Walk Yourself Happy – by Dr. Julia Bradbury

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Notwithstanding her (honorary) doctorate, Dr. Bradbury is not, in fact, a scientist. But…

  • She has a lot of experience walking all around the world, and her walking habit has seen her through all manner of things, from stress and anxiety to cancer and grief and more.
  • She does, throughout this book, consult many scientists and other experts (indeed, some we’ve featured here before at 10almonds), so we still get quite a dose of science too.

The writing style of this book is… Compelling. Honestly, the biggest initial barrier to you getting out of the door will be putting this book down first.If you have good self-discipline, you might make it last longer by treating yourself to a chapter per day

Bottom line: you probably don’t need this book to know how to go for a walk, but it will motivate, inspire, and even inform you of how to get the most out of it. Treat yourself!

Click here to check out Walk Yourself Happy, and prepare for a new healthy habit!

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  • Why does alcohol make my poo go weird?

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    As we enter the festive season it’s a good time to think about what all those celebratory alcoholic drinks can do to your gut.

    Alcohol can interfere with the time it takes for food to go through your gut (also known as the “transit time”). In particular, it can affect the muscles of the stomach and the small bowel (also known as the small intestine).

    So, how and why does alcohol make your poos goes weird? Here’s what you need to know.

    Diarrhoea and the ‘transit time’

    Alcohol’s effect on stomach transit time depends on the alcohol concentration.

    In general, alcoholic beverages such as whisky and vodka with high alcohol concentrations (above 15%) slow down the movement of food in the stomach.

    Beverages with comparatively low alcohol concentrations (such as wine and beer) speed up the movement of food in the stomach.

    These changes in gut transit explain why some people can get a sensation of fullness and abdominal discomfort when they drink vodka or whisky.

    How long someone has been drinking a lot of alcohol can affect small bowel transit.

    We know from experiments with rats that chronic use of alcohol accelerates the transit of food through the stomach and small bowel.

    This shortened transit time through the small bowel also happens when humans drink a lot of alcohol, and is linked to diarrhoea.

    Alcohol can also reduce the absorption of carbohydrates, proteins and fats in the duodenum (the first part of the small bowel).

    Alcohol can lead to reduced absorption of xylose (a type of sugar). This means diarrhoea is more likely to occur in drinkers who also consume a lot of sugary foods such as sweets and sweetened juices.

    Chronic alcohol use is also linked to:

    This means chronic alcohol use may lead to diarrhoea and loose stools.

    How might a night of heavy drinking affect your poos?

    When rats are exposed to high doses of alcohol over a short period of time, it results in small bowel transit delay.

    This suggests acute alcohol intake (such as an episode of binge drinking) is more likely to lead to constipation than diarrhoea.

    This is backed up by recent research studying the effects of alcohol in 507 university students.

    These students had their stools collected and analysed, and were asked to fill out a stool form questionnaire known as the Bristol Stool Chart.

    The research found a heavy drinking episode was associated with harder, firm bowel motions.

    In particular, those who consumed more alcohol had more Type 1 stools, which are separate hard lumps that look or feel a bit like nuts.

    The researchers believed this acute alcohol intake results in small bowel transit delay; the food stayed for longer in the intestines, meaning more water was absorbed from the stool back into the body. This led to drier, harder stools.

    Interestingly, the researchers also found there was more of a type of bacteria known as “Actinobacteria” in heavy drinkers than in non-drinkers.

    This suggests bacteria may have a role to play in stool consistency.

    But binge drinking doesn’t always lead to constipation. Binge drinking in patients with irritable bowel syndrom (IBS), for example, clearly leads to diarrhoea, nausea and abdominal pain.

    What can I do about all this?

    If you’re suffering from unwanted bowel motion changes after drinking, the most effective way to address this is to limit your alcohol intake.

    Some alcoholic beverages may affect your bowel motions more than others. If you notice a pattern of troubling poos after drinking certain drinks, it may be sensible to cut back on those beverages.

    If you tend to get diarrhoea after drinking, avoid mixing alcohol with caffeinated drinks. Caffeine is known to stimulate contractions of the colon and so could worsen diarrhoea.

    If constipation after drinking is the problem, then staying hydrated is important. Drinking plenty of water before drinking alcohol (and having water in between drinks and after the party is over) can help reduce dehydration and constipation.

    You should also eat before drinking alcohol, particularly protein and fibre-rich foods.

    Food in the stomach can slow the absorption of alcohol and may help protect against the negative effects of alcohol on the gut lining.

    Is it anything to worry about?

    Changes in bowel motions after drinking are usually short term and, for the most part, resolve themselves pretty efficiently.

    But if symptoms such as diarrhoea persist beyond a couple of days after stopping alcohol, it may signify other concerning issues such as an underlying gut disorder like inflammatory bowel disease.

    Researchers have also linked alcohol consumption to the development of irritable bowel syndrome.

    If problems persist or if there are alarming symptoms such as blood in your stool, seek medical advice from a general practitioner.

    Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

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

    The Conversation

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  • ‘Free birthing’ and planned home births might sound similar but the risks are very different

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    The death of premature twins in Byron Bay in an apparent “wild birth”, or free birth, last week has prompted fresh concerns about giving birth without a midwife or medical assistance.

    This follows another case from Victoria this year, where a baby was born in a critical condition following a reported free birth.

    It’s unclear how common free birthing is, as data is not collected, but there is some evidence free births increased during the COVID pandemic.

    Planned home births also became more popular during the pandemic, as women preferred to stay away from hospitals and wanted their support people with them.

    But while free births and home births might sound similar, they are a very different practice, with free births much riskier. So what’s the difference, and why might people opt for a free birth?

    What are home births?

    Planned home births involve care from midwives, who are registered experts in childbirth, in a woman’s home.

    These registered midwives work privately, or are part of around 20 publicly funded home birth programs nationally that are attached to hospitals.

    They provide care during the pregnancy, labour and birth, and in the first six weeks following the birth.

    The research shows that for women with low risk pregnancies, planned home births attended by competent midwives (with links to a responsive mainstream maternity system) are safe.

    Home births result in less intervention than hospital births and women perceive their experience more positively.

    What are free births?

    A free birth is when a woman chooses to have a baby, usually at home, without a registered health professional such as a midwife or doctor in attendance.

    Different terms such as unassisted birth or wild pregnancy or birth are also used to refer to free birth.

    The parents may hire an unregulated birth worker or doula to be a support at the birth but they do not have the training or medical equipment needed to manage emergencies.

    Women may have limited or no health care antenatally, meaning risk factors such as twins and breech presentations (the baby coming bottom first) are not detected beforehand and given the right kind of specialist care.

    Why do some people choose to free birth?

    We have been studying the reasons women and their partners choose to free birth for more than a decade. We found a previous traumatic birth and/or feeling coerced into choices that are not what the woman wants were the main drivers for avoiding mainstream maternity care.

    Australia’s childbirth intervention rates – for induction or augmentation of labour, episiotomy (cutting the tissue between the vaginal opening and the anus) and caesarean section – are comparatively high.

    One in ten women report disrespectful or abusive care in childbirth and some decide to make different choices for future births.

    Lack of options for a natural birth and birth choices such as home birth or birth centre birth also played a major role in women’s decision to free birth.

    Publicly funded home birth programs have very strict criteria around who can be accepted into the program, excluding many women.

    In other countries such as the United Kingdom, Netherlands and New Zealand, publicly funded home births are easier to access.

    Newborn baby holds their parent's finger
    It can be difficult to access home birth services in Australia.
    Ink Drop/Shutterstock

    Only around 200 midwives provide private midwifery services for home births nationally. Private midwives are yet to obtain insurance for home births, which means they are risking their livelihoods if something goes wrong and they are sued.

    The cost of a home birth with a private midwife is not covered by Medicare and only some health funds rebate some of the cost. This means women can be out of pocket A$6-8,000.

    Access to home birth is an even greater issue in rural and remote Australia.

    How to make mainstream care more inclusive

    Many women feel constrained by their birth choices in Australia. After years of research and listening to thousands of women, it’s clear more can be done to reduce the desire to free birth.

    As my co-authors and I outline in our book, Birthing Outside the System: The Canary in the Coal Mine, this can be achieved by:

    • making respectful care a reality so women aren’t traumatised and alienated by maternity care and want to engage with it
    • supporting midwifery care. Women are seeking more physiological and social ways of birthing, minimising birth interventions, and midwives are the experts in this space
    • supporting women’s access to their chosen place of birth and model of care and not limiting choice with high out-of-pocket expenses
    • providing more flexible, acceptable options for women experiencing risk factors during pregnancy and/or birth, such as having a previous caesarean birth, having twins or having a baby in breech position. Women experiencing these complications experience pressure to have a caesarean section
    • getting the framework right with policies, guidelines, education, research, regulation and professional leadership.

    Ensuring women’s rights and choices are informed and respected means they’re less likely to feel they’re left with no other option.The Conversation

    Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University

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

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  • Qigong: A Breath Of Fresh Air?

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    Qigong: Breathing Is Good (Magic Remains Unverified)

    In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinions of qigong, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

    • About 55% said “Qigong is just breathing, but breathing exercises are good for the health”
    • About 41% said “Qigong helps regulate our qi and thus imbue us with healthy vitality”
    • One (1) person said “Qigong is a mystical waste of time and any benefits are just placebo”

    The sample size was a little low for this one, but the results were quite clearly favorable, one way or another.

    So what does the science say?

    Qigong is just breathing: True or False?

    True or False, depending on how we want to define it—because qigong ranges in its presentation from indeed “just breathing exercises”, to “breathing exercises with visualization” to “special breathing exercises with visualization that have to be exactly this way, with these hand and sometimes body movements also, which also must be just right”, to far more complex definitions that involve qi by various mystical definitions, and/or an appeal to a scientific analog of qi; often some kind of bioelectrical field or such.

    There is, it must be said, no good quality evidence for the existence of qi.

    Writer’s note, lest 41% of you want my head now: I’ve been practicing qigong and related arts for about 30 years and find such to be of great merit. This personal experience and understanding does not, however, change the state of affairs when it comes to the availability (or rather, the lack) of high quality clinical evidence to point to.

    Which is not to say there is no clinical evidence, for example:

    Acute Physiological and Psychological Effects of Qigong Exercise in Older Practitioners

    …found that qigong indeed increased meridian electrical conductance!

    Except… Electrical conductance is measured with galvanic skin responses, which increase with sweat. But don’t worry, to control for that, they asked participants to dry themselves with a towel. Unfortunately, this overlooks the fact that a) more sweat can come where that came from, because the body will continue until it is satisfied of adequate homeostasis, and b) drying oneself with a towel will remove the moisture better than it’ll remove the salts from the skin—bearing in mind that it’s mostly the salts, rather than the moisture itself, that improve the conductivity (pure distilled water does conduct electricity, but not very well).

    In other words, this was shoddy methodology. How did it pass peer review? Well, here’s an insight into that journal’s peer review process…

    ❝The peer-review system of EBCAM is farcical: potential authors who send their submissions to EBCAM are invited to suggest their preferred reviewers who subsequently are almost invariably appointed to do the job. It goes without saying that such a system is prone to all sorts of serious failures; in fact, this is not peer-review at all, in my opinion, it is an unethical sham.❞

    ~ Dr. Edzard Ernst, a founding editor of EBCAM (he since left, and decries what has happened to it since)

    One of the other key problems is: how does one test qigong against placebo?

    Scientists have looked into this question, and their answers have thus far been unsatisfying, and generally to the tune of the true-but-unhelpful statement that “future research needs to be better”:

    Problems of scientific methodology related to placebo control in Qigong studies: A systematic review

    Most studies into qigong are interventional studies, that is to say, they measure people’s metrics (for example, blood pressure, heart rate, maybe immune function biomarkers, sleep quality metrics of various kinds, subjective reports of stress levels, physical biomarkers of stress levels, things like that), then do a course of qigong (perhaps 6 weeks, for example), then measure them again, and see if the course of qigong improved things.

    This almost always results in an improvement when looking at the before-and-after, but it says nothing for whether the benefits were purely placebo.

    We did find one study that claimed to be placebo-controlled:

    A placebo-controlled trial of ‘one-minute qigong exercise’ on the reduction of blood pressure among patients with essential hypertension

    …but upon reading the paper itself carefully, it turned out that while the experimental group did qigong, the control group did a reading exercise. Which is… Saying how well qigong performs vs reading (qigong did outperform reading, for the record), but nothing for how well it performs vs placebo, because reading isn’t a remotely credible placebo.

    See also: Placebo Effect: Making Things Work Since… Well, A Very Long Time Ago ← this one explains a lot about how placebo effect does work

    Qigong is a mystical waste of time: True or False?

    False! This one we can answer easily. Interventional studies invariably find it does help, and the fact remains that even if placebo is its primary mechanism of action, it is of benefit and therefore not a waste of time.

    Which is not to say that placebo is its only, or even necessarily primary, mechanism of action.

    Even from a purely empirical evidence-based medicine point of view, qigong is at the very least breathing exercises plus (usually) some low-impact body movement. Those are already two things that can be looked at, mechanistic processes pointed to, and declarations confidently made of “this is an activity that’s beneficial for health”.

    See for example:

    …and those are all from respectable journals with meaningful peer review processes.

    None of them are placebo-controlled, because there is no real option of “and group B will only be tricked into believing they are doing deep breathing exercises with low-impact movements”; that’s impossible.

    But! They each show how doing qigong reliably outperforms not doing qigong for various measurable metrics of health.

    And, we chose examples with physical symptoms and where possible empirically measurable outcomes (such as COVID-19 infection levels, or inflammatory responses); there are reams of studies showings qigong improves purely subjective wellbeing—but the latter could probably be claimed for any enjoyable activity, whereas changes in inflammatory biomarkers, not such much.

    In short: for most people, it indeed reliably helps with many things. And importantly, it has no particular risks associated with it, and it’s almost universally framed as a complementary therapy rather than an alternative therapy.

    This is critical, because it means that whereas someone may hold off on taking evidence-based medicines while trying out (for example) homeopathy, few people are likely to hold off on other treatments while trying out qigong—since it’s being viewed as a helper rather than a Hail-Mary.

    Want to read more about qigong?

    Here’s the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has to say. It cites a lot of poor quality science, but it does mention when the science it’s citing is of poor quality, and over all gives quite a rounded view:

    Qigong: What You Need To Know

    Enjoy!

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Related Posts

  • The Oxygen Advantage – by Patrick McKeown
  • Nudge – by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein

    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.

    How often in life do we make a suboptimal decision that ends up plaguing us for a long time afterwards? Sometimes, a single good or bad decision can even directly change the rest of our life.

    So, it really is important that we try to optimize the decisions we do make.

    Professors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein look at all kinds of decision-making in this book. Their goal, as per the subtitle, is “improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness”.

    For the most part, the book concentrates on “nudges”. Small factors that influence our decisions one way or another.

    Most importantly: that some of them are very good reasons to be nudged; others, very bad ones. And they often look similar.

    Where this book excels is in highlighting the many ways we make decisions without even thinking about it… or we think about it, but only down a prescribed, foreseen track, to an externally expected conclusion (for example, an insurance company offering three packages, but two of them exist only to direct you to the “correct” choice).

    A weakness of the book is that in some aspects it’s a little inconsistent. The authors describe their economic philosophy as “libertarian paternalism”, and as libertarians they’re against mandates, except when as paternalists they’re for them. But, if we take away their labels, this boils down to “some mandates can be good and some can be bad”, which would not be so inconsistent after all.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand your own decision-making processes through the eyes of policy-setting economists (especially Sunstein, who worked for the White House Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs) whose job it is to make sure you make the “right” decisions, then this is a very enlightening book.

    Click here to check out Nudge and improve your decision-making clarity!

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  • Biohack Your Way to Healthy Skin – by Jennifer Sun

    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 author, an aesthetician with a biotech background, explains about the overlap of skin health and skin beauty, making it better from the inside first (diet and other lifestyle factors), and then tweaking things as desired from the outside.

    We previous reviewed another book of hers, “Unleashing Your Best Skin”, and this time the focus is on things you can do at home—not requiring expensive salon treatments (the other book covers both approaches; this one simply skips the clinic work and instead has a lot more detail in the at-home category).

    As for what she covers, it comes in categories:

    • Gadgets to consider investing in, how to pick good ones, and what gadgets to avoid
    • Basic skincare knowledge and practice; here we’re talking cleaners, tonics, moisturizers, and so forth
    • Best topical and oral ingredients for the skin (and in contrast, ingredients to be wary of)
    • Nutrition for skincare; not just “your skin needs these ingredients”, but also…
    • Gut health for skincare, which gets a whole chapter just for that
    • Biohacking hormones for skincare, including in the cases of various common hormone imbalances (e.g. menopause, PCOS, etc) and other complications not generally thought of in terms of skincare, such as diabetes and hypo-/hyperthyroidism.
    • Circulatory health for skincare (blood and lymph)
    • Mental health techniques for skincare (including improving sleep, managing stress, supplements to consider, etc).

    As with her other book that we reviewed, the book is broadly aimed at women, and the section on sex-hormonal considerations is completely aimed at women, but as for the rest of the book, there’s no pressing reason why this book couldn’t benefit men too. It also addresses considerations when it comes to darker skintones, something that a lot of similar books overlook.

    The style is directly instructional, albeit light and conversational in tone, and still with 20+ pages of scientific references to show that she does indeed know her stuff.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your skin health, and/but aren’t a fan of going to the salon, then this book will be an invaluable resource.

    Click here to check out Biohack Your Way To Healthy Skin, and biohack your way to healthy skin!

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  • Why We Get Sick – by Dr. Benjamin Bikman

    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.

    There’s a slightly buried lede here in that the title doesn’t offer this spoiler, but we will: the book is about insulin resistance.

    However, unlike the books we’ve reviewed about blood sugar management, this time the focus is really and truly on insulin itself—and that makes some important differences:

    Dr. Bikman makes the case that while indeed hyper- or hypoglycemia bring their problems, mostly these are symptoms rather than causes, and the real culprit is insulin resistance, and this is important for two main reasons:

    1. Insulin resistance occurs well before the other symptoms set in (which means: it is the thing that truly needs to be nipped in the bud; if your fasting blood sugars are rising, then you missed “nipping it in the bud” likely by a decade or more)
    2. Insulin resistance causes more problems than “mere” hyperglycemia (the most commonly-known result of insulin resistance) does, so again, it really needs to be considered separately from blood sugar management.

    This latter, Dr. Bikman goes into in great detail, linking insulin resistance (even if blood sugar levels are normal) to all manner of diseases (hence the title).

    You may be wondering: how can blood sugar levels be normal, if we have insulin resistance?

    And the answer is that for as long as it is still able, your pancreas will just faithfully crank out more and more insulin to deal with the blood sugar levels that would otherwise be steadily rising. Since people measure blood sugar levels much more regularly than anyone checks for actual insulin levels, this means that one can be insulin resistant for years without knowing it, until finally the pancreas is no longer able to keep up with the demand—then that’s when people finally notice.

    The book is divided into sections:

    1. The Problem: What Is Insulin Resistance
    2. The Cause: What Makes Us Insulin Resistant
    3. How We Can Fight Insulin Resistance

    The first two parts are essential for the reader’s understanding, but the third part is the practical part, with appropriately practical advice on the most insulin-friendly ways to exercise, eat, fast, and more. He also talks drugs, and discusses the pros and cons of various interventions—but of course, far better is the lifestyle management of insulin.

    The style is mostly very pop-science in overall presentation, and then occasionally gets very dense at times, but when that happens, he will then tend to follow it with an easier-to-understand explanation, to ensure that nothing remains opaque.

    Bottom line: if you care about your metabolic health and don’t mind reading a book where you may have to read a paragraph or two twice sometimes, then this is a top-tier book on insulin resistance and how to prevent/reverse it.

    Click here to check out Why We Get Sick, and stay well instead!

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