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Small Changes For A Healthier Life
Plus: cancer is a lot easier to prevent than to reverse
The 10almonds Team
May 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:
It’s a lot easier to prevent cancer than to reverse it!
Some of the worst things that increase your risk of cancer are smoking, alcohol consumption, a poor diet, and high insulin.
Some of the best things that can help lower your risk of cancer are consuming vegetables and getting plenty of exercise.
Consuming just three servings of cruciferous vegetables a week can decrease your risk of getting certain types of cancer.
If doing meatless Mondays and you’ve already got the protein covered by beans or some other plant protein, but want a meaty flavor, that flavor can almost always be added by a combination of salt, yeast extract, and smoked paprika (and then balancing any fats accordingly)
Fun fact: a lot of “chicken flavor” or “beef flavor” processed food products contain those three ingredients instead of the animal product in question, because they’re cheaper. But we can enjoy their taste without having all the processed stuff with it, if we cook for ourselves at home!
Salt can often be replaced in recipes with MSG, which enhances flavors while containing less sodium
No, MSG does not convey any meaningful health risks—see today’s main feature for a link to some science-based mythbusting information about this!
Tea is a very healthful drink, with many benefits to body and mind alike.
Check out today’s sponsor section for a chance to uplift your daily tea-making with Mosi!
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
It’s much easier to prevent cancer than reverse it
Dr. Berg’s top things to avoid:
Smoking
Alcohol
Omega-6 fatty acids
Vegetable oil, seed oils, and corn oil
Trans fats
Sugar
Refined carbs
Processed foods
Synthetic foods
Frequent meals
Dr Berg’s top things to focus on:
Consuming real, natural foods
Lowering your insulin
Consuming cruciferous vegetables
Doing intermittent and prolonged fasting
Exposing yourself to infrared light to help increase your melatonin and vitamin D
Exercising
Consuming omega-3 fatty acids
Sources include:
(there are more in the video though, so do check it out!)
❓ MAIN FEATURE
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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 😎
I am interested in what I can substitute for ham in bean soup?
Well, that depends on what the ham was like! You can certainly buy ready-made vegan lardons (i.e. small bacon/ham bits, often in tiny cubes or similar) in any reasonably-sized supermarket. Being processed, they’re not amazing for the health, but are still an improvement on pork.
Alternatively, you can make your own seitan! Again, seitan is really not a health food, but again, it’s still relatively less bad than pork (unless you are allergic to gluten, in which case, definitely skip this one).
Alternatively alternatively, in a soup that already contains beans (so the protein element is already covered), you could just skip the ham as an added ingredient, and instead bring the extra flavor by means of a little salt, a little yeast extract (if you don’t like yeast extract, don’t worry, it won’t taste like it if you just use a teaspoon in a big pot, or half a teaspoon in a smaller pot), and a little smoked paprika. If you want to go healthier, you can swap out the salt for MSG, which enhances flavor in a similar fashion while containing less sodium.
Wondering about the health aspects of MSG? Check out our main feature on this, from last month:
I thoroughly enjoy your daily delivery. I’d love to see one for teens too!
That’s great to hear! The average age of our subscribers is generally rather older, but it’s good to know there’s an interest in topics for younger people. We’ll bear that in mind, and see what we can do to cater to that without alienating our older readers!
That said: it’s never too soon to be learning about stuff that affects us when we’re older—there are lifestyle factors at 20 that affect Alzheimer’s risk at 60, for example (e.g. drinking—excessive drinking at 20* is correlated to higher Alzheimer’s risk at 60).
*This one may be less of an issue for our US readers, since the US doesn’t have nearly as much of a culture of drinking under 21 as some places. Compare for example with general European practices of drinking moderately from the mid-teens, or the (happily, diminishing—but historically notable) British practice of drinking heavily from the mid-teens.
How much turmeric should I take each day?
Dr. Michael Greger’s research (of “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen” and “How Not To Die” fame) recommends getting at least ¼ tsp turmeric per day
Remember to take it with black pepper though, for a 2000% absorption bonus!
A great way to get it, if you don’t want to take capsules and don’t want to eat spicy food every day, is to throw a teaspoon of turmeric in when making a pot of (we recommend wholegrain!) rice. Turmeric is very water-soluble, so it’ll be transferred into the rice easily during cooking. It’ll make the rice a nice golden yellow color, and/but won’t noticeably change the taste.
Again remember to throw in some black pepper, and if you really want to boost the nutritional content, some chia seeds are a great addition too (they’ll get cooked with the rice and so it won’t be like eating seeds later, but the nutrients will be there in the rice dish).
You can do the same with par-boiled potatoes or other root vegetables, but because cooking those has water to be thrown away at the end (unlike rice), you’ll lose some turmeric in the water.
Request: more people need to be aware of suicidal tendencies and what they can do to ward them off
That’s certainly a very important topic! We’ll cover that properly in one of our Psychology Sunday editions. In the meantime, we’ll mention a previous special that we did, that was mostly about handling depression (in oneself or a loved one), and obviously there’s a degree of crossover:
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
Mosi: Award-Winning Garden-Picked Tea & Infusers
Making and drinking tea is an act that engages all five senses, and can be a ritual unto itself!
It can be good, then, to make the tea you drink a little special too.
Mosi offer garden-picked loose-leaf tea from around the world, giving you a taste of each continent, and a wide range of flavors.
Whether you go for strong, black, green, light, spiced, sweet, bold, or delicate, there's something here for everyone.
They also offer a variety of tea-related paraphernalia, ranging from cold brew infusers to matcha sieves and more, so you can elevate your tea-drinking experience and add an extra touch of class to your morning or evening routine.
🌎 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes - by Tom Rath
The subtitle of this book, "how small choices lead to big changes", is very much the idea that a lot of what we do here at 10almonds is about.
And the title itself, "Eat Move Sleep"? Well, that's 3/5 of The Usual Five Things™ that we promote here (the other two being: reduce or eliminate alcohol, and don't smoke). So, naturally this book got our attention.
One of the key ideas that Rath presents is that every action we take leads to a net gain or loss in health. The question then is: what are the biggest point-swingers? In other words, what are the places in our life where the smallest changes can make the biggest difference?
Rath looks at what parts of diet make the biggest difference to our health, and the findings there alone probably make reading the book worthwhile.
When it comes to movement, he actually flips this! For Rath, it's less about how much exercise you get, and more about minimizing how long we spend not moving... And especially, minimizing how long we spend sitting. So, lots of little tweaks for that.
In the category of sleep: a key idea is that quality is as important as quantity, and there's an aspect of bringing together as a synergistic routine. To finish off a productive day with good rest, and power up ready for the next morning.
In short: tying these items together—and focusing on the smallest choices that lead to the biggest changes—makes for quite a manifesto that we could describe as "Atomic Habits, for health specifically".
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May your health go ever from strength to strength,
The 10almonds Team