What immunocompromised people want you to know

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While many people in the U.S. have abandoned COVID-19 mitigations like vaccines and masking, the virus remains dangerous for everyone, and some groups face higher risks than others. Immunocompromised people—whose immune systems don’t work as well as they should due to health conditions or medications—are more vulnerable to infection and severe symptoms from the virus. 

Public Good News spoke with three immunocompromised people about the steps they take to protect themselves and what they want others to know about caring for each other.

[Editor’s note: The contents of these interviews have been condensed for length.]

PGN: What measures have you been taking to protect yourself since the COVID-19 pandemic began?

Tatum Spears, Virginia

From less than a year old, I had serious, chronic infections and have missed huge chunks of my life. In 2020, I quit my public job, and I have not worked publicly since. 

I have a degree in vocal performance and have been singing my whole life, but I haven’t performed publicly since 2019. I feel like a bird without wings. I had to stop traveling. Since no one wears a mask anymore, I can’t go to the movies or social outings or any party.

All my friends live in my phone now. It’s a community of people—a lot of them are immunocompromised or disabled in some way. 

There are a good portion of them who just take COVID-19 seriously and want to protect their health, who feel the existential abandonment and the burden of all of this. It’s really isolating having to step back from any sort of social life. I have to assess my risk every single time I leave the house.

Gwendolyn Alyse Bishop, Washington 

I was hit by a car when I was very young. I woke up from surgery, and doctors told me I had lost almost all of my spleen. So, I was always the sickest kid in my school.

When COVID-19 hit, I started working from home. At first, I wore cloth masks. I didn’t really learn about KN95 masks until right around the time that COVID-19 disabled me. [Editor’s note: N95 and KN95 masks have been shown to be significantly more effective at preventing the transmission of viral particles than cloth masks.]

I actually don’t get out much anymore because I am disabled by long COVID now, but when I do leave, I wear a respirator in all shared air spaces. My roommate and I have HEPA filters going in every room.

And then we test. I have a Pluslife testing dock, and so we keep a weekly testing schedule with that and then test if there are any symptoms. I got reinfected [with COVID-19] last winter, and a Pluslife test helped me catch it early and get Paxlovid. [Editor’s note: Pluslife is a brand of an at-home COVID-19 nucleic acid amplification test, which has been shown to be significantly more effective at detecting COVID-19 than at-home antigen rapid tests.]

Abby Mahler, California

I have lupus, and in 2016, I started taking the drug hydroxychloroquine, which is an immunomodulator. I’m not as immunocompromised as some people, but I certainly don’t have a normal immune system, which has resulted in long-term infections like C. diff.

I started masking early. My roommates and I prioritize going outside. We don’t remove our masks inside in public places. 

We are in a pod with one other household, and the pod has agreements on the way that we interact with public space. So, we will only unmask with people who have tested ahead of time. We use Metrix, an at-home nucleic acid amplification test.

While it’s not easy and it’s not the life that we had prior to COVID-19’s existence, it is a life that has provided us quite a lot of freedom, in the sense that we are not sick all the time. We are conscientiously making decisions that allow us to have a nice time without a monkey on our backs, which is freeing.

PGN: What do you want people who are not immunocompromised to know?

T.S.: Don’t be afraid to be the only person in a room wearing a mask. Your own health is worth it. And you have to realize how callous [people who don’t wear a mask are] by existing in spaces and breathing [their] air [on immunocompromised people].

People think that vaccines are magic, but vaccines alone are not enough. I would encourage people to look at the Swiss cheese model of risk assessment. 

Each slice of Swiss cheese has holes in it in different places, and each layer represents a layer of virus mitigation. One layer is vaccines. Another layer is masks. Then there’s staying home when you’re sick and testing.

G.A.B.: I wish people were masking. I wish people understood how likely it is that they are also now immunocompromised and vulnerable because of the widespread immune dysregulation that COVID-19 is causing. [Editor’s note: Research shows that COVID-19 infections may cause long-term harm to the immune system in some people.]

I want people to be invested in being good community members, and part of that is understanding that COVID-19 hits the poorest the hardest—gig workers, underpaid employees, frontline service workers, people who were already disabled or immunocompromised. 

If people want to be good community members, they not only need to protect immunocompromised and disabled people by wearing a mask when they leave their homes, but they also need to actually start taking care of their community members and participating in mutual aid. [Editor’s note: Mutual aid is the exchange of resources and services within a community, such as people sharing extra N95 masks.]

I spend pretty much all of my time working on LongCOVIDAidBot, which promotes mutual aid for people who have been harmed by COVID-19.

A.M.: An important thing to think about when you’re not disabled is that it becomes a state of being for all people, if they’re lucky. You will become disabled, or you will die. 

It is a privilege, in my opinion, to become disabled because I can learn different ways of living my life. And being able to see yourself as a body that changes over time, I hope, opens up a way of looking at your body as the porous reality that it is. 

Some people think of themselves as being willing to make concessions or change their behavior when immunocompromised people are around, but you don’t always know when someone is immunocompromised. 

So, if you’re not willing to change the way that you think about yourself as a person who is susceptible [to illness], then you should change the way that you consider other people around you. Wearing a mask—at the very least in public indoor spaces—means considering the unknown realities of all the people who are interacting with that space.

This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • Which Vitamin Brands Are Effective?

    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.

    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

    ❝As far as specific brands of vitamin…some are good some not. I don’t like being told what buy but I guess I want to know which are effective. Could there be some brands recognized as good given to us?❞

    The most reliable brands are generally those with the most transparency:

    • They tell you what is in the supplement; not just the active ingredient(s), with doses, but also any buffers etc.
    • They tell you, in the case of ingredients that can have various different sources, what the source is.
    • They are, ideally, well-certified and independently tested.

    Our previous sponsor Ora is a good example of a company that does this.

    Additionally, in terms of bioavailability, generally speaking the order of preference goes liquid > capsule/softgel > tablet, so that’s something to look out for, too.

    Note: “liquid” includes powders that are ingested when dissolved/suspended in water, and also includes tablets that become a liquid when dissolved/dispersed in water and ingested that way.

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  • Pain Doesn’t Belong on a Scale of Zero to 10

    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.

    Over the past two years, a simple but baffling request has preceded most of my encounters with medical professionals: “Rate your pain on a scale of zero to 10.”

    I trained as a physician and have asked patients the very same question thousands of times, so I think hard about how to quantify the sum of the sore hips, the prickly thighs, and the numbing, itchy pain near my left shoulder blade. I pause and then, mostly arbitrarily, choose a number. “Three or four?” I venture, knowing the real answer is long, complicated, and not measurable in this one-dimensional way.

    Pain is a squirrely thing. It’s sometimes burning, sometimes drilling, sometimes a deep-in-the-muscles clenching ache. Mine can depend on my mood or how much attention I afford it and can recede nearly entirely if I’m engrossed in a film or a task. Pain can also be disabling enough to cancel vacations, or so overwhelming that it leads people to opioid addiction. Even 10+ pain can be bearable when it’s endured for good reason, like giving birth to a child. But what’s the purpose of the pains I have now, the lingering effects of a head injury?

    The concept of reducing these shades of pain to a single number dates to the 1970s. But the zero-to-10 scale is ubiquitous today because of what was called a “pain revolution” in the ’90s, when intense new attention to addressing pain — primarily with opioids — was framed as progress. Doctors today have a fuller understanding of treating pain, as well as the terrible consequences of prescribing opioids so readily. What they are learning only now is how to better measure pain and treat its many forms.

    About 30 years ago, physicians who championed the use of opioids gave robust new life to what had been a niche specialty: pain management. They started pushing the idea that pain should be measured at every appointment as a “fifth vital sign.” The American Pain Society went as far as copyrighting the phrase. But unlike the other vital signs — blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate — pain had no objective scale. How to measure the unmeasurable? The society encouraged doctors and nurses to use the zero-to-10 rating system. Around that time, the FDA approved OxyContin, a slow-release opioid painkiller made by Purdue Pharma. The drugmaker itself encouraged doctors to routinely record and treat pain, and aggressively marketed opioids as an obvious solution.

    To be fair, in an era when pain was too often ignored or undertreated, the zero-to-10 rating system could be regarded as an advance. Morphine pumps were not available for those cancer patients I saw in the ’80s, even those in agonizing pain from cancer in their bones; doctors regarded pain as an inevitable part of disease. In the emergency room where I practiced in the early ’90s, prescribing even a few opioid pills was a hassle: It required asking the head nurse to unlock a special prescription pad and making a copy for the state agency that tracked prescribing patterns. Regulators (rightly) worried that handing out narcotics would lead to addiction. As a result, some patients in need of relief likely went without.

    After pain doctors and opioid manufacturers campaigned for broader use of opioids — claiming that newer forms were not addictive, or much less so than previous incarnations — prescribing the drugs became far easier and were promoted for all kinds of pain, whether from knee arthritis or back problems. As a young doctor joining the “pain revolution,” I probably asked patients thousands of times to rate their pain on a scale of zero to 10 and wrote many scripts each week for pain medication, as monitoring “the fifth vital sign” quickly became routine in the medical system. In time, a zero-to-10 pain measurement became a necessary box to fill in electronic medical records. The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations made regularly assessing pain a prerequisite for medical centers receiving federal health care dollars. Medical groups added treatment of pain to their list of patient rights, and satisfaction with pain treatment became a component of post-visit patient surveys. (A poor showing could mean lower reimbursement from some insurers.)

    But this approach to pain management had clear drawbacks. Studies accumulated showing that measuring patients’ pain didn’t result in better pain control. Doctors showed little interest in or didn’t know how to respond to the recorded answer. And patients’ satisfaction with their doctors’ discussion of pain didn’t necessarily mean they got adequate treatment. At the same time, the drugs were fueling the growing opioid epidemic. Research showed that an estimated 3% to 19% of people who received a prescription for pain medication from a doctor developed an addiction.

    Doctors who wanted to treat pain had few other options, though. “We had a good sense that these drugs weren’t the only way to manage pain,” Linda Porter, director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Pain Policy and Planning, told me. “But we didn’t have a good understanding of the complexity or alternatives.” The enthusiasm for narcotics left many varietals of pain underexplored and undertreated for years. Only in 2018, a year when nearly 50,000 Americans died of an overdose, did Congress start funding a program — the Early Phase Pain Investigation Clinical Network, or EPPIC-Net — designed to explore types of pain and find better solutions. The network connects specialists at 12 academic specialized clinical centers and is meant to jump-start new research in the field and find bespoke solutions for different kinds of pain.

    A zero-to-10 scale may make sense in certain situations, such as when a nurse uses it to adjust a medication dose for a patient hospitalized after surgery or an accident. And researchers and pain specialists have tried to create better rating tools — dozens, in fact, none of which was adequate to capture pain’s complexity, a European panel of experts concluded. The Veterans Health Administration, for instance, created one that had supplemental questions and visual prompts: A rating of 5 correlated with a frown and a pain level that “interrupts some activities.” The survey took much longer to administer and produced results that were no better than the zero-to-10 system. By the 2010s, many medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians, were rejecting not just the zero-to-10 scale but the entire notion that pain could be meaningfully self-reported numerically by a patient.

    In the years that opioids had dominated pain remedies, a few drugs — such as gabapentin and pregabalin for neuropathy, and lidocaine patches and creams for musculoskeletal aches — had become available. “There was a growing awareness of the incredible complexity of pain — that you would have to find the right drugs for the right patients,” Rebecca Hommer, EPPIC-Net’s interim director, told me. Researchers are now looking for biomarkers associated with different kinds of pain so that drug studies can use more objective measures to assess the medications’ effect. A better understanding of the neural pathways and neurotransmitters that create different types of pain could also help researchers design drugs to interrupt and tame them.

    Any treatments that come out of this research are unlikely to be blockbusters like opioids; by design, they will be useful to fewer people. That also makes them less appealing prospects to drug companies. So EPPIC-Net is helping small drug companies, academics, and even individual doctors design and conduct early-stage trials to test the safety and efficacy of promising pain-taming molecules. That information will be handed over to drug manufacturers for late-stage trials, all with the aim of getting new drugs approved by the FDA more quickly.

    The first EPPIC-Net trials are just getting underway. Finding better treatments will be no easy task, because the nervous system is a largely unexplored universe of molecules, cells, and electronic connections that interact in countless ways. The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to scientists who discovered the mechanisms that allow us to feel the most basic sensations: cold and hot. In comparison, pain is a hydra. A simple number might feel definitive. But it’s not helping anyone make the pain go away.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Cost of living: if you can’t afford as much fresh produce, are canned veggies or frozen fruit just as good?

    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 cost of living crisis is affecting how we spend our money. For many people, this means tightening the budget on the weekly supermarket shop.

    One victim may be fresh fruit and vegetables. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggests Australians were consuming fewer fruit and vegetables in 2022–23 than the year before.

    The cost of living is likely compounding a problem that exists already – on the whole, Australians don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables. Australian dietary guidelines recommend people aged nine and older should consume two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables each day for optimal health. But in 2022 the ABS reported only 4% of Australians met the recommendations for both fruit and vegetable consumption.

    Fruit and vegetables are crucial for a healthy, balanced diet, providing a range of vitamins and minerals as well as fibre.

    If you can’t afford as much fresh produce at the moment, there are other ways to ensure you still get the benefits of these food groups. You might even be able to increase your intake of fruit and vegetables.

    New Africa/Shutterstock

    Frozen

    Fresh produce is often touted as being the most nutritious (think of the old adage “fresh is best”). But this is not necessarily true.

    Nutrients can decline in transit from the paddock to your kitchen, and while the produce is stored in your fridge. Frozen vegetables may actually be higher in some nutrients such as vitamin C and E as they are snap frozen very close to the time of harvest. Variations in transport and storage can affect this slightly.

    Minerals such as calcium, iron and magnesium stay at similar levels in frozen produce compared to fresh.

    Another advantage to frozen vegetables and fruit is the potential to reduce food waste, as you can use only what you need at the time.

    A close up of frozen vegetables (peas, carrot and corn).
    Freezing preserves the nutritional quality of vegetables and increases their shelf life. Tohid Hashemkhani/Pexels

    As well as buying frozen fruit and vegetables from the supermarket, you can freeze produce yourself at home if you have an oversupply from the garden, or when produce may be cheaper.

    A quick blanching prior to freezing can improve the safety and quality of the produce. This is when food is briefly submerged in boiling water or steamed for a short time.

    Frozen vegetables won’t be suitable for salads but can be eaten roasted or steamed and used for soups, stews, casseroles, curries, pies and quiches. Frozen fruits can be added to breakfast dishes (with cereal or youghurt) or used in cooking for fruit pies and cakes, for example.

    Canned

    Canned vegetables and fruit similarly often offer a cheaper alternative to fresh produce. They’re also very convenient to have on hand. The canning process is the preservation technique, so there’s no need to add any additional preservatives, including salt.

    Due to the cooking process, levels of heat-sensitive nutrients such as vitamin C will decline a little compared to fresh produce. When you’re using canned vegetables in a hot dish, you can add them later in the cooking process to reduce the amount of nutrient loss.

    To minimise waste, you can freeze the portion you don’t need.

    Fermented

    A jar of red peppers in oil.
    Fermented vegetables are another good option. Angela Khebou/Unsplash

    Fermentation has recently come into fashion, but it’s actually one of the oldest food processing and preservation techniques.

    Fermentation largely retains the vitamins and minerals in fresh vegetables. But fermentation may also enhance the food’s nutritional profile by creating new nutrients and allowing existing ones to be absorbed more easily.

    Further, fermented foods contain probiotics, which are beneficial for our gut microbiome.

    5 other tips to get your fresh fix

    Although alternatives to fresh such as canned or frozen fruit and vegetables are good substitutes, if you’re looking to get more fresh produce into your diet on a tight budget, here are some things you can do.

    1. Buy in season

    Based on supply and demand principles, buying local seasonal vegetables and fruit will always be cheaper than those that are imported out of season from other countries.

    2. Don’t shun the ugly fruit and vegetables

    Most supermarkets now sell “ugly” fruit and vegetables, that are not physically perfect in some way. This does not affect the levels of nutrients in them at all, or their taste.

    A mother and daughter preparing food in the kitchen.
    Buying fruit and vegetables during the right season will be cheaper. August de Richelieu/Pexels

    3. Reduce waste

    On average, an Australian household throws out A$2,000–$2,500 worth of food every year. Fruit, vegetables and bagged salad are the three of the top five foods thrown out in our homes. So properly managing fresh produce could help you save money (and benefit the environment).

    To minimise waste, plan your meals and shopping ahead of time. And if you don’t think you’re going to get to eat the fruit and vegetables you have before they go off, freeze them.

    4. Swap and share

    There are many websites and apps which offer the opportunity to swap or even pick up free fresh produce if people have more than they need. Some local councils are also encouraging swaps on their websites, so dig around and see what you can find in your local area.

    5. Gardening

    Regardless of how small your garden is you can always plant produce in pots. Herbs, rocket, cherry tomatoes, chillies and strawberries all grow well. In the long run, these will offset some of your cost on fresh produce.

    Plus, when you have put the effort in to grow your own produce, you are less likely to waste it.

    Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

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

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  • Getting Your Messy Life In Order

    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.

    Getting Your Messy Life In Order

    We’ve touched on this before by recommending the book, but today we’re going to give an overview of the absolute most core essentials of the “Getting Things Done” method. If you’re unfamiliar, this will be enough to get you going. If you’re already familiar, this may be a handy reminder!

    First, you’ll need:

    • A big table
    • A block of small memo paper squares—post-it note sized, but no need to be sticky.
    • A block of A4 printer paper
    • A big trash bag

    Gathering everything

    Gather up not just all your to-dos, but: all sources of to-dos, too, and anything else that otherwise needs “sorting”.

    Put them all in one physical place—a dining room table may have enough room. You’ll need a lot of room because you’re going to empty our drawers of papers, unopened (or opened and set aside) mail. Little notes you made for yourself, things stuck on the fridge or memo boards. Think across all areas of your life, and anything you’re “supposed” to do, write it down on a piece of paper. No matter what area of your life, no matter how big or small.

    Whether it’s “learn Chinese” or “take the trash out”, write it down, one item per piece of paper (hence the block of little memo squares).

    Sorting everything

    Everything you’ve gathered needs one of three things to happen:

    • You need to take some action (put it in a “to do” pile)
    • You may need it later sometime (put it in a “to file” pile)
    • You don’t need it (put it in the big trash bag for disposal)

    What happens next will soothe you

    • Dispose of the things you put for disposal
    • File the things for filing in a single alphabetical filing system. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to get one, so write that down and add it to the “to do” pile.
    • You will now process your “to dos”

    Processing the “to dos”

    The pile you have left is now your “inbox”. It’s probably huge; later it’ll be smaller, maybe just a letter-tray on your desk.

    Many of your “to dos” are actually not single action items, they’re projects. If something requires more than one step, it’s a project.

    Take each item one-by-one. Do this in any order; you’re going to do this as quickly as possible! Now, ask yourself: is this a single-action item that I could do next, without having to do something else first?

    • If yes: put it in a pile marked “next action”
    • If no: put it in a pile marked “projects”.

    Take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it in half. Write “Next Action” on it, and put your pile of next actions inside it.

    Take a sheet of A4 paper per project and write the name of the project on it, for example “Learn Chinese”, or “Do taxes”. Put any actions relating to that project inside it.

    Likely you don’t know yet what the first action will be, or else it’d be in your “Next Action” pile, so add an item to each project that says “Brainstorm project”.

    Processing the “Next Action” pile

    Again you want to do this as quickly as possible, in any order.

    For each item, ask yourself “Do I care about this?” If the answer is no, ditch that item, and throw it out. That’s ok. Things change and maybe we no longer want or need to do something. No point in hanging onto it.

    For each remaining item, ask yourself “can this be done in under 2 minutes?”.

    • If yes, do it, now. Throw away the piece of paper for it when you’re done.
    • If no, ask yourself:”could I usefully delegate this to someone else?” If the answer is yes, do so.

    If you can’t delegate it, ask yourself: “When will be a good time to do this?” and schedule time for it. A specific, written-down, clock time on a specific calendar date. Input that into whatever you use for scheduling things. If you don’t already use something, just use the calendar app on whatever device you use most.

    The mnemonic for the above process is “Do/Defer/Delegate/Ditch”

    Processing projects:

    If you don’t know where to start with a project, then figuring out where to start is your “Next Action” for that project. Brainstorm it, write down everything you’ll need to do, and anything that needs doing first.

    The end result of this is:

    • You will always, at any given time, have a complete (and accessible) view of everything you are “supposed” to do.
    • You will always, at any given time, know what action you need to take next for a given project.
    • You will always, when you designate “work time”, be able to get straight into a very efficient process of getting through your to-dos.

    Keeping on top of things

    • Whenever stuff “to do something with/about” comes to you, put it in your physical “inbox” place—as mentioned, a letter-tray on a desk should suffice.
    • At the start of each working day, quickly process things as described above. This should be a small daily task.
    • Once a week, do a weekly review to make sure you didn’t lose sight of something.
    • Monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews can be a good practice too.

    How to do those reviews? Topic for another day, perhaps.

    Or:

    Check out the website / Check out GTD apps / Check out the book

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Twenty-One, No Wait, Twenty Tweaks For Better Health

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    Dr. Greger’s 21 Tweaks… We say 20, though!

    We’ve talked before about Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen (12 things he advises that we make sure to eat each day, to enjoy healthy longevity), but much less-talked-about are his “21 Tweaks”…

    They are, in short, a collection of little adjustments one can make for better health. Some of them are also nutritional, but many are more like lifestyle tweaks. Let’s do a rundown:

    At each meal:

    • Preload with water
    • Preload with “negative calorie” foods (especially: greens)
    • Incorporate vinegar (1-2 tbsp in a glass of water will slow your blood sugar increase)
    • Enjoy undistracted meals
    • Follow the 20-minute rule (enjoy your meal over the course of at least 20 minutes)

    Get your daily doses:

    • Black cumin ¼ tsp
    • Garlic powder ¼ tsp
    • Ground ginger (1 tsp) or cayenne pepper (½ tsp)
    • Nutritional yeast (2 tsp)
    • Cumin (½ tsp)
    • Green tea (3 cups)

    Every day:

    • Stay hydrated
    • Deflour your diet
    • Front-load your calories (this means implementing the “king, prince, pauper” rule—try to make your breakfast the largest meal of your day, followed my a medium lunch, and a small evening meal)
    • Time-restrict your eating (eat your meals within, for example, an 8-hour window, and fast the rest of the time)
    • Optimize exercise timing (before breakfast is best for most people, unless you are diabetic)
    • Weigh yourself twice a day (doing this when you get up and when you go to bed results in much better long-term weight management than weighing only once per day)
    • Complete your implementation intentions (this sounds a little wishy-washy, but it’s about building a set of “if this, then that” principles, and then living by them. An example could be directly physical health-related such as “if there is a choice of stairs or elevator, I will take the stairs”, or could be more about holistic good-living, such as “if someone asks me for help, I will try to oblige them so far as I reasonably can”)

    Every night:

    • Fast after 7pm
    • Get sufficient sleep (7–9 hours is best. As we get older, we tend more towards the lower end of that, but try get at least those 7 hours!)
    • Experiment with Mild Trendelenburg (better yet, skip this one)*

    *This involves a 6º elevation of the bed, at the foot end. Dr. Greger advises that this should only be undertaken after consulting your doctor, though, as a lot of health conditions can contraindicate it. We at 10almonds couldn’t find any evidence to support this practice, and numerous warnings against it, so we’re going to go ahead and say we think this one’s skippable.

    Again, we do try to bring you the best evidence-based stuff here at 10almonds, and we’re not going to recommend something just because of who suggested it

    As for the rest, you don’t have to do them all! And you may have noticed there was a little overlap in some of them. But, we consider them a fine menu of healthy life hacks from which to pick and choose!

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  • Better Sex = Longer Life (Here’s How)

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    This is Dr. Candice Hargons. She’s a professor of psychology, and has served on the Kentucky Psychological Association Board, the Society of Counseling Psychology Executive Board, and the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Council of Representatives. She also served on the APA Board of Directors, after receiving the APA’s Presidential Citation award for her research and leadership.

    She leads the Study of Mental And Sexual Health Equity in Relationships (SMASHER Lab), with a predominant focus on promoting good sex, sexual wellness, and liberation among couples and communities.

    In her own words:

    ❝Sex is one of the most common and normal human behaviors, and yet it remains relatively taboo as a topic. Many people worry about being judged, either for being perceived as too sexual or not sexual enough, and a major focus of my work is to normalize talking and learning about sex to improve sexual functioning across the adult lifespan.❞

    ~ Dr. Candice Hargons

    So, let’s do that!

    What does good sex do for health?

    We’ve written previously about the health aspects of orgasms specifically:

    “Early To Bed…” (Mythbusting Orgasms) ← including resources pertaining to anorgasmia, the inability to orgasm

    …but orgasms are not the be-all-and-end-all of sex; see for example:

    A Urologist Explains Edging: What, Why, & Is It Safe? ← when the journey is genuinely more of a focus than the destination

    And certainly, good sex is simply a very good way to relax and de-stress, which is important, given how important stress management is to general health in very many ways (affecting things ranging from inflammation to heart health and more).

    Plus, while the level of athleticism deployed may vary, sex is a physical activity, and physical activity is, as a rule, good.

    There’s more to it than that though! It also can help us bind closely to our loved ones, in a positive way, which—critically—has a very positive impact on healthy longevity:

    Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much! ← this is about the seriousness of the relationship, not the sex, but for most people, a strong and fulfilling relationship will include having good sex.

    The scientific relationship between sex and longevity also got a whole chapter in this excellent book that we reviewed all so recently:

    Age Proof: The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life – by Dr. Rose Anne Kenny

    What makes it “good”?

    Dr. Hargons considers (and her opinion is backed by extensive research in the SMASHER Lab, if you’ll pardon the mental image that that might conjure) that first and foremost… It has to feel good to all parties involved.

    In contrast, oftentimes, one partner’s pleasure is prioritized over another’s, and that becomes a problem.*

    *assuming that’s not part of an established kink dynamic with enthusiastic affirmative consent, such as if the partner whose pleasure is being deprioritized is enthusiastically requesting to be denied orgasms, for example. Yes, that’s a real kink and even a popular one, but it’s not what’s happening in most sexually uneven relationships.

    This kind of unplanned disparity often goes undiscussed by the couple in question—especially in heterosexual couples if the man is getting what he wants/needs and the woman isn’t, because there’s a rather lop-sided societal expectation in that regard. And even a loving, well-intentioned man can simply not know how to do better and be afraid to ask. And for that matter, it’s also entirely possible for his partner to not know either.

    Dr. Hargons lists the four main keys as:

    • Communication
    • Intimacy
    • Passion
    • Pleasure

    And communication indeed comes first, so to speak. For example, she advises:

    Begin by identifying what you like and don’t like sexually. An easy way to do this is to create a “Yes, No, Maybe So” list. You can use paper or a Notes app on your phone.

    Create three columns: one for Yes, No, and Maybe So sections. In the Yes section, write all the things you enjoy and want to keep doing sexually, as well as things you have not tried yet that you want to try. In the No section, write all the things you don’t enjoy and do not want to do anymore. It can also include things you haven’t tried that you’re uninterested in trying. Finally, in your Maybe So list, write all the things you’re curious about and/or are only willing to try in specific settings or circumstances.

    You can share this list with your partner, but even if you are not ready to do that, you will already have enhanced your sexual self-awareness and be better positioned to talk with your sexual partner about what you want.❞

    This represents an important shift from “whatever” to taking an active role in your sex life at your own pace.

    And from there, it’s just a matter of exploring, together, and learning as you go. Could anything be more exciting than that?

    “What if I’m single?”

    We talked about this a little previously, more relationally than sexually specifically, though:

    Singledom & Healthy Longevity

    Now, a single person can of course still have an active sex life if you so choose, in which case, the above advice still applies, just, it’ll be conversations with your partner-of-the-moment rather than with a life partner. And that’s important too! Just because something is casual, doesn’t mean it need not be entered into mindfully and with a sense of what you want out of it, and communicating that effectively (while encouraging the same from others, and of course actually listening to, and caring about, what they say too).

    And if you are, perchance, single and decided on a life of celibacy now, you can and (if you are sexual at all) should still figure out what you like and don’t like sexually, because even if it’s going to be you-on-you action, it will be good for you to love yourself enough to do it right.

    Seriously, treat yourself at least as well as you would any other lover.

    On which note, corded wand-style vibrators like the famous “Magic Wand” kind are much more powerful than the battery kind, and you will feel the difference, in a good way.

    And if you really want to invest in your sexual wellness and you like the idea, saddle-style vibrators like this one will rock your socks off in ways handheld vibrators couldn’t dream of.

    Want to know more?

    You might want to check out Dr. Hargons’ book:

    Good Sex: Stories, Science, and Strategies for Sexual Liberation – by Dr. Candice Hargons ← this covers so many important areas, more than we have room to here. Just check out the table of contents, and you’ll see what we mean.

    …which we haven’t reviewed yet, but here are some excellent related books that we have:

    Enjoy!

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