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Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Loading Screen Tip: as summer stretches into summer 2.0 for many of us, don’t assume that “it’s September now” means safety from heat and sun is guaranteed.
Check the weather forecasts, and if you can, plan to be somewhere cool and shady for the hottest part of the day, at least.
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Falling becomes more and more a risk as we get older, in two ways:
It becomes increasingly likely to happen
It becomes increasingly likely to cause increasingly serious harm
We can (and should!) deal with this risk proactively, no matter how young and fit we are now.
We can increase our bone strength with diet and exercise, so we’re less likely to suffer breaks/fractures
We can do exercises to make sure that we maintain the ability to get up off the floor easily
We can learn to fall safely, so that we’re much less likely to incur injury when we do fall. And yes, statistically, it’s “when”, not “if”.
We can, however, also improve our balance and stability such that we make falling in the first place much less likely than it would otherwise be.
As we get older, our brains can struggle to keep up with maintaining correct levels of some neurochemicals.
Today’s sponsor, Mindhoney, has potent all-natural nootropics to give your brain a boost of the things it needs to keep it in top health.
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
Sinus problems? Not any more.
Jharna dealt with sinusitis ever since her early teens and it caused her terrible sinus infections, headaches, pain, fatigue, fevers, malaise and misery over the years.
She even went down the surgery route but nothing could put an end to the chronic sinus issues she faced. So in this video she shares how she managed to finally control her symptoms:
🍁 MAIN FEATURE
Some fall-themed advice…
It is now, nominally at least, fall. We’re going to talk about the other kind of “fall” though, the kind that results in broken hips and more.
If you’re thinking “not me; that happens to older more infirm people”, rest assured, it can and statistically probably will happen to you at some point. So, how to play the odds?
First, be robust!
We may not be able to make ourselves like children who bounce easily, but we also don’t have to crumble into dust at the slightest knock, either. There are two important ways we can start to make ourselves robust from the inside out, and they are simple: diet and exercise.
Exercise: Osteoporosis Exercises
“But I don’t have osteoporosis”—great! But osteoporosis is preceded by osteopenia, which is generally asymptomatic at first, and also if we’re not very careful about it, we will lose about 1% bone density per year from the age of about 35 onwards, with that rate of loss climbing sharply from the age of 50 onwards, and even more steeply in cases of untreated menopause.
So in other words, don’t take your bone strength for granted; there’s a first time for everything, and you don’t want to find out the hard (and yet, dare we say it, brittle) way.
Second, be dynamic!
Be able to fall and get up safely. If your later life is going to be a triathlon of things you need to train for now, then being able to fall and get up safely should be at the top of the list.
Being able to “deep squat” will help you a lot here, in being able to get up with minimal (or no) use of your hands. We shared a great instructional video about this last week.
It also means that the more your lower body can still take your weight while your torso is closer to the ground (without your legs buckling and collapsing, for instance), the softer and gentler you’ll hit the floor if you do fall, because the final “drop” will be from a lower height.
If at all possible, consider taking some classes of a martial art that involves safely falling—aikido is typically the softest and gentlest and is famously great for people of all ages, but judo or jujitsu will suffice if aikido isn’t available where you are. You don’t have to get a black belt (unless you want to), and any decent instructor will be happy to guide you through the basics of safely falling and then send you on your merry way, if that’s all you wanted.
The benefits of this are twofold:
Obviously, if you fall, you will have better technique and thus be less likely to incur injury
As you are falling, you will be less afraid, and thus less likely to tense up mid-fall (tensing up will exacerbate any falling injury)
Third, be balanced!
Spending even just a few minutes each day working on your balance can go a long way.
Standing on one leg (and then the other) is a very good obvious starting point. Please, do so safely. The shower is not the best place to take up this practice, for instance. A nice safe grassy area is great. Your carpeted living room or bedroom is next-best.
Another great approach is the practice of bāguàzhǎng circle-walking.
Bāguà is tai chi’s lesser-known cousin, and those arts are two of the three main schools of wǔdāngquán. But, fear not, you don’t have to don orange robes and live atop the Wudang mountains to get what you need in this case.
To give a text-based summary: bāguàzhǎng circle-walking involves walking in a small circle, with a low center of gravity, moving one’s weight very purposefully from one leg to the other, keeping complete stability the whole time that one is (often!) on one leg.
Once you get good at this, you’ll see that this is essentially a super-enhanced version of the “standing on one leg” exercise, because it’s about keeping balance while on one leg, and/but while moving also.
Naturally, if you do get good at this, you’ll be very unlikely to fall in the first place.
Here’s a visual primer. This video will show the basic footwork, and the video that follows it (it’ll prompt you if you want to watch it) shows how to bring it up to a standard walking speed, without losing fluidity of movement:
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
A very science-based all-natural nootropic supplement!
An important thing we want to mention immediately about Mindhoney is that it has a dozen very well-studied ingredients—there’s nothing speculative or “based on traditional use” here. For most of these ingredients, there are literally thousands of studies attesting to their benefits.
In fact, many of them are ingredients we’ve featured here before for their many benefits, and others were good reminders that we should be writing about them!
You may be wondering: “All-in-one, though? Isn’t it better to take them separately?” And… no, it is not. This isn’t an all-in-one shower gel we’re talking about here.
Simply put: these ingredients are synergistic and each work on connected systems in different ways, each helping the other to work better. So, by taking them together, you get a Gestalt effect—the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Psst… 10almonds subscribers can use code “STACK15” to enjoy 15% off, and also free shipping! 🤫
Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
🌏 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
How to inactivate common cold viruses
More than one in four older adults report falling in the previous year
Could medicinal plants be the key to reversing cognitive decline?
Ultra-processed foods: the 19 things everyone needs to know
Does dahlia flower extract have anti-diabetic properties?
Clovibactin: a game-changing novel antibiotic with no resistance
Aging alters pancreatic circadian rhythm: study
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Fast. Feast. Repeat: The Comprehensive Guide to "Delay, Don't Deny" Intermittent Fasting – by Dr. Gin Stephens
We've reviewed intermittent fasting books before, so what makes this one different?
The title "Fast. Feast. Repeat." doesn't give much away; after all, we already know that that's what intermittent fasting is.
After taking the reader though the basics of how intermittent fasting works and what it does for the body, much of the rest of the book is given over to improvements.
That's what the real strength of this book is: ways to make intermittent fasting more efficient, including how to avoid plateaus. After all, sometimes it can seem like the only way to push further with intermittent fasting is to restrict the eating window further. Not so!
Instead, Dr. Stephens gives us ways to keep confusing our metabolism (in a good way) if, for example, we had a weight loss goal we haven't met yet.
Best of all, this comes without actually having to eat less.
Bottom line: if you want to be in good physical health, and/but also believe that life is for living and you enjoy eating food, then this book can resolve that age-old dilemma!
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Wishing you a wonderfully restorative weekend,
The 10almonds Team