The Body Is Not an Apology – by Sonya Renee Taylor
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First, a couple of things that this book is not about:
- Self-confidence (it’s about more than merely thinking highly of oneself)
- Self-acceptance (it’s about more than merely settling for “good enough”)
In contrast, it’s about loving and celebrating what is, while striving for better, for oneself and for others.
You may be wondering: whence this “radical” in the title?
The author argues that often, the problem with our bodies is not actually our bodies. If we have cancer, or diabetes, then sure, that’s a problem with the body. But most of the time, the “problem with our bodies” is simply society’s rejection of our “imperfect” bodies as somehow “less than”, and something we must invest time and money to correct. Hence, the need for a radical uprooting of ideas, to fix the real problem.
Bottom line: if, like most of us, you have a body that would not entirely pass for that of a Marvel Comics superhero, this is a book for you. And if you do have a MCU body? This is also a book for you, because we have bad news for you about what happens with age.
Click here to check out The Body Is Not An Apology, and appreciate more about yours!
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The Best 4 Pool Exercises to Strengthen Your Core & Tone Up
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A lot of people don’t love working on their core strength, but exercising in the pool can make it a lot more enjoyable, as well as minimizing risk of injury.
Dr Alyssa Kuhn, arthritis specialist, also advises “being in the water also helps to control for balance and can offload the joints so they aren’t as painful”:
The gentlest exercise
The specific exercises she recommends are:
Wood Chops
Stagger your feet, clasp your hands, and submerge them in the water. Now, move your hands diagonally from one side to the other. This engages your core and balance using water resistance. Perform 10–20 reps per side, exhaling on the hardest part.
Front Kick with Opposite Arm Press
Kick one leg forward while pushing the opposite arm out or overhead—higher kicks increase difficulty by requiring more balance. If balance isn’t sufficient for you yet, hold onto the pool wall if needed. Either way, engage the core to lift the leg. Do 20–30 reps alternating sides.
Wall Push-Ups
Place your hands on the pool wall, shoulder-width apart. Keep feet together and hips slightly tucked for core engagement. Next, move your chest toward the wall and push back while maintaining a straight body—avoid arching your back. Do 10–20 reps.
Arm Circles
Stand with your feet wider than shoulder-width. Clasp your hands, extend your arms, and submerge them in the water. Make large circular motions for resistance training. This can be done with straight or bent arms for different difficulty levels. Do 10–20 circles in each direction.
For more on each of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Osteoporosis & Exercises: Which To Do (And Which To Avoid)
Take care!
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Should Men Over 50 Get PSA?
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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
❝Loved the information on prostate cancer. Do recommend your readers get a PSA or equivalent test annually for over 50 yr old men.❞
(This is about: Prostate Health: What You Should Know)
Yep, or best yet, the much more accurate PSE test! But if PSA test is what’s available, it’s a lot better than nothing. And, much as it’s rarely the highlight of anyone’s day, a prostate exam by a suitably qualified professional is also a good idea.
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Walnuts vs Pecans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing walnuts to pecans, we picked the walnuts.
Why?
It was very close, though, and an argument could be made for pecans! Walnuts are nevertheless always a very good bet, and so far in our This-or-That comparisons, the only nut to beat them so far as been almonds, and that was very close too.
In terms of macros, walnuts have a lot more protein, while pecans have a little more fiber (for approximately the same carbs). Both are equally fatty (near enough; technically pecans have a little more) but where the walnuts stand out in the fat category is that while pecans have mostly healthy monounsaturated fats, walnuts have mostly healthy polyunsaturated fats, including including a good balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. So, while we do love the extra fiber from pecans, we’re calling it for walnuts in the macros category, on account of the extra protein and the best lipids profile (not that pecans’ lipids profile is bad by any stretch; just, walnuts have it better).
In the vitamins category, walnuts have more of vitamins B2, B6, B9, and C, while pecans offer more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B5, E, K, and choline. The margins aren’t huge and walnuts are also excellent for all the vitamins that pecans narrowly beat them on, but still, the vitamins category is a win for pecans.
When it comes to minerals, walnuts take back the crown; walnuts offer more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while pecans have a little more manganese and zinc. Once again, the margins aren’t huge and pecans are also excellent for all the minerals that walnuts narrowly beat them on, but still, the minerals category is a win for walnuts.
In short: enjoy both of these nuts for their healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber, but if you’re going to pick one, walnuts come out on top.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
Take care!
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How To Be 7.5x More Likely To Develop Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
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First, what is it?
Many more people have chronic fatigue, which is the symptom of being exhausted all the time, than have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) which is the illness of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
This is because fatigue can be a symptom of many, many other conditions, and can be heavily influenced by lifestyle factors too.
A lot of the advice for dealing with chronic fatigue is often the same in both cases, but some will be different, because for example:
- If your fatigue is from some other condition, that condition probably impacts what lifestyle factors you are (and are not) able to change, too
- If your fatigue is from lifestyle factors, that hopefully means you can change those and enjoy less fatigue…
- But if it’s not from lifestyle factors, as in ME/CFS, then advice to “exercise more” etc is not going to help so much.
There are ways to know the difference though:
Check out: Do You Have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?
The chronic disease pipeline
While it had been strongly suspected that COVID infection could lead to CFS, with long COVID having chronic fatigue as one of its characteristic symptoms, a research team led by Dr. Suzanne Vernon has now established the nature of the relationship.
It was a large (n=13,224) longitudinal observational cohort study of people with no pre-existing ME/CFS, grouped according to their COVID infection status:
- acute infected, enrolled within 30 days of infection or enrolled as uninfected who became infected (n=4,515)
- post-acute infected, enrolled greater than 30 days after infection (n=7,270)
- uninfected (n=1,439).
(to be clear, that last means “never infected”, or else they would be in group 2)
Note: people who had COVID and were hospitalized for it were excluded from the study, so this risk is the risk represented by even just more “moderate” infections.
What they found:
❝The proportion of all RECOVER-Adult participants that met criteria for ME/CFS following SARS-CoV-2 infection was 4.5% (531 of 11,785) compared to 0.6% (9 of 1439) in uninfected participants.❞
There are then different numbers if we look per 100 person-years, as the study also did—in which case, we get a re-modelled increase in risk of 5x instead of 7.5x, but a) that’s still not good b) the “here-and-now” figures of 4.5% vs 0.6% are also relevant.
Read in full: Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study
The killer nobody wants to talk about anymore
Of course, as we all know the pandemic is over, because politicians declared it so, which is very reassuring.
Nevertheless, COVID is currently the still 4th leading cause of death in the US, placing it higher than stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and others.
See also: Emergency or Not, Covid Is Still Killing People. Here’s What Doctors Advise to Stay Safe
So, while it’s very good to take care of our hearts, brains, blood sugars, and so forth, let’s at the very least continue to keep on top of our vaccinations, avoid enclosed crowded spaces where possible, etc.
And for extra boosts to one’s chances: Why Some People Get Sick More (And How To Not Be One Of Them)
What if I do get (or already have) long COVID and/or ME/CFS?
Well, that is definitely going to suck, but there are still some things that can be done.
Here’s a big one: How To Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue ← this will not, of course, cure you, but it’s a way of getting maximum nutrition for minimum effort, given that for someone with chronic fatigue, effort is a very finite resource that must be used sparingly
Finally, here are some further resources:
Support For Long COVID & Chronic Fatigue
Take care!
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Indistractable – by Nir Eyal
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Have you ever felt that you could accomplish anything you wanted/needed, if only you didn’t get distracted?
This book lays out a series of psychological interventions for precisely that aim, and it goes a lot beyond the usual “download/delete these apps to help you stop checking social media every 47 seconds”.
Some you’ll have heard of before, some you won’t have, and if even one method works for you, it’ll have been well worth your while reading this book. This reviewer, for example, enjoyed the call to identity-based strength, e.g. adopting an “I am indistractable*” perspective going into tasks. This is akin to the strength of, for example, “I don’t drink” over “I am a recovering alcoholic”.
*the usual spelling of this, by the way, is “undistractable”, but we use the author’s version here for consistency. It’s a great marketing gimmick, as all searches for the word “indistractable” will bring up his book.
Nor is the book just about maximizing productivity to the detriment of everything else; this is not about having a 25 hours per day “grindset”. Rather, it even makes sure to cover such things as focusing on one’s loved ones, for instance.
Bottom line: if you’ve tried blocking out the distractions but still find you can’t focus, this book offers next-level solutions
Click here to check out Indistractible, and become indeed indistractable!
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Retrain Your Brain – by Dr. Seth Gillihan
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15-Minute Arabic”, “Sharpen Your Chess Tactics in 24 Hours”, “Change Your Life in 7 Days”, “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 weeks”—all real books from this reviewer’s shelves.
The thing with books with these sorts of time periods in the titles is that the time period in the title often bears little relation to how long it takes to get through the book. So what’s the case here?
You’ll probably get through it in more like 7 days, but the pacing is more important than the pace. By that we mean:
Dr. Gillihan starts by assuming the reader is at best “in a rut”, and needs to first pick a direction to head in (the first “week”) and then start getting one’s life on track (the second “week”).
He then gives us, one by one, an array of tools and power-ups to do increasingly better. These tools aren’t just CBT, though of course that features prominently. There’s also mindfulness exercises, and holistic / somatic therapy too, for a real “bringing it all together” feel.
And that’s where this book excels—at no point is the reader left adrift with potential stumbling-blocks left unexamined. It’s a “whole course”.
Bottom line: whether it takes you 7 hours or 7 months, “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks” is a CBT-and-more course for people who like courses to work through. It’ll get you where you’re going… Wherever you want that to be for you!
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