Popcorn vs Peanuts – Which is Healthier
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Our Verdict
When comparing air-popped popcorn to peanuts (without an allergy), we picked the peanuts.
Why?
Peanuts, if we were to list popular nuts in order of healthfulness, would not be near the top of the list. Many other nuts have more nutrients and fewer/lesser drawbacks.
But the comparison to popcorn shines a different light on it:
Popcorn has very few nutrients. It’s mostly carbs and fiber; it’s just not a lot of carbs because the manner of its consumption makes it a very light snack (literally). You can eat a bowlful and it was perhaps 30g. It has some small amounts of some minerals, but nothing that you could rely on it for. It’s mostly fresh air wrapped in fiber.
Peanuts, in contrast, are a much denser snack. High in calories yes, but also high in protein, their fats are mostly healthy, and they have not only a fair stock of vitamins and minerals, but also a respectable complement of beneficial phytochemicals: mostly assorted antioxidant polyphenols, but also oleic acid (as in olives, good for healthy triglyceride levels).
Another thing worth a mention is their cholesterol-reducing phytosterols (these reduce the absorption of dietary cholesterol, “good” and “bad”, so this is good for most people, bad for some, depending on the state of your cholesterol and what you ate near in time to eating the nuts)
Peanuts do have their clear downsides too: its phytic acid content can reduce the bioavailability of iron and zinc taken at the same time.
In summary: while popcorn’s greatest claim to dietary beneficence is its fiber content and that it’s close to being a “zero snack”, peanuts (eaten in moderation, say, the same 30g as the popcorn) have a lot to contribute to our daily nutritional requirements.
We do suggest enjoying other nuts though!
Read more: Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
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Sleep Tracking, For Five Million Nights
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5 Sleep Phenotypes, By Actual Science
You probably know people can be broadly divided into “early birds” and “night owls”:
Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment
…and then the term “hummingbird” gets used for a person who flits between the two.
That’s three animals so far. If you read a book we reviewed recently, specifically this one:
The Power of When – by Dr. Michael Breus
…then you may have used the guide within to self-diagnose your circadian rhythm type (chronotype) according to Dr. Breus’s system, which divides people into bears, lions, wolves, and dolphins.
That’s another four animals. If you have a FitBit, it can “diagnose” you with being those and/or a menagerie of others, such as giraffe, hedgehog, parrot, and tortoise:
How Fitbit Developed the Sleep Profile Experience (Part 2 – Sleep Animals)
Five million nights
A team of researchers recently took a step away from this veritable zoo of 11 different animals and counting, and used a sophisticated modelling system to create a spatial-temporal map of people’s sleep habits, and this map created five main “islands” that people’s sleep habits could settle on, or sometimes move from island to island.
Those “five million nights” by the way? It was actually 5,095,798 nights! You might notice that would take from the 2020s to the 15970s to complete, so this was rather a matter of monitoring 33,152 individuals between January and October of the same year. Between them, they got those 5,095,798 nights of sleep (or in some cases, nights of little or no sleep, but still, they were there for the nights).
The five main phenotypes that the researchers found were:
- What we think of as “normal” sleep. In this phenotype, people get about eight hours of uninterrupted sleep for at least six days in a row.
- As above for half the nights, but they only sleep for short periods of time in bouts of less than three hours the other half.
- As per normal sleep, but with one interrupted night per week, consisting of a 5 hour sleep period and then broken sleep for a few more hours.
- As per normal sleep generally, but with occasional nights in which long bouts of sleep are separated by a mid-sleep waking.
- Sleeping for very short periods of time every night. This phenotype was the rarest the researchers found, and represents extremely disrupted sleep.
As you might suspect, phenotype 1 is healthier than phenotype 5. But that’s not hugely informational, as the correlation between getting good sleep and having good health is well-established. So, what did the study teach us?
❝We found that little changes in sleep quality helped us identify health risks. Those little changes wouldn’t show up on an average night, or on a questionnaire, so it really shows how wearables help us detect risks that would otherwise be missed.❞
More specifically,
❝We found that the little differences in how sleep disruptions occur can tell us a lot. Even if these instances are rare, their frequency is also telling. So it’s not just whether you sleep well or not – it’s the patterns of sleep over time where the key info hides❞
…and, which gets to the absolute point,
❝If you imagine there’s a landscape of sleep types, then it’s less about where you tend to live on that landscape, and more about how often you leave that area❞
In other words: if your sleep pattern is not ideal, that’s one thing and it’d probably be good to address it, by improving your sleep. However, if your sleep pattern changes phenotype without an obvious known reason why, this may be considered an alarm bell warning of something else that needs addressing, which may be an underlying illness or condition—meaning it can be worthwhile being a little extra vigilant when it comes to regular health screenings, in case something new has appeared.
Want to read more?
You can read the paper in full here:
Five million nights: temporal dynamics in human sleep phenotypes
Take care!
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Omega-3 Mushroom Spaghetti
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The omega-3 is not the only healthy fat in here; we’re also going to have medium-chain triglycerides, as well as monounsaturates. Add in the ergothioneine from the mushrooms and a stack of polyphenols from, well, most of the ingredients, not to mention the fiber, and this comes together as a very healthy dish. There’s also about 64g protein in the entire recipe, so you do the math for how much that is per serving, depending on how big you want the servings to be.
You will need
- 1lb wholewheat spaghetti (or gluten-free equivalent, such as a legume-based pasta, if avoiding gluten/wheat)
- 12oz mushrooms, sliced (any non-poisonous edible variety)
- ½ cup coconut milk
- ½ onion, finely chopped
- ¼ cup chia seeds
- ¼ bulb garlic, minced (or more, if you like)
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tbsp lime juice
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Cook the spaghetti according to packet instructions, or your own good sense, aiming for al dente. When it’s done, drain it, and lastly rinse it (with cold water), and set it aside.
2) Heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the onion, cooking for 5 minutes
3) Add the garlic, mushrooms, and black pepper, cooking for another 8 minutes.
4) Add the coconut milk, lime juice, and chia seeds, stirring well and cooking for a further two minutes
5) Reheat the spaghetti by passing boiling water through it in a colander (the time it spent cold was good for it; it lowered the glycemic index)
6) Serve, adding the mushroom sauce to the spaghetti:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- The Magic of Mushrooms: “The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
- The Many Health Benefits of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out
Take care!
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Do Breathe – by Michael Williams
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Have you ever felt you could get everything in your life in order, if you could just get a little breathing room first?
Notwithstanding the title, this is mostly not a book about breathing exercises. It does cover that too, but there’s a lot more.
The author’s advices draw from a variety of high quality sources. Well-read readers will certainly recognise sections that are straight from David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”, and Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi’s “Flow”, for example, as well as Francesco Cirillo’s “Pomodoro Technique”, and James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”.
We also learn about how even simple yoga can help us, and good sleep, and a healthy diet.
In short, if you’ve been reading 10almonds for a while, you might not actually learn much new! But it’s very nice to have all these things in one book, for sure, and it’s a pleasant, easy read too.
Bottom line: if you’d like to streamline your life and not have to buy a whole stack of different books to do it, this book is a great composite that will enable you to get the job done efficiently.
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How To Really Look After Your Joints
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The Other Ways To Look After Your Joints
When it comes to joint health, most people have two quick go-to items:
- Stretching
- Supplements like omega-3 and glucosamine sulfate
Stretching, and specifically, mobility exercises, are important! We’ll have to do a main feature on these sometime soon. But for today, we’ll just say: yes, gentle daily stretches go a long way, as does just generally moving more.
And, those supplements are not without their merits. For example:
- Effect of omega-3 on painful symptoms of patients with osteoarthritis of the synovial joints: systematic review and meta-analysis
- Glucosamine sulfate in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis symptoms: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study using acetaminophen as a side comparator
Of those, glucosamine sulfate may have an extra benefit in now just alleviating the symptoms, but also slowing the progression of degenerative joint conditions (like arthritis of various kinds). This is something it shares with chondroitin sulfate:
Effect of glucosamine or chondroitin sulfate on the osteoarthritis progression: a meta-analysis
An unlikely extra use for the humble cucumber…
As it turns out, cucumber extract beats glucosamine and chondroitin by 200%, at 1/135th of the dose.
You read that right, and it’s not a typo. See for yourself:
Reduce inflammation, have happier joints
Joint pain and joint degeneration in general is certainly not just about inflammation; there is physical wear-and-tear too. But combatting inflammation is important, and turmeric, which we’ve done a main feature on before, is a potent helper in this regard:
See also: Keep Inflammation At Bay
(a whole list of tips for, well, keeping inflammation at bay)
About that wear-and-tear…
Your bones and joints are made of stuff, and that stuff needs to be replaced. As we get older, the body typically gets worse at replacing it in a timely and efficient fashion. We can help it do its job, by giving it more of the stuff it needs.
And what stuff is that?
Well, minerals like calcium and phosphorus are important, but a lot is also protein! Specifically, collagen. We did a main feature on this before, which is good, as it’d take us a lot of space to cover all the benefits here:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
Short version? People take collagen for their skin, but really, its biggest benefit is for our bones and joints!
Wrap up warmly and… No wait, skip that.
Writer’s anecdote: when I was young, my mother—her body already wracked with arthritis, along with post-polio syndrome—warned me that if I did not dress warmly, I would end up like her. In her mind, the cause of her arthritis was having spent too much time exposed to the elements. This is a popular myth, doubtlessly resulting from the fact that barometric changes can worsen the symptoms of already-extant arthritis, so it’s not a stretch to believe that wind and rain caused it. But, while it’s not a stretch, it’s also not scientific.
If you have arthritis, you may indeed “feel it in your bones” when the weather changes. But the remedy for that is not to try to fight it, but rather, to strengthen your body’s ability to respond to it.
The answer? Cryotherapy, with ice baths ranking top:
- Effects of an Exercise Program and Cold-Water Immersion Recovery in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA): Feasibility Study
- Effectiveness of home-based conventional exercise and cryotherapy on daily living activities in patients with knee osteoarthritis: A randomized controlled clinical trial
- Local Cryotherapy, Comparison of Cold Air and Ice Massage on Pain and Handgrip Strength in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Note that this can be just localized, so for example if the problem joints are your wrists, a washing-up bowl with water and ice will do just nicely.
Note also that, per that last study, a single session will only alleviate the pain, not the disease itself. For that (per the other studies) more sessions are required.
We did a main feature about cryotherapy a while back, and it explains how and why it works:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?
Take care!
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Pistachios vs Pecans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing pistachios to pecans, we picked the pistachios.
Why?
Firstly, the macronutrients: pistachios have twice as much protein and fiber. Pecans have more fat, though in both of these nuts the fats are healthy.
The category of vitamins is an easy win for pistachios, with a lot more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, and E. Especially the 8x vitamin A, 7x vitamin B6, 4x vitamin C, and 2x vitamin E, and as the percentages are good too, these aren’t small differences. Pecans, meanwhile, boast only a little more vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid, the one whose name means “it’s everywhere”, because that’s how easy it is to get it).
In terms of minerals, pistachios have more calcium, iron, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while pecans have more manganese and zinc. So, a fair win for pistachios on this one.
Adding up the three different kinds of win for pistachios means that *drumroll* pistachios win overall, and it’s not close.
As ever, do enjoy both though, because diversity is healthy!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Take care!
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The Silent Struggle – by L. William Ross-Child, MLC
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The vast majority of literature out there about ADHD is about children. And fair enough, there are enough popular misunderstandings of ADHD in children so it’s good those works exist… but what about adults?
Adults face different challenges than children, and have different responsibilities. People have different expectations. And even if you say you have ADHD… If you’re not behaving like a squirrel, they will often not accept this, much less understand it, because half the actual symptoms are not what most people think they are.
Ross-Child first lays out the neurobiological underpinnings of ADHD. This is a good place to start, because the physiology of it explains a lot of the other parts of it that can otherwise seem quite mystifying.
Thereafter, he looks one-by-one at the various cognitive and behavioral aspects of ADHD in adults, which will surely help the reader to better understand themself (or perhaps a loved one).
The next part of the book is given over to an exploration of ADHD and the differences it can make in the workplace, relationships (incl. ADHD and sex), as well as parenting, and how these things can all be navigated better by all concerned.
The style throughout is light and very readable, peppered with science made comprehensible. If there’s any flaw, it’s that there are only two pages of references in the bibliography—we’d have liked to have seen more.
All in all though, a really useful guide if you or a loved one has ADHD and you’d like strategies for working with (or around) this condition in a world not made to be kind to such.
Order your copy of “The Silent Struggle: Taking Charge of ADHD in Adults” from Amazon today!
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