How To Stay In Shape At 70

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The 10almonds Team

Questions and Answers 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!

This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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 have a question: what are the pros and cons of older people (60+) taking creatine every day?

It depends what else you’re doing, as creatine mostly helps the muscles recover after exercise. So:

  • iff you’re doing resistance training (such as weights or bodyweight training), or HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), then creatine monohydrate may help you keep at that and keep doing well.
  • if you’re just doing light-to-moderate exercises, you might not get much benefit from creatine!

The topic merits diving deeper though, so we’ll queue that for one of our “Research Review Monday” days!

I wanted to ask if you think marine collagen is decent to take. I’ve heard a lot of bad press about it

We don’t know what you’ve heard, but generally speaking it’s been found to be very beneficial to bones, joints, and skin! We wrote about it quite recently on a “Research Review Monday”:

See: We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

Natural alternatives to medication for depression?

Great question! We did a mean feature a while back, but we definitely have much more to say! We’ll do another main feature soon, but in the meantime, here’s what we previously wrote:

See: The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need

^This covers not just the obvious, but also why the most common advice is not helpful, and practical tips to actually make manageable steps back to wellness, on days when “literally just survive the day” is one’s default goal.

I am now in the “aging” population. A great concern for me is Alzheimers. My father had it and I am so worried. What is the latest research on prevention?

One good thing to note is that while Alzheimer’s has a genetic component, it doesn’t appear to be hereditary per se. Still, good to be on top of these things, and it’s never too early to start with preventive measures!

You might like a main feature we did on this recently:

See: How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

Side effects of statins, are they worth it? Depression, are antidepressants worth it?

About statins, that depends a lot on you, your circumstances, and—as it happens—your gender. We covered this in a main feature recently, but a short answer is: for most people, they may not be the best first choice, and could even make things worse. For some people, however, they really are just what’s needed.

  • Factors that make them more likely better for you: being a man, or having atherosclerosis
  • Factors that make them more likely worse for you: being a woman in general

Check out the main feature we did: Statins: His & Hers?

As for antidepressants? That depends a lot on you, your physiology, your depression, your circumstances, and more. We’ll definitely do a main feature on that sometime soon, as there’s a lot that most people don’t know!

I am interested in the following: Aging, Exercise, Diet, Relationships, Purpose, Lowering Stress

You’re going to love our Psychology Sunday editions of 10almonds!

You may particularly like some of these:

(This coming Psychology Sunday will have a feature specifically on stress, so do make sure to read that when it comes out!)

Hair growth strategies for men combing caffeine and minoxidil?

Well, the strategy for that is to use caffeine and minoxidil! Some more specific tips, though:

  • Both of those things need to be massaged (gently!) into your scalp especially around your hairline.
    • In the case of caffeine, that boosts hair growth. No extra thought or care needed for that one.
    • In the case of minoxidil, it reboots the hair growth cycle, so if you’ve only recently started, don’t be surprised (or worried) if you see more shedding in the first three months. It’s jettisoning your old hairs because new ones were just prompted (by the minoxidil) to start growing behind them. So: it will get briefly worse before it gets better, but then it’ll stay better… provided you keep using it.
  • If you’d like other options besides minoxidil, finasteride is a commonly prescribed oral drug that blocks the conversion of testosterone to DHT, which latter is what tells your hairline to recede.
  • If you’d like other options besides prescription drugs, saw palmetto performs comparably to finasteride (and works the same way).
    • You may also want to consider biotin supplementation if you don’t already enjoy that
  • Consider also using a dermaroller on your scalp. If you’re unfamiliar, this is a device that looks like a tiny lawn aerator, with many tiny needles, and you roll it gently across your skin.
    • It can be used for promoting hair growth, as well as for reducing wrinkles and (more slowly) healing scars.
    • It works by breaking up the sebum that may be blocking new hair growth, and also makes the skin healthier by stimulating production of collagen and elastin (in response to the thousands of microscopic wounds that the needles make).
    • Sounds drastic, but it doesn’t hurt and doesn’t leave any visible marks—the needles are that tiny. Still, practise good sterilization and ensure your skin is clean when using it.

See: How To Use A Dermaroller ← also explains more of the science of it

PS: this question was asked in the context of men, but the information goes the same for women suffering from androgenic alepoceia—which is a lot more common than most people think!

How to get to sleep at night as fast and as naturally as possible? Thank you!

We’ll definitely write more on that! You might like these articles we wrote already, meanwhile:

Q: How to be your best self after 60: Self motivation / Avoiding or limiting salt, sugar & alcohol: Alternatives / Ways to sneak in more movements/exercise

…and, from a different subscriber…

Q: Inflammation & over 60 weight loss. Thanks!

Here are some of our greatest hits on those topics:

Also, while we’ve recommended a couple of books on stopping (or reducing) drinking, we’ve not done a main feature on that, so we definitely will one of these days!

Don’t Forget…

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  • Staying Healthy and Active After 60

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    Questions and Answers 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!

    This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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

    Q: How to be your best self after 60: Self motivation / Avoiding or limiting salt, sugar & alcohol: Alternatives / Ways to sneak in more movements/exercise

    …and, from a different subscriber…

    Q: Inflammation & over 60 weight loss. Thanks!

    Here are some of our greatest hits on those topics:

    Also, while we’ve recommended a couple of books on stopping (or reducing) drinking, we’ve not done a main feature on that, so we definitely will one of these days!

    Share This Post

  • Body on Fire – by Dr. Monica Aggarwal and Dr. Jyothi Rao

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    There are times when you do really need a doctor, not a dietician. But there are also times when a doctor will prescribe something for the symptom, leaving the underlying issue untouched. If only there were a way to have the best of both worlds!

    That’s where Drs. Rao and Aggarwal come in. They’re both medical doctors… with a keen interest in nutrition and healthy lifestyle changes to make us less sick such that we have less need to go to the doctor at all.

    Best of all, they understand—while some things are true for everyone—there’s not a one-size-fits all diet or exercise regime or even sleep setup.

    So instead, they take us hand-in-hand (chapter by chapter!) through the various parts of our life (including our diet) that might need tweaking. Each of these changes, if taken up, promise a net improvement that becomes synergistic with the other changes. There’s a degree of biofeedback involved, and listening to your body, to be sure of what’s really best for you, not what merely should be best for you on paper.

    The writing style is accessible while science-heavy. They don’t assume prior knowledge, and/but they sure deliver a lot. The book is more text than images, but there are plenty of medical diagrams, explanations, charts, and the like. You will feed like a medical student! And it’s very much worth studying.

    Bottom line: highly recommendable even if you don’t have inflammation issues, and worth its weight in gold if you do.

    Get your copy of Body on Fire from Amazon today!

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  • Chickpeas vs Pinto Beans – Which is Healthier?

    The 10almonds Team

    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 chickpeas to pinto beans, we picked the pinto beans.

    Why?

    Both are great! And an argument could be made for either…

    In terms of macros, pinto beans have slightly more fiber and slightly more protein, while chickpeas have slightly more carbs, and thus predictably higher net carbs. In the category of those proteins, they both have a comparable spread of amino acods, with pinto beans having very slightly more of each amino acid. All this adds up to a clear, but moderate, win for pinto beans.

    When it comes to vitamins, technically chickpeas have more of vitamins A, B3, B5, C, K, and choline, but the margins are so small as to be almost meaningless. Meanwhile, pinto beans have more of vitamins B1, B6, and E, and/but the only one where the margin is enough to really care about is vitamin E (a little over 2x what chickpeas have). So, an argument could be made either way, but we’re going to call this category a tie.

    The story with minerals is similar; chickpeas have more copper, iron, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, all with small margins, while pinto beans have more potassium and selenium, and/but also less sodium. We’d call this either a tie, or a very slight win for chickpeas.

    Adding up the sections gives for a very modest win for pinto beans, but as we say, an argument could be made for either.

    Certainly, enjoy both!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Nasal Hair; How Far To Go?

  • Get Past Executive Dysfunction

    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 10almonds Team

    In mathematics, there is a thing called the “travelling salesman problem”, and it is hard. Not just subjectively; it is classified in mathematical terms as an “NP-hard problem”, wherein NP stands for “nondeterministic polynomial”.

    The problem is: a travelling salesman must visit a certain list of cities, order undetermined, by the shortest possible route that visits them all.

    To work out what the shortest route is involves either very advanced mathematics, or else solving it by brute force, which means measuring every possible combination order (which number gets exponentially larger very quickly after the first few cities) and then selecting the shortest.

    Why are we telling you this?

    Executive dysfunction’s analysis paralysis

    Executive dysfunction is the state of knowing you have things to do, wanting to do them, intending to do them, and then simply not doing them.

    Colloquially, this can be called “analysis paralysis” and is considered a problem of planning and organizing, as much as it is a problem of initiating tasks.

    Let’s give a simple example:

    You wake up in the morning, and you need to go to the bathroom. But the bathroom will be cold, so you’ll want to get dressed first. However, it will be uncomfortable to get dressed while you still need to use the bathroom, so you contemplate doing that first. Those two items are already a closed loop now. You’re thirsty, so you want to have a drink, but the bathroom is calling to you. Sitting up, it’s colder than under the covers, so you think about getting dressed. Maybe you should have just a sip of water first. What else do you need to do today anyway? You grab your phone to check, drink untouched, clothes unselected, bathroom unvisited.

    That was a simple example; now apply that to other parts of your day that have much more complex planning possible.

    This is like the travelling salesman problem, except that now, some things are better if done before or after certain other things. Sometimes, possibly, they are outright required to be done before or after certain other things.

    So you have four options:

    • Solve the problem of your travelling-salesman-like tasklist using advanced mathematics (good luck if you don’t have advanced mathematics)
    • Solve the problem by brute force, calculating all possible variations and selecting the shortest (good luck getting that done the same day)
    • Go with a gut feeling and stick to it (people without executive dysfunction do this)
    • Go towards the nearest item, notice another item on the way, go towards that, notice a different item on the way there, and another one, get stuck for a while choosing between those two, head towards one, notice another one, and so on until you’ve done a very long scenic curly route that has narrowly missed all of your targetted items (this is the executive dysfunction approach).

    So instead, just pick one, do it, pick another one, do it, and so forth.

    That may seem “easier said than done”, but there are tools available…

    Task zero

    We’ve mentioned this before in the little section at the top of our daily newsletter that we often use for tips.

    One of the problems that leads to executive function is a shortage of “working memory”, like the RAM of a computer, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed with lists of things to do.

    So instead, hold only two items in your mind:

    • Task zero: the thing you are doing right now
    • Task one: the thing you plan to do next

    When you’ve completed task zero, move on to task one, renaming it task zero, and select a new task one.

    With this approach, you will never:

    • Think “what did I come into this room for?”
    • Get distracted by alluring side-quests

    Do not get corrupted by the cursed artefact

    In fantasy, and occasionally science fiction, there is a trope: an item that people are drawn towards, but which corrupts them, changes their motivations and behaviors for the worse, as well as making them resistant to giving the item up.

    An archetypal example of this would be the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.

    It’s easy to read/watch and think “well I would simply not be corrupted by the cursed artefact”.

    And then pick up one’s phone to open the same three apps in a cycle for the next 40 minutes.

    This is because technology that is designed to be addictive hijacks our dopamine processing, and takes advantage of executive dysfunction, while worsening it.

    There are some ways to mitigate this:

    Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)

    …but one way to avoid it entirely is to mentally narrate your choices. It’s a lot harder to make bad choices with an internal narrator going:

    • “She picked up her phone absent-mindedly, certain that this time it really would be only a few seconds”
    • “She picked up her phone for the eleventy-third time”
    • “Despite her plan to put her shoes on, she headed instead for the kitchen”

    This method also helps against other bad choices aside from those pertaining to executive dysfunction, too:

    • “Abandoning her plan to eat healthily, she lingered in the confectionary aisle, scanning the shelves for sugary treats”
    • “Monday morning will be the best time to start my new exercise regime”, she thought, for the 35th week so far this year

    Get pharmaceutical or nutraceutical help

    While it’s not for everyone, many people with executive dysfunction benefit from ADHD meds. However, they have their pros and cons (perhaps we’ll do a run-down one of these days).

    There are also gentler options that can significantly ameliorate executive dysfunction, for example:

    Bacopa Monnieri: A Well-Evidenced Cognitive Enhancer For Focus & More

    Enjoy!

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  • How to Stop Negative Thinking – by Daniel Paul

    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 10almonds Team

    Just think positive thoughts” is all well and good, but it doesn’t get much mileage in the real world, does it?

    What Daniel Paul offers is a lot better than that. Taking a CBT approach, he recommends tips and tricks, gives explanations and exercises, and in short, puts tools in the reader’s toolbox.

    But it doesn’t stop at just stopping negative thinking. Rather, it takes a holistic approach to also improve your general life…

    • Bookending your day with a good start and finish
    • Scheduling a time for any negative thinking that does need to occur (again with the useful realism!)
    • Inviting the reader to take on small challenges, of the kind that’ll have knock-on effects that add and multiply and compound as we go

    The format is very easy-reading, and we love that there are clear section headings and chapter summaries, too.

    Bottom line: definitely a book with the potential to improve your life from day one, and that’ll keep you coming back to it as a cheatsheet and references source.

    Get your copy of “How to Stop Negative Thinking” from Amazon today!

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  • Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

    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 10almonds Team

    Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

    We’ve talked before about how waist circumference is a much more useful indicator of metabolic health than BMI.

    So, let’s say you’ve a bit more around the middle than you’d like, but it stubbornly stays there. What’s going on underneath what you can see, why is it going on, and how can you get it to change?

    What is visceral fat?

    First, let’s talk about subcutaneous fat. That’s the fat directly under your skin. Women usually have more than men, and that’s perfectly healthy (up to a point); it’s supposed to be that way. We (women) will tend to accumulate this mostly in places such as our breasts, hips, and butt, and work outwards from there. Men will tend to put it on more to the belly and face.

    Side-note: if you’re undergoing (untreated) menopause, the changes in your hormone levels will tend to result in more subcutaneous fat to the belly and face too. That’s normal, and/but normal is not always good, and treatment options are great (with hormone replacement therapy, HRT, topping the list).

    Visceral fat (also called visceral adipose tissue), on the other hand, is the fat of the viscera—the internal organs of the abdomen.

    So, this is fat that goes under your abdominal muscles—you can’t squeeze this (directly).

    So what can we do?

    Famously “you can’t do spot reduction” (lose fat from a particular part of your body by focusing exercises on that area), but that’s about subcutaneous fat. There are things you can do that will reduce your visceral fat in particular.

    Some of these advices you may think “that’s just good advice for losing fat in general” and it is, yes. But these are things that have the biggest impact on visceral fat.

    Cut alcohol use

    This is the biggie. By numerous mechanisms, some of which we’ve talked about before, alcohol causes weight gain in general yes, but especially for visceral fat.

    Get better sleep

    You might think that hitting the gym is most important, but this one ranks higher. Yes, you can trim visceral fat without leaving your bed (and even without getting athletic in bed, for that matter). Not convinced?

    So, the verdict is clear: you snooze, you lose (visceral fat)!

    Tweak your diet

    You don’t have to do a complete overhaul (unless you want to), but a few changes can make a big difference, especially:

    If you’d like to learn more and enjoy videos, here’s an informative one to get you going!

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Don’t Forget…

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