Focusing On Health In Our Sixties

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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:

• Everything depends on our back, and we only get one.

  • Today’s featured video has some 1-minute exercises to take care of yours!

• In our 60s and beyond, we can encounter a lot of extra health considerations, including:

  • The other side of the menopause/andropause

  • Metabolic slump (caused in part by the above) causes fatigue

  • Increased osteoporosis risk especially for women

  • Most likely decade in which to be diagnosed with cancer

  • Hearing loss becomes as likely as not, in this decade

  • Our bodies have all but stopped making new T-cells

• But! There are things we can do about all of these (see today’s main feature for details)

• Health considerations in our 60s and beyond often include balancing blood sugar levels, maintaining healthy cholesterol levels, and losing weight.

  • Today’s sponsor NativePath have a new product, Native Berberine; an all-natural support for those three things, using three of the most potent and bioavailable forms of berberine.

    • 10almonds subscribers get a discount, and free shipping!

• Prostate cancer affects 12% of men overall, and 60% of men aged 60+, with that percentage climbing each year thereafter.

  • Today’s featured book is about avoiding/managing/treating this!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

1-Minute Exercises to Improve Posture and Reduce Back Pain

Everything depends on our back, and we only get one. Here’s how to take care of yours:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

❓ 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 😎

❝What happens when you age in your sixties?❞

The good news is, a lot of that depends on you!

But, speaking on averages:

While it’s common for people to describe being over 50 as being “over the hill”, halfway to a hundred, and many greetings cards and such reflect this… Biologically speaking, our 60s are more relevant as being halfway to our likely optimal lifespan of 120. Humans love round numbers, but nature doesn’t care for such.

• In our 60s, we’re now usually the “wrong” side of the menopausal metabolic slump (usually starting at 45–55 and taking 5–10 years), or the corresponding “andropause” where testosterone levels drop (usually starting at 45 and a slow decline for 10–15 years).

• In our 60s, women will now be at a higher risk of osteoporosis, due to the above. The risk is not nearly so severe for men.

• In our 60s, if we’re ever going to get cancer, this is the most likely decade for us to find out.

• In our 60s, approximately half of us will suffer some form of hearing loss

• In our 60s, our body has all but stopped making new T-cells, which means our immune defenses drop (this is why many vaccines/boosters are offered to over-60s, but not to younger people)

While at first glance this does not seem a cheery outlook, knowledge is power.

• We can take HRT to avoid the health impact of the menopause/andropause

• We can take extra care to look after our bone health and avoid osteoporosis

• We can make sure we get the appropriate cancer screenings when we should

• We can take hearing tests, and if appropriate find the right hearing aids for us

  • We can also learn to lip-read (this writer relies heavily on lip-reading!)

• We can take advantage of those extra vaccinations/boosters

• We can take extra care to boost immune health, too

Your body has no idea how many times you’ve flown around the sun and nor does it care. What actually makes a difference to it, is how it has been treated.

See also: Milestone Medical Tests You Should Take in Your 60s, 70s, and Beyond

❝Please please give some information on elderly loss of energy and how it can be corrected. Please!❞

A lot of that is the metabolic slump described above! While we certainly wouldn’t describe 60 as elderly, and the health impacts from those changes at 45–55 get a gentler curve from 60 onwards… that curve is only going in one direction if we don’t take exceptionally good care of ourselves.

And of course, there’s also a degree of genetic lottery, and external factors we can’t entirely control (e.g. injuries etc).

One factor that gets overlooked a lot, though, is really easy to fix: B-vitamins.

In particular, vitamins B1, B5, B6, and B12. Of those, especially vitamins B1 and B12.

(Vitamins B5 and B6 are critical to health too, but relatively few people are deficient in those, while many are deficient in B1 and/or B12, especially as we get older)

Without going so detailed as to make this a main feature: these vitamins are essential for energy conversion from food, and they will make a big big difference.

You might especially want to consider taking sulbutiamine, which is a synthetic version of thiamin (vitamin B1), and instead of being water-soluble, it’s fat-soluble, and it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier, which is a big deal.

As ever, always check with your doctor because your needs/risks may be different. Also, there can be a lot of reasons for fatigue and you wouldn’t want to overlook something important.

You might also want to check out yesterday’s sponsor, as they offer personalized at-home health testing to check exactly this sort of thing.

❝What are natural ways to lose weight after 60? Taking into account bad knees or ankles, walking may be out as an exercise, running certainly is.❞

Losing weight is generally something that comes more from the kitchen than the gym, as most forms of exercise (except HIIT; see below) cause the metabolism to slow afterwards to compensate.

However, exercise is still very important, and swimming is a fine option if that’s available to you.

A word to the wise: people will often say “gentle activities, like tai chi or yoga”, and… These things are not the same.

Tai chi and yoga both focus on stability and suppleness, which are great, but:

• Yoga is based around mostly static self-support, often on the floor

• Tai chi will have you very often putting most of your weight on one slowly-increasingly bent knee at a time, and if you have bad knees, we’ll bet you winced while reading that.

So, maybe skip tai chi, or at least keep it to standing meditations and the like, not dynamic routines. Qigong, the same breathing exercises used in tai chi, is also an excellent way to improve your metabolism, by the way.

Ok, back onto HIIT:

You might like our previous article: How To Do HIIT* (Without Wrecking Your Body)

*High-Intensity Interval Training (the article also explains what this is and why you want to do it)

📊 POLL

We turn the tables and ask you a question…

We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

A Natural Way To Balance Blood Sugars

Some of you have asked us for information about balancing blood sugar levels, maintaining healthy cholesterol levels, and losing weight.

Especially: in light of the metabolic slump that happens as we age, causing us to lose energy as we go.

NativePath has something for that! Berberine is a compound found in some plants, and it has a stack of evidence* backing its use for all three of those things.

*there are 22 high-quality sources linked at the bottom of this page!

What sets Native Berberine apart is it its use of the most bioavailable and potent forms of berberine known in nature:

• Barberry

• Goldenseal

• Oregon grape

That's it! Besides the vegetarian capsule and buffer.

PS: 10almonds subscribers get a discount, and free shipping! Just use the above button, and the discount will be applied automatically.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Brains with Alzheimer's disease have subnormal levels of important dietary antioxidants

• Do sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages increase depression risks?

• Fully understanding the human brain may not be a pipe dream

• Study finds no evidence linking social media platform’s penetration and psychological harm

• Study identifies sex differences in the brain cell types responding to stress

• Study examines the relationship between consumption of fatty acids and diabetic retinopathy

• Late life depression: bridging the gap with new perspectives on aging

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Dr. Patrick Walsh's Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer – by Dr. Patrick Walsh & Janet Farrar Worthington

Prostate cancer is not glamorous or fun, and neither is this book.

Nevertheless, it's a disease that affects 12% of men in general, and 60% of men aged 60+, with that percentage climbing every year after that.

So, if you have a prostate or love someone who has one, this book is worthwhile reading—yes, even as a preventative.

Like many cancers, prostate cancer is easy to treat if caught very early, becomes harder to treat as it goes, and almost impossible to cure if it gets as far as metastasis (i.e., it spread). Like all cancers, it's better off avoided entirely if possible.

This book covers all the stages:

• How to avoid it

• How to check for it

• How to "nip it in the bud"

• Why some might want to delay treatment (!)

• What options are available afterwards

This latter is quite extensive, and covers not just surgery, but radiation, thermo- or cryoablation, and hormone therapy.

And as for surgery, not just "remove the tumor", but other options like radical prostatectomy, and even orchiectomy. Not many men will choose to have their testicles removed to stop them from feeding the prostate, but the point is that this book is comprehensive.

It's asking whenever possible "is there another option?" and exploring all options, with information and without judgment, at each stage.

The writing style (likely co-author Worthington’s influence; she is an award-winning science-writer) is very "for the layman", and that's really helpful in demystifying a lot of what can be quite opaque in the field of oncology.

Bottom line: absolutely not an enjoyable read, but a potentially lifesaving one, especially given the odds we mentioned up top.

Click here to check out Dr. Patrick Walsh's Guide To Surviving Prostate Cancer, and be prepared!

Wishing you the very best of health,

The 10almonds Team