The Energy Plan – by James Collins
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There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there about how we should maintain our energy levels, for example:
- Eat fewer carbs!
- Eat more carbs!
- Eat slow-release carbs!
- Eat quick-release carbs!
- Practise intermittent fasting!
- Graze constantly throughout the day!
- Forget carbs and focus on fats!
- Actually it’s all about B-vitamins!
…and so on.
What Collins does differently is something much less-often seen:
Here, we’re advised on how to tailor our meals to our actual lifestyle, taking into account the day we actually have each day. For example:
- What will our energy needs be for the day?
- Will our needs be intense, or long, or both, or neither?
- What kind of recovery have we had, or do we need, from previous activities?
- Do we need to replace lost muscle glycogen, or are we looking to trim the fat?
- Are we doing a power-up or just maintenance today?
Rather than bidding us have a five-way spreadsheet and do advanced mathematics for every meal, though, Collins has done the hard work for us. The book explains the various principles in a casual format with a light conversational tone, and gives us general rules to follow.
These rules cover what to do for different times of day… and also, at different points in our life (the metabolic needs of a 13-year-old, 33-year-old, and 83-year-old, are very different!). That latter’s particularly handy, as a lot of books assume an age bracket for the reader, and this one doesn’t.
In short: a great book for anyone who wants to keep their energy levels up (throughout life’s ups and downs in activity) without piling on the pounds or starving oneself.
Click here to check out The Energy Plan on Amazon and fuel your days better!
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How & Why Non-Sleep Deep Rest Works (And What Activities Trigger The Same State)
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Stress is a natural response that evolved over thousands of years to help humans meet challenges by priming the body and mind for action. However, chronic stress is harmful, as it diverts energy away from essential processes like cell maintenance and repair, leading to deterioration of health (physical and mental).
Counteracting this requires intentional periods of deep rest… But how?
Parasympathetic Response
Practices as diverse as mindfulness meditation, yoga, prayer, tai chi, qigong, knitting, painting, gardening, and sound baths can help induce states of deep rest—these days often called “Non-Sleep Deep Rest” (NSDR), to differentiate it from deep sleep.
How it works: these activities send signals to the brain that the body is safe, initiating biological changes that…
- protect chromosomes from DNA damage
- promote cellular repair, and
- enhance mitochondrial function.
If we then (reasonably!) conclude from this: “so, we must embrace moments of stillness and mindfulness, and allow ourselves to experience the ease and safety of the present”, that may sound a little wishy-washy, but the neurology of it is clear, the consequences of that neurological response on every living cell in the body are also clear, so by doing NSDR (whether by yoga nidra or knitting or something else) we can significantly improve our overall well-being.
Note: the list of activities above is far from exhaustive, but do be aware that this doesn‘t mean any activity you enjoy and do to unwind will trigger NSDR. On the contrary, many activities you enjoy and do to unwind may trigger the opposite, a sympathetic nervous system response—watching television is a common example of this “wrong choice for NSDR”. Sure, it can be absorbing and a distraction from your daily stressors, but it also can be exciting (both cognitively and neurologically and thus also physiologically), which is the opposite of what we want.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Non-Sleep Deep Rest: A Neurobiologist’s Take
Take care!
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Pneumonia: Prevention Is Better Than Cure
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.
Pneumonia: What We Can & Can’t Do About It
Pneumonia is a significant killer of persons over the age of 65, with the risk increasing with age after that, rising very sharply around the age of 85:
While pneumonia is treatable, especially in young healthy adults, the risks get more severe in the older age brackets, and it’s often the case that someone goes into hospital with one thing, then develops pneumonia, which the person was already not in good physical shape to fight, because of whatever hospitalized them in the first place:
American Lung Association | Pneumonia Treatment and Recovery
Other risk factors besides age
There are a lot of things that can increase our risk factor for pneumonia; they mainly fall into the following categories:
- Autoimmune diseases
- Other diseases of the immune system (e.g. HIV)
- Medication-mediated immunosuppression (e.g. after an organ transplant)
- Chronic lung diseases (e.g. asthma, COPD, Long Covid, emphysema, etc)
- Other serious health conditions ← we know this one’s broad, but it encompasses such things as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer
See also:
Why Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Is More Likely Than You Think
Things we can do about it
When it comes to risks, we can’t do much about our age and some of the other above factors, but there are other things we can do to reduce our risk, including:
- Get vaccinated against pneumonia if you are over 65 and/or have one of the aforementioned risk factors. This is not perfect (it only reduces the risk for certain kinds of infection) and may not be advisable for everyone (like most vaccines, it can put the body through its paces a bit after taking it), so speak with your own doctor about this, of course.
- See also: Vaccine Mythbusting
- Avoid contagion. While pneumonia itself is not spread person-to-person, it is caused by bacteria or viruses (there are numerous kinds) that are opportunistic and often become a secondary infection when the immune system is already busy with the first one. So, if possible avoid being in confined spaces with many people, and do wash your hands regularly (as a lot of germs are transferred that way and can get into the respiratory tract because you touched your face or such).
- See also: The Truth About Handwashing
- If you have a cold, or flu, or other respiratory infection, take it seriously, rest well, drink fluids, get good immune-boosting nutrients. There’s no such thing as “just a cold”; not anymore.
- Look after your general health too—health doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and nor does disease. Every part of us affects every other part of us, so anything that can be in good order, you want to be in good order.
This last one, by the way? It’s an important reminder that while some diseases (such as some of the respiratory infections that can precede pneumonia) are seasonal, good health isn’t.
We need to take care of our health as best we can every day along the way, because we never know when something could change.
Want to do more?
Check out: Seven Things To Do For Good Lung Health!
Take care!
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Upgrade Your Life – by Pat Divilly
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Pat Divilly takes us through the steps to establish what it is we want out of life, adopt daily habits of success, build our self-esteem and confidence, and pursue what’s actually fulfilling, whatever that is for us as individuals.
The general layout of the book is: first, figuring out where you genuinely want to go (not just where people expect you to want to go!), and then seeing about what things you can change, first small and then larger, to get there.
The scope of the book covers work life and personal life, and treats them both as something where you can optimize how things work for you, and those around you. All in all, unless your life is literally perfect in every way imaginable, there’s probably something in this book that will help you to, indeed, “upgrade your life”. And who wouldn’t want that?
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Lemon Balm For Stressful Times And More
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Balm For The Mind: In More Ways Than One!
Lemon balm(Melissa officinalis) is quite unrelated to lemons, and is actually a closer relative to mint. It does have a lemony fragrance, though!
You’ll find it in a lot of relaxing/sleepy preparations, so…
What does the science say?
Relaxation
Lemon balm has indeed been found to be a potent anti-stress herb. Laboratories that need to test anything to do with stress generally create that stress in one of two main ways:
- If it’s not humans: a forced swimming test that’s a lot like waterboarding
- If it is humans: cognitive tests completed under time-pressure while multitasking
Consequently, studies that have set out to examine lemon balm’s anti-stress potential in humans, have often ended up also highlighting its potential as a cognitive enhancer, like this one in which…
❝Both active lemon balm treatments were generally associated with improvements in mood and/or cognitive performance❞
~ Dr. Anastasia Ossoukhova et al.
Read in full: Anti-Stress Effects of Lemon Balm-Containing Foods
And this one, which found…
❝The results showed that the 600-mg dose of Melissa ameliorated the negative mood effects of the DISS, with significantly increased self-ratings of calmness and reduced self-ratings of alertness.
In addition, a significant increase in the speed of mathematical processing, with no reduction in accuracy, was observed after ingestion of the 300-mg dose.❞
The appropriately named “DISS” is the Defined Intensity Stress Simulation we talked about.
Sleep
There’s a lot less research for lemon balm’s properties in this regard than for stress/anxiety, and it’s probably because sleep studies are much more expensive than stress studies.
It’s not for a lack of popular academic interest—for example, typing “Melissa officinalis” into PubMed (the vast library of studies we often cite from) autosuggests “Melissa officinalis sleep”. But alas, autosuggestions do not Randomized Controlled Trials make.
There are some, but they’re often small, old, and combined with other things, like this one:
This is interesting, because generally speaking there is little to no evidence that valerian actually helps sleep, so if this mixture worked, we might reasonably assume it was because of the lemon balm—but there’s an outside chance it could be that it only works in the presence of valerian (unlikely, but in science we must consider all possibilities).
Beyond that, we just have meta-reviews to work from, like this one that noted:
❝M. officinalis contains several phytochemicals such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, terpenoids, and many others at the basis of its pharmacological activities. Indeed, the plant can have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antimicrobial, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, antinociceptive effects.
Given its consolidated use, M. officinalis has also been experimented with clinical settings, demonstrating interesting properties against different human diseases, such as anxiety, sleeping difficulties, palpitation, hypertension, depression, dementia, infantile colic, bruxism, metabolic problems, Alzheimer’s disease, and sexual disorders. ❞
You see why we don’t try to cover everything here, by the way!
But if you want to read this one in full, you can, at:
An Updated Review on The Properties of Melissa officinalis L.: Not Exclusively Anti-anxiety
Is it safe?
Lemon balm is generally recognized as safe, and/but please check with your doctor/pharmacist in case of any contraindications due to medicines you may be on or conditions you may have.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Want to know your other options?
You might like our previous main features:
What Teas To Drink Before Bed (By Science!)
and
Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Enjoy!
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Dioscorea Villosa: Hormones, Arthritis, & Skin
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On A Wild Yam Chase?
We recently came across a supplement blend that had wild yam extract as a minor ingredient. Our plucky (and usually very knowledgable) researcher had never heard of its use before, so she set about doing her thing. This is what she found…
What health claims are made?
Wild yam extract (Dioscorea villosa) is traditionally sold and used for:
- Balancing hormones
- Combating arthritis
- Anti-aging effects for the skin
Does it balance hormones?
First, as a quick catch-up, we’ll drop a previous article of ours for your convenience:
What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
We couldn’t find almost any studies into wild yam extract’s hormone-balancing effects, but we did find one study, and:
❝Symptom scores showed a minor effect of both placebo and active treatment on diurnal flushing number and severity and total non-flushing symptom scores, and on nocturnal sweating after placebo, but no statistical difference between placebo and active creams.
This study suggests that short-term treatment with topical wild yam extract in women suffering from menopausal symptoms is free of side-effects, but appears to have little effect on menopausal symptoms❞
…which is a very thorough, polite, sciencey way of saying “wow, this does so many different kinds of nothing”
On the one hand, this was a small study (n=23). On the other hand, it was also literally the only study we could find.
Does it combat arthritis?
Maybe! We again didn’t find much research into this but we did find two in vitro studies that suggests that diosgenin (which can be derived from wild yam extract) helps:
- Diosgenin inhibits IL-1β-induced expression of inflammatory mediators in human osteoarthritis chondrocytes
- Diosgenin, a plant steroid, induces apoptosis in human rheumatoid arthritis synoviocytes with cyclooxygenase-2 overexpression
And we also found a rodent study that found that wild yam extract specifically helped against “acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin-induced pain“, and put that down to anti-inflammatory properties:
So, none of these studies tell us much about whether it would be helpful for humans—with or without arthritis, and hopefully without “acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin-induced pain”.
However, they do suggest that it would be reasonable to test in humans next.
You might prefer:
- Tips For Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
- Tips For Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis
- How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Does it keep skin young?
Again, research is thin on the ground, but we did find some! A study with wild-yam-derived diosgenin found that it didn’t make anything worse, and otherwise performed a similar role to vitamin A:
Read: Novel effects of diosgenin on skin aging
That was on rats with breast cancer though, so its applicability to healthy humans may be tenuous (while in contrast, simply getting vitamin A instead is a known deal).
Summary
- Does it balance hormones? It probably does little to nothing in this regard
- Does it combat arthritis? It probably has anti-inflammatory effects, but we know of no studies in humans. There are much more well-established anti-inflammatories out there.
- Does it keep the skin young? We know that it performs a role similar to vitamin A for rats with breast cancer, and didn’t make anything worse for them. That’s the extent of what we know.
Where can I get some?
In the unlikely event that the above research review has inspired you with an urge to buy wild yam extract, here is an example product for your convenience.
Some final words…
If you are surprised that we’re really not making any effort to persuade you of its merits, please know that (outside of the clearly-marked sponsor section, which helps us keep the lights on, so please do visit those) we have no interest in selling you anything. We’re genuinely just here to inform 🙂
If you are wondering why we ran this article at all if the supplement has negligible merits, it’s because science is science, knowledge is knowledge, and knowing that something has negligible merit can be good knowledge to have!
Also, running articles like this from time to time helps you to know that when we do sing the praises of something, it’s with good reason
Take care!
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The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
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In yesterday’s issue of 10almonds, we asked you “at what age do you think it’s important to start worrying about osteoporosis?”, and here’s the spread of answers you gave us:
The Bare-bones Truth About Osteoporosis
In yesterday’s issue of 10almonds, we asked you “at what age do you think it’s important to start worrying about osteoporosis?”, and here’s the spread of answers you gave us:
At first glance it may seem shocking that a majority of respondents to a poll in a health-focused newsletter think it’ll never be an issue worth worrying about, but in fact this is partly a statistical quirk, because the vote of the strongest “early prevention” crowd was divided between “as a child” and “as a young adult”.
This poll also gave you the option to add a comment with your vote. Many subscribers chose to do so, explaining your choices… But, interestingly, not one single person who voted for “never” had any additional thoughts to add.
We loved reading your replies, by the way, and wish we had room to include them here, because they were very interesting and thought-provoking.
Let’s get to the myths and facts:
Top myth: “you will never need to worry about it; drink a glass of milk and you’ll be fine!”
The body is constantly repairing itself. Its ability to do that declines with age. Until about 35 on average, we can replace bone mineral as quickly as it is lost. After that, we lose it by up to 1% per year, and that rate climbs after 50, and climbs even more steeply for those who go through (untreated) menopause.
Losing 1% per year might not seem like a lot, but if you want to live to 100, there are some unfortunate implications!
About that menopause, by the way… Because declining estrogen levels late in life contribute significantly to osteoporosis, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may be of value to many for the sake of bone health, never mind the more obvious and commonly-sought benefits.
On the topic of that glass of milk…
- Milk is a great source of calcium, which is useless to the body if you don’t also have good levels of vitamin D and magnesium.
- People’s vitamin D levels tend to directly correlate to the level of sun where they live, if supplementation isn’t undertaken.
- Plant-based milks are usually fortified with vitamin D (and calcium), by the way.
- Most people are deficient in magnesium, because green leafy things don’t form as big a part of most people’s diets as they should.
See also: An update on magnesium and bone health
Next most common myth: “bone health is all about calcium”
We spoke a little above about the importance of vitamin D and magnesium for being able to properly use that. But potassium is also critical:
Read more: The effects of potassium on bone health
While we’re on the topic…
People think of collagen as being for skin health. And it is important for that, but collagen’s benefits (and the negative effects of its absence) go much deeper, to include bone health. We’ve written about this before, so rather than take more space today, we’ll just drop the link:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
Want to really maximize your bone health?
You might want to check out this well-sourced LiveStrong article:
Bone Health: Best and Worst Foods
(Teaser: leafy greens are in 2nd place, topped by sardines at #1—where do you think milk ranks?)
Don’t Forget…
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