Surviving with Beans And Rice – by Eliza Whool
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If you’d like to be well-set the next time a crisis shuts down supply lines, this is one of those books you’ll want to have read.
Superficially, “have in a large quantity of dried beans and rice” is good advice, but obvious. Why a book?
Whool gives a lot of advice on keeping your nutrition balanced while subsisting on the same quite few ingredients, which is handy.
More than that, she offers 100 recipes using the ingredients that will be in your long-term pantry. That’s over three months without repeating a meal! And if you don’t think rice and beans can be tasty and exciting and varied, then most of the chefs of the Global South might want to have a word about that.
Anyway, we’re not here to sell you rice and beans (we’re just enthusiastic and correct). What we are here to do is to give you a fair overview of this book.
The recipes are just-the-recipes, very simple clear instructions, one two-page spread per recipe. Most of the book is devoted to these. As a quick note, it does cover making things gluten-free if necessary, and other similar adjustments for medical reasons.
The planning-and-storage section of the book is helpful too though, especially as it covers common mistakes to avoid.
Bottom line: this is a great book, and remember what we said about doing the things now that future you will thank you for!
Get yourself a copy of Surviving with Beans And Rice from Amazon today!
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Wrong Arm Position = Wrong Measurement Of Blood Pressure
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This is especially important to know if you measure your own blood pressure at home.
Even if you don’t, it’s still good to know this as healthcare providers also can (and often will) do it wrong, especially if they are under time pressure (e.g. they need to get you out of their office and the next person in):
From the heart
Many things can change our blood pressure, and even gravity changes (considerably!) our blood pressure locally.
For example, even with good circulation, so long as we are in the Earth’s gravity under normal conditions (e.g. not skydiving, not riding a rollercoaster, etc), our blood pressure will always be higher below our heart, and lower above it, because gravity is pulling our blood downwards; this is also why if your circulation is not good, you may feel light-headed upon sitting up or standing up, as the bloodstream takes a moment to win a battle against gravity. This is also why blood rushes to your head if you are hanging upside down—increasing the local blood pressure in your head, which unlike your feet, isn’t used to it, so you feel it, and the effect may be visible from the outside, too.
When it comes to having your arm above or below your heart, the difference is less pronounced as it’s only a small change, but that small change can make a big difference:
- If the cuff is above heart level → Lower blood pressure reading.
- If the cuff is below heart level → Higher blood pressure reading.
- Every 1-inch difference causes a 2 mmHg change in readings.
For the reading to be accurate, the blood pressure cuff therefore needs to be at the same height as your heart.
You may be thinking: “my heart is bigger than an inch; do I aim for the middle?”
And the answer is: ideally the cuff should be at the same height as the right atrium of the heart, which is under the midpoint of the sternum.
However, your arm needs to be supported at that height, because if you have to keep it there using your own power, that will mean a tensing of your muscles, and increase in both heart rate and blood pressure. In fact, studies cited in the video found:
- Unsupported arm, in healthy patients → Systolic +8 mmHg, Diastolic +7 mmHg.
- Unsupported arm, in high blood pressure patients → Systolic +23 mmHg, Diastolic +10 mmHg.
Some other considerations; firstly, correct sitting posture:
- Sit upright with back support
- Feet flat on the floor, legs uncrossed
- Arm should be outward from the body and, as per the above explanation, supported (armrest, table, etc.)
And finally, you should be relaxed and at rest.
For example, your writer here is due for a regular checkup in a couple of weeks, and usually when I go there, I will have walked a couple of miles to get there, then bounced cheerfully up 6 flights of stairs. However, for this appointment, I will need to make sure to arrive early, so that I have time for my (so far as I know, happy and healthy) heart to return to its resting pulse and blood pressure.
Also, if you are anything like this writer, the blood pressure cuff activating is not a relaxing experience (and so invites a higher pulse and blood pressure), so it’s better to take three readings and then discard the first one, and record the average of the second two (I do it this way at home).
Similarly, if a medical environment in general is stressful for you, then taking two minutes to do a little mindfulness meditation, or even just breathing exercises, can be good.
For more on all of these, plus also comments on issues such as correct cuff size and tightness, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Common Hospital Blood Pressure Mistake (Don’t Let This Happen To You Or A Loved One)
Take care!
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Overcoming Gravity – by Steven Low
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The author, a professional gymnast and coach with a background in the sciences, knows his stuff here. This is what it says on the tin: it’s rigorously systematic. It’s also the most science-based calisthenics book this reviewer has read to date.
If you just wanted to know how to do some exercises, then this book would be very much overkill, but if you want to be able to go from no knowledge to expert knowledge, then the nearly 600 pages of this weighty tome will do that for you.
This is a textbook, it’s a “the bible of…” style book, it’s the one that if you’re serious, will engage you thoroughly and enable you to craft the calisthenics-forged body you want, head to toe.
As if it weren’t already overdelivering, it also has plenty of information on injury avoidance (or injury/condition management if you have some existing injury or chronic condition), and building routines in a dynamic fashion that avoids becoming a grind, because it’s going from strength to strength while cycling through different body parts.
Bottom line: if you’d like to get serious about calisthenics, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out Overcoming Gravity, and do just that!
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Artichoke vs Heart of Palm– Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing artichoke to heart of palm, we picked the artichoke.
Why?
If you were thinking “isn’t heart of palm full of saturated fat?” then no… Palm oil is, but heart of palm itself has 0.62g/100g fat, of which, 0.13g saturated fat. So, negligible.
As for the rest of the macros, artichoke has more protein, carbs, and fiber, thus being the “more food per food” option. Technically heart of palm has the lower glycemic index, but they are both low-GI foods, so it’s really not a factor here.
Vitamins are where artichoke shines; artichoke has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while heart of palm is not higher in any vitamins.
The minerals situation is more balanced: artichoke has more copper, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium, while heart of palm has more iron, manganese, selenium, and zinc.
Adding up the categories, the winner of this “vegetables with a heart” face-off is clearly artichoke.
Fun fact: in French, “to have the heart of an artichoke” (avoir le coeur d’un artichaut) means to fall in love easily. Perfect vegetable for a romantic dinner, perhaps (especially with all those generous portions of B-vitamins)!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Artichoke vs Cabbage – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Vibration Plate, Review After 6 Months: Is It Worth It?
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Is it push-button exercise, or an expensive fad, or something else entirely? Robin, from “The Science of Self-Care”, has insights:
Science & Experience
According to the science (studies cited in the video and linked-to in the video description, underneath it on YouTube), vibration therapy does have some clear benefits, namely:
- Bone health (helps with bone density, particularly beneficial for postmenopausal women)
- Muscle recovery (reduces lactate levels, aiding faster recovery)
- Joint health (reduces pain and improves function in osteoarthritis patients)
- Muscle stimulation (helps older adults maintain muscle mass)
- Cognitive function (due to increased blood flow to the brain)
And from her personal experience, the benefits included:
- Improved recovery after exercise, reducing muscle soreness and stiffness
- Reduced back pain and improved posture (not surprising, given the need for stabilizing muscles when using one of these)
- Better circulation and (likely resulting from same) skin clarity
She did not, however, notice:
- Any reduction in cellulite
- Any change in body composition (fat loss or muscle gain)
For a deeper look into these things and more, plus a demonstration of how the machine actually operates, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Take care!
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How Much Does A Vegan Diet Affect Biological Aging?
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Slow Your Aging, One Meal At A Time
This one’s a straightforward one today, and the ““life hack” can be summed up:
Enjoy a vegan diet to enjoy younger biological age.
First, what is biological age?
Biological age is not one number, but a collection of numbers, as per different biomarkers of aging, including:
- Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)
- Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)
- Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)
- Cellular markers of aging (e.g. telomere length)
We wrote more about this here:
Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
A vegan diet may well impact multiple of those categories of aging, but today we’re highlighting a study (hot off the press; published only a few days ago!) that looks at its effect on that last category: cellular markers of aging.
There’s an interesting paradox here, because this category is:
- the most easily ignorable; because we all feel it if our knees are giving out or our skin is losing elasticity, but who notices if telomeres’ T/S ratio changed by 0.0407? ← the researchers, that’s who, as this difference is very significant
- the most far-reaching in its impact, because cellular aging in turn has an effect on all the other markers of aging
Second, how much difference does it make, and how do we know?
The study was an eight-week interventional identical twin study. This means several things, to start with:
- Eight weeks is a rather short period of time to accumulate cellular aging, let alone for an intervention to accumulate a significant difference in cellular aging—but it did. So, just imagine what difference it might make in a year or ten!
- Doing an interventional study with identical twin pairs already controlled for a lot of factors, that are usually confounding variables in population / cohort / longitudinal / observational studies.
Factors that weren’t controlled for by default by using identical twins, were controlled for in the experiment design. For example, twin pairs were rejected if one or more twin in a given pair already had medical conditions that could affect the outcome:
❝Inclusion criteria involved participants aged ≥18, part of a willing twin pair, with BMI <40, and LDL-C <190 mg/dL. Exclusions included uncontrolled hypertension, metabolic disease, diabetes, cancer, heart/renal/liver disease, pregnancy, lactation, and medication use affecting body weight or energy.
Eligibility was determined via online screening, followed by an orientation meeting and in-person clinic visit. Randomization occurred only after completing baseline visits, dietary recalls, and questionnaires for both twins❞
~ Dr. Varun Dwaraka et al. ← there’s a lot of “et al.” to this one; the paper had 16 collaborating authors!
As to the difference it made over the course of the 8 weeks…
❝Various measures of epigenetic age acceleration (PC GrimAge, PC PhenoAge, DunedinPACE) were assessed, along with system-specific effects (Inflammation, Heart, Hormone, Liver, and Metabolic).
Distinct responses were observed, with the vegan cohort exhibiting significant decreases in overall epigenetic age acceleration, aligning with anti-aging effects of plant-based diets. Diet-specific shifts were noted in the analysis of methylation surrogates, demonstrating the influence of diet on complex trait prediction through DNA methylation markers.❞
~ Ibid.
You can read the whole paper here (it goes into a lot more detail than we have room to here, and also gives infographics, charts, numbers, the works):
Were they just eating more healthily, though?
Well, arguably yes, as the results show, but to be clear:
The omnivorous diet compared to the vegan diet in this study was also controlled; both groups were given a healthy meal plan for their respective diet. So this wasn’t a case of “any omnivorous diet vs healthy vegan diet”, but rather “healthy omnivorous diet vs healthy vegan diet”.
Again, the paper itself has the full details—a short version is that it involved a healthy meal kit delivery service, followed by ongoing dietician involvement in an equal and carefully-controlled fashion.
So, aside from that one group had an omnivorous meal plan and the other vegan, both groups received the same level of “healthy eating” support, guidance, and oversight.
But isn’t [insert your preferred animal product here] healthy?
Quite possibly! For general health, general scientific consensus is that eating at least mostly plants is best, red meat is bad, poultry is neutral in moderation, fish is good in moderation, dairy is good in moderation if fermented, eggs are good in moderation if not fried.
This study looked at the various biomarkers of aging that we listed, and not every possible aspect of health—there’s more science yet to be done, and the researchers themselves are calling for it.
It also bears mentioning that for some (relatively few, but not insignificantly few) people, extant health conditions may make a vegan diet unhealthy or otherwise untenable. Do speak with your own doctor and/or dietician if unsure.
See also: Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
We would hypothesize, by the way, that the anti-aging benefits of a vegan diet are probably proportional to abstention from animal products—meaning that even if you simply have some “vegan days”, while still consuming animal products other days, you’ll still get benefit for the days you abstained. That’s just our hypothesis though.
Take care!
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Smart Sex – by Dr. Emily Morse
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First, what this isn’t: this isn’t a mere book of sex positions and party tricks, nor is it a book of Cosmo-style “drive your man wild by using hot sauce as lube” advice.
What it offers instead, is a refreshingly mature take on sex, free from the “teehee” titillations and blushes that many books of the genre go for.
Dr. Emily Morse outlines five pillars of sex:
- Embodiment
- Health
- Collaboration
- Self-knowledge
- Self-acceptance
…and talks about each of them in detail, and how we can bring them together. And, of course, how we or our partner(s) could accidentally sabotage ourselves or each other, and the conversations we can (and should!) have, to work past that.
She also, critically, and this is a big source of value in the book, looks at “pleasure thieves”: stress, trauma, and shame. The advice for overcoming these is not “don’t worry; be happy” but rather is actual practical steps one can take.
The style throughout is direct and unpatronizing. Since the advice within pertains to everyone who has and/or wants an active sex life, very little is divided by gender etc.
There is some attention given to anatomy and physiology, complete with clear diagrams. Honestly, most people could benefit from these, because most people’s knowledge of the relevant anatomy stopped with a very basic high school text book diagram that missed a lot out.
Bottom line: this book spends more time on what’s between your ears than what’s between your legs, and yet is very comprehensive in all areas. Everyone has something to gain from this one.
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