The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook – by Nisha Vora

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We all know that we should “eat the rainbow” (and that no, Skittles do not count)… So why do we often find ourselves falling into the same familiar habits and well-worn comfort foods?

Nisha Vora, of “Rainbow Plant Life“, is here to make things a lot easier—brightening up our plates is her mission!

In this Instant Pot-authorized, beautifully illustrated cookbook, Vora offers us 90 recipes to do just that. And because it’s an Instant Pot cookbook, they’re all super easy.

What if you don’t have an Instant Pot? Well, don’t tell Instant Pot we said this, but another pressure cooker brand will work too. And if you don’t have any pressure cooker, the recipes are modifiable for regular pots and pans. The recipes also lend themselves well to slow-cooker cooking, for that matter!

Where Vora really excels though is in making mostly-one-pot dishes beautiful and tasty.

The recipes, by the way, are drawn from cuisines from all around the world, and cover:

  • summer and winter dishes
  • breakfasts, sides, mains, desserts
  • the healthy and the decadent (and sometimes both!)

As for the presentation of each recipe, we get at least one full-page photo of the finished dish and sometimes extras of the steps. We get a little intro, the usual information about ingredients etc, and a no-fuss step-by-step method. It’s very easy to use.

If you have allergies or other dietary considerations, this book is pretty mindful of those, making substitutions minimal and easy.

Bottom line: this comprehensive book will seriously brighten up the colors of your cooking!

Click here to check out “The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook” on Amazon and get brightening up your dishes!

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  • Doctors From 15 Specialties Tell The Worst Common Mistakes People Make

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    Whatever your professional background, you probably know many things about it that are very obvious to you, but that most people don’t know. So it is for doctors too; here are the things that doctors from 15 specialties would never do, and thus advise people against doing:

    Better safe than sorry

    We’ll leap straight into it:

    1. General Surgery: avoid rushing into musculoskeletal or spinal surgery unless absolutely necessary; conservative treatments like physical therapy are often effective.
    2. Interventional Gastroenterology: avoid long-term, around-the-clock use of anti-inflammatory pain medications (e.g. Ibuprofen and friends) to prevent stomach ulcers.
    3. Podiatry: never place feet on the car dashboard due to the risk of severe injuries from airbag deployment.
    4. Rheumatology: avoid daily use of high heels to prevent joint and foot deformities, bunions, and pain.
    5. Otorhinolaryngology: never smoke, as it can lead to severe consequences like laryngectomy and other life-altering conditions.
    6. Pediatrics: avoid dangerous activities for children, such as swimming alone, eating choking hazards, biking or skiing without a helmet, or consuming raw meat/fish/dairy. Also, be cautious with firearms in homes.
    7. Orthopedic Surgery: avoid riding motorcycles and handling fireworks due to high risks of accidents.
    8. Emergency Medicine: never drink and drive or ride ATVs. Always use eye protection during activities like woodworking.
    9. Ophthalmology: always wear safety glasses during activities like grinding metal or woodworking. Sunglasses are essential to prevent UV damage even on cloudy days.
    10. Urology: avoid shaving pubic hair if diabetic or immunocompromised to prevent severe infections like Fournier’s gangrene.
    11. Gastroenterology: do not use gut health supplements as they lack proven efficacy and are often a waste of money*
    12. Plastic Surgery: avoid contour threads (barbed sutures for facial rejuvenation) and butt implants due to risks like infection, complications, and poor outcomes.
    13. Psychiatry: never take recreational drugs from unknown sources to avoid accidental overdoses, especially from substances laced with fentanyl. Carry Narcan for emergencies.
    14. Dermatology: use sunscreen daily to prevent skin cancer, aging, pigmentation issues, and texture problems caused by UV exposure.
    15. Cardiology: avoid the carnivore diet as it increases heart disease risks due to its negligible fiber content and high saturated fat intake.

    *We had an article about this a while back; part of the problem is that taking probiotics without prebiotics can mean your new bacteria just die in about 20 minutes, which is their approximate lifespan in which to multiply or else die out. Similar problems arise if taking them with sugar that feeds their competitors instead. See: Stop Sabotaging Your Gut!

    For more on each of these, in the words of the respective doctors, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Health Hacks from 20 Doctors

    Take care!

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  • No-Exercise Exercise!

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    Do you love to go to the gym?

    If so, today’s article might not be for you so much. Or maybe it will, because let’s face it, exercise is fun!

    At least… It can be, and should be 😎

    So without further ado, here’s a slew of no-exercise exercise ideas; we’re willing to bet that somewhere in the list there’s at least some you haven’t tried before, and probably some you haven’t done in a while but might enjoy making a reprise!

    Walking

    No surprises here: walking is great. Hopefully you have some green spaces near you, but if you don’t, [almost] any walking is better than no walking. So unless there’s some sort of environmental disaster going on outside, lace up and get stepping.

    If you struggle to “walk for walking’s sake” give yourself a little mission. Walk to the shop to buy one item. Walk to the park and find a flower to photograph. Walk to the library and take out a book. Whatever works for you!

    See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, And Move More

    Take the stairs

    This one doesn’t need many words, just: make it a habit.

    Treat the elevators as though they aren’t there!

    See also: How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

    Dance

    Dance is amazing! Any kind of dance, whatever suits your tastes. This writer loves salsa and tango, but no matter whether for you it’s zouk or zumba, breakdancing or line dancing, whatever gets you moving is going to be great for you.

    If you don’t know how, online tutorials abound, and best of all is to attend local classes if you can, because they’re always a fun social experience too.

    Make music

    Not something often thought of as an exercise, but it is! Most instruments require that we be standing or siting with good posture, focusing intently on our movements, and often as not, breathing very mindfully too. And yes, it’s great for the brain as well!

    Check out: This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession – by Dr. Daniel Levitin

    Take a stand

    If you spend a lot of time at a desk, please consider investing in a standing desk; they can be truly life-changing. Not only is it so much better for your back, hips, neck, and internal organs, but also it burns hundreds more calories than sitting, due to the no-exercise exercise that is keeping your body constantly stabilized while on your feet.

    (or, if you’re like this writer: on your foot. I do have two feet, I just spend an inordinate amount of time at my desk standing on one leg at a time; I’m a bit of a flamingo like that)

    See also: Deskbound: Standing Up to a Sitting World – by Kelly Starrett and Glen Cordoza

    Sit, but…

    Sit in a sitting squat! Sometimes called a Slav squat, or an Asian squat, or a resting squat, or various other names:

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

    Alternatively, sitting in seiza (the traditional Japanese sitting position) is also excellent, but watch out! While it’s great once your body is accustomed to it, if you haven’t previously sat this way much, you may cut off your own circulation, hurt your knees, and (temporarily) lose feeling in your feet. So if you don’t already sit in seiza often, gradually work up the time period you spend sitting in seiza, so that your vasculature can adapt and improve, which honestly, is a very good thing for your legs and feet to have.

    Breathe

    Perhaps the absolute most “no-exercise exercise” there is. And yes, of course you are (hopefully) breathing all the time, but how you are breathing matters a lot:

    The Inside Job Of Fixing Our Breathing: Exercises That Can Fix Sinus Problems (And More)

    Clean

    This doesn’t have to mean scrubbing floors like a sailor—even merely giving your house the Marie Kondo treatment counts, because while you’re distracted with all the objects, you’re going to be going back and forth, getting up and down, etc, clocking up lots of exercise that you barely even notice!

    PS, check out: The Life-Changing Manga Of Tidying Up – by Marie Kondo

    Garden

    As with the above, it’s lots of activity that doesn’t necessarily feel like it (assuming you’re doing more pruning and weeding etc, and less digging ditches etc), and as a bonus, there are a stack of mental health benefits to being in a green natural environment and interacting with soil:

    Read more: The Antidepressant In Your Garden

    Climb

    Depending on where you live, this might mean an indoor climbing wall, but give it a go! They have color-coded climbs from beginner to advanced, so don’t worry about being out of your depth.

    And the best thing is, the beginner climbs will be as much a workout to a beginner as the advanced climbs will be to an advanced climber, because at the end of the day, you’re still clinging on for dear life, no matter whether it’s a sizeable handhold not far from the ground, or the impression of a fingernail crack in an overhang 100ft in the air.

    Video games (but…)

    Less in the category of Stardew Valley, and more in the category of Wii Fit.

    So, dust off that old controller (or treat yourself to one if you didn’t have one already), and get doing a hundred sports and other physical activities in the comfort of your living room, with a surprisingly addictive gaming system!

    Sex!

    You probably don’t need instructions here, and if you do, well honestly, we’re running out of space today. But the answer to “does xyz count?” is “did it get your heart racing?” because if so, it counts

    Take care!

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  • We’re only using a fraction of health workers’ skills. This needs to change

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    Roles of health professionals are still unfortunately often stuck in the past. That is, before the shift of education of nurses and other health professionals into universities in the 1980s. So many are still not working to their full scope of practice.

    There has been some expansion of roles in recent years – including pharmacists prescribing (under limited circumstances) and administering a wider range of vaccinations.

    But the recently released paper from an independent Commonwealth review on health workers’ “scope of practice” identifies the myriad of barriers preventing Australians from fully benefiting from health professionals’ skills.

    These include workforce design (who does what, where and how roles interact), legislation and regulation (which often differs according to jurisdiction), and how health workers are funded and paid.

    There is no simple quick fix for this type of reform. But we now have a sensible pathway to improve access to care, using all health professionals appropriately.

    A new vision for general practice

    I recently had a COVID booster. To do this, I logged onto my general practice’s website, answered the question about what I wanted, booked an appointment with the practice nurse that afternoon, got jabbed, was bulk-billed, sat down for a while, and then went home. Nothing remarkable at all about that.

    But that interaction required a host of facilitating factors. The Victorian government regulates whether nurses can provide vaccinations, and what additional training the nurse requires. The Commonwealth government has allowed the practice to be paid by Medicare for the nurse’s work. The venture capitalist practice owner has done the sums and decided allocating a room to a practice nurse is economically rational.

    The future of primary care is one involving more use of the range of health professionals, in addition to GPs.

    It would be good if my general practice also had a physiotherapist, who I could see if I had back pain without seeing the GP, but there is no Medicare rebate for this. This arrangement would need both health professionals to have access to my health record. There also needs to be trust and good communication between the two when the physio might think the GP needs to be alerted to any issues.

    This vision is one of integrated primary care, with health professionals working in a team. The nurse should be able to do more than vaccination and checking vital signs. Do I really need to see the GP every time I need a prescription renewed for my regular medication? This is the nub of the “scope of practice” issue.

    How about pharmacists?

    An integrated future is not the only future on the table. Pharmacy owners especially have argued that pharmacists should be able to practise independently of GPs, prescribing a limited range of medications and dispensing them.

    This will inevitably reduce continuity of care and potentially create risks if the GP is not aware of what other medications a patient is using.

    But a greater role for pharmacists has benefits for patients. It is often easier and cheaper for the patient to see a pharmacist, especially as bulk billing rates fall, and this is one of the reasons why independent pharmacist prescribing is gaining traction.

    Pharmacists explains something to a patient
    It’s often easier for a patient to see a pharmacist than a GP. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Every five years or so the government negotiates an agreement with the Pharmacy Guild, the organisation of pharmacy owners, about how much pharmacies will be paid for dispensing medications and other services. These agreements are called “Community Pharmacy Agreements”. Paying pharmacists independent prescribing may be part of the next agreement, the details of which are currently being negotiated.

    GPs don’t like competition from this new source, even though there will be plenty of work around for GPs into the foreseeable future. So their organisations highlight the risks of these changes, reopening centuries old turf wars dressed up as concerns about safety and risk.

    Who pays for all this?

    Funding is at the heart of disputes about scope of practice. As with many policy debates, there is merit on both sides.

    Clearly the government must increase its support for comprehensive general practice. Existing funding of fee-for-service medical benefits payments must be redesigned and supplemented by payments that allow practices to engage a range of other health professionals to create health-care teams.

    This should be the principal direction of primary care reform, and the final report of the scope of practice review should make that clear. It must focus on the overall goal of better primary care, rather than simply the aspirations of individual health professionals, and working to a professional’s full scope of practice in a team, not a professional silo.

    In parallel, governments – state and federal – must ensure all health professionals are used to their best of their abilities. It is a waste to have highly educated professionals not using their skills fully. New funding arrangements should facilitate better access to care from all appropriately qualified health professionals.

    In the case of prescribing, it is possible to reconcile the aspirations of pharmacists and the concerns of GPs. New arrangements could be that pharmacists can only renew medications if they have agreements with the GP and there is good communication between them. This may be easier in rural and suburban areas, where the pharmacists are better known to the GPs.

    The second issues paper points to the complexity of achieving scope of practice reforms. However, it also sets out a sensible path to improve access to care using all health professionals appropriately.

    Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Related Posts

  • Built from Broken – by Scott Hogan, CPT, COES
  • Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

    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 Real Immune-Boosters

    What comes to your mind when we say “immune support”? Vitamin C and maybe zinc? Those have their place, but there are things we can do that are a lot more important!

    It’s just, these things are not talked about as much, because stores can’t sell them to you

    Sleep

    One of the biggest difference-makers. Get good sleep! Getting at least 7 hours decent sleep (not lying in bed, not counting interruptions to sleep as part of the sleep duration) can improve your immune system by three or four times.

    Put another way, people are 3–4 times more likely to get sick if they get less sleep than that on average.

    Check it out: Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

    Eat an anti-inflammatory diet

    In short, for most of us this means lots of whole plant foods (lots of fiber), and limited sugar, flour, alcohol.

    For more details, you can see our main feature on this: Keep Inflammation At Bay!

    You may wonder why eating to reduce inflammation (inflammation is a form of immune response) will help improve immune response. Put it this way:

    If your town’s fire service is called out eleventy-two times per day to deal with things that are not, in fact, fires, then when there is a fire, they will be already exhausted, and will not do their job so well.

    Look after your gut microbiota

    Additionally, healthy gut microbiota (fostered by the same diet we just described) help keep your body pathogen-free, by avoiding “leaky gut syndrome” that occurs when, for example, C. albicans (you do not want this in your gut, and it thrives on the things we just told you to avoid) puts its roots through your intestinal walls, making holes in them. And through those holes? You definitely do not want bacteria from your intestines going into the rest of your body.

    See also: Gut Health 101

    Actually get that moderate exercise

    There’s definitely a sweet-spot here, because too much exercise will also exhaust you and deplete your body’s resources. However, the famous “150 minutes per week” (so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) will make a big difference.

    See: Exercise and the Regulation of Immune Functions

    Manage your stress levels (good and bad!)

    This one swings both ways:

    • Acute stress (like a cold shower) is good for immune response. Think of it like a fire drill for your body.
    • Chronic stress (“the general everything” persistently stressful in life) is bad for immune response. This is the fire drill that never ends. Your body’s going to know what to do really well, but it’s going to be exhausted already by the time an actual threat hits.

    Read more: Effects of Stress on Immune Function: the Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

    Supplement, yes.

    These are far less critical than the above things, but are also helpful. Good things to take include:

    Enjoy, and stay well!

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  • Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear

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    Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear

    Women get Alzheimer’s at nearly twice the rate than men do, and deteriorate more rapidly after onset, too.

    So… Why?

    There are many potential things to look at, but four stand out for quick analysis:

    • Chromosomes: women usually have XX chromosomes, to men’s usual XY. There are outliers to both groups, people with non-standard combinations of chromosomes, but not commonly enough to throw out the stats.
    • Hormones: women usually have high estrogen and low testosterone, compared to men. Again there are outliers and this is a huge oversimplification that doesn’t even look at other sex hormones, but broadly speaking (which sounds vague, but is actually what is represented in epidemiological studies), it will be so.
    • Anatomy: humans have some obvious sexual dimorphism (again, there are outliers, but again, not enough to throw out the stats); this seems least likely to be relevant (Alzheimer’s is probably not stored in the breasts, for examples), though average body composition (per muscle:fat ratio) could admittedly be a factor.
    • Social/lifestyle: once again, #NotAllWomen etc, but broadly speaking, women and men often tend towards different social roles in some ways, and as we know, of course lifestyle can play a part in disease pathogenesis.

    As a quick aside before we continue, if you’re curious about those outliers, then a wiki-walk into the fascinating world of intersex conditions, for example, could start here. But by and large, this won’t affect most people.

    So… Which parts matter?

    Back in 2018, Dr. Maria Teresa Ferretti et al. kicked up some rocks in this regard, looking not just at genes (as much research has focussed on) or amyloid-β (again, well-studied) but also at phenotypes and metabolic and social factors—bearing in mind that all three of those are heavily influenced by hormones. Noting, for example, that (we’ll quote directly here):

    • Men and women with Alzheimer disease (AD) exhibit different cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, and women show faster cognitive decline after diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or AD dementia.
    • Brain atrophy rates and patterns differ along the AD continuum between the sexes; in MCI, brain atrophy is faster in women than in men.
    • The prevalence and effects of cerebrovascular, metabolic and socio-economic risk factors for AD are different between men and women.

    See: Sex differences in Alzheimer disease—the gateway to precision medicine

    So, have scientists controlled for each of those factors?

    Mostly not! But they have found clues, anyway, while noting the limitations of the previous way of conducting studies. For example:

    ❝Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and experience faster cognitive decline compared to their male counterparts. These sex differences should be accounted for when designing medications and conducting clinical trials❞

    ~ Dr. Feixiong Cheng

    Read: Research finds sex differences in immune response and metabolism drive Alzheimer’s disease

    Did you spot the clue?

    It was “differences in immune response and metabolism”. These things are both influenced by (not outright regulated by, but strongly influenced by) sex hormones.

    ❝As [hormonal] sex influences both the immune system and metabolic process, our study aimed to identify how all of these individual factors influence one another to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease❞

    ~ Dr. Justin Lathia

    Ignoring for a moment progesterone’s role in metabolism, estrogen is an immunostimulant and testosterone is an immunosuppressant. These thus both also have an effect in inflammation, which yes, includes neuroinflammation.

    But wait a minute, shouldn’t that mean that women are more protected, not less?

    It should! Except… Alzheimer’s is an age-related disease, and in the age-bracket that generally gets Alzheimer’s (again, there are outliers), menopause has been done and dusted for quite a while.

    Which means, and this is critical: post-menopausal women not on HRT are essentially left without the immune boost usually directed by estrogen, while men of the same age will be ticking over with their physiology that (unlike that of the aforementioned women) was already adapted to function with negligible estrogen.

    Specifically:

    ❝The metabolic consequences of estrogen decline during menopause accelerate neuropathology in women❞

    ~ Dr. Rasha Saleh

    Source: Hormone replacement therapy is associated with improved cognition and larger brain volumes in at-risk APOE4 women

    Critical idea to take away from all this:

    Alzheimer’s research is going to be misleading if it doesn’t take into account sex differences, and not just that, but also specifically age-relevant sex differences—because that can flip the narrative. If we don’t take age into account, we could be left thinking estrogen is to blame, when in fact, it appears to be the opposite.

    In the meantime, if you’re a woman of a certain age, you might talk with a doctor about whether HRT could be beneficial for you, if you haven’t already:

    ❝Women at genetic risk for AD (carrying at least one APOE e4 allele) seem to be particularly benefiting from MHT❞

    (MHT = Menopausal Hormone Therapy; also commonly called HRT, which is the umbrella term for Hormone Replacement Therapies in general)

    ~ Dr. Herman Depypere

    Source study: Menopause hormone therapy significantly alters pathophysiological biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease

    Pop-sci press release version: HRT could ward off Alzheimer’s among at-risk women

    Take care!

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  • Hazelnuts vs Pistachios – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing hazelnuts to pistachios, we picked the hazelnuts.

    Why?

    An argument could be made for either, depending on what we prioritize! So there was really no wrong answer here today, but it is good to know what each nut’s strengths are:

    In terms of macros, pistachios have more fiber, carbs, protein, and (mostly healthy) fat. That does make them the “more food per food” option, but it’s worth noting that while hazelnuts have more fiber, they also have a higher margin of difference when it comes to their greater carb count, and resultantly, hazelnuts do have the lower glycemic index. That said, they’re still both low-GI foods, so we’ll call this section a win for pistachios overall.

    When it comes to vitamins, hazelnuts have more of vitamins B3, B5, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pistachios have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, and B6. So, a fair 7:4 win for hazelnuts here.

    In the category of minerals, hazelnuts have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, while pistachios have more phosphorus, potassium, and selenium. A clear 6:3 win for hazelnuts.

    In short, both are good sources of many nutrients, so choose according to what you want to prioritize, or better yet, enjoy both.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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