
The Sprout Book – by Doug Evans
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Sprouting seeds are more nutritious than most people think, and “seeds” is also a much broader category than people think. Beyond even chia and sunflower and such, this book bids us remember that onions do not just appear on supermarket shelves fully formed (to give just one example of many); most plants come from seeds and of those, most can be usefully sprouted.
The author, most well-known for his tech companies, here is selling us a very low-tech health kick with very little profit to be found except for our health. By sprouting seeds of many kinds at home, we can enjoy powerful superfoods that are not only better than, but also cheaper than, most supplements.
Nor are the benefits of sprouting things marginal; we’re not talking about a 1–10% increase in bioavailable so much as what’s often a 100–1000% increase.
After explaining the science and giving a primer on sprouting things for oneself, there is a wide selection of recipes, but the biggest benefit of the book is in just getting the reader up-and-running with at-home sprouting.
Bottom line: if you like the idea of letting food be your medicine and even like the idea of essentially growing your own food with zero gardening skills, then this is an excellent book for you.
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A Correction, And A New, Natural Way To Boost Daily Energy Levels
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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
First: a correction and expansion!
After yesterday’s issue of 10almonds covering breast cancer risks and checks, a subscriber wrote to say, with regard to our opening statement, which was:
“Anyone (who has not had a double mastectomy, anyway) can get breast cancer”
❝I have been enjoying your newsletter. This statement is misleading and should have a disclaimer that says even someone who has had a double mastectomy can get breast cancer, again. It is true and nothing…nothing is 100% including a mastectomy. I am a 12 year “thriver” (I don’t like to use the term survivor) who has had a double mastectomy. I work with a local hospital to help newly diagnosed patients deal with their cancer diagnosis and the many decisions that follow. A double mastectomy can help keep recurrence from happening but there are no guarantees. I tried to just delete this and let it go but it doesn’t feel right. Thank you!❞
Thank you for writing in about this! We wouldn’t want to mislead, and we’re always glad to hear from people who have been living with conditions for a long time, as (assuming they are a person inclined to learning) they will generally know topics far more deeply than someone who has researched it for a short period of time.
Regards a double mastectomy (we’re sure you know this already, but noting here for greater awareness, prompted by your message), a lot of circumstances can vary. For example, how far did a given cancer spread, and especially, did it spread to the lymph nodes at the armpits? And what tissue was (and wasn’t) removed?
Sometimes a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy will leave the lymph nodes partially or entirely intact, and a cancer could indeed come back, if not every last cancerous cell was removed.
A total double mastectomy, by definition, should have removed all tissue that could qualify as breast tissue for a breast cancer, including those lymph nodes. However, if the cancer spread unnoticed somewhere else in the body, then again, you’re quite correct, it could come back.
Some people have a double mastectomy without having got cancer first. Either because of a fear of cancer due to a genetic risk (like Angelina Jolie), or for other reasons (like Elliot Page).
This makes a difference, because doing it for reasons of cancer risk may mean surgeons remove the lymph nodes too, while if that wasn’t a factor, surgeons will tend to leave them in place.
In principle, if there is no breast tissue, including lymph nodes, and there was no cancer to spread, then it can be argued that the risk of breast cancer should now be the same “zero” as the risk of getting prostate cancer when one does not have a prostate.
But… Surgeries are not perfect, and everyone’s anatomy and physiology can differ enough from “textbook standard” that surprises can happen, and there’s almost always a non-zero chance of certain health outcomes.
For any unfamiliar, here’s a good starting point for learning about the many types of mastectomy, that we didn’t go into in yesterday’s edition. It’s from the UK’s National Health Service:
NHS: Mastectomy | Types of Mastectomy
And for the more sciency-inclined, here’s a paper about the recurrence rate of cancer after a prophylactic double mastectomy, after a young cancer was found in one breast.
The short version is that the measured incidence rate of breast cancer after prophylactic bilateral mastectomy was zero, but the discussion (including notes about the limitations of the study) is well worth reading:
Breast Cancer after Prophylactic Bilateral Mastectomy in Women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 Mutation
❝[Can you write about] the availability of geriatric doctors Sometimes I feel my primary isn’t really up on my 70 year old health issues. I would love to find a doctor that understands my issues and is able to explain them to me. Ie; my worsening arthritis in regards to food I eat; in regards to meds vs homeopathic solutions.! Thanks!❞
That’s a great topic, worthy of a main feature! Because in many cases, it’s not just about specialization of skills, but also about empathy, and the gap between studying a condition and living with a condition.
About arthritis, we’re going to do a main feature specifically on that quite soon, but meanwhile, you might like our previous article:
Keep Inflammation At Bay (arthritis being an inflammatory condition)
As for homeopathy, your question prompts our poll today!
(and then we’ll write about that tomorrow)
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The Humor Habit – by Paul Osincup
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Ask not for whom the bell tolls… It could be tolling for anyone. Don’t worry about it.It’s probably fine.
More seriously (heh), laughter is good for healthy lifespan, also called healthspan. It eases stress and anxiety, gives our brains neurochemicals they need to function well, and is very pro-social too, which in turn has knock-on positive effects for our own mental health as well as those around us.
This book is a guide to cultivating that humor, finding the funny side in difficult times, and bringing a light-hearted silliness to moments where it helps.
The title suggests it’s about habit-building (and it is!) but it’s also about knowing where to look in your daily life for humorous potential and how to find it, and how to bring that into being in the moment.
The style is that of an instruction manual with a healthy dose of pop-science; first and foremost this is a practical guide, not a several-hundred page exhortation on “find things funny!”, but rather a “hey, psst, here are many sneaky insider tricks for finding the funny“.
Bottom line: this book is not only a very enjoyable read, but also very much the gift that keeps on giving, so treat yourself!
Click here to check out The Humor Habit, and strength your funny-bones!
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Pear vs Prickly Pear – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing pear to prickly pear, we picked the prickly.
Why?
Both of these fruits are fine and worthy choices, but the prickly pear wins out in nutritional density.
Looking at the macros to start with, the prickly pear is higher in fiber and lower in carbs, resulting in a much lower glycemic index. However, non-prickly pears are already low GI, so this is not a huge matter. Whether it’s pear’s GI of 38 or prickly pear’s GI of 7, you’re unlikely to experience a glucose spike.
In the category of vitamins, pear has a little more of vitamins B5, B9, E, K, and choline, but the margins are tiny. On the other hand, prickly pear has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, and C, with much larger margins of difference (except vitamin B1; that’s still quite close). Even before taking margins of difference into account, this is a slight win for prickly pear.
When it comes to minerals, things are more pronounced; pear has more manganese, while prickly pear has more calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc.
In short, both pears are great (so do enjoy the pair), but prickly pear is the clear winner where one must be declared.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Apple vs Pear – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Why is pain so exhausting?
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One of the most common feelings associated with persisting pain is fatigue and this fatigue can become overwhelming. People with chronic pain can report being drained of energy and motivation to engage with others or the world around them.
In fact, a study from the United Kingdom on people with long-term health conditions found pain and fatigue are the two biggest barriers to an active and meaningful life.
But why is long-term pain so exhausting? One clue is the nature of pain and its powerful effect on our thoughts and behaviours.
simona pilolla 2/Shutterstock Short-term pain can protect you
Modern ways of thinking about pain emphasise its protective effect – the way it grabs your attention and compels you to change your behaviour to keep a body part safe.
Try this. Slowly pinch your skin. As you increase the pressure, you’ll notice the feeling changes until, at some point, it becomes painful. It is the pain that stops you squeezing harder, right? In this way, pain protects us.
When we are injured, tissue damage or inflammation makes our pain system become more sensitive. This pain stops us from mechanically loading the damaged tissue while it heals. For instance, the pain of a broken leg or a cut under our foot means we avoid walking on it.
The concept that “pain protects us and promotes healing” is one of the most important things people who were in chronic pain tell us they learned that helped them recover.
But long-term pain can overprotect you
In the short term, pain does a terrific job of protecting us and the longer our pain system is active, the more protective it becomes.
But persistent pain can overprotect us and prevent recovery. People in pain have called this “pain system hypersensitivity”. Think of this as your pain system being on red alert. And this is where exhaustion comes in.
When pain becomes a daily experience, triggered or amplified by a widening range of activities, contexts and cues, it becomes a constant drain on one’s resources. Going about life with pain requires substantial and constant effort, and this makes us fatigued.
About 80% of us are lucky enough to not know what it is like to have pain, day in day out, for months or years. But take a moment to imagine what it would be like.
Imagine having to concentrate hard, to muster energy and use distraction techniques, just to go about your everyday tasks, let alone to complete work, caring or other duties.
Whenever you are in pain, you are faced with a choice of whether, and how, to act on it. Constantly making this choice requires thought, effort and strategy.
Mentioning your pain, or explaining its impact on each moment, task or activity, is also tiring and difficult to get across when no-one else can see or feel your pain. For those who do listen, it can become tedious, draining or worrying.
Concentrating hard, mustering energy and using distraction techniques can make everyday life exhausting. PRPicturesProduction/Shutterstock No wonder pain is exhausting
In chronic pain, it’s not just the pain system on red alert. Increased inflammation throughout the body (the immune system on red alert), disrupted output of the hormone cortisol (the endocrine system on red alert), and stiff and guarded movements (the motor system on red alert) also go hand in hand with chronic pain.
Each of these adds to fatigue and exhaustion. So learning how to manage and resolve chronic pain often includes learning how to best manage the over-activation of these systems.
Loss of sleep is also a factor in both fatigue and pain. Pain causes disruptions to sleep, and loss of sleep contributes to pain.
In other words, chronic pain is seldom “just” pain. No wonder being in long-term pain can become all-consuming and exhausting.
What actually works?
People with chronic pain are stigmatised, dismissed and misunderstood, which can lead to them not getting the care they need. Ongoing pain may prevent people working, limit their socialising and impact their relationships. This can lead to a descending spiral of social, personal and economic disadvantage.
So we need better access to evidence-based care, with high-quality education for people with chronic pain.
There is good news here though. Modern care for chronic pain, which is grounded in first gaining a modern understanding of the underlying biology of chronic pain, helps.
The key seems to be recognising, and accepting, that a hypersensitive pain system is a key player in chronic pain. This makes a quick fix highly unlikely but a program of gradual change – perhaps over months or even years – promising.
Understanding how pain works, how persisting pain becomes overprotective, how our brains and bodies adapt to training, and then learning new skills and strategies to gradually retrain both brain and body, offers scientifically based hope; there’s strong supportive evidence from clinical trials.
Every bit of support helps
The best treatments we have for chronic pain take effort, patience, persistence, courage and often a good coach. All that is a pretty overwhelming proposition for someone already exhausted.
So, if you are in the 80% of the population without chronic pain, spare a thought for what’s required and support your colleague, friend, partner, child or parent as they take on the journey.
More information about chronic pain is available from Pain Revolution.
Michael Henry, Physiotherapist and PhD candidate, Body in Mind Research Group, University of South Australia and Lorimer Moseley, Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Foundation Chair in Physiotherapy, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Managing Your Mortality
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When Planning Is a Matter of Life and Death
Barring medical marvels as yet unrevealed, we are all going to die. We try to keep ourselves and our loved ones in good health, but it’s important to be prepared for the eventuality of death.
While this is not a cheerful topic, considering these things in advance can help us manage a very difficult thing, when the time comes.
We’ve put this under “Psychology Sunday” as it pertains to processing our own mortality, and managing our own experiences and the subsequent grief that our death may invoke in our loved ones.
We’ll also be looking at some of the medical considerations around end-of-life care, though.
Organizational considerations
It’s generally considered good to make preparations in advance. Write (or update) a Will, tie up any loose ends, decide on funerary preferences, perhaps even make arrangements with pre-funding. Life insurance, something difficult to get at a good rate towards the likely end of one’s life, is better sorted out sooner rather than later, too.
Beyond bureaucracy
What’s important to you, to have done before you die? It could be a bucket list, or it could just be to finish writing that book. It could be to heal a family rift, or to tell someone how you feel.
It could be more general, less concrete: perhaps to spend more time with your family, or to engage more with a spiritual practice that’s important to you.
Perhaps you want to do what you can to offset the grief of those you’ll leave behind; to make sure there are happy memories, or to make any requests of how they might remember you.
Lest this latter seem selfish: after a loved one dies, those who are left behind are often given to wonder: what would they have wanted? If you tell them now, they’ll know, and can be comforted and reassured by that.
This could range from “bright colors at my funeral, please” to “you have my blessing to remarry if you want to” to “I will now tell you the secret recipe for my famous bouillabaisse, for you to pass down in turn”.
End-of-life care
Increasingly few people die at home.
- Sometimes it will be a matter of fighting tooth-and-nail to beat a said-to-be-terminal illness, and thus expiring in hospital after a long battle.
- Sometimes it will be a matter of gradually winding down in a nursing home, receiving medical support to the end.
- Sometimes, on the other hand, people will prefer to return home, and do so.
Whatever your preferences, planning for them in advance is sensible—especially as money may be a factor later.
Not to go too much back to bureaucracy, but you might also want to consider a Living Will, to be enacted in the case that cognitive decline means you cannot advocate for yourself later.
Laws vary from place to place, so you’ll want to discuss this with a lawyer, but to give an idea of the kinds of things to consider:
National Institute on Aging: Preparing A Living Will
Palliative care
Palliative care is a subcategory of end-of-life care, and is what occurs when no further attempts are made to extend life, and instead, the only remaining goal is to reduce suffering.
In the case of some diseases including cancer, this may mean coming off treatments that have unpleasant side-effects, and retaining—or commencing—pain-relief treatments that may, as a side-effect, shorten life.
Euthanasia
Legality of euthanasia varies from place to place, and in some times and places, palliative care itself has been considered a form of “passive euthanasia”, that is to say, not taking an active step to end life, but abstaining from a treatment that prolongs it.
Clearer forms of passive euthanasia include stopping taking a medication without which one categorically will die, or turning off a life support machine.
Active euthanasia, taking a positive action to end life, is legal in some places and the means varies, but an overdose of barbiturates is an example; one goes to sleep and does not wake up.
It’s not the only method, though; options include benzodiazepines, and opioids, amongst others:
Efficacy and safety of drugs used for assisted dying
Unspoken euthanasia
An important thing to be aware of (whatever your views on euthanasia) is the principle of double-effect… And how it comes to play in palliative care more often than most people think.
Say a person is dying of cancer. They opt for palliative care; they desist in any further cancer treatments, and take medication for the pain. Morphine is common. Morphine also shortens life.
It’s common for such a patient to have a degree of control over their own medication, however, after a certain point, they will no longer be in sufficient condition to do so.
After this point, it is very common for caregivers (be they medical professionals or family members) to give more morphine—for the purpose of reducing suffering, of course, not to kill them.
In practical terms, this often means that the patient will die quite promptly afterwards. This is one of the reasons why, after sometimes a long-drawn-out period of “this person is dying”, healthcare workers can be very accurate about “it’s going to be in the next couple of days”.
The take-away from this section is: if you would like for this to not happen to you or your loved one, you need to be aware of this practice in advance, because while it’s not the kind of thing that tends to make its way into written hospital/hospice policies, it is very widespread and normalized in the industry on a human level.
Further reading: Goods, causes and intentions: problems with applying the doctrine of double effect to palliative sedation
One last thing…
Planning around our own mortality is never a task that seems pressing, until it’s too late. We recommend doing it anyway, without putting it off, because we can never know what’s around the corner.
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Do You Need to Wear Sunscreen Indoors? An Analysis
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Dr. Michelle Wong—chemist, science educator, and cosmetician—explains the science:
Factors to take into account
UVA and UVB aren’t entirely interchangeable, so it’s important to know what you’re up against.
Sunscreen is rated by SPF, which indicates UVB protection—guarding against burning, skin cancer, and premature aging. Broad spectrum or UVA ratings measure protection against UVA rays, which cause tanning, contribute to melanoma, and can lead to skin aging and hyperpigmentation. However, most UV studies are based on white skin, which may not apply universally.
The need for sunscreen indoors depends on how much UV exposure you receive there:
- Direct exposure occurs when sunlight shines directly on you, such as when sitting by a window.
- Diffuse exposure happens when UV rays are scattered by air molecules or reflected off surfaces, which can still occur in shaded areas.
Indoors, walls and barriers do reduce UV exposure significantly. However, factors like window size, distance from windows, and the type of glass (which blocks UVB but not all UVA) play important roles in determining exposure.
The UV index (your phone’s weather app will probably have this) indicates the level of sunburn-causing UV in a specific area at a particular time. In Sydney, for example (where Dr. Wong is), the UV index can vary from 12 in summer to 2 in winter. Although UVA levels fluctuate less dramatically than UVB, they still peak during midday and in summer. Health guidelines in countries like Australia recommend wearing sunscreen when the UV index is 3 or above, but not necessarily every day.
Personal factors also influence the need for sunscreen indoors. People with darker skin, who have more melanin, may need less protection from incidental UV exposure but might still require UVA protection to prevent pigmentation. Those using skincare products that increase UV sensitivity, like alpha hydroxy acids, or those with specific medical conditions, such as photosensitivity or a family history of skin cancer, may also get particular benefit from wearing sunscreen indoors.
As to the downsides? There are some drawbacks to wearing sunscreen indoors, including cost, the effort required for application, and the risk of clogged pores. Though health concerns related to sunscreen are generally minor, they may tip the balance against wearing it if UV exposure is minimal.
For more on all of this plus visual teaching aids, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Do We Need Sunscreen In Winter, Really? ← we tackle the science behind the answer to this similar* question
*But different, because now we need to take into account such things as axial tilt, the sun’s trajectory through the atmosphere (and thus how much gets reflected, refracted, diffused, etc—or not, as the case may be).
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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