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Today’s almonds have been activated by:
❝Health is not simply the absence of sickeness❞
⏰ 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:
Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) can strike at any age, but they get a lot more common as we get older.
Extra risk factors include being female (shorter urethra on average), kidney diseases, and diabetes
We can reduce our risks with good hygiene practices, cranberry supplementation, and other interventions—worst case scenario is needing antibiotics, so that’s good to avoid if reasonably possible.
Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.
Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise.
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
Unlock Ankle Mobility: 3 Guided Exercises (16:22)
Those deep squats that are so life-giving will not work without ankles that allow such.
So if that's currently a stumbling block for you, here's the remedy:
Achilles' menu:
Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖
🦠 MAIN FEATURE
Psst… A Word To The Wise
Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) can strike at any age, but they get a lot more common as we get older:
About 10% of women over 65 have had one
About 30% of women over 85 have had one
Note: those figures are almost certainly very underreported, so the real figures are doubtlessly higher. However, we print them here as they’re still indicative of a disproportionate increase in risk over time.
What about men?
Men do get UTIs too, but at a much lower rate. The difference in average urethra length means that women are typically 30x more likely to get a UTI.
However! If a man does get one, then assuming the average longer urethra, it will likely take much more treatment to fix:
Risk factors you might want to know about
While you may not be able to do much about your age or the length of your urethra, there are some risk factors that can be more useful to know:
Catheterization
You might logically think that having a catheter would be the equivalent of having a really long urethra, thus keeping you safe, but unfortunately, the opposite is true:
Untreated menopause
Low estrogen levels can cause vaginal tissue to dry, making it easier for pathogens to grow.
For more information on menopausal HRT, see:
Sexual activity
Most kinds of sexual activity carry a risk of bringing germs very close to the urethra. Without wishing to be too indelicate: anything that’s going there should be clean, so it’s a case for washing your hands/partner(s)/toys etc.
For the latter, beyond soap and water, you might also consider investing in a UV sanitizer box ← This example has a 9” capacity; if you shop around though, be sure to check the size is sufficient!
Kidney stones and other kidney diseases
Anything that impedes the flow of urine can raise the risk of a UTI.
Diabetes
How much you can control this one will obviously depend on which type of diabetes you have, but diabetes of any type is an immunocompromizing condition. If you can, managing it as well as possible will help many aspects of your health, including this one.
More on that:
Note: In the case of Type 1 Diabetes, the above advice will (alas) not help you to prevent or reverse it. However, reducing/avoiding insulin resistance is even more important in cases of T1D (because if your exogenous insulin stops working, you die), so the advice is good all the same.
How do I know if I have a UTI?
Routine screening isn’t really a thing, since the symptoms are usually quite self-evident. If it hurts/burns when you pee, the most likely reason is a UTI.
Get it checked out; the test is a (non-invasive) urinalysis test. In other words, you’ll give a urine sample and they’ll test that.
Anything else I can do to avoid it?
Yes! We wrote previously about the benefits of cranberry supplementation, which was found even to rival antibiotics:
❝…recommend cranberry ingestion to decrease the incidence of urinary tract infections, particularly in individuals with recurrent urinary tract infections. This would also reduce the [need for] administration of antibiotics❞
Read more: Health Benefits Of Cranberries
Take care!
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
Hearing So Clear It Has No Peers
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🌎 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
Women with osteoporosis want to know their fracture risk
High levels of HDL cholesterol tied to higher dementia risk
Could exercise pills help create a healthier society?
How researchers are "CReATiNG" synthetic chromosomes faster and cheaper
Artery calcification more common in people who stay up late
A Parkinson's diagnosis can come with some hope, experts say
Think you’re good at multitasking? Here’s how your brain compensates—and how this changes with age
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
The Pain-Free Mindset: 7 Steps to Taking Control and Overcoming Chronic Pain – by Dr. Deepak Ravindran
First: please ignore the terrible title. This is not the medical equivalent of "think and grow rich". A better title would have been something like "The Pain-Free Plan".
Attentive subscribers may notice that this author was our featured expert yesterday, so you can learn about his "seven steps" described in our article there, without us repeating that in our review here.
This book's greatest strength is also potentially its greatest weakness, depending on the reader: it contains a lot of detailed medical information.
This is good or bad depending on whether you like lots of detailed medical information. Dr. Ravindran doesn't assume prior knowledge, so everything is explained as we go. However, this means that after his well-referenced clinical explanations, high quality medical diagrams, etc, you may come out of this book feeling like you've just done a semester at medical school.
Knowledge is power, though, so understanding the underlying processes of pain and pain management really does help the reader become a more informed expert on your own pain—and options for reducing that pain.
Bottom line: this, disguised by its cover as a "think healing thoughts" book, is actually a science-centric, information-dense, well-sourced, comprehensive guide to pain management from one of the leading lights in the field.
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Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday,
The 10almonds Team