You Are Not a Before Picture – by Alex Light
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It’s that time of year, and many of us are looking at what we’ll do in the coming days, weeks, and months to level-up our health. So… Is this a demotivational book?
Quite the opposite! It’s rather a case of an often much-needed reminder to ensure that our plans are really our own, and really are what’s best for us. Why wouldn’t they be, you ask?
Much of diet culture (ubiquitous! From magazine covers to movie stars to the models advertising anything from health insurance to water filters) has us reaching for “body goals” that are not possible without a different skeleton and genes and compromises and post-production edits.
Alex Light—herself having moved from the fashion and beauty industry into health education—sets out in a clear, easy-reading manner, how we can look after ourselves, not be neglectful of our bodies, and/but also not get distracted into unhelpful, impossible, castles-in-the-air.
Bottom line: you cannot self-hate your way into good health, and good health will always be much more attainable than a body that’s just not yours. This book can help you sort out which is which.
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7-Minute Face Fitness For Lymphatic Drainage & Youthful Jawline
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Valeriia Veksler is a registered nurse with a background in cosmetic medicine. She’s been practicing for 7 years, and on the strength of that, is going to teach us how to give our face some love for 7 minutes:
The routine, step by step
Preparation: clean your face and apply your usual moisturizer. Breathe deeply: Inhale through the nose, exhale to release tension.
Neck massage: use fingertips in circular motion from the bottom of the neck to the hairline and back for 30 seconds. This helps promote blood flow to the face.
Sternocleidomastoid massage: use knuckles to massage in circles from the sternal area up to the jawline and down to the collarbone for 30 seconds. Keep posture straight, shoulders down, and relax muscles.
Collarbone pressure: apply and release pressure with fingertips above the collarbones for 30 seconds. This stimulates lymphatic flow and helps reduce puffiness.
Under-chin massage: use knuckles to massage side-to-side under the chin for 30 seconds. Relax the under-chin area and promote lymphatic drainage.
Jawline massage: with knuckles, massage from the chin towards the ears in circular motion for 30 seconds. Relax the jaw.
Nasolabial fold and nose massage: place index fingers near nostrils and move mouth in a “O” shape, then massage around the nostrils and up the nose for 30 seconds.
Smile line lift: press palms on the smile lines and slide hands up towards the temples for 30 seconds. This helps lift the face and sculpt cheekbones.
Under-eye massage: use index fingers in a hook shape, massaging under the eyes along the bone structure for 30 seconds. This promotes blood flow and lymphatic drainage.
Temple lift: use fingertips to lift the area near the left temple for 30 seconds, then assist with the opposite hand to lift further. Repeat on the other side. This reduces crow’s feet and lifts the corners of the eyes.
Forehead lift: place hands on the forehead, lock fingers, and gently elevate the skin upwards. Glide fingers towards the hairline for 30 seconds. This promotes blood flow and smooths the forehead.
Relax 11 Lines: place fingers at the center of the forehead, gently press into the tissue, and let them glide away from each other towards the eyebrows for 30 seconds.
Bonus:
- Ensure good posture throughout.
- Relax, stay mindful, and breathe deeply during the exercises.
- Feel the warmth and energy from improved circulation, after the routine.
For more on all of this plus a visual demonstration of everything, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Top 10 Foods That Promote Lymphatic Drainage and Lymph Flow
Take care!
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World Menopause Day Health News Round-Up
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.
In order to provide variety in this week’s round-up, not all of this is menopause-related, but it is all important:
Menopause & CVD
Untreated menopause is associated with higher incidence of heart disease, and higher mortality. People often forget about how much estrogen does for us (well, for those of us with a physiology running on estrogen, anyway; gentlemen, your testosterone is fine for you), and think it is “just” a sex hormone, but it’s a lot more.
Read in full: Menopause transition linked to increased heart disease risk
Related: What Menopause Does To The Heart
Extraterrestrial medical technology
The much lower gravity in Earth orbit has allowed for tissue engineering techniques that Earth’s normal gravity imposes limitations on. This is big news, because it means that rather than replacing a whole liver, tissue implants could be grafted, allowing the extant liver to repair itself (something livers are famously good at, but they need enough undamaged base material to work with).
Read in full: How liver tissue from the International Space Station may transform tissue engineering
Related: How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
One thing and then another
As if endometriosis weren’t unpleasant enough in and of itself, the endothelial dysfunction inherent to it also raises cardiovascular disease risk. This is important, because while endometriosis has (like many maladies predominantly affecting women) generally been shrugged off by the medical world as an unhappy inconvenience but not life-threatening, now we know it comes with extra existential risks too:
Read in full: Understanding cardiovascular risks in endometriosis patients
Related: What You Need To Know About Endometriosis
Push-button meditation
Unlike mindfulness meditation, listening to music is a very passive experience, and thus requires less effort from the user. And yet, it has been associated with lower perceived pain levels, lower self-reported anxiety levels, less opioid use, and measurably lower heart-rate.
Read in full: Listening to music may speed up recovery from surgery, research suggests
Related: Nobody Likes Surgery, But Here’s How To Make It Much Less Bad
Cholesterol in menopause: quality over quantity
Much like previous research has shown that the quantity of LDL is not nearly so predictive of health outcomes in women as it is in men, this study into HDL and menopausal women shows that quantity of HDL does not matter nearly so much as the quality of it.
Read in full: HDL quality, not quantity, contribute to the first sign of Alzheimer’s disease in women
Related: Statins: His & Hers? ← consistent with the above, statins (to lower LDL cholesterol) generally help more for men and produce more adverse side effects for women. So again, a case of “the actual amount of cholesterol isn’t so important for women as for men”.
Take care!
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At The Heart Of Women’s Health
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A woman’s heart is a particular thing
For the longest time (and still to a large degree now), “women’s health” is assumed to refer to the health of organs found under a bikini. But there’s a lot more to it than that. We are whole people, with such things as brains and hearts and more.
Today (Valentine’s Day!) we’re focusing on the heart.
A quick recap:
We’ve talked previously about some of these sex differences when it comes to the heart, for example:
Heart Attack: His & Hers (Be Prepared!)
…but that’s fairly common knowledge at least amongst those who are attentive to such things, whereas…
…is much less common knowledge, especially with the ways statins are more likely to make things worse for a lot of women (not all though; see the article for some nuance about that).
We also talked about:
What Menopause Does To The Heart
…which is well worth reading too!
A question:
Why are women twice as likely to die from a heart attack as their age-equivalent male peers? Women develop heart disease later, but die from it sooner. Why is that?
That’s been a question scientists have been asking (and tentatively answering, as scientists do—hypotheses, theories, conclusions even sometimes) for 20 years now. Likely contributing factors include:
- A lack of public knowledge of the different symptoms
- A lack of confidence of bystanders to perform CPR on a woman
- A lack of public knowledge (including amongst prescribers) about the sex-related differences for statins
- A lack of women in cardiology, comparatively.
- A lack of attention to it, simply. Men get heart disease earlier, so it’s thought of as a “man thing”, by health providers as much as by individuals. Men get more regular cardiovascular check-ups, women get a mammogram and go.
Statistically, women are much more likely to die from heart disease than breast cancer:
- Breast cancer kills around 0.02% of us.
- Heart disease kills one in three.
And yet…
❝In a nationwide survey, only 22% of primary care doctors and 42% of cardiologists said they feel extremely well prepared to assess cardiovascular risks in women.
We are lagging in implementing risk prevention guidelines for women.
A lot of women are being told to just watch their cholesterol levels and see their doctor in a year. That’s a year of delayed care.❞
Source: The slowly evolving truth about heart disease and women
(there’s a lot more in that article than we have room for in ours, so do check it out!)
Some good news:
The “bystanders less likely to feel confident performing CPR on a woman” aspect may be helped by the deployment of new automatic external defibrillator, that works from four sides instead of one.
It’s called “double sequential external defibrillation”, and you can learn about it here:
A new emergency procedure for cardiac arrests aims to save more lives—here’s how it works
(it’s in use already in Canada and Aotearoa)
Gentlemen-readers, thank you for your attention to this one even if it was mostly not about you! Maybe someone you love will benefit from being aware of this
On a lighter note…
Since it’s Valentine’s Day, a little more on affairs of the heart…
Is chocolate good for the heart? And is it really an aphrodisiac?
We answered these questions and more in our previous main feature:
Chocolate & Health: Fact or Fiction?
Enjoy!
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Dodging Dengue In The US
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Dengue On The Rise
We wrote recently about dengue outbreaks in the Americas, with Puerto Rico declaring an epidemic. Cases are now being reported in Florida too, and are likely to spread, so it’s good to be prepared, if your climate is of the “warm and humid” kind.
If you want to catch up on the news first, here you go:
- UN health agency cites tenfold increase in reported cases of dengue over the last generation
- Puerto Rico has declared an epidemic following a spike in dengue cases
- Dengue fever confirmed in Florida Keys as US on watch for rise in mosquito illness
Note: dengue is far from unheard of in Florida, but the rising average temperatures in each year mean that each year stands a good chance of seeing more cases than the previous. It’s been climbing since at least 2017, took a dip during the time of COVID restrictions keeping people at home more, and then for the more recent years has been climbing again since.
What actually is it?
Dengue is a viral, mosquito-borne disease, characterized by fever, vomiting, muscle pain, and a rash, in about 1 in 4 cases.
Which can sound like “you’ll know if you have it”, but in fact it’s usually asymptomatic for a week or more after infection, so, watch out!
What next, if those symptoms appear?
The good news is: the fever will usually last less than a week
The bad news is: a day or so after that the fever subsided, the more serious symptoms are likely to start—if they’re going to.
If you’re unlucky enough to be one of the 1 in 20 who get the serious symptoms, then you can expect abdominal cramps, repeat vomiting, bleeding from various orifices (you may not get them all, but all are possible), and (hardly surprising, given the previous items) “extreme fatigue and restlessness”.
If you get those symptoms, then definitely get to an ER as soon as possible, as dengue can become life-threatening within hours of such.
Read more: CDC | Symptoms of Dengue and Testing
While there is not a treatment for dengue per se, the Emergency Room will be better able to manage your symptoms and thus keep you alive long enough for them to pass.
If you’d like much more detail (on symptoms, seriousness, at-risk demographics, and prognosis) than what the CDC offers, then…
Read more: BMJ | Dengue Fever
Ok, so how do we dodge the dengue?
It sounds flippant to say “don’t get bitten”, but that’s it. However, there are tips are not getting bitten:
- Use mosquito-repellent, but it has to contain >20% DEET, so check labels
- Use mosquito nets where possible (doors, windows, etc, and the classic bed-tent net is not a bad idea either)
- Wear clothing that covers your skin, especially during the day—it can be light clothing; it doesn’t need to be a HazMat suit! But it does need to reduce the area of attack to reduce the risk of bites.
- Limit standing water around your home—anything that can hold even a small amount of standing water is a potential mosquito-breeding ground. Yes, even if it’s a crack in your driveway or a potted bromeliad.
Further reading
You might also like to check out:
Stickers and wristbands aren’t a reliable way to prevent mosquito bites. Here’s why
…and in case dengue wasn’t bad enough:
Mosquitoes can spread the flesh-eating Buruli ulcer. Here’s how you can protect yourself
Take care!
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Detox: What’s Real, What’s Not, What’s Useful, What’s Dangerous?
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Detox: What’s Real, What’s Not, What’s Useful, What’s Dangerous?
Out of the subscribers who engaged in the poll, it looks like we have a lot of confidence in at least some detox approaches being useful!
Celery juice is most people’s go-to, and indeed it was the only one to get mentioned in the comments added. So let’s take a look at that first…
Celery juice
Celery juice is enjoyed by many people, with many health benefits in mind, including to:
- reduce inflammation
- lower blood pressure
- heal the liver
- fight cancer
- reduce bloating
- support the digestive system
- increase energy
- support weight loss
- promote good mental health
An impressive list! With such an impressive list, we would hope for an impressive weight of evidence, so regular readers might be wondering why those bullet-pointed items aren’t all shiny hyperlinks to studies backing those claims. The reason is…
There aren’t any high-quality studies that back any of those claims.
We found one case study (so, a study with a sample size of one; not amazing) that observed a blood pressure change in an elderly man after drinking celery juice.
Rather than trawl up half of PubMed to show the lacklustre results in a way more befitting of Research Review Monday, though, here’s a nice compact article detailing the litany of disappointment that is science’s observations regards celery juice:
Why Are People Juicing Their Celery? – by Allison Webster, PhD, RD
A key take-away is: juicing destroys the fiber that is celery’s biggest benefit, and its phytochemicals are largely unproven to be of use.
If you enjoy celery, great! It (when not juiced) is a great source of fiber and water. If you juice it, it’s a great source of water.
Activated Charcoal
Unlike a lot of greenery—whose “cleansing” benefits mostly come from fiber and disappear when juiced—activated charcoal has a very different way of operating.
Activated charcoal is negatively charged on a molecular level*, and that—along with its porous nature—traps toxins. It really is a superpowered detox that actually works very well indeed.
But…
It works very well indeed. It will draw out toxins so well, that it’s commonly used to treat poisonings. “Wait”, we hear you say, “why was that a but”?
It doesn’t know what a toxin is. It just draws out all of the things. You took medicine recently? Not any more you didn’t. You didn’t even take that medication orally, you took it some other way? Activated charcoal does not care:
- The effect of activated charcoal on drug exposure following intravenous administration: A meta-analysis
- Activated charcoal for acute overdose: a reappraisal
Does this mean that activated charcoal can be used to “undo” a night of heavy drinking?
Sadly not. That’s one of the few things it just doesn’t work for. It won’t work for alcohol, salts, or metals:
The Use of Activated Charcoal to Treat Intoxications
*Fun chemistry mnemonic about ions:
Cations are pussitive
Anions (by process of elimination) are negative
Onions taste good in salad (remember also: Cole’s Law)
Bottom line on detox foods/drinks:
- Fiber is great; juicing removes fiber. Eat your greens (don’t drink them)!
- Activated charcoal is the heavy artillery of detoxing
- Sometimes it will remove things you didn’t want removed, though
- It also won’t help against alcohol, sadly
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The Inflammation Spectrum – by Dr. Will Cole
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Cole’s other book “Gut Feelings”, and now he’s back, this time to tackle inflammation.
The focus here is on understanding what things trigger inflammation in your body—personally yours, not someone else’s—by something close to the usual elimination process yes, but he offers a way of sliding into it gently instead of simply quitting all the things and gradually adding everything back in.
The next step he takes the reader through is eating not just to avoid triggering inflammation, but to actively combat it. From there, it should be possible for the reader to build an anti-inflammatory cookbook, that’s not only one’s own personal repertoire of cooking, but also specifically tailored to one’s own personal responses to different ingredients.
The style of this book is very pop-science, helpful, walking-the-reader-by-the-hand through the processes involved. Dr. Cole wants to make everything as easy as possible.
Bottom line: if your diet could use an anti-inflammatory revamp, this is a top-tier guidebook for doing just that.
Click here to check out The Inflammation Spectrum, find your food triggers and reset your system!
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