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Heart Rate Zones, Oxalates, & More

Plus: a new approach to agile thinking

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The 10almonds Team
June 15, 2023

 

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

Thought for the Day: what is most important to you in life? And… What will you do today to further that?

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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:

  • Oats are a great and healthy food for most people

    • Benefits are mostly metabolic in nature, due to oats’ high fibre content, slow-release carbs

    • Also an underrated source of protein!

  • What should your maximum heart rate (e.g. while doing strenuous exercise) be? According to the American Heart Association, for most of us it’s 220 beats per minute, minus our age.

    • So for a 70-year-old, that’d be 150 beats per minute.

  • Spinach is great, but its high oxalate content can impede calcium absorption and cause problems for people with kidney stones

    • Kale has an otherwise similar nutritional profile to spinach, without this drawback!

  • Summer fun can mean much higher risks of germs and allergies

    • Today’s sponsor, Beekeeper’s Naturals, have a great extra line of defense to offer to keep you and your loved ones safe and comfortable

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Eating Oats Every Day Will Do This To Your Body

Timestamp menu:

  • Cardiovascular health: 00:20

  • Weight management: 00:43

  • Diabetes management: 01:07

  • Digestive health: 01:33

  • Chronic disease management: 01:56

  • Reproductive health: 02:25

❓ 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 😎 

❝I think the heart may be an issue for lots of us. I know it is for me due to AFib. When I'm in my training zone like on a treadmill, I'm usually around 110 to 120. But there are occasionally times when I'm at 140 or 150. How dangerous is that? If I use that formula of 180 minus age, thats 103. I get nothing from that. My resting heart rate is in the 50 to 60 range.❞

First, for safety, let us draw attention to our medical disclaimer at the bottom of each email, and also specifically note that we are not cardiologists here, let alone your cardiologist. There’s a lot we can’t know or advise about. However, as general rules of thumb:

For people without serious health conditions, it is considered good and healthful for one’s heart rate to double (from its resting rate) during exercise, with even more than 2.5x resting rate being nothing more than a good cardio workout.

As for “180 minus age” (presuming you mean: to calculate the safe maximum heart rate), more common (and used by the American Heart Association) is 220 minus age. In your case, that’d give 143.

Having atrial fibrillation may change this however, and we can’t offer medical advice.

We can point to this AHA “AFib Resources For Patients and Professionals”, including this handy FAQ sheet which says:

“Am I able to exercise?” / “Yes, as long as you're cleared by your doctor, you can perform normal activities of daily living that you can tolerate” (accompanied by a little graphic of a person using an exercise bike)

You personally probably know this already, of course, but it’s quite an extensive collection of resources, so we thought we’d include it.

It’s certainly a good idea for everyone to be aware of their healthy heart rate ranges, regardless of having a known heart condition or not, though!

❝I would like to see some articles on osteoporosis❞

You might enjoy this mythbusting main feature we did a few weeks ago!

❝Interesting, but... Did you know spinach is high in oxylates? Some people are sensitive and can cause increased inflammation, joint pain or even kidney stones. Moderation is key. My sister and I like to eat healthy but found out by experience that too much spinach salad caused us joint and other aches.❞

It’s certainly good to be mindful of such things! For most people, a daily serving of spinach shouldn’t cause ill effects, and certainly there are other greens to eat.

We wondered whether there was a way to reduce the oxalate content, and we found:

…which led us this product on Amazon:

We wondered what “nephure” was, and whether it could be trusted, and came across this “Supplement Police” article about it:

…which honestly, seems to have been written as a paid advertisement. But! It did reference a study, which we were able to look up, and find:

…which seems to indicate that it was safe (for rats) in all the ways that they checked. They did not, however, check whether it actually reduced oxalate content in spinach or any other food.

The authors did declare a conflict of interest, in that they had a financial relationship with the sponsor of the study, Captozyme Inc.

All in all, it may be better to just have kale instead of spinach:

We turn the tables and ask you a question!

We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:

What's your stance on vaccines?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Be Prepared This Summer: Get Your Propolis Throat Spray Now

We've written before about the science-based benefits of honey... When it comes to not only protection against allergies, but also for general antimicrobial action, bees have it covered.

Beekeeper's Naturals take it a step further with their propolis spray!

You may wonder: what is propolis?

Bees make it and use it to line their walls and keep germs out. Beekeeper's Naturals offer it in spray form, to:

  • soothe scratchy throats

  • support our immune systems

  • combat free radical damage in the body

  • feed the good bacteria in our gut

As the company name suggests, it's all-natural ingredients, all with great science-based benefits. You can check out their ingredients (and explanations of same, with pictures) on their website.

There's a lot to assail the airways this summer, from germs to allergens, so an extra line of defense—and as a bonus, relief from symptoms—could make a huge difference to you and your family!

Psst... 10almonds readers get 20% off the first bottle if you use code ALMOND20 😉

Please do check out our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Switchcraft: How Agile Thinking Can Help You Adapt and Thrive - by Dr. Elaine Fox

How do we successfully balance "a mind is like a parachute: it only works if it's open", with the importance of also actually having some kind of personal integrity and consistency?

Dr. Fox recommends that we focus on four key attributes:

  • Mental agility

  • Self-awareness

  • Emotional awareness

  • Situational awareness

If this sounds a little wishy-washy, it isn't—she delineates and explains each in detail. And most importantly: how we can build and train each one.

Mental agility, for example, is not about being able to rapidly solve chess problems or "answer these riddles three". It's more about:

  • Adaptability

  • Balancing our life

  • Challenging (and if appropriate, changing) our perspective

  • Developing our mental competence

This sort of thing is the "meat" of the book. Meanwhile, self-awareness is more a foundational conscious knowledge of one's own "pole star" values, while emotional awareness is a matter of identifying and understanding and accepting what we feel—anything less is self-sabotage! And situational awareness is perhaps most interesting:

Dr. Fox advocates for "trusting one's gut feelings". With a big caveat, though!

If we trust our gut feelings without developing their accuracy, we're just going to go about being blindly prejudiced and often wrong. So, a whole section of the book is devoted to honing this and improving our ability to judge things as they really are—rather than as we expect.

Bottom line: this book is a great tool for not only challenging our preconceptions about how we think, but giving us the resources to be adaptable and resilient without sacrificing integrity.

What did you think of today's newsletter?

We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by!

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Wishing you the healthiest possible body and mind,

The 10almonds Team