Testosterone, Tourette’s, and Tickly Throats
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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
❝Could you do a series on mens health? Testosterone boosters. Libido? What works what doesnt? Also could you discuss prostate health and what supplements, meds, foods or protocols work to relieve symptoms of bph❞
We could indeed! We’ll be sure to write more, but while you’re waiting, you might like to read our main feature from a while back:
Too Much Or Too Little Testosterone?
…as it does include a lot about the use of a supplement that helps against Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, with performance comparable to the most common drug prescribed for such.
And since (like that drug) it’s a 5α-reductase inhibitor (meaning it works by blocking the conversion of testosterone to DHT), this means it helps against prostate problems (and also, incidentally, male pattern hair loss) without reducing overall testosterone levels. In fact, because less testosterone will be converted to DHT, you’ll actually (all other things being equal) end up with slightly higher free testosterone levels.
❝My BMI is fine, but my waist is too big. What do I do about that? I am 5′ 5″ tall and 128 pounds and 72 years old.❞
It’s hard to say without knowing about your lifestyle (and hormones, for that matter)! But, extra weight around the middle in particular is often correlated with high levels of cortisol, so you might find this of benefit:
Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)
❝Is there anything special that might help someone with Tourette’s syndrome?❞
There are of course a lot of different manifestations of Tourette’s syndrome, and some people’s tics may be far more problematic to themselves and/or others, while some may be quite mild and just something to work around.
It’s an interesting topic for sure, so we’ll perhaps do a main feature (probably also covering the related-and-sometimes-overlapping OCD umbrella rather than making it hyperspecific to Tourette’s), but meanwhile, you might consider some of these options:
- Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)
- Medications/ Pharmacology
- Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics (CBIT)
- Speech Therapies
❝Natural solutions for osteoarthritis. Eg. Rosehip tea, dandelion root tea. Any others??? What foods should I absolutely leave alone?❞
We’ll do a main feature on arthritis (in both its main forms) someday soon, but meanwhile, we recommend eating for good bone/joint health and against inflammation. To that end, you might like these main features we did on those topics:
- We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of (collagen for bone and joint health)
- The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis (eating for bone health generally)
- Keep Inflammation At Bay (dietary tips for minimizing inflammation—also, our all-time most popular article to date!)
Of these, probably the last one is the most critical, and also will have the speediest effects if implemented.
We turn the tables and ask you a question!
We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:
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The Easy Way To Fix Shoulder Pain For Good
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Will Harlow, over-50s specialist physio, shows us how.
And the good news is, you don’t even have to get out of bed:
On the fly
This looks like an astonishingly lazy exercise, but in fact, it trains your posterior deltoid, your middle and lower trapezius, your rhomboids, and at least three rotator-cuff muscles that keep your shoulder centred in its socket.
The resultant stability, i.e. your shoulder’s ability to to essentially hold itself together and move freely, will mean (unless there is something else going on) a considerable reduction in pain. And if there is something else going on, then well, it will in most cases still help, but we cannot cover all eventualities and nor did this video.
Here’s the exercise, with all the details you need to know:
- How to set up: lie on your side on a bed with your painful side on top, rest your head on a pillow, extend your top arm slightly forwards
- How to do it: raise your arm upwards without rolling your torso backwards, then slowly lower it for about five seconds, allowing your hand to drop slightly below bed height if comfortable to lengthen and strengthen your shoulder muscles.
- How to modify: if lowering past neutral causes pain in your shoulder, stop at neutral and lift again rather than forcing the range—but do increase again when your body allows you to do so without pain.
- What you should feel: expect strong work in your posterior deltoid and your deep rotator-cuff muscles, as they stabilize and control your shoulder during the slow lowering phase.
- How to structure practice: do a short set, rest, and repeat for about three total sets, adding weight only when the movement becomes easy.
For more on all of this plus a visual demonstration, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Shoulders Range – by Elia Bartolini
Take care!
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Yoga Safety: Simple Guidelines
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
❝I was wondering whether there were very simple, clear bullet points or instructions on things to be wary of in Yoga.❞
That’s quite a large topic, and not one that lends itself well to being conveyed in bullet points, but first we’ll share the article you sent us when sending this question:
Tips for Avoiding Yoga Injuries
…and next we’ll recommend the YouTube channel @livinleggings, whose videos we feature here from time to time. She (Liv) has a lot of good videos on problems/mistakes/injuries to avoid.
Here’s a great one to get you started:
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Somatic Exercises For Nervous System Regulation – by Rose Kilian
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 written before about the vagus nerve, its importance, and how to make use of it, but it’s easy to let it slip from one’s mind when it comes to exercises. This book fixes that!
The promised 35 exercises are quite a range, and are organized into sections:
- Revitalizing through breath
- Stress and tension release
- Spinal and postural health
- Mindfulness and grounding
- Movements for flexibility
- Graceful balance and focus
While it’s not necessary to do all 35 exercises, it’s recommended to do at least some from each section, to “cover one’s bases”, and enjoy the best of all worlds.
The exercises are drawn from many sources, but tai chi and yoga are certainly the most well-represented. Others, meanwhile, are straight from physiotherapy or are things one might expect to be advised at a neurology consultation.
Bottom line: if you’d like to take better care of your vagus nerve, the better for it to take care of you, this book can certainly help with that.
Click here to check out Somatic Exercises For Nervous System Regulation, and take care of yourself!
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‘Tis To Season To Be SAD-Savvy
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Seasonal Affective Disorder & SAD Lamps
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s that time of the year; especially after the clocks recently went back and the nights themselves are getting longer. So, what to do in the season of 3pm darkness?
First: the problem
The problem is twofold:
- Our circadian rhythm gets confused
- We don’t make enough serotonin
The latter is because serotonin production is largely regulated by sunlight.
People tend to focus on item 2, but item 1 is important too—both as problem, and as means of remedy.
Circadian rhythm is about more than just light
We did a main feature on this a little while back, talking about:
- What light/dark does for us, and how it’s important, but not completely necessary
- How our body knows what time it is even in perpetual darkness
- The many peaks and troughs of many physiological functions over the course of a day/night
- What that means for us in terms of such things as diet and exercise
- Practical take-aways from the above
Read: The Circadian Rhythm: Far More Than Most People Know
With that in mind, the same methodology can be applied as part of treating Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Serotonin is also about more than just light
Our brain is a) an unbelievably powerful organ, and the greatest of any animal on the planet b) a wobbly wet mass that gets easily confused.
In the case of serotonin, we can have problems:
- knowing when to synthesize it or not
- synthesizing it
- using it
- knowing when to scrub it or not
- scrubbing it
- etc
Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are a class of antidepressants that, as the name suggests, inhibit the re-uptake (scrubbing) of serotonin. So, they won’t add more serotonin to your brain, but they’ll cause your brain to get more mileage out of the serotonin that’s there, using it for longer.
So, whether or not they help will depend on you and your brain:
Read: Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
How useful are artificial sunlight lamps?
Artificial sunlight lamps (also called SAD lamps), or blue light lamps, are used in an effort to “replace” daylight.
Does it work? According to the science, generally yes, though everyone would like more and better studies:
- The Efficacy of Light Therapy in the Treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
- Blue-Light Therapy for Seasonal and Non-Seasonal Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Interestingly, it does still work in cases of visual impairment and blindness:
How much artificial sunlight is needed?
According to Wirz-Justice and Terman (2022), the best parameters are:
- 10,000 lux
- full spectrum (white light)
- 30–60 minutes exposure
- in the morning
Source: Light Therapy: Why, What, for Whom, How, and When (And a Postscript about Darkness)
That one’s a fascinating read, by the way, if you have time.
Can you recommend one?
For your convenience, here’s an example product on Amazon that meets the above specifications, and is also very similar to the one this writer has
Enjoy!
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Avocado vs Eggplant – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing avocado to eggplant, we picked the avocado.
Why?
In the battle of “fleshy plants that can be enjoyed on toast or in warm salads”, there was a clear winner:
In terms of macros, avocado has more than 2x the fiber, a lot more fat (famously, healthy fats, including omega-3 fatty acids), just a tiny bit more carbs, and more than 2x the protein, winning easily in this category.
In the category of vitamins, avocado has a lot more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, E, and K, while eggplant is not higher in any vitamins. A total win for avocado in this round!
Looking at minerals, avocado has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while eggplant has more manganese. Another easy win for avocado.
In other considerations, neither are particularly a good source of polyphenols. Despite the rich purple color, the skin of an eggplant is so thin that unless one is eating only the skin, the polyphenol-per-100g scores are negligible.
Adding up the sections makes for a very clear overall win for avocado, but by all means enjoy either or both, as diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us
Enjoy!
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Is It Ever Too Late for Hormone Replacement?
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Dr. Susan Hardwick-Smith explains:
The short answer is “no”
The famous (and since, discredited) Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Study caused widespread fear about hormone therapy some decades ago. It looked at older women (average age 63) and used outdated, pro-inflammatory hormone types (conjugated equine estrogens such as Premarin and Provera, rather than modern bioidentical estrogen). This, along with some bad science when it came to calculating cancer risk, led to the misconception that menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) should stop at 60 or after 10 years, or perhaps even be avoided entirely.
Corrected analysis shows that women under 60 in the WHI study actually had a reduced risk of heart disease, even with older hormone types. Women over 60 saw a slight initial increase in heart disease risk, due to pre-existing conditions rather than the hormones themselves. Another large study confirmed that starting MHT within six years of menopause reduces heart disease risk, while starting after ten years has a neutral effect—neither harmful nor beneficial, in terms of heart health.
Modern bioidentical estrogen is highly protective for the heart, brain, and bones, especially when started early. Transdermal estrogen (patch, gel) is even safer than oral estrogen.
Bioidentical estrogen also improves vascular health, reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia when started early.
Stopping hormone therapy at a certain age is unnecessary. If MHT was started early, it should continue, as stopping increases risks of osteoporosis, heart disease, and cognitive decline. The only major reason to stop would be an estrogen-sensitive breast cancer diagnosis.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
- HRT: Bioidentical vs Animal
- HRT & Your Heart
- How Old Is Too Old For HRT? ← this one’s specifically about the benefits that are still to be gained if one starts in one’s 60s or 70s
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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