Three Daily Servings of Beans?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
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
❝Not crazy about the Dr.s food advice. Beans 3X a day?❞
For reference, this is in response to our recent article on the topic of 12 things to aim to get a certain amount of each day:
So, there are a couple of things to look at here:
Firstly, don’t worry, it’s a guideline and an aim. If you don’t hit it on a given day, there is always tomorrow. It’s just good to know what one is aiming for, because without knowing that, achieving it will be a lot less likely!
Secondly, the beans/legumes/pulses category says three servings, but the example serving sizes are quite small, e.g. ½ cup cooked beans, or ¼ cup hummus. And also as you notice, dips/pastes/sauces made from beans count too. So given the portion sizes, you could easily get two servings in by breakfast (and two servings of whole grains, too) if you enjoy frijoles refritos, for example. Many of the recipes we share on this site have “stealth” beans/legumes/pulses in this fashion
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Haven’t Done Endurance Training Lately? Turn That Into An Advantage (Here’s How)
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Confession time: this writer, who reads and writes about health science every day, hasn’t done endurance training in a long time. Partly because of time constraints, partly for other reasons, but I sometimes wonder if I could still run pretty much indefinitely like I used to. I’ll find out someday, but not today!
Today we’re going to be looking at making use of that lack of endurance training, by leveraging how muscles “remember” past exercise and bounce back quickly. Good news, you don’t have to bounce back specifically into endurance training if you don’t want to, and in fact, weight training seems to be what’s best.
Here’s how…
Bounce back stronger
Researchers (Dr. Clay Weidenhamer et al.) investigated this topic, using a combination of gene analysis and mouse trials. If you, dear reader, are not a mouse, then worry not: broadly speaking, mammalian muscles are mammalian muscles regardless, and this is one of the most applicable-to-humans kinds of study available.
How the experiment ran: mice ran on a wheel for 4 weeks, rested 4 weeks, then ran again for 4 weeks.
What they found, in few words: the second round of exercise led to greater muscle fiber growth (up to 30% more mass) than the first.
As a bonus, this occurred even when the second exercise phase was much less intense than the first.
Remember that gene analysis that we mentioned? It showed increased mitochondrial activity during retraining, suggesting mitochondria—not just satellite cells—drive muscle memory. This is important, because it means we can boost (or lose) muscle memory in more ways than previously recognized.
See also: 7 Ways To Boost Mitochondrial Health To Fight Disease
And, since it is one of the above-linked 7 ways, you might also want to bear in mind: Coenzyme Q10 From Foods & Supplements
On which note, you may be wondering how much diet affects this, and the answer is that while diet can and will play a part, both control and high-fat diet mice showed similar retraining gains, showing that exercise memory can override poor diet.
In terms of what exercise works best, weight training was best, but aerobic exercise still resulted in gains, and primed the muscles to be more receptive to future exercise benefits too.
You can read the paper itself, here: Muscle memory of exercise optimizes mitochondrial metabolism to support skeletal muscle growth
If, like this writer, you have a vague idea that you might like to get back into endurance training, then check out this mythbusting edition with regard to (amongst other things) marathon-runners in older age: Are We Truly “Never Too Old”, Or Are There Some Reasonable Age Limits On Exercise?
Want to learn more?
Check out this truly excellent book that we reviewed a little while ago:
Next Level – by Dr. Stacy Sims ← the focus is on thriving through menopause (including: postmenopause) and going from strength to strength.
Dr. Sims uses the first few chapters to explain the menopause in more detail than most people know it, before launching into the main part of the book, which is the “what to do” section. If you only buy one book of this genre, we heartily recommend this one.
Enjoy!
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Why Stretching Doesn’t Work After 50 (Unless You Fix These 3 Mistakes)
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Over-50s specialist physio Will Harlow explains the missing knowledge that holds most people back:
How most people err
Three traps to not fall into:
- Not holding long enough: you need at least a 30–60-second hold for each stretch because your Golgi tendon organs desensitize only after around 30 seconds, allowing you to access more range without actually lengthening your muscle fibers.
- Chasing intensity instead of consistency: pushing your stretches to maximum discomfort gives only a short-term benefit, and long-term gains are identical to moderate stretching. In reality, the biggest driver of progress is frequency, such as returning to the same 30-second stretch five times per day so your muscles never fully tighten back to baseline.
- Building flexibility without control: flexibility without strength and control increases injury risk, so every new range should be reinforced with active movement that teaches your body to support that position.
Three exercise do help you do it best:
- Romanian deadlift with a stick: sliding a barbell (or unweighted stick) down your legs while keeping your back straight helps you to improve your hamstring range and the control of your hip hinge by actively using your muscles, rather than relying on passive stretching.
- Wide squat: taking a wide stance and lowering into a comfortable squat improves mobility of your quads and adductors, while also reinforcing strength and control through that deeper range.
- Wall-assisted shoulder lift: walking your hand up a wall, then lightly lifting it off builds mobility and control in your shoulders because you actively move through the range rather than hanging on a passive stretch—and that way you’re much less likely to later injure yourself while getting something from a high shelf!
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Four Habits That Drastically Improve Mobility
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More Things Dopamine Does For Us
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In this week’s news roundup, we have two dopamine items and one other for variety:
The real “dopamine switch”
Dopamine is well-known as “the reward chemical”, and indeed it is that, but it also plays a central role in many neurological processes, including:
- Linear task processing
- Motivation
- Learning and memory
- Motor functions
- Language faculties
Recent research has now shown its importance in cognitive flexibility, i.e. the ability to adapt to circumstances, and switch approaches appropriately to such, and generally not get stuck in a cognitive rut:
Read in full: Scientists confirm neurobiochemical link between dopamine and cognitive flexibility
Related: The Dopamine Myth
You may like the sound of this
It’s been known for a while that dopamine is involved in learning and memory (as mentioned above), but this has been established largely by associative studies, e.g. “people with lower dopamine levels learn less easily”. But scientists have now mapped out more of how it actually does that.
One more reason to ensure we have and maintain healthy dopamine levels!
Read in full: Songbirds highlight dopamine’s role in learning
Related: 10 Ways To Naturally Boost Dopamine
Resist Or Run!
When it comes to protecting against bone loss, resistance exercise remains key, but impact-laden activities such as running (but not lower-level everyday activity) can help too. There have been studies on the extent to which walking (a load-bearing activity) may be protective against bone loss, and the results of those studies have mostly been inconclusive.
This study looked into the incidence (or not, as the case may be) of bone-loading impacts in everyday movements, using accelerometers, and measured bone mineral density before and after testing periods. Those that had higher-intensity bone-loading movements (so, resistance training or running, for example) retained the best measures of bone density through menopause into postmenopause:
Read in full: Everyday physical activity does not slow bone loss during menopause, finds study
Related: The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
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What Does Hypermobile Posture Look Like?
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Is this how you stand and/or walk?
Every which way and loose
Posture, with hypermobility, can be quite paradoxical—for example, it can be either overly stiff for protection, or overly loose with poor control, often alternating between bracing and collapsing.
Some things to watch out for:
- Standing posture: favoring one leg over both, locking your knees backwards or keeping a slight constant bend, your pelvis tucked under and/or shifted forwards.
- Walking pattern: feet turned out, glute clenching, and/or excessive leg rotation where your leg rolls in then your knee swings out as weight transfers.
- Joint behaviour: frequent hyperextension, especially in your knees, elbows, fingers, or spine, plus excessive fidgeting or moving into end-range positions even while standing still.
- Upper body signs: exaggerated hand gestures, frequent neck movement, shoulder tension, and a tendency to overextend your neck or back beyond neutral.
Confession: your writer here is currently writing this while standing on one leg, hip cocked, as she types with her very spidery fingers, and proofreading with a tilted head like a dog that thinks things might make more sense at 45°. This video is taking no prisoners today, it seems.
In the video, we also learn about unusual flexibility positions like curling our toes, sitting in extreme folded postures, “W-sitting,” or “frog-leg” positions that feel natural but may stress our joints.
Notably, the main visual clue isn’t just flexibility, but rather also instability, where our body uses compensations like muscle gripping, locking joints, or shifting alignment to create support.
For once, there’s no real call-to-action here; we cannot re-posture our way out of having hypermobility. If our body’s built this way, it’s built this way, and that’s that (per current science anyway; who knows what future developments may be discovered).
However, it can be good to recognize the signs and symptoms, such that we can better understand what’s going on.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
What Your Hands Can Tell You About Your Health ← about some hypermobility signs that can show up in our hands
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5 Ways To Lose Fat Without Losing Muscle
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It can seem like a paradox, trying to lose weight and gain it (in muscle) at the same time. But it can be done:
How to do it
Chances are, if you’re looking for change that you’re not currently getting, it won’t be by doing what you’ve been doing already. Thus:
- Accept the change you hate most: the change you resist most is usually what you need most (precisely because it’s what’s missing, because you’ve been avoiding it). Avoiding discomfort keeps you stuck. Real progress often comes from doing what feels hardest.
- Track everything: it gives you the data to make informed decisions. Whether it’s logging macros, using hand portions, or taking food photos, tracking brings clarity and helps tailor your plan. Otherwise, you are guessing. And that can be fine for maintaining a stable status quo that you’re happy with, but not for effecting change.
- Diet for fat loss, train for muscle: nutrition drives fat loss; training builds muscle. Worry less about cardio and focus on strength training with progressive overload. Rest when needed, and train with intent to preserve/define muscle.
- Create daily consistency: simple habits done consistently yield lasting results. Keep your routine steady across training (while still integrating rest days to allow recovery), which coupled with the “track everything” dictum, will reduce guesswork, and reveal what actually works over time.
- What you put first gets priority: tackle key habits early in the day. Prioritize strength training over cardio, and do your most important exercises first in your workout to get your best effort when it matters most.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Can You Gain Muscle & Lose Fat At The Same Time? ← for our own main feature on this topic, with much more specificity than provided in the video.
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What you need to know about FLiRT, an emerging group of COVID-19 variants
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What you need to know
- COVID-19 wastewater levels are currently low, but a recent group of variants called FLiRT is making headlines.
- KP.2 is one of several FLiRT variants, and early lab tests suggest that it’s more infectious than JN.1.
- Getting infected with any COVID-19 variant can cause severe illness, heart problems, and death.
KP.2, a new COVID-19 variant, is now dominant in the United States. Lab tests suggest that it may be more infectious than JN.1, the variant that was dominant earlier this year.
Fortunately, there’s good news: Current wastewater data shows that COVID-19 infection rates are low. Still, experts are closely watching KP.2 to see if it will lead to an uptick in infections.
Read on to learn more about KP.2 and how to stay informed about COVID-19 cases in your area.
Where can I find data on COVID-19 cases in my area?
Hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions or hospital capacity to the Department of Health and Human Services. However, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) estimates the number of COVID-19 infections in a community based on the amount of COVID-19 viral particles detected in local wastewater.
View this map of wastewater data from the CDC to visualize COVID-19 infection rates throughout the U.S., or look up COVID-19 wastewater trends in your state.
What do we know so far about the new variant?
Early lab tests suggest that KP.2—one of a group of emerging variants called FLiRT—is similar to the previously dominant variant, JN.1, but it may be more infectious. If you had JN.1, you may still get reinfected with KP.2, especially if it’s been several months or longer since your last COVID-19 infection.
A CDC spokesperson said they have no reason to believe that KP.2 causes more severe illness than other variants. Experts are closely watching KP.2 to see if it will lead to an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
How can I protect myself from COVID-19 variants?
Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines reduces your risk of severe illness, long COVID, heart problems, and death. The CDC recommends that people 65 and older and immunocompromised people receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring.
Wearing a high-quality, well-fitting mask reduces your risk of contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to others. At indoor gatherings, improving ventilation by opening doors and windows, using high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, and building your own Corsi-Rosenthal box can also reduce the spread of COVID-19.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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