The Mistake Far Too Many People Make With Cardio After 60
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Do you do this?
It’s not a panacea
Cardio is great for heart and lung health, but especially after age 60 it needs to be complemented with strength, mobility, balance, and bone-loading exercises to maintain physical function and, with it, independence.
Many people, on the other hand, just do cardio, and wonder why they deteriorate, saying “but I exercise regularly!”.
If you want to avoid such deterioration while still avoiding doing more things than necessary, here’s a fairly good bang-for-buck shortlist to consider:
- Farmer’s carry: walk with two moderately heavy weights for 30–60 seconds while maintaining an upright posture, using dumbbells or household items, then rest for one minute and repeat.
- Lateral step-over: step sideways over a low obstacle and back, progressing to facing forwards while stepping.
- Modified get-up progression: progress from a weighted Turkish get-up, to a bodyweight version, to using both hands for assistance, and finally to a slow sit-to-stand if needed. This might sound backwards, but the extra weight is providing a counterbalance rather than extra difficulty; if you watch the video, you’ll see what we mean.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Mobility For Now & For Later: Train For The Marathon That Is Your Life!
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White Bread vs White Pasta – Which Is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing a white bread to a white pasta, we picked the pasta.
Why?
Neither are great for the health! But like for like, the glycemic index of the bread is usually around 150% of the glycemic index for pasta.
All that said, we heartily recommend going for wholegrain in either case!
Bonus tip: cooking pasta “al dente”, so it is still at least a little firm to the bite, results in a lower GI compared to being boiled to death.
Bonus bonus tip: letting pasta cool increases resistant starches. You can then reheat the pasta without losing this benefit.
Please don’t put it in the microwave though; you will make an Italian cry. Instead, simply put it in a colander and pour boiling water over it, and then serve in your usual manner (a good approach if serving it separately is: put it in the serving bowl/dish/pan, drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil and a little cracked black pepper, stir to mix those in, and serve)
Enjoy!
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Bath vs Shower – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing bathing to showering, we picked the shower.
Why?
For the basic task of getting your body clean, the shower is better as it is an entirely one-way process. Clean water hits your body, dirty water leaves it, and no dirt is making its way back.
Baths do not have this advantage, and if you enter a bath dirty, you will then be sitting in dirty water. You will leave it a lot cleaner than you entered it (because a lot of the dirt stayed in the bathwater to be drained away after the bath), but not as clean as if you had showered.
One could argue soap or equivalent will prevent the dirt re-sticking, and that’s true, but it’s true for soap in the shower too, so it doesn’t offset anything.
Additionally, being immersed in water for more than 15 minutes can start to have a (paradoxically) dehydrating effect on the skin; this happens not only because of losing skin oils to the water, but also because of osmosis, the resultant mild edema, the body’s homeostatic response to the mild edema, then getting out the bath and drying, leaving one with the response having now just caused dehydrated skin.
Baths do have some health advantages! And these come primarily from the mental health benefits of relaxation in warm water and/or generally pampering oneself. Additionally, some bath oils or bath salts can be beneficial in a way that couldn’t be administered the same way in the shower.
Best of both worlds?
In some parts of the world (Thailand and Turkey come to mind; doubtlessly there are many others) there are traditions of first taking a shower to get clean, and then taking a bath for the rest of the bathing experience. As a bonus, the bathing experience is then all the more pleasant for the water remaining just as clean as it was to start with.
However, if you do have to pick one (and for the purpose of our “This or That” exercise, we do), then it’s the shower, hands-down.
Want to read more?
You might want to also take into account how it’s still possible to have too much of a good thing:
Enjoy!
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How Most People Use Nasal Sprays Incorrectly
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Is this how you’ve been doing it? Here’s the right way:
Like a professional
5 key points to know:
- Proper position: sit upright with your head slightly forwards, not tipped backwards.
- Prime it first: when you first open a new bottle, pump it once or twice until it produces a fine mist; you do not need to prime it again while using that bottle.
- Aim at an angle: place the nozzle well into the nostril, aim backwards and slightly to the side (the nasal cavity goes back, not up).
- Spray correctly: press to release a spray, feel the medicine inside your nasal cavity, and let it sit there. Avoid strong sniffing because that sends the medicine down your throat; a gentle sniff is fine if it starts to run.
- Actually absorb it: keep your head in a neutral position for a few seconds so the spray can absorb, then repeat on the other nostril.
For more on this plus a visual demonstration, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Tips For Putting In Eye Drops (3 Techniques That Work!)
Take care!
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Peas vs Green Beans – 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 peas to green beans, we picked the peas.
Why?
Looking at macros first, peas have nearly 6x the protein, nearly 2x the fiber, and nearly 2x the carbs, making them the “more food per food” choice.
In terms of vitamins, peas have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline, while green beans have more of vitamins E and K. An easy win for peas.
In the category of minerals, peas have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while green beans have more calcium. Another overwhelming win for peas.
In short, enjoy both (diversity is good), but there’s a clear winner here and it’s peas.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Peas vs Broad Beans – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Genius Gut – by Dr. Emily Leeming
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When it comes to the gut-brain information interchange, 90% of it is the gut talking to the brain (the brain is a good listener). As such, one of the best things we can do for our brain is ensure our gut has good things to say.
Dr. Leeming talks us through doing a quick initial assessment to judge the general goodness/badness of our current gut situation (based on output, not input, so it’s about the actual goodness/badness, not what we expect it should be), before going on to explain a lot of the anatomy and physiology at hand.
The hacks themselves may be, in their titles, things you already know—but where the real value of this book lies is in all the data and science collated under each of those hacks, allowing the reader to optimize everything rather than just guessing. Which can mean optimize by doing things as close to perfectly as possible, or it can mean optimize by doing/using the things that get the best results for the minimum effort. It’s up to you!
The style is very casual and friendly, even conversational, while not skimping on science (and indeed, citations are frequently provided for such).
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your gut health, especially with the goal of improving your brain health, this is an excellent book for that.
Click here to check out Genius Gut, and make yours better for you!
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Why We Get Earaches & How To Stop Them
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
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!
No question/request too big or small 😎
❝I find I’m very prone to earaches in colder weather, is there something can be done to prevent this? Besides earmuffs!❞
Prevent outright? Sadly no.
Reduce the risk? Definitely yes!
Most earaches are caused by ear infections, which can be from a wide assortment of pathogens, including bacterial or viral, or even fungal.
Streptococcus pneumoniae is the most common culprit, and is bacterial, which is why antibiotics are often prescribed. But, as regular 10almonds readers will know, antibiotics should only be used when it’s either absolutely certain they’re necessary, or when the counter risk is so grave that going scorched-earth on the microbiome is worth the harm.
See also: Antibiotics? Think Thrice ← including 4 ways oral antibiotics can kill you
And if you must have antibiotics, then: Minimize The Harm Of Antibiotics
Because we’re unlikely to be able to self-diagnose whether our earache is due to a bacterial, viral, or fungal infection (or something else entirely), that limits self-treatment options, and even ear drops for the purpose will often only work on one of the three. And in some cases, if you guess wrong, it’ll make things worse rather than better (for example, if you use a topical antibiotic that wipes out your local skin microbiome but doesn’t touch the viral or fungal infection, but rather removes the competitors for resources and causes further overgrowth/infection).
Aside from that, the first-line treatment is just to wait it out, and take painkillers if appropriate. However, you shouldn’t wait more than 2–3 days, and if it gets severe, see a doctor (or your pharmacist, often quicker and usually able to help).
What about prevention?
First we’ll mention, earmuffs will usually not help and may even increase the risk, since they will help create a warmer environment for the pathogens to flourish.
To understand the cold weather paradox at hand in such situations, see: The Pathogens That Came In From The Cold
The only time when they might help you avoid earache is when the earache is not due to an ear infection at all, but is due to changes in air pressure, for example due to altitude.
Another possible cause is earwax buildup, but of course earmuffs will not help in that case either. In that case, earwax removal is good, but gently please, and do not poke things in your ears no matter how much you may be tempted.
And especially, please do not put things in your ears and set fire to them, either; that is a terrible idea. For more on that, see: Ear Candling: Is It Safe & Does It Work? ← the answer is “no and no”, but the science may interest you!
What you can do, however, is use earwax-removing oils, and if you want a home-remedy edition, olive oil or almond oil can be used; these oils dissolve the wax quite quickly (in fancier words: they are cerumenolytic agents); washing with water (e.g. in the shower or bath) is then all that’s needed. However, to avoid infection, ensure you are using a high-purity oil, and get one to use just for that; don’t just grab a bottle from the kitchen.
For your convenience, here is an example of medical grade almond oil (with dropper!) on Amazon
For more on that, see: What Is Earwax & Should You Get Rid Of It?
Since it is usually an ear infection, however, it’s worth knowing that common risk factors include:
- Being immunocompromised (having long COVID counts for this)
- Smoking, including being exposed to second-hand smoke
- You might wonder why a toxin would increase infection risk, rather than killing the pathogens. The answer is firstly that it’s toxic to us because of our physiology, and doesn’t affect those. However, it does compromise our own immune system in an assortment of ways, including, mostly simply, clogging up macrophages with pollution to get rid of, which takes them away from anti-infection duties.
- Being in close proximity with many other people, especially if some or all are ill (hospitals and care institutions are high on this list, as are airplanes)
- Being male (this is because of hormone-modulated immune responses differing by which sex hormone is dominant out of estrogen and testosterone)
- Being in climates that are conducive to pathogens (note that this can also mean microclimates, for example a damp house)
So, avoid those things where possible, and you will reduce your earache risk significantly.
Want to learn more?
Check out:
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