Sometimes, Perfect Isn't Practical!

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ 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:

• At 10almonds, our aim is to be informational, not prescriptive. We give you the information; you decide what (if anything) you want to do with it!

  • Today’s main feature looks at implementing health science information in a way that hopefully tempers perfectionism with pragmatism

  • We also look at building and maintaining strength in older age!

• Have you tried everything for sleep and still find yourself getting to sleep later than you’d like, and/or sleeping less soundly than you’d like?

  • Today’s sponsor Cornbread Hemp is offering gummies that combine organic CBD with lavender, valerian, and chamomile, for a synergistic soporific effect that’ll have you peacefully snoozing in no time, guaranteed (literally, they offer a guarantee).

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

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

How To Stop Feeling Lost

With his characteristic empathy and insight, Dr. Gabor Maté explains:

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

• The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need

• Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

• Are GMOs Good Or Bad For Us? Unzipping Our Food’s Genes

❓ MAIN FEATURE

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝10 AM breakfast is not realistic for most. What's wrong with 8 AM and Evening me at 6. Don't quite understand the differentiation.❞

(for reference, this is about our “Breakfasting For Health?” main feature)

It’s not terrible to do it the way you suggest 🙂 It’s just not optimal, either, that’s all!

Breakfasting at 08:00 and then dining at 18:00 is ten hours apart, so no fasting benefits between those. Let’s say you take half an hour to eat dinner, then eat nothing again until breakfast, that’s 18:30 to 08:00, so that’s 13½ hours fasting. You’ll recall that fasting benefits start at 12 hours into the fast, so that means you’d only get 1½ hours of fasting benefits.

As for breakfasting at 08:00 regardless of intermittent fasting considerations, the reason for the conclusion of around 10:00 being optimal, is based on when our body is geared up to eat breakfast and get the most out of that, which the body can’t do immediately upon waking. So if you wake and get sunlight at 08:30, get a little moderate exercise, then by 10:00 your digestive system will be perfectly primed to get the most out of breakfast.

However! This is entirely based on you waking and getting sunlight at 08:30.

So, iff you wake and get sunlight at 06:30, then in that case, breakfasting at 08:00 would give the same benefits as described above. What’s important is the 1½ hour priming-time.

❝Good article on older men and testosterone. What about older men who still workout hard and are looking to increase strength levels ? Is that possible ? ❞

(for reference, this is about our “The Testosterone Drop” main feature)

Thank you, and, definitely! Your body neither knows nor cares how many times you have flown around the sun (i.e. your chronological age); it is all about the state of your body (i.e. your biological age).

People often think about biological age as one number, “the body of a 40-year-old” or such, but really, it’s a whole collection of numbers, e.g:

• Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)

• Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)

• Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)

• Cellular markers of aging (e.g. telomere length)

…and more, but we only have so much room here. You can read more about this here, though:

Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

In the case of increasing strength with age, the same rules apply as when younger, it’s only some of the numbers that might change!

It also may be that if we get an injury as we get older, it might take us longer to recover, so we need to take a little more care about safety, and focus on mobility and core stability at least as much as you might on arms and such.

One thing you might find difficult with age is that most personal trainers are quite young, and often simply don’t have the knowledge or experience of an aging body’s capabilities or needs. So that’s a resource that gets scarcer.

You might like this book that we reviewed last month:

Functional Exercise For Seniors: Daily exercise routines for stability, balance, strength & mobility – by James Atkinson

Unlike a lot of “for seniors” books, it doesn’t assume that the reader can barely tie their shoelaces, and is actually all about seriously building the things it mentions in the subtitle.

Enjoy!

📊 POLL

We turn the tables and ask you a question…

We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:

Just a tip: there’s a chance that in tomorrow’s main feature the unavoidable use of certain words might cause our email to end up in your spam filter. So if you don’t see our email around the usual time, check there!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Think you’ve tried everything? Use the oldest herb in the book for quality sleep.

Feel like you've tried everything? It's time to turn to the oldest herb in the book for a sleep solution that stands the test of time. Hemp-derived CBD is your ticket to a night of uninterrupted rest, and Cornbread Hemp’s CBD Sleep Gummies take it to the next level.

Bid farewell to those nights of waking up halfway through and the grogginess that follows. So, what makes their gummies unique? They harness the power of all-natural ingredients, combining organic CBD with lavender, valerian, and chamomile. These plant powered ingredients work harmoniously together to guide you into a peaceful slumber while ensuring you wake up feeling refreshed.

Featuring a 25mg CBD and 1mg THC introductory dose and a 50mg CBD and 2mg THC stronger dose, you can choose the strength that's right for you.

Order now and experience the time-honored benefits of all-natural sleep support. Plus, get 25% off with code SLEEP25. Sweet dreams, guaranteed.

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

Browse By Category

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Art Of Letting Go: Stop Overthinking, Stop Negative Spirals, And Find Emotional Freedom – by Nick Trenton

You may be wondering: is this a basic CBT book? And, for the most part, no, it’s not.

It does touch on some of the time-tested CBT techniques, but a large part of the book is about reframing things in a different way, that’s a little more DBT-ish, and even straying into BA. But enough of the initialisms, let’s give an example:

It can be scary to let go of the past, or of present or future possibilities (bad ones as well as good!). However, it’s hard to consciously do something negative (same principle as “don’t think of a pink elephant”), so instead, look at it as taking hold of the present/future—and thus finding comfort and security in a new reality rather than an old memory or a never-actual imagining.

So, this book has a lot of ideas like that, and if even one of them helps, then it was worth reading.

The writing style is comprehensive, and goes for the “tell them what you’re gonna tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them” approach, which a) is considered good for learning b) can feel a little like padding nonetheless.

Bottom line: this reviewer didn’t personally love the style, but the content made up for it.

Click here to check out The Art Of Letting Go, and let go!

May your health grow from strength to strength,

The 10almonds Team