The 5 Resets – by Dr. Aditi Nerurkar

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What this book isn’t: an advice to go on a relaxing meditation retreat, or something like that.

What this is: a science-based guide to what actually works.

There’s no need to be mysterious, so we’ll mention that the titular “5 resets” are:

  1. What matters most
  2. Quiet in a noisy world
  3. Leveraging the brain-body connection
  4. Coming up for air (regaining perspective)
  5. Bringing your best self forward

All of these are things we can easily lose sight of in the hustle and bustle of daily life, so having a system for keeping them on track can make a huge difference!

The style is personable and accessible, while providing a lot of strongly science-backed tips and tricks along the way.

Bottom line: if life gets away from you a little too often for comfort, this book can help you keep on top of things with a lot less stress.

Click here to check out “The 5 Resets”, and take control with conscious calm!

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  • Why You Probably Need More Sleep

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    Sleep: yes, you really do still need it!

    We asked you how much sleep you usually get, and got the above-pictured, below-described set of responses:

    • A little of a third of all respondents selected the option “< 7 hours”
    • However, because respondents also selected options such as < 6 hours, < 5 hours, and < 4 hours, so if we include those in the tally, the actual total percentage of respondents who reported getting under 7 hours, is actually more like 62%, or just under two thirds of all respondents.
    • Nine respondents, which was about 5% of the total, reported usually getting under 4 hours sleep
    • A little over quarter of respondents reported usually getting between 7 and 8 hours sleep
    • Fifteen respondents, which was a little under 10% of the total, reported usually getting between 8 and 9 hours of sleep
    • Three respondents, which was a little under 2% of the total, reported getting over 9 hours of sleep
    • In terms of the classic “you should get 7–9 hours sleep”, approximately a third of respondents reported getting this amount.

    You need to get 7–9 hours sleep: True or False?

    True! Unless you have a (rare!) mutated ADRB1 gene, which reduces that.

    The way to know whether you have this, without genomic testing to know for sure, is: do you regularly get under 6.5 hours sleep, and yet continue to go through life bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? If so, you probably have that gene. If you experience daytime fatigue, brain fog, and restlessness, you probably don’t.

    About that mutated ADRB1 gene:

    NIH | Gene identified in people who need little sleep

    Quality of sleep matters as much as duration, and a lot of studies use the “RU-Sated” framework, which assesses six key dimensions of sleep that have been consistently associated with better health outcomes. These are:

    • regularity / usual hours
    • satisfaction with sleep
    • alertness during waking hours
    • timing of sleep
    • efficiency of sleep
    • duration of sleep

    But, that doesn’t mean that you can skimp on the last one if the others are in order. In fact, getting a good 7 hours sleep can reduce your risk of getting a cold by three or four times (compared with six or fewer hours):

    Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

    ^This study was about the common cold, but you may be aware there are more serious respiratory viruses freely available, and you don’t want those, either.

    Napping is good for the health: True or False?

    True or False, depending on how you’re doing it!

    If you’re trying to do it to sleep less in total (per polyphasic sleep scheduling), then no, this will not work in any sustainable fashion and will be ruinous to the health. We did a Mythbusting Friday special on specifically this, a while back:

    Could Just Two Hours Sleep Per Day Be Enough?

    PS: you might remember Betteridge’s Law of Headlines

    If you’re doing it as a energy-boosting supplement to a reasonable night’s sleep, napping can indeed be beneficial to the health, and can give benefits such as:

    However! There is still a right and a wrong way to go about it, and we wrote about this previously, for a Saturday Life Hacks edition of 10almonds:

    How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

    As we get older, we need less sleep: True or False

    False, with one small caveat.

    The small caveat: children and adolescents need 9–12 hours sleep because, uncredited as it goes, they are doing some seriously impressive bodybuilding, and that is exhausting to the body. So, an adult (with a normal lifestyle, who is not a bodybuilder) will tend to need less sleep than a child/adolescent.

    But, the statement “As we get older, we need less sleep” is generally taken to mean “People in the 65+ age bracket need less sleep than younger adults”, and this popular myth is based on anecdotal observational evidence: older people tend to sleep less (as our survey above shows! For any who aren’t aware, our readership is heavily weighted towards the 60+ demographic), and still continue functioning, after all.

    Just because we survive something with a degree of resilience doesn’t mean it’s good for us.

    In fact, there can be serious health risks from not getting enough sleep in later years, for example:

    Sleep deficiency promotes Alzheimer’s disease development and progression

    Want to get better sleep?

    What gets measured, gets done. Sleep tracking apps can be a really good tool for getting one’s sleep on a healthier track. We compared and contrasted some popular ones:

    The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down

    Take good care of yourself!

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  • Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory – by Dr. Andrew Budson & Dr. Maureen O’Connor

    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.

    First, what this is not: a “how to improve your memory” book of the kind marketed to students and/or people who want to do memory-themed party tricks.

    What this book actually is: exactly what the title and subtitle claim it to be: seven steps to managing your memory: what’s normal, what’s not, and what to do about it.

    Drs. Budson & O’Connor cover:

    • which memory errors can (and usually do) happen at any age
    • how memory changes with normal aging, and
    • what kinds of memory problems are not normal.

    One thing that sets this book aside from a lot of its genre is that it also covers which kinds of memory loss are reversible—and, where appropriate, what can be undertaken to effect such a reversal.

    The authors talk about what things have (and what things haven’t!) been shown to strengthen memory and reduce cognitive decline, and in the worst case scenario, what medications can help against Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

    The style is halfway between pop-science and a science textbook. The structure of the book, with its headings, subheadings, bullet points, summaries, etc, helps the reader to process and remember the information.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to get on top of managing your memory before you forget, then this book is for you.

    Click here to check out Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory, and safeguard what’s most important to you!

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  • Kiwi vs Lime – Which is Healthier?

    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 kiwi to lime, we picked the kiwi.

    Why?

    Looking at the macros first, kiwi has more protein, more carbs, and more fiber. As with most fruits, the fiber is the number we’re most interested in for health purposes; in this case, kiwi is just slightly ahead of lime on all three of those.

    In terms of vitamins, kiwi has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while lime has a tiny bit more vitamin B5. As in, the vitamin that’s in pretty much anything and is practically impossible to be deficient in unless you are literally starving to death. You may be thinking: aren’t limes a famously good source of vitamin C? And yes, yes they are. But kiwis have >3x more. In other big differences, kiwis also have >6x more vitamin E and >67 times more vitamin K.

    When it comes to minerals, kiwi has more calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while lime has more iron and selenium. Another easy win for kiwis.

    In short: enjoy both; both are good. But kiwis are the more nutritionally dense option by almost every way of measuring it.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer ← kiwi is top of the list; it promotes cancer cell death while sparing healthy cells

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Getting Things Done – by David Allen
  • When And Why Do We Pick Up Our Phones?

    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 School of Life’s Alain de Botton makes the argument that—if we pay attention, if we keep track—there’s an understory to why we pick up our phones:

    It’s not about information

    Yes, our phones (or rather, the apps therein) are designed to addict us, to draw us back, to keep us scrolling and never let us go. We indeed seek out information like our ancestors once sought out berries; searching, encouraged by a small discovery, looking for more. The neurochemistry is similar.

    But when we look at the “when” of picking up our phones, de Botton says, it tells a different story:

    We pick them up not to find out what’s going on with the world, but rather specifically to not find out what’s going with ourselves. We pick them up to white out some anxiety we don’t want to examine, a line of thought we don’t want to go down, memories we don’t want to consider, futures we do not want to have to worry about.

    And of course, phones do have a great educational potential, are an immensely powerful tool for accessing knowledge of many kinds—if only we can remain truly conscious while using them, and not take them as the new “opiate of the masses”.

    De Botton bids us, when next we pick up our phone. ask a brave question:

    “If I weren’t allowed to consult my phone right now, what might I need to think about?”

    As for where from there? There’s more in the video:

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

    Further reading

    Making Social Media Work For Your Mental Health

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • How To Avoid Self-Hatred & Learn To Love Oneself More

    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.

    Alain de Botton gives a compassionate, but realistic, explanation in this video:

    The enemy within

    Or rather, the collaborator within. Because there’s usually first an enemy without—those who are critical of us, who consider that we are bad people in some fashion, and may indeed get quite colorful in their expressions of this.

    Sometimes, their words will bounce straight off us; sometimes, their words will stick. So what’s the difference, and can we do anything about it?

    The difference is: when their words stick, it’s usually because on some level we believe their words may be true. That doesn’t mean they necessarily are true!

    They could be (and it would be a special kind of hubris to assume no detractor could ever find a valid criticism of us), but very often the reason we have that belief, or at least that fear/insecurity, is simply because it was taught to us at an early age, often by harsh words/actions of those around us; perhaps our parents, perhaps our schoolteachers, perhaps our classmates, and so forth.

    The problem—and solution—is that we learn emotions much the same way that we learn language; only in part by reasoned thought, and rather for the most part, by immersion and repetition.

    It can take a lot of conscious self-talk to undo the harm of decades of unconscious self-talk based on what was probably a few years of external criticisms when we were small and very impressionable… But, having missed the opportunity to start fixing this sooner, the next best time to do it is now.

    We cannot, of course, simply do what a kind friend might do and expect any better results; if a kind friend tells us something nice that we do not believe is true, then however much they mean it, we’re not going to internalize it. So instead, we must simply chip away at those unhelpful longstanding counterproductive beliefs, and simply build up the habit of viewing ourselves in a kinder light.

    For more on all this, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • From Strength to Strength – by Dr. Arthur Brooks

    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.

    For most professions, there are ways in which performance can be measured, and the average professional peak varies by profession, but averages are usually somewhere in the 30–45 range, with a pressure to peak between 25–35.

    With a peak by age 45 or perhaps 50 at the latest (aside from some statistical outliers, of course), what then to expect at age 50+? Not long after that, there’s a reason for mandatory retirement ages in some professions.

    Dr. Brooks examines the case for accepting that rather than fighting it, and/but making our weaknesses into our strengths as we go. If our fluid intelligence slows, our accumulated crystal intelligence (some might call it “wisdom“) can make up for it, for example.

    But he also champions the idea of looking outside of ourselves; of the importance of growing and fostering connections; giving to those around us and receiving support in turn; not transactionally, but just as a matter of mutualism of the kind found in many other species besides our own. Indeed, Dr. Brooks gives the example of a grove of aspen trees (hence the cover art of this book) that do exactly that.

    The style is very accessible in terms of language but with frequent scientific references, so very much a “best of both worlds” in terms of readability and information-density.

    Bottom line: if ever you’ve wondered at what age you might outlive your usefulness, this book will do as the subtitle suggests, and help you carve out your new place.

    Click here to check out From Strength To Strength, and find yours!

    Don’t Forget…

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