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 😎

❝I have a question about seafood as healthy, doesn’t eating shellfish contribute to gout?❞

It can do! Gout (a kind of inflammatory arthritis characterized by the depositing of uric acid crystals in joints) has many risk factors, and diet is one component, albeit certainly the most talked-about one.

First, you may be wondering: isn’t all arthritis inflammatory? Since arthritis is by definition the inflammation of joints, this is a reasonable question, but when it comes to classifying the kinds, “inflammatory” arthritis is caused by inflammation, while “non-inflammatory” arthritis (a slightly confusing name) merely has inflammation as one of its symptoms (and is caused by physical wear-and-tear). For more information, see:

• Tips For Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis ←inflammatory
• Tips For Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis ← “non-inflammatory”

As for gout specifically, top risk factors include:

• Increasing age: risk increases with age
• Being male: women do get gout, but much less often
• Hypertension: all-cause hypertension is the biggest reasonably controllable factor

There’s not a lot we can do about age (but of course, looking after our general health will tend to slow biological aging, and after all, diseases only care about the state of our body, not what the date on the calendar is).

As for sex, this risk factor is hormones, and specifically has to do with estrogen and testosterone’s very different effects on the immune system (bearing in mind that chronic inflammation is a disorder of the immune system). However, few if any men would take up feminizing hormone therapy just to lower their gout risk!

That leaves hypertension, which happily is something that we can all (barring extreme personal circumstances) do quite a bit about. Here’s a good starting point:

Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt

…and for further pointers:

How To Lower Your Blood Pressure (Cardiologists Explain)

As for diet specifically (and yes, shellfish):

The largest study into this (and thus, one of the top ones cited in a lot of other literature) looked at 47,150 men with no history of gout at the baseline.

So, with the caveat that their findings could have been different for women, they found:

• Eating meat in general increased gout risk
  • Narrowing down specific meats: beef, pork, and lamb were the worst offenders
• Eating seafood in general increased gout risk
  • Narrowing down specific seafoods: all seafoods increased gout risk within a similar range
  • As a specific quirk of seafoods: the risk was increased if the man had a BMI under 25
• Eating dairy in general was not associated with an increased risk of gout
  • Narrowing down specific dairy foods: low-fat dairy products such as yogurt were associated with a decreased risk of gout
• Eating purine-rich vegetables in general was not associated with an increased risk of gout
  • Narrowing down to specific purine-rich vegetables: no purine-rich vegetable was associated with an increase in the risk of gout

Dairy products were included in the study, as dairy products in general and non-fermented dairy products in particular are often associated with increased inflammation. However, the association was simply not found to exist when it came to gout risk.

Purine-rich vegetables were included in the study, as animal products highest in purines have typically been found to have the worst effect on gout. However, the association was simply not found to exist when it came to plants with purines.

You can read the full study here:

Purine-Rich Foods, Dairy and Protein Intake, and the Risk of Gout in Men

So, the short answer to your question of “doesn’t eating shellfish contribute to the risk of gout” is:

Yes, it can, but occasional consumption probably won’t result in gout unless you have other risk factors going against you.

If you’re a slim male 80-year-old alcoholic smoker with hypertension, then definitely do consider skipping the lobster, but honestly, there may be bigger issues to tackle there.

And similarly, obviously skip it if you have a shellfish allergy, and if you’re vegan or vegetarian or abstain from shellfish for religious reasons, then you can certainly live very healthily without ever having any.

See also: Do We Need Animal Products, To Be Healthy?

For most people most of the time, a moderate consumption of seafood, including shellfish if you so desire, is considered healthy.

As ever, do speak with your own doctor to know for sure, as your individual case may vary.

For reference, this question was surely prompted by the article:

Lobster vs Crab – Which is Healthier?

Take care!

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 😎

❝I want to learn more about macros. Can you cover that topic?❞

That’s a little broader than we usually go for, given the amount of space we have, but let’s give it a go!

Macronutrients, or “macros”, are the nutrients that we typically measure in grams rather than milligrams or micrograms, and are:

• Carbohydrates
  • …and what kinds, of which usually the focus is on how much is sugars as opposed to more complex carbs that take longer to break down. See also: Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
  • …and of the sugars, the interested may further categorize them into sucrose, fructose, etc. See also: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
• Proteins
  • …of which, the amino acid make-up is generally considered a matter of micronutrients. See also: Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?
• Fats
  • …and what kinds, i.e. monounsaturated vs polyunsaturated vs saturated. See also: Saturated Fat: What’s The Truth?
  • …and then the interested may further categorize them for their fatty acids / triglycerides profile, etc. See also: What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us
• Fiber
  • …which often gets ignored by people counting macros, as “stuff that doesn’t do anything”, despite it in fact being very important for health. See also: Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)
• Water
  • …which again tends to get disregarded but is very arguably a critical macronutrient. See also: Busting The Myth of “Eight Glasses Of Water A Day”

In terms of how much we need of each, you can read more in the above-linked articles, but:

• General scientific consensus is we need plenty of fiber (30 or 40g per day is good) and water (highly dependent on climate and activity), and there’s a clear minimum requisite for protein (usually put at around 1g of protein per day per 1kg of body weight).
• There is vigorous debate in the general health community about what the best ratio of carbs to fat is.

The reality is that humans are quite an adaptable species, and while we absolutely do need at least some of both (carbohydrates and fats), we can play around with the ratios quite a bit, provided we don’t get too extreme about it.

While some influence is social and often centered around weight loss (see for example keto which seeks to minimize carbs, and volumetrics, which seeks maximise volume-to-calorie ratio, which de facto tends to minimize fats), some of what drives us to lean one way or the other will be genetics, too—dependent on what our ancestors ate more or less of.

Writer’s example: my ancestors could not grow much grain (or crops in general) where they were, so they got more energy from such foods as whale and seal fat (with protein coming more from reindeer). Now, biology is not destiny, and I personally enjoy a vegan diet, but my genes are probably why I am driven to get most of my daily calories from fat (of which, a lot of fatty nuts (don’t tell almonds, but I prefer walnuts and cashews) and healthy oils such as olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil).

However! About that adaptability. Provided we make changes slowly, we can usually adjust our diet to whatever we want it to be, including whether we get our energy more from carbs or fats. The reason we need to make changes slowly is because our gut needs time to adjust. For example, if your vegan writer here were to eat her ancestrally-favored foods now, I’d be very ill, because my gut microbiome has no idea what to do with animal products anymore, no matter what genes I have. In contrast, if an enthusiastic enjoyer of a meat-heavy diet were to switch to my fiber-rich diet overnight, they’d be very ill.

So: follow your natural inclinations, make any desired changes slowly, and if in doubt, it’s hard to go wrong with enjoying carbs and fats in moderation.

Learn more: Intuitive Eating Might Not Be What You Think

Take care!