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❝Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work they’re supposed to be doing at the moment.❞
It’s Expert Insights Tuesday at 10almonds, and our main feature is about the surprising important of leafy greens for brain health! In today’s edition:
The best foods to repair gut health
Brain food? The eyes have it!
The causes of brain aging
How lutein fits in
Why you really need plenty of lutein
Best sources of lutein
Another reason to choose leafy greens over eggs for lutein!
Finish What You Start (for anyone with a stack of unfinished projects)
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
The Best Foods to Repair Gut Health
Timestamp Menu:
References
🥬 MAIN FEATURE
Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
This is Dr. Michael Greger, M.D. FACLM, of “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen” and “How Not To Die” fame, and he wants us to protect our brains (and while we’re at it, our eyesight).
And the secret is…
Lutein.
This is a carotenoid, which is super important for the eyes and brain. Not to be confused with carrots, which despite the name are usually not a good source of carotenoids!
They do however contain lots of beta-carotene, a form of vitamin A, but that (and the famous WW2-era myth born of deliberate disinformation by the British government) isn’t what we’re covering today.
We say “eyes and brain” but really, the eyes are just an extension of the brain in any case.
Pedantry aside, what Dr. Greger wants you to know about lutein is how important it is for the protection of your brain/eyes, both against cognitive decline and against age-related macular degeneration (the most common cause of eyesight loss in old age).
Important take-away info:
Two things that hasten brain aging are inflammation and oxidative stress. Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory foods mitigate those.
Researchers investigated eight different dietary antioxidants, including vitamins A and E. Only lutein was “significantly related to better cognition”.
The macula in the middle of our retina is packed with lutein, and levels in the retina correspond to levels in the rest of our brain.
Alzheimer’s patients have significantly less lutein in their eyes and in their blood, and a higher occurrence of macular degeneration.
Dark green leafy vegetables are lutein superstars. A half cup of kale has 50 times more lutein than an egg.
Want to know more about the Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen approach to health?
📢 Tweet of the Day
About those 50 eggs that it’d take to compete with just half a cup of kale for lutein content…
Eating one egg a day is associated with significantly greater risk of breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. bit.ly/3XcSq6A
— Michael Greger, M.D. (@nutrition_facts)
4:00 PM • Mar 18, 2023
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Finish What You Start - by Peter Hollins
For some people, getting started is the problem. For others of us, getting started is the easy part! We just need a little help not dropping things we started.
There are summaries at the starts and ends of sections, and many "quick tips" to get you back on track.
As a taster: one of these is "temptation bundling", combining unpleasant things with pleasant. A kind of "spoonful of sugar" approach.
Hollins also discusses hyperbolic discounting (the way we tend to value rewards according to how near they are, and procrastinate accordingly). He offers a tool to overcome this, too, the "10–10–10 rule".
Also dealt with is "the preparation trap", and how to know when you have enough information to press on.
For a lot of us, the places we're most likely to drop a project is 20% in (initial enthusiasm wore off) or 80% in ("it's nearly done; no need to worry about it"). Those are the times when the advices in this book can be particularly handy!
All in all, a great book for seeing a lot of things to completion.
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Wishing you the healthiest productivity,
The 10almonds Team