Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer
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.
Dr. Amy Dee, pharmacist and cancer survivor herself, lays out the best options for anticancer fruits:
The fruits
Without further ado, they are:
- Kiwi: promotes cancer cell death while sparing healthy cells
- Plums & peaches: an interesting choice to list these similar fruits together as one item, but they both also induce cell death in cancer cells while sparing healthy ones
- Dragon fruit: this does the same, while also inhibiting cancer cell growth
- Figs: these have antitumor effects specifically, while removing carcinogens too, and additionally sensitizing cancer cells to light therapy
- cranberries: disrupt cancer cell adhesion, breaking down tumors, while protecting non-cancerous cells against DNA damage
- citrus fruits: inhibit tumor growth and kill cancer cells; regular consumption is also associated with a lower cancer risk (be warned though, grapefruit interacts with some medications)
- cherries: induce cancer cell death; protect healthy cells against DNA damage
- tomatoes: don’t often make it into lists of fruits, but lycopene reduces cancer risk, and slows the growth of cancer cells (10almonds note: watermelon has more lycopene than tomatoes, and is more traditionally considered a fruit in all respects, so could have taken the spot here).
We would also argue that apricots could have had a spot on the list, both for their lycopene content (comparable to tomatoes) and their botanical (and this phytochemical) similarities to peaches and plums.
For more information on each of these (she also talks about the different polyphenols and other nutrients that constitute the active compounds delivering these anticancer effects), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Food Choice & Cancer Risk: Eat To Beat Cancer
- Beat Cancer Kitchen: Deliciously Simple Plant-Based Anticancer Recipes (book)
Take care!
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:
Ice Baths: To Dip Or Not To Dip?
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.
Many Are Cold, But Few Are Frozen
We asked you for your (health-related) view of ice baths, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 31% said “ice baths are great for the health; we should take them”
- About 29% said “ice baths’ risks outweigh their few benefits”
- About 26% said “ice baths’ benefits outweigh their few risks”
- About 14% said “ice baths are dangerous and can kill you; best avoided”
So what does the science say?
Freezing water is very dangerous: True or False?
True! Water close to freezing point is indeed very dangerous, and can most certainly kill you.
Fun fact, though: many such people are still saveable with timely medical intervention, in part because the same hypothermia that is killing them also slows down the process* of death
Source (and science) for both parts of that:
Cold water immersion: sudden death and prolonged survival
*and biologically speaking, death is a process, not an event, by the way. But we don’t have room for that today!
(unless you die in some sudden violent way, such as a powerful explosion that destroys your brain instantly; then it’s an event)
Ice baths are thus also very dangerous: True or False?
False! Assuming that they are undertaken responsibly and you have no chronic diseases that make it more dangerous for you.
What does “undertaken responsibly” mean?
Firstly, the temperature should not be near freezing. It should be 10–15℃, which for Americans is 50–59℉.
You can get a bath thermometer to check this, by the way. Here’s an example product on Amazon.
Secondly, your ice bath should last no more than 10–15 minutes. This is not a place to go to sleep.
What chronic diseases would make it dangerous?
Do check with your doctor if you have any doubts, as no list we make can be exhaustive and we don’t know your personal medical history, but the main culprits are:
- Cardiovascular disease
- Hypertension
- Diabetes (any type)
The first two are for heart attack risk; the latter is because diabetes can affect core temperature regulation.
Ice baths are good for the heart: True or False?
True or False depending on how they’re done, and your health before starting.
For most people, undertaking ice baths responsibly, repeated ice bath use causes the cardiovascular system to adapt to better maintain homeostasis when subjected to thermal shock (i.e. sudden rapid changes in temperature).
For example: Respiratory and cardiovascular responses to cold stress following repeated cold water immersion
And because that was a small study, here’s a big research review with a lot of data; just scroll to where it has the heading“Specific thermoregulative adaptations to regular exposure to cold air and/or cold water exposure“ for many examples and much discussion:
Health effects of voluntary exposure to cold water: a continuing subject of debate
Ice baths are good against inflammation: True or False?
True! Here’s one example:
Uric acid and glutathione levels (important markers of chronic inflammation) are also significantly affected:
Uric acid and glutathione levels during short-term whole body cold exposure
Want to know more?
That’s all we have room for today, but check out our previous “Expert Insights” main feature looking at Wim Hof’s work in cryotherapy:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?
Enjoy!
Share This Post
Buckwheat vs Bulgur Wheat – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing buckwheat to bulgur, we picked the buckwheat.
Why?
First, some things to know up front:
- Bulgur wheat is a kind of cracked wheat product. As such, it contains wheat, and yes, gluten.
- Buckwheat is not a wheat, nor even a grass, but a flowering plant. Buckwheat is as related to wheat as a lionfish is to a lion. It does not contain gluten.
- Buckwheat can be purchased whole or hulled. We went with whole. If you go with hulled, the percentages of vitamins and minerals will be relatively higher, and/but this will be because you lost the fibrous husk, so they’ll be commensurately lower in fiber. If you were to go with hulled, we’d still pick it over bulgur wheat though, just for a different reason (as in that case, the vitamin and mineral contents would be more overwhelmingly in buckwheat’s favor, even though it’d have less fiber).
Ok, now that those things are covered…
Looking at the macronutrients, there’s not a lot between them, except that buckwheat has the much lower glycemic index (this is only the case if you got whole, not hulled—if you got hulled, the glycemic index would be about the same).
In terms of vitamins, buckwheat has more of vitamins B2, B5, B9, E, K, and choline, while bulgur wheat technically has more vitamin A, but the numbers are tiny; a cup of bulgur wheat will give you 0.12% of the RDA. So, an easy win (functionally: 5:0) for buckwheat.
When it comes to minerals, buckwheat has more copper, magnesium, potassium, and selenium, while bulgur wheat has more calcium and manganese. They’re equal on iron and phosphorus, making this a 4:2 win for buckwheat.
Adding up the categories makes this a clear win for buckwheat!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Take care!
Share This Post
Tooth Remineralization: How To Heal Your Teeth Naturally
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.
Dr. Michelle Jorgensen, dentist, explains:
The bare-bones details:
Teeth cannot be regrown (yet!) but can be remineralized, which simply involves restoring lost minerals. When we’re talking about health, “minerals” is usually used to mean elemental minerals, like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, etc, but the specific mineral that’s needed here is hydroxyapatite (a calcium phosphate mineral, the same as is found in bones).
Not only can acids from food and bacteria dissolve the minerals from the teeth, but also, the body itself may extract minerals from the teeth if it needs them for other functions it considers more critical and/or more urgent.
Cavities occur when acids create porous holes in teeth by dissolving minerals, which allows bacteria to invade, which means more acid, and cavities.
Remineralization can be achieved by doing the following things:
- Use hydroxyapatite-based products (tooth powder, mouthwash).
- Improve gut health to ensure proper mineral absorption.
- Reduce acidic food and drink intake.
- Maintain good oral hygiene to prevent bacteria build-up.
- Eat foods rich in vitamins A, D, E, and K, which help direct minerals to teeth and bones.
For more on all of the above, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Less Common Oral Hygiene Options
- Fluoride Toothpaste vs Non-Fluoride Toothpaste – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
How Ibogaine Can Beat Buprenorphine For Beating Addictions
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
❝Questions?❞
It seems that this week, everyone was so satisfied with our information, that we received no questions! (If you sent one and we somehow missed it, please accept our apologies and do bring our attention to it)
However, we did receive some expert feedback that we wanted to share because it’s so informative:
❝I work at a detox rehab in Mexico, where we can use methods not legal in the United States. Therefore, while much of the linked articles had useful information, I’m in the “trenches” every day, and there’s some information I’d like to share that you may wish to share, with additional information:
- Buprenorphine is widely used and ineffective for addiction because it’s synthetic and has many adverse side effects. For heavy drug users it isn’t enough and they still hit the streets for more opioid, resulting in fentanyl deaths. Depending on length of usage and dose, it can take WEEKS to get off of, and it’s extremely difficult.
- Ibogaine is the medicine we use to detox people off opiates, alcohol, meth as well as my own specialty, bulimia. It’s psychoactive and it temporarily “resets” the brain to a pre-addictive state. Supplemented by behavior and lifestyle changes, as well as addressing the traumas that led to the addiction is extremely effective.
Our results are about 50%, meaning the client is free of the substance or behavior 1 year later. Ibogaine isn’t a “magic pill” or cure, it’s an opening tool that makes the difficult work of reclaiming one’s life easier.
Ibogaine is not something that should be done outside a medical setting. It requires an EKG to ensure the heart is healthy and doesn’t have prolonged QT intervals; also blood testing to ensure organs are functioning (especially the liver) and mineral levels such as magnetic and potassium are where they should be. It is important that this treatment be conducted by experienced doctors or practitioners, and monitoring vital signs constantly is imperative.
I’m taking time to compose this information because it needs to be shared that there is an option available most people have not heard about.❞
~ 10almonds reader (slightly edited for formatting and privacy)
Thank you for that! Definitely valuable information for people to know, and (if applicable for oneself or perhaps a loved one) ask about when it comes to local options.
We see it’s also being studied for its potential against other neurological conditions, too:
❝The combination of ibogaine and antidepressants produces a synergistic effect in reducing symptoms of psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, paranoia, anxiety, panic disorder, mania, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive–compulsive disorder. Though ibogaine and the antidepressant act in different pathways, together they provide highly efficient therapeutic responses compared to when each of the active agents is used alone.❞
Read more: Ibogaine and Their Analogs as Therapeutics for Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders
For those who missed it, today’s information about ibogaine was in response to our article:
Let’s Get Letting Go (Of These Three Things)
…which in turn referenced our previous main feature:
Which Addiction-Quitting Methods Work Best?
Take care!
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:
Want to sleep longer? Adding mini-bursts of exercise to your evening routine can help – new study
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.
Exercising before bed has long been discouraged as the body doesn’t have time to wind down before the lights go out.
But new research has found breaking up a quiet, sedentary evening of watching television with short bursts of resistance exercise can lead to longer periods of sleep.
Adults spend almost one third of the 24-hour day sleeping. But the quality and length of sleep can affect long-term health. Sleeping too little or waking often in the night is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Physical activity during the day can help improve sleep. However, current recommendations discourage intense exercise before going to bed as it can increase a person’s heart rate and core temperature, which can ultimately disrupt sleep.
Nighttime habits
For many, the longest period of uninterrupted sitting happens at home in the evening. People also usually consume their largest meal during this time (or snack throughout the evening).
Insulin (the hormone that helps to remove sugar from the blood stream) tends to be at a lower level in the evening than in the morning.
Together these factors promote elevated blood sugar levels, which over the long term can be bad for a person’s health.
Our previous research found interrupting evening sitting every 30 minutes with three minutes of resistance exercise reduces the amount of sugar in the bloodstream after eating a meal.
But because sleep guidelines currently discourage exercising in the hours before going to sleep, we wanted to know if frequently performing these short bursts of light activity in the evening would affect sleep.
Activity breaks for better sleep
In our latest research, we asked 30 adults to complete two sessions based in a laboratory.
During one session the adults sat continuously for a four-hour period while watching streaming services. During the other session, they interrupted sitting by performing three minutes of body-weight resistance exercises (squats, calf raises and hip extensions) every 30 minutes.
After these sessions, participants went home to their normal life routines. Their sleep that evening was measured using a wrist monitor.
Our research found the quality of sleep (measured by how many times they woke in the night and the length of these awakenings) was the same after the two sessions. But the night after the participants did the exercise “activity breaks” they slept for almost 30 minutes longer.
Identifying the biological reasons for the extended sleep in our study requires further research.
But regardless of the reason, if activity breaks can extend sleep duration, then getting up and moving at regular intervals in the evening is likely to have clear health benefits.
Time to revisit guidelines
These results add to earlier work suggesting current sleep guidelines, which discourage evening exercise before bed, may need to be reviewed.
As the activity breaks were performed in a highly controlled laboratory environment, future research should explore how activity breaks performed in real life affect peoples sleep.
We selected simple, body-weight exercises to use in this study as they don’t require people to interrupt the show they may be watching, and don’t require a large space or equipment.
If people wanted to incorporate activity breaks in their own evening routines, they could probably get the same benefit from other types of exercise. For example, marching on the spot, walking up and down stairs, or even dancing in the living room.
The key is to frequently interrupt evening sitting time, with a little bit of whole-body movement at regular intervals.
In the long run, performing activity breaks may improve health by improving sleep and post-meal blood sugar levels. The most important thing is to get up frequently and move the body, in a way the works best for a person’s individual household.
Jennifer Gale, PhD candidate, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago and Meredith Peddie, Senior Lecturer, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago
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:
What Your Brain Is Really Doing When You’re Doing “Nothing”
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.
Unless we are dead, our brain is never truly inactive. And it’s not just a matter of regulating autonomic functions, either…
Default Mode Network
When the brain is at rest but not necessarily asleep, the Default Mode Network (DMN) engages. This makes up for around 20% of the brain’s overall activity, and contributes to complex cognitive processes.
What constitutes “at rest”: the DMN activates when external tasks stop and is engaged during self-reflection, mind-wandering, and relaxed memory recall (i.e. reminiscing, rather than answering questions in a difficult test, for example).
As for its neurophysiology, the DMN is connected to the hippocampus and plays a key role in episodic, prospective, and semantic memory (memories of experiences, future plans, and general knowledge), as well as being involved in self-reflection, social cognition, and understanding others’ thoughts (theory of mind). The DMN thus also helps integrate memories and thoughts to create a cohesive internal narrative and sense of self.
However, it doesn’t work alone: the DMN interacts with other networks like the salience network, which switches attention to external stimuli. Disruptions between these networks are linked to psychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, depression), in various different ways depending on the nature of the disruption.
Sometimes, for some people in some circumstances, the option to disrupt the DMN is useful. For example, research shows that psilocybin disrupts the DMN, leading to changes in brain activity and potential therapeutic benefits for depression* and other psychiatric disorders by enhancing neuroplasticity.
*Essentially, kicking the brain out of the idling gear it got stuck in, and into action
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 to read:
- The Wandering Mind – by Dr. Michael Corballis ← a book, largely about the DMN and how to use it beneficially
- Taking A Trip Through The Evidence On Psychedelics ← for a shorter read, touching on psilocybin
Take care!
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:
