
Yoga for Better Sleep – by Mark Stephens
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The book has, as you might expect:
- postural exercises
- breathing exercises
- meditation exercises
Instructions given in all of the above categories are clear and easy to follow, and there are photographic illustrations too where appropriate.
What sets it apart from many books of this kind is that it also has chapters dedicated to various specific circumstances; the many actual reasons people seriously struggle to sleep; not just “screentime too late”, but for example deprepression, sleep apnea, hyperarousal, or even just aging.
As well as the comprehensive exercises, there are also many tips, tricks, hacks, and workarounds—it’s a practical guidebook with practical advice.
While the book is about yogic practices, the author also does tackle this holistically, acknowledging that there are many factors going on, and that yogic practices should be one more string to our sleep-improving bow—as we continue with other general good advice for good sleep too, have medical tests if it seems appropriate, that kind of thing. Basically, to have one’s assorted approaches work together with synergistic effect.
Bottom line: this book will quite possibly put you to sleep! But only in the best possible way.
Click here to check out Yoga for Better Sleep, and get those valuable Zs in, healthily!
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Good Energy – by Dr. Casey Means
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For a book with a title like “Good Energy” and chapters such as “Bad Energy Is the Root of Disease”, this is actually a very science-based book (and there are a flock of well-known doctors saying so in the “praise for” section, too).
The premise is simple: most of our health is a matter of what our metabolism is (or isn’t) doing, and it’s not just a case of “doing more” or “doing less”. Indeed, a lot of “our” energy is expended doing bad things (such as chronic inflammation, to give an obvious example).
Dr. Means outlines about a dozen things many people do wrong, and about a dozen things we can do right, to get our body’s energy system working for us, rather than against us.
The style here is pop-science throughout, and in the category of criticism, the bibliography is offloaded to her website (we prefer to have things in our hands). However, the information here is good, clearly-presented, and usefully actionable.
Bottom line: if you ever find yourself feeling run-down and like your body is using your resources against you rather than for you, this is the book to get you out of that slump!
Click here to check out Good Energy, and get your metabolism working for you!
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Anti-Inflammatory Brownies
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Brownies are usually full of sugar, butter, and flour. These ones aren’t! Instead, they’re full of fiber (good against inflammation), healthy fats, and anti-inflammatory polyphenols:
You will need
- 1 can chickpeas (keep half the chickpea water, also called aquafaba, as we’ll be using it)
- 4 oz of your favorite nut butter (substitute with tahini if you’re allergic to nuts)
- 3 oz rolled oats
- 2 oz dark chocolate chips (or if you want the best quality: dark chocolate, chopped into very small pieces)
- 3 tbsp of your preferred plant milk (this is an anti-inflammatory recipe and unfermented dairy is inflammatory)
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder (pure cacao is best)
- 1 tbsp glycine (if unavailable, use 2 tbsp maple syrup, and skip the aquafaba)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp low-sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃, and line a 7″ cake tin with baking paper.
2) Blend the oats in a food processor, until you have oat flour.
3) Add all the remaining ingredients except the dark chocolate chips, and process until the mixture resembles cookie dough.
3) Transfer to a bowl, and fold in the dark chocolate chips, distributing evenly.
4) Add the mixture to the cake tin, and smooth the surface down so that it’s flat and even. Bake for about 25 minutes, and let them cool in the tin for at least 10 minutes, but longer is better, as they will firm up while they cool. Cut into cubes when ready to serve:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
- Cacao vs Carob – Which is Healthier?
- Keep Inflammation At Bay
- The Sweet Truth About Glycine
- The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health?
Take care!
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Can you ‘boost’ your immune system?
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As flu season and a likely winter COVID-19 wave approach, you may encounter both proven and unproven methods claiming to “boost” your immune system. Before you reach for supplements, learn more about how the immune system works, how vaccines give us the best protection against many illnesses, and how some lifestyle factors can help your immune system function properly.
What is the immune system?
The immune system is the body’s first line of defense against invaders like viruses, bacteria, or fungi. You develop immunity—or protection from infection—when your immune system has learned how to recognize an invader and attack it before it makes you sick.
How can you boost your immune system?
You can teach your immune system how to fight back against dangerous invaders by staying up to date on vaccines. This season’s updated flu and COVID-19 vaccines target newer variants and are recommended for everyone 6 months and older.
Vaccines reduce your risk of getting sick and spreading illness to others. Even if you get infected with a disease after you’ve been vaccinated against it, the vaccine will still increase protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and death.
People who have compromised immune systems due to certain health conditions or because they need to take immunosuppressant medications may need additional vaccine doses.
Find out which vaccines you and your children need by using the CDC’s Adult Vaccine Assessment Tool and Child and Adolescent Vaccine Assessment Tool. Talk to your health care provider about the best vaccines for your family.
Find pharmacies offering updated flu and COVID-19 vaccines by visiting Vaccines.gov.
Can supplements boost your immune system?
Many vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements that are marketed as “immune boosting” have little to no effect on your immune system. Research is split on whether some of these supplements—like vitamin C, vitamin D, and zinc—are capable of helping your body fight infections.
Plus, the Food and Drug Administration typically does not review supplements until after they have reached store shelves, and companies can sell supplements without notifying the FDA. This means that supplements may not be accurately labeled.
Eating a diverse diet rich in fruits and vegetables is the best way for most people to absorb nutrients that support optimal immune system function. People with certain health conditions and deficiencies may need specific supplements prescribed by a health care provider. For example, people with anemia may need iron supplements in order to maintain appropriate iron levels.
Before you begin taking a new supplement, talk to your health care provider, as some supplements may interact with medications you are taking or worsen certain health conditions.
Can lifestyle factors strengthen your immune system?
Based on current evidence, there is no direct link between lifestyle changes and enhanced immunity to infections. However, maintaining a healthy lifestyle through the following practices can help ensure that your immune system functions as it should:
- Eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
- Exercise regularly.
- Don’t smoke.
- Limit or eliminate alcohol consumption.
- Get seven or more hours of sleep per night.
- Reduce stress.
Taking steps to avoid contact with germs also reduces your risk of getting sick. Safer sex barriers like condoms protect against HIV, while wearing a high-quality, well-fitting mask—especially in high-risk environments—protects against COVID-19. Both of these illnesses can reduce your production of white blood cells, which protect against infection.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Food for Thought – by Lorraine Perretta
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What are “brain foods”? If you think for a moment, you can probably list a few. What this book does is better.
As well as providing the promised 50 recipes (which themselves are varied, good, and easy), Perretta explains the science of very many brain-healthy ingredients. Not just that, but also the science of a lot of brain-unhealthy ingredients. In the latter case, probably things you already knew to stay away from, but still, it’s a good reminder of one more reason why.
Nor does she merely sort things into brain-healthy (or brain-unhealthy, or brain-neutral), but rather she gives lists of “this for memory” and “this against depression” and “this for cognition” and “this against stress” and so forth.
Perhaps the greatest value of this book is in that; her clear explanations with science that’s simplified but not dumbed down. The recipes are definitely great too, though!
Bottom line: if you’d like to eat more for brain health, this book will give you many ways of doing so
Click here to check out Food for Thought, and upgrade your recipes!
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Dates vs Raisins – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing dates to raisins, we picked the dates.
Why?
There are benefits for each fruit, but we say dates come out on top. See what you think:
In terms of macros, while they’re both dried fruits, dates contain more water (unless you leave them sitting open for a while), which will tend to mathematically lower the relative percentages of other components because they’re being held against water weight too. However, even though this is the case (i.e. dates are being mathematically disadvantaged), dates contain more than twice the fiber that raisins do (8g/100g compared to raisins’ 3.7g/100g).
While we’re talking macros, dates are also lower in total carbs, as well as obviously net carbs, and have a much lower glycemic index than raisins (dates have a glycemic index of 42, considered low, while raisins have a glycemic index of 64, considered medium; their respective glycemic loads are even more telling: 13 for raisins and just 2 for dates!).
About those carbs… For dates, it’s an approximately equal mix of sucrose, glucose, and fructose, while for raisins it’s 49% glucose and 49% fructose. Because sucrose is the only disaccharide here, this (as well as the fiber difference) is one of the reasons for the different glycemic indices and glycemic loads, since glucose and fructose are more quickly absorbed.
That’s more than we usually write about macros, but in this case, both fruits are ones especially often hit with the “aren’t they full of sugar though?” question, so it was important to cover the critical distinctions between the two, because they really are very different.
Summary of macros: dates win easily in every aspect we looked at
In the category of vitamins, raisins get a tally in their favor. Raisins are higher in vitamins B1, B2, C, E, K, and choline, while dates are higher in vitamins A, B3, B5, and B9, giving raisins a 6:4 lead here. In dates’ defense, the difference in vitamin K is marginal, and it’d make it a 5:4 lead if we considered that within the margin of error (because all these figures are of course based on averages), and the vitamins that dates are higher in, the margins are much wider indeed, meaning that both fruits have approximately the same overall levels of vitamins when looked at in total, but still, we’ll call this category a nominal win for raisins.
When it comes to minerals, dates have more magnesium, selenium, and zinc, while raisins have more copper, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. Nominally that’s a 4:3 lead for raisins, but if we consider that raisins also contain more sodium, it’s more like a tie here. If we have to pick one though, this is a very slight win for raisins.
Adding up the sections, we have one huge win for dates (macros) with two very marginal wins for raisins—hence, we say that dates win out.
Still, of course enjoy both; diversity is good for the health.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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Health Insurers Limit Coverage of Prosthetic Limbs, Questioning Their Medical Necessity
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When Michael Adams was researching health insurance options in 2023, he had one very specific requirement: coverage for prosthetic limbs.
Adams, 51, lost his right leg to cancer 40 years ago, and he has worn out more legs than he can count. He picked a gold plan on the Colorado health insurance marketplace that covered prosthetics, including microprocessor-controlled knees like the one he has used for many years. That function adds stability and helps prevent falls.
But when his leg needed replacing last January after about five years of everyday use, his new marketplace health plan wouldn’t authorize it. The roughly $50,000 leg with the electronically controlled knee wasn’t medically necessary, the insurer said, even though Colorado law leaves that determination up to the patient’s doctor, and his has prescribed a version of that leg for many years, starting when he had employer-sponsored coverage.
“The electronic prosthetic knee is life-changing,” said Adams, who lives in Lafayette, Colorado, with his wife and two kids. Without it, “it would be like going back to having a wooden leg like I did when I was a kid.” The microprocessor in the knee responds to different surfaces and inclines, stiffening up if it detects movement that indicates its user is falling.
People who need surgery to replace a joint typically don’t encounter similar coverage roadblocks. In 2021, 1.5 million knee or hip joint replacements were performed in United States hospitals and hospital-owned ambulatory facilities, according to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ. The median price for a total hip or knee replacement without complications at top orthopedic hospitals was just over $68,000 in 2020, according to one analysis, though health plans often negotiate lower rates.
To people in the amputee community, the coverage disparity amounts to discrimination.
“Insurance covers a knee replacement if it’s covered with skin, but if it’s covered with plastic, it’s not going to cover it,” said Jeffrey Cain, a family physician and former chair of the board of the Amputee Coalition, an advocacy group. Cain wears two prosthetic legs, having lost his after an airplane accident nearly 30 years ago.
AHIP, a trade group for health plans, said health plans generally provide coverage when the prosthetic is determined to be medically necessary, such as to replace a body part or function for walking and day-to-day activity. In practice, though, prosthetic coverage by private health plans varies tremendously, said Ashlie White, chief strategy and programs officer at the Amputee Coalition. Even though coverage for basic prostheses may be included in a plan, “often insurance companies will put caps on the devices and restrictions on the types of devices approved,” White said.
An estimated 2.3 million people are living with limb loss in the U.S., according to an analysis by Avalere, a health care consulting company. That number is expected to as much as double in coming years as people age and a growing number lose limbs to diabetes, trauma, and other medical problems.
Fewer than half of people with limb loss have been prescribed a prosthesis, according to a report by the AHRQ. Plans may deny coverage for prosthetic limbs by claiming they aren’t medically necessary or are experimental devices, even though microprocessor-controlled knees like Adams’ have been in use for decades.
Cain was instrumental in getting passed a 2000 Colorado law that requires insurers to cover prosthetic arms and legs at parity with Medicare, which requires coverage with a 20% coinsurance payment. Since that measure was enacted, about half of states have passed “insurance fairness” laws that require prosthetic coverage on par with other covered medical services in a plan or laws that require coverage of prostheses that enable people to do sports. But these laws apply only to plans regulated by the state. Over half of people with private coverage are in plans not governed by state law.
The Medicare program’s 80% coverage of prosthetic limbs mirrors its coverage for other services. Still, an October report by the Government Accountability Office found that only 30% of beneficiaries who lost a limb in 2016 received a prosthesis in the following three years.
Cost is a factor for many people.
“No matter your coverage, most people have to pay something on that device,” White said. As a result, “many people will be on a payment plan for their device,” she said. Some may take out loans.
The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a rule that would prohibit lenders from repossessing medical devices such as wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs if people can’t repay their loans.
“It is a replacement limb,” said White, whose organization has heard of several cases in which lenders have repossessed wheelchairs or prostheses. Repossession is “literally a punishment to the individual.”
Adams ultimately owed a coinsurance payment of about $4,000 for his new leg, which reflected his portion of the insurer’s negotiated rate for the knee and foot portion of the leg but did not include the costly part that fits around his stump, which didn’t need replacing. The insurer approved the prosthetic leg on appeal, claiming it had made an administrative error, Adams said.
“We’re fortunate that we’re able to afford that 20%,” said Adams, who is a self-employed leadership consultant.
Leah Kaplan doesn’t have that financial flexibility. Born without a left hand, she did not have a prosthetic limb until a few years ago.
Growing up, “I didn’t want more reasons to be stared at,” said Kaplan, 32, of her decision not to use a prosthesis. A few years ago, the cycling enthusiast got a prosthetic hand specially designed for use with her bike. That device was covered under the health plan she has through her county government job in Spokane, Washington, helping developmentally disabled people transition from school to work.
But when she tried to get approval for a prosthetic hand to use for everyday activities, her health plan turned her down. The myoelectric hand she requested would respond to electrical impulses in her arm that would move the hand to perform certain actions. Without insurance coverage, the hand would cost her just over $46,000, which she said she can’t afford.
Working with her doctor, she has appealed the decision to her insurer and been denied three times. Kaplan said she’s still not sure exactly what the rationale is, except that the insurer has questioned the medical necessity of the prosthetic hand. The next step is to file an appeal with an independent review organization certified by the state insurance commissioner’s office.
A prosthetic hand is not a luxury device, Kaplan said. The prosthetic clinic has ordered the hand and made the customized socket that will fit around the end of her arm. But until insurance coverage is sorted out, she can’t use it.
At this point she feels defeated. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” Kaplan said.
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.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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