
Thinner Leaner Stronger – by Michael Matthews
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First, the elephant in the training room: this book does assume that you want to be thinner, leaner, and stronger. This is the companion book, written for women, to “Bigger, Stronger, Leaner”, which was written for men. Statistically, these assumptions are reasonable, even if the generalizations are imperfect. Also, this reviewer has a gripe with anything selling “thinner”. Leaner was already sufficient, and “stronger” is the key element here, so “thinner” is just marketing, and marketing something that’s often not unhealthy, to sell a book that’s actually full of good advice for building a healthy body.
In other words: don’t judge a book by the cover, however eyeroll-worthy it may be.
The book is broadly aimed at middle-aged readers, but boasts equal worth for young and old alike. If there’s something Matthews knows how to do well in his writing, it’s hedging his bets.
As for what’s in the book: it’s diet and exercise advice, aimed at long-term implementation (i.e. not a crash course, but a lifestyle change), for maximum body composition change results while not doing anything silly (like many extreme short-term courses do) and not compromising other aspects of one’s health, while also not taking up an inordinate amount of time.
The dietary advice is sensible, broadly consistent with what we’d advise here, and/but if you want to maximise your body composition change results, you’re going to need a pocket calculator (or be better than this writer is at mental arithmetic).
The exercise advice is detailed, and a lot more specific than “lift things”; there are programs of specifically how many sets and reps and so forth, and when to increase the weights and when not to.
A strength of this book is that it explains why all those numbers are what they are, instead of just expecting the reader to take on faith that the best for a given exercise is (for example) 3 sets of 8–10 reps of 70–75% of one’s single-rep max for that exercise. Because without the explanation, those numbers would seem very arbitrary indeed, and that wouldn’t help anyone stick with the program. And so on, for any advice he gives.
The style is… A little flashy for this reader’s taste, a little salesy (and yes he does try to upsell to his personal coaching, but really, anything you need is in the book already), but when it comes down to it, all that gym-boy bravado doesn’t take away from the fact his advice is sound and helpful.
Bottom line: if you would like your body to be the three things mentioned in the title, this book can certainly help you get there.
Click here to check out Thinner Leaner Stronger, and become thinner, leaner, stronger!
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The Gym For Your Mental Health
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Getting The Most Out Of Therapy
If you’ve never had therapy, what image do you have of it? Perhaps you imagine a bearded and bespectacled man in a suit, impassively making notes on a clipboard. Perhaps you imagine an empathetic woman, with tissues and camomile tea on standby.
The reality is: the experience of therapy can vary, a lot.
In its results, too! Sometimes we may try therapy and think “well that was a waste of time and money”. Sometimes we may try therapy and it’ll change our life.
So… Is there any way to make it less of a lottery?
First: knowledge is power
And while the therapist-client relationship certainly shouldn’t be a power struggle, you do want to be empowered.
So, read about different styles of therapy, and also, read some how-to guides for self-therapy. We’ve recommended some before in previous editions of 10almonds; you can check those books out here:
- How to Be Your Own Therapist: Boost your mood and reduce your anxiety in 10 minutes a day – by Owen O’Kane
- You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships – by Dr. Richard Schwartz
- DBT Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dialectical Behavior Therapy – by Sheri van Dijk
- How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self – by Dr. Nicole LaPera
This will serve two purposes:
- You’ll know what to expect out of a therapist
- You can more efficiently “get to work” in therapy
It also, of course, could help you already, without even going to therapy!
Second: begin with the end in mind
A person who does not know what they want to get out of therapy, will likely not get much out of therapy. Or rather, their first task will be to figure that out. So, figure it out in advance, if you can.
Maybe you have a problem that has a specific name, for example poor self-esteem, anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, neuroticism, phobia, etc.
This isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous, and in this case you don’t want a lifetime of “Hello, my name is ______ and I have ______”, if you can help it.
So, what do you want?
- Maybe you want to be able to go to social events without feeling anxious
- Maybe you want your relationship(s) to be more secure and fulfilling
- Maybe you want to no longer have nightmares about that traumatic thing
- Maybe you want to be able to greet each day’s tasks with confidence and without overwhelm
…etc.
A good therapist will help you to set such goals (if you haven’t already), and attain them.
If you’re going the self-therapy route, then this is your job now!
It will probably start with the question: imagine that everything currently troubling you is now healed.
What would that look like, to you?
Third: get a good match for you
Unless you are going entirely the self-therapy route (which can work for some), you will want a therapist who’s a good match for you.
It may take a degree of “suck it and see” trial runs before you find the right one, but that takes time and money, so you’ll want to streamline the process as much as you can. If you do this well, you may be able to find a good therapist for you first time.
For this, personal recommendations (such as from friends) may help more than exmaining academic and institutional affiliations.
Yes, you want a well-qualified therapist who is a member in good standing of a respectable regulated body… but whether your therapist is easy for you to “get on with” will matter at least as much as whether their approach is psychodynamic, or 4th wave CBT, or IFS, or whatever seems popular in your time and place.
Bear in mind:
- Some therapists are specialized in helping with some kinds of things and not others. It will obviously help if the therapist you choose is specialized in the thing you are seeking help for.
- Some therapists may be able to relate to you better (or not), based on simple factors of who they are. To this end, while your therapist certainly doesn’t have to be a mirror image of you, factors like age, gender, race, etc can be relevant and may be worth considering, depending on what you are seeking help with, and what factors impact that thing.
Prefer keeping things to yourself?
Therapy isn’t for everyone, but having a good relationship with oneself definitely is. You might want to invest in one of the books whose reviews we linked above, and you might also get value from previous Psychology Sunday articles, which you can find in our archive (every seventh edition here has a Psychology Sunday main feature):
Click Here To Check Out The 10almonds Archive
To borrow the catchphrase of Dr. Kirk Honda (a therapist and therapy educator with decades of experience):
❝Take care of yourself, because you deserve it; you really, really do.❞
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Body Sculpting with Kettlebells for Women – by Lorna Kleidman
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For those of us who are more often lifting groceries or pots and pans than bodybuilding trophies, kettlebells provide a way of training functional strength. This book does (as per the title) offer both sides of things—the body sculpting, and thebody maintenance free from pain and injury.
Kleidman first explains the basics of kettlebell training, and how to get the most from one’s workouts, before discussing what kinds of exercises are best for which benefits, and finally moving on to provide full exercise programs.
The exercise programs themselves are fairly comprehensive without being unduly detailed, and give a week-by-week plan for getting your body to where you want it to be.
The style is fairly personal and relaxed, while keeping things quite clear—the photographs are also clear, though if there’s a weakness here, it’s that we don’t get to see which muscles are being worked in the same as we do when there’s an illustration with a different-colored part to show that.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for an introductory course for kettlebell training that’ll take you from beginner through to the “I now know what I’m doing and can take it from here, thanks” stage.
Click here to check out Body Sculpting With Kettlebells For Women, and get sculpting!
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Total Fitness After 40 – by Nick Swettenham
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Time may march relentlessly on, but can we retain our youthful good health?
The answer is that we can… to a degree. And where we can’t, we can and should adapt what we do as we age.
The key, as Swettenham illustrates, is that there are lifestyle factors that will help us to age more slowly, thus retaining our youthful good health for longer. At the same time, there are factors of which we must simply be mindful, and take care of ourselves a little differently now than perhaps we did when we were younger. Here, Swettenham acts guide and instructor.
A limitation of the book is that it was written with the assumption that the reader is a man. This does mean that anything relating to hormones is assuming that we have less testosterone as we’re getting older and would like to have more, which is obviously not the case for everyone. However, happily, the actual advice remains applicable regardless.
Swettenham covers the full spread of what he believes everyone should take into account as we age:
- Mindset changes (accepting that physical changes are happening, without throwing our hands in the air and giving up)
- Focus on important aspects such as:
- strength
- flexibility
- mobility
- agility
- endurance
- Some attention is also given to diet—nothing you won’t have read elsewhere, but it’s a worthy mention.
All in all, this is a fine book if you’re thinking of taking up or maintaining an exercise routine that doesn’t stick its head in the sand about your aging body, but doesn’t just roll over and give up either. A worthy addition to anyone’s bookshelf!
Check Out Fitness After 40 On Amazon Today!
Looking for a more women-centric equivalent book? Vonda Wright M.D. has you covered (and her bio is very impressive)!
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Apples vs Oranges – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apples to oranges, we picked the oranges.
Why?
In terms of macros, the two fruits are approximately equal (and indeed, on average, precisely equal in the most important metric, which is fiber). So, a tie here.
In the category of vitamins, apples are higher in vitamin K, while oranges are higher in vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline. An easy win for oranges this time.
When it comes to minerals, apples have more iron and manganese, while oranges have more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another easy win for oranges.
So, adding up the sections, a clear win for oranges. But, by all means, enjoy either or both! Diversity is good.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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Drug companies pay doctors over A$11 million a year for travel and education. Here’s which specialties received the most
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Drug companies are paying Australian doctors millions of dollars a year to fly to overseas conferences and meetings, give talks to other doctors, and to serve on advisory boards, our research shows.
Our team analysed reports from major drug companies, in the first comprehensive analysis of its kind. We found drug companies paid more than A$33 million to doctors in the three years from late 2019 to late 2022 for these consultancies and expenses.
We know this underestimates how much drug companies pay doctors as it leaves out the most common gift – food and drink – which drug companies in Australia do not declare.
Due to COVID restrictions, the timescale we looked at included periods where doctors were likely to be travelling less and attending fewer in-person medical conferences. So we suspect current levels of drug company funding to be even higher, especially for travel.
Monster Ztudio/Shutterstock What we did and what we found
Since 2019, Medicines Australia, the trade association of the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, has published a centralised database of payments made to individual health professionals. This is the first comprehensive analysis of this database.
We downloaded the data and matched doctors’ names with listings with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra). We then looked at how many doctors per medical specialty received industry payments and how much companies paid to each specialty.
We found more than two-thirds of rheumatologists received industry payments. Rheumatologists often prescribe expensive new biologic drugs that suppress the immune system. These drugs are responsible for a substantial proportion of drug costs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
The specialists who received the most funding as a group were cancer doctors (oncology/haematology specialists). They received over $6 million in payments.
This is unsurprising given recently approved, expensive new cancer drugs. Some of these drugs are wonderful treatment advances; others offer minimal improvement in survival or quality of life.
A 2023 study found doctors receiving industry payments were more likely to prescribe cancer treatments of low clinical value.
Our analysis found some doctors with many small payments of a few hundred dollars. There were also instances of large individual payments.
Why does all this matter?
Doctors usually believe drug company promotion does not affect them. But research tells a different story. Industry payments can affect both doctors’ own prescribing decisions and those of their colleagues.
A US study of meals provided to doctors – on average costing less than US$20 – found the more meals a doctor received, the more of the promoted drug they prescribed.
Pizza anyone? Even providing a cheap meal can influence prescribing. El Nariz/Shutterstock Another study found the more meals a doctor received from manufacturers of opioids (a class of strong painkillers), the more opioids they prescribed. Overprescribing played a key role in the opioid crisis in North America.
Overall, a substantial body of research shows industry funding affects prescribing, including for drugs that are not a first choice because of poor effectiveness, safety or cost-effectiveness.
Then there are doctors who act as “key opinion leaders” for companies. These include paid consultants who give talks to other doctors. An ex-industry employee who recruited doctors for such roles said:
Key opinion leaders were salespeople for us, and we would routinely measure the return on our investment, by tracking prescriptions before and after their presentations […] If that speaker didn’t make the impact the company was looking for, then you wouldn’t invite them back.
We know about payments to US doctors
The best available evidence on the effects of pharmaceutical industry funding on prescribing comes from the US government-run program called Open Payments.
Since 2013, all drug and device companies must report all payments over US$10 in value in any single year. Payment reports are linked to the promoted products, which allows researchers to compare doctors’ payments with their prescribing patterns.
Analysis of this data, which involves hundreds of thousands of doctors, has indisputably shown promotional payments affect prescribing.
Medical students need to know about this. LightField Studios/Shutterstock US research also shows that doctors who had studied at medical schools that banned students receiving payments and gifts from drug companies were less likely to prescribe newer and more expensive drugs with limited evidence of benefit over existing drugs.
In general, Australian medical faculties have weak or no restrictions on medical students seeing pharmaceutical sales representatives, receiving gifts, or attending industry-sponsored events during their clinical training. They also have no restrictions on academic staff holding consultancies with manufacturers whose products they feature in their teaching.
So a first step to prevent undue pharmaceutical industry influence on prescribing decisions is to shelter medical students from this influence by having stronger conflict-of-interest policies, such as those mentioned above.
A second is better guidance for individual doctors from professional organisations and regulators on the types of funding that is and is not acceptable. We believe no doctor actively involved in patient care should accept payments from a drug company for talks, international travel or consultancies.
Third, if Medicines Australia is serious about transparency, it should require companies to list all payments – including those for food and drink – and to link health professionals’ names to their Ahpra registration numbers. This is similar to the reporting standard pharmaceutical companies follow in the US and would allow a more complete and clearer picture of what’s happening in Australia.
Patients trust doctors to choose the best available treatments to meet their health needs, based on scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness. They don’t expect marketing to influence that choice.
Barbara Mintzes, Professor, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney and Malcolm Forbes, Consultant psychiatrist and PhD candidate, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Brazil Nuts vs Pecans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing Brazil nuts to pecans, we picked the pecans.
Why?
In terms of macros, Brazil nuts have more protein while pecans have more fiber. Both of these nuts are equally fatty, though Brazil nuts have much more saturated fat per 100g, which still isn’t terrible, but it does make pecans’ profile (mostly monounsaturated with some polyunsaturated) the healthier. They’re about equal in carbs. All in all, a win for pecans here.
In the category of vitamins, Brazil nuts have more vitamin E, while pecans have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, K, and choline. An easy win for pecans.
The category of minerals is an interesting one. Brazil nuts have more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while pecans have more iron, manganese, and zinc. Before we crown Brazil nuts with the win in this category, though, let’s take a closer look at those selenium levels:
- A cup of pecans contains 21% of the RDA of selenium. Your hair will be luscious and shiny.
- A cup of Brazil nuts contains 10,456% of the RDA of selenium. This is way past the point of selenium toxicity, and your (luscious, shiny) hair will fall out.
For this reason, it’s recommended to eat no more than 3–4 Brazil nuts per day.
We consider that a point against Brazil nuts.
Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for pecans; of course, enjoy either or both, just be sure to practise moderation when it comes to the Brazil nuts!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Enjoy!
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