The Science-Backed Anti-Inflammatory Diet for Beginners – by Dr. Yasmine Elamir & Dr. William Grist

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We have written about how to eat to beat inflammation, but what we didn’t do is include 75 recipes and a plan for building up one’s culinary repertoire around those core dishes!

That’s what this book does. It covers briefly the science of inflammation and anti-inflammatory diet, discusses experimental elimination diets (e.g. you eliminate likely culprits of triggering your inflammation, then reintroduce them one by one to see which it was), and ingredients likely to increase or decrease inflammation.

The 75 recipes are good, and/but a caveat is “yes, one of the recipes is ketchup and another is sour cream” so it’s not exactly 75 mains.

However! Where this book excels is in producing anti-inflammatory versions of commonly inflammatory dishes. That ketchup? Not sugary. The sour cream? Vegan. And so forth. We also see crispy roast potatoes, an array of desserts, and sections for popular holiday dishes too, so you will not need to be suddenly inflamed into the next dimension when it comes to festive eating.

The recipes are what the title claims them to be, “science-backed anti-inflammatory”, and that is clearly the main criterion for their inclusion. They are not by default vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, nut-free, gluten-free, etc. For this reason, all recipes are marked with such tags as “V, VG, DF, GF, EF, NF” etc as applicable.

Bottom line: we’d consider this book more of a jumping-off point than a complete repertoire, but it’s a very good jumping-off point, and will definitely get you “up and running” (there’s a 21-day meal plan, for example).

Click here to check out The Science-Back Anti-Inflammatory Diet for Beginners, and dial down the inflammation!

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Recommended

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    AI in healthcare: a valuable tool that speeds up research, improves diagnosis, and reduces errors. It’s not about humans vs machines, but rather collaboration for more informed decisions.

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  • Older people’s risk of abuse is rising. Can an ad campaign protect them?

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    Elder abuse is an emerging public health and safety issue for communities of high-income countries.

    The most recent data from Australia’s National Elder Abuse Prevalence Study, which surveyed 7,000 older people living in the community, found one in six self-reported being a victim of some form of abuse. But this did not include older people living in residential aged care or those with cognitive impairment, such as dementia – so is likely an underestimate.

    This week the Australian government announced a multi-million dollar advertising campaign it hopes will address this serious and abhorrent abuse.

    But is investing in community awareness of elder abuse the best use of scarce resources?

    Nuttapong punna/Shutterstock

    What is elder abuse?

    The World Health Organization (WHO) defines elder abuse as

    […] a single, or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust which causes harm or distress to an older person.

    Australia usually defines older people as those over 65. The exact age varies between countries depending on the overall health status of a nation and its vulnerable population groups. The WHO definitions of an older adult for sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is over 50. And there are communities with poorer health status and shorter lifespans within country borders, including our First Nations people.

    Elder abuse can take on many different forms including physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, or financial abuse and neglect.

    Living longer and wealthier

    The number of older people in our society is greater than it has ever been. Around 17% Australians are aged 65 and over. By 2071, older Australians will make up between 25% and 27% of the total population.

    People are living longer, accumulating substantial wealth and are vulnerable to abuse due to cognitive, physical or functional limitations.

    Longer lifespans increase the time of possible exposure to abuse. Australian men aged 65 can expect to live another 20.2 years, while women aged 65 are likely to live another 22.8 years. (Life expectancy for First Nations men and women remains significantly shorter.)

    Australian men are now 143 times more likely to reach the age of 100 than they were in 1901. Women are 82 times more likely.

    Older people hold a large proportion of our nation’s wealth, making them vulnerable to financial abuse. Recent research by the Australian Council of Social Service and UNSW Sydney reveals older households (with people over 65) are 25% wealthier than the average middle-aged household and almost four times as wealthy as the average under-35 household.

    Finally, older people have higher levels of impairment in their thinking, reasoning and physical function. Cognitive impairment, especially dementia, increases from one in 67 Australians under 60 to almost one in two people aged over 90.

    Over half of Australians aged 65 years and over have disability. A particularly vulnerable group are the 258,374 older Australians who receive government-funded home care.

    Who perpetrates elder abuse?

    Sadly, most of the perpetrators of elder abuse are known to their victims. They are usually a member of the family, such as a life partner, child or grandchild.

    Elder abuse causes significant illness and even early death. Financial abuse (across all ages) costs the community billions of dollars. Specific data for financial elder abuse is limited but indicates massive costs to individual survivors and the community.

    Despite this, the level of awareness of elder abuse is likely to be much lower than for family violence or child abuse. This is partly due to the comparatively recent concept of elder abuse, with global awareness campaigns only developed over the past two decades.

    Is an advertising campaign the answer?

    The federal government has allocated A$4.8 million to an advertising campaign on television, online and in health-care clinics to reach the broader community. For context, last year the government spent $131.4 million on all media campaigns, including $32.6 million on the COVID vaccination program, $2 million on Japanese encephalitis and $3.2 million on hearing health awareness.

    The campaign will likely benefit a small number of people who may be victims and have the capacity to report their perpetrators to authorities. It will generate some heartbreaking anecdotes. But it is unlikely to achieve broad community or systemic change.

    There is little research evidence to show media campaigns alter the behaviour of perpetrators of elder abuse. And suggesting the campaign raises awareness of the issue for older people who are survivors of abuse sounds more like blaming victims than empowering them.

    We don’t know how the government will judge the success of the campaign, so taxpayers won’t know whether a reasonable return on this investment was achieved. There may also be opportunity costs associated with the initiative – that is, lost opportunities for other actions and strategies. It could be more effective and efficient to target high-risk subgroups or to allocate funding to policy, practice reform or research that has direct tangible benefits for survivors. https://www.youtube.com/embed/DeK2kaqplTI?wmode=transparent&start=0 The Australian Human Rights Commission’s campaign from last year.

    But the campaign can’t hurt, right?

    Actually, the dangers that could come with an advertising campaign are two-fold.

    First it may well oversimplify a highly complex issue. Identifying and managing elder abuse requires an understanding of the person’s vulnerabilities, their decision-making capacity and ability to consent, the will and preferences of victim and the role of perpetrator in the older person’s life. Abuse happens in the context of family and social networks. And reporting abuse can have consequences for the victim’s quality of life and care.

    Consider the complexities of a case where an older person declines to have her grandson reported to police for stealing her money and medication because of her fear of becoming socially isolated. She might even feel responsible for the behaviour having raised the grandson and not want him to have a criminal record.

    Secondly, a public campaign can create the illusion government and our institutions have the matter “in hand”. This might slow the opportunity for real change.

    Ideally, the campaign will strengthen the argument for better policies, reporting procedures, policing, prosecution and judgements that are aligned. But these ends will also need investment in more research to build better communities that take good care of older people.

    Joseph Ibrahim, Professor, Aged Care Medical Research Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, La Trobe University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • You can’t reverse the ageing process but these 5 things can help you live longer

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    At this time of year many of us resolve to prioritise our health. So it is no surprise there’s a roaring trade of products purporting to guarantee you live longer, be healthier and look more youthful.

    While an estimated 25% of longevity is determined by our genes, the rest is determined by what we do, day to day.

    There are no quick fixes or short cuts to living longer and healthier lives, but the science is clear on the key principles. Here are five things you can do to extend your lifespan and improve your health.

    1. Eat a predominantly plant-based diet

    What you eat has a huge impact on your health. The evidence overwhelmingly shows eating a diet high in plant-based foods is associated with health and longevity.

    If you eat more plant-based foods and less meat, processed foods, sugar and salt, you reduce your risk of a range of illnesses that shorten our lives, including heart disease and cancer.

    Plant-based foods are rich in nutrients, phytochemicals, antioxidants and fibre. They’re also anti-inflammatory. All of this protects against damage to our cells as we age, which helps prevent disease.

    No particular diet is right for everyone but one of the most studied and healthiest is the Mediterranean diet. It’s based on the eating patterns of people who live in countries around the Mediterranean Sea and emphases vegetables, fruits, wholegrains, legumes, nuts and seeds, fish and seafood, and olive oil.

    2. Aim for a healthy weight

    Another important way you can be healthier is to try and achieve a healthy weight, as obesity increases the risk of a number of health problems that shorten our lives.

    Obesity puts strain on all of our body systems and has a whole myriad of physiological effects including causing inflammation and hormonal disturbances. These increase your chances of a number of diseases, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and a number of cancers.

    In addition to affecting us physically, obesity is also associated with poorer psychological health. It’s linked to depression, low self-esteem and stress.

    One of the biggest challenges we face in the developed world is that we live in an environment that promotes obesity. The ubiquitous marketing and the easy availability of high-calorie foods our bodies are hard-wired to crave mean it’s easy to consume too many calories.

    3. Exercise regularly

    We all know that exercise is good for us – the most common resolution we make this time of year is to do more exercise and to get fitter. Regular exercise protects against chronic illness, lowers your stress and improves your mental health.

    While one of the ways exercising helps you is by supporting you to control your weight and lowering your body fat levels, the effects are broader and include improving your glucose (blood sugar) use, lowering your blood pressure, reducing inflammation and improving blood flow and heart function.

    While it’s easy to get caught up in all of the hype about different exercise strategies, the evidence suggests that any way you can include physical activity in your day has health benefits. You don’t have to run marathons or go to the gym for hours every day. Build movement into your day in any way that you can and do things that you enjoy.

    4. Don’t smoke

    If you want to be healthier and live longer then don’t smoke or vape.

    Smoking cigarettes affects almost every organ in the body and is associated with both a shorter and lower quality of life. There is no safe level of smoking – every cigarette increases your chances of developing a range of cancers, heart disease and diabetes.

    Even if you have been smoking for years, by giving up smoking at any age you can experience health benefits almost immediately, and you can reverse many of the harmful effects of smoking.

    If you’re thinking of switching to vapes as a healthy long term option, think again. The long term health effects of vaping are not fully understood and they come with their own health risks.

    5. Prioritise social connection

    When we talk about living healthier and longer, we tend to focus on what we do to our physical bodies. But one of the most important discoveries over the past decade has been the recognition of the importance of spiritual and psychological health.

    People who are lonely and socially isolated have a much higher risk of dying early and are more likely to suffer from heart disease, stroke, dementia as well as anxiety and depression.

    Although we don’t fully understand the mechanisms, it’s likely due to both behavioural and biological factors. While people who are more socially connected are more likely to engage in healthy behaviours, there also seems to be a more direct physiological effect of loneliness on the body.

    So if you want to be healthier and live longer, build and maintain your connections to others.

    Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    The Conversation

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  • One Cause; Countless Aches

    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.

    What Is The Cause?

    Zac Cupples’ video (below) makes an appealing claim: 90% of movement issues and discomforts we experience daily come from one source: reduced joint space due to increased muscle tension.

    For Cupples, this could be causing anything from knee pain to foot pain to ankle pain to hip pain to generalized joint pain to…pretty much any sort of pain.

    So, why do we describe this as “appealing”?

    Well, if there’s just one cause, that means there is only one thing to fix

    Can This Be True?

    Whilst we normally stray away from oversimplifications, we found Cupples’ example quite powerful.

    Cupples defends his thesis by illustrating it with a simple wrist movement experiment: try moving your wrist in a circle with your palm open, and then do the same with your fist clenched.

    Did you notice a difference?

    When you clench your fist, movement (normally) becomes restricted and uncomfortable, illustrating how increased tension limits joint space.

    It’s a powerful analogy for understanding our body’s mechanics.

    So How Do We Fix It?

    To combat issues with reduced joint space, Cupples proposes a three-step solution: reducing muscle tension, increasing range of motion in commonly limited areas, and enhancing movement efficiency. He delves into strategies for achieving these, including adopting certain positions and breathing techniques.

    There are also some elements of strategic muscle engagement, but we’ll leave that to him to describe:

    How was the video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!

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Related Posts

  • The Age-Proof Brain – by Dr. Marc Milstein
  • Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis

    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.

    Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis

    Arthritis is the umbrella term for a cluster of joint diseases involving inflammation of the joints, hence “arthr-” (joint) “-itis” (suffix used to denote inflammation).

    Inflammatory vs Non-Inflammatory Arthritis

    Arthritis is broadly divided into inflammatory arthritis and non-inflammatory arthritis.

    Some forms, such as rheumatoid arthritis, are of the inflammatory kind. We wrote about that previously:

    See: Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis

    You may be wondering: how does one get non-inflammatory inflammation of the joints?

    The answer is, in “non-inflammatory” arthritis, such as osteoarthritis, the damage comes first (by general wear-and-tear) and inflammation generally follows as part of the symptoms, rather than the cause.

    So the name can be a little confusing. In the case of osteo- and other “non-inflammatory” forms of arthritis, you definitely still want to keep your inflammation at bay as best you can; it’s just not the prime focus.

    So, what should we focus on?

    First and foremost: avoiding wear-and-tear if possible. Naturally, we all must live our lives, and sometimes that means taking a few knocks, and definitely it means using our joints. An unused joint would suffer just as much as an abused one. But, we can take care of our joints!

    We wrote on that previously, too:

    See: How To Really Look After Your Joints

    New osteoarthritis medication (hot off the press!)

    At 10almonds, we try to keep on top of new developments, and here’s a shiny new one from this month:

    Note also that Dr. Flavia Cicuttini there talks about what we talked about above—that calling it non-inflammatory arthritis is a little misleading, as the inflammation still occurs.

    And finally…

    You might consider other lifestyle adjustments to manage your symptoms. These include:

    • Exercise—gently, though!
    • Rest—while keeping mobility going.
    • Mobility aids—if it helps, it helps.
    • Go easy on the use of braces, splints, etc—these can offer short-term relief, but at a long term cost of loss of mobility.
      • Only you can decide where to draw the line when it comes to that trade-off.

    You can also check out our previous article:

    See: Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

    Take good care of yourself!

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  • Sleep Tracking, For Five Million Nights

    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.

    5 Sleep Phenotypes, By Actual Science

    You probably know people can be broadly divided into “early birds” and “night owls”:

    Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment

    …and then the term “hummingbird” gets used for a person who flits between the two.

    That’s three animals so far. If you read a book we reviewed recently, specifically this one:

    The Power of When – by Dr. Michael Breus

    …then you may have used the guide within to self-diagnose your circadian rhythm type (chronotype) according to Dr. Breus’s system, which divides people into bears, lions, wolves, and dolphins.

    That’s another four animals. If you have a FitBit, it can “diagnose” you with being those and/or a menagerie of others, such as giraffe, hedgehog, parrot, and tortoise:

    How Fitbit Developed the Sleep Profile Experience (Part 2 – Sleep Animals)

    Five million nights

    A team of researchers recently took a step away from this veritable zoo of 11 different animals and counting, and used a sophisticated modelling system to create a spatial-temporal map of people’s sleep habits, and this map created five main “islands” that people’s sleep habits could settle on, or sometimes move from island to island.

    Those “five million nights” by the way? It was actually 5,095,798 nights! You might notice that would take from the 2020s to the 15970s to complete, so this was rather a matter of monitoring 33,152 individuals between January and October of the same year. Between them, they got those 5,095,798 nights of sleep (or in some cases, nights of little or no sleep, but still, they were there for the nights).

    The five main phenotypes that the researchers found were:

    1. What we think of as “normal” sleep. In this phenotype, people get about eight hours of uninterrupted sleep for at least six days in a row.
    2. As above for half the nights, but they only sleep for short periods of time in bouts of less than three hours the other half.
    3. As per normal sleep, but with one interrupted night per week, consisting of a 5 hour sleep period and then broken sleep for a few more hours.
    4. As per normal sleep generally, but with occasional nights in which long bouts of sleep are separated by a mid-sleep waking.
    5. Sleeping for very short periods of time every night. This phenotype was the rarest the researchers found, and represents extremely disrupted sleep.

    As you might suspect, phenotype 1 is healthier than phenotype 5. But that’s not hugely informational, as the correlation between getting good sleep and having good health is well-established. So, what did the study teach us?

    ❝We found that little changes in sleep quality helped us identify health risks. Those little changes wouldn’t show up on an average night, or on a questionnaire, so it really shows how wearables help us detect risks that would otherwise be missed.❞

    ~ Dr. Benjamin Smarr

    More specifically,

    ❝We found that the little differences in how sleep disruptions occur can tell us a lot. Even if these instances are rare, their frequency is also telling. So it’s not just whether you sleep well or not – it’s the patterns of sleep over time where the key info hides❞

    ~ Dr. Edward Wang

    …and, which gets to the absolute point,

    ❝If you imagine there’s a landscape of sleep types, then it’s less about where you tend to live on that landscape, and more about how often you leave that area❞

    ~ Dr. Varun Viswanath

    In other words: if your sleep pattern is not ideal, that’s one thing and it’d probably be good to address it, by improving your sleep. However, if your sleep pattern changes phenotype without an obvious known reason why, this may be considered an alarm bell warning of something else that needs addressing, which may be an underlying illness or condition—meaning it can be worthwhile being a little extra vigilant when it comes to regular health screenings, in case something new has appeared.

    Want to read more?

    You can read the paper in full here:

    Five million nights: temporal dynamics in human sleep phenotypes

    Take care!

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  • This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism – by Ashton Applewhite

    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 easy to think of ageism as being 80% “nobody will hire me because I am three years away from standard retirement age”, but it’s a lot more pervasive than that. And some of it, perhaps the most insidious, is the ageism that we can sometimes internalize without thinking it through.

    10almonds readers love to avoid/reverse aging (and this reviewer is no different!), but it’s good once in a while to consider our priorities and motivations, for example:

    • There is merit in being able to live without disability or discomfort
    • There is harm in feeling a need to pass for younger than we are

    And yet, even things such as disabilities are, Applewhite fairly argues, not to be feared. Absolutely avoided if reasonably possible of course, yes, but if they happen they happen and it’s good that we be able to make our peace with that, because most people have at least some kind of disability before the end, and can still strive to make the most of the precious gift that is life. The goal can and should be to play the hand we’re dealt and to live as well as we can—whatever that latter means for us personally.

    Many people’s life satisfaction goes up in later years, and Applewhite hypothesizes that while some of that can be put down to circumstances (often no longer overwhelmed with work etc, often more financially stable), a lot is a matter of having come to terms with “losing” youth and no longer having that fear. Thus, a new, freer age of life begins.

    The book does cover many other areas too, more than we can list here (but for example: ranging from pro/con brain differences to sex and intimacy), and the idea that long life is a team sport, and that we should not fall into the all-American trap of putting independence on a pedestal. Reports of how aging works with close-knit communities in the supercentenarian Blue Zones can be considered to quash this quite nicely, for instance.

    The style is casual and entertaining, and yet peppered with scholarly citations, which stack up to 30 pages of references at the back.

    Bottom line: getting older is a privilege that not everyone gets to have, so who are we to squander it? This book shares a vital sense of perspective, and is a call-to-arms for us all to do better, together.

    Click here to check out This Chair Rocks, and indeed rock it!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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