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Building & Maintaining Mobility

Plus: how to build an Azheimer's-resistant brain

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The 10almonds Team
October 18, 2023

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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:

  • Strength and fitness is great, but useless without mobility

    • Today’s featured expert, Juliet Starrett, advises regular testing of various kinds of mobility, and working on any weak spots.

  • Losing weight (healthily!) can be a challenge. Keeping that weight off can be even harder.

    • Today’s sponsor, the Mayo Clinic Diet, is a medically-backed, globally-trusted method that focuses on changing your daily routine by adding and breaking habits that make a difference to your weight.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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👀 WATCH AND LEARN

5 ways to build an Alzheimer’s-resistant brain | Dr. Lisa Genova (9:14)

Genes can only load the gun; lifestyle pulls the trigger. How to avoid Alzheimer’s, per Dr. Lisa Genova:

Neuroprotective menu:

  • 4:26 | Get enough sleep

  • 5:14 | Enjoy the Mediterranean diet

  • 5:50 | Regular exercise, especially walking

  • 6:18 | Reduce chronic stress

  • 7:17 | Learn new things

You also might like our previous main feature:

🤸‍♀️ MAIN FEATURE

Troubleshoot Your Mobility!

This is Juliet Starrett. She’s a CrossFit co-founder, and two-time white-water rafting world champion. Oh, and she won those after battling thyroid cancer. She’s now 50 years old, and still going strong, having put aside her career as a lawyer to focus on fitness. Specifically, mobility training.

The Ready State

Together with her husband Kelly, Starrett co-founded The Ready State, of which she’s CEO.

It used to be called “Mobility WOD” (the “WOD” stands for “workout of the day”) but they changed their name as other companies took up the use of the word “mobility”, something the fitness world hadn’t previously focussed on much, and “WOD”, which was also hardly copyrightable.

True to its origins, The Ready State continues to offer many resources for building and maintaining mobility.

Why the focus on mobility?

When was the last time you had to bench-press anything larger than a small child? Or squat more than your partner’s bodyweight? Or do a “farmer’s walk” with anything heavier than your groceries?

For most of us, unless our lifestyles are quite extreme, we don’t need ridiculous strength (fun as that may be).

You know what makes a huge difference to our quality of life though? Mobility.

Have you ever felt that moment of panic when you reach for something on a high shelf and your shoulder or back twinges (been there!)? Or worse, you actually hurt yourself and the next thing you know, you need help putting your socks on (been there, too!)?

And we say to ourselves “I’m not going to let that happen to me again”

But how? How do we keep our mobility strong?

First, know your weaknesses

Starrett is a big fan of mobility tests to pinpoint areas that need more work.

Most of her resources for this aren’t free, and we’re drawing heavily from her book here, so for your convenience, we’ll link to some third party sources for this:

Next, eliminate those weaknesses

Do mobility exercises in any weak areas, until they’re not weak:

Want to train the full body in one session?

Want to learn more?

You might also enjoy The Ready State App, available for iOS and for Android:

Enjoy!

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Mayo Clinic Diet: effective, practical, and healthy weight loss

Losing weight (healthily!) can be a challenge. Keeping that weight off can be even harder. But, you don't have to do it alone:

The Mayo Clinic Diet is a medically-backed, globally-trusted method that focuses on changing your daily routine by adding and breaking habits that make a difference to your weight.

The benefits are far more than we could list here, but include:

  • A new digital platform that has helped members lose 3x more weight

  • A quick-start "lose it!" phrase, where members can lose 6–12 lbs in 2 weeks

  • Meal plan options that include healthy keto, high protein, vegetarian, and Mediterranean

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

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🌍 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Doctor’s Kitchen: Supercharge your health with 100 delicious everyday recipes – by Dr. Rupy Aujla

We've featured Dr. Aujla before as an expert-of-the-week, and now it's time to review a book by him. What's his deal, and what should you expect?

Dr. Aujla first outlines the case for food as medicine. Not just "eat nutritionally balanced meals", but literally, "here are the medicinal properties of these plants". Think of some of the herbs and spices we've featured in our Monday Research Reviews, and add in medicinal properties of cancer-fighting cruciferous vegetables, bananas with dopamine and dopamine precursors, berries full of polyphenols, hemp seeds that fight cognitive decline, and so forth.

Most of the book is given over to recipes. They're plant-centric, but mostly not vegan. They're consistent with the Mediterranean diet, but mostly Indian. They're economically mindful (favoring cheap ingredients where reasonable) while giving a nod to where an extra dollar will elevate the meal. They don't give calorie values etc—this is a feature not a bug, as Dr. Aujla is of the "positive dieting" camp that advocates for us to "count colors, not calories". Which, we have to admit, makes for very stress-free cooking, too.

Dr. Aujla is himself an Indian Brit, by the way, which gives him two intersecting factors for having a taste for spices. If you don't share that taste, just go easier on the pepper etc.

As for the medicinal properties we mentioned up top? Four pages of references at the back, for any who are curious to look up the science of them. We at 10almonds do love references!

Bottom line: if you like tasty food and you're looking for a one-stop, well-rounded, food-as-medicine cookbook, this one is a top-tier choice.

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Wishing you an energizing day,

The 10almonds Team