The Good Skin Solution – by Shann Jones
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Not everyone knows that eczema is not just a skin condition; it’s an autoimmune condition. And thus to heal one’s skin, the gut is a good place to start.
This is not your average gut health book though, because it is focused on optimizing things for one’s skin… Although the author herself learned about this while helping her husband to battle an MRSA infection. In other words, a multi-fronted battle for sure.
The advices in this book are good for, as the subtitle promises, an assortment of other skin conditions too, including psoriasis, rosacea, and acne. She covers the usual bases, and recommends probiotics, of which she’s particularly keen to praise kefir, while advising against the use of antibiotics unless absolutely necessary—something we’ve talked about from time to time at 10almonds, too.
Not content to merely cover those things, she also talks allergies, and walking the fine line between avoiding triggers and developing hypersensitivity by treating to live in a perfectly clean bubble.
Ultimately, she offers “7 daily habits”, 3 of which involve goat’s milk kefir, that’s how keen on it she is. So if you’re vegan, probably this book isn’t as good value, however much it discusses the health woes that can be caused and/or exacerbated by drinking cow’s milk.
The style is very light and personable, which makes for easy reading, more like one friend talking to another, than a scientific textbook.
Bottom line: if you’d like healthier skin, are interested in dietary tweaks and homemade soaps, and have no aversion to goat’s milk and/or kefir, then this book is full of fascinating pointers.
Click here to check out The Good Skin Solution, and who knows, maybe you’ll find it’s the G.O.A.T!
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The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
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How Good Is Your Sleep, Really?
This is Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Director of Columbia University’s Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research.
The focus of Dr. St-Onge’s research is the study of the impact of lifestyle, especially sleep and diet, on cardio-metabolic risk factors.
She conducts clinical research combining her expertise on sleep, nutrition, and energy regulation.
What kind of things do her studies look at?
Her work focuses on questions about…
- The role of circadian rhythms (including sleep duration and timing)
- Meal timing and eating patterns
…and their impact on cardio-metabolic risk.
What does she want us to know?
First things first, when not to worry:
❝Getting a bad night’s sleep once in a while isn’t anything to worry about. That’s what we would describe as transient insomnia. Chronic insomnia occurs when you spend three months or more without regular sleep, and that is when I would start to be concerned.❞
But… as prevention is (as ever) better than cure, she also advises that we do pay attention to our sleep! And, as for how to do that…
The Six Dimensions of Sleep
One useful definition of overall sleep health is the RU-Sated framework, which assesses six key dimensions of sleep that have been consistently associated with better health outcomes. These are:
- regularity
- satisfaction with sleep
- alertness during waking hours
- timing of sleep
- efficiency of sleep
- duration of sleep
You’ll notice that some of these things you can only really know if you use a sleep-monitoring app. She does recommend the use of those, and so do we!
We reviewed and compared some of the most popular sleep-monitoring apps! You can check them out here: Time For Some Pillow Talk
You also might like…
We’re not all the same with regard to when is the best time for us to sleep, so:
Use This Sleep Cycle Calculator To Figure Out the Optimal Time for You To Go to Bed and Wake Up
AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
- Aspirin may make your breathing worse
- Taking naps for more than 30 minutes may raise your metabolic disease risk
- How to ease back into exercise after surgery
- Study provides evidence that breathing exercises may reduce your Alzheimer’s risk
- No one in movies knows how to swallow a pill
More to come tomorrow!
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Yoga For Stiff Birds – by Marion Deuchars
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Quick show of hands, who here practices yoga in some fashion, but does not necessarily always look Instagrammable while doing it? Yep, same here.
This book is a surprisingly practical introduction to yoga for newcomers, and inspirational motivator for those of us who feel like we should do more.
Rather than studio photography of young models in skimpy attire, popular artist (and well-practised yogi) Marion Deuchars offers in a few brushstrokes what we need to know for each asana, and how to approach it if we’re not so supple yet as we’d like to be.
Bottom line: whether for yourself or as a gift for a loved one (or both!) this is a very charming introduction to (or refresher of) yoga.
Click here to check out Yoga For Stiff Birds, and get yours going!
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The Joy of Saying No – by Natalie Lue
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Superficially, this seems an odd topic for an entire book. “Just say no”, after all, surely! But it’s not so simple as that, is it?
Lue looks into what underpins people-pleasing, first. Then, she breaks it down into five distinct styles of people-pleasing that each come from slightly different motivations and ways of perceiving how we interact with those around us.
Lest this seem overly complicated, those five styles are what she calls: gooding, efforting, avoiding, saving, suffering.
She then looks out how to have a healthier relationship with our yes/no decisions; first by observing, then by creating healthy boundaries. “Healthy” is key here; this isn’t about being a jerk to everyone! Quite the contrary, it involves being honest about what we can and cannot reasonably take on.
The last section is about improving and troubleshooting this process, and constitutes a lot of the greatest value of the book, since this is where people tend to err the most.
Bottom line: this book is informative, clear, and helpful. And far from disappointing everyone with “no”, we can learn to really de-stress our relationships with others—and ourselves.
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How To Really Look After Your Joints
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The Other Ways To Look After Your Joints
When it comes to joint health, most people have two quick go-to items:
- Stretching
- Supplements like omega-3 and glucosamine sulfate
Stretching, and specifically, mobility exercises, are important! We’ll have to do a main feature on these sometime soon. But for today, we’ll just say: yes, gentle daily stretches go a long way, as does just generally moving more.
And, those supplements are not without their merits. For example:
- Effect of omega-3 on painful symptoms of patients with osteoarthritis of the synovial joints: systematic review and meta-analysis
- Glucosamine sulfate in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis symptoms: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study using acetaminophen as a side comparator
Of those, glucosamine sulfate may have an extra benefit in now just alleviating the symptoms, but also slowing the progression of degenerative joint conditions (like arthritis of various kinds). This is something it shares with chondroitin sulfate:
Effect of glucosamine or chondroitin sulfate on the osteoarthritis progression: a meta-analysis
An unlikely extra use for the humble cucumber…
As it turns out, cucumber extract beats glucosamine and chondroitin by 200%, at 1/135th of the dose.
You read that right, and it’s not a typo. See for yourself:
Reduce inflammation, have happier joints
Joint pain and joint degeneration in general is certainly not just about inflammation; there is physical wear-and-tear too. But combatting inflammation is important, and turmeric, which we’ve done a main feature on before, is a potent helper in this regard:
See also: Keep Inflammation At Bay
(a whole list of tips for, well, keeping inflammation at bay)
About that wear-and-tear…
Your bones and joints are made of stuff, and that stuff needs to be replaced. As we get older, the body typically gets worse at replacing it in a timely and efficient fashion. We can help it do its job, by giving it more of the stuff it needs.
And what stuff is that?
Well, minerals like calcium and phosphorus are important, but a lot is also protein! Specifically, collagen. We did a main feature on this before, which is good, as it’d take us a lot of space to cover all the benefits here:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
Short version? People take collagen for their skin, but really, its biggest benefit is for our bones and joints!
Wrap up warmly and… No wait, skip that.
If you have arthritis, you may indeed “feel it in your bones” when the weather changes. But the remedy for that is not to try to fight it, but rather, to strengthen your body’s ability to respond to it.
The answer? Cryotherapy, with ice baths ranking top:
- Effects of an Exercise Program and Cold-Water Immersion Recovery in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA): Feasibility Study
- Effectiveness of home-based conventional exercise and cryotherapy on daily living activities in patients with knee osteoarthritis: A randomized controlled clinical trial
- Local Cryotherapy, Comparison of Cold Air and Ice Massage on Pain and Handgrip Strength in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Note that this can be just localized, so for example if the problem joints are your wrists, a washing-up bowl with water and ice will do just nicely.
Note also that, per that last study, a single session will only alleviate the pain, not the disease itself. For that (per the other studies) more sessions are required.
We did a main feature about cryotherapy a while back, and it explains how and why it works:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?
Take care!
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Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science
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Chronic fatigue is on the rise. A lot of it appears to be Long COVID-related, but whether that’s the case for you or not, one thing that will make a big difference to your energy levels is something that French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé is here to explain:
Mitochondrial management
Inchauspé explains it in terms of a steam train; to keep running, it must have coal burning in its furnace. However, if more coal is delivered to the engine room faster than it can be put in the furnace and burned, and the coal just keeps on coming, the worker there will soon be overwhelmed trying to find places to put it all; the engine room will be full of coal, and the furnace will sputter and go out because the worker can’t even reach it on account of being buried in coal.
So it is with our glucose metabolism also. If we get spikes of glucose faster than our body can deal with them, it will overload the body’s ability to process that energy at all. Just like the steam train worker, our body will try! It’ll stuff that extra glucose wherever it can (storing as glycogen in the liver is a readily available option that’s easy to do and/but also gives you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and isn’t quickly broken down into useable energy), and meanwhile, your actual mitochondria aren’t getting what they need (which is: a reliable, but gentle, influx of glucose).
You can imagine that the situation we described in the steam train isn’t good for the engine’s longevity, and the corresponding situation in the human body isn’t good for our mitochondria either (or our pancreas, or our liver, or… the list goes on). Indeed, damaged mitochondria affect exercise capacity and stress resilience—as well as being a long-term driver of cancer.
The remedy, of course, is blood sugar management. Specifically, avoiding glucose spikes. She has a list of 10 ways to do this (small changes to how we eat; what things to eat with what, in which order, etc) that make a huge measurable difference. For your convenience, we’ve linked those ten ways below; first though, if you’d like to hear it from Inchauspé directly (her style is very pleasant), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- 10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars ← this is the longer list she’s referring to in the video!
- How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver ← also relevant
Take care!
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Cranberries vs Goji Berries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing cranberries to goji berries, we picked the cranberries.
Why?
Both are great! And your priorities may differ. Here’s how they stack up:
In terms of macros, goji berries have more protein, carbs, and fiber. This is consistent with them generally being eaten very dried, whereas cranberries are more often eaten fresh or from frozen, or partially rehydrated. In any case, goji berries are the “more food per food” option, so it wins this category. The glycemic indices are both low, by the way, though goji berries are the lower.
When it comes to vitamins, cranberries have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, E, K, and choline, while goji berries have more of vitamins A and C. Admittedly it’s a lot more, but still, on strength of overall vitamin coverage, the clear winner here is cranberries.
We see a similar story when it comes to minerals: cranberries have more copper, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while goji berries have (a lot) more calcium and iron. Again, by strength of overall mineral coverage, the clear winner here is cranberries.
Cranberries do also have some extra phytochemical benefits, including their prevention/cure status when it comes to UTIs—see our link below for more on that.
At any rate, enjoy either or both, but those are the strengths and weaknesses of these two berries!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Health Benefits Of Cranberries (But: You’d Better Watch Out)
- Goji Berries: Which Benefits Do They Really Have?
- The Sugary Food That Lowers Blood Sugars ← this is also about goji berries
Take care!
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