Water Bath + More Cookbook for Beginners – by Sarah Roslin
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Whether you want to be prepared for the next major crisis that shuts down food supply chains, or just learn a new skill, this book provides the tools!
Especially beneficial if you also grow your own vegetables, but even you just buy those… Home-canned food is healthy, contains fewer additives and preservatives, and costs less in the long run.
Roslin teaches an array of methods, including most importantly:
- fermentation and pickling
- water bath canning, and
- pressure canning.
As for what’s inside? She covers not just vegetables, but also fruit, seafood, meat… Basically, anything that can be canned.
The book explains the tools and equipment you will need as well as how to perform it safely—as well as common mistakes to avoid!
Lest we be intimidated by the task of acquiring appropriate equipment, she also walks us through what we’ll need in that regard too!
Last but not least, there’s also a (sizeable) collection of simple, step-by-step recipes, catering to a wide variety of tastes.
Bottom line: a highly valuable resource that we recommend heartily.
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Top Foods Against Neuroinflammation
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Chronic inflammation is something you might feel in your joints, but it will usually be in the brain too. There, neuroinflammation can disrupt brain function, affecting stress responses, mood, cognition, and even alter brain structure. It’s also heavily implicated in the pathogenesis of various forms of dementia.
What to do about it
Dr. Tracey Marks, psychiatrist, bids us eat:
- Fatty fish: omega-3-rich fish like salmon reduce neuroinflammation.
- Leafy greens: spinach, kale, and collards protect brain cells and support neurotransmitter production.
- Berries: blueberries and strawberries improve memory and protect neurons.
- Nuts and seeds: walnuts, almonds, and flaxseeds support brain health and reduce inflammation.
- Turmeric: curcumin combats inflammation and supports neuron growth (best with supplements).
- Fermented foods: yogurt and sauerkraut improve gut health, benefiting the brain via the gut-brain axis; not just the vagus nerve, but also, remember that various neurotransmitters (including serotonin) are made in the gut.
Of course, you should also avoid alcohol, nicotine, red meat, processed meat, and ideally also white flour products, and sugary foods (unless they are also rich in fiber, like whole fruit).
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 to read:
How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Take care!
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Celery vs Cucumber – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing celery to cucumber, we picked the celery.
Why?
They are both great, of course! But celery came out on top:
Their macros are very comparable; they’re both 95% water with just enough other things to hold them together, and those other things are in approximately the same proportions in both celery and cucumber.
In the category of vitamins, however, celery has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B9, E, and K, as well as slightly more vitamin C. Cucumber, meanwhile, only boasts slightly higher vitamin B1.
An easy win for celery on the vitamin front!
Minerals are closer, but celery still comes out on top with its notably higher calcium and potassium content. Cucumber has more iron and zinc, but the margin is smaller.
As a point in cucumber’s favor, it has been noted for its anti-inflammatory effect in ways that celery hasn’t, but we don’t think this is enough to say it wins over celery sweeping the vitamins category and coming out top for minerals too.
However! They are both great, so enjoy them both, of course.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Cucumber Extract Beats Glucosamine & Chondroitin… At 1/135th Of The Dose?!
- Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety ← both celery and cucumber are great for this
Enjoy!
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How To Get Your First Pull-Up
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Pull-ups are a great compound exercise that works most of the upper body. However, it can be frustrating for many, if unable to do more than dangle and struggle while not going anywhere. That’s not actually bad, by the way! Of course it’s not great athletic performance, but in terms of exercise, “dangling and struggling while not going anywhere” is an isometric exercise that has plenty of benefits of its own. However, for those who would rather go up in the world, personal trainer Meg Gallagher shows the way:
The Only Way Is Up?
Gallagher offers a few methods; the first is simply an improvement on the “dangling and struggling while not going anywhere” method, but doing it with good form. It’s called the…
Hollow body hold:
- Hang from the bar with legs and feet together.
- Maintain a posterior pelvic tilt (i.e. don’t let your hips roll forwards, and don’t let your butt stick out more than is necessary by mere virtue of having a butt)
- Engage your core by shortening the space between your ribs and pelvis.
- Turn on your abs and lats, with your head slightly behind the bar.
- Practice the hollow body hang instead of dead hangs to build grip and core strength.
Another method is now moving on from the hollow body hold, and shows that in fact, up is not the only way. It’s called…
Negative pull-ups:
- Jump up to get your chin over the bar, then slowly lower yourself in a controlled manner.
- Prioritize negative pull-ups over other exercises to build strength.
- You can use modifications like resistance bands or feet assistance if necessary to extend the duration of your negative pull-up, but these are “crutches”, so try to move on from them as soon as you reasonably can—same if your gym has an “assisted pull-up” machine, consisting of a moving platform with a variable counterweight, mimicking how a pull-up would feel if your body were lighter.
- Practice resisting throughout the entire range of motion.
To give a sense of direction, Gallagher offers the following program:
- On day 1, test how long you can resist the negative pull-up (e.g., 10 seconds).
- For each session, multiply your time by 2 (e.g., 10 seconds × 2 = 20 seconds total).
- Break the total volume into as many sets as needed (e.g., 2 sets of 10 seconds or 4 sets of 5 seconds).
- After each session, add 2 seconds to the total volume for the next session.
- Aim for 3 sessions per week for 3–4 weeks, increasing by 2 seconds each session.
- When you reach about 25 seconds, you should be close to performing your first pull-up.
For more on all of this, plus a few other things to try, plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Take care!
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White Noise vs Pink Noise
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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
❝I live in a large city and even late at night there is always a bit of background noise. While I am pretty used to it by now, I find I don’t sleep nearly as well in the city as I do in the country. I have seen some stuff about “white noise” generators. I was wondering whether you have any thoughts about the science behind these, and whether it is something I should try out – or maybe I should be trying something completly different.❞
The science says…
❝Our data show that white noise significantly improved sleep based on subjective and objective measurements in subjects complaining of difficulty sleeping due to high levels of environmental noise. This suggests that the application of white noise may be an effective tool in helping to improve sleep in those settings.❞
That said, you might also consider “pink noise”, which is very similar to white noise (having all frequencies normally audible to the human ear), but has greater intensity of lower frequencies, creating a more deep and even sound. While white noise and pink noise are both great at “muting” external sounds like those that have been disturbing your sleep, pink noise may have an advantage in helping to stimulate deep and restful sleep:
❝This study demonstrates that steady pink noise has significant effect on reducing brain wave complexity and inducing more stable sleep time to improve sleep quality of individuals.❞
Source: Pink noise: effect on complexity synchronization of brain activity and sleep consolidation
There may be extra benefits to pink noise, too:
Acoustic Enhancement of Sleep Slow Oscillations and Concomitant Memory Improvement in Older Adults
Rest well!
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How Not To Get Sick: A Cookbook – by Dr. Benjamin Bikman and Diana Keuilian
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Bikman’s excellent “Why We Get Sick”, and if you haven’t read that yet, we recommend doing so.
Nevertheless, you don’t need to have read it to benefit from this one, which is about cooking with those learnings (from the other book) in mind.
Before getting to the recipes, we get a section recapping what we learned previously, as well as adding some more general lifestyle advices beyond the kitchen. The science is also expanded a bit, to include such things as the two-way relationship between insulin and aging, as well as the interplay with other metrics of health, including blood lipids, for example.
The authors then provide a plan, in the three stages: reverse (insulin resistance), prevent (insulin resistance), maintain (insulin sensitivity).
The recipes themselves, of which there are 70, are of course tailored to do the above three things; they’re also quite diverse, albeit if you are vegetarian or vegan, you should know in advance that most of these recipes are not.
Bottom line: if the above doesn’t apply to you, and you would like to improve your insulin sensitivity, this book can indeed help.
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Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
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Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
Yesterday, we asked you for your opinions on antidepressants, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- Just over half of respondents said “They clearly help people, but should not be undertaken lightly”
- Just over a fifth of respondents said “They may help some people, but the side effects are alarming”
- Just under a sixth of respondents said “They’re a great way to correct an imbalance of neurochemicals”
- Four respondents said “They are no better than placebo, and are more likely to harm”
- Two respondents said “They merely mask the problem, and thus don’t really help”
So what does the science say?
❝They are no better than placebo, and are more likely to harm? True or False?❞
True or False depending on who you are and what you’re taking. Different antidepressants can work on many different systems with different mechanisms of action. This means if and only if you’re not taking the “right” antidepressant for you, then yes, you will get only placebo benefits:
- Placebo Effect in the Treatment of Depression and Anxiety ← randomly assigned antidepressants are, shockingly, luck of the draw in usefulness
- Antidepressants versus placebo in major depression: an overview ← “wow this science is messy”
- Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs: a systematic review and network meta-analysis ← “oh look, it makes a difference which antidepressant we give to people”
Rather than dismissing antidepressants as worthless, therefore, it is a good idea to find out (by examination or trial and error) what kind of antidepressant you need, if you indeed do need such.
Otherwise it is like getting a flu shot and being surprised when you still catch a cold!
❝They merely mask the problem, and thus don’t really help: True or False?❞
False, categorically.
The problem in depressed people is the depressed mood. This may be influenced by other factors, and antidepressants indeed won’t help directly with those, but they can enable the person to better tackle them (more on this later).
❝They may help some people, but the side-effects are alarming: True or False?❞
True or False depending on more factors than we can cover here.
Side-effects vary from drug to drug and person to person, of course. As does tolerability and acceptability, since to some extent these things are subjective.
One person’s dealbreaker may be another person’s shrugworthy minor inconvenience at most.
❝They’re a great way to correct an imbalance of neurochemicals: True or False?❞
True! Contingently.
That is to say: they’re a great way to correct an imbalance of neurochemicals if and only if your problem is (at least partly) an imbalance of neurochemicals. If it’s not, then your brain can have all the neurotransmitters it needs, and you will still be depressed, because (for example) the other factors* influencing your depression have not changed.
*common examples include low self-esteem, poor physical health, socioeconomic adversity, and ostensibly bleak prospects for the future.
For those for whom the problem is/was partly a neurochemical imbalance and partly other factors, the greatest help the antidepressants give is getting the brain into sufficient working order to be able to tackle those other factors.
Want to know more about the different kinds?
Here’s a helpful side-by-side comparison of common antidepressants, what type they are, and other considerations:
Mind | Comparing Antidepressants
Want a drug-free approach?
You might like our previous main feature:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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