The Plant-Based Diet Revolution – by Dr. Alan Desomond
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.
Is this just another gut-healthy cooking guide? Not entirely…
For a start, it’s not just about giving you a healthy gut; it also covers a healthy heart and a healthy brain. There’s lots of science in here!
It’s also aimed as a transitional guide to eating more plants and fewer animal products, if you so choose. And if you don’t so choose, at least having the flexibility to cook both ways.
The recipes themselves (organized into basics, breakfasts, lunches, mains, desserts) are clear and easy while also being calculated to please readers (and their families) who are used to eating more meat. There are, for instance, plenty of healthy proteins, healthy fats, and comfort foods.
The “28 days” of the title refers to a meal plan using the recipes from the book; it’s not a big feature of the book though, so use it or don’t, but the cooking advice itself is more than worth the price of the book and the recipes are certainly great.
Bottom line: if you’re thinking of taking a “Meatless Mondays” approach to making your diet healthier, this book can help you do that in style!
Click here to check out The Plant-Based Diet Revolution, and upgrade your culinary repertoire!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
‘Sleep tourism’ promises the trip of your dreams. Beyond the hype plus 5 tips for a holiday at home
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.
Imagine arriving at your hotel after a long flight and being greeted by your own personal sleep butler. They present you with a pillow menu and invite you to a sleep meditation session later that day.
You unpack in a room kitted with an AI-powered smart bed, blackout shades, blue light-blocking glasses and weighted blankets.
Holidays are traditionally for activities or sightseeing – eating Parisian pastry under the Eiffel tower, ice skating at New York City’s Rockefeller Centre, lying by the pool in Bali or sipping limoncello in Sicily. But “sleep tourism” offers vacations for the sole purpose of getting good sleep.
The emerging trend extends out of the global wellness tourism industry – reportedly worth more than US$800 billion globally (A$1.2 trillion) and expected to boom.
Luxurious sleep retreats and sleep suites at hotels are popping up all over the world for tourists to get some much-needed rest, relaxation and recovery. But do you really need to leave home for some shuteye?
RossHelen/Shutterstock Not getting enough
The rise of sleep tourism may be a sign of just how chronically sleep deprived we all are.
In Australia more than one-third of adults are not achieving the recommended 7–9 hours of sleep per night, and the estimated cost of this inadequate sleep is A$45 billion each year.
Inadequate sleep is linked to long-term health problems including poor mental health, heart disease, metabolic disease and deaths from any cause.
Can a fancy hotel give you a better sleep?
Many of the sleep services available in the sleep tourism industry aim to optimise the bedroom for sleep. This is a core component of sleep hygiene – a series of healthy sleep practices that facilitate good sleep including sleeping in a comfortable bedroom with a good mattress and pillow, sleeping in a quiet environment and relaxing before bed.
The more people follow sleep hygiene practices, the better their sleep quality and quantity.
When we are staying in a hotel we are also likely away from any stressors we encounter in everyday life (such as work pressure or caring responsibilities). And we’re away from potential nighttime disruptions to sleep we might experience at home (the construction work next door, restless pets, unsettled children). So regardless of the sleep features hotels offer, it is likely we will experience improved sleep when we are away.
Being away from home also means being away from domestic disruptions. Makistock/Shutterstock What the science says about catching up on sleep
In the short-term, we can catch up on sleep. This can happen, for example, after a short night of sleep when our brain accumulates “sleep pressure”. This term describes how strong the biological drive for sleep is. More sleep pressure makes it easier to sleep the next night and to sleep for longer.
But while a longer sleep the next night can relieve the sleep pressure, it does not reverse the effects of the short sleep on our brain and body. Every night’s sleep is important for our body to recover and for our brain to process the events of that day. Spending a holiday “catching up” on sleep could help you feel more rested, but it is not a substitute for prioritising regular healthy sleep at home.
All good things, including holidays, must come to an end. Unfortunately the perks of sleep tourism may end too.
Our bodies do not like variability in the time of day that we sleep. The most common example of this is called “social jet lag”, where weekday sleep (getting up early to get to work or school) is vastly different to weekend sleep (late nights and sleep ins). This can result in a sleepy, grouchy start to the week on Monday. Sleep tourism may be similar, if you do not come back home with the intention to prioritise sleep.
So we should be mindful that as well as sleeping well on holiday, it is important to optimise conditions at home to get consistent, adequate sleep every night.
Good sleep hygiene doesn’t require a passport. Maridav/Shutterstock 5 tips for having a sleep holiday at home
An AI-powered mattress and a sleep butler at home might be the dream. But these features are not the only way we can optimise our sleep environment and give ourselves the best chance to get a good night’s sleep. Here are five ideas to start the night right:
1. avoid bright artificial light in the evening (such as bright overhead lights, phones, laptops)
2. make your bed as comfortable as possible with fresh pillows and a supportive mattress
3. use black-out window coverings and maintain a cool room temperature for the ideal sleeping environment
4. establish an evening wind-down routine, such as a warm shower and reading a book before bed or even a “sleepy girl mocktail”
5. use consistency as the key to a good sleep routine. Aim for a similar bedtime and wake time – even on weekends.
Charlotte Gupta, Senior postdoctoral research fellow, Appleton Institute, HealthWise research group, CQUniversity Australia and Dean J. Miller, Adjunct Research Fellow, Appleton Institute of Behavioural Science, CQUniversity Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Share This Post
-
Life Extension Multivitamins vs Centrum Multivitamins – 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 Life Extension Multivitamins to Centrum Multivitamins, we picked the Life Extension.
Why?
The clue here was on the label: “two per day”. It’s not so that they can sell extra filler! It’s because they couldn’t fit it all into one.
While the Centrum Multivitamins is a (respectably) run-of-the-mill multivitamin (and multimineral) containing reasonable quantities of most vitamins and minerals that people supplement, the Life Extension product has the same plus more:
- More of the vitamins and minerals; i.e. more of them are hitting 100%+ of the RDA
- More beneficial supplements, including:
- Inositol, Alpha lipoic acid, Bio-Quercetin phytosome, phosphatidylcholine complex, Marigold extract, Apigenin, Lycopene, and more that we won’t list here because it starts to get complicated if we do.
We’ll have to write some main features on some of those that we haven’t written about before, but suffice it to say, they’re all good things.
Main take-away for today: sometimes more is better; it just necessitates then reading the label to check.
Want to get some Life Extension Multivitamins (and/or perhaps just read the label on the back)? Here they are on Amazon
PS: it bears mentioning, since we are sometimes running brands against each other head-to-head in this section: nothing you see here is an advertisement/sponsor unless it’s clearly marked as such. We haven’t, for example, been paid by Life Extension or any agent of theirs, to write the above. It’s just our own research and conclusion.
Share This Post
-
Pomegranate’s Health Gifts Are Mostly In Its Peel
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.
Pomegranate Peel’s Potent Potential
Pomegranates have been enjoying a new surge in popularity in some parts, widely touted for their health benefits. What’s not so widely touted is that most of the bioactive compounds that give these benefits are concentrated in the peel, which most people in most places throw away.
They do exist in the fruit too! But if you’re discarding the peel, you’re missing out:
Food Applications and Potential Health Benefits of Pomegranate and its Derivatives
“That peel is difficult and not fun to eat though”
Indeed. Drying the peel, especially freeze-drying it, is a good first step:
❝Freeze drying peels had a positive effect on the total phenolic, tannins and flavonoid than oven drying at all temperature range. Moreover, freeze drying had a positive impact on the +catechin, -epicatechin, hesperidin and rutin concentrations of fruit peel. ❞
Once it is freeze-dried, it is easy to grind it into a powder for use as a nutritional supplement.
“How useful is it?”
Studies with 500mg and 1000mg per day in people with cases of obesity and/or type 2 diabetes saw significant improvements in assorted biomarkers of cardiometabolic health, including blood pressure, blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and hemoglobin A1C:
- Effects of pomegranate extract supplementation on inflammation in overweight and obese individuals: A randomized controlled clinical trial
- Beneficial effects of pomegranate peel extract on plasma lipid profile, fatty acids levels and blood pressure in patients with diabetes mellitus type-2: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study
It also has anticancer properties:
- Punicalagin, a polyphenol from pomegranate fruit, induces growth inhibition and apoptosis in human PC-3 and LNCaP cells
- Punica granatum (Pomegranate) activity in health promotion and cancer prevention
- The extract from Punica granatum (pomegranate) peel induces apoptosis and impairs metastasis in prostate cancer cells
…and neuroprotective benefits:
- Long-term (15 mo) dietary supplementation with pomegranates attenuates cognitive and behavioral deficits
- Neuroprotective Effects of Pomegranate Peel Extract
- An Evaluation of the Effects of a Non-caffeinated Energy Dietary Supplement on Cognitive and Physical Performance
…and it may protect against osteopenia and osteoporosis, but we only have animal or in vitro studies so far, for example:
- Pomegranate Peel Extract Prevents Bone Loss in a Preclinical Model of Osteoporosis and Stimulates Osteoblastic Differentiation in Vitro
- Pomegranate and its derivatives can improve bone health through decreased inflammation and oxidative stress in an animal model of postmenopausal osteoporosis
Want to try it?
We don’t sell it, but you can buy pomegranates at your local supermarket, or buy the peel extract ready-made from online sources; here’s an example on Amazon for your convenience
(the marketing there is for use of the 100% pomegranate peel powder as a face mask; it also has health benefits for the skin when applied topically, but we didn’t have time to cover that today)
Enjoy!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Do We Need Sunscreen In Winter, Really?
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.
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!
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 😎
❝I keep seeing advice that we shoudl wear sunscreen out in winter even if it’s not hot or sunny, but is there actually any real benefit to this?❞
Short answer: yes (but it’s indeed not as critical as it is during summer’s hot/sunny days)
Longer answer: first, let’s examine the physics of summer vs winter when it comes to the sun…
In summer (assuming we live far enough from the equator to have this kind of seasonal variation), the part of the planet where we live is tilted more towards the sun. This makes it closer, and more importantly, it’s more directly overhead during the day. The difference in distance through space isn’t as big a deal as the difference in distance through the atmosphere. When the sun is more directly overhead, its rays have a shorter path through our atmosphere, and thus less chance of being blocked by cloud cover / refracted elsewhere / bounced back off into space before it even gets that far.
In winter, the opposite of all that is true.
Morning/evening also somewhat replicate this compared to midday, because the sun being lower in the sky has a similar effect to seasonal variation causing it to be less directly overhead.
For this reason, even though visually the sun may be just as bright on a winter morning as it is on a summer midday, the rays have been filtered very differently by the time they get to us.
This is one reason why you’re much less likely to get sunburned in the winter, compared to the summer (others include the actual temperature difference, your likely better hydration, and your likely more modest attire protecting you).
However…
The reason it is advisable to wear sunscreen in winter is not generally about sunburn, and is rather more about long-term cumulative skin damage (ranging from accelerated aging to cancer) caused by the UV rays—specifically, mostly UVA rays, since UVB rays (with their higher energy but shorter wavelength) have nearly all been blocked by the atmosphere.
Here’s a good explainer of that from the American Cancer Society:
UV (Ultraviolet) Radiation and Cancer Risk
👆 this may seem like a no-brainer, but there’s a lot explained here that demystifies a lot of things, covering ionizing vs non-ionizing radiation, x-rays and gamma-rays, the very different kinds of cancer caused by different things, and what things are dangerous vs which there’s no need to worry about (so far as best current science can say, at least).
Consequently: yes, if you value your skin health and avoidance of cancer, wearing sunscreen when out even in the winter is a good idea. Especially if your phone’s weather app says the UV index is “moderate” or above, but even if it’s “low”, it doesn’t hurt to include it as part of your skincare routine.
But what if sunscreens are dangerous?
Firstly, not all sunscreens are created equal:
Learn more: Who Screens The Sunscreens?
Secondly: consider putting on a protective layer of moisturizer first, and then the sunscreen on top. Bear in mind, this is winter we’re talking about, so you’re probably not going out in a bikini, so this is likely a face-neck-hands job and you’re done.
What about vitamin D?
Humans evolved to have more or less melanin in our skin depending on where we lived, and white people evolved to wring the most vitamin D possible out of the meagre sun far from the equator. Black people’s greater melanin, on the other hand, offers some initial protection against the sun (but any resultant skin cancer is then more dangerous than it would be for white people if it does occur, so please do use sunscreen whatever your skintone).
Nowadays many people live in many places which may or may not be the places we evolved for, and so we have to take that into account when it comes to sun exposure.
Here’s a deeper dive into that, for those who want to learn:
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:
-
Securely Attached –
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.
A lot of books on attachment theory are quite difficult to read. They’re often either too clinical with too much jargon that can feel like incomprehensible psychobabble, or else too wishy-washy and it starts to sound like a horoscope for psychology enthusiasts.
This one does it better.
The author gives us a clear overview and outline of attachment theory, with minimal jargon and/but clearly defined terms, and—which is a boon for anyone struggling to remember which general attachment pattern is which—color-codes everything consistently along the way. This is one reason that we recommend getting a print copy of the book, not the e-book.
The other reason to invest in the print copy rather than the e-book is the option to use parts of it as a workbook directly—though if preferred, one can simply take the prompts and use them, without writing in the book, of course.
It’s hard to say what the greatest value of this book is because there are two very strong candidates:
- Super-clear and easy explanation of Attachment Theory, in a way that actually makes sense and will stick
- Excellent actually helpful advice on improving how we use the knowledge that we now have of our own attachment patterns and those of others
Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand Attachment Theory and apply it to your life, but have been put off by other presentations of it, this is the most user-friendly, no-BS version that this reviewer has seen.
Click here to check out Securely Attached, and upgrade your relationship(s)!
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:
-
Improving Women’s Health Across the Lifespan – by Dr. Michelle Tollefson et al.
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.
We say “et al.”, because this hefty book (504 pages) is a compilation of contributions by about 60 authors, of whom, 100% are doctors and about 90% are women.
As one might expect from a book with many small self-contained chapters by such a lot of doctors, the content is very diverse, though the style is consistent throughout, likely due to the authors working from a style sheet, plus the work of the editorial team.
About that content: the focus here is lifestyle medicine, and while much of the advice will go for men too (most people are unlikely to go wrong with “eat more fruits and vegetables and get better sleep” etc), anything more detailed than that (of which there’s a lot) is focussed on women. Hence, we get chapters on optimal nutrition for women, physical activity for women, sleep and women’s health, etc, as well as topics that can affect everyone but disproportionately affect women—ranging from autoimmune diseases to social burdens that affect health in measurable ways. There’s also, as you might expect, plenty about sexual health, pregnancy-related health, menopausal health, and so forth.
The strength of this book is really in its diversity; it’s very much a case of “60 heads are better than one”, and as such, we’re pretty much getting 60 books for the price of one here, as each author brings what they are most specialized in.
Bottom line: if you are a woman and/or love a woman, this book is packed with information that will be of interest and applicable use.
Click here to check out Improving Women’s Health Across The Lifespan, and do just that!
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:
