The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons

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There’s a lot more to breast cancer care than “check your breasts regularly”. Because… And then what? “Go see a doctor” obviously, but it’s a scary prospect with a lot of unknowns.

Dr. Simmons demystifies these unknowns, from both her position as an oncologist (and breast surgeon) and also her position as a breast cancer survivor herself.

What she found, upon getting to experience the patient side of things, was that the system is broken in ways she’d never considered before as a doctor.

This book is the product of the things she’s learned both within her field, and elsewhere because of realizing the former’s areas of shortcoming.

She gives a step-by-step guide, from diagnosis onwards, advising taking as much as possible into one’s own hands—especially in the categories of information and action. She also explains the things that make the biggest difference to cancer outcomes when it comes to eating, sleeping, and so forth, the best attitude to have to be neither despairing and giving up, nor overconfident and complacent.

She does also talk complementary therapies, be they supplements or more out-of-the-box approaches and the evidence for them where applicable, as well as doing some high-quality mythbusting about more prescription-based considerations such as HRT.

Bottom line: if you or a loved one have a breast cancer diagnosis, or you just prefer knowing this sort of thing than not, then this book is a top-tier “insider’s guide”.

Click here to check out the Smart Woman’s Guide To Breast Cancer, and take control!

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Recommended

  • The Anti-Viral Gut – by Dr. Robynne Chutkan
  • Thinking about cosmetic surgery? New standards will force providers to tell you the risks and consider if you’re actually suitable
    People considering cosmetic surgery should be protected by new safety and quality standards. These standards cover advertising, psychological assessments, informed consent, and post-operative care. Reforms are needed in this unregulated area of medicine.

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  • PCOS Repair Protocol – by Tamika Woods

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    PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) affects about 1 in 5 women, and the general position of the medical establishment is “Oh dear, how sad; never mind”.

    …which leaves a lot of people suffering with symptoms with little to no help.

    This book looks to address that, and while it doesn’t claim to cure PCOS, it offers a system for managing (including: reducing) the symptoms. The author, a clinical nutritionist by academic background, tackles this in large part via being mindful about what one eats, in the context of the gut and endocrine system specifically.

    It’s not just “have a gut healthy diet and eat foods with these nutrients”, though (although yes: also that). Rather, the author walks us through in-depth quizzes and lab testing advice, to advise the reader on how to understand the root cause of your PCOS symptoms, and then address each of those with an individualized management plan.

    The style is on the low-end of pop-science, notwithstanding the clinically-informed content. For those who like a very chatty informal approach, you’ll find this one perfect. For those who don’t, well, you won’t find this one perfect, but you will most likely find it informative all the same.

    Bottom line: if you or someone you care about (do you know 5 women?) has PCOS, the information in here could make a difference.

    Click here to check out PCOS Repair Protocol, and suffer less!

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  • What Happens To Your Body When You Stop Drinking Alcohol

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    Immediately after we stop drinking is rarely when we feel our best. But how long is it before we can expect to see benefits, instead of just suffering?

    Timeline

    After stopping drinking alcohol for…

    • Seconds: the liver starts making progress filtering out toxins and sugars; ethanol starts to leave the system
    • 1 hour: fatigue sets in as the body uses a lot of energy to metabolize and eliminate alcohol. However, sleep quality (if one goes to sleep now) is low because alcohol disrupts the brain patterns required for restful sleep
    • 6–12 hours: the immune system starts recovering from the suppression caused by alcohol
    • 24 hours: immune system is back to normal; withdrawal symptoms may occur in the case of heavy drinkers
    • 3–5 days: resting blood pressure begins to drop, as stress levels decrease (alcohol may seem anxiolytic, but it is actually anxiogenic; it just masks its own effect in this regard). Also, because of insulin responses improving, appetite reduces. The liver, once it has finished dealing your last drinking session (if you used to drink all the time, it probably had a backlog to clear), can now begin to make repairs on itself.
    • 1 week: skin will start looking better, as antidiuretic hormone levels neutralize, leading to a healthier maintenance of hydration
    • 2 weeks: cognitive abilities improve as the brain begins to make progress in repairing itself. At the same time, kidneys start to heal.
    • 3–4 weeks: the liver begins to regenerate in earnest. You may wonder what took it so long given the liver’s famous regenerative abilities, but in this case, the liver was also the organ that took the most damage from drinking, so its regeneration gets off to a slow start (in contrast, if the liver had “merely” suffered physical trauma, such as being shot, stabbed, or eaten by eagles, it’d start regenerating vigorously as soon as the immediate wound-response had been tended to). Once it is able to pick up the pace though, overall health improves, as the liver can focus on breaking down other toxins.
    • 1–2 months: the heart is able to repair itself, and start to become stronger again (dependent on other lifestyle factors, of course).
    • 3 months and more: bodily repairs continue (for example, the damage to the liver is often so severe that it can take quite a bit longer to recover completely, and repairs in the brain are always slow, for reasons beyond the scope of this article). Looking at the big picture, at this point we also see other benefits, such as reduced cancer risks.

    In short… It’s never too soon to stop, but it’s also never too late, unless you are going to die in the next few days. So long as you’ll be in the land of the living for a few days yet, there’s time to enjoy the benefits of stopping.

    Most importantly: the timeline for the most important repairs is not as long as many people might think, and that itself can be very motivating.

    For more detail on much of the above, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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  • Statins and Brain Fog?

    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 was wondering if you had done any info about statins. I’ve tried 3, and keep quitting them because they give me brain fog. Am I imagining this as the research suggests?❞

    If you are female, the chances of adverse side-effects are a lot higher:

    Statins: His & Hers?

    As an extra kicker, not only are the adverse side-effects more likely for women, but also, the benefits are often less beneficial, too (see the above main feature for some details).

    That’s not to say that statins can’t have their place for women; sometimes it will still be the right choice. Just, not as readily so as for men.

    Enjoy!

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Related Posts

  • The Anti-Viral Gut – by Dr. Robynne Chutkan
  • The Collagen Cure – by Dr. James DiNicolantonio

    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.

    Collagen is vital for, well, most of our bodies, really. Where me most tend to feel its deficiency is in our joints and skin, but it’s critical for bones and many other tissues too.

    You may be wondering: why a 572-page book to say what surely must amount to “take collagen, duh”?

    Dr. DiNicolantonio has a lot more of value to offer us than that. In this book, we learn about not just collagen synthesis and usage, different types of collagen, the metabolism of it in our diet (if we get it—vegans and vegetarians won’t). We also learn about the building blocks of collagen (vegans and vegetarians do get these, assuming a healthy balanced diet), with a special focus on glycine, the smallest amino acid which makes up about a third of the mass of collagen (a protein).

    Not stopping there, we also learn about the interplay of other nutrients with our metabolism of glycine and, if applicable, collagen. Vitamin C and copper are star features, but there’s a lot more going on with other nutrients too, down to the level of “So take this 75 minutes before this but after that and/but definitely not with the other”, etc.

    The style is incredibly clear and readable for something that’s also quite scientifically dense (over 1000 references and many diagrams).

    Bottom line: if you’re serious about maintaining your body as you get older, and you’d like a book about collagen that’s a lot more helpful than “take collagen, duh”, then this is the book for you.

    Click here to check out The Collagen Cure, and take care of yours!

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  • Blue Cheese vs Brunost – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing blue cheese to brunost, we picked the brunost.

    Why?

    First, for the unfamiliar, as brunost isn’t necessarily as popular as blue cheese in N. America where most of our readers are:

    Brunost, literally “brown cheese” is a traditional Norwegian affair made from aggressively boiling milk, cream, and whey in an iron cauldron. Whereas the blue in blue cheese comes from mold, the brown in brown cheese comes from caramelizing the milk sugars in the cauldron. When we say “cauldron”, yes, there is nowadays mass-produced brunost that is no longer made in something that could be mistaken for a witch’s brew, but the use of cast iron is actually important to the process, and has been the subject of regulatory controversy in Norway; first the cast iron was abandoned, then because that changed the cheese they fortified the product with added iron supplementation, then that was banned, then they reversed it because it affected iron levels in the general population. Nowadays, it is usually made with iron, one way or another.

    Ok, so let’s see how they stack up against each other:

    In terms of macronutrients, the two cheeses are comparable in fat, but brunost has more carbs—because whereas bacteria (and to a lesser extent, the mold) ate nearly all the carbs in the blue cheese, the caramelization of the milk sugars in brunost meant the result stayed higher in carbs. Both are considered “low GI” foods, but this category is still at least a moderate win for blue cheese.

    When it comes to vitamins, brunost is higher in vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12, while blue cheese is higher in vitamin B9. In other words, a clear and easy win for brunost.

    In the category of minerals, brunost has more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium. Meanwhile, blue cheese contains more zinc, although we can also mention that blue cheese has about 2x the sodium, which is generally not considered a benefit. The two cheeses are about equal in calcium and selenium. Adding these up makes for another clear and easy win for brunost.

    In short, unless you are strongly avoiding [even low-GI foods’] carbs for some reason, brunost wins the day by virtue of its overwhelmingly better vitamin and mineral content.

    Still, like most fermented dairy products, both cheeses can be enjoyed in moderation as part of a healthy diet (assuming you don’t have an allergy/intolerance).

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Is Dairy Scary?

    Take care!

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  • 52 Ways to Walk – by Annabel Streets

    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.

    Most of us learned to walk at a very young age and probably haven’t thought much about it since, except perhaps in a case where some injury made it difficult.

    Annabel Streets provides a wonderful guide to not just taking up (or perhaps reclaiming) the joy of walking, but also the science of it in more aspects than most of us have considered:

    • The physical mechanics of walking—what’s best?
    • Boots or shoes? Barefoot?
    • Roads, grass, rougher vegetation… Mud?
    • Flora & fauna down to the microbiota that affect us
    • How much walking is needed, to be healthy?
    • Is there such a thing as too much walking?
    • What are the health benefits (or risks) of various kinds of weather?
    • Is it better to walk quickly or to walk far?
    • What about if we’re carrying some injury?
    • What’s going on physiologically when we walk?
    • And so much more…

    Streets writes with a captivating blend of poetic joie-de-vivre coupled with scientific references.

    One moment the book is talking about neuroradiology reports of NO-levels in our blood, the impact of Mycobacterium vaccae, and the studied relationship between daily steps taken and production of oligosaccharide 3′-sialyllactose, and the next it’s all:

    “As if the newfound lightness in our limbs has crept into our minds, loosening our everyday cares and constraints…”

    And all in all, this book helps remind us that sometimes, science and a sense of wonder can and do (and should!) walk hand-in-hand.

    Treat yourself to “52 Ways to Walk” from Amazon today!

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