5 Ways To Make Your Smoothie Blood Sugar Friendly (Avoid the Spike!)
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At 10almonds, we are often saying “eat whole fruit; don’t drink your calories”. Whole fruit is great for blood sugars; fruit juices and many smoothies on the other hand, not so much. Especially juices, being near-completely or perhaps even completely stripped of fiber, but even smoothies have had a lot of the fiber broken down and are still a liquid, meaning they are very quickly and easily digestible, and thus their sugars (whatever carbs are in there) can just zip straight into your veins.
However, there are ways to mitigate this…
Slow it down
The theme here is “give the digestive process something else to do”; some things are more quickly and easily digestible than others, and if it’s working on breaking down some of the slower things, it’s not waving sugars straight on through; they have to wait their turn.
To that end, recommendations include:
- Full-fat Greek yogurt which provides both protein and fat, helping to slow down the absorption of sugar. Always choose unsweetened versions to avoid added sugars, though!
- Coconut milk (canned) which is low in sugar and carbs, high in fat. This helps reduce blood sugar spikes, as she found through personal experimentation too.
- Avocado which is rich in healthy fats that help stabilize blood sugar. As a bonus, it blends well into smoothies without affecting the taste much.
- Coconut oil which contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) that are quickly absorbed for energy without involving glucose, promoting fat-burning and reducing blood sugar spikes.
- Collagen powder which is a protein that helps lower blood sugar spikes while also supporting muscle growth, skin, and joints.
For more on all of these, enjoy:
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Trout vs Carp – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing trout to carp, we picked the trout.
Why?
Both have their strong points!
In terms of macros, trout has slightly more protein and fat, and/but also has less cholesterol than carp. So, we pick the trout in the macros category.
In the category of vitamins, trout has much more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B12, C, D, E, K, and choline, while carp has slightly more vitamin B9. In other words, an easy win for trout here.
When it comes to minerals, however, trout has more potassium and selenium, while carp has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc. A fair win for carp this time.
You may be wondering about heavy metals: this will vary depending on location, as well as the age of the fish (younger fish have had less time to accumulate heavy metals than old ones, so if you’re visiting the fishmonger, choose the smaller ones) and the lives they have led (e.g. wild vs farmed), however, as a general rule of thumb, trout will generally have lower heavy metals levels than carp, all other things (e.g. location, age, etc) being equal.
In short, enjoy either or both in moderation, but trout wins on 3/4 categories today.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught: Antibiotics, Mercury, & More
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Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
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Social Media, But Healthy
Social media has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It’s calculated to trick you into doomscrolling and rage-posting, and it encourages you to compare your everyday life to other people’s carefully-curated highlight reels.
Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)
But it doesn’t have to be so.
Find your community
One of the biggest strengths social media has going for it is that it can, if used well, be a powerful tool for community. As for why that’s important from a health perspective, see:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Loneliness & isolation do, of course, kill people. By:
- Accidents, e.g. household fall but nobody notices for a week
- Depression and resultant decline (and perhaps even active suicidality)
- Cognitive decline from a lack of social contact
Read more:
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
- How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)
- The Five Key Traits Of Healthy Aging
So, what’s “community” to you, and to what extent can you find it online? Examples might include:
- A church, or other religious community, if we be religious
- The LGBT+ community, or even just a part of it, if that fits for us
- Any mutual-support oriented, we-have-this-shared-experience community, could be anything from AA to the VA.
Find your people, and surround yourself with them. There are more than 8,000,000,000 people on this planet, you will not find all the most compatible ones with you on your street.
Grow & nurture your community
Chances are, you have a lot to contribute. Your life experiences are valuable.
Being of service to other people is strongly associated “flourishing”, per the science.
Indeed, one of the questions on the subjective wellness scale test is to ask how much one agrees with the statement “I actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others”.
See: Are You Flourishing? (There’s a Scale)
So, help people, share your insights, create whatever is relevant to your community and fits your skills (it could be anything from art to tutorials to call-to-action posts or whatever works for you and your community)
As a bonus: when people notice you are there for them, they’ll probably be there for you, too. Not always, sadly, but there is undeniable strength in numbers.
Remember it’s not the boss of you
Whatever social media platform(s) you use, the companies in question will want you to use it in the way that is most profitable for them.
Usually that means creating a lot of shallow content, clicking on as many things as possible, and never logging off.
Good ways to guard against that include:
- Use the social media from a computer rather than a handheld device
- Disable “infinite scroll” in the settings, if possible
- Set a timer and stick to it
- Try to keep your interactions to only those that are relevant and kind (for the good of your own health, let alone anyone else’s)
On that latter note…
Before posting, ask “what am I trying to achieve here?” and ensure your action is aligned with your actual desires, and not just reactivity. See also:
A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It
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This is a Levantine dish, Syrian in origin (although Lebanese cuisine uses it plenty too) and popularly enjoyed all the way up to Turkey, down to Egypt, and across to Armenia. And today, perhaps rather further afield! It’s first and foremost a spicy dip/spread, though it can be lengthened into a sauce, and/or made more substantial by adding an extra protein. We’ll give you the basic recipe though, and let you see where it takes you! Healthwise, it’s very nutritionally dense, mostly thanks to the walnuts and red peppers, though spices and olive oil bring their healthy benefits too.
You will need
- ½ cup chopped walnuts (ideally: toasted)
- 3 red peppers, from a jar (jarred over fresh not only improves the consistency, but also makes it extra gut-healthy due to the fermentation bacteria present; if you must use fresh, roast them first)
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses (you can omit if you don’t like sweetness, but this is traditional)
- 1 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 tbsp Aleppo pepper flakes (less, if you don’t like heat) (substitute another hot pepper if necessary)
- ½ bulb garlic, crushed
- 2 tsp ground smoked paprika
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Juice of 1 lemon
- Optional: handful of pomegranate seeds
- Optional: herb garnish, e.g. cilantro or parsley
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Add everything except the pomegranate seeds and herbs to a blender, and blend to a smooth consistency.
2) Add the pomegranate seeds and herbs, as a garnish.
3) Serve! Can be enjoyed as a dip (perhaps using our Homemade Healthy Flatbreads recipe), or as a spread, or used as a sauce poured over chickpeas or some other bulky protein, to make a more substantial dish.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Walnuts vs Cashews – Which is Healthier?
- Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
- Red Bell Peppers vs Tomatoes – Which is Healthier?
- Bell Peppers: A Spectrum Of Specialties
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
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The Case Against Sugar – by Gary Taubes
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We generally already know that sugar is bad for the health. Most people don’t know how bad.
Taubes makes, as the title goes, “the case against sugar”. Implicated in everything from metabolic syndrome to cancer to Alzheimer’s, sugar is ruinous to the health.
It’s hard to review this book without making a comparison to William Duffy’s 1975 bestseller, “Sugar Blues“. Stylistically it’s very similar, and the general gist is certainly the same.
However! Where this book beats Sugar Blues is in content; Duffy’s book often makes bold claims without scientific backing. Some of those claims didn’t stand the test of time and are now disproven. Instead, Taubes’ book leans on actual up-to-date science, and talks more about what we actually know, than what we imagine.
If this book has a weak point, it’s when it veers away from its main topic and starts talking about, for example, saturated fat. In this side-topic, the book makes some good points, but is less well-considered, cherry-picks data, and lacks nuance.
On its main topic, though, the investigation of sugar, it is rather more thorough.
Bottom line: if you want a next-level motivation to reduce or eliminate dietary sugar, this book may certainly provide that.
Click here to check out The Case Against Sugar and reduce a lot of your health risks!
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14 Powerful Strategies To Prevent Dementia
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Dementia risk starts climbing very steeply after the age of 65, but it’s not entirely predetermined. Dr. Brad Stanfield, a primary care physician, has insights:
The strategies
We’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:
- Cognitive stimulation: which means genuinely challenging mental activities using a variety of mental faculties. This will usually mean that anything that is just “same old, same old” all the time will stop giving benefits after a short while once it becomes rote, and you’ll need something harder and/or different.
- Hearing health: being unable to participate in conversations increases dementia risk; hearing aids can help.
- Eyesight health: similar to the above; regular eye tests are good, and the use of glasses where appropriate.
- Depression management: midlife depression is linked to later life dementia, likely in large part due to social isolation and a lack of stimulation, but either way, treating depression earlier reduces later dementia risk.
- Exercising regularly: what’s good for the heart is good for the brain; the brain is a hungry organ and the blood is what feeds it (and removes things that shouldn’t be there)
- Head injury avoidance: even mild head injuries can cause problems down the road. Protecting one’s head in sports, and even while casually cycling, is important.
- Smoking cessation: just don’t smoke; if you smoke, make it a top priority to quit unless you are given direct strong medical advice to the contrary (there are cases, few and far between, whereby quitting smoking genuinely needs to be deferred until after something else is dealt with first, but they are a lot rarer than a lot of people who are simply afraid of quitting would like to believe)
- Cholesterol management: again, healthy blood means a healthy brain, and that goes for triglycerides too.
- Weight management: obesity, especially waist to hip ratio (indicating visceral abdominal fat specifically) is associated with many woes, including dementia.
- Diabetes management: once again, healthy blood means a healthy brain, and that goes for blood sugar management too.
- Blood pressure management: guess what, healthy blood still means a healthy brain, and that goes for blood pressure too.
- Alcohol reduction/cessation: alcohol is bad for pretty much everything, and for most people who drink, quitting is probably the top thing to do after quitting smoking.
- Social engagement: while we all may have our different preferences on a scale of introversion to extroversion, we are fundamentally a social species and thrive best with social contact, even if it’s just a few people.
- Air pollution reduction: avoiding pollutants, and filtering the air we breathe where pollutants are otherwise unavoidable, makes a measurable difference to brain health outcomes.
For more information on all of these (except the last two, which really he only mentions in passing), enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk ← our own main feature on the topic
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Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? – by Alex Hutchinson
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This is a book of questions and answers, myths and busts, and in short, all things exercise.
It’s laid out as many micro-chapters with questions as headers. The explanations are clear and easy to understand, with several citations (of studies and other academic papers) per question.
While it’s quite comprehensive (weighing in at a hefty 300+ pages), it’s not the kind of book where one could just look up any given piece of information that one wants.
Its strength, rather, lies in pre-emptively arming the reader with knowledge, and correcting many commonly-believed myths. It can be read cover-to-cover, or just dipped into per what interests you (the table of contents lists all questions, so it’s easy to flip through).
Bottom line: if you’ve found the world of exercise a little confusing and would like it demystifying, this book will result in a lot of “Oooooh” moments.
Click here to check out Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?, and know your stuff!
PS: the short answer to the titular question is “mix it up and keep it varied”
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