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Lifestyle vs Multiple Sclerosis & More
Plus: hate sit-ups? Try this 10-minute standing abs workout!
The 10almonds Team
October 23, 2024
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Cooking with onions? Red onions have higher levels of the heart-healthy phytochemicals quercetin and anthocyanin than white ones, and will usually fulfill the same culinary role.
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:
An apple a day might not keep the doctor away, but evidence-based lifestyle medicine sure can work some miracles.
Today’s main feature showcases the findings of a doctor who after years of deterioration with multiple sclerosis under various treatments, now lives symptom-free because of the 6 lifestyle changes she made.
We know that 10almonds readers like being presented with well-sourced information, with the ability to follow-up on it if desired.
Today’s sponsor 1440 has a similar view, different field: they specialize in presenting the news as neutrally as they can!
Today’s featured book outlines a plan for boosting your immune system, while dialing down inflammation.
Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive
A Word To The Wise
Watch and Learn
Hate Sit-Ups? Try This 10-Minute Standing Abs Workout!
Abdominal muscles are important to many people for aesthetics; they also fulfil the important role of keeping your innards in, as well as being a critical part of core stability (and you cannot have a truly healthy back without healthy abs on the other side).
However, not everyone loves sit-ups and their many variations, so here’s an all-standing workout instead:
Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!
Tuesday’s Expert Insights
Lifestyle vs Multiple Sclerosis & More
This is Dr. Saray Stancic. She’s another from the ranks of “doctors who got a serious illness and it completely changed how they view the treatment of serious illness”.
In her case, Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and wasn’t impressed with the results from the treatments offered, so (after 8 years of pain, suffering, and many medications, only for her condition to worsen) she set about doing better with an evidence-based lifestyle medicine approach.
After 7 years of her new approach, she would go on to successfully run a marathon and live symptom-free.
All this to say: her approach isn’t a magic quick fix, but it is a serious method for serious results, and after all, while it’d be nice to be magically in perfect health tomorrow, what’s important is being in good health for life, right?
If you’re interested in her impressive story, check out:
If you want to know what she did, then read on…
Six key lifestyle changes
Dr. Stancic credits her recovery to focus on the following evidence-based approaches:
The plant-centered plate
This is critical, and is the one she places most emphasis on. Most chronic diseases are exacerbated, if not outright caused, by chronic inflammation, and one cannot fix that without an anti-inflammatory diet.
An anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t have to be 100% plant-based, but broadly speaking, plants are almost always anti-inflammatory to a greater or lesser degree, while animal products are often pro-inflammatory—especially red meat and unfermented dairy.
For more details, see:
Movement every day
While “exercise is good for you” is in principle not a shocker, remember that her starting point was being in terrible condition with badly flared-up MS.
Important to understand here is that excessive exercise can weaken the immune system and sometimes cause flare-ups of various chronic diseases.
Moving thoroughly and moving often, however, is best. So walking yes, absolutely, but also don’t neglect the rest of your body, do some gentle bodyweight squats (if you can; if you can’t, work up to them), stretch your arms as well as your legs, take all your joints through a full range of motion.
See also:
Mindful stress management
Stress in life is unavoidable, but how we manage it is up to us. Bad things will continue to happen, great and small, but we can take a deep breath, remember that those things aren’t the boss of us, and deal with it calmly and conscientiously.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is of course the evidence-based “gold standard” for this, but whatever (not substance-based) method works for you, works for you!
About MBSR:
Good sleeping habits
Getting good sleep can be hard for anyone, let alone if you have chronic pain. However, Dr. Stancic advocates for doing whatever we can to get good sleep—which means not just duration (the famous “7–9 hours”), but also quality.
Learn more:
Substance intake awareness
This one’s not so much of a “don’t do drugs, kids” as the heading makes it look. Dr. Stancic assumes we already know, for example, that smoking is bad for us in a long list of ways, and alcohol isn’t much better.
However, she also advises us that in our eagerness to do that plant-based diet, we would do better to go for whole foods plant-based, rather than the latest processed meat substitutes, for example.
And supplements? She bids us exercise caution, and to make sure to get good quality, as poor quality supplements can be worse than taking nothing (looking at you, cheap turmeric supplements that contain heavy metals).
And of course, that nutrients gained from diet will almost always be better than nutrients gained from supplements, as our body can usually use them better.
And see also, some commonly-made supplements mistakes:
Human connection
Lastly, we humans are a social species by evolution; as individuals, we may enjoy relatively more or less social contact, but having access to such is important not just for our mental health, but our physical health too—we will tend to deteriorate much more quickly when we have to deal with everything alone, all other things being equal.
It doesn’t mean you need a busy social life if that’s not in your nature, but it does mean it’s incredibly beneficial to have at least a small number of people that you trust and whose company you enjoy, at least relatively accessible to you (i.e., their life need not revolve around you, but they are the kind of people who will generally happily spend time with you and provide support when needed if they can).
As for how:
Want to know more from Dr. Stancic?
We recently reviewed this very good book of hers, which goes over each of these six things in much more detail than we have room for here:
Enjoy!
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Vote on Which is Healthier
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One-Minute Book Review
The Immune System Recovery Plan: A Doctor's 4-Step Program to Treat Autoimmune Disease – by Dr. Susan Blum
We’ll not keep the four steps a secret; they are:
Using food as medicine
Understanding the stress connection
Healing your gut and digestive system
Optimizing liver function
Each of these sections gives a primer in the relevant science, worksheets for personalizing your own plan to your own situation, condition, and goals, and of course lots of practical advice.
This is important and perhaps the book’s greatest strength, since there are dozens of possible autoimmune conditions, and getting a professional diagnosis is often a long, arduous process. So while this book can’t necessarily speed that up, what it can do is give you a good head-start on managing your symptoms based on things that are most likely to help, and certainly, there will be no harm trying.
While it’s not primarily a recipe book, there are also recipes targeting each part of the whole, as well as an extensive herb and supplement guide, before getting into lots of additional resources.
Bottom line: if you are, or suspect you are, suffering from an autoimmune condition, the information in this book can make your life a lot easier.
Penny For Your Thoughts?
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Wishing you good health every day, in every way,
The 10almonds Team
