Foot Drop!

Plus: the *real* reason why most women don't lose belly fat

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The 10almonds Team
July 05, 2024

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

It’s the 4th of July, and for Americans that often means grilling things, drinking things, and blowing things up—needless to say, it’s a day when there’s a spike in trips to the emergency room. Burns, cuts, falls, and vehicular accidents feature strongly.

We know we have a very health-conscious readership here, so maybe you won’t be doing those things, but if you are, consider making a plan in advance for how you will stay safe and well!

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:

  • Foot drop is a neurological condition that can have a big impact on the way we walk

    • Today’s main feature looks at how to fix that, and also how to minimize the risk of it in the first place, and keep our feet healthy in other ways too.

  • Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s featured recipe is an easy slow-cooker Moroccan tagine, full of hearty fiber and healthy spices.

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

A Word To The Wise

Ve vs V

What’s the difference between vegan and vegetarian? More people get confused than you might think:

Watch and Learn

Why 93% Of Women Never Lose Belly Fat

Cori Lefkowith, from Redefining Strength, and of “Strength at every age” fame, talks about the real-world problems and real-world solutions:

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

Q&A Thursday

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝Interesting about DVT after surgery. A friend recently got diagnosed with foot drop. Could you explain that? Thank you.❞

First, for reference, the article about DVT after surgery was:

As for foot drop…

Foot drop is descriptive of the main symptom: the inability to raise the front part of the foot due to localized weakness/paralysis. Hence, if a person with foot drop dangles their feet over the edge of the bed, for example, the affected foot will simply flop down, while the other (if unaffected) can remain in place under its own power. The condition is usually neurological in origin, though there are various more specific causes:

When walking unassisted, this will typically result in a distinctive “steppage gait”, as it’s necessary to lift the foot higher to compensate, or else the toes will scuff along the ground.

There are mobility aids that can return one’s walking to more or less normal, like this example product on Amazon.

Incidentally, the above product will slightly shorten the lifespan of shoes, as it will necessarily pull a little at the front.

There are alternatives that won’t like this example product on Amazon, but this comes with the different problem that it limits the user to stepping flat-footedly, which is not only also not an ideal gait, but also, will serve to allow any muscles down there that were still (partially or fully) functional to atrophy. For this reason, we’d recommend the first product we mentioned over the second one, unless your personal physiotherapist or similar advises otherwise (because they know your situation and we don’t).

Both have their merits, though:

Of course, prevention is better than cure, so while some things are unavoidable (especially when it comes to neurological conditions), we can all look after our nerve health as well as possible along the way:

...as well as the very useful:

…which this writer personally takes daily and swears by (went from frequent pins-and-needles to no symptoms and have stayed that way, and that’s after many injuries over the years).

If you’d like a more general and less supplements-based approach though, check out:

Take care!

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This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between salmon and tuna—we picked the tuna (click here to read about why), as did only 7% of you! (It’s tempting to assume the much more expensive option must be correspondingly much healthier, isn’t it?)

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Bonus (Sponsored) Recommendation

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Recipes Worth Sharing

Slow-Cooker Moroccan Tagine

Tagine (طاجين) (tā-jīn) is a traditional dish named after, well, the traditional dish that it's cooked in. Here's an example tagine pot on Amazon.

It's a very nifty bit of kit, and while it's often used for cooking over charcoal, one of its features is that if you have a hot sunny day, you can just leave it out in the sun and it will cook the contents nicely. Today though, we're going to assume you don't have one of these, and are going to give instructions for cooking a tagine-style dish with a slow cooker, which we're going to assume you do have.

There are many kinds of tagine, but this one is full of hearty fiber and health-giving spices:

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

One-Minute Book Review

The DASH Diet Mediterranean Solution: The Best Eating Plan to Control Your Weight and Improve Your Health for Life – by Dr. Marla Heller

Sometimes, an author releases a series of books that could have just been one book, with various padding and rehashes. In some cases, naming no names Dr. Mark Hyman, it means we have to carefully pick out the honestly very good and highly recommendable ones from the “you just republished for the extra income, didn’t you?” ones.

In this case, today’s book is part of a series of books with very similar titles, and this one seems the most useful as a standalone book

The Mediterranean Diet is still the scientific world’s current “gold standard” in terms of most evidence-based diet for general health, and as we’ve written about, it can be tweaked to focus on being best for [your particular concern here]. In this case, it’s the DASH variant of the Mediterranean Diet, considered best for heart health specifically.

The style is repetitive, and possibly indicative of the author getting into a habit of having to pad books. Nevertheless, saying things too often is better than forgetting to say them, so hey. On which note, it is more of an educational book than a cookbook—it does have recipes, but not many.

Bottom line: if you’d like an introduction to the DASH variant of the Mediterranean Diet, this book will get you well-acquainted.

Penny For Your Thoughts?

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Wishing you a safe and healthy day,

The 10almonds Team