What Is “75 Hard”?

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This is Andy Frisella. He’s not a doctor, scientist, nutritionist, personal trainer, or professional athlete, but he has kicked off a viral fitness challenge, so let’s take a look at it:

What it is

Firstly, Frisella asserts that it’s not a fitness challenge, but rather, he describes it as a “transformative mental toughness program”.

Here’s what it consists of:

  • Follow a healthy diet plan with no deviations from it (i.e. no “cheat days”)
  • Abstain from alcohol
  • Exercise 2x per day, 45 minutes each
  • One of the exercise sessions each day must be outside
  • No rest days
  • Drink 3.5 liters of water per day

And the duration? 75 days, hence the name of the fitness challenge transformative mental toughness program.

Why it is

Frisella’s rationale is:

  • we must cultivate mental toughness by doing hard things
  • allowing ourselves any deviation would be a sign of mental weakness
  • if we allow ourselves to deviate, it becomes a habit

For this reason, he does not “allow” any substitutions, for example if somebody wants to do such-and-such a thing slightly differently instead. We put “allow” in quotation marks because of course, he’s not the boss of you, but per the rules of his challenge, at least.

These reasonings are in and of themselves somewhat sound, however, we at 10almonds would argue:

  • before doing hard things, it is good to first consider “is it a good idea?” (amputating your leg using only a spork is a “hard thing”, and demonstrates incredible mental toughness, but that doesn’t make it a good idea)
  • while being able to decide to do a thing and then do it is great characteristic to have, it’s good to first consider science; for example, restrictive diets with no flexibility simply do not work, and our bodies do require adequate rest, especially if being pushed through hard things, or problems will happen (injuries, illnesses, etc).
  • while it’s true that allowing ourselves to deviate can become a habit, it’s good to first consider what habits we want to make, and make those habits, instead of potentially unsustainable or even simply unpleasant ones.

See also: What Flexible Dieting Really Means: When Flexibility Is The Dish Of The Day

And for that matter: How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

Want a “75 Gentle” instead?

If you like the idea of making new habits, but are not sure if extreme (and perhaps arbitrary) standards are the ones you want to hold, check out:

Cori Lefkowith’s 25 Healthy Habits That Will Change Your Life

Take care!

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  • Stop Sabotaging Your Gut

    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.

    This is Dr. Robynne Chutkan. She’s an integrative gastroenterologist, and founder of the Digestive Center for Wellness, in Washington DC, which for the past 20 years has been dedicated to uncovering the root causes of gastrointestinal disorders, while the therapeutic side of things has been focused on microbial optimization, nutritional therapy, mind-body techniques, and lifestyle changes.

    In other words, maximal health for minimal medicalization.

    So… What does she want us to know?

    Live dirty

    While attentive handwashing is important to avoid the spread of communicable diseases*, excessive cleanliness in general can result in an immune system that has no idea how to deal with pathogens when exposure does finally occur.

    *See also: The Truth About Handwashing

    This goes doubly for babies: especially those who were born by c-section and thus missed out on getting colonized by vaginal bacteria, and especially those who are not breast-fed, and thus miss out on nutrients given in breast milk that are made solely for the benefit of certain symbiotic bacteria (humans can’t even digest those particular nutrients, we literally evolved to produce some nutrients solely for the bacteria).

    See also: Breast Milk’s Benefits That Are (So Far) Not Replicable

    However, it still goes for the rest of us who are not babies, too. We could, Dr. Chutkan tells us, stand to wash less in general, and definitely ease up on antibacterial soaps and so forth.

    See also: Should You Shower Daily?

    Take antibiotics only if absolutely necessary (and avoid taking them by proxy)

    Dr. Chutkan describes antibiotics as the single biggest threat to our microbiome, not just because of overprescription, but also the antibiotics that are used in animal agriculture and thus enter the food chain (and thus, enter us, if we eat animal products).

    Still, while the antibiotics meat/dairy-enjoyers will get from food are better avoided, antibiotics actually taken directly are even worse, and are absolutely a “scorched earth” tactic against whatever they’re being prescribed for.

    See also: Antibiotics? Think Thrice ← which also brings up “Four Ways Antibiotics Can Kill You”; seriously, the risks of antibiotics are not to be underestimated, including the risks associated only with them working exactly as intended—let alone if something goes wrong.

    Probiotics won’t save you

    While like any gastroenterologist (or really, almost any person in general), she notes that probiotics can give a boost to health. However, she wants us to know about two shortcomings that are little-discussed:

    1) Your body has a collection of microbiomes each with their own needs, and while it is possible to take “generally good” bacteria in probiotics and assume they’ll do good, taking Lactobacillus sp. will do nothing for a shortage of Bifidobacteria sp, and even taking the correct genus can have similar shortcomings if a different species of that genus is needed, e.g. taking L. acidophilus will do nothing for a shortage of L. reuteri.

    It’d be like a person with a vitamin D deficiency taking vitamin B12 supplements and wondering why they’re not getting better.

    2) Probiotics are often wasted if not taken mindfully of their recipient environment. For example, most gut bacteria only live for about 20 minutes in the gut. They’re usually inactive in the supplement form, they’re activated in the presence of heat and moisture and appropriate pH etc, and then the clock is ticking for them to thrive or die.

    This means that if you take a supplement offering two billion strains of good gut bacteria, and you take it on an empty stomach, then congratulations, 20 minutes later, they’re mostly dead, because they had nothing to eat. Or if you take it after drinking a soda, congratulations, they’re mostly dead because not only were they starved, but also their competing “bad” microbes weren’t starved and changed the environment to make it worse for the “good” ones.

    For this reason, taking probiotics with (or immediately after) plenty of fiber is best.

    This is all accentuated if you’re recovering from using antibiotics, by the way.

    Imagine: a nuclear war devastates the population of the Earth. Some astronauts manage to safely return, finding a mostly-dead world covered in nuclear winter. Is the addition of a few astronauts going to quickly repopulate the world? No, of course not. They are few, the death toll is many, and the environment is very hostile to life. A hundred years later, the population will be pretty much the same—a few straggling survivors.

    It’s the same after taking antibiotics, just, generations pass in minutes instead of decades. You can’t wipe out almost everything beneficial in the gut, create a hostile environment there, throw in a couple of probiotic gummies, and expect the population to bounce back.

    That said, although “probiotics will not save you”, they can help provided you give them a nice soft bed of fiber to land on, some is better than none, and guessing at what strains are needed is better than giving nothing.

    See also: How Much Difference Do Probiotic Supplements Make, Really?

    What she recommends

    So to recap, we’ve had:

    • Wash less, and/or with less harsh chemicals
    • Avoid antibiotics like the plague, unless you literally have The Plague, for which the treatment is indeed antibiotics
    • Avoid antibiotic-contaminated foods, which in the US is pretty much all animal products unless it’s, for example, your own back-yard hens whom you did not give antibiotics. Do not fall for greenwashing aesthetics in the packaging of “happy cows” and their beef, milk, etc, “happy hens” and their meat, eggs, etc… If it doesn’t explicitly claim to be free from the use of antibiotics, then antibiotics were almost certainly used.
      • Dr. Chutkan herself is not even vegan, by the way, but very much wants us to be able to make informed choices about this, and does recommend at least a “plants-forward” diet, for the avoiding-antibiotics reason and for the plenty-of-fiber reason, amongst others.
    • Consider probiotics, but don’t expect them to work miracles by themselves; you’ve got to help them to help you.
      • Dr. Chutkan also recommends getting microbiome tests done if you think something might be amiss, and then you can supplement with probiotics in a more targetted fashion instead of guessing at what species is needed where.

    She also recommends, of course, a good gut-healthy diet in general, especially “leafy green things that were recently alive; not powders”, beans, and nuts, while avoiding gut-unhealthy things such as sugars-without-fiber, alcohol, or some gut-harmful additives (such as most artificial sweeteners, although stevia is a gut-healthy exception, and sucralose is ok in moderation).

    For more on gut-healthy eating, check out:

    Make Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

    Want to know more from Dr. Chutkan?

    We recently reviewed an excellent book of hers:

    The Anti-Viral Gut: Tackling Pathogens From The Inside Out – by Dr. Robynne Chutkan

    Enjoy!

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  • Why the WHO has recommended switching to a healthier salt alternative

    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.

    This week the World Health Organization (WHO) released new guidelines recommending people switch the regular salt they use at home for substitutes containing less sodium.

    But what exactly are these salt alternatives? And why is the WHO recommending this? Let’s take a look.

    goodbishop/Shutterstock

    A new solution to an old problem

    Advice to eat less salt (sodium chloride) is not new. It has been part of international and Australian guidelines for decades. This is because evidence clearly shows the sodium in salt can harm our health when we eat too much of it.

    Excess sodium increases the risk of high blood pressure, which affects millions of Australians (around one in three adults). High blood pressure (hypertension) in turn increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease, among other conditions.

    The WHO estimates 1.9 million deaths globally each year can be attributed to eating too much salt.

    The WHO recommends consuming no more than 2g of sodium daily. However people eat on average more than double this, around 4.3g a day.

    In 2013, WHO member states committed to reducing population sodium intake by 30% by 2025. But cutting salt intake has proved very hard. Most countries, including Australia, will not meet the WHO’s goal for reducing sodium intake by 2025. The WHO has since set the same target for 2030.

    The difficulty is that eating less salt means accepting a less salty taste. It also requires changes to established ways of preparing food. This has proved too much to ask of people making food at home, and too much for the food industry.

    A salt shaker spilling onto a table.
    There’s been little progress on efforts to cut sodium intake. snezhana k/Shutterstock

    Enter potassium-enriched salt

    The main lower-sodium salt substitute is called potassium-enriched salt. This is salt where some of the sodium chloride has been replaced with potassium chloride.

    Potassium is an essential mineral, playing a key role in all the body’s functions. The high potassium content of fresh fruit and vegetables is one of the main reasons they’re so good for you. While people are eating more sodium than they should, many don’t get enough potassium.

    The WHO recommends a daily potassium intake of 3.5g, but on the whole, people in most countries consume significantly less than this.

    Potassium-enriched salt benefits our health by cutting the amount of sodium we consume, and increasing the amount of potassium in our diets. Both help to lower blood pressure.

    Switching regular salt for potassium-enriched salt has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and premature death in large trials around the world.

    Modelling studies have projected that population-wide switches to potassium-enriched salt use would prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths from cardiovascular disease (such as heart attack and stroke) each year in China and India alone.

    The key advantage of switching rather than cutting salt intake is that potassium-enriched salt can be used as a direct one-for-one swap for regular salt. It looks the same, works for seasoning and in recipes, and most people don’t notice any important difference in taste.

    In the largest trial of potassium-enriched salt to date, more than 90% of people were still using the product after five years.

    A female nurse taking a senior man's blood pressure.
    Excess sodium intake increases the risk of high blood pressure, which can cause a range of health problems. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Making the switch: some challenges

    If fully implemented, this could be one of the most consequential pieces of advice the WHO has ever provided.

    Millions of strokes and heart attacks could be prevented worldwide each year with a simple switch to the way we prepare foods. But there are some obstacles to overcome before we get to this point.

    First, it will be important to balance the benefits and the risks. For example, people with advanced kidney disease don’t handle potassium well and so these products are not suitable for them. This is only a small proportion of the population, but we need to ensure potassium-enriched salt products are labelled with appropriate warnings.

    A key challenge will be making potassium-enriched salt more affordable and accessible. Potassium chloride is more expensive to produce than sodium chloride, and at present, potassium-enriched salt is mostly sold as a niche health product at a premium price.

    If you’re looking for it, salt substitutes may also be called low-sodium salt, potassium salt, heart salt, mineral salt, or sodium-reduced salt.

    A review published in 2021 found low sodium salts were marketed in only 47 countries, mostly high-income ones. Prices ranged from the same as regular salt to almost 15 times higher.

    An expanded supply chain that produces much more food-grade potassium chloride will be needed to enable wider availability of the product. And we’ll need to see potassium-enriched salt on the shelves next to regular salt so it’s easy for people to find.

    In countries like Australia, about 80% of the salt we eat comes from processed foods. The WHO guideline falls short by not explicitly prioritising a switch for the salt used in food manufacturing.

    Stakeholders working with government to encourage food industry uptake will be essential for maximising the health benefits.

    Xiaoyue (Luna) Xu, Scientia Lecturer, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney and Bruce Neal, Executive Director, George Institute Australia, George Institute for Global Health

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

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  • Treat Your Own Back – by Robin McKenzie

    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.

    A quick note about the author first: he’s a physiotherapist and not a doctor, but with over 40 years of practice to his name and 33 letters after his name (CNZM OBE FCSP (Hon) FNZSP (Hon) Dip MDT Dip MT), he seems to know his stuff. And certainly, if you visit any physiotherapist, they will probably have some of his books on their own shelves.

    This book is intended for the layperson, and as such, explains everything that you need to know, in order to diagnose and treat your back. To this end, he includes assorted tests to perform, a lot of details about various possible back conditions, and then exercises to fix it, i.e. fix whatever you have now learned that the problem is, in your case (if indeed you didn’t know for sure already).

    Of course, not everything can be treated by exercises, and he does point to what other things may be necessary in those cases, but for the majority, a significant improvement (if not outright symptom-free status) can be enjoyed by applying the techniques described in this book.

    Bottom line: for most people, this book gives you the tools required to do exactly what the title says.

    Click here to check out Treat Your Own Back, and treat your own back!

    PS: if your issue is not with your back, we recommend you check out his other books in the series (neck, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle) 😎

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  • Bananas vs Grapes – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing bananas to grapes, we picked the bananas.

    Why?

    In terms of macros, bananas have more fiber and carbs, the ratio of which gives them the (very slightly) lower glycemic index. The difference in GI is marginal enough that it’d be tied on that point alone, but looking at total fiber figures, we say that having nearly 3x the fiber counts for a win here.

    In the category of vitamins, bananas have more of vitamins B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline, while grapes have more of vitamins A, B1, E, and K. Thus, an 8:4 win for bananas (and with considerable margins of difference, too).

    When it comes to minerals, bananas have more copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium*, selenium, and zinc, while grapes have more calcium and manganese. Thus, a 6:2 win for bananas this time.

    *because of some popular mentions in TV shows, people get hung up on bananas being a good source of potassium. Which they are, but they’re not even in the top 10 of fruits for potassium. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of fruits that have more potassium than bananas, portion for portion:

    1. Honeydew melon
    2. Papaya
    3. Mango
    4. Prunes
    5. Figs
    6. Dates
    7. Nectarine
    8. Cantaloupe melon
    9. Kiwi
    10. Orange

    See also: The Other “Special K”: The Top Micronutrient Deficiency In High Blood Pressure

    It’s worth mentioning polyphenols: black/red grapes do have more abundant polyphenols than bananas, and this is very much a point in their favor; however, we don’t think it’s enough to compensate for bananas beating them in every other category, so we still declare bananas the winner.

    Of course, the solution to this dilemma is to enjoy both!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Can We Drink To Good Health? ← while there are polyphenols such as resveratrol in red wine that per se would boost heart health, there’s so little per glass that you may need 100–1000 glasses per day to get the dosage that provides benefits in mouse studies.

    If you’re not a mouse, you might even need more than that!

    To this end, many people prefer resveratrol supplementation ← link is to an example product on Amazon, but there are plenty more so feel free to shop around 😎

    Enjoy!

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  • A New Tool For Bone Regeneration

    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.

    When it comes to rebuilding bones, one of the tools in the orthopedic surgeon’s toolbox is bone grafts. This involves, to oversimplify it a bit, gluing particles of bone to where bone needs rebuilding. However, this comes with problems, most notably:

    • that the bone tissue and the adhesive “glue” need to be prepared separately and mixed in situ, which is fiddly, to say the least
    • that the resultant mixture mixed in situ will usually be unevenly mixed, resulting in weak bonding and degradation over time
    • having any more of one part or the other in any given site means that bone regeneration and adhesion become a “pick one” matter, when both are critically needed

    You may be wondering: why can’t they mix them before putting them in?

    And the answer is: because then either the glue will set the bone prematurely (and now we have a clump of bone outside of the body which is not what we wanted), or else the glue will have issues with setting in situ, and now we have bone tissue running down the inside of someone’s leg and setting somewhere else, which is also not what we want.

    These kinds of problems may seem a little more “arts and crafts” than “orthopedic surgery”, but they are the kind of nitty-gritty real-life real challenges that actually get in the way of healing patients’ bones.

    The new solution

    Biomaterial research scientists have developed an injectable hydrogel (containing all the necessary ingredients* that uses light to achieve cross-linking of bone particles and mineralization without any of the above being necessary. In again oversimplified terms: they inject the hydrogel where it’s needed, and then irradiate the site with harmless visible light which instantly sets it in place. As to how the light gets in there: it’s just very shiny, like candling an egg to see inside, or like how you can still approximately see bright light even with your eyes closed.

    *alginate (natural polysaccharide derived from brown algae), RGD peptide-containing mussel** adhesive protein, calcium ions, phosphonodiols, and a photoinitiator.

    **unclear whether this would trigger a shellfish allergy. Probably kosher per “פיקוח נפש” and Talmud Yoma 85b, but we are a health science newsletter, not Talmudic scholars, so please talk to your Rabbi. Probably halal per Qur’an 5:4 and failing that, the same principle as previously mentioned, expressed in Qur’an 5:3 and 6:119, but once again, your humble writer here is no Mufti, so please talk to your Imam. As for if you are vegetarian or vegan, then that is for you to decide whether to take a “medications with animal ingredients are unfortunate but necessary” stance, as most do. This vegan writer would (she’d grumble about it, though, and at least try to find an acceptable alternative first).

    Back to the more general practicalities…

    How it works, in less oversimplified terms:

    ❝The coacervate-based formulation, which is immiscible in water, ensures that the hydrogel retains its shape and position after injection into the body. Upon visible light irradiation, cross-linking occurs, and amorphous calcium phosphate, which functions as a bone graft material, is simultaneously formed. This eliminates the need for separate bone grafts or adhesives, enabling the hydrogel to provide both bone regeneration and adhesion.❞

    See the paper: Visible light-induced simultaneous bioactive amorphous calcium phosphate mineralization and in situ crosslinking of coacervate-based injectable underwater adhesive hydrogels for enhanced bone regeneration

    “That’s great, but I was hoping for something I can do right now, ideally at home”

    If getting glued back together was not on your bucket list, that’s understandable. There’s still a lot you can do for bone density; here’s a quick overview:

    Too much information?

    If that was too much information all at once, then we recommend this as your one-stop article:

    The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis

    Want more information?

    We are but a humble newsletter and can only include so much per day, but we highly recommend this book we reviewed a little while back, which goes into everything in a lot more detail than we can here:

    The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis: How To Improve Bone Strength And Reduce Your Fracture Risk – by Keith McCormick

    Enjoy!

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  • Hero Homemade Hummus

    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.

    If you only have store-bought hummus at home, you’re missing out. The good news is that hummus is very easy to make, and highly customizable—so once you know how to make one, you can make them all, pretty much. And of course, it’s one of the healthiest dips out there!

    You will need

    • 2 x 140z/400g tins chickpeas
    • 4 heaped tbsp tahini
    • 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
    • Juice of 1 lemon
    • 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • Optional, but recommended: your preferred toppings/flavorings. Examples to get you started include olives, tomatoes, garlic, red peppers, red onion, chili, cumin, paprika (please do not put everything in one hummus; if unsure about pairings, select just one optional ingredient per hummus for now)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Drain the chickpeas, but keep the chickpea water from them (also called aquafaba; it has many culinary uses beyond the scope of today’s recipe, but for now, just keep it to one side).

    2) Add the chickpeas, ⅔ of the aquafaba, the tahini, the olive oil, the lemon juice, the black pepper, and any optional extra flavoring(s) that you don’t want to remain chunky. Blend until smooth; if it becomes to thick, add a little more aquafaba and blend again until it’s how you want it.

    3) Transfer the hummus to a bowl, and add any extra toppings.

    4) Repeat the above steps for each different kind of hummus you want to make.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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