The Secret To Better Squats: Foot, Knee, & Ankle Mobility
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We’ve talked before about how Slav squats, Asian squats, deep squats, sitting squats, or various other things they might by called (these are all different names for the same thing), are one of the most anti-aging exercises, if not outright the most anti-aging exercise. Yet, how to get good at them?
“Just squat more” is fine advice and will get you there eventually, but there are ways to shorten the time it takes, by unlocking whatever part(s) might be holding you back:
Piece by piece
The key to improving the whole is to not neglect any of the parts—so here they are:
- Foot rolls: roll your foot onto its outer and inner edges to stretch; repeat for both legs.
- Toe lifts: lift your toes up and down while keeping your legs straight.
- Toe curls: curl your toes to engage foot muscles.
- Foot circles: rotate your feet in circles; repeat for both legs.
- Heel raises: stand tall, raise your heels off the ground, and engage your core.
- Tibialis anterior exercise: lean against a wall or similar, and lift your toes off ground to strengthen your tibialis anterior (important and oft-forgotten muscle, responsible for more than people think!)
- Heel drops: perform dynamic heel drops with your feet back, to stretch your ankles.
- Hamstring curls & leg extension: curl your leg back toward your glutes, and then extend it forwards; alternate legs.
- Dynamic calf stretch: bend and straighten your knees alternately in a forward lunge position.
- Squat to heel raise: perform squats with your heels lifting off the floor and your arms raised.
- Banded ankle dorsiflexion: use a yoga strap or towel to stretch your feet, calves, and hamstrings.
- Seated feet circles: extend your legs and rotate your feet in outward and inward circles.
- Dorsiflexion/plantar flexion: alternate one foot up and the other down dynamically.
- Seated knee flexion & extension: alternate lifting your knees and extending your legs, while seated.
Note: “seated” in all cases means on the floor, not a chair!
For more on all of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
What Nobody Teaches You About Strengthening Your Knees ← about that tibialis anterior muscle and what it means for your knees
Take care!
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Lies I Taught in Medical School – by Dr. Robert Lufkin
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There seems to be a pattern of doctors who practice medicine one way, get a serious disease personally, and then completely change their practice of medicine afterwards. This is one of those cases.
Dr. Lufkin here presents, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, the titularly promised “lies” or, in more legally compliant speak (as he acknowledges in his preface), flawed hypotheses that are generally taught as truths. In many cases, the “lie” is some manner of “xyz is normal and nothing to worry about”, and/or “there is nothing to be done about xyz; suck it up”.
The end result of the information is not complicated—enjoy a plants-forward whole foods low-carb diet to avoid metabolic diseases and all the other things to branch off from same (Dr. Lufkin makes a fair case for metabolic disease leading to a lot of secondary diseases that aren’t considered metabolic diseases per se). But, the journey there is actually important, as it answers a lot of questions that are much less commonly understood, and often not even especially talked-about, despite their great import and how they may affect health decisions beyond the dietary. Things like understanding the downsides of statins, or the statistical models that can be used to skew studies, per relative risk reduction and so forth.
Bottom line: this book gives the ins and outs of what can go right or wrong with metabolic health and why, and how to make sure you don’t sabotage your health through missing information.
Click here to check out Lies I Taught In Medical School, and arm yourself with knowledge!
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New research suggests intermittent fasting increases the risk of dying from heart disease. But the evidence is mixed
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Kaitlin Day, RMIT University and Sharayah Carter, RMIT University
Intermittent fasting has gained popularity in recent years as a dietary approach with potential health benefits. So you might have been surprised to see headlines last week suggesting the practice could increase a person’s risk of death from heart disease.
The news stories were based on recent research which found a link between time-restricted eating, a form of intermittent fasting, and an increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, or heart disease.
So what can we make of these findings? And how do they measure up with what else we know about intermittent fasting and heart disease?
The study in question
The research was presented as a scientific poster at an American Heart Association conference last week. The full study hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a long-running survey that collects information from a large number of people in the United States.
This type of research, known as observational research, involves analysing large groups of people to identify relationships between lifestyle factors and disease. The study covered a 15-year period.
It showed people who ate their meals within an eight-hour window faced a 91% increased risk of dying from heart disease compared to those spreading their meals over 12 to 16 hours. When we look more closely at the data, it suggests 7.5% of those who ate within eight hours died from heart disease during the study, compared to 3.6% of those who ate across 12 to 16 hours.
We don’t know if the authors controlled for other factors that can influence health, such as body weight, medication use or diet quality. It’s likely some of these questions will be answered once the full details of the study are published.
It’s also worth noting that participants may have eaten during a shorter window for a range of reasons – not necessarily because they were intentionally following a time-restricted diet. For example, they may have had a poor appetite due to illness, which could have also influenced the results.
Other research
Although this research may have a number of limitations, its findings aren’t entirely unique. They align with several other published studies using the NHANES data set.
For example, one study showed eating over a longer period of time reduced the risk of death from heart disease by 64% in people with heart failure.
Another study in people with diabetes showed those who ate more frequently had a lower risk of death from heart disease.
A recent study found an overnight fast shorter than ten hours and longer than 14 hours increased the risk dying from of heart disease. This suggests too short a fast could also be a problem.
But I thought intermittent fasting was healthy?
There are conflicting results about intermittent fasting in the scientific literature, partly due to the different types of intermittent fasting.
There’s time restricted eating, which limits eating to a period of time each day, and which the current study looks at. There are also different patterns of fast and feed days, such as the well-known 5:2 diet, where on fast days people generally consume about 25% of their energy needs, while on feed days there is no restriction on food intake.
Despite these different fasting patterns, systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) consistently demonstrate benefits for intermittent fasting in terms of weight loss and heart disease risk factors (for example, blood pressure and cholesterol levels).
RCTs indicate intermittent fasting yields comparable improvements in these areas to other dietary interventions, such as daily moderate energy restriction.
There are a variety of intermittent fasting diets. Fauxels/Pexels So why do we see such different results?
RCTs directly compare two conditions, such as intermittent fasting versus daily energy restriction, and control for a range of factors that could affect outcomes. So they offer insights into causal relationships we can’t get through observational studies alone.
However, they often focus on specific groups and short-term outcomes. On average, these studies follow participants for around 12 months, leaving long-term effects unknown.
While observational research provides valuable insights into population-level trends over longer periods, it relies on self-reporting and cannot demonstrate cause and effect.
Relying on people to accurately report their own eating habits is tricky, as they may have difficulty remembering what and when they ate. This is a long-standing issue in observational studies and makes relying only on these types of studies to help us understand the relationship between diet and disease challenging.
It’s likely the relationship between eating timing and health is more complex than simply eating more or less regularly. Our bodies are controlled by a group of internal clocks (our circadian rhythm), and when our behaviour doesn’t align with these clocks, such as when we eat at unusual times, our bodies can have trouble managing this.
So, is intermittent fasting safe?
There’s no simple answer to this question. RCTs have shown it appears a safe option for weight loss in the short term.
However, people in the NHANES dataset who eat within a limited period of the day appear to be at higher risk of dying from heart disease. Of course, many other factors could be causing them to eat in this way, and influence the results.
When faced with conflicting data, it’s generally agreed among scientists that RCTs provide a higher level of evidence. There are too many unknowns to accept the conclusions of an epidemiological study like this one without asking questions. Unsurprisingly, it has been subject to criticism.
That said, to gain a better understanding of the long-term safety of intermittent fasting, we need to be able follow up individuals in these RCTs over five or ten years.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in trying intermittent fasting, you should speak to a health professional first.
Kaitlin Day, Lecturer in Human Nutrition, RMIT University and Sharayah Carter, Lecturer Nutrition and Dietetics, RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How Regularity Of Sleep Can Be Even More Important Than Duration
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A recent, large (n=72,269) 8-year prospective* observational study of adults aged 40-79 has found an association between irregular sleep and major cardiovascular events.
*this means they started the study at a given point, and measured what happened for the next eight years—as opposed to a retrospective study, which would look at what had happened during the previous 8 years.
As to what qualifies as major cardiovascular events, they counted:
- Heart attack
- Cardiac arrest
- Stroke
- Cardiovascular death (any)
Irregular sleep, meanwhile, was defined per a bell curve of participants. Based on a sleep regularity index (SRI) score, those with a score of 87 or more were on the “regular” side of the curve, and those with a score of 72 or lower were on the “irregular” side of the curve.
What they found is that irregular sleep is associated with major cardiovascular events, regardless of the actual amount of sleep that people got. So in other words, you could be sleeping 9 hours per day, but if it’s a different 9 hours each day, your cardiovascular risk will still be higher.
How much higher?
- For those in the middle of the curve (so, moderate irregularity), it was 8% higher than those on the “regular” side.
- For those on the “irregular” side of the curve, it was 26% higher than those on the “regular” side.
All of the above is after taking into account confounding variables such as age, physical activity levels, discretionary screen time, fruit, vegetable, and coffee intake, alcohol consumption, smoking, mental health issues, medication use, and shift work. Which is quite something, given that shift work is a very common reason for irregular sleep schedules in a lot of people.
Limitations
While, as noted above, they did their best to account for a lot of things, this was an observational study, not an interventional study or a randomized controlled trial, and as such, it cannot truly establish cause and effect.
For example, an observational study in the 90s found that the sport most strongly associated with longevity was polo. For any unfamiliar, it’s a game played on horseback with mallets and balls. Why was this game so much better than, say, swimming? And the answer is most likely that polo is played almost entirely by very rich people. It wasn’t the sport that enhanced longevity—it was the wealth.
So similarly here, it could be for example that people who are predisposed to heart conditions, are prone to having irregular schedules. We won’t know for sure until we have interventional studies (and we probably can’t get RCTs for this, for practical reasons).
Still, it seems likely that the association is indeed causal, in which case, having a regular sleep schedule if at all possible seems like a very good way to look after one’s health.
You can read more about the study here:
Irregular sleep may elevate risk of major cardiovascular events
Practical take-away
This study strongly suggests that sleep regularity is even more important than sleep duration.
This means that there is extra reason to not sleep in past one’s normal getting-up time, even if one had a less restful night.
That’s the end of sleep that’s the most important in practical terms, too, because we can control our getting-up time, whereas we can’t really control our going-to-sleep time, because it’s perfectly possible to just lie there awake.
So, controlling the getting-up time is really the key to the whole thing. See also:
Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep
And for scope, you might enjoy reading:
Morning Larks vs Night Owls: How Much Can We Control Our Sleep Schedule?
Enjoy!
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They Were Injured at the Super Bowl Parade. A Month Later, They Feel Forgotten.
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.
KFF Health News and KCUR are following the stories of people injured during the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration. Listen to how one Kansas family is coping with the trauma.
Jason Barton didn’t want to attend the Super Bowl parade this year. He told a co-worker the night before that he worried about a mass shooting. But it was Valentine’s Day, his wife is a Kansas City Chiefs superfan, and he couldn’t afford to take her to games since ticket prices soared after the team won the championship in 2020.
So Barton drove 50 miles from Osawatomie, Kansas, to downtown Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Bridget, her 13-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and Gabriella’s school friend. When they finally arrived home that night, they cleaned blood from Gabriella’s sneakers and found a bullet in Bridget’s backpack.
Gabriella’s legs were burned by sparks from a ricocheted bullet, Bridget was trampled while shielding Gabriella in the chaos, and Jason gave chest compressions to a man injured by gunfire. He believes it was Lyndell Mays, one of two men charged with second-degree felony murder.
“There’s never going to be a Valentine’s Day where I look back and I don’t think about it,” Gabriella said, “because that’s a day where we’re supposed to have fun and appreciate the people that we have.”
One month after the parade in which the U.S. public health crisis that is gun violence played out on live television, the Bartons are reeling from their role at its epicenter. They were just feet from 43-year-old Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who was killed. Twenty-four other people were injured. Although the Bartons aren’t included in that official victim number, they were traumatized, physically and emotionally, and pain permeates their lives: Bridget and Jason keep canceling plans to go out, opting instead to stay home together; Gabriella plans to join a boxing club instead of the dance team.
During this first month, Kansas City community leaders have weighed how to care for people caught in the bloody crossfire and how to divide more than $2 million donated to public funds for victims in the initial outpouring of grief.
The questions are far-reaching: How does a city compensate people for medical bills, recovery treatments, counseling, and lost wages? And what about those who have PTSD-like symptoms that could last years? How does a community identify and care for victims often overlooked in the first flush of reporting on a mass shooting: the injured?
The injured list could grow. Prosecutors and Kansas City police are mounting a legal case against four of the shooting suspects, and are encouraging additional victims to come forward.
“Specifically, we’re looking for individuals who suffered wounds from their trying to escape. A stampede occurred while people were trying to flee,” said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. Anyone who “in the fleeing of this event that maybe fell down, you were trampled, you sprained an ankle, you broke a bone.”
Meanwhile, people who took charge of raising money and providing services to care for the injured are wrestling with who gets the money — and who doesn’t. Due to large donations from celebrities like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, some victims or their families will have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical expenses. Other victims may simply have their counseling covered.
The overall economic cost of U.S. firearm injuries is estimated by a recent Harvard Medical School study at $557 billion annually. Most of that — 88% — represented quality-of-life losses among those injured by firearms and their families. The JAMA-published study found that each nonfatal firearm injury leads to roughly $30,000 in direct health care spending per survivor in the first year alone.
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, as well-intentioned GoFundMe pages popped up to help victims, executives at United Way of Greater Kansas City gathered to devise a collective donation response. They came up with “three concentric circles of victims,” said Jessica Blubaugh, the United Way’s chief philanthropy officer, and launched the #KCStrong campaign.
“There were folks that were obviously directly impacted by gunfire. Then the next circle out is folks that were impacted, not necessarily by gunshots, but by physical impact. So maybe they were trampled and maybe they tore a ligament or something because they were running away,” Blubaugh said. “Then third is folks that were just adjacent and/or bystanders that have a lot of trauma from all of this.”
PTSD, Panic, and the Echo of Gunfire
Bridget Barton returned to Kansas City the day after the shooting to turn in the bullet she found in her backpack and to give a statement at police headquarters. Unbeknownst to her, Mayor Quinton Lucas and the police and fire chiefs had just finished a press conference outside the building. She was mobbed by the media assembled there — interviews that are now a blur.
“I don’t know how you guys do this every day,” she remembered telling a detective once she finally got inside.
The Bartons have been overwhelmed by well wishes from close friends and family as they navigate the trauma, almost to the point of exhaustion. Bridget took to social media to explain she wasn’t ignoring the messages, she’s just responding as she feels able — some days she can hardly look at her phone, she said.
A family friend bought new Barbie blankets for Gabriella and her friend after the ones they brought to the parade were lost or ruined. Bridget tried replacing the blankets herself at her local Walmart, but when she was bumped accidentally, it triggered a panic attack. She abandoned her cart and drove home.
“I’m trying to get my anxiety under control,” Bridget said.
That means therapy. Before the parade, she was already seeing a therapist and planning to begin eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a form of therapy associated with treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Now the shooting is the first thing she wants to talk about in therapy.
Since Gabriella, an eighth grader, has returned to middle school, she has dealt with the compounding immaturity of adolescence: peers telling her to get over it, pointing finger guns at her, or even saying it should have been her who was shot. But her friends are checking on her and asking how she’s doing. She wishes more people would do the same for her friend, who took off running when the shooting started and avoided injury. Gabriella feels guilty about bringing her to what turned into a horrifying experience.
“We can tell her all day long, ‘It wasn’t your fault. She’s not your responsibility.’ Just like I can tell myself, ‘It wasn’t my fault or my responsibility,’” Bridget said. “But I still bawled on her mom’s shoulder telling her how sorry I was that I grabbed my kid first.”
The two girls have spent a lot of time talking since the shooting, which Gabriella said helps with her own stress. So does spending time with her dog and her lizard, putting on makeup, and listening to music — Tech N9ne’s performance was a highlight of the Super Bowl celebration for her.
In addition to the spark burns on Gabriella’s legs, when she fell to the concrete in the pandemonium she split open a burn wound on her stomach previously caused by a styling iron.
“When I see that, I just picture my mom trying to protect me and seeing everyone run,” Gabriella said of the wound.
It’s hard not to feel forgotten by the public, Bridget said. The shooting, especially its survivors, have largely faded from the headlines aside from court dates. Two additional high-profile shootings have occurred in the area since the parade. Doesn’t the community care, she wonders, that her family is still living with the fallout every day?
“I’m going to put this as plainly as possible. I’m f—ing pissed because my family went through something traumatic,” Bridget vented in a recent social media post. “I don’t really want anything other [than], ‘Your story matters, too, and we want to know how you’re doing.’ Have we gotten that? Abso-f—lutely not.”
‘What Is the Landscape of Need?’
Helped in part by celebrities like Swift and Kelce, donations for the family of Lopez-Galvan, the lone fatality, and other victims poured in immediately after the shootings. Swift and Kelce donated $100,000 each. With the help of an initial $200,000 donation from the Kansas City Chiefs, the United Way’s #KCStrong campaign took off, reaching $1 million in the first two weeks and sitting at $1.2 million now.
Six verified GoFundMe funds were established. One solely for the Lopez-Galvan family has collected over $406,000. Smaller ones were started by a local college student and Swift fans. Churches have also stepped up, and one local coalition had raised $183,000, money set aside for Lopez-Galvan’s funeral, counseling services for five victims, and other medical bills from Children’s Mercy Kansas City hospital, said Ray Jarrett, executive director of Unite KC.
Money for Victims Rolls In
Donations poured in for those injured at the Super Bowl Parade in Kansas City after the Feb. 14 shootings. The largest, starting with a $200,000 donation from the Kansas City Chiefs, is at the United Way of Greater Kansas City. Six GoFundMe sites also popped up, due in part to $100,000 donations each from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Here’s a look at the totals as of March 12.United Way#KCStrong: $1.2 million.Six Verified GoFundMe AccountsLisa Lopez-Galvan GoFundMe (Taylor Swift donated): $406,142Reyes Family GoFundMe (Travis Kelce donated): $207,035Samuel Arellano GoFundMe: $11,896Emily Tavis GoFundMe: $9,518Cristian Martinez’s GoFundMe for United Way: $2,967Swifties’ GoFundMe for Children’s Mercy hospital: $1,060ChurchesResurrection (Methodist) “Victims of Violence Fund”: $53,358‘The Church Loves Kansas City’: $183,000
Meanwhile, those leading the efforts found models in other cities. The United Way’s Blubaugh called counterparts who’d responded to their own mass shootings in Orlando, Florida; Buffalo, New York; and Newtown, Connecticut.
“The unfortunate reality is we have a cadre of communities across the country who have already faced tragedies like this,” Blubaugh said. “So there is an unfortunate protocol that is, sort of, already in place.”
#KCStrong monies could start being paid out by the end of March, Blubaugh said. Hundreds of people called the nonprofit’s 211 line, and the United Way is consulting with hospitals and law enforcement to verify victims and then offer services they may need, she said.
The range of needs is staggering — several people are still recovering at home, some are seeking counseling, and many weren’t even counted in the beginning. For instance, a plainclothes police officer was injured in the melee but is doing fine now, said Police Chief Stacey Graves.
Determining who is eligible for assistance was one of the first conversations United Way officials had when creating the fund. They prioritized three areas of focus: first were the wounded victims and their families, second was collaborating with organizations already helping victims in violence intervention and prevention and mental health services, and third were the first responders.
Specifically, the funds will be steered to cover medical bills, or lost wages for those who haven’t been able to work since the shootings, Blubaugh said. The goal is to work quickly to help people, she said, but also to spend the money in a judicious, strategic way.
“We don’t have a clear sightline of the entire landscape that we’re dealing with,” Blubaugh said. “Not only of how much money do we have to work with, but also, what is the landscape of need? And we need both of those things to be able to make those decisions.”
Firsthand Experience of Daily Kansas City Violence
Jason used his lone remaining sick day to stay home with Bridget and Gabriella. An overnight automation technician, he is the family’s primary breadwinner.
“I can’t take off work, you know?” he said. “It happened. It sucked. But it’s time to move on.”
“He’s a guy’s guy,” Bridget interjected.
On Jason’s first night back at work, the sudden sound of falling dishes startled Bridget and Gabriella, sending them into each other’s arms crying.
“It’s just those moments of flashbacks that are kicking our butts,” Bridget said.
Tell Us About Your Experience
We are continuing to report on the effects of the parade shooting on the people who were injured and the community as a whole. Do you have an experience you want to tell us about, or a question you think we should look into? Message KCUR’s text line at (816) 601-4777. Your information will not be used in an article without your permission.
In a way, the shooting has brought the family closer. They’ve been through a lot recently. Jason survived a heart attack and cancer last year. Raising a teenager is never easy.
Bridget can appreciate that the bullet lodged in her backpack, narrowly missing her, and that Gabriella’s legs were burned by sparks but she wasn’t shot.
Jason is grateful for another reason: It wasn’t a terrorist attack, as he initially feared. Instead, it fits into the type of gun violence he’d become accustomed to growing up in Kansas City, which recorded its deadliest year last year, although he’d never been this close to it before.
“This crap happens every single day,” he said. “The only difference is we were here for it.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
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Avocado Oil vs Olive Oil – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing avocado oil to olive oil, we picked the olive oil.
Why?
Avocados and olives are both very healthy foods. However, when they are made into oils, there’s an important distinguishing factor:
Olive oil usually retains a lot of the micronutrients from the olives (including vitamins E and K), whereas no measurable micronutrients usually remain in avocado oil.
So while both olive oil and avocado oil have a similar (excellent; very heart-healthy!) lipids profile, the olive oil has some bonuses that the avocado oil doesn’t.
We haven’t written about the nutritional profiles of either avocados or olives yet, but here’s what we had to say on the different kinds of olive oil available:
And here’s an example of a good one on Amazon, for your convenience 😎
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Reduce Your Skin Tag Risk
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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!
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
❝As I get older, I seem to be increasingly prone to skin tags, which appear, seemingly out of nowhere, on my face, chest and back. My dermatologist happily burns them off – but is there anything I can do to prevent them?!❞
Not a lot! But, potentially something.
The main risk factor for skin tags is genetic, and you can’t change that in any easy way.
The other main risk factors are connected to each other:
Skin folds, and chafing
Skin tags mostly appear where chafing happens. This can be, for example:
- Inside joint articulations (especially groin and armpits)
- Between fat rolls (if you have them)
So, if you have fat rolls, then losing weight will also reduce the risk of skin tags.
Additionally, obesity and some often-related problems such as diabetes, hypertension, and an atherogenic lipid profile also increase the risk of skin tags (amongst other more serious things):
See: Association of Skin Tag with Metabolic Syndrome and its Components
As for the chafing, this can be reduced in various ways, including:
- losing weight if (and only if) you are carrying excess weight
- dressing against chafing (consider your underwear choices, for example)
- keeping hair in the armpits and groin (it’s part of what it’s there for)
See also: Simply The Pits: These Underarm Myths!
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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