Food for Thought – by Lorraine Perretta
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What are “brain foods”? If you think for a moment, you can probably list a few. What this book does is better.
As well as providing the promised 50 recipes (which themselves are varied, good, and easy), Perretta explains the science of very many brain-healthy ingredients. Not just that, but also the science of a lot of brain-unhealthy ingredients. In the latter case, probably things you already knew to stay away from, but still, it’s a good reminder of one more reason why.
Nor does she merely sort things into brain-healthy (or brain-unhealthy, or brain-neutral), but rather she gives lists of “this for memory” and “this against depression” and “this for cognition” and “this against stress” and so forth.
Perhaps the greatest value of this book is in that; her clear explanations with science that’s simplified but not dumbed down. The recipes are definitely great too, though!
Bottom line: if you’d like to eat more for brain health, this book will give you many ways of doing so
Click here to check out Food for Thought, and upgrade your recipes!
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Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
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Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
Yesterday, we asked you for your opinions on antidepressants, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- Just over half of respondents said “They clearly help people, but should not be undertaken lightly”
- Just over a fifth of respondents said “They may help some people, but the side effects are alarming”
- Just under a sixth of respondents said “They’re a great way to correct an imbalance of neurochemicals”
- Four respondents said “They are no better than placebo, and are more likely to harm”
- Two respondents said “They merely mask the problem, and thus don’t really help”
So what does the science say?
❝They are no better than placebo, and are more likely to harm? True or False?❞
True or False depending on who you are and what you’re taking. Different antidepressants can work on many different systems with different mechanisms of action. This means if and only if you’re not taking the “right” antidepressant for you, then yes, you will get only placebo benefits:
- Placebo Effect in the Treatment of Depression and Anxiety ← randomly assigned antidepressants are, shockingly, luck of the draw in usefulness
- Antidepressants versus placebo in major depression: an overview ← “wow this science is messy”
- Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs: a systematic review and network meta-analysis ← “oh look, it makes a difference which antidepressant we give to people”
Rather than dismissing antidepressants as worthless, therefore, it is a good idea to find out (by examination or trial and error) what kind of antidepressant you need, if you indeed do need such.
Otherwise it is like getting a flu shot and being surprised when you still catch a cold!
❝They merely mask the problem, and thus don’t really help: True or False?❞
False, categorically.
The problem in depressed people is the depressed mood. This may be influenced by other factors, and antidepressants indeed won’t help directly with those, but they can enable the person to better tackle them (more on this later).
❝They may help some people, but the side-effects are alarming: True or False?❞
True or False depending on more factors than we can cover here.
Side-effects vary from drug to drug and person to person, of course. As does tolerability and acceptability, since to some extent these things are subjective.
One person’s dealbreaker may be another person’s shrugworthy minor inconvenience at most.
❝They’re a great way to correct an imbalance of neurochemicals: True or False?❞
True! Contingently.
That is to say: they’re a great way to correct an imbalance of neurochemicals if and only if your problem is (at least partly) an imbalance of neurochemicals. If it’s not, then your brain can have all the neurotransmitters it needs, and you will still be depressed, because (for example) the other factors* influencing your depression have not changed.
*common examples include low self-esteem, poor physical health, socioeconomic adversity, and ostensibly bleak prospects for the future.
For those for whom the problem is/was partly a neurochemical imbalance and partly other factors, the greatest help the antidepressants give is getting the brain into sufficient working order to be able to tackle those other factors.
Want to know more about the different kinds?
Here’s a helpful side-by-side comparison of common antidepressants, what type they are, and other considerations:
Mind | Comparing Antidepressants
Want a drug-free approach?
You might like our previous main feature:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
Take care!
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The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
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In yesterday’s issue of 10almonds, we asked you “at what age do you think it’s important to start worrying about osteoporosis?”, and here’s the spread of answers you gave us:
The Bare-bones Truth About Osteoporosis
In yesterday’s issue of 10almonds, we asked you “at what age do you think it’s important to start worrying about osteoporosis?”, and here’s the spread of answers you gave us:
At first glance it may seem shocking that a majority of respondents to a poll in a health-focused newsletter think it’ll never be an issue worth worrying about, but in fact this is partly a statistical quirk, because the vote of the strongest “early prevention” crowd was divided between “as a child” and “as a young adult”.
This poll also gave you the option to add a comment with your vote. Many subscribers chose to do so, explaining your choices… But, interestingly, not one single person who voted for “never” had any additional thoughts to add.
We loved reading your replies, by the way, and wish we had room to include them here, because they were very interesting and thought-provoking.
Let’s get to the myths and facts:
Top myth: “you will never need to worry about it; drink a glass of milk and you’ll be fine!”
The body is constantly repairing itself. Its ability to do that declines with age. Until about 35 on average, we can replace bone mineral as quickly as it is lost. After that, we lose it by up to 1% per year, and that rate climbs after 50, and climbs even more steeply for those who go through (untreated) menopause.
Losing 1% per year might not seem like a lot, but if you want to live to 100, there are some unfortunate implications!
About that menopause, by the way… Because declining estrogen levels late in life contribute significantly to osteoporosis, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may be of value to many for the sake of bone health, never mind the more obvious and commonly-sought benefits.
On the topic of that glass of milk…
- Milk is a great 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 people are deficient in magnesium, because green leafy things don’t form as big a part of most people’s diets as they should.
See also: An update on magnesium and bone health
Next most common myth: “bone health is all about calcium”
We spoke a little above about the importance of vitamin D and magnesium for being able to properly use that. But potassium is also critical:
Read more: The effects of potassium on bone health
While we’re on the topic…
People think of collagen as being for skin health. And it is important for that, but collagen’s benefits (and the negative effects of its absence) go much deeper, to include bone health. We’ve written about this before, so rather than take more space today, we’ll just drop the link:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
Want to really maximize your bone health?
You might want to check out this well-sourced LiveStrong article:
Bone Health: Best and Worst Foods
(Teaser: leafy greens are in 2nd place, topped by sardines at #1—where do you think milk ranks?)
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Yoga Safety: Simple Guidelines
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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 was wondering whether there were very simple, clear bullet points or instructions on things to be wary of in Yoga.❞
That’s quite a large topic, and not one that lends itself well to being conveyed in bullet points, but first we’ll share the article you sent us when sending this question:
Tips for Avoiding Yoga Injuries
…and next we’ll recommend the YouTube channel @livinleggings, whose videos we feature here from time to time. She (Liv) has a lot of good videos on problems/mistakes/injuries to avoid.
Here’s a great one to get you started:
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The Good, The Bad, & The Vigorously Debated
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This week in health news sees some pretty varied topics:
One more reason to care about the gut-brain axis
Stroke is a top killer in much of the industrialized world, usually making it into the top-few list on a per-country basis. And, it’s rising in prevalence, too. This is partly because our longevity is increasing so age-related things kill us more often, statistically, than age-unrelated things. But that’s only part of the reason; another is that our lifestyle (on the national level) is becoming more conducive to stroke. Diet is a large contributor to that, and gut health has now been identified as a key factor.
What recent research has shown is that minutes after a stroke occurs, normal gut anatomy is disrupted, and cells responsible for gut barrier integrity are eroded, and bugs from the gut get into the blood, and arrive at the (newly damaged) brain vasculature, where the blood-brain barrier is often also compromised on account of the stroke.
Because of this, critical to reducing post-stroke neuroinflammation (something that makes stroke damage more severe and recovery a lot harder) is improving the gut’s ability to heal itself quickly.
This can be helped with a dose of Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1), but there are other things that can help or hinder, and those other things are modifiable by us as individuals in our lifestyle choices (e.g. a gut-healthy diet with plenty of fiber, and avoiding gut-unhealthy things like sugar and alcohol that feed C. albicans growths that will put roots through your intestines and make holes as they do), because the better/worse your gut barrier integrity is to start with, the easier/harder it will be for your gut to repair itself quickly:
Read in full: Healing the gut can reduce long-term impact of stroke
Related: Stop Sabotaging Your Gut
How about that seasonal lead-spiced hot drink?
Lead contamination in ground spices has become a bit of an issue, ground turmeric has had quite some flak in this regard, and now the spotlight is on cinnamon.
These reports, by the way, do not specify what kind of cinnamon (i.e. cassia vs Ceylon), however, clicking through to assorted sources and then doing our own digging finds that all cinnamon products we found listed as contaminated, were cassia cinnamon. This is unsurprising, as a) it’s cheaper b) it’s the kind most readily found on shelves in the US. That said, when it comes to Ceylon (sweet) cinnamon, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so that doesn’t mean they got the all-clear on lead contamination, but rather, that they haven’t received the same scrutiny as yet.
It’s worth noting that cinnamon sticks have been found to have less contamination than ground cinnamon, though.
It’s also worth noting that since some adulterated products have had lead added deliberately in increase the weight and darken the color, this is more likely to happen to cassia cinnamon than sweet cinnamon because cassia cinnamon is visibly darker, so adding a darkening agent to sweet cinnamon would just make it look like cassia (which no seller would want to do since cassia is the cheaper of the two).
Read in full: Why lead-tainted cinnamon products have turned up on shelves, and what questions consumers should ask
Related: Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier? ← this also covers toxicity issues, by the way
A matter of life and death
Assisted dying is currently legal in 10/40 US states, and Canada. Over in the UK, it’s being debated (and voted on) in Parliament today, at time of writing.
While bodily autonomy discussions are usually quite straightforward arguments between the very separate camps of
- “my body, my choice” vs
- “they shouldn’t be allowed to do that”,
…this one comes with a considerable middleground, because
- “people should have to right to end things without extra suffering and on their own terms”, and
- “many disabled people fear being placed in a position of having justify why they are not exercising their right to die when it might be cheaper and easier for others if they did”
…are positions with a lot of potential overlap.
In any case, we know most of our readers are in the US, but with a 10/40 split in US states (and some recent controversies in Canada), it’s likely a topic that’ll come up for most people at some point, so it’s good to understand it, and this is as good an opportunity as any:
Read in full: How would the assisted dying bill work and what issues might it create?
Related: Managing Your Mortality ← this talks about psychological/social considerations, as well as end-of-life care, palliative care (which is not quite the same thing!) and euthanasia in various forms, including the unofficial kind that you might want to be aware of if you want to avoid that happening.
Take care!
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The Dopa-Bean
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Mucuna pruriens, also called the “magic velvet bean”, is an established herbal drug used for the management of male infertility, nervous disorders, and also as an aphrodisiac:
The Magic Velvet Bean of Mucuna pruriens
How it works is more interesting than that, though.
It’s about the dopamine
M. pruriens contains levodopa (L-dopa). That’s right, the same as the dopaminergic medication most often prescribed for Parkinson’s disease. Furthermore, it might even be better than synthetic L-dopa, because:
❝M. pruriens seed extract demonstrated acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity, while synthetic L-dopa enhanced the activity of the enzyme. It can be concluded that the administration of M. pruriens seed might be effective in protecting the brain against neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
M. pruriens seed extract containing L-dopa has shown less acetylcholinesterase activity stimulation compared with L-dopa, suggesting that the extract might have a superior benefit for use in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.❞
~ Dr. Narisa Kamkaen et al.
Indeed, it has been tested specifically in (human!) Parkinson’s disease patients, which RCT found:
❝The rapid onset of action and longer on time without concomitant increase in dyskinesias on mucuna seed powder formulation suggest that this natural source of l-dopa might possess advantages over conventional l-dopa preparations in the long term management of Parkinson’s disease❞
~ Dr. Regina Katzenschlager et al.
Read more: Mucuna pruriens in Parkinson’s disease: a double-blind clinical and pharmacological study
Beyond Parkinson’s disease
M. pruriens has also been tested and found beneficial in cases of disease other than Parkinson’s, thus:
Mucuna pruriens in Parkinson’s and in some other diseases: recent advancement and future prospective
…but the science is less well-established for things not generally considered related to dopamine, such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiometabolic disorders.
Note, however, that the science for it being neuroprotective is rather stronger.
Against depression
Depression can have many causes, and (especially on a neurological level) diverse presentations. As such, sometimes what works for one person’s depression won’t touch another person’s, because the disease and treatment are about completely different neurotransmitter dysregulations. So, if a person’s depression is due to a shortage of serotonin, for example, then perking up the dopamine won’t help much, and vice versa. See also:
Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
When it comes to M. pruriens and antidepressant activity, then predictably it will be more likely to help if your depression is due to too little dopamine. Note that this means that even if your depression is dopamine-based, but the problem is with your dopamine receptors and not the actual levels of dopamine, then this may not help so much, depending on what else you have going on in there.
The science for M. pruriens and depression is young, and we only found non-human animal studies so far, for example:
In summary
It’s good against Parkinson’s in particular and is good against neurodegeneration in general.
It may be good against depression, depending on the kind of depression you have.
Is it safe?
That’s a great question! And the answer is: it depends. For most people, in moderation, it should be fine (but, see our usual legal/medical disclaimer). Definitely don’t take it if you have bipolar disorder or any kind of schizoid/psychotic disorder; it is likely to trigger a manic/psychotic episode if you do.
For more on this, we discussed it (pertaining to L-dopa in general, not M. pruriens specifically) at greater length here:
An Accessible New Development Against Alzheimer’s ← scroll down to the heading that reads “Is there a catch?”
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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Stop Pain Spreading
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Put Your Back Into It (Or Don’t)!
We’ve written before about Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!), and today we’re going to tackle a particular aspect of chronic pain management.
- It’s a thing where the advice is going to be “don’t do this”
- And if you have chronic pain, you will probably respond “yep, I do that”
However, it’s definitely a case of “when knowing isn’t the problem”, or at the very least, it’s not the whole problem.
Stop overcompensating and address the thing directly
We all do it, whether in chronic pain, or just a transient injury. But we all need to do less of it, because it causes a lot of harm.
Example: you have pain in your right knee, so you sit, stand, walk slightly differently to try to ease that pain. It works, albeit marginally, at least for a while, but now you also have pain in your left hip and your lumbar vertebrae, because of how you leaned a certain way. You adjust how you sit, stand, walk, to try to ease both sets of pain, and before you know it, now your neck also hurts, you have a headache, and you’re sure your digestion isn’t doing what it should and you feel dizzy when you stand. The process continues, and before long, what started off as a pain in one knee has now turned your whole body into a twisted aching wreck.
What has happened: the overcompensation due to the original pain has unduly stressed a connected part of the body, which we then overcompensate for somewhere else, bringing down the whole body like a set of dominoes.
For more on this: Understanding How Pain Can Spread
“Ok, but how? I can’t walk normally on that knee!”
We’re keeping the knee as an example here, but please bear in mind it could be any chronic pain and resultant disability.
Note: if you found the word “disability” offputting, please remember: if it adversely affects your abilities, it is a disability. Disabilities are not something that only happen to other people! They will happen to most of us at some point!
Ask yourself: what can you do, and what can’t you do?
For example:
- maybe you can walk, but not normally
- maybe you can walk normally, but not without great pain
- maybe you can walk normally, but not at your usual walking pace
First challenge: accept your limitations. If you can’t walk at your usual walking pace without great pain and/or throwing your posture to the dogs, then walk more slowly. To Hell with societal expectations that it shouldn’t take so long to walk from A to B. Take the time you need.
Second challenge: accept help. It doesn’t have to be help from another person (although it could be). It might be accepting the help of a cane, or maybe even a wheelchair for “flare-up” days. Society, especially American society which is built on ideas of self-sufficiency, has framed a lot of such options as “giving up”, but if they help you get about your day while minimizing doing further harm to your body, then they can be good and even health-preserving things. Same goes for painkillers if they help you from doing more harm to your body by balling up tension in a part of your body in a way that ends up spreading out and laying ruin to your whole body.
Speaking of which:
How Much Does It Hurt? Get The Right Help For Your Pain
After which, you might want to check out:
The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
and
Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief
Third challenge: deserves its own section, so…
Do what you can
If you have chronic pain (or any chronic illness, really), you are probably fed up of hearing how this latest diet will fix you, or yoga will fix you, and so on. But, while these things may not be miracle cures…
- A generally better diet really will lessen symptoms and avoid flare-ups (a low-inflammation diet is a great start for lessening the symptoms of a lot of chronic illnesses)
- Doing what exercise you can, being mindful of your limitations yes but still keeping moving as much as possible, will also prevent (or at least slow) deterioration. Consider consulting a physiotherapist for guidance (a doctor will more likely just say “rest, take it easy”, whereas a physiotherapist will be able to give more practical advice).
- Getting good sleep may be a nightmare in the case of chronic pain (or other chronic illnesses! Here’s to those late night hyperglycemia incidents for Type 1 Diabetics that then need monitoring for the next few hours while taking insulin and hoping it goes back down) but whatever you can do to prioritize it, do it.
Want to read more?
We reviewed a little while ago a great book about this; the title sounds like a lot of woo, but we promise the content is extremely well-referenced science:
…and if your issue is back pain specifically, we highly recommend:
Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection – by Dr. John Sarno
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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