When "Normal" Health Is Not What You Want

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⏰ 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:

• In health, what’s “normal” is not always what’s optimal. Today we look at two “normal” things when it comes to sleep problems: mouth-breathing once asleep, and waking in the night.

• Psychological resilience is the ability to suffer adversity, and come out the other side of it without having been weakened by it.

  • Today’s sponsor, Stoa, is a free newsletter that will bookend your week (it publishes on Mondays and Fridays) with Stoic philosophy to help you develop just that.

• Today’s featured book is quite a big deal, and your writer here is very excited about it, having had it on pre-order for a long time and finally got it. In short, “How Not To Age” is finally out, and it’s even better than hoped-for!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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❓ MAIN FEATURE

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

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 😎

❝When going to sleep, I try to breathe through my nose (since everyone says that's best). But when I wake I often find that I am breathing through my mouth. Is that normal, or should I have my nose checked out?❞

It is quite normal, but when it comes to health, “normal” does not always mean “optimal”.

• Good news: it is correctable!

• Bad news: it is correctable by what may be considered rather an extreme practice that comes with its own inconveniences and health risks.

Some people correct this by using medical tape to keep their mouth closed at night, ensuring nose-breathing. Advocates of this say that after using it for a while, nose-breathing in sleep will become automatic.

We know of no hard science to confirm this, and cannot even offer a personal anecdote on this one. Here are some pop-sci articles that do link to the (very few) studies that have been conducted:

• Mouth taping may be a trending sleep hack, but the science behind it is slim

• Mouth Taping for Sleep: Does it Work? And What are the Side Effects?

This writer’s personal approach is simply to do breathing exercises when going to sleep and first thing upon awakening, and settle for imperfection in this regard while asleep.

❝I'm now in my sixties and find that I invariably wake up at least once during the night. Is this normal? Even if it is, I would still like, once in a while, to sleep right through like a teenager. How might this be achieved, without pills?❞

Most people wake up briefly between sleep cycles, and forget doing so. But waking up for more than a brief moment is indeed best avoided. In men of your age, if you’re waking to pee (especially if it’s then not actually that easy to pee), it can be a sign of an enlarged prostate. Which is again a) normal b) not optimal.

By “without pills” we’ll assume you mean “without sleeping pills”. There are options to treat an enlarged prostate, including well-established supplements. We did a main feature on this:

Prostate Health: What You Should Know

If the cause of waking up is something else, then again this is common for everyone as we get older, and again it’s not optimal. But since there are so many possible causes (and thus solutions), it’s more than we can cover in less than a main feature, so we’ll have to revisit this later.

Meanwhile, take care!

📊 POLL

We turn the tables and ask you a question…

We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:

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🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

Cutting sugar and processed meats helped people live longer, study found

• Cutting sugar and processed meats helped people live longer, study found

• Fitness video games may misrepresent exercise intensity for people with diabetes

• Study reveals how different ways to experience empathy affect our willingness to help others

• Revolutionary "anthrobots" from human cells: a leap in healing and drug delivery

• Conscientiousness, extraversion, and positive affect may reduce dementia risk

• Researchers discover how Lactobacillus may help prevent depression and anxiety

• Human behavior guided by fast changes in dopamine levels

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older – by Dr. Michael Greger

First things first: it's a great book, and it's this reviewer's favorite of Dr. Greger's so far.

Unlike many popular physician authors, Dr. Greger doesn't rehash a lot of old material, and instead favours prioritizing new material in each work. Where appropriate, he'll send the reader to other books for more specific information (e.g: you want to know how to avoid premature death? Go read How Not To Die. You want to know how to lose weight? How Not To Diet. Etc).

In the category of new information, he has a lot to offer here. And with over 8,000 references, it's information, not conjecture. On which note, we recommend the e-book version if that's possible for you, for three reasons:

1. It's possible to just click the references and be taken straight to the cited paper itself online

2. To try to keep the book's size down, Dr. Greger has linked to other external resources too

3. The only negative reviews on Amazon, so far, are people complaining that the print copy's text is smaller than they'd like

For all its information-density (those 8,000+ references are packed into 600ish pages), the book is very readable even to a lay reader; the author is a very skilled writer.

As for the content, we can't fit more than a few sentences here so forgive the brevity, but we’ll mention that he covers:

• Slowing 11 pathways of aging

• The optimal anti-aging regimen according to current best science

• Preserving function (specific individual aspects of aging, e.g. hearing, sight, cognitive function, sexual function, hair, bones, etc)

• "Dr. Greger's Anti-Aging Eight"

In terms of "flavor" of anti-aging science, his approach can be summed up as: diet and lifestyle as foundation; specific supplements and interventions as cornerstones.

Bottom line: this is now the anti-aging book.

Click here to check out How Not To Age, and look after yourself with the best modern science!

Wishing you youthful vigor at every age,

The 10almonds Team