The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness – by Alvaro Fernandez 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.” in the by-line, because this one has a flock of authors, including Dr. Pascale Michelon, Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, Dr. Elkehon Goldberg, and various others if we include the foreword, introduction, etc.
This is relevant, because those who contributed to the meat of the book (i.e., those listed above), it makes the work a lot more scientifically reliable; one skilled science writer might make a mistake; it’s much less likely to make it through to publication when there are a bevy of doctors in the mix, each staking their reputation on the book’s content, and thus having a vested interest in checking each other’s work as well as their own.
As for what this multidisciplinary team have to offer? The book covers such things as:
- how the brain works (especially the possibilities of neuroplasticity), and what that means for such things as memory and attention
- being “a coach not a patient”; i.e., being active rather than passive in one’s approach to brain health
- the relevance of physical exercise, how much, and what kind
- the relevance (and limitations) of diet choices for brain health
- the relevance of such things as learning new languages and musical training
- the relevance of social engagement, and how some (but not all) social engagement can boost cognition
- methods for managing stress and building resilience to same (critical for maintaining a healthy brain)
- “cross-fit for your brain”, that is to say, a multi-vector collection of tools to explore, ranging from meditation to CBT to biofeedback and more.
The style is pop-science without being sensationalist, just communicating ideas clearly, with enough padding to feel casual, and not like a dense read. Importantly, it’s also practical and applicable too, which is something we always look for here.
Bottom line: if you’d like to be given a good overview of what things work (and how much they can be expected to work), along with a good framework to put that knowledge into practice, then this is a great book for you.
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:
-
Heart Rate Zones, Oxalates, & More
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? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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 think the heart may be an issue for lots of us. I know it is for me due to AFib. When I’m in my training zone like on a treadmill, I’m usually around 110 to 120. But there are occasionally times when I’m at 140 or 150. How dangerous is that? If I use that formula of 180 minus age, thats 103. I get nothing from that. My resting heart rate is in the 50 to 60 range.❞
First, for safety, let us draw attention to our medical disclaimer at the bottom of each email, and also specifically note that we are not cardiologists here, let alone your cardiologist. There’s a lot we can’t know or advise about. However, as general rules of thumb:
For people without serious health conditions, it is considered good and healthful for one’s heart rate to double (from its resting rate) during exercise, with even more than 2.5x resting rate being nothing more than a good cardio workout.
As for “180 minus age” (presuming you mean: to calculate the safe maximum heart rate), more common (and used by the American Heart Association) is 220 minus age. In your case, that’d give 143.
Having atrial fibrillation may change this however, and we can’t offer medical advice.
We can point to this AHA “AFib Resources For Patients and Professionals”, including this handy FAQ sheet which says:
“Am I able to exercise?” / “Yes, as long as you’re cleared by your doctor, you can perform normal activities of daily living that you can tolerate” (accompanied by a little graphic of a person using an exercise bike)
You personally probably know this already, of course, but it’s quite an extensive collection of resources, so we thought we’d include it.
It’s certainly a good idea for everyone to be aware of their healthy heart rate ranges, regardless of having a known heart condition or not, though!
American Heart Association: Target Heart Rates Chart
❝I would like to see some articles on osteoporosis❞
You might enjoy this mythbusting main feature we did a few weeks ago!
The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
❝Interesting, but… Did you know spinach is high in oxylates? Some people are sensitive and can cause increased inflammation, joint pain or even kidney stones. Moderation is key. My sister and I like to eat healthy but found out by experience that too much spinach salad caused us joint and other aches.❞
It’s certainly good to be mindful of such things! For most people, a daily serving of spinach shouldn’t cause ill effects, and certainly there are other greens to eat.
We wondered whether there was a way to reduce the oxalate content, and we found:
How to Reduce Oxalic Acid in Spinach: Neutralizing Oxalates
…which led us this product on Amazon:
Nephure Oxalate Reducing Enzyme, Low Oxalate Diet Support
We wondered what “nephure” was, and whether it could be trusted, and came across this “Supplement Police” article about it:
Nephure Review – Oxalate Reducing Enzyme Powder Health Benefits?
…which honestly, seems to have been written as a paid advertisement. But! It did reference a study, which we were able to look up, and find:
In vitro and in vivo safety evaluation of Nephure™
…which seems to indicate that it was safe (for rats) in all the ways that they checked. They did not, however, check whether it actually reduced oxalate content in spinach or any other food.
The authors did declare a conflict of interest, in that they had a financial relationship with the sponsor of the study, Captozyme Inc.
All in all, it may be better to just have kale instead of spinach:
- 20 Foods High in Oxalates to Limit if You Have Kidney Stones
- The Kidney Dietician: The Best Low Oxalate Greens
We turn the tables and ask you a question!
We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:
Share This Post
-
Blood and Water
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.
Q&A with the 10almonds Team
Q: I really loved the information about macular degeneration! I was wondering if you have any other advice about looking after eye health?
A: We may well do a full feature on it sometime! Meanwhile, some top tips include:
- Eat your greens (as you know from this last Tuesday’s edition of 10almonds)!
- Exercise! Generally. We’re not talking about eye exercises here, we’re talking about exercises that will support:
- Healthy heart rate
- Healthy blood pressure
- Healthy blood oxygenation
- Healthy blood sugar levels
- Healthy blood flow in general (so keep hydrated too! There’s a reason phlebotomists ask you to be well-hydrated before they take blood)
Eye health is a good indicator for a lot of other things, and that’s because whether or not the eyes are the window to your soul, they’re definitely the window to what your blood’s like, and that affects (and is affected by) so many other things.
- On that note, don’t smoke!
- Protect your eyes physically, too. This means:
- UV-blocking sunglasses when appropriate
- Protective eye-wear when appropriate
You think safety glasses are for laboratories and construction sites, then you go and do comparable tasks in your home? Your eyes are just as damageable in your kitchen or garden as they would be in a lab or workshop.
Some bits and bobs that can help:
- Safety sunglasses! Because a thing can do two jobs (useful in the garden now the days are brightening up!)
- Pulse oximeter! Check your own heart rate, pulse strength, and blood oxygenation at home!
- Blood pressure monitor! Because it’s so important for a lot of things and you really should have one.
Share This Post
-
You could be stress eating these holidays – or eating your way to stress. 5 tips for the table
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 holiday season can be a time of joy, celebration, and indulgence in delicious foods and meals. However, for many, it can also be an emotional and stressful period.
This stress can manifest in our eating habits, leading to what is known as emotional or stress eating.
There are certain foods we tend to eat more of when we’re stressed, and these can affect our health. What’s more, our food choices can influence our stress levels and make us feel worse. Here’s how.
Dean Clarke/Shutterstock Why we might eat more when stressed
The human stress response is a complex signalling network across the body and brain. Our nervous system then responds to physical and psychological events to maintain our health. Our stress response – which can be subtle or trigger a fight-or-flight response – is essential and part of daily life.
The stress response increases production of the hormones cortisol and insulin and the release of glucose (blood sugars) and brain chemicals to meet demand. Eating when we experience stress is a normal behaviour to meet a spike in energy needs.
But sometimes our relationship with food becomes strained in response to different types of stress. We might attach shame or guilt to overeating. And anxiety or insecurity can mean some people under-eat in stressful times.
Over time, people can start to associate eating with negative emotions – such as anger, sadness, fear or worry. This link can create behavioural cycles of emotional eating. “Emotional eaters” may go on to develop altered brain responses to the sight or smell of food.
What stress eating can do to the body
Stress eating can include binge eating, grazing, eating late at night, eating quickly or eating past the feeling of fullness. It can also involve craving or eating foods we don’t normally choose. For example, stressed people often reach for ultra-processed foods. While eating these foods is not necessarily a sign of stress, having them can activate the reward system in our brain to alleviate stress and create a pattern.
Short-term stress eating, such as across the holiday period, can lead to symptoms such as acid reflux and poor sleep – particularly when combined with drinking alcohol.
In the longer term, stress eating can lead to weight gain and obesity, increasing the risks of cancer, heart diseases and diabetes.
While stress eating may help reduce stress in the moment, long-term stress eating is linked with an increase in depressive symptoms and poor mental health.
If you do over eat at a big gathering, don’t try and compensate by eating very little the next day. Peopleimage.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock What we eat can make us more or less stressed
The foods we choose can also influence our stress levels.
Diets high in refined carbohydrates and sugar (such as sugary drinks, sweets, crackers, cakes and most chocolates) can make blood sugar levels spike and then crash.
Diets high in unhealthy saturated and trans fats (processed foods, animal fats and commercially fried foods) can increase inflammatory responses.
Rapid changes in blood sugar and inflammation can increase anxiety and can change our mood.
Meanwhile, certain foods can improve the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain that regulate stress and mood.
Omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish and flaxseeds, are known to reduce inflammation and support brain health. Magnesium, found in leafy greens and nuts, helps regulate cortisol levels and the body’s stress response.
Vitamin Bs, found in whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans and animal products (mostly B12), help maintain a healthy nervous system and energy metabolism, improving mood and cognitive performance.
5 tips for the holiday table and beyond
Food is a big part of the festive season, and treating yourself to delicious treats can be part of the fun. Here are some tips for enjoying festive foods, while avoiding stress eating:
1. slow down: be mindful about the speed of your eating. Slow down, chew food well and put down your utensils after each bite
2. watch the clock: even if you’re eating more food than you normally would, sticking to the same timing of eating can help maintain your body’s response to the food. If you normally have an eight-hour eating window (the time between your first meal and last meal of the day) then stick to this even if you’re eating more
3. continue other health behaviours: even if we are eating more food or different food during the festive season, try to keep up other healthy behaviours, such as sleep and exercise
4. stay hydrated: make sure to drink plenty of fluids, especially water. This helps our body function and can help with feelings of hunger. When our brain gets the message something has entered the stomach (what we drink) this can provide a temporary reduction in feelings of hunger
5. don’t restrict: if we have a big day of eating, it can be tempting to restrict eating in the days before or after. But it is never a good idea to overly constrain food intake. It can lead to more overeating and worsen stress.
Reaching for cookies late at night can be characteristic of stress eating. Stokkete/Shutterstock Plus 3 bonus tips to manage holiday stress
1. shift your thinking: try reframing festive stress. Instead of viewing it as “something bad”, see it as “providing the energy” to reach your goals, such as a family gathering or present shopping
2. be kind to yourself and others: practise an act of compassion for someone else or try talking to yourself as you would a friend. These actions can stimulate our brains and improve wellbeing
3. do something enjoyable: being absorbed in enjoyable activities – such as crafting, movement or even breathing exercises – can help our brains and bodies to return to a more relaxed state, feel steady and connected.
For support and more information about eating disorders, contact the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800. If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call 000.
Saman Khalesi, Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead in Nutrition, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity Australia; Charlotte Gupta, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Appleton Institute, HealthWise research group, CQUniversity Australia, and Talitha Best, Professor of Psychology, NeuroHealth Lab, Appleton Institute, CQUniversity Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
What’s The Difference Between Minoxidil For Men vs For Women?
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’m confused, does minoxidil work the same for women and for men? The label on the minoxidil I was looking at says it is only for men❞
Great question!
Simple answer: yes, it works (or not, as the case may be for some people, more on that later) exactly the same for men and women.
You may be wondering: what, then, is the difference between minoxidil for men and minoxidil for women?
And the answer is: the packaging/marketing. That’s literally it.
It’s like with razors, there are razors marketed to men and razors marketed to women, and both come with advertising/marketing promising to be enhance your masculine/feminine appearance (as applicable), but at the end of the day, in both cases it’s just sharp steel blades that cut through hairs as closely as possible to the skin. The sharp steel neither knows nor cares about your gender.
When it comes to minoxidil, in both cases the active ingredient is indeed minoxidil, usually at 2% or 5% strength (though other options exist, and all these get marketed to men and women), and in both cases it works in the same ways, by:
- dilating the blood vessels that feed the hair follicles and thus allowing them to perform better
- kicking the follicles into anagen (growth phase) and keeping them there for longer
Note: this is why we mentioned that it won’t work for all people, and it’s because (regardless of sex/gender), it cannot do those things for your hair follicles if you do not have hair follicles to treat. In the case of someone who has had hair loss for a long time, sometimes there will not be enough living follicles remaining to do anything useful with. As a general rule of thumb, provided you have some hairs there (even if they are little downy baby hairs), they can usually be coaxed back to full life.
In both cases, it’s for treating “pattern hair loss”, the pattern being “male pattern” or “female pattern”, respectively, but in both cases it’s androgenetic alopecia, and in both cases it’s caused by the corresponding genetic factors and hormone-mediated gene expression (the physical pattern therefore is usually a little different for men and women; that’s because of the “hormone-mediated gene expression”, or to put it into lay terms “the hormones tell the body which genes to turn on and off”.
Fun fact: it’s the same resultant phenotype as for PCOS, though usually occurring at different stages in life; PCOS earlier and AGA later—sometimes people (including people with both ovaries and hair) can get one without the other, though, as there may be other considerations going on besides the genetic and hormonal.
Limitation: if the hair loss is for reasons other than androgenetic alopecia, it’s unlikely to work. In fact, it is usually flat-out stated that it won’t work, but since one of the common listed side effects of minoxidil is “hair growth in other places”, it seems fair to say that the scalp is not really the only place it can cause hair to grow.
Want to know more?
You can read about the science of various pharmaceutical options (including minoxidil) here:
Hair-Loss Remedies, By Science ← this also goes more into the pros and cons of minoxidil than we have today, so if you’re considering minoxidil, you might want to read this first, to make the most informed decision.
And if you want to be a bit less pharmaceutical about it:
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:
-
Ageless – by Dr. Andrew Steele
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.
So, yet another book with “The new science of…” in the title; does this one deliver new science?
Actually, yes, this time! The author was originally a physicist before deciding that aging was the number one problem that needed solving, and switched tracks to computational biology, and pioneered a lot of research, some of the fruits of which can be found in this book, in amongst a more general history of the (very young!) field of biogerontology.
Downside: most of this is not very practical for the lay reader; most of it is explanations of how things happen on a cellular and/or genetic level, and how we learned that. A lot also pertains to what we can learn from animals that either age very slowly, or are biologically immortal (in other words, they can still be killed, but they don’t age and won’t die of anything age-related), or are immune to cancer—and how we might borrow those genes for gene therapy.
However, there are also chapters on such things as “running repairs”, “reprogramming aging”, and “how to live long enough to live even longer”.
The style is conversational pop science; in the prose, he simply states things without reference, but at the back, there are 40 pages of bibliography, indexed in the order in which they occurred and prefaced with the statement that he’s referencing in each case. It’s an odd way to do citations, but it works comfortably enough.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand aging on the cellular level, and how we know what we know and what the likely future possibilities are, then this is a great book; it’s also simply very enjoyable to read, assuming you have an interest in the topic (as this reviewer does).
Click here to check out Ageless, and understand the science of getting older without getting old!
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:
-
Dandelion: Time For Evidence On Its Benefits?
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.
In recent decades often considered a weed, now enjoying a resurgence in popularity due its benefits for pollinators, this plant has longer-ago been enjoyed as salad (leaves) or as a drink (roots), and is typically considered to have diuretic and digestion-improving properties. So… Does it?
Diuretic
Probably! Because of the ubiquity of anecdotal evidence, this hasn’t been well-studied, but here’s a small (n=17) study that found that it significantly increased urination:
The diuretic effect in human subjects of an extract of Taraxacum officinale folium over a single day
You may be thinking, “you usually do better than an n=17 study” and yes we do, but there’s an amazing paucity of human research when it comes to dandelions, as you’ll see:
Digestion-improving
There’s a lot of fiber in dandelion greens and roots both, and eating unprocessed or minimally-processed plants is (with obvious exceptions, such as plants that are poisonous) invariably going to improve digestion just by virtue of the fiber content alone.
As for dandelions, the roots are rich in inulin, a great prebiotic fiber that indeed definitely helps:
Effect of inulin in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (Review)
When it comes to studies that are specifically about dandelions, however, we are down to animal studies, such as:
The effect of Taraxacum officinale on gastric emptying and smooth muscle motility in rodents
Note that this is not about the fiber; this is about the plant extract (so, no fiber), and how it gets the intestinal muscles to do their thing with more enthusiasm. Of course you, dear reader, are probably not a rodent, we can’t say for sure that this will have this effect in humans. However, generally speaking, what works for mammals works for mammals, so it probably indeed helps.
For liver health
More about rats and not humans, but again, it’s promising. Dandelion extract appears to protect the liver, reducing the damage in the event of induced liver failure:
In other words: the researchers poisoned the rats, and those who took dandelion extract suffered less liver damage than those who didn’t.
…and more?
It may help improve blood triglycerides and reduce ischemic stroke risk, but most of this research is still in non-human animals:
And while we’re on the topic of blood, it likely has blood-sugar-lowering effects too; once again (you guessed it), mostly non-human animal studies, though, with some in vitro studies:
The Physiological Effects of Dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale) in Type 2 Diabetes
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but if you have a garden, that’s a great place to grow this very easy-to-grow plant without having to worry about pesticides etc.
Alternatively, if you’d like to buy it in supplement form, here’s an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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:
