Let's Get Letting Go (Of These Three Things)

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• When talking about your health, “you’ve really let it go” isn’t usually what you want to hear

  • Today’s main feature, however, is about exactly that—in a good way!

  • Dr. Mitika Kanabar talks about the lifestyle medicine of letting go of excessive stress, substances, and screens (with tips on each how to do of these as quickly and easily as possible)

• Today’s sponsor Lumen is offering a way to learn about and keep track of your body’s metabolism; breathing into the device once per day gives it all the info it needs. It’s quite nifty; check it out!

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

A Word To The Wise

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Tuesday’s Expert Insights

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Let It Go…

This is Dr. Mitika Kanabar. She’s triple board-certified in addiction medicine, lifestyle medicine, and family medicine.

What does she want us to know?

Let go of what’s not good for you

Take a moment to release any tension you were holding, perhaps in your shoulders or jaw.

Now release the breath you might have been holding while doing that.

Dr. Kanabar is a keen yoga practitioner, and recommends it for alleviating stress, as well as its more general somatic benefits. And yes, stress is in large part somatic too!

One method she recommends for de-stressing quickly is to imagine holding a pin-wheel (the kind that whirls around when blown), and imagine slowly blowing it. The slowness of the exhalation here not only means we exhale more (shallow breathing starts with the out-breath!), but also gives us time to focus on the present moment.

Having done that, she recommends to ask yourself:

1. What can you change right now?

2. What about next time?

3. How can you do better?

And then the much more relaxing questions:

1. What can you not change?

2. What can you let go?

3. Whom can you ask for help?

Why did we ask the first questions first? It’s a lot like a psychological version of the physical process of progressive relaxation, involving first a deliberate tensing up, and then a greater relaxation:

How To Deal With The Body’s “Wrong” Stress Response

The diet that’s not good for you

Dr. Kanabar also recommends letting go of the diet that’s not good for you, too. In particular, she recommends dropping alcohol, sugar, and animal products.

Dr. Kanabar recommends either doing a 21-day challenge of abstention (and likely finding after 21 days that, in fact, you’re fine without), or taking a slow-and-gentle approach.

Some things will be easier one way or the other, and in particular if you drink heavily or use some other substance that gives withdrawal symptoms if withdrawn, the slow-and-gentle approach will be best:

Which Addiction-Quitting Methods Work Best?

If it’s sugar you’re quitting, you might like to check out:

Food Addictions: When It’s More Than “Just” Cravings

If it’s meat, though (in particular, quitting red meat is a big win for your health), the following can help:

The Whys and Hows of Cutting Meats Out Of Your Diet

Want more from Dr. Kanabar?

There’s one more thing she advises to let go of, and that’s excessive use of technology (the kind with screens) in the evening, and not just because of the blue light thing.

With full appreciation of the irony of a one-hour video about too much screentime:

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Enjoy!

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

You May Have Missed

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• Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?

• What’s The Real Deal With The Paleo Diet?

This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between goat’s milk yogurt and almond milk yogurt—we picked the almond milk yogurt (click here to read about why), as did 40% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

A Quick Question…

You (Also) May Have Missed

• The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression (book)

• When Painkillers Aren’t Helping, These Things Might

• What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Fibromyalgia (book)

One-Minute Book Review

The End of Old Age: Living a Longer, More Purposeful Life – by Dr. Marc Agronin

First, what this book is not: a book about ending aging. For that, you would want to check out "Ending Aging", by Dr. Aubrey de Grey.

What this book actually is: a book about the purpose of aging. As in: "aging: to what end?", and then the book answers that question.

Rather than viewing aging as solely a source of decline, this book (while not shying away from that) resolutely examines the benefits of old age—from clinically defining wisdom, to exploring the many neurological trade-offs (e.g., "we lose this thing but we get this other thing in the process"), and the assorted ways in which changes in our brain change our role in society, without relegating us to uselessness—far from it!

The style of the book is deep and meaningful prose throughout. Notwithstanding the author's academic credentials and professional background in geriatric psychiatry, there's no hard science here, just comprehensible explanations of psychiatry built into discussions that are often quite philosophical in nature (indeed, the author additionally has a degree in psychology and philosophy, and it shows).

Bottom line: if you'd like your own aging to be something you understand better and can actively work with rather than just having it happen to you, then this is an excellent book for you.

Click here to check out The End Of Old Age, and live it!

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Wishing you beautiful, wonderful life,

The 10almonds Team