Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

🧠 BRAINTEASER

Keep Your Brain Young With Today’s Brainteaser:

A variation on the classic “two guards” puzzle…

A girl meets a lion and unicorn in the forest. She has been forewarned:

• The lion lies every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and the other days it speaks the truth.

• The unicorn lies on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and the other days it speaks the truth.

“Yesterday I was lying,” the lion tells the girl.

“So was I,” says the unicorn.

⏰ 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:

• Osteoarthritis is nominally a “non-inflammatory” kind of arthritis. However, the latter name is a little misleading, as inflammation is still an important factor!

  • It has various additional avoidance/management/treatment options, some of which we look at today.

• The conditions associated with untreated menopause can range from the inconvenient (e.g. mood swings) to the potentially life-threatening (e.g. heart palpitations)

  • Today’s sponsor, Wellcore, is offering an at-home test kit to help take your menopausal healthcare into your own hands, and find out what is responsible for what—and then enjoy treatment, if appropriate.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Why do we have skinny people with type 2 diabetes? (2:26)

Our previously featured expert, Dr. Jason Fung, explains:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Prefer text? You might like our previous main feature (not the same one as above) where we covered this topic in our own way:

Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

Visceral fat is the “hidden” fat of the viscera; you can’t squeeze it directly; read the above article to learn more!

Or, watch the video, of course. If you don’t have time now, you can always bookmark it for later!

🦴 MAIN FEATURE

Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis

Arthritis is the umbrella term for a cluster of joint diseases involving inflammation of the joints, hence “arthr-” (joint) “-itis” (suffix used to denote inflammation).

Inflammatory vs Non-Inflammatory Arthritis

Arthritis is broadly divided into inflammatory arthritis and non-inflammatory arthritis.

Some forms, such as rheumatoid arthritis, are of the inflammatory kind. We wrote about that previously:

See: Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis

You may be wondering: how does one get non-inflammatory inflammation of the joints?

The answer is, in “non-inflammatory” arthritis, such as osteoarthritis, the damage comes first (by general wear-and-tear) and inflammation generally follows as part of the symptoms, rather than the cause.

So the name can be a little confusing. In the case of osteo- and other “non-inflammatory” forms of arthritis, you definitely still want to keep your inflammation at bay as best you can; it’s just not the prime focus.

So, what should we focus on?

First and foremost: avoiding wear-and-tear if possible. Naturally, we all must live our lives, and sometimes that means taking a few knocks, and definitely it means using our joints. An unused joint would suffer just as much as an abused one. But, we can take care of our joints!

We wrote on that previously, too:

See: How To Really Look After Your Joints

New osteoarthritis medication (hot off the press!)

At 10almonds, we try to keep on top of new developments, and here’s a shiny new one from this month:

• Methotrexate to treat hand osteoarthritis with synovitis (12th Oct, clinical trial)

• New research has found an existing drug could help many people with painful hand osteoarthritis (24th Oct, pop-science article about the above, but still written by one of the study authors!)

Note also that Dr. Flavia Cicuttini there talks about what we talked about above—that calling it non-inflammatory arthritis is a little misleading, as the inflammation still occurs.

And finally…

You might consider other lifestyle adjustments to manage your symptoms. These include:

• Exercise—gently, though!

• Rest—while keeping mobility going.

• Mobility aids—if it helps, it helps.

• Go easy on the use of braces, splints, etc—these can offer short-term relief, but at a long term cost of loss of mobility.

  • Only you can decide where to draw the line when it comes to that trade-off.

You can also check out our previous article:

See: Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

Take good care of yourself!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Wellcore | Personalized Menopausal Healthcare

People tend to know about hot flashes, but did you know there are more than 30 symptoms associated with menopause? Maybe you knew about weight gain and bone density loss, but night sweats and heart palpitations?

The conditions associated with untreated menopause can range from the inconvenient to the potentially life-threatening.

And yet, many people are left to guess at what symptoms might mean, or worse, simply ignore them.

Wellcore believes in doing better. To make diagnosis and treatment much more accessible to everyone, they offer an at-home testing kit. They’ll then analyze the results, and offer appropriate hormone therapy themselves if you want it (there are many benefits).

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

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• New method provides valuable insights into the brain's noradrenaline system: implications for Parkinson's disease

• COVID-19 may be worse for those with uncontrolled high blood pressure or diabetes

• Killer smile? An oral pathogen increases heart attack damage, study reveals

• Molecular pathology of suicide: a postmortem study

• Genetic connection between aerobic fitness and disease is not what you'd expect

• Strength training may reduce health risks of a high-protein diet

• Identifying a signature biomarker for early-onset Alzheimer's disease

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Better Brain – by Dr. Bonnie Kaplan and Dr. Julia Rucklidge

We've reviewed books about eating for brain health before, but this is the first time we've reviewed one written by clinical psychologists.

What does that change? Well, it means it less focus on, say, reducing beta amyloid plaques, and more on mental health—which often has a more immediate impact in our life.

In the category of criticisms, the authors do seem to have a bit of a double-standard. For example, they criticise psychiatrists prescribing drugs that have only undergone 12-week clinical trials, but they cite a single case-study of a 10-year-old boy as evidence for a multivitamin treating his psychosis when antipsychotics didn't work.

However, the authors’ actual dietary advice is nonetheless very respectable. Whole foods, nutrients taken in synergistic stacks, cut the sugar, etc.

Bottom line: if you'd like to learn about the impact good nutrition can have on the brain's health, ranging from diet itself to dietary supplements, this book presents many avenues to explore.

Click here to check out "The Better Brain", and eat for the good health of yours!

🗞️ OTHER NEWSLETTERS WE LOVE

Wishing you all manner of wellbeing,

The 10almonds Team