Staying Alive – by Dr. Jenny Goodman
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A lot of “healthy long life” books are science-heavy to the point of being quite challenging to read—they become excellent reference sources, but not exactly “curl up in the armchair” books.
Dr. Goodman writes in a much more reader-friendly fashion, casual yet clear.
She kicks off with season-specific advice. What does that mean? Basically, our bodies need different things at different times of year, and we face different challenges to good health. We may ignore such at our peril!
After a chapter for each of the four seasons (assuming a temperate Northern Hemisphere climate), she goes on to cover the seasons of our life. Once again, our bodies need different things at different times in our life, and we again face different challenges to good health!
There’s plenty of “advice for all seasons”, too. Nutritional dos and don’t, and perennial health hazards to avoid.
As a caveat, she does also hold some unscientific views that may be skipped over. These range from “plant-based diets aren’t sustainable” to “this detox will get rid of heavy metals”. However, the value contained in the rest of the book is more than sufficient to persuade us to overlook those personal quirks.
In particular, she offers very good advice on overcoming cravings (and distinguishing them from genuine nutritional cravings), and taking care of our “trillions of tiny companions” (beneficial gut microbiota) without nurturing Candida and other less helpful gut flora and fauna.
In short, a fine lot of information in a very readable format.
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Undoing Creatine’s Puffiness Side Effect
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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 😎
❝Creatine is known to increase “puffiness”, especially in my face. Are there any supplements that do the opposite?!❞
So first, let’s examine why this happens: creatine is most often taken to boost muscle size and performance. Your muscles are, of course, mostly water by mass, and so building your muscles requires extra water, which triggers systemic water retention.
In other words: you take creatine, exercise, and as the muscles start growing, the body goes “oh heck, we are running out of water, better save as much as possible in order to keep hydrating the muscles without running out” and starts putting it anywhere it can that’s not your bladder, so this will largely be the soft tissues of your body.
So, this results in classic water retentions symptoms including bloating and, yes, facial puffiness.
How much this happens, and how long the effects last, depend on three main things:
- What daily dose of creatine you are taking
- What kind of exercise you are doing
- What your hydration is like
The dose is relevant as it’s most common to get this puffiness during the “loading” phase, i.e. if you’re taking an increased dose to start with.
The exercise is relevant as it affects how much your body is actually using the water to build muscles.
The hydration is relevant because the less water you are taking, the more the body will try to retain whatever you do have.
This means, of course, that the supplement you are looking for to undo the facial puffiness is, in fact, water (even, nay, especially, if you feel bloated too):
Water For Everything? Water’s Counterintuitive Properties
Additionally, you could scale back the dose of creatine you’re taking, if you’re not currently doing heavy muscle-building exercise.
That said, the recommended dose for cognitive benefits is 5g/day, which is a very standard main-phase (i.e., post-loading) bodybuilding dose, so do with that information what you will.
See also: Creatine’s Brain Benefits Increase With Age
On which note: whether or not you want to take creatine for brain benefits, however, may depend on your age:
Creatine: Very Different For Young & Old People
Most research on creatine’s effects on humans has usually been either collegiate athletes or seniors, which leaves quite a research gap in the middle—so it’s unclear at what age the muscle-building effects begin to taper off, and at what age the cognitive benefits begin to take off.
Want a quicker fix?
If you want to reduce your facial puffiness acutely (e.g., you have a date in an hour and would like to not have a puffy face), then there are two things you can do that will help immediately, and/but only have short-term effects, meaning you’d have to do them daily to enjoy the results every day:
The first is an ice bath; simply fill a large bowl with water and ice cubes, give it a couple of minutes to get down to temperature, hold your breath and plunge your face in for as long as you can comfortably hold your breath. Repeat a few times, and towel off.
This helps by waking up the vasculature in your face, helping it to reduce puffiness naturally.
The second is facial yoga or guā shā, which is the practice of physically manipulating the soft tissues of your face to put them where you want them, rather than where you don’t want them. This will work against water retention puffiness, as well as cortisol puffiness, lymphatic puffiness, and more:
7-Minute Face Fitness For Lymphatic Drainage & Youthful Jawline
Enjoy!
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Eggs: Nutritional Powerhouse or Heart-Health Timebomb?
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Eggs: All Things In Moderation?
We asked you for your (health-related) opinion on eggs. We specified that, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that they are from happy healthy backyard hens who enjoy a good diet.
Apparently this one wasn’t as controversial as it might have been! We (for myth-busting purposes) try to pick something polarizing and sometimes even contentious for our Friday editions, and pick apart what science lies underneath public perceptions.
However, more than half (in fact, 60%) of the subscribers who voted in the poll voted for “Eggs are nutritionally beneficial as part of a balanced diet”, which very moderate statement is indeed pretty much the global scientific consensus.
Still, we’ve a main feature to write, so let’s look at the science, and what the other 40% had in mind:
Eggs are ruinous to health, especially cardiometabolic health: True or False?
False, per best current science, anyway!
Scientific consensus has changed over the years. We learned about cholesterol, then we learned about different types of cholesterol, and now we’ve even learned about in some instances even elevated levels of “bad” cholesterol aren’t necessarily a cause of cardiometabolic disorders so much as a symptom—especially in women.
Not to derail this main feature about eggs (rather than just cholesterol), but for those who missed it, this is actually really interesting: basically, research (pertaining to the use of statins) has found that in women, higher LDL levels aren’t anywhere near the same kind of risk factor as they are for men, and thus may mean that statins (whose main job is reducing LDL) may be much less helpful for women than for men, and more likely to cause unwanted serious side effects in women.
Check out our previous main feature about this: Statins: His & Hers?
But, for back on topic, several large studies (totalling 177,000 people in long-term studies in 50 countries) found:
❝Results from the three cohorts and from the updated meta-analysis show that moderate egg consumption (up to one egg per day) is not associated with cardiovascular disease risk overall, and is associated with potentially lower cardiovascular disease risk in Asian populations.❞
Egg whites are healthy (protein); egg yolks are not (cholesterol): True or False?
True and False, respectively. That is to say, egg whites are healthy (protein), and egg yolks are also healthy (many nutrients).
We talked a bit already about cholesterol, so we’ll not rehash that here. As to the rest:
Eggs are one of the most nutritionally dense foods around. After all, they have everything required to allow a cluster of cells to become a whole baby chick. That’s a lot of body-building!
They’re even more nutritionally heavy-hitters if you get omega-3 enriched eggs, which means the hens were fed extra omega-3, usually in the form of flax seeds.
Also, free-range is better healthwise than others. Do bear in mind that unless they really are from your backyard, or a neighbor’s, chances are that the reality is not what the advertising depicts, though. There are industry minimum standards to be able to advertise as “free-range”, and those standards are a) quite low b) often ignored, because an occasional fine is cheaper than maintaining good conditions.
So if you can look after your own hens, or get them from somewhere that you can see for yourself how they are looked after, so much the better!
Check out the differences side-by-side, though:
Pastured vs Omega-3 vs “Conventional” Eggs: What’s the Difference?
Stallone-style 12-egg smoothies are healthy: True or False?
False, at least if taken with any regularity. One can indeed have too much of a good thing.
So, what’s the “right amount” to eat?
It may vary depending on individual factors (including age and ethnicity), but a good average, according to science, is to keep it to 3 eggs or fewer per day. There are a lot of studies, but we only have so much room here, so we’ll pick one. Its findings are representative of (and in keeping with) the many other studies we looked at, so this seems uncontroversial scientifically:
❝Intake of 1 egg/d was sufficient to increase HDL function and large-LDL particle concentration; however, intake of 2-3 eggs/d supported greater improvements in HDL function as well as increased plasma carotenoids. Overall, intake of ≤3 eggs/d favored a less atherogenic LDL particle profile, improved HDL function, and increased plasma antioxidants in young, healthy adults.❞
Enjoy!
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Life Is in the Transitions – by Bruce Feiler
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Change happens. Sometimes, because we choose it. More often, we don’t get a choice.
Our bodies change; with time, with illness, with accident or incident, or even, sometimes, with effort. People in our lives change; they come, they go, they get sick, they die. Our working lives change; we get a job, we lose a job, we change jobs, our jobs change, we retire.
Whether we’re undergoing cancer treatment or a religious conversion, whether our families are growing or down to the last few standing, change is inescapable.
Our author makes the case that on average, we each undergo at least 5 major “lifequakes”; changes that shake our lives to the core. Sometimes one will come along when we’ve barely got back on our feet from the previous—if we have at all.
What, then, to do about this? We can’t stop change from occurring, and some changes aren’t easy to “roll with”. Feiler isn’t prescriptive about this, but rather, descriptive:
By looking at the stories of hundreds of people he interviewed for this book, he looks at how people pivoted on the spot (or picked up the pieces!) and made the best of their situation—or didn’t.
Bottom line: zooming out like this, looking at many people’s lives, can remind us that while we don’t get to choose what winds we get swept by, we at least get to choose how we set the sails. The examples of others, as this book gives, can help us make better decisions.
Click here to check out Life Is In The Transitions, and get conscious about how you handle yours!
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How To Keep Warm (Without Sweat Patches!)
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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
❝I saw an advert on the subway for a pillow spray that guarantees a perfect night’s sleep. What does the science say about smells/sleep?❞
That is certainly a bold claim! Unless it’s contingent, e.g. “…or your money back”. Because otherwise, it absolutely cannot guarantee that.
There is some merit:
❝Odors can modulate the latency to sleep onset, as well as the quality and duration of sleep. Olfactory modulation of sleep may be mediated by direct synaptic interaction between the olfactory system and sleep control nuclei, and/or indirectly through odor modulation of arousal and respiration.
Such modulation appears most heavily influenced by past associations and expectations about the odor, beyond any potential direct physicochemical effect❞
Source: Reciprocal relationships between sleep and smell
Translating that from sciencese:
Sometimes we find pleasant smells relaxing, and placebo effect also helps.
That “any potential direct physiochemical effect”, though, when it does occur, is things like this…
Read: Odor blocking of stress hormone responses
…but that’s a mouse study, and those odors may only work to block three specific mouse stress responses to three specific stressors: physical restraint, predator odor, and male–male confrontation.
In other words: if, perchance, those three things are not what’s stressing you in bed at night (we won’t make assumptions), and/or you are not a mouse, it may not help.
(and this, dear readers, is why we must read articles, and not just headlines!)
But! If you are going to go for a pillow fragrance, something well-associated with being relaxing and soporific, such as lavender, is the way to go:
- Effects of aromatherapy on sleep quality and anxiety of patients
- Effects of Aromatherapy on the Anxiety, Vital Signs, and Sleep Quality of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Patients in Intensive Care Units
- Effect of lavender aromatherapy on vital signs and perceived quality of sleep in the intermediate care unit: a pilot study
tl;dr = patients found lavender fragrances relaxing, experienced less anxiety, got better sleep (significantly or insignificantly, depending on the study) and enjoyed lower blood pressure (significantly or insignificantly, depending on the study).
PS: this writer uses a pillow spray like this one
Enjoy!
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The 5 Love Languages Gone Wrong
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Levelling up the 5 love languages
The saying “happy wife; happy life” certainly goes regardless of gender, and if we’re partnered, it’s difficult to thrive in our individual lives if we’re not thriving as a couple. So, with the usual note that mental health is also just health, let’s take a look at getting beyond the basics of a well-known, often clumsily-applied model:
The 5 love languages
You’re probably familiar with “the 5 love languages”, as developed by Dr. Gary Chapman. If not, they are:
- Acts of Service
- Gift-Giving
- Physical Touch
- Quality Time
- Words of Affirmation
The idea is that we each weight these differently, and problems can arise when a couple are “speaking a different language”.
So, is this a basic compatibility test?
It doesn’t have to be!
We can, if we’re aware of each other’s primary love languages, make an effort to do a thing we wouldn’t necessarily do automatically, to ensure they’re loved the way they need to be.
But…
What a lot of people overlook is that we can also have different primary love languages for giving and for receiving. And, missing that can mean that even taking each other’s primarily love languages into account, efforts to make a partner feel loved, or to feel loved oneself, can miss 50% of the time.
For example, I (your writer here today, hi) could be asked my primary love language and respond without hesitation “Acts of Service!” because that’s my go-to for expressing love.
I’m the person who’ll run around bringing drinks, do all the housework, and without being indelicate, will tend towards giving in the bedroom. But…
A partner trying to act on that information to make me feel loved by giving Acts of Service would be doomed to catastrophic failure, because my knee-jerk reaction would be “No, here, let me do that for you!”
So it’s important for partners to ask each other…
- Not: “what’s your primary love language?” ❌
- But: “what’s your primary way of expressing love?” ✅
- And: “which love language makes you feel most loved?” ✅
For what it’s worth, I thrive on Words of Affirmation, so thanks again to everyone who leaves kind feedback on our articles! It lets me know I provided a good Act of Service
So far, so simple, right? You and your partner (or: other person! Because as we’ve just seen, these go for all kinds of dynamics, not just romantic partnerships) need to be aware of each other’s preferred love languages for giving and receiving.
But…
There’s another pitfall that many fall into, and that’s assuming that the other person has the same idea about what a given love language means, when there’s more to clarify.
For example:
- Acts of Service: is it more important that the service be useful, or that it took effort?
- Gift-Giving: is it better that a gift be more expensive, or more thoughtful and personal?
- Physical Touch: what counts here? If we’re shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, is that physical touch or is something more active needed?
- Quality Time: does it count if we’re both doing our own thing but together in the same room, comfortable in silence together? Or does it need to be a more active and involved activity together? And is it quality time if we’re at a social event together, or does it need to be just us?
- Words of Affirmation: what, exactly, do we need to hear? For romantic partners, “I love you” can often be important, but is there something else we need to hear? Perhaps a “because…”, or perhaps a “so much that…”, or perhaps something else entirely? Does it no longer count if we have to put the words in our partner’s mouth, or is that just good two-way communication?
Bottom line:
There’s a lot more to this than a “What’s your love language?” click-through quiz, but with a little application and good communication, this model can really resolve a lot of would-be problems that can grow from feeling unappreciated or such. And, the same principles go just the same for friends and others as they do for romantic partners.
In short, it’s one of the keys to good interpersonal relationships in general—something critical for our overall well-being!
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What Happened to You? – by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey
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The very title “What Happened To You?” starts with an assumption that the reader has suffered trauma. This is not just a sample bias of “a person who picks up a book about healing from trauma has probably suffered trauma”, but is also a statistically safe assumption. Around 60% of adults report having suffered some kind of serious trauma.
The authors examine, as the subtitle suggests, these matters in three parts:
- Trauma
- Resilience
- Healing
Trauma can take many forms; sometimes it is a very obvious dramatic traumatic event; sometimes less so. Sometimes it can be a mountain of small things that eroded our strength leaving us broken. But what then, of resilience?
Resilience (in psychology, anyway) is not imperviousness; it is the ability to suffer and recover from things.
Healing is the tail-end part of that. When we have undergone trauma, displayed whatever amount of resilience we could at the time, and now have outgrown our coping strategies and looking to genuinely heal.
The authors present many personal stories and case studies to illustrate different kinds of trauma and resilience, and then go on to outline what we can do to grow from there.
Bottom line: if you or a loved one has suffered trauma, this book may help a lot in understanding and processing that, and finding a way forwards from it.
Click here to check out “What Happened To You?” and give yourself what you deserve.
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