An Unexpected Extra Threat Of Alcohol

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Air travel often isn’t fun, but even a small amount of alcohol can make it more dangerous

  • Today’s main feature looks at new research that found that even just two small (the kind given on planes) alcoholic drinks were enough to vastly increase the risk of cardiac incidents

  • This is because the reduced cabin pressure causes hypoxia, so the heart has to pick up the slack to pump correspondingly more blood, since the blood is less oxygenated—something that is seriously compounded and made much worse if the person at altitude also has alcohol in their blood

• Do you use headphones/earbuds a lot? If so…

  • Today’s sponsor Status has some latest-tech earbuds you are going to want to try out, to give your ears the best they’ve ever heard.

• Today’s featured recipe is a hearty healthy ragù, which this writer dearly wishes she could make for you all. Yes all 60,000+ of you. Come to my kitchen. Failing that, check out the recipe below, and make it for yourself!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

What is HRT? HRT and Hormones Explained

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Wildcard Wednesday

If You Could Use Some Exotic Booze… 🎶

…then for health reasons, we’re going to have to say “nay”.

We’ve written about alcohol before, and needless to say, it’s not good:

Can We Drink To Good Health?

(the answer is “no, we cannot”)

In fact, the WHO (which unlike government regulatory bodies setting “safe” limits on drinking, makes no profit from taxes on alcohol sales) has declared that “the only safe amount of alcohol is zero”:

WHO: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

Up there, where the air is rarefied… 🎶

If you’re flying somewhere this summer (Sinatra-style flying honeymoon or otherwise), you might want to skip the alcohol even if you normally do imbibe, because:

Source: Alcohol plus cabin pressure at higher altitude may threaten sleeping plane passengers' heart health

The experiment divided subjects into a control group and a study group; the study group were placed in simulated cabin pressure as though at altitude, which found, when giving some of them two small (we’re talking the kind given on flights) alcoholic drinks:

In contrast, that was 77 beats/minute for those who had alcohol but weren’t at altitude pressure, or 64 beats/minute for those who neither drank nor were at altitude pressure.

Lots more metrics were recorded and the study is interesting to read; if you’ve ever slept on a plane and thought “that sleep was not restful at all”, then know: it wasn’t just the seat’s fault, nor the engine, nor the recycled nature of the air—it was the reduced pressure causing hypoxia (defined as having oxygen levels lower than the healthy clinical norm of 90%) and almost halving your sleep’s effectiveness for a less than 10% drop in available oxygen in the blood (the sleepers not at altitude pressure averaged 96% SpO2, compared to the 85% at altitude).

We say “almost halving” because the deep sleep phase of sleep was reduced from 84 minutes (control) to 67.5 minutes at altitude without alcohol, or 46.5 minutes at altitude with alcohol.

Again, this was a pressure cabin in a lab—so this wasn’t about the other conditions of an airplane (seats, engine hundreds of other people, etc).

Which means: in an actual airplane it’s probably even worse.

Oh, and the study participants? All healthy individuals aged 18–40, so again probably worse for those older (or younger) than that range, or with existing health conditions!

Want to know more?

You can read the study in full here:

Effects of moderate alcohol consumption and hypobaric hypoxia: implications for passengers’ sleep, oxygen saturation and heart rate on long-haul flights

Want to drop the drink at any altitude? Check out:

How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

Want to get that vacation feel without alcohol? You’re going to love:

Mocktails – by Moira Clark (book)

Enjoy!

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This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between soap and sanitizer—we picked the sanitizer (click here to read about why), as did 93% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Recipes Worth Sharing

Hearty Healthy Ragù

Ragù is a traditional Italian meaty sauce with tomato, and is the base for a number of other Italian dishes. We’ve made it healthier without losing even a tiny bit of the experience of the dish—we’re using nutrition-packed lentils instead of meat (but with a couple of twists that make them meatier)!

Click below for our full recipe, and learn this versatile dish:

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One-Minute Book Review

Super Joints: Russian Longevity Secrets for Pain-Free Movement, Maximum Mobility & Flexible Strength – by Pavel Tsatsouline

For those of us for whom mobility and pain-free movement are top priorities, this book has us covered. So what’s different here, compared to your average stretching book?

It’s about functional strength with the stretches. The author’s background as a special forces soldier means that his interest was not in doing arcane yoga positions so much as being able to change direction quickly without losing speed or balance, get thrown down and get back up without injury, twist suddenly without unpleasantly wrenching anything (of one’s own, at least), and generally be able to take knocks without taking damage.

While we are hopefully not having to deal with such violence in our everyday lives, the robustness of body that results from these exercises is one that certainly can go a long way to keep us injury-free.

The exercises themselves are well-described, clearly and succinctly, with equally clear illustrations.

Note: the paperback version is currently expensive, probably due to supply and demand, but if you select the Kindle version, it’s much cheaper with no loss of quality (because the illustrations are black-on-white line-drawings and very clear; perfect for Kindle e-ink)

The style of the book is very casual and conversational, yet somehow doesn’t let that distract it from being incredibly information dense; there is no fluff here, just valuable guidance.

Bottom line: if you would like to be more robust with non-nonsense exercises, then this book is a fine choice.

Click here to check out Super Joints, and make yours flexible and strong!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you safety and good health,

The 10almonds Team