The Spice Of Life

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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

❝Great newsletter. Am taking turmeric for inflammation of hips and feet. Works like magic. Would like to know how it works, and what tumeric is best combined with – also whether there any risks in longterm use.❞

Glad you’re enjoying! As for turmeric, it sure is great, isn’t it? To answer your questions in a brief fashion:

  • How it works: it does a lot of things, but perhaps its most key feature is its autoxidative metabolites that mediate its anti-inflammatory effect. This, it slows or inhibits oxidative stress that would otherwise cause inflammation, increase cancer risk, and advance aging.
  • Best combined with: black pepper
  • Any risks in long-term use: there are no known risks in long-term use ← that’s just one study, but there are lots. Some studies were prompted by reported hepatotoxicity of curcumin supplements, but a) the reports themselves seem to be without evidence b) the reported hepatoxicity was in relation to contaminants in the supplements, not the curcumin itself c) clinical trials were unable to find any hepatotoxicity (or other) risks anyway. Here’s an example of such a study.

You might also like our previous main feature: Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold

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  • How I Cured My Silent Reflux – by Don Daniels

    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.

    Acid reflux, in its various forms (not all of which include heartburn as a symptom!), affects around 1 in 8 people. Often it takes the form of coughing or excess mucus after eating, and it can trigger ostensibly random sweats, for example.

    Don Daniels does an excellent job of demystifying the various kinds of acid reflux, explaining clearly and simply the mechanics of what is going on for each of them and why.

    Further, he talks about the medications that can make things worse (and how and why), and supplements that can make it better (and supplements that can make it worse, too!), and a multiphase plan (diet on, meds weaned off, supplements on, supplements weaned off when asymptomatic, diet adjust to a new normal) to get free from acid reflux.

    The writing style is simple, clear, and jargon-free, while referencing plenty of scientific literature, often quoting from it and providing sources, much like we often do at 10almonds. There are 50+ such references in all, for a 105-page book.

    So, do also note that yes, it’s quite a short book for the price, but the content is of value and wouldn’t have benefitted from padding of the kind that many authors do just to make the book longer.

    Bottom line: if you have, or suspect you may have, an acid reflux condition of any kind, then this book can guide you through fixing that.

    Click here to check out How I Cured My Silent Reflux, and put up with it no longer!

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  • No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

    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’s on your mind, really?

    We hear a lot about “the evidence-based benefits of mindfulness”, but what actually are they? And what is the evidence? And, perhaps most importantly: how do we do it?

    What are the benefits?

    The benefits of mindfulness are many, and include:

    • reducing stress
    • reducing pain
    • improving quality of life
    • reducing fatigue
    • providing relief from digestive disorders
    • reducing symptoms of sleep disorders
    • improving immune response
    • providing support for caregivers

    The evidence is also abundant, and includes:

    Sounds great… What actually is it, though?

    Mindfulness is the state of being attentive to one’s mind. This is at its heart a meditative practice, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be sitting in the lotus position with candles—mindfulness can be built into any daily activity, or even no activity at all.

    An exercise you can try right now:

    Take a moment to notice everything you can hear. For this writer, that includes:

    • The noise of my keystrokes as I type
    • The ticking of the clock on the wall
    • The gentle humming of my computer’s processor
    • The higher-pitched noise of my computer’s monitor
    • Birdsong outside
    • Traffic further away
    • My own breathing
    • The sound of my eyelids as I blink

    Whatever it is for you, notice how much you can notice that you had previously taken for granted.

    You can repeat this exercise with other senses, by the way! For example:

    • Notice five things you can see in your immediate environment that you’ve never noticed before. If you’re at home reading this, you probably think you’re very familiar with everything around you, but now see that mark on the wall you’d never noticed before, or a quirk of some electrical wiring, or the stitching on some furnishing, for example.
    • Notice the textures of your clothes, or your face, or perhaps an object you’ve never paid attention to touching before. Your fingertips, unless you have some special reason this doesn’t apply to you, are far more sensitive than you probably give them credit for, and can notice the tiniest differentiation in textures, so take a moment to do that now.
    • Mindful eating can be an especially healthful practice because it requires that we pay every attention to what we’re putting in our mouth, tasting, chewing, swallowing. No more thoughtlessly downing a box of cookies; every bite is now an experience. On the one hand, you’ll probably eat less at a sitting. On the other hand, what a sensory experience! It really reminds one that life is for living, not just for zipping through at a speed-run pace!

    What about mindfulness as a meditative practice?

    Well, those are meditative practices! But yes, mindfulness goes for more formal meditation too. For example:

    Sit comfortably, with good posture, whatever that means to you. No need to get too caught up in the physical mechanics here—it’d take a whole article. For now, if you’re sitting and comfortable, that’s enough.

    Notice your breathing. No need to try to control it—that’s not what this is about today. Just notice it. The in, the out, whether you breathe to your chest or abdomen, through your nose or mouth, don’t worry about doing it “right”, just notice what you are doing. Observe without judgement.

    Notice your thoughts—no need to try to stop them. Notice noticing your thoughts, and again, observe without judgement. Notice your feelings; are you angry, hopeful, stressed, serene? There are no wrong answers here, and there’s nothing you should try to “correct”. Just observe. No judgement, only observe. Watch your thoughts, and watch your thoughts go.

    Did you forget about your breathing while watching your thoughts? Don’t worry about that either if so, just notice that it happened. If you have any feelings about that, notice them too, and carry on observing.

    We go through so much of our lives in “autopilot”, that it can be an amazing experience to sometimes just “be”—and be aware of being.

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  • The Joy of Movement – by Dr. Kelly McGonigal

    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 know that exercise is good for us. Obviously. We know that that exercise will make us feel good. In principle.

    So why is that exercise bike wearing the laundry instead, or the weights bench gathering dust?

    Dr. Kelly McGonigal explores our relationship with exercise, both the formal (organized, planned, exercise that looks like exercise) and the informal (ad hoc, casual, exercise that looks like just having a nice time).

    Moreover: she starts with the why, and moves to the how. The trick she plays on us here is to get us very fired up on the many tangible benefits that will make a big difference in all areas of our lives… And then shows us how easy it can be to unlock those, and how we can make it even easier.

    And as to making it stick? Exercise can be addictive, and/but it’s one of the few addictions that is almost always healthful rather than deleterious. And, there are tricks we can use to heighten that, thresholds that once we pass, we just keep going.

    She also looks at the evolutionary tendency of exercise to be connection-building, as part of a community, friend group, or couple.

    And, yes, she gives attention also to undertaking exercise when circumstances aren’t ideal, or our bodies simply won’t allow certain things.

    In short: if any book can get you shaking off the cobwebs, this is the one.

    Click here to check out The Joy Of Movement on Amazon today, and get your body moving!

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  • Kombucha vs Kimchi – Which is Healthier

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing kombucha to kimchi, we picked the kombucha.

    Why?

    While both are very respectable gut-healthy fermented products,
    •⁠ ⁠the kombucha contains fermented tea, a little apple cider vinegar, and a little fiber
    •⁠ ⁠the kimchi contains (after the vegetables) 810 mg sodium in that little tin, and despite the vegetables, no fiber.

    You may reasonably be surprised that they managed to take something that is made of mostly vegetables and ended up with no fiber without juicing it, but they did. Fermented vegetables are great for the healthy bacteria benefits (and are tasty too!), but the osmotic pressure due to the salt destroys the cell walls and thus the fiber.

    Thus, we chose the kombucha that does the same job without delivering all that salt.

    However! If you are comparing kombucha and kimchi out in the wilds of your local supermarket, do still check individual labels. It’s not uncommon, for example, for stores to sell pre-made kombucha that’s loaded with sugar.

    About sugar and kombucha…

    Sugar is required to make kombucha, to feed the yeast and helpful bacteria. However, there should be none of that sugar left (or only the tiniest trace amount) in the final product, because the yeast (and friends) consumed and metabolized it.

    What some store brands do, however, is add in sugar afterwards, as they believe it improves the taste. This writer cannot imagine how, but that is their rationale in any case. Needless to say, it is not a healthy addition, and specifically, it’s bad for your gut, which (healthwise) is the whole point of drinking kombucha in the first place.

    Want some? Here is an example product on Amazon, but feel free to shop around as there are many flavors available!

    Read more about gut health: Gut Health 101

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  • Immunity – by Dr. William Paul

    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.

    This book gives a very person-centric (i.e., focuses on the contributions of named individuals) overview of advances in the field of immunology—up to its publication date in 2015. So, it’s not cutting edge, but it is very good at laying the groundwork for understanding more recent advances that occur as time goes by. After all, immunology is a field that never stands still.

    We get a good grounding in how our immune system works (and how it doesn’t), the constant arms race between pathogens and immune responses, and the complexities of autoimmune disorders and—which is functionally in an overlapping category of disease—cancer. And, what advances we can expect soon to address those things.

    Given the book was published 8 years ago, how did it measure up? Did we get those advances? Well, for the mostpart yes, we have! Some are still works in progress. But, we’ve also had obvious extra immunological threats in years since, which have also resulted in other advances along the way!

    If the book has a downside, it’s that sometimes the author can be a little too person-centric. It’s engaging to focus on human characters, and helps us bring information to life; name-dropping to excess, along with awards won, can sometimes feel a little like the book was co-authored by Tahani Al-Jamil.

    Nevertheless, it certainly does keep the book from getting too dry!

    Bottom line: this book is a great overview of immunology and immunological research, for anyone who wants to understand these things better.

    Click here to check out Immunity, and boost your knowledge of yours!

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  • It’s Not A Bloody Trend – by Kat Brown

    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.

    This one’s not a clinical book, and the author is not a clinician. However, it’s not just a personal account, either. Kat Brown is an award-winning journalist (with ADHD) and has approached this journalistically.

    Not just in terms of investigative journalism, either. Rather, also with her knowledge and understanding of the industry, doing for us some meta-journalism and explaining why the press have gone for many misleading headlines.

    Which in this case means for example it’s not newsworthy to say that people have gone undiagnosed and untreated for years and that many continue to go unseen; we know this also about such things as endometriosis, adenomyosis, and PCOS. But some more reactionary headlines will always get attention, e.g. “look at these malingering attention-seekers”.

    She also digs into the common comorbidities of various conditions, the differences it makes to friendships, families, relationships, work, self-esteem, parenting, and more.

    This isn’t a “how to” book, but there’s a lot of value here if a) you have ADHD, and/or b) you spend any amount of time with someone who does.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to understand “what all the fuss is about” in one book, this is the one for ADHD.

    Click here to check out It’s Not A Bloody Trend, and discover a whole world of things that might have passed you by!

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