The Book of Lymph – by Lisa Levitt Gainsely
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 book starts with an overview of what lymph is and why it matters, before getting into the main meat of the book, which is lymphatic massage techniques to improve lymphatic flow/drainage throughout different parts of the body, and in the context of an assortment of common maladies that may merit particular attention.
There’s an element of aesthetic medicine here, and improving beauty, but there’s also a whole section devoted to such things as breast care and the like (bearing in mind, the lymphatic system is one of our main defenses against cancer). There’s also a lot about managing lymph in the context of chronic health conditions.
The style is light pop-science; the science is explained clearly throughout, but without academic citations every few lines as some books might have. The author is, after all, a practitioner (CLT) and/but not an academic.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your lymphatic health, whether for beauty or health maintenance or recovery, this book will walk you through it.
Click here to check out The Book of Lymph, and give yours some love!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Healing Back Pain – by Dr. John Sarno
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.
Often when we review books with titles like this one, we preface it with a “what it’s not: a think-yourself-better book”.
In this case… It is, in fact, a think-yourself-better book. However, its many essay-length rave reviews caught our attention, and upon reading, we can report: its ideas are worth reading.
The focus of this book is on TMS, or “Tension Myoneural Syndrome”, to give it its full name. The author asserts (we cannot comment on the accuracy) that many cases of TMS are misdiagnosed as other things, from sciatica to lupus. When other treatments fail, or are simply not available (no cure for lupus yet, for example) or are unenticing (risky surgeries, for example), he offers an alternative approach.
Dr. Sarno lays out the case for TMS being internally fixable, since our muscles and nerves are all at the command of our brain. Rather than taking a physical-first approach, he takes a psychological-first approach, before building into a more holistic model.
The writing style is… A little dated and salesey and unnecessarily padded, to be honest, but the content makes it worthwhile.
Bottom line: if you have back pain, then the advice of this book, priced not much more than a box of top brand painkillers, seems a very reasonable thing to try.
Click here to check out Healing Back Pain, and see if it works for you!
Share This Post
-
The End of Alzheimer’s – by Dr. Dale Bredesen
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.
This one didn’t use the “The New Science Of…” subtitle that many books do, and this one actually is a “new science of”!
Which is exciting, and/but comes with the caveat that the overall protocol itself is still undergoing testing, but the results so far are promising. The constituent parts of the protocol are for the most already well-established, but have not previously been put together in this way.
Dr. Bredesen argues that Alzheimer’s Disease is not one condition but three (medical consensus agrees at least that it is a collection of conditions, but different schools of thought slice them differently), and outlines 36 metabolic factors that are implicated, and the good news is, most of them are within our control.
Since there’s a lot to put together, he also offers many workarounds and “crutches”, making for very practical advice.
The style of the book is on the hard end of pop-science, that is to say while the feel and tone is very pop-sciencey, there are nevertheless a lot of words that you might know but your spellchecker probably wouldn’t. He does explain everything along the way, but this does mean that if you’re not already well-versed, you can’t just dip in to a later point without reading the earlier parts.
Bottom line: even if you only implement half the advice in this book, you’ll be doing your long-term cognitive health a huge favor.
Click here to check out The End of Alzheimer’s, and keep cognitive decline at bay!
Share This Post
-
25 Healthy Habits That Will Change Your Life
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.
Cori Lefkowith, of “Redefining Strength” and “Strong At Every Age” fame, has compiled a list of the simple habits that make a big difference, and here they are!
The Tips
Her recommendations include…
- The healthy activities you’re most prone to skipping? Do those first
- Create staple meals… Consciously! This means: instead of getting into a rut of cooking the same few things in rotation because it’s what you have the ingredients in for, consciously and deliberately make a list of at least 7 meals that, between them, constitute a healthy balanced diet, and choose to make them your staples. That doesn’t mean don’t eat anything else (indeed, variety is good!) but having a robust collection of healthy staples to fall back on will help you avoid falling into unhealthy eating traps.
- Schedule time for healthy activities that you love. Instead of thinking “it would be nice to…”, actually figure out a timeslot, plan in advance, making it recurring, and do it!
- Have (healthy!) no-spoil food options always available. No-spoil doesn’t have to mean “won’t spoil ever”, but does mean at least that it has a long shelf-life. Nuts are a good example, assuming you’re not allergic. Sundried fruits are good too; not nearly as good as fresh fruit, but a lot better than some random processed snack because it’s what in. If you eat fish, then see if you can get dried fish in; it’s high in protein and keeps for a very long time indeed.
- Stock up on spices! Not only do they all have great health-giving properties (at least, we can’t think of a refutation by counterexample, Arrakis be damned), but also, they literally spice up our culinary repertoire, and bring joy to cooking and eating healthy food.
If you like these, check out the rest:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically
Further reading
For more about actually making habits stick quickly and reliably,enjoy:
How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
Take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Apples vs Oranges – 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 apples to oranges, we picked the oranges.
Why?
In terms of macros, the two fruits are approximately equal (and indeed, on average, precisely equal in the most important metric, which is fiber). So, a tie here.
In the category of vitamins, apples are higher in vitamin K, while oranges are higher in vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline. An easy win for oranges this time.
When it comes to minerals, apples have more iron and manganese, while oranges have more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another easy win for oranges.
So, adding up the sections, a clear win for oranges. But, by all means, enjoy either or both! Diversity is good.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Mindsight – by Dr. Daniel Siegel
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.
A lot of books these days bear the subtitle “The New Science Of…”, but usually it’s not new, and often it’s not even science. So how does this one measure up?
- Is it new? The core ideas are mostly very old, but some of the interventions are new in presentation—and backed by relatively recent research—so we can give him this one on a technicality at least
- It is science? Yes! The author is a clinician (a psychatric clinician, specifically) and there’s nothing here that doesn’t have its foundations in robust science.
So, what’s this “mindsight”, then? Dr. Siegel wants to express to us a concept “for which no word currently exists”, so he had to make one up, to convey the idea of having a conscious awareness of what is going on in our brain, on an experiential basis. In other words: “mindfulness”. There was totally already a word for this, which he goes on to lampshade not very far into the book.
Nevertheless, we’ll forgive him a little copywriting swizzle with the title, because the content here is genuinely top-tier.
In the book, many ideas from many other pop-psychology books are covered, in useful, practical, no-nonsense fashion, laying out tools and interventions to strengthen various parts of our brain and our relationship with same.
Bottom line: this is the most comprehensive, science-centric, book on mindfulness that this reviewer has read.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
How a Friend’s Death Turned Colorado Teens Into Anti-Overdose Activists
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.
Gavinn McKinney loved Nike shoes, fireworks, and sushi. He was studying Potawatomi, one of the languages of his Native American heritage. He loved holding his niece and smelling her baby smell. On his 15th birthday, the Durango, Colorado, teen spent a cold December afternoon chopping wood to help neighbors who couldn’t afford to heat their homes.
McKinney almost made it to his 16th birthday. He died of fentanyl poisoning at a friend’s house in December 2021. His friends say it was the first time he tried hard drugs. The memorial service was so packed people had to stand outside the funeral home.
Now, his peers are trying to cement their friend’s legacy in state law. They recently testified to state lawmakers in support of a bill they helped write to ensure students can carry naloxone with them at all times without fear of discipline or confiscation. School districts tend to have strict medication policies. Without special permission, Colorado students can’t even carry their own emergency medications, such as an inhaler, and they are not allowed to share them with others.
“We realized we could actually make a change if we put our hearts to it,” said Niko Peterson, a senior at Animas High School in Durango and one of McKinney’s friends who helped write the bill. “Being proactive versus being reactive is going to be the best possible solution.”
Individual school districts or counties in California, Maryland, and elsewhere have rules expressly allowing high school students to carry naloxone. But Jon Woodruff, managing attorney at the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association, said he wasn’t aware of any statewide law such as the one Colorado is considering. Woodruff’s Washington, D.C.-based organization researches and drafts legislation on substance use.
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that can halt an overdose. Available over the counter as a nasal spray, it is considered the fire extinguisher of the opioid epidemic, for use in an emergency, but just one tool in a prevention strategy. (People often refer to it as “Narcan,” one of the more recognizable brand names, similar to how tissues, regardless of brand, are often called “Kleenex.”)
The Biden administration last year backed an ad campaign encouraging young people to carry the emergency medication.
Most states’ naloxone access laws protect do-gooders, including youth, from liability if they accidentally harm someone while administering naloxone. But without school policies explicitly allowing it, the students’ ability to bring naloxone to class falls into a gray area.
Ryan Christoff said that in September 2022 fellow staff at Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colorado, where he worked and which one of his daughters attended at the time, confiscated naloxone from one of her classmates.
“She didn’t have anything on her other than the Narcan, and they took it away from her,” said Christoff, who had provided the confiscated Narcan to that student and many others after his daughter nearly died from fentanyl poisoning. “We should want every student to carry it.”
Boulder Valley School District spokesperson Randy Barber said the incident “was a one-off and we’ve done some work since to make sure nurses are aware.” The district now encourages everyone to consider carrying naloxone, he said.
Community’s Devastation Turns to Action
In Durango, McKinney’s death hit the community hard. McKinney’s friends and family said he didn’t do hard drugs. The substance he was hooked on was Tapatío hot sauce — he even brought some in his pocket to a Rockies game.
After McKinney died, people started getting tattoos of the phrase he was known for, which was emblazoned on his favorite sweatshirt: “Love is the cure.” Even a few of his teachers got them. But it was classmates, along with their friends at another high school in town, who turned his loss into a political movement.
“We’re making things happen on behalf of him,” Peterson said.
The mortality rate has spiked in recent years, with more than 1,500 other children and teens in the U.S. dying of fentanyl poisoning the same year as McKinney. Most youth who die of overdoses have no known history of taking opioids, and many of them likely thought they were taking prescription opioids like OxyContin or Percocet — not the fake prescription pills that increasingly carry a lethal dose of fentanyl.
“Most likely the largest group of teens that are dying are really teens that are experimenting, as opposed to teens that have a long-standing opioid use disorder,” said Joseph Friedman, a substance use researcher at UCLA who would like to see schools provide accurate drug education about counterfeit pills, such as with Stanford’s Safety First curriculum.
Allowing students to carry a low-risk, lifesaving drug with them is in many ways the minimum schools can do, he said.
“I would argue that what the schools should be doing is identifying high-risk teens and giving them the Narcan to take home with them and teaching them why it matters,” Friedman said.
Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, Friedman identified Colorado as a hot spot for high school-aged adolescent overdose deaths, with a mortality rate more than double that of the nation from 2020 to 2022.
“Increasingly, fentanyl is being sold in pill form, and it’s happening to the largest degree in the West,” said Friedman. “I think that the teen overdose crisis is a direct result of that.”
If Colorado lawmakers approve the bill, “I think that’s a really important step,” said Ju Nyeong Park, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University, who leads a research group focused on how to prevent overdoses. “I hope that the Colorado Legislature does and that other states follow as well.”
Park said comprehensive programs to test drugs for dangerous contaminants, better access to evidence-based treatment for adolescents who develop a substance use disorder, and promotion of harm reduction tools are also important. “For example, there is a national hotline called Never Use Alone that anyone can call anonymously to be supervised remotely in case of an emergency,” she said.
Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands
Many Colorado school districts are training staff how to administer naloxone and are stocking it on school grounds through a program that allows them to acquire it from the state at little to no cost. But it was clear to Peterson and other area high schoolers that having naloxone at school isn’t enough, especially in rural places.
“The teachers who are trained to use Narcan will not be at the parties where the students will be using the drugs,” he said.
And it isn’t enough to expect teens to keep it at home.
“It’s not going to be helpful if it’s in somebody’s house 20 minutes outside of town. It’s going to be helpful if it’s in their backpack always,” said Zoe Ramsey, another of McKinney’s friends and a senior at Animas High School.
“We were informed it was against the rules to carry naloxone, and especially to distribute it,” said Ilias “Leo” Stritikus, who graduated from Durango High School last year.
But students in the area, and their school administrators, were uncertain: Could students get in trouble for carrying the opioid antagonist in their backpacks, or if they distributed it to friends? And could a school or district be held liable if something went wrong?
He, along with Ramsey and Peterson, helped form the group Students Against Overdose. Together, they convinced Animas, which is a charter school, and the surrounding school district, to change policies. Now, with parental permission, and after going through training on how to administer it, students may carry naloxone on school grounds.
Durango School District 9-R spokesperson Karla Sluis said at least 45 students have completed the training.
School districts in other parts of the nation have also determined it’s important to clarify students’ ability to carry naloxone.
“We want to be a part of saving lives,” said Smita Malhotra, chief medical director for Los Angeles Unified School District in California.
Los Angeles County had one of the nation’s highest adolescent overdose death tallies of any U.S. county: From 2020 to 2022, 111 teens ages 14 to 18 died. One of them was a 15-year-old who died in a school bathroom of fentanyl poisoning. Malhotra’s district has since updated its policy on naloxone to permit students to carry and administer it.
“All students can carry naloxone in our school campuses without facing any discipline,” Malhotra said. She said the district is also doubling down on peer support and hosting educational sessions for families and students.
Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland took a similar approach. School staff had to administer naloxone 18 times over the course of a school year, and five students died over the course of about one semester.
When the district held community forums on the issue, Patricia Kapunan, the district’s medical officer, said, “Students were very vocal about wanting access to naloxone. A student is very unlikely to carry something in their backpack which they think they might get in trouble for.”
So it, too, clarified its policy. While that was underway, local news reported that high school students found a teen passed out, with purple lips, in the bathroom of a McDonald’s down the street from their school, and used Narcan to revive them. It was during lunch on a school day.
“We can’t Narcan our way out of the opioid use crisis,” said Kapunan. “But it was critical to do it first. Just like knowing 911.”
Now, with the support of the district and county health department, students are training other students how to administer naloxone. Jackson Taylor, one of the student trainers, estimated they trained about 200 students over the course of three hours on a recent Saturday.
“It felt amazing, this footstep toward fixing the issue,” Taylor said.
Each trainee left with two doses of naloxone.
This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: