load by 99.9% may still mean there are potentially millions of microbes remaining on the surface.
Time is is a key factor that determines how effectively microbes are killed. So exposing a highly contaminated surface to disinfectant for a longer period is one way to ensure you kill more of the microbial population.
This is why if you look closely at the labels of many common household disinfectants, they will often suggest that to disinfect you should apply the product then wait a specified time before wiping clean. So always consult the label on the product you’re using.
Disinfectants won’t necessarily work in your kitchen exactly like they work in a lab. Ground Picture/Shutterstock Other factors such as temperature, humidity and the type of surface also influence how well a disinfectant works outside the lab.
Similarly, microbes in the real world may be either more or less sensitive to disinfection than those used for testing in the lab.
Disinfectants are one part infection control
The sensible use of disinfectants plays an important role in our daily lives in reducing our exposure to pathogens (microbes that cause illness). They can therefore reduce our chances of getting sick.
The fact disinfectants can’t be shown to be 100% effective from a scientific perspective in no way detracts from their importance in infection control. But their use should always be complemented by other infection control practices, such as hand washing, to reduce the risk of infection.
Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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