Science of HIIT – by Ingrid Clay
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We previously reviewed another book in this series, Science of Yoga. This one’s about HIIT: High Intensity Interval Training!
We’ve written about HIIT before too, but our article doesn’t have the same amount of room as a book, so…
This one lays out 90 key HIIT exercises that you can do at home without special equipment. By “without special equipment”, we mean: there are a few exercises that use dumbbells, but if you don’t want to get/use dumbbells, you can improvize (e.g. with water bottles as weights) or skip those. All the rest require just your body!
The illustrations are clear and the explanations excellent. The book also dives into (as the title promises) the science of HIIT, and why it works the way it does to give results that can’t be achieved with other forms of exercise.
Bottom line: if you’ve been wanting to do HIIT but have not yet found a way of doing it that suits your lifestyle, this book gives many excellent options.
Click here to check out Science of HIIT, and level-up yours!
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Outlive – by Dr. Peter Attia
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We know, we know; this diet, that exercise, don’t smoke or drink, get decent sleep”—a lot of books don’t go beyond this level of advice!
What Dr. Attia offers is a multi-vector approach that covers the above and a lot more.
Themes of the book include:
- The above-mentioned things, of course
- Rethinking medicine for the age of chronic disease
- The pros and cons of…
- caloric restriction
- dietary restriction
- intermittent fasting
- Pre-emptive interventions for…
- specific common cause-of-death conditions
- specific common age-related degenerative conditions
- The oft-forgotten extra pillar of longevity: mental health
The last one in the list there is covered mostly in the last chapter of the book, but it’s there as a matter of importance, not as an afterthought. As Dr. Attia puts it, not only are you less likely to take care of your physical health if you are (for example) depressed, but also… “Longevity is meaningless if your life sucks!”
So, it’s important to do things that promote and maintain good physical and mental health.
Bottom line: if you’re interested in happy, healthy, longevity, this is a book for you.
Click here to check out Dr. Attia’s “Outlive” on Amazon today!
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Most People Who Start GLP-1 RAs Quit Them Within A Year (Here’s Why)
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Specifically, 54% quit within one year, with that number rising to 72% within two years.
We first wrote about GLP-1 receptor agonists (i.e. semaglutide drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy) a couple of years ago when popularity was just beginning to take off:
However, as we had room only to touch briefly on the side effects and what happens when you stop taking it, you might also want to check out:
What happens when I stop taking a drug like Ozempic or Mounjaro?
…and:
Notwithstanding all this information, there’s a lot of science that has still yet to be done. If you’re a regular 10almonds reader, you’ll be familiar with our research review articles—this one was more of a non-research review, i.e. looking at the great absence of evidence in certain areas, and the many cases of research simply not asking the right questions, for example:
❝Of the four studies that actually looked at the macros (unlike most studies), they found that on average, protein intake decreased by 17.1%. Which is a big deal!
It’s an especially big deal, because while protein’s obviously important for everyone, it’s especially important for anyone trying to lose weight, because muscle mass is a major factor in metabolic base rate—which in turn is much important for fat loss/maintenance than exercise, when it comes to how many calories we burn by simply existing.
A reasonable hypothesis, therefore, is that one of the numerous reasons people who quit GLP-1 agonists immediately put fat back on, is because they probably lost muscle mass in amongst their weight loss, meaning that their metabolic base rate will have decreased, meaning that they end up more disposed to put on fat than before.❞
Read in full: Semaglutide’s Surprisingly Unexamined Effects ← there are a lot more (equally concerning) items discussed in this article
Why people quit GLP-1 RAs
There was a large (n=125,474) study of US adults. The average age was about 54 years, and about 65% were female.
From the total data pool (i.e. not narrowing it down by demographic), 54% stopped within a year, and 72% within two years.
The factors most associated with discontinuation were:
- age above 65 years
- not having type 2 diabetes
The main reasons given for discontinuation were:
- High costs: self-explanatory, but it’s worth noting that people who stopped for this reason were more likely to restart later.
- Adverse side effects: the most common ones were nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, and loss of appetite. Rarer, but more seriously, side effects included: pancreatitis (severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting), gallbladder issues (gallstones, cholecystitis), kidney problems, severe allergic reactions (rash, swelling, difficulty breathing), hypoglycemia, especially if taken with insulin or other diabetes medications, changes in vision (worsening diabetic retinopathy), and an increased heart rate.
- Disappointingly little weight loss: the researchers noted that GLP-1 RA results are “heterogenous”, meaning, they differ a lot. For those for whom it didn’t work, quitting was more likely, for obvious reasons. See also: 10 Mistakes To Sabotage Your Ozempic Progress
- Successful weight loss: while it is widely known that if one stops taking GLP-1 RAs, weight regain is the usual next thing to happen, there are a lot of people who go onto GLP-1 RAs with the rationale “I’ll just use this to lose the weight, and then I’ll keep the weight off with my diet and lifestyle”. Which sounds reasonable, but because of the specific mechanisms of actions of GLP-1 RAs, it simply doesn’t work that way (and, as we mentioned above, there are reasons that you may, after stopping taking GLP-1 RAs, be more disposed to put weight on than you were before you started). So, by the best of current science (which admittedly is not amazing when it comes to this topic), it does seem that taking GLP-1 RAs is a lifetime commitment.
You can read the study itself here:
Want to get similar results, without GLP-1 RAs?
Then check out:
5 Ways To Naturally Boost The “Ozempic Effect” ← this is about natural ways of doing similar hormone-hacking to what GLP-1 RAs do
and
Ozempic vs Five Natural Supplements ← this is about metabolism-tweaking supplements
and
Hack Your Hunger ← this is about appetite management
Take care!
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Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal
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Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
Piperine, a compound found in Piper nigrum (black pepper, to its friends), has many health benefits. It’s included as a minor ingredient in some other supplements, because it boosts bioavailability. In its form as a kitchen spice, it’s definitely a superfood.
What does it do?
First, three things that generally go together:
These things often go together for the simple reason that oxidative stress, inflammation, and cancer often go together. In each case, it’s a matter of cellular wear-and-tear, and what can mitigate that.
For what it’s worth, there’s generally a fourth pillar: anti-aging. This is again for the same reason. That said, black pepper hasn’t (so far as we could find) been studied specifically for its anti-aging properties, so we can’t cite that here as an evidence-based claim.
Nevertheless, it’s a reasonable inference that something that fights oxidation, inflammation, and cancer, will often also slow aging.
Special note on the anti-cancer properties
We noticed two very interesting things while researching piperine’s anti-cancer properties. It’s not just that it reduces cancer risk and slows tumor growth in extant cancers (as we might expect from the above-discussed properties). Let’s spotlight some studies:
It is selectively cytotoxic (that’s a good thing)
Piperine was found to be selectively cytotoxic to cancerous cells, while not being cytotoxic to non-cancerous cells. To this end, it’s a very promising cancer-sniper:
Piperine as a Potential Anti-cancer Agent: A Review on Preclinical Studies
It can reverse multi-drug resistance in cancer cells
P-glycoprotein, found in our body, is a drug-transporter that is known for “washing out” chemotherapeutic drugs from cancer cells. To date, no drug has been approved to inhibit P-glycoprotein, but piperine has been found to do the job:
Targeting P-glycoprotein: Investigation of piperine analogs for overcoming drug resistance in cancer
What’s this about piperine analogs, though? Basically the researchers found a way to “tweak” piperine to make it even more effective. They called this tweaked version “Pip1”, because calling it by its chemical name,
((2E,4E)-5-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-1-(6,7-dimethoxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolin-2(1 H)-yl)penta-2,4-dien-1-one)
…got a bit unwieldy.
The upshot is: Pip1 is better, but piperine itself is also good.
Other benefits
Piperine does have other benefits too, but the above is what we were most excited to talk about today. Its other benefits include:
- Neuroprotective effects (against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and more)
- Blood-sugar balancing / antidiabetic effect
- Good for gut microbiome diversity
- Heart health benefits, including cholesterol-balancing
- Boosts bioavailability of other nutrients/drugs
Enjoy!
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Smart Sex – by Dr. Emily Morse
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First, what this isn’t: this isn’t a mere book of sex positions and party tricks, nor is it a book of Cosmo-style “drive your man wild by using hot sauce as lube” advice.
What it offers instead, is a refreshingly mature take on sex, free from the “teehee” titillations and blushes that many books of the genre go for.
Dr. Emily Morse outlines five pillars of sex:
- Embodiment
- Health
- Collaboration
- Self-knowledge
- Self-acceptance
…and talks about each of them in detail, and how we can bring them together. And, of course, how we or our partner(s) could accidentally sabotage ourselves or each other, and the conversations we can (and should!) have, to work past that.
She also, critically, and this is a big source of value in the book, looks at “pleasure thieves”: stress, trauma, and shame. The advice for overcoming these is not “don’t worry; be happy” but rather is actual practical steps one can take.
The style throughout is direct and unpatronizing. Since the advice within pertains to everyone who has and/or wants an active sex life, very little is divided by gender etc.
There is some attention given to anatomy and physiology, complete with clear diagrams. Honestly, most people could benefit from these, because most people’s knowledge of the relevant anatomy stopped with a very basic high school text book diagram that missed a lot out.
Bottom line: this book spends more time on what’s between your ears than what’s between your legs, and yet is very comprehensive in all areas. Everyone has something to gain from this one.
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Gut – by Dr. Giulia Enders
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On account of being an organ (or rather, a system of organs) whose functions are almost entirely autonomic, most of us don’t think about our gut much. We usually know there’s acid in the stomach, and we usually know there are “good and bad” gut bacteria. But what of the rest of what goes on?
For anyone who has a hazy half-remembered knowledge from school, this will serve as not only a reminder, but a distinct upgrade in knowledge.
Dr. Giuliua Enders talks us through not just the processes of what goes on, but, as a medical doctor, also many instances of what can go wrong, for example:
- Why do some people’s bodies mistake nuts for a deadly threat (and consequently, accidentally elevate them to the status of actually becoming a deadly threat)?
- Why are some people lactose-intolerant, and why do food intolerances often pop up later with age?
- Why do constipation and diarrhoea happen?
- Why is it that stress can cause stomach ulcers?
The style of writing is light and easy-reading, and the illustrations are clear too. This is a very accessible book that doesn’t assume prior knowledge, and also doesn’t skimp on the scientific explanations—there’s no dumbing down here.
Bottom line: knowing what goes on in our gut as akin to knowing what goes on under the hood of a car. A lot of the time we don’t need to know, but knowing can make a big difference from time to time, and that’s when you’ll wish you’d learned!
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Goji Berries vs Cherries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing goji berries to cherries, we picked the goji berries.
Why?
Looking at the macros first, goji berries have more protein, fiber, and carbs, as well as the lower glycemic index, although cherries are great too. Still, a clear and easy win here.
In the category of vitamins, goji berries have more of vitamins A and C, while cherries have more of vitamin K; in the other vitamins these two fruits are close enough to equal that variants in what kind of cherry it is will push it slightly one way or the other. However, it’s worth noting that goji berries have 1,991% more vitamin A and 16,033% more vitamin C, while cherries have only 20% more vitamin K. So, all in all, another clear win for goji berries.
When it comes to minerals, goji berries have more calcium and iron, while cherries have more copper. Again, the margins of difference are very much in goji berries’ favor, with 1,088% more calcium and 2,025% more iron, while cherries have 35% more copper. So, again, a win for goji berries.
The polyphenol contents of cherries differ far too much to comment here, but as a general rule of thumb, goji berries have more antioxidant powers than cherries, but cherries are also excellent for this.
In short, enjoy either or both, but goji berries are the more nutritionally dense!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Take care!
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