Tight Hips? Stiff Back? These 5 Exercises Improve Everything
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Movement coach Alisa Szyman shows us how:
On the move
These movements address most tight hips, stiff shoulders, and back pain that stretching alone doesn’t fix:
- Inchworm to cobra: this sequence counteracts prolonged sitting by opening your posterior chain during the inchworm and your anterior line during cobra, moving from a forward fold to a high plank, dropping your hips into cobra, pressing back into downward dog, and returning to standing for five reps or 60 seconds.
World’s greatest stretch with arm reaches: this lunge-based movement opens your hip flexors while restoring thoracic spine rotation and extension by rotating your chest towards your front leg and reaching your arm up and back, holding about 60 seconds per side. - Reverse tabletop and drive through: this exercise opens your shoulders and chest while activating your glutes, core, and posterior chain, lifting your hips into reverse tabletop before driving your hips through your arms for about 60 seconds, or holding the tabletop if the drive through isn’t yet possible.
- Cossack squat: this lateral squat restores side-to-side hip mobility often lost from only moving forwards and backwards, shifting deeply into one bent knee while keeping the opposite leg straight, then alternating sides for about a minute or as many controlled reps as possible.
- Deep squat with heel lifts: this movement improves your ankle mobility and strength while reinforcing deep hip mobility, holding your deepest squat with your chest lifted and lifting your heels briefly before lowering them back to the ground, modifying by holding the squat or using support if needed.
The reason they work is because together, these five movements address full-body mobility, flexibility, strength, lateral movement, spinal rotation, and ankle control, which all adds up to a daily routine that targets the areas most affected by modern sedentary habits.
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:
Mobility For Now & For Later: Train For The Marathon That Is Your Life!
Take care!
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Guava vs Pineapple – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing guava to pineapple, we picked the guava.
Why?
Pineapple is great, but guava just beats it in most ways:
In terms of macros, guava has nearly 4x the fiber and nearly 5x the protein, for the same carbs, giving it the notably lower glycemic index. An easy win for guava in this category.
In the category of vitamins, guava has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pineapple has marginally more vitamin B1. Another clear win for guava.
When it comes to minerals, guava has more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while pineapple has more iron and manganese. One more win for guava.
One big thing in pineapple’s favor is that it contains bromelain, which is an enzyme* found in pineapple (and only in pineapple), that has many very healthful properties, some of them unique to bromelain (and thus: unique to pineapple)
*actually a combination of enzymes, but most often referred to collectively in the singular. But when you do see it referred to as “they”, that’s what that means.
However cool that is, we think it unfair to weight it against guava winning in every other category, so we still say guava gets the overall win.
Of course, enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Let’s Get Fruity: Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More
Enjoy!
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The End of Food Allergy – by Dr. Kari Nadeau & Sloan Barnett
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We don’t usually mention author credentials beyond their occupation/title. However, in this case it bears acknowledging at least the first line of the author bio:
❝Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, is the director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University and is one of the world’s leading experts on food allergy❞
We mention this, because there’s a lot of quack medicine out there [in general, but especially] when it comes to things such as food allergies. So let’s be clear up front that Dr. Nadeau is actually a world-class professional at the top of her field.
This book is, by the way, about true allergies—not intolerances or sensitivities. It does touch on those latter two, but it’s not the main meat of the book.
In particular, most of the research cited is around peanut allergies, though the usual other common allergens are all discussed too.
The authors’ writing style is that of a science educator (Dr. Nadeau’s co-author, Sloan Barnett, is lawyer and health journalist). We get a clear explanation of the science from real-world to clinic and back again, and are left with a strong understanding, not just a conclusion.
The titular “End of Food Allergy” is a bold implicit claim; does the book deliver? Yes, actually.
The book lays out guidelines for safely avoiding food allergies developing in infants, and yes, really, how to reverse them in adults. But…
Big caveat:
The solution for reversing severe food allergies (e.g. “someone nearby touched a peanut three hours ago and now I’m in anaphylactic shock”), drug-assisted oral immunotherapy, takes 6–24 months of weekly several-hour-long clinic visits, relies on having a nearby clinic offering the service, and absolutely 100% cannot be done at home (on pain of probable death).
Bottom line: it’s by no means a magic bullet, but yes, it does deliver.
Click here to check out The End of Food Allergy to learn more!
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Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing sweet cinnamon to regular cinnamon, we picked the sweet.
Why?
In this case, it’s not close. One of them is health-giving and the other is poisonous (but still widely sold in supermarkets, especially in the US and Canada, because it is cheaper).
It’s worth noting that “regular cinnamon” is a bit of a misnomer, since sweet cinnamon is also called “true cinnamon”. The other cinnamon’s name is formally “cassia cinnamon”, but marketers don’t tend to call it that, preferring to calling it simply “cinnamon” and hope consumers won’t ask questions about what kind, because it’s cheaper.
Note: this too is especially true in the US and Canada, where for whatever reason sweet cinnamon seems to be more difficult to obtain than in the rest of the world.
In short, both cinnamons contain cinnamaldehyde and coumarin, but:
- Sweet/True cinnamon contains only trace amounts of coumarin
- Regular/Cassia cinnamon contains about 250x more coumarin
Coumarin is heptatotoxic, meaning it poisons the liver, and the recommended safe amount is 0.1mg/kg, so it’s easy to go over that with just a couple of teaspoons of cassia cinnamon.
You might be wondering: how can they get away with selling something that poisons the liver? In which case, see also: the alcohol aisle. Selling toxic things is very common; it just gets normalized a lot.
Cinnamaldehyde is responsible for cinnamon’s healthier properties, and is found in reasonable amounts in both cinnamons. There is about 50% more of it in the regular/cassia than in the sweet/true, but that doesn’t come close to offsetting the potential harm of its higher coumarin content.
Want to learn more?
You may like to read:
- A Tale Of Two Cinnamons ← this one has more of the science of coumarin toxicity, as well as discussing (and evidencing) cinnamaldehyde’s many healthful properties against inflammation, cancer, heart disease, neurodegeneration, etc
Enjoy!
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Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)
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Heart attack symptoms vary by sex. This is governed by hormones, so if you are for example a postmenopausal woman and not on HRT, your symptoms might be nearer that of men.
The following symptom list is intended as a rough “most likely” guide. You may not get all of the symptoms you “should”. You could get symptoms from the “wrong” category. So don’t sweat the minutiae, but do be aware of…
Symptoms for everyone:
- Jaw, neck, and/or back pain
- Nausea and/or vomiting
- Shortness of breath
- Feeling of impending doom ← heart attack survivors assure us that you’ll know this one if you experience it
Additional symptoms (mostly) just for men:
- Pressure and/or pain in the upper chest
- Discomfort and/or tingling in the arms
- Sudden cold sweat
Additional symptoms (mostly) just for women:
- Pressure and/or pain in the lower chest and/or abdomen
- Feeling of fullness and/or indigestion
- Fatigue, dizziness, possibly fainting
In the event of experiencing symptoms…
Call 911 or your local equivalent.This is not the time to wait to see if it goes away by itself. If unsure, call. Better safe than sorry/dead.
If you are not alone, or if it is someone with you who is having the suspected heart attack, it may be quicker to go to the Emergency Room by car, than wait for an ambulance.
Even if you choose to do that, you should still call 911 anyway, as the responder will be able to instruct you in real-time, not something we can do in a newsletter.
Note that if available, this means three people in the car is ideal:
Driver, patient, and third person on the phone giving information and following instructions.
Emergency situations rarely go entirely by-the-book, but with a little foreknowledge and at least one person with a calm head, preventable deaths can be avoided.
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Loving Life at 50+ – by Maria Sabando
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What a pleasant mix of a book! Sabando writes about aging with a great blend of light-heartedness and seriousness, and gives extra attention to the important balancing act of:
- Indulging sufficiently to enjoy life
- Staying well enough to enjoy life
…because one without the other will not generally result in an enjoyable life! An American proud of her Italian heritage, she blends (as many immigrant families do) cultures and perspectives, aiming where she can for “the best of both” in that regard, too.
Nor is this just a philosophical book—there’s yoga to be learned here, chapter by chapter, and recipes peppered throughout. The recipes, by the way, are simple and… Honestly, not as healthy as the recipes we share here at 10almonds, but they are good and when it comes to those indulgences we mentioned, her philosophy is that strategic mindful indulgence keeps mindless binge-eating at bay. Which is generally speaking not a bad approach, and is one we’ve written about before as well.
When it comes to health advice, the author is no doctor or scientist, but her husband (a doctor) had input throughout, keeping things on track and medically sound.
The style is very casual, like talking to a friend, which makes for a very easy and enjoyable read. Absolutely a book that one could read casually in the garden, put down when interrupted, pick up again, and continue happily where one left off.
Bottom line: whatever your age (no matter whether your 50th birthday is in your shrinkingly near future or your increasingly distant past), there’s wisdom to be gained here—it’s not a manual (unless you want to treat it as one), it’s more… Thought-provoking, from cover to cover. Highly recommendable.
Click here to check out Loving Life at 50+, and love life at 50+!
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Statins: Study Insights
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Q: Can you let us know about more studies that have been done on statins? Are they really worth taking?
That is a great question! We imagine it might have been our recent book recommendation that prompted it? It’s quite a broad question though, so we’ll do that as a main feature in the near future!
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