State of Slim – by Dr. James Hill & Dr. Holly Wyatt

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.

The premise of this book is “people in Colorado are on average the slimmest in the US”, and sets about establishing why, and then doing what Coloradans are doing. As per the subtitle (drop 20 pounds in 8 weeks), this is a weight loss book and does assume that you want to lose weight—specifically, to lose fat. So if that’s not your goal, you can skip this one already.

The authors explain, as many diet and not-diet-but-diet-adjacent book authors do, that this is not a diet—and then do refer to it as the Colorado Diet throughout. So… Is it a diet?

The answer is a clear “yes, but”—and the caveat is “yes, but also some associated lifestyle practices”.

The diet component is basically a very low-carb diet to start with (with the day’s ration of carbs being a small amount of oats and whatever you can get from some non-starchy vegetables such as greens, tomatoes, etc), and then reintroducing more carbohydrate centric foods one by one, stopping after whole grains. If you are vegan or vegetarian, you can also skip this one already, because this advises eating six animal protein centric meals per day.

The non-diet components are very general healthy-living advices mixed in with popular “diet culture” advices, such as practice mindful eating, don’t eat after 8pm, exercise more, use small plates, enjoy yourself, pre-portion your snacks, don’t drink your calories, get 8 hours sleep, weigh all your food, etc.

Bottom line: this is a very mixed bag, even to the point of being a little chaotic. It gives sometimes contradictory advice, and/but this results in a very “something for everyone” cafeteria approach to dieting. The best recommendation we can give for this book is “it has very many ideas for you to try and see if they work for you”.

Click here to check out State of Slim, and take your pick!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • Unwell Women – by Dr. Elinor Cleghorn
  • Getting Flexible, Starting As An Adult: How Long Does It Really Take?
    Aleks Brzezinska shares her flexibility journey from 21 to 23, stressing anatomy, consistency, lifestyle, hydration, and diverse stretching methods for gains.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • 100,000 People, 30 Years, One Clear Winner vs Aging

    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.

    Generally speaking, the scientific community most highly lauds the Mediterranean diet as being best for general health:

    The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For? ← what isn’t it good for?!

    However, even this can be tweaked with specific health considerations in mind, for example:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← these tweaks offer adjusted versions of the Mediterranean diet, optimized for anti-inflammation, gut health, heart health, or brain health

    And today we present to you some very good research into…

    The best diet for aging well

    Let’s be clear on terms first: by “aging well”, this means reaching age 70 without chronic diseases and maintaining good cognitive, physical, and mental health.

    105,015 participants (of whom, 66% women, average age 53 at the start of the study) were followed for up to 30 years. Not in the stalkery way, but in the longitudinal study way. We say “up to”, because as with any sizeable longitudinal study, some died before the end of the study.

    9,771 of them were deemed, at the end of the study, to have achieved “healthy aging”.

    So, how did those participants achieve that, in terms of diet?

    The dietary patterns that had the strongest positive impact were:

    • AHEI (Alternative Healthy Eating Index): best for mental and physical function, overall healthy aging.
    • PHDI (Planetary Health Diet Index): best for cognitive health and survival to age 70.
    • DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension): strongest general impact.
    • MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay): best for brain health.
    • rEDIH (Reversed Empirical Dietary Index for Hyperinsulinemia): most effective for chronic disease prevention.

    In contrast:

    • EIDP (Empirically Inflammatory Dietary Pattern): shocking nobody, performed least well in all areas

    You are probably wondering what those dietary patterns actually consist of, so click here to see a chart of what’s included or excluded in each dietary pattern.

    As you can see, the AHEI diet that was “best for mental and physical function, overall healthy aging” is essentially the Mediterranean diet with three small tweaks:

    1. no seafood, but long-chain omega-3 fatty acids include to compensate
    2. no sugar-sweetened beverages or fruit juices
    3. “no” sodium (in other words, minimal sodium, since almost everything contains trace amounts)

    The PHDI diet, which was “best for cognitive health and survival to age 70” is essentially a whole-foods plant-based diet. Which in turn is very consistent with the Mediterranean, except that it excludes animal products, of which the Mediterranean diet uses small amounts.

    You can read the paper in its entirety here:

    Optimal dietary patterns for healthy aging

    Want to know more?

    A panel of 69 doctors and nutritionists examined the evidence for 38 diets (including Mediterranean, MIND, DASH, Vegan, Keto, Slimfast, WeightWatchers, Nutrisystem, and more) and scored them in 21 categories (e.g. best for general health, best for weight loss, best for heart, best against diabetes, etc):

    Which Diet? Top Diets Ranked By Experts

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

  • Younger For Life – by Dr. Anthony Youn

    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.

    We’ve reviewed anti-aging books before, so what makes this one different? Mostly, it’s the very practical focus.

    Which is not to say there’s not also good science in here; there is. But the focus is on what everything means for the reader, not what happened with a certain cohort of lab mice. Instead, he looks at the causes of aging, the process of aging, and what interventions to implement to address those, and reverse many of them.

    Some parts are more general lifestyle interventions that 10almonds readers will know well already, but other parts are very specific advices, protocols, and regimes; in particular his skincare section is well worth reading. As for nutrition, there’s even a respectable recipes section, so this book does have it all!

    The final section of the book is dedicated to plastic surgeries (the author is a plastic surgeon who believes that most people should not need those, and would do well to stick to the advices in the rest of the book). We suspect this last part of the book will be of least interest to 10almonds readers.

    Bottom line: if you’re of the view that getting older should come with as little as possible physical deterioration along the way, then this book can help a lot with that.

    Click here to check out Younger For Life, and feel great!

    Share This Post

  • Managing [E-word] Dysfunction Reactions

    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? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    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

    We had several requests pertaining to veganism, meatless mondays, and substitutions in recipes—so we’re going to cover those on a different day!

    As for questions we’re answering today…

    Q: Information on [e-word] dysfunction for those who have negative reactions to [the most common medications]?

    When it comes to that particular issue, one or more of these three factors are often involved:

    • Hormones
    • Circulation
    • Psychology

    The most common drugs (that we can’t name here) work on the circulation side of things—specifically, by increasing the localized blood pressure. The exact mechanism of this drug action is interesting, albeit beyond the scope of a quick answer here today. On the other hand, the way that they work can cause adverse blood-pressure-related side effects for some people; perhaps you’re one of them.

    To take matters into your own hands, so to speak, you can address each of those three things we just mentioned:

    Hormones

    Ask your doctor (or a reputable phlebotomy service) for a hormone test. If your free/serum testosterone levels are low (which becomes increasingly common in men over the age of 45), they may prescribe something—such as testosterone shots—specifically for that.

    This way, it treats the underlying cause, rather than offering a workaround like those common pills whose names we can’t mention here.

    Circulation

    Look after your heart health; eat for your heart health, and exercise regularly!

    Cold showers/baths also work wonders for vascular tone—which is precisely what you need in this matter. By rapidly changing temperatures (such as by turning off the hot water for the last couple of minutes of your shower, or by plunging into a cold bath), your blood vessels will get practice at constricting and maintaining that constriction as necessary.

    Psychology

    [E-word] dysfunction can also have a psychological basis. Unfortunately, this can also then be self-reinforcing, if recalling previous difficulties causes you to get distracted/insecure and lose the moment. One of the best things you can do to get out of this catch-22 situation is to not worry about it in the moment. Depending on what you and your partner(s) like to do in bed, there are plenty of other equally respectable options, so just switch track!

    Having a conversation about this in advance will probably be helpful, so that everyone’s on the same page of the script in that eventuality, and it becomes “no big deal”. Without that conversation, misunderstandings and insecurities could arise for your partner(s) as well as yourself (“aren’t I desirable enough?” etc).

    So, to recap, we recommend:

    • Have your hormones checked
    • Look after your circulation
    • Make the decision to have fun!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Unwell Women – by Dr. Elinor Cleghorn
  • Cannabis Myths vs Reality

    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.

    Cannabis Myths vs Reality

    We asked you for your (health-related) opinion on cannabis use—specifically, the kind with psychoactive THC, not just CBD. We got the above-pictured, below-described, spread of responses:

    • A little over a third of you voted for “It’s a great way to relax, without most of the dangers of alcohol”.
    • A little under a third of you voted for “It may have some medical uses, but recreational use is best avoided”.
    • About a quarter of you voted for “The negative health effects outweigh the possible benefits”
    • Three of you voted for “It is the gateway to a life of drug-induced stupor and potentially worse”

    So, what does the science say?

    A quick legal note first: we’re a health science publication, and are writing from that perspective. We do not know your location, much less your local laws and regulations, and so cannot comment on such. Please check your own local laws and regulations in that regard.

    Cannabis use can cause serious health problems: True or False?

    True. Whether the risks outweigh the benefits is a personal and subjective matter (for example, a person using it to mitigate the pain of late stage cancer is probably unconcerned with many other potential risks), but what’s objectively true is that it can cause serious health problems.

    One subscriber who voted for “The negative health effects outweigh the possible benefits” wrote:

    ❝At a bare minimum, you are ingesting SMOKE into your lungs!! Everyone SEEMS TO BE against smoking cigarettes, but cannabis smoking is OK?? Lung cancer comes in many forms.❞

    Of course, that is assuming smoking cannabis, and not consuming it as an edible. But, what does the science say on smoking it, and lung cancer?

    There’s a lot less research about this when it comes to cannabis, compared to tobacco. But, there is some:

    ❝Results from our pooled analyses provide little evidence for an increased risk of lung cancer among habitual or long-term cannabis smokers, although the possibility of potential adverse effect for heavy consumption cannot be excluded.❞

    Read: Cannabis smoking and lung cancer risk: Pooled analysis in the International Lung Cancer Consortium

    Another study agreed there appears to be no association with lung cancer, but that there are other lung diseases to consider, such as bronchitis and COPD:

    ❝Smoking cannabis is associated with symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and there may be a modest association with the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Current evidence does not suggest an association with lung cancer.❞

    Read: Cannabis Use, Lung Cancer, and Related Issues

    Cannabis edibles are much safer than smoking cannabis: True or False?

    Broadly True, with an important caveat.

    One subscriber who selected “It may have some medical uses, but recreational use is best avoided”, wrote:

    ❝I’ve been taking cannabis gummies for fibromyalgia. I don’t know if they’re helping but they’re not doing any harm. You cannot overdose you don’t become addicted.❞

    Firstly, of course consuming edibles (rather than inhaling cannabis) eliminates the smoke-related risk factors we discussed above. However, other risks remain, including the much greater ease of accidentally overdosing.

    ❝Visits attributable to inhaled cannabis are more frequent than those attributable to edible cannabis, although the latter is associated with more acute psychiatric visits and more ED visits than expected.❞

    Note: that “more frequent” for inhaled cannabis, is because more people inhale it than eat it. If we adjust the numbers to control for how much less often people eat it, suddenly we see that the numbers of hospital admissions are disproportionately high for edibles, compared to inhaled cannabis.

    Or, as the study author put it:

    ❝There are more adverse drug events associated on a milligram per milligram basis of THC when it comes in form of edibles versus an inhaled cannabis. If 1,000 people smoked pot and 1,000 people at the same dose in an edible, then more people would have more adverse drug events from edible cannabis.❞

    See the numbers: Acute Illness Associated With Cannabis Use, by Route of Exposure

    Why does this happen?

    • It’s often because edibles take longer to take effect, so someone thinks “this isn’t very strong” and has more.
    • It’s also sometimes because someone errantly eats someone else’s edibles, not realising what they are.
    • It’s sometimes a combination of the above problems: a person who is now high, may simply forget and/or make a bad decision when it comes to eating more.

    On the other hand, that doesn’t mean inhaling it is necessarily safer. As well as the pulmonary issues we discussed previously, inhaling cannabis has a higher risk of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (and the resultant cyclic vomiting that’s difficult to treat).

    You can read about this fascinating condition that’s sometimes informally called “scromiting”, a portmanteau of screaming and vomiting:

    Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome

    You can’t get addicted to cannabis: True or False?

    False. However, it is fair to say that the likelihood of developing a substance abuse disorder is lower than for alcohol, and much lower than for nicotine.

    See: Prevalence of Marijuana Use Disorders in the United States Between 2001–2002 and 2012–2013

    If you prefer just the stats without the science, here’s the CDC’s rendering of that:

    Addiction (Marijuana or Cannabis Use Disorder)

    However, there is an interesting complicating factor, which is age. One is 4–7 times more likely to develop a substance abuse disorder, if one starts use as an adolescent, rather than later in life:

    See: Likelihood of developing an alcohol and cannabis use disorder during youth: Association with recent use and age

    Cannabis is the gateway to use of more dangerous drugs: True or False?

    False, generally speaking. Of course, for any population there will be some outliers, but there appears to be no meaningful causal relation between cannabis use and other substance use:

    Is marijuana really a gateway drug? A nationally representative test of the marijuana gateway hypothesis using a propensity score matching design

    Interestingly, the strongest association (where any existed at all) was between cannabis use and opioid use. However, rather than this being a matter of cannabis use being a gateway to opioid use, it seems more likely that this is a matter of people looking to both for the same purpose: pain relief.

    As a result, growing accessibility of cannabis may actually reduce opioid problems:

    Some final words…

    Cannabis is a complex drug with complex mechanisms and complex health considerations, and research is mostly quite young, due to its historic illegality seriously cramping science by reducing sample sizes to negligible. Simply put, there’s a lot we still don’t know.

    Also, we covered some important topics today, but there were others we didn’t have time to cover, such as the other potential psychological benefits—and risks. Likely we’ll revisit those another day.

    Lastly, while we’ve covered a bunch of risks today, those of you who said it has fewer and lesser risks than alcohol are quite right—the only reason we couldn’t focus on that more, is because to talk about all the risks of alcohol would make this feature many times longer!

    Meanwhile, whether you partake or not, stay safe and stay well.

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Move – by Caroline Williams

    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.

    • Get 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, says the American Heart Association
    • There are over 10,000 minutes per week, says the pocket calculator

    Is 150/10,000 really the goal here? Really?

    For Caroline Williams, the answer is no.

    In this book that’s practically a manifesto, she outlines the case that:

    • Humans evolved to move
    • Industrialization and capitalism scuppered that
    • We now spend far too long each day without movement

    Furthermore, for Williams this isn’t just an anthropological observation, it’s a problem to be solved, because:

    • Our lack of movement is crippling us—literally
    • Our stagnation affects not just our bodies, but also our minds
      • (again literally—there’s a direct correlation with mental health)
    • We urgently need to fix this

    So, what now, do we need to move in to the gym and become full-time athletes to clock up enough hours of movement? No.

    Williams convincingly argues the case (using data from supercentenarian “blue zones” around the world) that even non-exertive movement is sufficient. In other words, you don’t have to be running; walking is great. You don’t have to be lifting weights; doing the housework or gardening will suffice.

    From that foundational axiom, she calls on us to find ways to build our life around movement… rather than production-efficiency and/or convenience. She gives plenty of tips for such too!

    Bottom line: some books are “I couldn’t put it down!” books. This one’s more of a “I got the urge to get up and get moving!” book.

    Get your get-up-and-go up and going with “Move”—order yours from Amazon today!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Your Heart In Their Hands: Surgeon Preferences & Survival Rates

    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.

    Unless you are paying entirely out-of-pocket for a heart surgery, you will not usually get final say over which surgeon you get.

    The surgeon, however, will have final say over what they actually do when they open you up.

    And their preferences, it seems, can make all the difference:

    MAG vs SAG

    When doing coronary artery bypass grafting, (CABG), surgeons may prefer to do multi-arterial grafting (MAG) or single-arterial grafting (SAG).

    Recently, there was a study analysing more than a million Americans who underwent CABG on Medicare over an 18-year period, looking at outcomes for MAG vs SAG.

    The superficial news: those who received MAG had much better long-term survival chances than those who received SAG.

    However: this may be less to do with the relative merits of the procedures themselves, and more to do with the preferences of the surgeon.

    The “eyeball test”

    If surgeons look at a patient and think they will not have many years to live after surgery, they may opt for the SAG, as the long-term benefits of the MAG will only manifest in the long-term.

    This may seem a little self-defeating (indeed, maybe you won’t live to see the long-term if you don’t get the surgery type with the longer-term survival chances), there can be other factors involved, that may make surgeons more interested in your short-term survival chances.

    Or you might just not have enough donor artery tissue available to pick and choose; after all, a person having a coronary artery bypass quite possibly won’t have great arteries in their arm or leg, either.

    Or a person could be missing limbs (a common complication, given the comorbidities of both peripheral artery disease, and diabetes).

    See also: How To Stay A Step Ahead Of Peripheral Artery Disease

    Why it might be ok that things are like this

    When factoring in surgeon preference for MAG or SAG as an instrumental variable, no significant difference in long-term survival was observed. This may explain inconsistencies with randomized controlled trials like the Arterial Revascularization Trial (ART), which also found no survival benefit of MAG over SAG.

    Also, MAG recipients were generally younger, healthier, and from more resourceful areas, which likely had a further impact on MAG-giving decisions, and/but at the same time, may also have increased survival chances for reasons other than that they got MAG rather than SAG.

    Here’s a pop-science article that goes into more detail about this:

    Surgeon preferences may explain differences in CABG survival rates

    How to look out for yourself, and advocate for yourself

    …or your loved one, of course. Now, having a coronary artery bypass surgery of any kind is not a fun activity; it will be dangerous, it’ll be stressful before and after, and the recovery will often not be an easy time either. However, it is possible to learn more about what is going on / what will happen, ask the right questions, and get the best options for you (which may not always be the same as the best options for someone else).

    We wrote about that in more detail here:

    Nobody Likes Surgery, But Here’s How To Make It Much Less Bad

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: