Spoon-Fed – by Dr. Tim Spector

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Dr. Spector looks at widespread beliefs about food, and where those often scientifically disproven beliefs come from. Hint, there’s usually some manner of “follow the money”.

From calorie-counting to cholesterol content, from fish to bottled water, to why of all the people who self-report having an allergy, only around half turn out to actually have one when tested, Dr. Spector sets the record straight.

The style is as very down-to-earth and not at all self-aggrandizing; the author acknowledges his own mistakes and limitations along the way. In terms of pushing any particular agenda, his only agenda is clear: inform the public about bad science, so that we demand better science going forwards. Along the way, he gives us lots of information that can inform our personal health choices based on better science than indiscriminate headlines wildly (and sometimes intentionally) misinterpreting results.

Read this book, and you may find yourself clicking through to read the studies for yourself, next time you see a bold headline.

Bottom line: this book looks at a lot of what’s wrong with what a lot of people believe about healthy eating. Regular 10almonds readers might not find a lot that’s new here, but it could be a great gift for a would-be health-conscious friend or relative

Click here to check out Spoon-Fed, and bust some myths!

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  • Water’s Counterintuitive Properties

    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.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝Why are we told to drink more water for everything, even if sometimes it seems like the last thing we need? Bloated? Drink water. Diarrhea? Drink water. Nose running like a tap? Drink water❞

    While water will not fix every ill, it can fix a lot, or at least stop it from being worse!

    Our bodies are famously over 60% water (exact figure will depend on how well-hydrated you are, obviously, as well as your body composition in terms of muscle and fat). Our cells (which are mostly full of mostly water) need replacing all the time, and almost everything that needs transporting almost anywhere is taken there by blood (which is also mostly water). And if we need something moving out of the body? Water is usually going to be a large part of how it gets ejected.

    In the cases of the examples you gave…

    • Bloating: bloating is often a matter of water retention, which often happens as a result of having too much salt, and/or sometimes too much fat. So the body’s homeostatic system (the system that tries to maintain all kinds of equilibrium, keeping salt balance, temperature, pH, and many other things in their respective “Goldilocks zones”) tries to add more water to where it’s needed to balance out the salt etc.
      • Consequently, drinking more water means the body will note “ok, balance restored, no need to keep retaining water there, excess salts being safely removed using all this lovely water”.
    • Diarrhea: this is usually a case of a bacterial infection, though there can be other causes. Whether for that reason or another, the body has decided that it needs to give your gut an absolute wash-out, and it can only do that from the inside—so it uses as much of the body’s water as it needs to do that.
      • Consequently, drinking more water means that you are replenishing the water that the body has already 100% committed to using. If you don’t drink water, you’ll still have diarrhea, you’ll just start to get dangerously dehydrated.
    • Runny nose: this is usually a case of either fighting a genuine infection, or else fighting something mistaken for a pathogen (e.g. pollen, or some other allergen). The mucus is an important part of the body’s defense: it traps the microbes (be they bacteria, virus, whatever) and water-slides them out of the body.
      • Consequently, drinking more water means the body can keep the water-slide going. Otherwise, you’ll just get gradually more dehydrated (because as with diarrhea, your body will prioritize this function over maintaining water reserves—water reserves are there to be used if necessary, is the body’s philosophy) and if the well runs dry, you’ll just be dehydrated and have a higher pathogen-count still in your body.

    Some previous 10almonds articles that might interest you:

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  • 10 Lessons For A Healthy Mind & Body

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    Sadia Badiei, food scientist of “Pick Up Limes” culinary fame, has advice in and out of the kitchen:

    Pick up a zest for life

    Here’s what she picked up, and we all can too:

    1. “I can’t do it… yet”: it’s never too late to adopt a growth mindset by adding “yet” to your self-doubt, focusing on progress and the possibility of improvement.
    2. The spotlight effect: people are generally too absorbed in their own lives to focus on you, so don’t worry too much about others’ perceptions.
    3. Nutrition by addition: focus on adding healthier foods to your diet rather than eliminating the less healthy ones to avoid restrictive mindsets. You can still eliminate the less healthy ones if you want to! It just shouldn’t be the primary focus. Focusing on a conceptually negative thing is rarely helpful.
    4. It’s ok to change: embrace change as a sign of growth and evolution, rather than seeing it as a failure or waste of time.
    5. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything: be mindful of how you approach small tasks, regular tasks, boring tasks, unwanted tasks—you can either create a habit of enthusiasm or a habit of suffering (it’s entirely your choice which)
    6. Setting goals for success: set goals based on actions you can control (inputs) rather than outcomes that are uncertain. Less “lose 10 lbs”, and more “eat fiber before starch”, for example.
    7. You probably can’t have it all at once: you can achieve all your dreams, but often not simultaneously; goals and desires unfold in stages over time.
    8. The five-year rule: before adopting a new lifestyle or habit, ask yourself if you can realistically sustain it for five years to ensure it’s not just a short-term fix. If you struggle with this prognostic, look backwards first instead. Which healthy habits have you maintained for decades, and which were you never able to make stick?
    9. Are you afraid or excited?: reframe fear as excitement, as both emotions share similar physical sensations and signify that you care about the outcome.
    10. The voice you hear most: speak kindly to yourself in self-talk to create a softer, more compassionate tone. Your subconscious is always listening, so reinforce healthy rather than unhealthy thought patterns.

    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:

    80-Year-Olds Share Their Biggest Regrets

    Take care!

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  • Probiotics & Gas/Bloating

    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.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small 😎

    ❝I read about probiotics and got myself some from amazon but having started them, now I have a lot of gas, is this normal?❞

    As Tom Jones would say: it’s not unusual.

    However, it’s also not necessary, and it is easy enough to get past!

    And probiotics certainly have their place; see: How Much Difference Do Probiotic Supplements Make, Really?

    What’s going on with your gas is…

    We interrupt this article to bring back attention to our regular legal/medical disclaimer; please do remember that we can only speak in general health terms, cannot diagnose you, nor make any firm assurances about your health, nor prescribe treatment. What we can do is share information that we hope is educational, and if it helps you, so much the better. Always speak to your own doctor if you have concerns about your health.

    Now, back to the article,,,

    What’s going on with your gas is most probably what happens for a lot of people: you’ve just put a lot of bacteria into your gut, and congratulations, they survived (which is definitely not a given, more on that later, but their survival is what you wanted), and they are now thriving sufficiently that the output of their respiratory processes is tangible to you—in the form of abdominal bloating/gas.

    Because your gut is a semi-closed system (literally there’s an opening at both ends, but it’s mostly quite self-contained in terms of its ecosystem, unless you have leaky gut syndrome, which is Very Bad™), this will generally fix itself within a few days at most—perhaps it even has by the time you’re reading this.

    How does it fix itself you wonder? Because there’s only enough resources to sustain so many bacteria, what happens when we take a probiotic supplement (or food) is initially an overload of more bacteria than the gut can support (because unless you recently took antibiotics, the gut is pretty much always running at maximum capacity, because the bacteria there have no evolutionary reason to leave room for newcomers; they just multiply as best they can until the resources run out), and then the excess (i.e., those that are in excess of how many your gut can support) will die, and then the numbers will be back to normal.

    Note: the numbers will be back to normal. However, that doesn’t mean the probiotics did nothing—what you’ve done is add diversity, and specifically, you’ve made it so that percentage-wise, you now have slightly more “good” bacteria in the balance than you did previously.

    So, unless there are factors out of the ordinary: this is all usually self-correcting quite quickly.

    Tips to make things go as smoothly as possible

    Firstly, pay attention to recommended doses. If you take one, and think “that was delicious; I’ll have six more” then the initial effect will be a lot more than six times stronger, because of the nature of how bacteria multiply (i.e. exponentially) within minutes of reaching your gut.

    Again, this will normally self-correct, but there’s no reason to cause yourself discomfort unnecessarily.

    Secondly, if you take probiotics and do not get even a little gas or abdominal bloating even just a little bit, even just briefly… Then probably one of two things happened:

    • The probiotics were dead on arrival (i.e. the supplement was a dud, or a “live culture” product in fact died before it got to you)
    • The probiotics were fine, but your gut wasn’t prepared for them, and they died upon arrival

    The latter happens a lot, especially if the current gut health is not good. What your probiotics need to survive (and bear in mind, because of their life cycle, they need this in minutes of arrival, which is their multiply-or-die-out window), is:

    • Fiber, especially insoluble fiber
    • In a place they can get at it (i.e. it was the most recent thing you ate, and is not several feet further down your intestines)
    • Not too crowded with competitors (i.e. you just ate it, not last night)

    Thus, it can be best to take probiotics on a mostly-empty stomach after enjoying a fibrous snack.

    See also: What Do The Different Kinds Of Fiber Do? 30 Foods That Rank Highest

    And for that matter: Stop Sabotaging Your Gut ← this covers some common probiotics mistakes/problems

    If you’d rather take them on an entirely empty stomach, look for probiotic supplements that come with their own prebiotic fiber (usually inulin); these are often marketed as “symbiotics”.

    We don’t sell them, but here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience 😎

    Another thing to bear in mind is that there is (unless your case is unusual) no reason to take the same kind of probiotic for more than one course (i.e. one container of however many servings it has). This is because one of two things will be the case:

    • The probiotic worked, in which case, you now have thriving colonies of the bacterial species that that supplement provided
    • The probiotic didn’t work, in which case, why buy that one again?

    So, if supplementing with probiotics, it can be good to do so with new brand each time, with a gap in between each for your gut to get used to the new order of things.

    Finally, if you’re making any drastic dietary change, likely this will result in similar gut disturbances.

    In particular, if you are moving away from foods that feed C. albicans (the bad fungus that puts holes in your gut), then it will object strongly, cause you to crave sugar/flour/alcohol/etc, give you mood swings, and generally remind you that it has its roots firmly embedded in your nervous system. If that happens, don’t listen to it; it’s just its death throes and it’ll quieten down soon.

    You can read more about that here:

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

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • But First, Inner Peace – by Case Kenny
  • ‘I keep away from people’ – combined vision and hearing loss is isolating more and more older Australians

    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 ageing population brings a growing crisis: people over 65 are at greater risk of dual sensory impairment (also known as “deafblindness” or combined vision and hearing loss).

    Some 66% of people over 60 have hearing loss and 33% of older Australians have low vision. Estimates suggest more than a quarter of Australians over 80 are living with dual sensory impairment.

    Combined vision and hearing loss describes any degree of sight and hearing loss, so neither sense can compensate for the other. Dual sensory impairment can occur at any point in life but is increasingly common as people get older.

    The experience can make older people feel isolated and unable to participate in important conversations, including about their health.

    bricolage/Shutterstock

    Causes and conditions

    Conditions related to hearing and vision impairment often increase as we age – but many of these changes are subtle.

    Hearing loss can start as early as our 50s and often accompany other age-related visual changes, such as age-related macular degeneration.

    Other age-related conditions are frequently prioritised by patients, doctors or carers, such as diabetes or heart disease. Vision and hearing changes can be easy to overlook or accept as a normal aspect of ageing. As an older person we interviewed for our research told us

    I don’t see too good or hear too well. It’s just part of old age.

    An invisible disability

    Dual sensory impairment has a significant and negative impact in all aspects of a person’s life. It reduces access to information, mobility and orientation, impacts social activities and communication, making it difficult for older adults to manage.

    It is underdiagnosed, underrecognised and sometimes misattributed (for example, to cognitive impairment or decline). However, there is also growing evidence of links between dementia and dual sensory loss. If left untreated or without appropriate support, dual sensory impairment diminishes the capacity of older people to live independently, feel happy and be safe.

    A dearth of specific resources to educate and support older Australians with their dual sensory impairment means when older people do raise the issue, their GP or health professional may not understand its significance or where to refer them. One older person told us:

    There’s another thing too about the GP, the sort of mentality ‘well what do you expect? You’re 95.’ Hearing and vision loss in old age is not seen as a disability, it’s seen as something else.

    Isolated yet more dependent on others

    Global trends show a worrying conundrum. Older people with dual sensory impairment become more socially isolated, which impacts their mental health and wellbeing. At the same time they can become increasingly dependent on other people to help them navigate and manage day-to-day activities with limited sight and hearing.

    One aspect of this is how effectively they can comprehend and communicate in a health-care setting. Recent research shows doctors and nurses in hospitals aren’t making themselves understood to most of their patients with dual sensory impairment. Good communication in the health context is about more than just “knowing what is going on”, researchers note. It facilitates:

    • shorter hospital stays
    • fewer re-admissions
    • reduced emergency room visits
    • better treatment adherence and medical follow up
    • less unnecessary diagnostic testing
    • improved health-care outcomes.

    ‘Too hard’

    Globally, there is a better understanding of how important it is to maintain active social lives as people age. But this is difficult for older adults with dual sensory loss. One person told us

    I don’t particularly want to mix with people. Too hard, because they can’t understand. I can no longer now walk into that room, see nothing, find my seat and not recognise [or hear] people.

    Again, these experiences increase reliance on family. But caring in this context is tough and largely hidden. Family members describe being the “eyes and ears” for their loved one. It’s a 24/7 role which can bring frustration, social isolation and depression for carers too. One spouse told us:

    He doesn’t talk anymore much, because he doesn’t know whether [people are] talking to him, unless they use his name, he’s unaware they’re speaking to him, so he might ignore people and so on. And in the end, I noticed people weren’t even bothering him to talk, so now I refuse to go. Because I don’t think it’s fair.

    older woman looks down at table while carer looks on
    Dual sensory loss can be isolating for older people and carers. Synthex/Shutterstock

    So, what can we do?

    Dual sensory impairment is a growing problem with potentially devastating impacts.

    It should be considered a unique and distinct disability in all relevant protections and policies. This includes the right to dedicated diagnosis and support, accessibility provisions and specialised skill development for health and social professionals and carers.

    We need to develop resources to help people with dual sensory impairment and their families and carers understand the condition, what it means and how everyone can be supported. This could include communication adaptation, such as social haptics (communicating using touch) and specialised support for older adults to navigate health care.

    Increasing awareness and understanding of dual sensory impairment will also help those impacted with everyday engagement with the world around them – rather than the isolation many feel now.

    Moira Dunsmore, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Nursing School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, University of Sydney; Annmaree Watharow, Lived Experience Research Fellow, Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney, and Emily Kecman, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The Longevity Diet – by Dr. Valter Longo

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    Another book with “The New Science” in its subtitle, so, is this one a new science?

    Yes and no; some findings are new, many are not, what really sets this book apart from many of its genre though is that rather than focusing on fighting aging, it focuses on retaining youth. While this may seem like one and the same thing, there is a substantive difference beyond the ideological, which is: while anti-aging research focuses on what causes people to suffer age-related decline and fights each of those things, Dr. Longo’s research focuses on what is predominant in youthful bodies, cells, DNA, and looks to have more of that. Looking in a slightly different place means finding slightly different things, and knowledge is power indeed.

    Dr. Longo bases his research and focus on his “5 pillars of longevity”. We’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:

    1. Juventology research
    2. Epidemiology
    3. Clinical studies
    4. Centenarian studies
    5. Study of complex systems

    The first there (juventology research) may sound like needless jargon, but it is the counterpoint of the field of gerontology, and is otherwise something that didn’t have an established name.

    You may wonder why “clinical studies” gets a separate item when the others already include studies; this is because many studies when it comes to aging and related topics are population-based studies, cohort studies, observational studies, or (as is often the case) multiple of the above at once.

    Of course, all this discussion of academia is not itself practical information for the reader (unless we happen to work in the field), but it is interesting and does give confidence in the conclusions upon which the practical parts of the book are based.

    And what are they? As the title suggests, it’s about diet, and specifically, it’s about Dr. Longo’s “fast-mimicking diet”, which boasts the benefits of intermittent fasting without intermittent fasting. This hinges, of course, on avoiding metabolic overload, which can be achieved with a fairly simple diet governed by the principles outlined in this book, based on the research referenced.

    In the category of subjective criticism, there is quite a bit of fluff, much of it self-indulgently autobiographical and very complimentary, but its presence does not take anything away from the excellent content contained in the book.

    Bottom line: if you’d like a fresh perspective on regaining/retaining youthfulness, then this is a great book to read.

    Click here to check out The Longevity Diet, and stay younger!

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  • We’re only using a fraction of health workers’ skills. This needs to change

    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.

    Roles of health professionals are still unfortunately often stuck in the past. That is, before the shift of education of nurses and other health professionals into universities in the 1980s. So many are still not working to their full scope of practice.

    There has been some expansion of roles in recent years – including pharmacists prescribing (under limited circumstances) and administering a wider range of vaccinations.

    But the recently released paper from an independent Commonwealth review on health workers’ “scope of practice” identifies the myriad of barriers preventing Australians from fully benefiting from health professionals’ skills.

    These include workforce design (who does what, where and how roles interact), legislation and regulation (which often differs according to jurisdiction), and how health workers are funded and paid.

    There is no simple quick fix for this type of reform. But we now have a sensible pathway to improve access to care, using all health professionals appropriately.

    A new vision for general practice

    I recently had a COVID booster. To do this, I logged onto my general practice’s website, answered the question about what I wanted, booked an appointment with the practice nurse that afternoon, got jabbed, was bulk-billed, sat down for a while, and then went home. Nothing remarkable at all about that.

    But that interaction required a host of facilitating factors. The Victorian government regulates whether nurses can provide vaccinations, and what additional training the nurse requires. The Commonwealth government has allowed the practice to be paid by Medicare for the nurse’s work. The venture capitalist practice owner has done the sums and decided allocating a room to a practice nurse is economically rational.

    The future of primary care is one involving more use of the range of health professionals, in addition to GPs.

    It would be good if my general practice also had a physiotherapist, who I could see if I had back pain without seeing the GP, but there is no Medicare rebate for this. This arrangement would need both health professionals to have access to my health record. There also needs to be trust and good communication between the two when the physio might think the GP needs to be alerted to any issues.

    This vision is one of integrated primary care, with health professionals working in a team. The nurse should be able to do more than vaccination and checking vital signs. Do I really need to see the GP every time I need a prescription renewed for my regular medication? This is the nub of the “scope of practice” issue.

    How about pharmacists?

    An integrated future is not the only future on the table. Pharmacy owners especially have argued that pharmacists should be able to practise independently of GPs, prescribing a limited range of medications and dispensing them.

    This will inevitably reduce continuity of care and potentially create risks if the GP is not aware of what other medications a patient is using.

    But a greater role for pharmacists has benefits for patients. It is often easier and cheaper for the patient to see a pharmacist, especially as bulk billing rates fall, and this is one of the reasons why independent pharmacist prescribing is gaining traction.

    Pharmacists explains something to a patient
    It’s often easier for a patient to see a pharmacist than a GP. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Every five years or so the government negotiates an agreement with the Pharmacy Guild, the organisation of pharmacy owners, about how much pharmacies will be paid for dispensing medications and other services. These agreements are called “Community Pharmacy Agreements”. Paying pharmacists independent prescribing may be part of the next agreement, the details of which are currently being negotiated.

    GPs don’t like competition from this new source, even though there will be plenty of work around for GPs into the foreseeable future. So their organisations highlight the risks of these changes, reopening centuries old turf wars dressed up as concerns about safety and risk.

    Who pays for all this?

    Funding is at the heart of disputes about scope of practice. As with many policy debates, there is merit on both sides.

    Clearly the government must increase its support for comprehensive general practice. Existing funding of fee-for-service medical benefits payments must be redesigned and supplemented by payments that allow practices to engage a range of other health professionals to create health-care teams.

    This should be the principal direction of primary care reform, and the final report of the scope of practice review should make that clear. It must focus on the overall goal of better primary care, rather than simply the aspirations of individual health professionals, and working to a professional’s full scope of practice in a team, not a professional silo.

    In parallel, governments – state and federal – must ensure all health professionals are used to their best of their abilities. It is a waste to have highly educated professionals not using their skills fully. New funding arrangements should facilitate better access to care from all appropriately qualified health professionals.

    In the case of prescribing, it is possible to reconcile the aspirations of pharmacists and the concerns of GPs. New arrangements could be that pharmacists can only renew medications if they have agreements with the GP and there is good communication between them. This may be easier in rural and suburban areas, where the pharmacists are better known to the GPs.

    The second issues paper points to the complexity of achieving scope of practice reforms. However, it also sets out a sensible path to improve access to care using all health professionals appropriately.

    Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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