6 Blood Markers That Predict Disease Years Before Symptoms Appear
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Do you have these 6 done?
When “normal” isn’t helpful
Most of the most common blood tests are designed to confirm established disease, not detect the slow, early biological drift that occurs years before symptoms appear.
Here are 6 that do better:
- High-sensitivity CRP: persistently elevated hs-CRP within the “normal” range reflects chronic low-grade inflammation that predicts cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and dementia long before diagnosis.
- Fasting insulin: elevated fasting insulin with normal glucose reveals early insulin resistance, a reversible stage that predicts type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and often even Alzheimer’s disease years in advance.
- ApoB: apolipoprotein B directly counts atherogenic particles and predicts heart attack and stroke risk more accurately than LDL cholesterol, especially in people with metabolic dysfunction.
- Homocysteine: raised homocysteine damages blood vessels and brain tissue, increasing risks of cardiovascular disease and dementia, and is often correctable with adequate B-vitamin status.
- HbA1c trajectory: trends and position within the normal range matter more than cut-offs, with gradual rises over years signalling worsening metabolic health and cumulative glycation damage.
- GlycA: this little-known marker reflects long-term inflammatory burden and predicts cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and mortality more strongly than many traditional tests.
Lastly, Dr. Wibberly advises us that patterns that can be noted from repeated measurements over time reveal true risk, whereas isolated “normal” results can hide a worsening biological trajectory.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Early Dementia Screening From Your Blood & More
And for a much more comprehensive overview of blood tests in general:
Common Sense Labs: Blood Labs Demystified – by Dr. Ken Berry & Kim Howerton
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Are Supplements Worth Taking?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
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 😎
❝There seems to be a lot of suggestions to take supplements for every thing, from your head to your toes. I know it’s up to the individual but what are the facts or stats to support taking them versus not?❞
Short answer:
- supplementary vitamins and minerals are probably neither needed nor beneficial for most (more on this later) people, with the exception of vitamin D which most people over a certain age need unless they are white and getting a lot of sun.
- other kinds of supplement can be very beneficial or useless, depending on what they are, of course, and also your own personal physiology.
With regard to vitamins and minerals, in most cases they should be covered by a healthy balanced diet, and the bioavailability is usually better from food anyway (bearing in mind, we say vitamin such-and-such, or name an elemental mineral, but there are usually multiple, often many, forms of each—and supplements will usually use whatever is cheapest to produce and most chemically stable).
However! It is also quite common for food to be grown in whatever way is cheapest and produces the greatest visible yield, rather than for micronutrient coverage.
This goes for most if not all plants, and it goes extra for animals (because of the greater costs and inefficiencies involved in rearing animals).
We wrote about this a while back in a mythbusting edition of 10almonds, covering:
- Food is less nutritious now than it used to be: True or False?
- Supplements aren’t absorbed properly and thus are a waste of money: True or False?
- We can get everything we need from our diet: True or False?
You can read the answers and explanations, and see the science that we presented, here:
Do We Need Supplements, And Do They Work?
You may be wondering: what was that about “most (more on this later) people”?
Sometimes someone will have a nutrient deficiency that can’t be easily remedied with diet. Often this occurs when their body:
- has trouble absorbing that nutrient, or
- does something inconvenient with it that makes a lot of it unusable when it gets it.
…which is why calcium, iron, vitamin B12, and vitamin D are quite common supplements to get prescribed by doctors after a certain age.
Still, it’s best to try getting things from one’s diet first all of all, of course.
Things we can’t (reasonably) get from food
This is another category entirely. There are many supplements that are convenient forms of things readily found in a lot of food, such as vitamins and minerals, or phytochemicals like quercetin, fisetin, and lycopene (to name just a few of very many).
Then there are things not readily found in food, or at least, not in food that’s readily available in supermarkets.
For example, if you go to your local supermarket and ask where the mimosa is, they’ll try to sell you a cocktail mix instead of the roots, bark, or leaves of a tropical tree. It is also unlikely they’ll stock lion’s mane mushroom, or reishi.
If perchance you do get the chance to acquire fresh lion’s mane mushroom, by the way, give it a try! It’s delicious shallow-fried in a little olive oil with black pepper and garlic.
In short, this last category, the things most of us can’t reasonably get from food without going far out of our way, are the kind of thing whereby supplements actually can be helpful.
And yet, still, not every supplement has evidence to support the claims made by its sellers, so it’s good to do your research beforehand. We do that on Mondays, with our “Research Review Monday” editions, of which you can find in our searchable research review archive ← we also review some drugs that can’t be classified as supplements, but mostly, it’s supplements.
Take care!
Share This Post
-
Coughing/Wheezing After Dinner?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
The After-Dinner Activities You Don’t Want
A quick note first: our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies here, and we are not here to diagnose you or treat you; we are not doctors, let alone your doctors. Do see yours if you have any reason to believe there may be cause for concern.
Coughing and/or wheezing after eating is more common the younger or older someone is. Lest that seem contradictory: it’s a U-shaped bell-curve.
It can happen at any age and for any of a number of reasons, but there are patterns to the distribution:
Mostly affects younger people:
Allergies, asthma
Young people are less likely to have a body that’s fully adapted to all foods yet, and asthma can be triggered by certain foods (for example sulfites, a common preservative additive):
Adverse reactions to the sulphite additives
Foods/drinks that commonly contain sulfites include soft drinks, wines and beers, and dried fruit
As for the allergies side of things, you probably know the usual list of allergens to watch out for, e.g: dairy, fish, crustaceans, eggs, soy, wheat, nuts.
However, that’s far from an exhaustive list, so it’s good to see an allergist if you suspect it may be an allergic reaction.
Affects young and old people equally:
Again, there’s a dip in the middle where this doesn’t tend to affect younger adults so much, but for young and old people:
Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing)
For children, this can be a case of not having fully got used to eating yet if very small, and when growing, can be a case of “this body is constantly changing and that makes things difficult”.
For older people, this can can come from a variety of reasons, but common culprits include neurological disorders (including stroke and/or dementia), or a change in saliva quality and quantity—a side-effect of many medications:
Hyposalivation in Elderly Patients
(particularly useful in the article above is the table of drugs that are associated with this problem, and the various ways they may affect it)
Managing this may be different depending on what is causing your dysphagia (as it could be anything from antidepressants to cancer), so this is definitely one to see your doctor about. For some pointers, though:
NHS Inform | Dysphagia (swallowing problems)
Affects older people more:
Gastroesophagal reflux disease (GERD)
This is a kind of acid reflux, but chronic, and often with a slightly different set of symptoms.
GERD has no known cure once established, but its symptoms can be managed (or avoided in the first place) by:
- Healthy eating (Mediterranean diet is, as usual, great)
- Weight loss (if and only if obese)
- Avoiding trigger foods
- Eating smaller meals
- Practicing mindful eating
- Staying upright for 3–4 hours after eating
And of course, don’t smoke, and ideally don’t drink alcohol.
You can read more about this (and the different ways it can go from there), here:
NICE | Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease
Note: this above page refers to it as “GORD”, because of the British English spelling of “oesophagus” rather than “esophagus”. It’s the exact same organ and condition, just a different spelling.
Take care!
Share This Post
-
Are Your Vitamin D Supplements Working? Probably Not (Here’s Why & How To Fix It)
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Most people over a certain age know the importance of maintaining good vitamin D levels, especially in the context of bone health (as vitamin D is instrumental in how the body processes calcium).
Most people don’t know that you also need a good amount of vitamin K, or else that calcium is going to get stuck in your arteries instead of getting to your bones.
You can read about that, here: Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox
There are other popular misconceptions about vitamin D, which you can read about here: Debunking the vitamin D fad
And yes, you can still overdo it: Vit D + Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing?
And there are even more ways to mess it up! See: How Taking Vitamin D Supplements Can Sabotage Your Vitamin D Levels
Which latter is mostly because of people making mistakes in the category of: Vitamin D2 vs Vitamin D3: What You Would Benefit From Knowing
0mg!
In the US, many people rely on milk for calcium. Some notes about that to get us started:
- Milk is a rich source of calcium, which is useless to the body if you don’t also have good levels of vitamin D and magnesium.
- People’s vitamin D levels tend to directly correlate to the level of sun where they live, if supplementation isn’t undertaken.
- Plant-based milks are usually fortified with vitamin D (and calcium), by the way.
- Most Americans* are deficient in magnesium, because green leafy things don’t form as big a part of most people’s diets as they should.
*magnesium deficiency is very common, and around 80% of people in the US do not meet the RDA for magnesium, despite widespread attention to vitamin D insufficiency.
Learn more: An update on magnesium and bone health
Now, with this in mind, researchers (Dr. Xiangzhu Zhu et al.) investigated the relationship between magnesium (Mg) levels and vitamin D synthesis and vitamin D metabolism.
That latter is important, because your body can be full to the brim with vitamin D, but if you can’t metabolize it, it’s useless to you.
What Dr. Zhu and her team found is that magnesium is seen to regulate vitamin D like a thermostat—raising levels when they are low and lowering them when they are high, which suggests an explanation for why vitamin D supplements do not work consistently across people.
In a randomized, placebo-controlled trial with 239 adults, tailoring magnesium doses to participants’ usual dietary intake, and found that magnesium supplementation increased vitamin D in participants who were deficient but reduced vitamin D in those who already had high levels, suggesting an optimizing rather than a purely boosting effect.
You can read the paper in full, here: Magnesium treatment increases gut microbiome synthesizing vitamin D and inhibiting colorectal cancer: results from a double-blind precision-based randomized placebo-controlled trial
If you prefer to get your nutrients from food rather than supplements, then magnesium intake at recommended levels can usually be enjoyed through foods such as dark leafy greens, beans, whole grains, nuts, avocados, and even dark chocolate.
If you prefer to supplement for convenience or “just to be sure”, then do check out: Which Magnesium? (And: When?)
Want to learn more?
As for why you might want to favor getting it from food if you can, then while the title says “vitamins”, this book discusses an assortment of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients; the “other nutrients” category including amino acids (branched chain and essential), prebiotics and probiotics, and triglycerides of various kinds:
Eat Your Vitamins – by Mascha Davis, RDN ← see our review, here
Take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Olive oil is healthy. Turns out olive leaf extract may be good for us too
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Olive oil is synonymous with the Mediterranean diet, and the health benefits of both are well documented.
Olive oil reduces the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and premature death. Olives also contain numerous healthy nutrients.
Now evidence is mounting about the health benefits of olive leaves, including from studies in a recent review.
Here’s what’s in olive leaves and who might benefit from taking olive leaf extract.
mtphoto19/Shutterstock What’s in olive leaves?
Olive leaves have traditionally been brewed as a tea in the Mediterranean and drunk to treat fever and malaria.
The leaves contain high levels of a type of antioxidant called oleuropein. Olives and olive oil contain this too, but at lower levels.
Generally, the greener the leaf (the less yellowish) the more oleuropein it contains. Leaves picked in spring also have higher levels compared to ones picked in autumn, indicating levels of oleuropein reduce as the leaves get older.
Olive leaves also contain other antioxidants such as hydroxytyrosol, luteolin, apigenin and verbascoside.
Antioxidants work by reducing the oxidative stress in the body. Oxidative stress causes damage to our DNA, cell membranes and tissues, which can lead to chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
Are olive leaves healthy?
One review and analysis combined data from 12 experimental studies with 819 participants in total. Overall, olive leaf extract improved risk factors for heart disease. This included healthier blood lipids (fats) and lowering blood pressure.
The effect was greater for people who already had high blood pressure.
Most studies in this review gave olive leaf extract as a capsule, with daily doses of 500 milligrams to 5 grams for six to 48 weeks.
Another review and analysis published late last year looked at data from 12 experimental studies, with a total of 703 people. Some of these studies involved people with high blood lipids, people with high blood pressure, people who were overweight or obese, and some involved healthy people.
Daily doses were 250-1,000mg taken as tablets or baked into bread.
Individual studies in the review showed significant benefits in improving blood glucose (sugar) control, blood lipid levels and reducing blood pressure. But when all the data was combined, there were no significant health effects. We’ll explain why this may be the case shortly.
Olive leaves can be brewed into tea. Picture Partners/Shutterstock Another review looked at people who took oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol (the antioxidants in olive leaves). This found significant improvement in body weight, blood lipid profiles, glucose metabolism and improvements in bones, joints and cognitive function.
The individual studies included tested either the two antioxidants or olive leaf incorporated into foods such as bread and cooking oils (but not olive oil). The doses were 6-500mg per day of olive leaf extract.
So what can we make of these studies overall? They show olive leaf extract may help reduce blood pressure, improve blood lipids and help our bodies handle glucose.
But these studies show inconsistent results. This is likely due to differences in the way people took olive leaf extract, how much they took and how long for. This type of inconsistency normally tells us we need some more research to clarify the health effects of olive leaves.
Can you eat olive leaves?
Olive leaves can be brewed into a tea, or the leaves added to salads. Others report grinding olive leaves into smoothies.
However the leaves are bitter, because of the antioxidants, which can make them hard to eat, or the tea unpalatable.
Olive leaf extract has also been added to bread and other baked goods. Researchers find this improves the level of antioxidants in these products and people say the foods tasted better.
Olive leaves can taste bitter, which can put people off. But you can bake the extract into bread. Repina Valeriya/Shutterstock Is olive leaf extract toxic?
No, there seem to be no reported toxic effects of eating or drinking olive leaf extract.
It appears safe up to 1g a day, according to studies that have used olive leaf extract. However, there are no official guidelines about how much is safe to consume.
There have been reports of potential toxicity if taken over 85mg/kg of body weight per day. For an 80kg adult, this would mean 6.8g a day, well above the dose used in the studies mentioned in this article.
Pregnant and breastfeeding women are recommended not to consume it as we don’t know if it’s safe for them.
What should I do?
If you have high blood pressure, diabetes or raised blood lipids you may see some benefit from taking olive leaf extract. But it is important you discuss this with your doctor first and not change any medications or start taking olive leaf extract until you have spoken to them.
But there are plenty of antioxidants in all plant foods, and you should try to eat a wide variety of different coloured plant foods. This will allow you to get a range of nutrients and antioxidants.
Olive leaf and its extract is not going to be a panacea for your health if you’re not eating a healthy diet and following other health advice.
Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Older adults need another COVID-19 vaccine
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
What you need to know
- The CDC recommends people 65 and older and immunocompromised people receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring—if at least four months have passed since they received a COVID-19 vaccine.
- Updated COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting against severe illness, hospitalization, death, and long COVID.
- The CDC also shortened the isolation period for people who are sick with COVID-19.
Last week, the CDC said people 65 and older should receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring. The recommendation also applies to immunocompromised people, who were already eligible for an additional dose.
Older adults made up two-thirds of COVID-19-related hospitalizations between October 2023 and January 2024, so enhancing protection for this group is critical.
The CDC also shortened the isolation period for people who are sick with COVID-19, although the contagiousness of COVID-19 has not changed.
Read on to learn more about the CDC’s updated vaccination and isolation recommendations.
Who is eligible for another COVID-19 vaccine this spring?
The CDC recommends that people ages 65 and older and immunocompromised people receive an additional dose of the updated COVID-19 vaccine this spring—if at least four months have passed since they received a COVID-19 vaccine. It’s safe to receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna, or Novavax, regardless of which COVID-19 vaccines you received in the past.
Updated COVID-19 vaccines are available at pharmacies, local clinics, or doctor’s offices. Visit Vaccines.gov to find an appointment near you.
Under- and uninsured adults can get the updated COVID-19 vaccine for free through the CDC’s Bridge Access Program. If you’re over 60 and unable to leave your home, call the Aging Network at 1-800-677-1116 to learn about free at-home vaccination options.
What are the benefits of staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines?
Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines prevents severe illness, hospitalization, death, and long COVID.
Additionally, the CDC says staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines is a safer and more reliable way to build protection against COVID-19 than getting sick from COVID-19.
What are the new COVID-19 isolation guidelines?
According to the CDC’s general respiratory virus guidance, people who are sick with COVID-19 or another common respiratory illness, like the flu or RSV, should isolate until they’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication and their symptoms improve.
After that, the CDC recommends taking additional precautions for the next five days: wearing a well-fitting mask, limiting close contact with others, and improving ventilation in your home if you live with others.
If you’re sick with COVID-19, you can infect others for five to 12 days, or longer. Moderately or severely immunocompromised patients may remain infectious beyond 20 days.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
10almonds Subcribers Take The Wheel!
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
❓ Q&A With 10almonds Subscribers!
Q: What kind of salt is best for neti pots?
A: Non-iodised salt is usually recommended, but really, any human-safe salt is fine. By this we mean for example:
- Sodium chloride (like most kitchen salts),
- Potassium chloride (as found in “reduced sodium” kitchen salts), or
- Magnesium sulfate (also known as epsom salts).
Q: You talked about spearmint as reducing testosterone levels, what about ginseng for increasing them?
A: Hormones are complicated and often it’s not a simple matter of higher or lower levels! It can also be a matter of…
- how your body converts one thing into another
- how your body responds (or not) to something according to how the relevant hormone’s receptors are doing
- …and whether there’s anything else blocking those receptors.
All this to say: spearmint categorically is an anti-androgen, but the mechanism of action remains uncertain.
Panax ginseng, meanwhile, is one of the most well-established mysteries in herbal medicine.
Paradoxically, it seems to improve both male and female hormonal regulation, despite being more commonly associated with the former.
- It doesn’t necessarily increase or decrease testosterone or estrogen levels (but it can, even if indirectly)
- It does improve sexual function
- …and alleviates symptoms associated with conditions as varied as:
- Late-onset hypogonadism (common for men during the andropause)
- Benign prostate hyperplasia (again common for men during the andropause)
- …and also counteracts unwanted side-effects of finasteride. Finasteride is often taken by men as a hair loss remedy or, less often but critically, in the case of an enlarged prostate.
But it also…
- Alleviates symptoms of PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome, which effects around 20% of women)
- May even be an effective treatment for PCOS (rat model only so far)
- It also may improve female reproductive fertility more generally (the studies are down to fruit flies now though)
Bottom line: Panax ginseng is popularly taken to improve natural hormone function, a task at which it appears to excel.
Scientists are still working out exactly how it does the many things it appears to do.
Progress has been made, and it clearly is science rather than witchcraft, but there are still far more unanswered questions than resolved ones!
Q: I like that the quizzes (I’ve done two so far) give immediate results , with no “give us your email to get your results”. Thanks!
A: You’re welcome! That’s one of the factors that influences what things we include here! Our mission statement is “to make health and productivity crazy simple”, and the unwritten part of that is making sure to save your time and energy wherever we reasonably can!
Q: Do you know if adrafanil is as good as modafinil? It seems to be a lot cheaper for the same result?
A: Adrafinil is the pro-drug of modafinil. What this means is that if you take it, your own liver will use it to make modafinil inside you. So the end result is chemically the same drug.
As to whether it’s as good, it depends what you need. It’s worth noting that anything that taxes liver function can be harmful if you take too much, and/or your liver is already strained for some reason.
If in doubt, consult a doctor! And if it’s something that’s accessible to you, a recent lipids test (a kind of blood test that checks your liver health) is always a good thing to have.
Q: Would love to see your take on polyphasic sleep!
A: Watch this space
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
