The Case Against Sugar – by Gary Taubes
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We generally already know that sugar is bad for the health. Most people don’t know how bad.
Taubes makes, as the title goes, “the case against sugar”. Implicated in everything from metabolic syndrome to cancer to Alzheimer’s, sugar is ruinous to the health.
It’s hard to review this book without making a comparison to William Duffy’s 1975 bestseller, “Sugar Blues“. Stylistically it’s very similar, and the general gist is certainly the same.
However! Where this book beats Sugar Blues is in content; Duffy’s book often makes bold claims without scientific backing. Some of those claims didn’t stand the test of time and are now disproven. Instead, Taubes’ book leans on actual up-to-date science, and talks more about what we actually know, than what we imagine.
If this book has a weak point, it’s when it veers away from its main topic and starts talking about, for example, saturated fat. In this side-topic, the book makes some good points, but is less well-considered, cherry-picks data, and lacks nuance.
On its main topic, though, the investigation of sugar, it is rather more thorough.
Bottom line: if you want a next-level motivation to reduce or eliminate dietary sugar, this book may certainly provide that.
Click here to check out The Case Against Sugar and reduce a lot of your health risks!
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10 Healthiest Foods You Should Eat In The Morning
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For many of us, our creative minds aren’t their absolute best first thing in the morning, and it’s easy to reach for what’s available, if we haven’t planned ahead.
So here’s some inspiration for the coming week! If you’re a regular coffee-and-toast person, at least consider alternating some of these with that:
- Oatmeal with fresh fruit: fiber, energy, protein, vitamins and minerals (10almonds tip: we recommend making it as overnight oats! Same nutrients, lower glycemic index)
- Greek yogurt parfait: probiotic gut benefits, along with all the goodness of fruit
- Avocado toast: so many nutrients; most famous for the healthy fats, but there’s lots more in there too!
- Egg + vegetable scramble: protein, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals, fiber
- Smoothie bowl: many nutrients—But be aware that blending will reduce fiber and make the sugar quicker to enter your bloodstream. Still not bad as an occasional feature for the sake of variety, though!
- Wholegrain pancakes: energy, fiber, and whatever your toppings! Fresh fruit is a top-tier choice; the video suggests maple syrup; we however invite you to try aged balsamic vinegar instead (sounds unlikely, we know, but try it and you’ll see; it is so delicious and your blood sugars will thank you too!)
- Chia pudding: so many nutrients in this one; chia seeds are incredible!
- Quinoa breakfast bowl: the healthy grains are a great start to the day, and contain a fair bit of protein too, and served with nuts, seeds, and diced fruit, many more nutrients get added to the mix. Unclear why the video-makers want to put honey or maple syrup on everything.
- Berries: lots of vitamins, fiber, hydration, and very many polyphenols
For a quick visual overview, and a quick-start preparation guide for the ones that aren’t just “berries” or similar, enjoy this short (3:11) video:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
PS: They said 10, and we only counted 9. Where is the tenth one? Who would say “10 things” and then ostensibly only have 9? Who would do such a thing?!
About that chia pudding…
It’s a great way to get a healthy dose of protein, healthy fats, antioxidants, and a lot of other benefits for the heart and brain:
The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value
Enjoy!
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Who will look after us in our final years? A pay rise alone won’t solve aged-care workforce shortages
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Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they deserved substantial wage rises of up to 28%. The federal government has committed to the increases, but is yet to announce when they will start.
But while wage rises for aged-care workers are welcome, this measure alone will not fix all workforce problems in the sector. The number of people over 80 is expected to triple over the next 40 years, driving an increase in the number of aged care workers needed.
How did we get here?
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which delivered its final report in March 2021, identified a litany of tragic failures in the regulation and delivery of aged care.
The former Liberal government was dragged reluctantly to accept that a total revamp of the aged-care system was needed. But its weak response left the heavy lifting to the incoming Labor government.
The current government’s response started well, with a significant injection of funding and a promising regulatory response. But it too has failed to pursue a visionary response to the problems identified by the Royal Commission.
Action was needed on four fronts:
- ensuring enough staff to provide care
- building a functioning regulatory system to encourage good care and weed out bad providers
- designing and introducing a fair payment system to distribute funds to providers and
- implementing a financing system to pay for it all and achieve intergenerational equity.
A government taskforce which proposed a timid response to the fourth challenge – an equitable financing system – was released at the start of last week.
Consultation closed on a very poorly designed new regulatory regime the week before.
But the big news came at end of the week when the Fair Work Commission handed down a further determination on what aged-care workers should be paid, confirming and going beyond a previous interim determination.
What did the Fair Work Commission find?
Essentially, the commission determined that work in industries with a high proportion of women workers has been traditionally undervalued in wage-setting. This had consequences for both care workers in the aged-care industry (nurses and Certificate III-qualified personal-care workers) and indirect care workers (cleaners, food services assistants).
Aged-care staff will now get significant pay increases – 18–28% increase for personal care workers employed under the Aged Care Award, inclusive of the increase awarded in the interim decision.
The commission determined aged care work was undervalued.
Shutterstock/Toa55Indirect care workers were awarded a general increase of 3%. Laundry hands, cleaners and food services assistants will receive a further 3.96% on the grounds they “interact with residents significantly more regularly than other indirect care employees”.
The final increases for registered and enrolled nurses will be determined in the next few months.
How has the sector responded?
There has been no push-back from employer groups or conservative politicians. This suggests the uplift is accepted as fair by all concerned.
The interim increases of up to 15% probably facilitated this acceptance, with the recognition of the community that care workers should be paid more than fast food workers.
There was no criticism from aged-care providers either. This is probably because they are facing difficulty in recruiting staff at current wage rates. And because government payments to providers reflect the actual cost of aged care, increased payments will automatically flow to providers.
When the increases will flow has yet to be determined. The government is due to give its recommendations for staging implementation by mid-April.
Is the workforce problem fixed?
An increase in wages is necessary, but alone is not sufficient to solve workforce shortages.
The health- and social-care workforce is predicted to grow faster than any other sector over the next decade. The “care economy” will grow from around 8% to around 15% of GDP over the next 40 years.
This means a greater proportion of school-leavers will need to be attracted to the aged-care sector. Aged care will also need to attract and retrain workers displaced from industries in decline and attract suitably skilled migrants and refugees with appropriate language skills.
Aged care will need to attract workers from other sectors.
nastya_ph/ShutterstockThe caps on university and college enrolments imposed by the previous government, coupled with weak student demand for places in key professions (such as nursing), has meant workforce shortages will continue for a few more years, despite the allure of increased wages.
A significant increase in intakes into university and vocational education college courses preparing students for health and social care is still required. Better pay will help to increase student demand, but funding to expand place numbers will ensure there are enough qualified staff for the aged-care system of the future.
Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How extreme heat can affect you—and how you can protect yourself
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Because of climate change, last summer was the hottest in the Northern Hemisphere in 2,000 years—and this summer is expected to be even hotter. The record may continue to be broken: Extreme heat is expected to become even more frequent.
The scorching heat has led to an increase in heat-related deaths in the United States, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, with approximately 2,300 deaths in the summer of 2023. Extreme heat, defined as a period of two to three days with high heat and humidity with temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, can have serious health consequences, including symptoms like headache, dizziness, loss of consciousness, nausea, and confusion.
As we face more extreme heat, you may be wondering how you can protect yourself and your loved ones. Read on to learn about heat-related illness, who’s most at risk, and more.
What happens when our bodies are exposed to extreme heat?
As our body temperature rises, our bodies attempt to cool down by opening up more blood vessels near the skin to begin sweating. The evaporation of our sweat regulates our body temperature, but it also leads to losing fluids and minerals.
When it’s too humid, sweating alone doesn’t do the trick. The heart must work harder to bring blood around the body. It starts beating faster, which can cause light-headedness, nausea, and headache.
This process can affect our health in different ways, including increasing our risk of hospitalization for heart disease, worsening asthma, and injuring kidneys due to dehydration. It can also result in heat-related illness. Below are some effects of heat on our bodies:
- Heat cramps: Occur when a person loses salt through sweating, which causes painful cramps. Symptoms begin as painful spasms after heavy sweating, usually in the legs or the stomach. Heat cramps can lead to heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
- Heat exhaustion: This occurs when the body loses an excessive amount of water and salt, usually during intense physical activity. Symptoms include irritability, heavy sweating, and weakness, including muscle cramps. Heat exhaustion can lead to heat stroke.
- Heat stroke: This is the most severe heat-related illness. It happens when the body can’t cool down and reaches a temperature of 106 Fahrenheit or higher within 10 to 15 minutes. If the person doesn’t receive emergency treatment, it can cause permanent disability or death. Symptoms include confusion, loss of consciousness, and seizures.
What should I do if someone experiences a heat-related illness?
If you or someone you’re with begins to show signs of heat illness, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the following:
- Heat cramps: Stop all physical activity, drink water or a sports drink, move to a cool place, and wait for cramps to go away before resuming activity. If the cramps last more than an hour, you’re on a low-sodium diet, or you have heart problems, get medical help.
- Heat exhaustion: Move the person to a cool place, loosen their clothes, use a cool bath or cloths to try to lower their body temperature, and give them a sip of water. If the person throws up, or if their symptoms last longer than an hour or worsen, get medical help.
- Heat stroke: Call 911 immediately. Then, move the person to a cooler place, use cool cloths or a cool bath to help lower their temperature, and don’t give them anything to drink.
Read more about heat-related illness and what to do in each case.
Who’s more vulnerable to extreme heat?
While everyone can be affected by extreme heat, some people are more at risk, including people of color.
A 2023 KFF report outlined that because of historical residential segregation in the U.S. (known as “redlining”), people of color are more likely to live in areas that experience higher temperatures from rooftops, asphalt, and sidewalks that retain the sun’s heat (known as the “urban heat island effect”). Additionally, communities of color are more likely to live in areas with fewer trees, which act as a canopy and provide shade, making the heat worse and more direct.
Children under 5, adults 65 or over, and pregnant people are also more vulnerable to extreme heat. If you have a chronic health condition like diabetes, heart problems, or a mental health condition, you’re also at higher risk. (Some psychiatric medications, like antidepressants, can also make people more susceptible to heat).
Lastly, anyone exposed to the sun and extreme heat for long periods is also at higher risk. This includes athletes, people who work outdoors, and unhoused people.
What can I do to prevent heat-related illness during a heat wave?
During a heat wave, follow these tips to stay cool and protect yourself from heat-related illness:
- Never leave your pets or children inside a car.
- Wear loose, light-colored clothing (dark colors absorb more heat).
- Find shade if you’re outside.
- If you don’t have air conditioning in your home, go to a place where you can cool down, such as a local library, community center, local pool or splash pad, or mall. Check to see if your city has designated cooling centers. (Cities like New York have a list of places.)
- Wear a hat.
- Drink (non-alcoholic) fluids often to stay hydrated—and if you have pets, give them water frequently as well.
- Check on your family members or older neighbors who may be more sensitive to extreme heat.
- Avoid using your stove or oven too often or during the hottest parts of the day.
- Cover your windows with shades to keep the heat out.
What are some resources to prevent heat-related illness?
If you need financial assistance to cool down your home, such as to purchase an air conditioner, apply to the federal government’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
Before you head outside during a heat wave, use the CDC’s HeatRisk tool: Enter your zip code to find the current heat risk in your area and get tips on what to do to stay safe with each risk level.
During a heat wave, also look for a cooling center in your state using the National Center for Healthy Housing’s list.
Check out the National Weather Service’s for more tips and resources.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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6 Ways To Look After Your Back
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Back To Back
When people think about looking after their back, often thought does not go much further than sitting with good posture, and perhaps even standing with good posture. And those things are important, but:
1) People’s efforts to have good posture often result in overcorrecting creating an anterior pelvic tilt that causes lower back problems.
Quick tip: if you’re sticking your butt out, you’re doing it wrong (no matter how great your butt is). Instead, to find the correct posture, go up on your tip-toes for a moment, then imagine a plumb-line down the center of your body, thus perpendicular to the floor, going all the way down to the ground. Now, slowly return your heels to the ground, but as you do so, keep your spine aligned to the plumb-line, so you’re not moving backwards as you drop, just directly down. This will land you in perfect posture.
Unless you have scoliosis. In which case, it’ll get you as close to good posture as is likely attainable from any quick tip.
2) There’s a lot more to looking after our back than just good posture!
Here are 5 other important things to do:
Be strong
Do strength-training for your back. How to do that is beyond the scope of today’s feature, but there are many good guides and also personal trainers that can be found.
Start off easy and work up, but do start. The stronger your back is, the less likely a momentary lapse in concentration is to throw out your back because you picked something up with imperfect form.
See also: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Stretch intentionally
Many back injuries occur as a result of stretching and/or twisting awkwardly, so if you ensure your basic mobility and range of motion is good, the less likely it is that unthinkingly twisting around 270° to see where that wasp was going will slip a disk.
The more you stretch intentionally (carefully, please), the more you will be able to stretch unintentionally without injury.
See also: Building & Maintaining Mobility
Stand when you can, walk when you can
We humans have outrun our evolution in a lot of ways, and/but one thing our bodies are definitely not well-adapted for is sitting. Unless we are sitting in a low squat the way you might often see an orang-utan sitting, sitting is not a good way of being for us. Even sitting seiza-style or cross-legged is passable for a short while, not for too long.
So, while there sure are times we need to sit (especially if you’re driving!) minimizing those times is ideal. There are a lot of activities that are traditionally done sitting, where there’s no need for it to be so. For example, your writer here sits for the day’s main meal, but takes any smaller meal standing (and when guests visit for a coffee or such, I’ll offer them the couch while I myself prop up the fireplace). Standing desks are also great if you spend a lot of time at the computer for any reason.
See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
Rest when you need to
You can’t stand all the time! But know this: if you want to rest your legs, lying down is a lot better for your back (and internal organs) than sitting.
Taking a 5 minute break lying on your couch, or bed, or floor, is a perfectly good option and only social convention says otherwise.
If you want a compromise option, though? A recliner chair, in the reclined position, is a better for your back than being scrunched up in the Economy Class Flight position.
PS: About that bed situation…
What Mattress Is Best, By Science?
Kill pain before it kills you
Painkillers aren’t great for the health per se, but pain (or rather, our bodily responses to such) can be worse. Half the time, when it comes to musculoskeletal problems, things get a lot worse a lot more quickly because of how we overcompensate due to the pain. So, take your pain seriously, and remember, the right amount of pain is zero.
If you’re thinking “but pain relief option xyz isn’t good for me”, we strongly recommend checking out:
The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
Take care!
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Statin and Antidepressant Side Effects
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Questions and Answers 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!
This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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
Side effects of statins, are they worth it? Depression, are antidepressants worth it?
About statins, that depends a lot on you, your circumstances, and—as it happens—your gender. We covered this in a main feature recently, but a short answer is: for most people, they may not be the best first choice, and could even make things worse. For some people, however, they really are just what’s needed.
- Factors that make them more likely better for you: being a man, or having atherosclerosis
- Factors that make them more likely worse for you: being a woman in general
Check out the main feature we did: Statins: His & Hers?
As for antidepressants? That depends a lot on you, your physiology, your depression, your circumstances, and more. We’ll definitely do a main feature on that sometime soon, as there’s a lot that most people don’t know!
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The “Five Tibetan Rites” & Why To Do Them!
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Spinning Around
In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinion of the “Five Tibetan Rites”, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 41% said “I have never heard of these before”
- About 27% said “they restore youth by adjusting internal vortexes”
- About 22% said “they are basically yoga, by a different name”
- About 11% said “they are a pseudoscience popular in the US”
So what does the science say?
The Five Tibetan Rites are five Tibetan rites: True or False?
False, though this is more question of social science than of health science, so we’ll not count it against them for having a misleading name.
The first known mentioning of the “Five Tibetan Rites” is by an American named Peter Kelder, who in 1939 published, through a small LA occult-specialized publishing house, a booklet called “The Eye of Revelation”. This work was then varyingly republished, repackaged, and occasionally expanded upon by Kelder or other American authors, including Chris Kilham’s popular 1994 book “The Five Tibetans”.
The “Five Tibetan Rites” are unknown as such in Tibet, except for what awareness of them has been raised by people asking about them in the context of the American phenomenon.
Here’s a good history book, for those interested:
The author didn’t originally set out to “debunk” anything, and is himself a keen spiritualist (and practitioner of the five rites), but he was curious about the origins of the rites, and ultimately found them—as a collection of five rites, and the other assorted advices given by Kelder—to be an American synthesis in the whole, each part inspired by various different physical practices (some of them hatha yoga, some from the then-popular German gymnastics movement, some purely American spiritualism, all available in books that were popular in California in the early 1900s).
You may be wondering: why didn’t Kelder just say that, then, instead of telling stories of an ancient Tibetan tradition that empirically does not exist? The answer to this lies again in social science not health science, but it’s been argued that it’s common for Westerners to “pick ‘n’ mix” ideas from the East, champion them as inscrutably mystical, and (since they are inscrutable) then simply decide how to interpret and represent them. Here’s an excellent book on this, if you’re interested:
(in Kelder’s case, this meant that “there’s a Tibetan tradition, trust me” was thus more marketable in the West than “I read these books in LA”)
They are at least five rites: True or False?
True! If we use the broad definition of “rite” as “something done repeatedly in a solemn fashion”. And there are indeed five of them:
- Spinning around (good for balance)
- Leg raises (this one’s from German gymnastics)
- Kneeling back bend (various possible sources)
- Tabletop (hatha yoga, amongst others)
- Pendulum (hatha yoga, amongst others) ← you may recognize this one from the Sun Salutation
You can see them demonstrated here:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically
Kelder also advocated for what was basically the Hay Diet (named not for the substance but for William Hay; it involved separating foods into acid and alkali, not necessarily according to the actual pH of the foods, and combining only “acid” foods or only “alkali” foods at a time), which was popular at the time, but has since been rejected as without scientific merit. Kelder referred to this as “the sixth rite”.
The Five Rites restore youth by adjusting internal vortexes: True or False?
False, in any scientific sense of that statement. Scientifically speaking, the body does not have vortexes to adjust, therefore that is not the mechanism of action.
Spiritually speaking, who knows? Not us, a humble health science publication.
The Five Rites are a pseudoscience popular in the US: True or False?
True, if 27% of those who responded of our mostly North American readership can be considered as representative of what is popular.
However…
“Pseudoscience” gets thrown around a lot as a bad word; it’s often used as a criticism, but it doesn’t have to be. Consider:
A small child who hears about “eating the rainbow” and mistakenly understands that we are all fuelled by internal rainbows that need powering-up by eating fruits and vegetables of different colors, and then does so…
…does not hold a remotely scientific view of how things are happening, but is nevertheless doing the correct thing as recommended by our best current science.
It’s thus a little similar with the five rites. Because…
The Five Rites are at least good for our health: True or False?
True! They are great for the health.
The first one (spinning around) is good for balance. Science would recommend doing it both ways rather than just one way, but one is not bad. It trains balance, trains our stabilizing muscles, and confuses our heart a bit (in a good way).
See also: Fall Special (How To Not Fall, And Not Get Injured If You Do)
The second one (leg raises) is excellent for core strength, which in turn helps keep our organs where they are supposed to be (this is a bigger health issue than most people realise, because “out of sight, out of mind”), which is beneficial for many aspects of our health!
See also: Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It ← visceral fat is the fat that surrounds your internal organs; too much there becomes a problem!
The third, fourth, and fifth ones stretch our spine (healthily), strengthen our back, and in the cases of the fourth and fifth ones, are good full-body exercises for building strength, and maintaining muscle mass and mobility.
See also: Building & Maintaining Mobility
So in short…
If you’ve been enjoying the Five Rites, by all means keep on doing them; they might not be Tibetan (or an ancient practice, as presented), and any mystical aspect is beyond the scope of our health science publication, but they are great for the health in science-based ways!
Take care!
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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