The Pain Relief Secret – by Sarah Warren

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’s a book to not judge by the cover—or the title. The title is actually accurate, but it sounds like a lot of woo, doesn’t it?

Instead, what we find is a very clinical, research-led (40 pages of references!) explanation of:

  1. the causes of musculoskeletal pain
  2. how this will tend to drive us to make it worse
  3. what we can do instead to make it better

A lot of this, to give you an idea what to expect, hinges on the fact that bones only go where muscles allow/move them; muscles only behave as instructed by nerves, and with a good development of biofeedback and new habits to leverage neuroplasticity, we can take more charge of that than you might think.

Warning: you may want to jump straight into the part with the solutions, but if you do so without a very good grounding in anatomy and physiology, you may find yourself out of your depth with previously-explained terms and concepts that are now needed to understand (and apply) the solutions.

However, if you read it methodically cover-to-cover, you’ll find you need no prior knowledge to take full advantage of this book; the author is a very skilled educator.

Bottom line: while it’s not an overnight magic pill, the methodology described in this book is a very sound way to address the causes of musculoskeletal pain.

Click here to check out The Pain Relief Secret, and help your body undo damage done!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • The Metabolism Reset Diet – by Alan Christianson
  • Easing Election Stress & Anxiety
    Facing election anxiety? Learn mental health strategies with CBT and DBT, embrace radical acceptance, and find purpose through Behavioral Activation (BA) for post-election actions.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Astaxanthin: Super-Antioxidant & Neuroprotectant

    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.

    Think Pink For Brain Health!

    Astaxanthin is a carotenoid that’s found in:

    • certain marine microalgae
    • tiny crustaceans that eat the algae
    • fish (and flamingos!) that eat the crustaceans

    Yes, it’s the one that makes things pink.

    But it does a lot more than that…

    Super-antioxidant

    Move over, green tea! Astaxanthin has higher antioxidant activity than most carotenoids. For example, it is 2–5 times more effective than alpha-carotene, lutein, beta-carotene, and lycopene:

    Antioxidant activities of astaxanthin and related carotenoids

    We can’t claim credit for naming it a super-antioxidant though, because:

    Astaxanthin: A super antioxidant from microalgae and its therapeutic potential

    Grow new brain cells

    Axtaxanthin is a neuroprotectant, but that’s to be expected from something with such a powerful antioxidant ability.

    What’s more special to astaxanthin is that it assists continued adult neurogenesis (creation of new brain cells):

    ❝The unique chemical structure of astaxanthin enables it to cross the blood-brain barrier and easily reach the brain, where it may positively influence adult neurogenesis.

    Furthermore, astaxanthin appears to modulate neuroinflammation by suppressing the NF-κB pathway, reducing the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and limiting neuroinflammation associated with aging and chronic microglial activation.

    By modulating these pathways, along with its potent antioxidant properties, astaxanthin may contribute to the restoration of a healthy neurogenic microenvironment, thereby preserving the activity of neurogenic niches during both normal and pathological aging. ❞

    Source: Dietary Astaxanthin: A Promising Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Agent for Brain Aging and Adult Neurogenesis

    That first part is very important, by the way! There are so many things that our brain needs, and we can eat, but the molecules are unable to pass the blood-brain barrier, meaning they either get wasted, or used elsewhere, or dismantled for their constituent parts. In this case, it zips straight into the brain instead.

    See also:

    How To Grow New Brain Cells (At Any Age)

    (Probably) good for the joints, too

    First, astaxanthin got a glowing report in a study we knew not to trust blindly:

    A Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of a Krill Oil, Astaxanthin, and Oral Hyaluronic Acid Complex on Joint Health in People with Mild Osteoarthritis

    …and breathe. What a title that was! But, did you catch why it’s not to be trusted blindly? It was down at the bottom…

    ❝Conflict of interest statement

    NOVAREX Co., Ltd. funded the study. Valensa International provided the FlexPro MD® ingredients, and NOVAREX Co., Ltd. encapsulated the test products (e.g., both FlexPro MD® and placebo)❞

    Studies where a supplement company funded the study are not necessarily corrupt, but they can certainly sway publication bias, i.e. the company funds a bunch of studies and then pulls funding from the ones that aren’t going the way it wants.

    So instead let’s look at:

    Astaxanthin attenuates joint inflammation induced by monosodium urate crystals

    and

    Astaxanthin ameliorates cartilage damage in experimental osteoarthritis

    …which had no such conflicts of interest.

    They agree that astaxanthin indeed does the things (attenuates joint inflammation & ameliorates cartilage damage).

    However, they are animal studies (rats), so we’d like to see studies with humans to be able to say for sure how much it helps these things.

    Summary of benefits

    Based on the available research, astaxanthin…

    • is indeed a super-antioxidant
    • is a neuroprotective agent
    • also assists adult neurogenesis
    • is probablygood for joints too

    How much do I take, and is it safe?

    A 2019 safety review concluded:

    ❝Recommended or approved doses varied in different countries and ranged between 2 and 24 mg.

    We reviewed 87 human studies, none of which found safety concerns with natural astaxanthin supplementation, 35 with doses ≥12 mg/day.❞

    Source: Astaxanthin: How much is too much? A safety review

    In short: for most people, it’s very safe and well-tolerated. If you consume it to an extreme, you will likely turn pink, much as you would turn orange if you did the same thing with carrots. But aside from that, the risks appear to be minimal.

    However! If you have a seafood allergy, please take care to get a supplement that’s made from microalgae, not one that’s made from krill or other crustaceans, or from other creatures that eat those.

    Where can I get it?

    We don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

  • Aging Minds: Normal vs Abnormal Cognitive Decline

    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.

    Having a “senior moment” and having dementia are things that are quite distinct from one another; while we may very reasonably intend to fight every part of it, it’s good to know what’s “normal” as well as what is starting to look like progress into something more severe:

    Know the differences

    Cognitive abilities naturally decline with age, often beginning around 30 (yes, really—the first changes are mostly metabolic though, so this is far from set in stone). Commonly-noticed changes include:

    • slower thinking
    • difficulty multitasking
    • reduced attention
    • weaker memory.

    Over time, these changes have what is believed to be a two-way association (as in, each causes/worsens the other) with changes in brain structure, especially reduced hippocampal and frontal lobe volume.

    • Gradual cognitive changes are normal with age, whereas dementia involves a pathological decline affecting memory, problem-solving, and behavior.
    • Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) involves noticeable cognitive decline without disrupting daily life, while dementia affects everyday tasks like cooking or driving.
    • Dementia causes significant impairments, including motor challenges like falls or tremors, and dementia-induced cognitive decline symptoms include forgetfulness, getting lost, personality changes, and planning difficulties, often worsening with stress or illness.

    To best avoid these, consider: regular exercise, a nutritious diet, good quality sleep, social interaction, and mentally stimulating activities.

    Also, often forgotten (in terms of its relevance at least): managing cardiovascular health is very important too. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: what’s good for your heart is good for your brain (since the former feeds the latter with oxygen and nutrients, and also takes away detritus that will otherwise build up in the brain).

    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:

    Is It Dementia? Spot The Signs (Because None Of Us Are Immune) ← we go into more specific detail here

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Cantaloupe vs Cucumber – 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 cantaloupe to cucumber, we picked the cucumber.

    Why?

    In terms of macros, both are of course 90–95% water, with just enough fiber to hold them together. However, it’s cantaloupe that’s 90% water and cucumber that’s 95% water, because cantaloupe has more than 2x the carbs and 144x the sugar (whence the sweetness). Now, it’s a fruit and so this sugar isn’t really anything to worry about if you’re eating it in solid form (as opposed to as juice), but by the numbers, it does mean that cucumber has the much lower glycemic index (cucumber has a GI of 21, while cantaloupe has a GI of 65), so we’ll give cucumber the win in this category.

    In the category of vitamins, cantaloupe has more of vitamins A, B3, B6, B9, C, and E, while cucumber has more of vitamins B2, B5, and K, so cantaloupe scores a 6:3 win in this round.

    When it comes to minerals, cantaloupe has more potassium and selenium, while cucumber has more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, so another win for cucumber here.

    Looking at polyphenols, cantaloupe has almost nothing (trace amounts of some lignans), while cucumber has more of the same lignans that cantaloupe has, plus highly beneficial flavones apigenin and luteolin, and famously good flavonols like kaempferol and quercetin. So, one more win for cucumber here.

    Plus, and it’s not yet known the mechanism of action for this one, but cucumber extract beats glucosamine and chondroitin for reducing joint inflammation, at 1/135th of the dose.

    Adding up the sections makes for a very clear overall win for cucumber, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like:

    What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • The Metabolism Reset Diet – by Alan Christianson
  • As the U.S. Struggles With a Stillbirth Crisis, Australia Offers a Model for How to Do Better

    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.

    ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

    Series: Stillbirths:When Babies Die Before Taking Their First Breath

    The U.S. has not prioritized stillbirth prevention, and American parents are losing babies even as other countries make larger strides to reduce deaths late in pregnancy.

    The stillbirth of her daughter in 1999 cleaved Kristina Keneally’s life into a before and an after. It later became a catalyst for transforming how an entire country approaches stillbirths.

    In a world where preventing stillbirths is typically far down the list of health care priorities, Australia — where Keneally was elected as a senator — has emerged as a global leader in the effort to lower the number of babies that die before taking their first breaths. Stillbirth prevention is embedded in the nation’s health care system, supported by its doctors, midwives and nurses, and touted by its politicians.

    In 2017, funding from the Australian government established a groundbreaking center for research into stillbirths. The next year, its Senate established a committee on stillbirth research and education. By 2020, the country had adopted a national stillbirth plan, which combines the efforts of health care providers and researchers, bereaved families and advocacy groups, and lawmakers and government officials, all in the name of reducing stillbirths and supporting families. As part of that plan, researchers and advocates teamed up to launch a public awareness campaign. All told, the government has invested more than $40 million.

    Meanwhile, the United States, which has a far larger population, has no national stillbirth plan, no public awareness campaign and no government-funded stillbirth research center. Indeed, the U.S. has long lagged behind Australia and other wealthy countries in a crucial measure: how fast the stillbirth rate drops each year.

    According to the latest UNICEF report, the U.S. was worse than 151 countries in reducing its stillbirth rate between 2000 and 2021, cutting it by just 0.9%. That figure lands the U.S. in the company of South Sudan in Africa and doing slightly better than Turkmenistan in central Asia. During that period, Australia’s reduction rate was more than double that.

    Definitions of stillbirth vary by country, and though both Australia and the U.S. mark stillbirths as the death of a fetus at 20 weeks or more of pregnancy, to fairly compare countries globally, international standards call for the use of the World Health Organization definition that defines stillbirth as a loss after 28 weeks. That puts the U.S. stillbirth rate in 2021 at 2.7 per 1,000 total births, compared with 2.4 in Australia the same year.

    Every year in the United States, more than 20,000 pregnancies end in a stillbirth. Each day, roughly 60 babies are stillborn. Australia experiences six stillbirths a day.

    Over the past two years, ProPublica has revealed systemic failures at the federal and local levels, including not prioritizing research, awareness and data collection, conducting too few autopsies after stillbirths and doing little to combat stark racial disparities. And while efforts are starting to surface in the U.S. — including two stillbirth-prevention bills that are pending in Congress — they lack the scope and urgency seen in Australia.

    “If you ask which parts of the work in Australia can be done in or should be done in the U.S., the answer is all of it,” said Susannah Hopkins Leisher, a stillbirth parent, epidemiologist and assistant professor in the stillbirth research program at the University of Utah Health. “There’s no physical reason why we cannot do exactly what Australia has done.”

    Australia’s goal, which has been complicated by the pandemic, is to, by 2025, reduce the country’s rate of stillbirths after 28 weeks by 20% from its 2020 rate. The national plan laid out the target, and it is up to each jurisdiction to determine how to implement it based on their local needs.

    The most significant development came in 2019, when the Stillbirth Centre of Research Excellence — the headquarters for Australia’s stillbirth-prevention efforts — launched the core of its strategy, a checklist of five evidence-based priorities known as the Safer Baby Bundle. They include supporting pregnant patients to stop smoking; regular monitoring for signs that the fetus is not growing as expected, which is known as fetal growth restriction; explaining the importance of acting quickly if fetal movement changes or decreases; advising pregnant patients to go to sleep on their side after 28 weeks; and encouraging patients to talk to their doctors about when to deliver because in some cases that may be before their due date.

    Officials estimate that at least half of all births in the country are covered by maternity services that have adopted the bundle, which focuses on preventing stillbirths after 28 weeks.

    “These are babies whose lives you would expect to save because they would survive if they were born alive,” said Dr. David Ellwood, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Griffith University, director of maternal-fetal medicine at Gold Coast University Hospital and a co-director of the Stillbirth Centre of Research Excellence.

    Australia wasn’t always a leader in stillbirth prevention.

    In 2000, when the stillbirth rate in the U.S. was 3.3 per 1,000 total births, Australia’s was 3.7. A group of doctors, midwives and parents recognized the need to do more and began working on improving their data classification and collection to better understand the problem areas. By 2014, Australia published its first in-depth national report on stillbirth. Two years later, the medical journal The Lancet published the second report in a landmark series on stillbirths, and Australian researchers applied for the first grant from the government to create the stillbirth research center.

    But full federal buy-in remained elusive.

    As parent advocates, researchers, doctors and midwives worked to gain national support, they didn’t yet know they would find a champion in Keneally.

    Keneally’s improbable journey began when she was born in Nevada to an American father and Australian mother. She grew up in Ohio, graduating from the University of Dayton before meeting the man who would become her husband and moving to Australia.

    When she learned that her daughter, who she named Caroline, would be stillborn, she remembers thinking, “I’m smart. I’m educated. How did I let this happen? And why did nobody tell me this was a possible outcome?”

    A few years later, in 2003, Keneally decided to enter politics. She was elected to the lower house of state parliament in New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital. In Australia, newly elected members are expected to give a “first speech.” She was able to get through just one sentence about Caroline before starting to tear up.

    As a legislator, Keneally didn’t think of tackling stillbirth as part of her job. There wasn’t any public discourse about preventing stillbirths or supporting families who’d had one. When Caroline was born still, all Keneally got was a book titled “When a Baby Dies.”

    In 2009, Keneally became New South Wales’ first woman premier, a role similar to that of an American governor. Another woman who had suffered her own stillbirth and was starting a stillbirth foundation learned of Keneally’s experience. She wrote to Keneally and asked the premier to be the foundation’s patron.

    What’s the point of being the first female premier, Keneally thought, if I can’t support this group?

    Like the U.S., Australia had previously launched an awareness campaign that contributed to a staggering reduction in sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. But there was no similar push for stillbirths.

    “If we can figure out ways to reduce SIDS,” Keneally said, “surely it’s not beyond us to figure out ways to reduce stillbirth.”

    She lost her seat after two years and took a break from politics, only to return six years later. In 2018, she was selected to serve as a senator at Australia’s federal level.

    Keneally saw this as her second chance to fight for stillbirth prevention. In the short period between her election and her inaugural speech, she had put everything in place for a Senate inquiry into stillbirth.

    In her address, Keneally declared stillbirth a national public health crisis. This time, she spoke at length about Caroline.

    “When it comes to stillbirth prevention,” she said, “there are things that we know that we’re not telling parents, and there are things we don’t know, but we could, if we changed how we collected data and how we funded research.”

    The day of her speech, March 27, 2018, she and her fellow senators established the Select Committee on Stillbirth Research and Education.

    Things moved quickly over the next nine months. Keneally and other lawmakers traveled the country holding hearings, listening to testimony from grieving parents and writing up their findings in a report released that December.

    “The culture of silence around stillbirth means that parents and families who experience it are less likely to be prepared to deal with the personal, social and financial consequences,” the report said. “This failure to regard stillbirth as a public health issue also has significant consequences for the level of funding available for research and education, and for public awareness of the social and economic costs to the community as a whole.”

    It would be easy to swap the U.S. for Australia in many places throughout the report. Women of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds experienced double the rate of stillbirth of other Australian women; Black women in America are more than twice as likely as white women to have a stillbirth. Both countries faced a lack of coordinated research and corresponding funding, low autopsy rates following a stillbirth and poor public awareness of the problem.

    The day after the report’s release, the Australian government announced that it would develop a national plan and pledged $7.2 million in funding for prevention. Nearly half was to go to education and awareness programs for women and their health care providers.

    In the following months, government officials rolled out the Safer Baby Bundle and pledged another $26 million to support parents’ mental health after a loss.

    Many in Australia see Keneally’s first speech as senator, in 2018, as the turning point for the country’s fight for stillbirth prevention. Her words forced the federal government to acknowledge the stillbirth crisis and launch the national action plan with bipartisan support.

    Australia’s assistant minister for health and aged care, Ged Kearney, cited Keneally’s speech in an email to ProPublica where she noted that Australia has become a world leader in stillbirth awareness, prevention and supporting families after a loss.

    “Kristina highlighted the power of women telling their story for positive change,” Kearney said, adding, “As a Labor Senator Kristina Keneally bravely shared her deeply personal story of her daughter Caroline who was stillborn in 1999. Like so many mothers, she helped pave the way for creating a more compassionate and inclusive society.”

    Keneally, who is now CEO of Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation, said the number of stillbirths a day in Australia spurred the movement for change.

    “Six babies a day,” Keneally said. “Once you hear that fact, you can’t unhear it.”

    Australia’s leading stillbirth experts watched closely as the country moved closer to a unified effort. This was the moment for which they had been waiting.

    “We had all the information needed, but that’s really what made it happen.” said Vicki Flenady, a perinatal epidemiologist, co-director of the Stillbirth Centre of Research Excellence based at the Mater Research Institute at the University of Queensland, and a lead author on The Lancet’s stillbirth series. “I don’t think there’s a person who could dispute that.”

    Flenady and her co-director Ellwood had spent more than two decades focused on stillbirths. After establishing the center in 2017, they were now able to expand their team. As part of their work with the International Stillbirth Alliance, they reached out to other countries with a track record of innovation and evidence-based research: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland. They modeled the Safer Baby Bundle after a similar one in the U.K., though they added some elements.

    In 2019, the state of Victoria, home to Melbourne, was the first to implement the Safer Baby Bundle. But 10 months into the program, the effort had to be paused for several months because of the pandemic, which forced other states to cancel their launches altogether.

    “COVID was a major disruption. We stopped and started,” Flenady said.

    Still, between 2019 and 2021, participating hospitals across Victoria were able to reduce their stillbirth rate by 21%. That improvement has yet to be seen at the national level.

    A number of areas are still working on implementing the bundle. Westmead Hospital, one of Australia’s largest hospitals, planned to wrap that phase up last month. Like many hospitals, Westmead prominently displays the bundle’s key messages in the colorful posters and flyers hanging in patient rooms and in the hallways. They include easy-to-understand slogans such as, “Big or small. Your baby’s growth matters,” and, “Sleep on your side when baby’s inside.”

    As patients at Westmead wait for their names to be called, a TV in the waiting room plays a video on stillbirth prevention, highlighting the importance of fetal movement. If a patient is concerned their baby’s movements have slowed down, they are instructed to come in to be seen within two hours. The patient’s chart gets a colorful sticker with a 16-point checklist of stillbirth risk factors.

    Susan Heath, a senior clinical midwife at Westmead, came up with the idea for the stickers. Her office is tucked inside the hospital’s maternity wing, down a maze of hallways. As she makes the familiar walk to her desk, with her faded hospital badge bouncing against her navy blue scrubs, it’s clear she is a woman on a mission. The bundle gives doctors and midwives structure and uniform guidance, she said, and takes stillbirth out of the shadows. She reminds her staff of how making the practices a routine part of their job has the power to change their patients’ lives.

    “You’re trying,” she said, “to help them prevent having the worst day of their life.”

    Christine Andrews, a senior researcher at the Stillbirth Centre who is leading an evaluation of the program’s effectiveness, said the national stillbirth rate beyond 28 weeks has continued to slowly improve.

    “It is going to take a while until we see the stillbirth rate across the whole entire country go down,” Andrews said. “We are anticipating that we’re going to start to see a shift in that rate soon.”

    As officials wait to receive and standardize the data from hospitals and states, they are encouraged by a number of indicators.

    For example, several states are reporting increases in the detection of babies that aren’t growing as they should, a major factor in many late-gestation stillbirths. Many also have seen an increase in the number of pregnant patients who stopped smoking. Health care providers also are more consistently offering post-stillbirth investigations, such as autopsies.

    In addition to the Safer Baby Bundle, the national plan also calls for raising awareness and reducing racial disparities. The improvements it recommends for bereavement care are already gaining global attention.

    To fulfill those directives, Australia has launched a “Still Six Lives” public awareness campaign, has implemented a national stillbirth clinical care standard and has spent two years developing a culturally inclusive version of the Safer Baby Bundle for First Nations, migrant and refugee communities. Those resources, which were recently released, incorporated cultural traditions and used terms like Stronger Bubba Born for the bundle and “sorry business babies,” which is how some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women refer to stillbirth. There are also audio versions for those who can’t or prefer not to read the information.

    In May, nearly 50 people from the state of Queensland met in a large hotel conference room. Midwives, doctors and nurses sat at round tables with government officials, hospital administrators and maternal and infant health advocates. Some even wore their bright blue Safer Baby T-shirts.

    One by one, they discussed their experiences implementing the Safer Baby Bundle. One midwifery group was able to get more than a third of its patients to stop smoking between their first visit and giving birth.

    Officials from a hospital in one of the fastest-growing areas in the state discussed how they carefully monitored for fetal growth restriction.

    And staff from another hospital, which serves many low-income and immigrant patients, described how 97% of pregnant patients who said their baby’s movements had decreased were seen for additional monitoring within two hours of voicing their concern.

    As the midwives, nurses and doctors ticked off the progress they were seeing, they also discussed the fear of unintended consequences: higher rates of premature births or increased admissions to neonatal intensive care units. But neither, they said, has materialized.

    “The bundle isn’t causing any harm and may be improving other outcomes, like reducing early-term birth,” Flenady said. “I think it really shows a lot of positive impact.”

    As far behind as the U.S. is in prioritizing stillbirth prevention, there is still hope.

    Dr. Bob Silver, who co-authored a study that estimated that nearly 1 in 4 stillbirths are potentially preventable, has looked to the international community as a model. Now, he and Leisher — the University of Utah epidemiologist and stillbirth parent — are working to create one of the first stillbirth research and prevention centers in the U.S. in partnership with stillbirth leaders from Australia and other countries. They hope to launch next year.

    “There’s no question that Australia has done a better job than we have,” said Silver, who is also chair of the University of Utah Health obstetrics and gynecology department. “Part of it is just highlighting it and paying attention to it.”

    It’s hard to know what parts of Australia’s strategy are making a difference — the bundle as a whole, just certain elements of it, the increased stillbirth awareness across the country, or some combination of those things. Not every component has been proven to decrease stillbirth.

    The lack of U.S. research on the issue has made some cautious to adopt the bundle, Silver said, but it is clear the U.S. can and should do more.

    There comes a point when an issue is so critical, Silver said, that people have to do the best they can with the information that they have. The U.S. has done that with other problems, such as maternal mortality, he said, though many of the tactics used to combat that problem have not been proven scientifically.

    “But we’ve decided this problem is so bad, we’re going to try the things that we think are most likely to be helpful,” Silver said.

    After more than 30 years of working on stillbirth prevention, Silver said the U.S. may be at a turning point. Parents’ voices are getting louder and starting to reach lawmakers. More doctors are affirming that stillbirths are not inevitable. And pressure is mounting on federal institutions to do more.

    Of the two stillbirth prevention bills in Congress, one already sailed through the Senate. The second bill, the Stillbirth Health Improvement and Education for Autumn Act, includes features that also appeared in Australia’s plan, such as improving data, increasing awareness and providing support for autopsies.

    And after many years, the National Institutes of Health has turned its focus back to stillbirths. In March, it released a report with a series of recommendations to reduce the nation’s stillbirth rate that mirror ProPublica’s reporting about some of the causes of the crisis. Since then, it has launched additional groups to begin to tackle three critical angles: prevention, data and bereavement. Silver co-chairs the prevention group.

    In November, more than 100 doctors, parents and advocates gathered for a symposium in New York City to discuss everything from improving bereavement care in the U.S to tackling racial disparities in stillbirth. In 2022, after taking a page out of the U.K.’s book, the city’s Mount Sinai Hospital opened the first Rainbow Clinic in the U.S., which employs specific protocols to care for people who have had a stillbirth.

    But given the financial resources in the U.S. and the academic capacity at American universities and research institutions, Leisher and others said federal and state governments aren’t doing nearly enough.

    “The U.S. is not pulling its weight in relation either to our burden or to the resources that we have at our disposal,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of babies dying, and we’ve got a really bad imbalance of who those babies are as well. And yet we look at a country with a much smaller number of stillbirths who is leading the world.”

    “We can do more. Much more. We’re just not,” she added. “It’s unacceptable.”

    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:

  • The Painkilling Power Of Opioids, Without The Harm?

    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.

    When it comes to painkilling medications, they can generally be categorized into two kinds:

    • non-opioids (e.g. ibuprofen, paracetamol/acetaminophen, aspirin)
    • ones that actually work for something more serious than a headache

    That’s an oversimplification, but broadly speaking, when there is serious painkilling to be done, that’s when doctors consider it’s time to break out the opioids.

    Nor are all opioids created equal—there’s a noteworthy difference between codeine and morphine, for instance—but the problems of opioids are typically the same (tolerance, addiction, and eventual likelihood of overdose when one tries to take enough to make it work after developing a tolerance), and it becomes simply a matter of degree.

    See also: I’ve been given opioids after surgery to take at home. What do I need to know?

    So, what’s the new development?

    A team of researchers have found that the body can effectively produce its own targetted painkilling peptides, similar in function to benzodiazepines (an opioid drug), but—and which is a big difference—confined to the peripheral nervous system (PNS), meaning that it doesn’t enter the brain.

    • The peptides killing the pain before it can reach the brain is obviously good because that means the pain is simply not experienced
    • The peptides not having any effect on the brain, however, means that the mechanism of addiction of opioids simply does not apply here
    • The peptides not having any effect on the brain also means that the CNS can’t be “put to sleep” by these peptides in the same way it can if a high dose of opioids is taken (this is what typically causes death in opioid overdoses; the heart simply beats too slowly to maintain life)

    The hope, therefore, is to now create medications that target the spinal ganglia that produce these peptides, to “switch them on” at will.

    Obviously, this won’t happen overnight; there will need to be first a lot of research to find a drug that does that (likely this will involve a lot of trial and error and so many mice/rats), and then multiple rounds of testing to ascertain that the drug is safe and effective for humans, before it can then be rolled out commercially.

    But, this is still a big breakthrough; there arguably hasn’t been a breakthrough this big in pain research since various opioid-related breakthroughs in the 70s and 80s.

    You can see a pop-science article about it here:

    Chronic pain, opioids and natural benzos: Researchers discover how body can make its own “sleeping pills”

    And you can see the previous research (from earlier this year) that this is now building from, about the glial cells in the spinal ganglia, here:

    Peripheral gating of mechanosensation by glial diazepam binding inhibitor

    But wait, there’s more!

    Remember what we said about affecting the PNS without affecting the CNS, to kill the pain without killing the brain?

    More researchers are already approaching the same idea to deal with the same problem, but from the angle of gene therapy, and have already had some very promising results with mice:

    Structure-guided design of a peripherally restricted chemogenetic system

    …which you can read about in pop-science terms (with diagrams!) here:

    New gene therapy could alleviate chronic pain, researchers find

    While you’re waiting…

    In the meantime, approaches that are already available include:

    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:

  • The Brain Fog Fix – by Dr. Mike Dow

    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 three weeks mentioned in the subtitle is in fact a week-by-week plan:

    1. Adjusting diet (inclusions and exclusions) and cognitive strategies
    2. Focusing on sleep, exercise, and memory-boosting “brain games”
    3. Bringing in the social aspect, and connection to something larger than oneself

    In this reviewer’s opinion, a week is too short a time to completely overhaul one’s diet; most changes need to be gradual, so doing several at once in a week is quite extreme. But, even if it takes a month for each stage instead of a week, the method is reasonable.

    The nutritional advice is good, and consistent with current best science on the topic. There’s a lot about keeping even blood sugars and improving insulin sensitivity, as well as doing what is best for the heart and blood in general (e.g. fiber, managing triglycerides, doing the right kinds of exercise, etc).

    As a psychotherapist, he also talks a fair bit about neurotransmitters, and making sure one’s gut and brain are fed appropriately to keep the correct balance (remembering for example that serotonin is made in the gut, and dopamine is made in the brain). Unlike many of his colleagues, he’s not a fan of medicating beyond absolute necessity.

    The style is a little salesy for this reviewer’s personal taste—but then again, perhaps he made the reasonable assumption that a person reading a book entitled “the brain fog fix” needs their attention grabbing and re-grabbing every paragraph or so. As such, maybe it’s not a bad call.

    Bottom line: if you have brain fog and would like to not have brain fog, this book offers a scientifically sound, evidence-based, holistic approach that can certainly improve things.

    Click here to check out The Brain Fog Fix, and fix your brain fog!

    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: