It’s A Wrap
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We hope all our readers have had a great and healthy week! Here are some selections from health news from around the world:
A lack of transparency
Thousands of chemicals blanket-approved for food contact in packaging, under the FDA’s “Generally Recognized As Safe” umbrella, have been found in humans.
This highlights a gap in the safeguarding system, because the GRAS classification is given when there’s no known significant association with disease—but in this case, a problem can occur when the build-up in the blood and brain cause problems much later.
Read in full: Thousands of toxins from food packaging found in humans – research
Learn more: We Are Such Stuff As Bottles Are Made Of (It’s Not Fantastic To Be Plastic)
Cafestol for weight loss?
Most coffee intervention studies use instant coffee. Which is understandable; they are scientists on a budget, not coffee shop baristas. But, instant coffee is low in some of coffee’s important compounds, such as cafestol—which as it turns out, can lower not only overall body fat, but also (importantly!) visceral fat.
Read in full: 12-week coffee compound study shows promising results for weight and fat reduction in at-risk individuals
Learn more: The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
Doing something is better than doing nothing
While a lot of the bad news both locally and around the world can be infuriating and/or depressing, turning a blind eye may not be the best approach for dealing with it. This study was in teens, but it’s likely that the benefits are similar for other ages too:
Read in full: Racial justice activism, advocacy found to reduce depression, anxiety in some teens
Learn more: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
A ray of hope!
Sometimes, the topic of sun and sunscreens can seem like “damned if you do; damned if you don’t”, with regard to the harmful effects of the sun, and in some cases, potentially harmful effects of some sunscreen chemicals. We’ve argued ultimately in favor of sunscreens in this tug-of-war, but it’s nice to see improvements being made, in this case, with lignin-based sunscreen (a plant-based by-product of the pulp industry).
Read in full: Researchers create high-performing, eco-friendly sunscreen
Learn more: Who Screens The Sunscreens?
All about the pores
Researchers have identified a protein, and from that, a stack of protein fragments, that are involved in the formation of large pores. This is important, as it’s pointing to a means of relief for a lot of inflammatory diseases.
Read in full: Scientists unravel the process of pore formation in cells
Learn more: Why Do We Have Pores, And Could We Not?
Getting to the bottom of Crohn’s
If you have Crohn’s, or perhaps someone close to you has it, then you’ll be familiar with the common medical refrain of “we don’t know”. While this honesty is laudable, it’s not reassuring. So, it’s good that researchers are making progress in understanding why many people with Crohn’s may respond differently not only to lifestyle interventions, but also to various relevant drugs—allowing doctors to prescribe the right treatment for the right person.
Read in full: Patient-derived gut organoids reveal new insights into Crohn’s disease subtypes
Learn more: Diet Tips for Crohn’s Disease
Another carotenoid that holds back Alzheimer’s
Phytoene is a carotenoid that is found in many red, orange, or yellow foods, including tomatoes, carrots, apricots, red peppers, oranges, mandarins and passion fruit, among others. Researchers have found that it slows the onset of symptoms associated with the formation of amyloid plaques, by 30–40%, and increases longevity by 10–19%:
Read in full: Carotenoid phytoene shows potential in slowing Alzheimer’s plaque formation and increasing lifespan
Learn more: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It! ← this is about a different carotenoid, lutein, found mostly in dark green leafy vegetables, but it’s best to enjoy both 😎
Take care!
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Exercises for Aging-Ankles
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Can Ankles Deterioration be Stopped?
As we all know (or have experienced!), Ankle mobility deteriorates with age.
We’re here to argue that it’s not all doom and gloom!
(In fact, we’ve written about keeping our feet, and associated body parts, healthy here).
This video by “Livinleggings” (below) provides a great argument that yes, ankle deterioration can be stopped, or even reversed. It’s a must-watch for anyone from yoga enthusiasts to gym warriors who might be unknowingly crippling their ankle-health.
How We Can Prioritise Our Ankles
Poor ankle flexibility isn’t just an inconvenience – it’s a direct route to knee issues, hip hiccups, and back pain. More importantly, ankle strength is a core component of building overall mobility.
With 12 muscles in the ankle, it can be overwhelming to work out which to strengthen – and how. But fear not, we can prioritise three of the twelve: the calf duo (gastrocnemius and soleus) and the shin’s main muscle, the tibialis anterior.
The first step is to test yourself! A simple wall test reveals any hidden truths about your ankle flexibility. Go to the 1:55 point in the video to see how it’s done.
If you can’t do it, you’ve got work to be done.
If you read the book we recommended on great functional exercises for seniors, then you may already be familiar with some super ankle exercises.
Otherwise, these four ankle exercises are a great starting point:
How did you find that video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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The Good Skin Solution – by Shann Jones
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Not everyone knows that eczema is not just a skin condition; it’s an autoimmune condition. And thus to heal one’s skin, the gut is a good place to start.
This is not your average gut health book though, because it is focused on optimizing things for one’s skin… Although the author herself learned about this while helping her husband to battle an MRSA infection. In other words, a multi-fronted battle for sure.
The advices in this book are good for, as the subtitle promises, an assortment of other skin conditions too, including psoriasis, rosacea, and acne. She covers the usual bases, and recommends probiotics, of which she’s particularly keen to praise kefir, while advising against the use of antibiotics unless absolutely necessary—something we’ve talked about from time to time at 10almonds, too.
Not content to merely cover those things, she also talks allergies, and walking the fine line between avoiding triggers and developing hypersensitivity by treating to live in a perfectly clean bubble.
Ultimately, she offers “7 daily habits”, 3 of which involve goat’s milk kefir, that’s how keen on it she is. So if you’re vegan, probably this book isn’t as good value, however much it discusses the health woes that can be caused and/or exacerbated by drinking cow’s milk.
The style is very light and personable, which makes for easy reading, more like one friend talking to another, than a scientific textbook.
Bottom line: if you’d like healthier skin, are interested in dietary tweaks and homemade soaps, and have no aversion to goat’s milk and/or kefir, then this book is full of fascinating pointers.
Click here to check out The Good Skin Solution, and who knows, maybe you’ll find it’s the G.O.A.T!
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The Distracted Mind – by Dr. Adam Gazzaley and Dr. Larry Rosen
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Yes, yes, we know, unplug once in a while. But what else do this highly-qualified pair of neuroscientists have to offer?
Rather than being a book for the sake of being a book, with lots of fluff and the usual advice about single-tasking, the authors start with a reframe:
Neurologically speaking, the hit of dopamine we get when looking for information is the exact same as the hit of dopamine that we, a couple of hundred thousand years ago, got when looking for nuts and berries.
- When we don’t find them, we become stressed, and search more.
- When we do find them, we are encouraged and search more nearby, and to the other side of nearby, and near around, to find more.
But in the case of information (be it useful information or celebrity gossip or anything in between), the Internet means that’s always available now.
So, we jitter around like squirrels, hopping from one to the next to the next.
A strength of this book is where it goes from there. Specifically, what evidence-based practices will actually keep our squirrel-brain focused… and which are wishful thinking for anyone who lives in this century.
Bringing original research from their own labs, as well as studies taken from elsewhere, the authors present a science-based toolkit of genuinely useful resources for actual focus.
Bottom line: if you think you could really optimize your life if you could just get on track and stay on track, this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Distracted Mind, and get yours to focus!
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The Ultimate Booster
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Winning The Biological Arms Race
The human immune system (and indeed, other immune systems, but we are all humans here, after all) is in a constant state of war with pathogens, and that war is a constant biological arms race:
- We improve our defenses and destroy the attackers; the 1% of pathogens that survived now “know” how to counter that trick.
- The pathogens wreak havoc in our systems; the n% of us that survive now have immune systems that “know” how to counter that trick.
Vaccines are a mighty tool in our favor here, because they’re the technology that stops our n% from also being a very low number.
With vaccines, we can effectively pass on established defenses onto the population at large, as this cute video explains very well and very simply in 57 seconds:
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The problem with vaccines
The problem is that this accelerates the arms race. It’s like a chess game where we are able to respond to every move quickly (which is good for us), and/but this means passing the move over to our opponent sooner.
That problem’s hard to avoid, because the alternative has always been “let people die in much larger numbers”.
Traditional vs mRNA vaccines
A quick refresher before we continue to the big news of the day:
- Traditional vaccines use a disabled version of a pathogen to trigger an immune response that will teach the body to recognize the pathogen ready for when the full version shows up
- mRNA vaccines use a custom-made bit of genetic information to tell the body to make its own harmless fake pathogen and then respond to the harmless fake pathogen it made.
Note: this happens independently of the host’s DNA, so no, it does not change your DNA
See also: The Truth About Vaccines
Here’s a more detailed explainer (with a helpful diagram) using the COVID mRNA vaccine as an example:
Genome.gov | How does an mRNA vaccine work?
However, this still leaves us “chasing strains”, because as the pathogen (in this case, a virus) adapts, the vaccine has to be updated too, hence all the boosters.
This is a lot like a security update for your computer’s antivirus software. They’re annoying, but they do an important job.
No more “chasing strains”
The press conference soundbite on this sums it up well:
❝Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.❞
Read in full: Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains
You may be wondering: what makes this one effective against any strain?
❝What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad.
It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.
Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this.❞
Importantly, this means it can be applied not just to one disease, let alone just one strain of COVID. Rather, it can be used for a wide variety of viruses that have similar viral functions—COVID / SARS in general, including influenza, and even viruses such as dengue.
How it does this: the above article explains in more detail, but in few words: it targets tiny strings of the genome that are present in all strains of the virus.
Illustrative example: if you wanted to block 10almonds (please don’t), you could block our email address.
But if we were malicious (we’re not) we could be sneaky and change it, so you’d have to block the new one, and the cycle repeats.
But if you were block all emails containing the tiny string of characters “10almonds”, changing our email address would no longer penetrate your defenses.
Now imagine also blocking strings such as “One-Minute Book Review” and “Today’s almonds have been activated by” and other strings we use in every email.
Now multiply this by thousands of strings (because genomes are much larger than our little newsletter), and you see its effectiveness!
Great! How can I get this?
It’s still in the testing stages for now; this is “breaking news” science, after all.
The study itself
…is paywalled for now, sadly, but if you happen to have institutional access, here it is:
Take care!
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A Urologist Explains Edging: What, Why, & Is It Safe?
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“Edging” is the practice of intentionally delaying orgasm, which can be enjoyed by anyone, with a partner or alone.
On the edge
Urologist Dr. Rena Malik explains:
Question: why?
Answer: the more tension is built up, the stronger the orgasm can be at the end of it. And, even before then, pleasure along the way is pleasure along the way, which is generally considered a good thing—especially for any (usually but not always women, for hormonal and social reasons) who find it difficult to orgasm. It’s also a great way to experiment and learn more about one’s own body and/or that of one’s partner(s), personal responses, and so forth. Also, for any (usually but not always men, for hormonal reasons) who find they usually orgasm sooner than they’d like, it’s a great way to change that, if changing that is what’s wanted.
Bonus answer: for some (usually but not always men, for hormonal reasons) who find they have an uncomfortable slump in mood after orgasm, that can simply be skipped entirely, postponed for another time, etc, with pleasure being derived from the sexual activity rather than orgasm. That way, there’s a lasting dopamine high, with no prolactin crash afterwards ← this is very much tied to male hormones, by the way. If you have female hormones, there’s usually no prolactin crash either way, and instead, the post-orgasm spike in oxytocin is stronger, and a wave of serotonin makes the later decline of dopamine much more gentle.
Question: can it cause any problems?
Answer: yep! Or rather, subjectively, it may be considered so—this is obviously a personal matter and your mileage may vary. The main problem it may cause is that if practised habitually, it may result in greater difficulty achieving orgasm, simply because the body has got used to “ok, when we do this (sex/masturbation), we are in no particular rush to do that (orgasm)”. So whether not this would be a worry for you is down to any given individual. Lastly, if your intent was a long edging session with an orgasm at the end and then something happened to interrupt that, then your orgasm may be unintentionally postponed to another time, which again, may be more or less of an issue depending on your feelings about that.
For more on these things including advice on how to try it, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Mythbusting The Big O ← 10almonds main feature on orgasms, health, and associated myths
- Come Together: The Science (and Art) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections – by Dr. Emily Nagoski
- Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire – by Dr. Lori Brotto
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Change Your Brain, Change Your Life – by Dr. Daniel G. Amen
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To what extent can we change our brains, and to what extent are we stuck with what we have?
Dr. Amen tells us that being mindful of both ends of this is critical:
- Neuroplasticity means we can, indeed, change our brains
- We do, however, have fundamental “brain types” based on our neurochemistry and physical brain structure
He argues for the use of brain imaging technology to learn more about the latter… In order to better go about doing what we can with the former.
The book looks at how these different brain types can lead to situations where what works as a treatment for one person can often not work for another. It’s also prescriptive, about what sorts of treatments (and lifestyle adjustments) are more likely to do better for each.
Where the book excels is in giving ideas and pointers for exploration… Things to take to one’s doctor, and—for example—request certain tests, and then what to do with those.
Where the book is a little light is on including hard science in the explanations. The hard science is referred to, but is considered beyond the scope of the book, or perhaps beyond the interest of the reader. That’s unfortunate, as we’d have liked to have seen more of it, rather than taking claims at face value without evidence.
Bottom line: this is distinctly “pop science” in presentation, but can give a lot of great ideas for learning more about our own brains and brain health… And then optimizing such.
Click here to check out “Change Your Brain; Change Your Life” on Amazon today!
Don’t Forget…
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