What Most People Don't Know About Blood Pressure

Happy Sunday 👋 

❝We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.❞
_{~ James Clear (just kidding; it was Aristotle)}

In today’s email we cover what most people don’t know about blood pressure, staying lean all year, and rewiring our way out of chronic pain.

Want only the very best for your hearing? Hear.com’s hearing aids have some of the world’s most advanced hearing technology, with German-engineered dual processors to handle speech and background noise completely separately, for unparalleled, crystal clear sound! Click here to check out their 45-day no-risk trial 😎

Today’s Main Feature

Recommended Reading

Watch and Learn

How To Stay Lean All Year (3 Principles To Live By)

It’s common for weight (and specifically: adiposity, i.e. how much fat we carry) to fluctuate throughout the year. This is reasonable; we are, after all, mammals—and so will naturally tend towards putting on a few pounds for the winter, if food is available to do so.

However, as we’re no longer living with the seasonal food scarcity of tens of thousands of years ago and earlier, it’s nowadays all too easy to put on significantly more weight for winter, and then it’s either a) an arduous challenge to lose it in spring, or b) it gets set as our new base weight, to which we will now add even more weight in the following winter, and repeat each year.

So… Is there a third option? Cori Lefkowitz, of “Redefining Strength” and “Strong at every age”, shows how to keep the weight off for as long as you want:

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text overview, as well as the video!

Our Sponsors Make This Publication Possible

The Future Of Hearing Aids Is Here

What happens when you combine German engineering with the world’s most trusted name in hearing care?

The biggest breakthrough in hearing technology in more than a decade. Introducing the Horizon IX hearing aid.

Join 540,000+ people hearing better than ever. Find out if you qualify for a 45-day no-risk trial!

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

This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between seaweed (nori) and spinach—we picked the nori (click here to read about why), as did 57% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

One-Minute Book Review

The Pain Reprocessing Therapy Workbook: Using the Brain's Neuroplasticity to Break the Cycle of Chronic Pain – by Vanessa Blackstone

The author, a clinical consultant who trains practitioners in pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), lays out for us the basics of what we need to know to, as the subtitle promises, use the brain’s neuroplasticity to break the cycle of chronic pain.

She explains how when pain works correctly, it is a useful messenger saying “hey, something is wrong here”. It’s the body’s “check engine” light. However, in the case of chronic pain, it’s no longer helpful, which can be for one or more of several reasons, such as:

1. The message is just plain wrong (nerves misfiring).

2. There is an underlying problem, but it can’t be fixed, so further pain is not helpful.

3. The pain is actually doing its job just fine, indicating a real, fixable problem, but the bad news is that your automatic response to that pain is an overcompensation that will now cause a different pain somewhere else, and so on.

PRT is a way to gently interrupt that process by changing how your brain, and thus your body, responds to pain signals. This means that for those three scenarios we just mentioned:

1. We can now suffer less than previously.

2. We can now note “ok, message received”, and dial down the continued pain signals.

3. We can now note “ok, message received”, and tend to the thing without letting the pain cause our body to create a different problem somewhere else.

While all three are helpful, the latter item is the one that really lives up to the “break the cycle of chronic pain” promise, since referred pain (as it is called) is perhaps the most common source of enduring misery for people with many types of chronic pain, who started off with one source of pain, and then ended up with several more.

The style of the book is, as per the title, a workbook. It gives us explanations, and then exercises (mostly psychological exercises), giving us a roadmap to either a pain-free life or, at least, a life in which whatever pain remains is much more manageable, allowing us to go about our lives without everything being ten times as exhausting.

Bottom line: if you or a loved one has chronic pain, this book can help avoid a lot of needless suffering.

Click here to check out The Pain Reprocessing Therapy Workbook, and end the cycle of chronic pain!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team