Why We Get Sick – by Dr. Benjamin Bikman
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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:
- 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)
- 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:
- The Problem: What Is Insulin Resistance
- The Cause: What Makes Us Insulin Resistant
- 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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Avocado vs Tomato – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing avocado to tomato, we picked the avocado.
Why?
Both have their merits, but it wasn’t close:
In terms of macros, avocado has more (famously healthy) fats, as well as more than 5x the fiber, 2x the carbs, and 2x the protein, winning this first round easily.
In the category of vitamins, avocado has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, E, and K, while tomatoes have more of vitamins A and C, yielding to avocado a 9:2 win here.
Looking at minerals, avocado has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while tomatoes are not higher in any minerals—a third win in a row for avocado, and a complete one at that.
In other considerations, tomatoes are higher in polyphenols and are a good source of lycopene, which is also very beneficial, so that’s a round in tomatoes’ favor, finally.
Still, adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for avocado, but by all means do enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
Enjoy!
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Don’t Miss This Early Warning Sign Of Physical Decline (Better To Fix It Now)
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It’s about balance. The first sign might be that you find you fail “can you stand on one leg for 30 seconds with your eyes closed” test.
Safety tip: try it with your eyes open first, then try it with one eye closed, then try it with both eyes closed.
Soon after failing that test, the problem can look like regularly grabbing furniture, chair arms, walls, or people for stability, which usually indicates a loss of leg strength, balance, and confidence.
More Stability is the answer
While training your balance is worthwhile, stability is the most important aspect. Consequently, there are exercise can be done that don’t depend a lot on balance, that will help it:
Farmer’s carry exercise: this builds total-body strength (in particular: your stabilizing muscles) and removes reliance on your hands for support; walk slowly while holding light weights (e.g. dumbbells, or water carriers) for 30–60 seconds, rest, and repeat thrice, 2–3 times per week.
Side lunge: step to the side and bend the knee to strengthen glutes and quads, improve control and balance, and reduce fall risk; adjust depth and add weights if needed; do 10–15 reps per leg, 3 sets, 2x per week.
Sit-to-stand progressions: you can start easy and work up, if necessary, by doing 1) mini squats: slight bends without full sitting to start building leg strength 2) sit to stand: lower yourself slowly to the chair, then stand without using your hands 3) weighted sit to stand: same as above, but holding a weight to increase difficulty (and without using the weight as a counterbalance! Hold it close to your chest). Do 10–15 reps, 3 sets, a few times weekly.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
90% Of People Over 50 Fail This Balance Test. Will You? ← also includes some more specifically balance-developing exercises
Take care!
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Why do we blush? Turning red may have surprising social benefits
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We’ve all had the feeling. You’re embarrassed and then there it is: a warm flush creeping up your neck and across your cheeks. The more you think about it, the hotter and redder you get. If someone asks “are you blushing?” it only makes you blush more.
So, why do we do it? When we’re already self-conscious, this involuntary response can feel like an added punishment. But evolutionary science suggests blushing may actually have social advantages. Let’s take a look.
What is blushing?
Blushing is our body’s visible reaction when we feel emotions such as embarrassment, shyness or self-consciousness.
It’s caused by a short burst of increased blood flow to the skin of the ears, face, neck or chest.
When an emotion triggers blushing, the sympathetic nervous system – which controls automatic body functions – becomes active and releases adrenaline (epinephrine). This makes the tiny muscles in blood vessels relax.
In the body, adrenaline tightens blood vessels, but in the face it does the opposite – they dilate. This means more blood flows through to the skin and makes the face feel hot.
We turn red because of this sudden rush of blood close to the surface of the skin.
People with lighter skin tones show this redness more clearly. In darker skin tones, the change may be less visible or not visible at all – but the same physiological process still happens.
No matter whether others can see it, you’ll still feel warmth or tingling in your face.
People of any skin tone can blush – it might just be less visible to others. Stephen Okonkwo/Unsplash The social role of blushing
People blush when they are feeling highly self-conscious, which is generally brought on by unwanted social attention.
So even though the “fight-or-flight” system is involved, blushing isn’t about preparing for danger. Instead, scientists think it evolved as a social signal, a way of showing others that we recognise a mistake or feel embarrassed.
This can actually help build trust, because people often see blushing as a sign of honesty or sincerity – especially as it’s involuntary. Blushing can signal a non-verbal apology for a social misstep that can help to maintain social bonds after a transgression.
Different emotions can make us blush – but the mechanism is the same: increasing blood flow to the face and making us feel hot.
The difference is that blushing in anger, for example, comes from arousal and frustration, while blushing from embarrassment comes from self-awareness and social emotion.
People will blush for different reasons. For example, one study found children with social anxiety blushed from embarrassment when given exaggerated praise, compared to moderate praise or none.
In a follow-up study, the researchers found kids found who scored highly for narcissism – meaning they had an exaggerated sense of self-importance, wanted admiration and lacked empathy – blushed only when given moderate praise. Researchers suggested this was because the praise given didn’t match how well the child believed they performed.
Who’s most likely to blush?
Women and younger people blush more. This may explain why it is often associated with youth, vitality and fertility.
People with social anxiety are also more likely to blush.
But as we age and have more life experience, we tend to blush less. This may indicate we are more familiar with social norms – or less bothered if we transgress them.
People with facial erythema (persistent facial redness) are often mistakenly seen as blushing. But this condition can have a variety of causes, including rosacea, allergic contact dermatitis, reactions to medication and lupus erythematosus (a chronic autoimmune disease).
Animals can blush too
Some primates have pale facial skin that can blush, such as Japanese macaques and bald uakaris.
For mandrills, another kind of primate, blushing plays an important role in fertility. Females have a dark face when young and after giving birth. But their faces become bright red during the follicular phase of their menstrual cycle, advertising their fertility.
When male mandrills are in the presence of fertile females, their faces become redder as they produce more testosterone.
Human make-up trends may be evoking similar fertility and attraction rituals, whether consciously or unconsciously.
For example, TikTok and Instagram are awash with people “addicted” to blush using hashtags such as #Blushaholics and #BlushBlindness. Heavy blush is also popularly worn by K-Pop bands – and not only female groups.
When to get help for blushing
Because blushing is an involuntary reaction, you can’t stop a blush once it’s coming on.
However, if you have a blush that lasts more than a few days, is accompanied by pain, or is distressing to you due to cosmetic concerns, talk to your GP or health professional.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (a kind of talk therapy that helps reframe unhelpful thoughts and behaviours) may benefit people who blush because of social anxiety.
In rare cases where the cause is an overactive sympathetic nervous system, surgery may be recommended. There are two kinds: a sympathectomy removes a piece of the sympathetic chain – a long chain of nerve fibres running beside the spine; while a sympathicotomy cuts this chain near the second rib, where it joins this spine.
Evidence suggests these procedures are effective and can improve quality of life for people with severe symptoms.
But for most people, blushing won’t require medical intervention. If you can get through the embarrassment, this involuntary response can be a chance to reflect on your body’s signals, and what they reveal about yourself and how you connect with the world.
Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology in the College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University and Monika Zimanyi, Associate Professor in Anatomy, James Cook University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Here’s To Getting Assuredly Good Health
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An unusual amount of excitement in the health news world this week, with health insurance in the spotlight:
Deny, Delay, Depose?
Insurance company UnitedHealthcare, which used AI with a 90% error rate to deny insurance claims (of which, disproportionately denying insurance claims of the elderly), has come under extra public scrutiny this week for its recent-years business practices:
❝Nearly 1 in 5 insured adults experienced claim denials during a 12-month period.
Those with job-based insurance or Affordable Care Act policies ran into this problem about twice as often as those covered by Medicare or Medicaid❞
…although, the company has dramatically increased its care denials for Medicare Advantage enrollees, doubling the rate of denials as it implemented its new, automated denials process.
Anesthesiologist Dr. Brain Schmutzler noted:
❝We have a bigger issue with the insurance companies in general, who, essentially, it’s their job to make money, not to actually pay for health care❞
And in those cases where healthcare is not denied, it is often dangerously delayed, as insurance companies can stall for time to decide whether they’re going to pay or not.
One useful take-away from all of this is that if your insurance claim is denied, consider fighting it, as often they can be overturned.
Specifically, it can be good to insist on knowing who (named persons) was involved in the denial process, and their qualifications. Once upon a time, this was mostly unqualified interns, which prompted insurance companies to reverse the denial rather than admit that; nowadays it’s mostly AI, which many companies can hope will shield them from culpability—either way, fighting for one’s rights can often be successful.
Read in full: Killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO prompts flurry of stories on social media over denied insurance claims
Related: With Medical Debt Burdening Millions, a Financial Regulator Steps In to Help
Rest Easy
Health insurer Elevance Health (formerly Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield), had last month announced plans to limit its coverage for anesthesia used in operations, whereby they would pay for only a certain amount of anesthetic, and if the procedure was still ongoing when that amount had been used, then well, you were on your own.
However, on Thursday afternoon and allegedly completely coincidentally in the wake of the Wednesday assassination of the CEO who oversaw the denial of so many health insurance claims, this decision to limit paying for anesthesia was reversed, retracted, and they are now doing their best to downplay what the proposal would have meant for anesthesiologists and patients:
Read in full: Insurance company halts plan to put time limits on coverage for anesthesia during surgery
Related: The Insider’s Guide To Making Hospital As Comfortable As Possible ← an anesthesiologist’s tips
Getting a good grip of your health
What’s the best indicator of good health when it comes to age-related health issues? It’s not BMI! Could it be blood pressure? It could, but the news presently is about grip strength.
While training to have an amazing grip (and neglecting all else) will not necessarily increase your general healthspan, having a weak or strong grip is strongly associated with, respectively, having weak or strong general health in later years.
This is because unless someone has been training very unnaturally, grip strength is a good general measure of overall muscle strength, which in turn is a good indicator of metabolic health, as well as bodily robustness.
Read in full: Handgrip strength is a reliable predictor for age-related disease and disability, finds study
Related: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Take care!
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To Medicate or Not? That is the Question! – by Dr. Asha Bohannon
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Medications are, of course, a necessity of life (literally!) for many, especially as we get older. Nevertheless, overmedication is also a big problem that can cause a lot of harm too, and guess what, it comes with the exact same “especially as we get older” tag too.
So, what does Dr. Bohannon (a doctor of pharmacy, diabetes educator, and personal trainer too) recommend?
Simply put: she recommends starting with a comprehensive health history assessment and analysing one’s medication/supplement profile, before getting lab work done, tweaking all the things that can be tweaked along the way, and—of course—not neglecting lifestyle medicine either.
The book is prefaced and ended with pep talks that probably a person who has already bought the book does not need, but they don’t detract from the practical content either. Nevertheless, it feels a little odd that it takes until chapter 4 to reach “step 1” of her 7-step method!
The style throughout is conversational and energetic, but not overly padded with hype; it’s just a very casual style. Nevertheless, she brings to bear her professional knowledge and understanding as a doctor of pharmacy, to include her insights into the industry that one might not observe from outside of it.
Bottom line: if you’d like to do your own personal meds review and want to “know enough to ask the right questions” before bringing it up with your doctor, this book is a fine choice for that.
Click here to check out To Medicate Or Not, and make informed choices!
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How Prehab Boosts Recovery After Surgery
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…and other items from this week’s health science news:
Don’t wait until later!
Recovery from surgery can be hard, but it doesn’t have to be so bad: a randomized trial involving 164 patients aged 75 and older found that a four-week prehabilitation program before spinal fusion surgery reduced postoperative complications and improved recovery outcomes compared with standard care alone.
What this prehabilitation included: patients received a combination of strength training, balance exercises, flexibility work, cardiovascular conditioning, nutritional guidance focused on adequate calories and protein, and support for sleep, pain management, medication use, and psychological wellbeing.
To put the results in numbers, only about 75% of patients who completed prehab experienced at least one complication within three months of surgery, compared with more than 91% of patients who received only standard postoperative care, representing an 18% lower risk. Additionally, patients in the prehab group stayed in hospital for a shorter time after surgery, averaging 12 days compared with 14 days for those receiving standard care. Further, 68 of 79 prehab patients were able to get out of bed within 24 hours of surgery, compared with 55 of 80 patients in the standard-care group.
So, it’s not a magical panacea, but that’s still a relevant difference (imagine what you’d do for an 18% lower risk while you’re recovering!)
Read in full: Prehab can boost seniors’ recuperation from spinal fusion surgery, trial finds
Related: What To Eat, Take, & Do Before & After A Surgery
They can rebuild you; they have the technology
This one’s about SensoExo, a wearable system that combines a robotic hand exoskeleton with electrical nerve and muscle stimulation to help people with neurological hand impairments.
How the system works: a custom-fitted sleeve on the forearm delivers electrical stimulation to nerves and muscles through the skin, while sensors on the fingers detect touch and grip force and convert that information into stimulation patterns that provide artificial tactile feedback.
Why it matters: hand function depends not only on movement and strength, but also on touch sensation. After spinal cord injuries or brain injuries, people often lose both motor control and sensory feedback, making everyday tasks such as eating, dressing, and personal hygiene difficult.
This therefore means that the system can help users open and close their fingers through functional electrical stimulation, while also giving them information about how firmly they are gripping an object, something that is often lost after neurological injury, and something that has been a challenge for roboticists for decades, let alone cyberneticists doing enhancement tech for human bodies.
Read in full: Scientists develop wearable robotic system to restore hand function
Related: When a Hearing Aid Isn’t Enough ← we haven’t written much about cybernetic enhancements, so do pardon the more tenuous connection here as we didn’t have many to choose from, but cochlear implants are interesting too!
What’s going on with bird flu in cows
Birds and cows are not very alike. And it’s especially strange that the bird flu is being found in the cows’ milk, bearing in mind that birds are famously not mammals, and thus do not have breasts as we do (or udders, which are the same thing with a different name in non-human mammals such as cows) or produce milk.
So, what’s going on? In few words, researchers (Dr. Santhamani Ramasamy et al.) found that H5N1 preferentially binds to a glycan receptor subtype called N-linked sialic acid receptors. And, you guessed it, these receptors are abundant in the mammary glands of cows but (unusually for mammals) are largely absent from their airways, making the udder tissue highly susceptible while making the respiratory tract unusually resistant, unlike in humans.
Unfortunately, that is no help whatsoever to humans who drink raw milk, and promptly get the virus in their respiratory tract that does have the receptors that the virus binds to:
Read in full: Scientists find mechanism behind bird flu infections in dairy cattle
Related: Just How Infectious Is The Bird Flu In Cows’ Milk Anyway?
Take care!
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