The Beautiful Cure – by Dr. Daniel Davis
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This one is not just a book about the history of immunology and a primer on how the immune system works. It is those things too, but it’s more:
Dr. Daniel Davis, a professor of immunology and celebrated researcher in his own right, bids us look at not just what we can do, but also what else we might.
This is not to say that the book is speculative; Dr. Davis deals in data rather than imaginings. He also cautions us against falling prey to sensationalization of the “beautiful cures” that the field of immunology is working towards. What, then, are these “beautiful cures”?
Just like our immune systems (in the plural; by Dr. Davis’ count, primarily talking about our innate and adaptive immune systems) can in principle deal with any biological threat, but in practice don’t always get it right, the same goes for our medicine.
He argues that in principle, we categorically can cure any immune-related disease (including autoimmune diseases, and tangentially, cancer). The theoretical existence of such cures is a mathematically known truth. The practical, contingent existence of them? That’s what takes the actual work.
The style of the book is accessible pop science, with a hard science backbone from start to finish.
Bottom line: if you’d like to know more about immunology, and be inspired with hope and wonder without getting carried away, this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Beautiful Cure, and learn about these medical marvels!
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Fast Diet, Fast Exercise, Fast Improvements
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Diet & Exercise, Optimized
This is Dr. Michael Mosley. He originally trained in medicine with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist, but he grew disillusioned with psychiatry as it was practised, and ended up pivoting completely into being a health educator, in which field he won the British Medical Association’s Medical Journalist of the Year Award.
He also died under tragic circumstances very recently (he and his wife were vacationing in Greece, he went missing while out for a short walk on the 5th of June, appears to have got lost, and his body was found 100 yards from a restaurant on the 9th). All strength and comfort to his family; we offer our small tribute here today in his honor.
The “weekend warrior” of fasting
Dr. Mosley was an enjoyer (and proponent) of intermittent fasting, which we’ve written about before:
Fasting Without Crashing? We Sort The Science From The Hype
However, while most attention is generally given to the 16:8 method of intermittent fasting (fast for 16 hours, eat during an 8 hour window, repeat), Dr. Mosley preferred the 5:2 method (which generally means: eat at will for 5 days, then eat a reduced calorie diet for the other 2 days).
Specifically, he advocated putting that cap at 800 kcal for each of the weekend days (doesn’t have to be specifically the weekend).
He also tweaked the “eat at will for 5 days” part, to “eat as much as you like of a low-carb Mediterranean diet for 5 days”:
❝The “New 5:2” approach involves restricting calories to 800 on fasting days, then eating a healthy lower carb, Mediterranean-style diet for the rest of the week.
The beauty of intermittent fasting means that as your insulin sensitivity returns, you will feel fuller for longer on smaller portions. This is why, on non-fasting days, you do not have to count calories, just eat sensible portions. By maintaining a Mediterranean-style diet, you will consume all of the healthy fats, protein, fibre and fresh plant-based food that your body needs.❞
Read more: The Fast 800 | The New 5:2
And about that tweaked Mediterranean Diet? You might also want to check out:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
Knowledge is power
Dr. Mosley encouraged the use of genotyping tests for personal health, not just to know about risk factors, but also to know about things such as, for example, whether you have the gene that makes you unable to gain significant improvements in aerobic fitness by following endurance training programs:
The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing
On which note, he himself was not a fan of exercise, but recognised its importance, and instead sought to minimize the amount of exercise he needed to do, by practising High Intensity Interval Training. We reviewed a book of his (teamed up with a sports scientist) not long back; here it is:
Fast Exercise: The Simple Secret of High Intensity Training – by Dr. Michael Mosley & Peta Bee
You can also read our own article on the topic, here:
How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Just One Thing…
As well as his many educational TV shows, Dr. Mosley was also known for his radio show, “Just One Thing”, and a little while ago we reviewed his book, effectively a compilation of these:
Just One Thing: How Simple Changes Can Transform Your Life – by Dr. Michael Mosley
Enjoy!
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The FIRST Program: Fighting Insulin Resistance with Strength Training – by Dr. William Shang
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A lot of advice about fighting insulin resistance focuses on diet. And, that’s worthwhile! How we eat does make a huge difference to our insulin responses (as does fasting). But, we expect our regular 10almonds readers either know these things now, or can read one of several very good books we’ve already reviewed about such.
This one’s different: it focuses, as the title promises, on fighting insulin resistance with strength training. And why?
It’s because of the difference that our body composition makes to our metabolism. Now, our body fat percentage is often talked about (or, less usefully but more prevalently, even if woefully misleadingly, our BMI), but Dr. Shang makes the case for it being our musculature that has the biggest impact; because of how it hastens our metabolism, and because of how it is much healthier for the body to store glycogen in muscle tissue, than just cramming whatever it can into the liver and visceral fat. It becomes relevant, then, that there’s a limit to how much glycogen can be stored in muscle tissue, and that limit is how much muscle you have.
This is not, however, 243 pages to say “lift some weights, lazybones”. Rather, he explains the relevant pathophysiology (we will be more likely to adhere to things we understand, than things we do not), and gives practical advice on exercising the different kinds of muscle fibers, arguing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as well as outlining an exercise program for the gym, plus a chapter on no-gym exercises too.
The style is quite dense, which may be offputting for some, but it suffices to take one’s time and read thoughtfully; the end result is worth it.
Bottom line: if you’d like to keep insulin resistance at bay, this book is an excellent extra tool for that.
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Tips for Avoiding PFAs
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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
❝Hi, do you have anything helpful on avoiding PFAs?❞
PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are “forever chemicals” made specifically to avoid degradation of industrial and chemical products. Which is great for providing stain and water resistance, but not so great for our bodies or the environment.
To go into all the harms they cause would take a main feature (maybe we will, one of these days), but suffice it to say, they’re not good, and range from cancer and insulin resistance to hypertension and reduced immune response.
To answer your question in a nutshell, avoiding them completely would be almost impossible, but we can reduce our exposure a lot by avoiding single-use food/drink products that have been waterproofed, e.g. paper/bamboo straws, utensils, cups, dishes, take-out containers, etc.
Also, anything advertised as “stain-resistant” that you suspect should be quite stainable by nature, is probably good to avoid too.
For more detailed information than we have room for here today, here’s a helpful overview:
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A new government inquiry will examine women’s pain and treatment. How and why is it different?
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The Victorian government has announced an inquiry into women’s pain. Given women are disproportionately affected by pain, such a thorough investigation is long overdue.
The inquiry, the first of its kind in Australia and the first we’re aware of internationally, is expected to take a year. It aims to improve care and services for Victorian girls and women experiencing pain in the future.
The gender pain gap
Globally, more women report chronic pain than men do. A survey of over 1,750 Victorian women found 40% are living with chronic pain.
Approximately half of chronic pain conditions have a higher prevalence in women compared to men, including low back pain and osteoarthritis. And female-specific pain conditions, such as endometriosis, are much more common than male-specific pain conditions such as chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome.
These statistics are seen across the lifespan, with higher rates of chronic pain being reported in females as young as two years old. This discrepancy increases with age, with 28% of Australian women aged over 85 experiencing chronic pain compared to 18% of men.
It feels worse
Women also experience pain differently to men. There is some evidence to suggest that when diagnosed with the same condition, women are more likely to report higher pain scores than men.
Similarly, there is some evidence to suggest women are also more likely to report higher pain scores during experimental trials where the same painful pressure stimulus is applied to both women and men.
Pain is also more burdensome for women. Depression is twice as prevalent in women with chronic pain than men with chronic pain. Women are also more likely to report more health care use and be hospitalised due to their pain than men.
Women seem to feel pain more acutely and often feel ignored by doctors.
ShutterstockMedical misogyny
Women in pain are viewed and treated differently to men. Women are more likely to be told their pain is psychological and dismissed as not being real or “all in their head”.
Hollywood actor Selma Blair recently shared her experience of having her symptoms repeatedly dismissed by doctors and put down to “menstrual issues”, before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018.
It’s an experience familiar to many women in Australia, where medical misogyny still runs deep. Our research has repeatedly shown Australian women with pelvic pain are similarly dismissed, leading to lengthy diagnostic delays and serious impacts on their quality of life.
Misogyny exists in research too
Historically, misogyny has also run deep in medical research, including pain research. Women have been viewed as smaller bodied men with different reproductive functions. As a result, most pre-clinical pain research has used male rodents as the default research subject. Some researchers say the menstrual cycle in female rodents adds additional variability and therefore uncertainty to experiments. And while variability due to the menstrual cycle may be true, it may be no greater than male-specific sources of variability (such as within-cage aggression and dominance) that can also influence research findings.
The exclusion of female subjects in pre-clinical studies has hindered our understanding of sex differences in pain and of response to treatment. Only recently have we begun to understand various genetic, neurochemical, and neuroimmune factors contribute to sex differences in pain prevalence and sensitivity. And sex differences exist in pain processing itself. For instance, in the spinal cord, male and female rodents process potentially painful stimuli through entirely different immune cells.
These differences have relevance for how pain should be treated in women, yet many of the existing pharmacological treatments for pain, including opioids, are largely or solely based upon research completed on male rodents.
When women seek care, their pain is also treated differently. Studies show women receive less pain medication after surgery compared to men. In fact, one study found while men were prescribed opioids after joint surgery, women were more likely to be prescribed antidepressants. In another study, women were more likely to receive sedatives for pain relief following surgery, while men were more likely to receive pain medication.
So, women are disproportionately affected by pain in terms of how common it is and sensitivity, but also in how their pain is viewed, treated, and even researched. Women continue to be excluded, dismissed, and receive sub-optimal care, and the recently announced inquiry aims to improve this.
What will the inquiry involve?
Consumers, health-care professionals and health-care organisations will be invited to share their experiences of treatment services for women’s pain in Victoria as part of the year-long inquiry. These experiences will be used to describe the current service delivery system available to Victorian women with pain, and to plan more appropriate services to be delivered in the future.
Inquiry submissions are now open until March 12 2024. If you are a Victorian woman living with pain, or provide care to Victorian women with pain, we encourage you to submit.
The state has an excellent track record of improving women’s health in many areas, including heart, sexual, and reproductive health, but clearly, we have a way to go with women’s pain. We wait with bated breath to see the results of this much-needed investigation, and encourage other states and territories to take note of the findings.
Jane Chalmers, Senior Lecturer in Pain Sciences, University of South Australia and Amelia Mardon, PhD Candidate, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)
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The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)
This is Dr. Elissa Epel, whose work has for the past 20 years specialized in the effect of stress on aging. She’s led groundbreaking research on cortisol, telomeres, and telomerase, all in the context of aging, especially in women, as well as the relationship between stress and weight gain. She was elected member of the National Academy of Medicine for her work on stress pathways, and has been recognized as a key “Influencer in Aging” by the Alliance for Aging Research.
Indeed, she’s also been named in the top 0.1% of researchers globally, in terms of publication impact.
What’s that about stress and aging?
In her words,
❝Women with the highest levels of perceived stress have telomeres shorter on average by the equivalent of at least one decade of additional aging compared to low stress women❞
Source: Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress
We say “in her words”, as she is the top-listed author on this paper—an honour reserved for the lead researcher of any given study/paper.
However, we’d be remiss not to note that the second-listed author is Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn. What a team! Maybe we’ll do a spotlight feature on Dr. Blackburn’s work one of these days, but for now, back to Dr. Epel…
What does she want us to do about it?
She has the following advice for us:
Let go of what we can’t control
This one is simple enough, and can be as simple as learning how to set anxiety aside, and taking up the practice of radical acceptance of what we cannot control.
Be challenged, not afraid
This is about eustress, and being the lion, not the gazelle. Dr. Epel uses the example of how when lions are hunting gazelles, both are stressed, but both are feeling the physiological effects of that stress in terms of the augmentation to their immediate abilities, but only one of them is suffering by it.
We’ll let her explain how to leverage this:
TED ideas | Here’s how you can handle stress like a lion, not a gazelle | Dr. Elissa Epel
Build resilience through controlled discomfort
Don’t worry, you don’t have to get chased by lions. A cold shower will do it! This is about making use of hormesis, the body’s ability to build resilience to stressors by small doses of controlled cortisol release—as for example when one undergoes thermal shock, which sounds drastic, but for most people, a cold shower (or even an ice bath) is safe enough.
You can read more about this here:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away
Connect with nature
You don’t have to hug a tree, but you do have get to a natural (or at least, natural-seeming) environment once in a while. Simply put, we did not evolve to be in the urban or even suburban settings where most of us spend most of our time. Getting to be around greenery with at least some kind of regularity is hugely beneficial. It doesn’t have to be a national park; a nice garden or local park can suffice, and potted plants at home are better than nothing. Even spending time in virtual reality “nature” is an option:
(you can see an example there, of the kind of scenery this study used)
Breathe deeply, and rest deeply
Mindful breathing, and good quality sleep, are very strongly evidence-based approaches to reduce stress, for example:
Practice gratitude to build optimism
Optimism has a huge positive impact on health outcomes, even when other factors (including socioeconomic factors, pre-existing conditions, and general reasons for one person to be more optimistic than another) are controlled for.
Read: Optimism and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study
There are various ways to increase optimism, and practising gratitude is one of them—but that doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning realism, either:
How To Practise (Non-Toxic) Positivity
There are other ways too, though, and Dr. Epel discusses some with her friend and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, here:
Want to learn more from Dr. Epel?
We reviewed one of her books, The Telomere Effect, previously. It’s about what we can do to lengthen our telomeres (a key factor in health aging; effectively, being biologically younger). You also might enjoy her newer book, The Stress Prescription, as well as her blog.
Enjoy!
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Hack Your Hunger
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When it comes to dealing with hunger, a common-sense way of dealing with it is “eat something”. However, many people find that they then eat the wrong things, in the wrong quantities, and end up in a cycle of overeating and being hungry.
If this gets to the extreme, it can turn into a full-blown eating disorder:
Eating Disorders: More Varied (And Prevalent) Than People Think
…and even in more moderate presentations, the cycle of hunger and overeating is not great for the health. So, how to avoid that?
Listen to your body (but: actually listen)
Your body says: we’re running a little low on glycogen reserves so our energy’s going to start suffering in a few hours if we don’t eat some fruit, kill something and eat its fatty organs, or perhaps find some oily nuts.
You hear: eat something bright and sugary, shout at the dog, eat some fried food, got it!
Your body says: our water balance is a little off, we could do with some sodium, potassium, and perhaps some phosphorus to correct it.
You hear: eat something salty, got it, potato chips coming right up!
…and so on. Now, we know 10almonds readers are quite a health-conscious readership, so perhaps your responses are not quite like that. But the take-away point is still important: we need to listen to the whole message, and give the body what it actually needs, not what will just shut the message off the most quickly.
Here’s how: Intuitive Eating Might Not Be What You Think
Bonus: Interoception: Improving Our Awareness Of Body Cues
About those cravings…
As illustrated a little above, a lot of cravings might not be what they first appear, and in evolutionary terms, our body is centuries behind industrialization, in terms of adaptations, which means that even if we try to take the above into account, our responses can sometimes be inappropriate in the age of supermarkets.
See also: The Science of Hunger, And How To Sate Cravings
Natural appetite suppressants
Eating more is not always the answer, not even if it’s more healthy food. And hunger pangs can be especially inconvenient if, for example, we are fasting at present, which is by the way a very healthful thing for most people:
Learn more: Intermittent Fasting: What’s the truth?
One way to suppress hunger is simply to trigger the stomach into sending “full” signals, which involves filling it. Since you do not want to overeat, the trick here is imply to use high-volume food.
Consider for example: 30 grapes and 30 raisins have approximately the same calorie count (what with raisins being dried grapes, and the calories didn’t evaporate), but the bowl of fresh fruit is going to physically fill your stomach a lot more quickly than the tiny amount of dried fruit.
More on this: Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety
Protein is of course also an appetite suppressant, but it takes about 20 minutes for the signal to kick in. So a “hack” here is to snack on something proteinous at least 15 minutes before your main meal (for example, a portion of nuts while cooking, unless you’re allergic, or some dried fish unless you’re vegetarian/vegan; you get it, pick something high in protein and good for snacking, and have a small portion before your main meal).
Nor is protein the only option!
See also: 3 Natural Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic
Scale it down
Related to the above, there is a feedback loop that occurs here. The more you eat, the more your stomach slowly grows to accommodate it; the less you eat, the more your stomach slowly shrinks because the body tries hard to be an efficient organism, and will not maintain something that isn’t being used.
So, there’s a bit of a catch-22; sate your hunger by filling your stomach with high volume foods, but filling it will cause it to grow?
The trick is: do the “eat until 80% full” thing. That’s full enough that you have had a nice meal and are not suffering, without stretching the stomach.
Enjoy your food
Seriously! Actually enjoy it. Which means paying full attention to it. Eating can and should be a wonderful experience, so it’s best savored rather than inhaling a bowl of something in 30 seconds.
Have you seen those dog bowls that have obstructions to slow down how quickly a dog eats? We can leverage that kind of trick too! While you might not want to eat from a dog bowl, how about having a little bowl of pistachio nuts rather than ready-to-eat peanuts? Or any shelled nuts that we must shell as we go. If you’re allergic to nuts, there are plenty of other foods with a high work-to-food ratio. Take some time and enjoy that pomegranate, for instance!
Not that we necessarily have to make things difficult for ourselves either; we can just take appropriate care to ensure a good dining experience. Life is for living, so why not enjoy it?
See also: Mindful Eating: How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate
Enjoy!
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