Retinoids: Retinol vs Retinal vs Retinoic Acid vs..?
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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’m confused about retinol, retinal, retinoin, retinoids, etc, and of course every product claims to be the best, what’s the actual science on it?❞
Before we get into these skincare products, let’s first note that for most people, what’s best for the skin is good sleep and hydration, a plants-centric whole foods diet, and good stress management:
See for example: Of Brains And Breakouts: The Brain Skin Doctor
However, the world of potions and lotions can be an alluring one, and there is some merit there too. So, in a nutshell:
- Retinoids are the overall class of chemicals, and not a specific type
- Retinoic acid is the strongest form of this chemical and is prescription-controlled in most places
- “Retinoin” is probably tretinoin (all-trans retinoic acid) with the “t” having falling off; we can only find it being used as a product name, not an actual substance
- Retinal, when it’s not an adjective referring to the retina (the part of the eye that receives refocussed light) and is instead a noun, is a less potent retinoid than the prescription-only kinds, but still stronger than retinol
- Retinol is a much less potent form, and is the most widely found in skincare products
- Retinoic acid is the strongest form of this chemical and is prescription-controlled in most places
All of them work the same way; it is only how serious they are about it that differs.
The mechanism of action is that they speed up the turnover (shedding cycle) of skin, so that cells are replaced sooner. As with any non-cancerous human tissue, this means that the tissue itself (in this case, your skin) will be biologically younger than if it had been replaced later.
The downside, of course, of this is that—while trying to make your skin healthier and more beautiful—the first thing that will happen is skin shedding. Depending on the retinoid type, dose, and the health of your skin to start with, this may mean anything from needing to exfoliate in the morning, to having to go to hospital with what looks like the world’s worst sunburn. For this reason, it is recommended to start with weaker products and lower doses, and work up carefully.
A note on doses: the recommended doses for these products are always truly tiny, like “use a pea-sized amount of this 0.05% serum on your face”. Take them seriously until you’re absolutely sure from experience that your skin can handle more.
Also, a tip: wear gloves when you apply any of the above products. This is because your fingers are also covered in skin, and if you don’t use gloves, then half the product that you intended for your face will be absorbed into your fingers instead.
You can learn more about the science of retinoids here, in our article about tretinoin, the usually prescription-only form of retinoic acid:
Tretinoin: Undo The Sun’s Damage To Your Skin
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product of retinal (stronger than retinol) on Amazon 😎
Take care!
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“The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
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The Magic of Mushrooms
“The Longevity Vitamin that’s not a vitamin” is a great tagline for what’s actually an antioxidant amino acid nutraceutical, but in this case, we’re not the ones spearheading its PR, but rather, the Journal of Nutritional Science:
Is ergothioneine a “longevity vitamin” limited in the American diet?
It can be found in all foods, to some extent, but usually in much tinier amounts than would be useful. The reason for this is that it’s synthesized by a variety of microbes (mostly fungi and actinobacteria), and enters the food chain via vegetables that are grown in soil that contain such (which is basically all soil, unless you were to go out of your way to sterilize it, or something really unusually happened).
About those fungi? That includes common popular edible fungi, where it is found quite generously. An 85g (3oz) portion of (most) mushrooms contains about 5mg of ergothioneine, the consumption of which is associated with a 16% reduced all-cause mortality:
However… Most Americans don’t eat that many mushrooms, and those polled averaged 1.1mg/day ergothioneine (in contrast with, for example, Italians’ 4.6mg/day average).
Antioxidant properties
While its antioxidant properties aren’t the most exciting quality, they are worth a mention, on account of their potency:
The biology of ergothioneine, an antioxidant nutraceutical
This is also part of its potential bid to get classified as a vitamin, because…
❝Decreased blood and/or plasma levels of ergothioneine have been observed in some diseases, suggesting that a deficiency could be relevant to the disease onset or progression❞
Source: Ergothioneine: a diet-derived antioxidant with therapeutic potential
Healthy aging
Building on from the above, ergothioneine has been specifically identified as being associated with healthy aging and the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases:
❝An increasing body of evidence suggests ergothioneine may be an important dietary nutrient for the prevention of a variety of inflammatory and cardiometabolic diseases and ergothioneine has alternately been suggested as a vitamin, “longevity vitamin”, and nutraceutical❞
~ Dr. Bernadette Moore et al., citing more references every few words there
Source: Ergothioneine: an underrecognised dietary micronutrient required for healthy ageing?
Good for the heart = good for the brain
As a general rule of thumb, “what’s good for the heart is good for the brain” is almost always true, and it appears to be so in this case, too:
❝Ergothioneine crosses the blood–brain barrier and has been reported to have beneficial effects in the brain. In this study, we discuss the cytoprotective and neuroprotective properties of ergotheioneine, which may be harnessed for combating neurodegeneration and decline during aging.❞
Source: Ergothioneine: A Stress Vitamin with Antiaging, Vascular, and Neuroprotective Roles?
Want to get some?
You can just eat a portion of mushrooms per day! But if you don’t fancy that, it is available as a supplement in convenient 1/day capsule form too.
We don’t sell it, but for your convenience, here is an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health
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There Will Be Blood
Are you counting steps? Counting calories? Monitoring your sleep? Heart rate zones? These all have their merits:
- Steps: One More Resource Against Osteoporosis!
- Calories: Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?
- Sleep: A Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
- Heart Rate Zones: Heart Rate Zones, Oxalates, & More
About calories: this writer (it’s me, hi) opines that intermittent fasting has the same benefits as caloric restriction, without the hassle of counting, and is therefore superior. I also personally find fasting psychologically more pleasant. However, our goal here is to be informative, not prescriptive, and some people may have reasons to prefer CR to IF!
Examples that come to mind include ease of adherence in the case of diabetes management, especially Type 1, or if one’s schedule (and/or one’s “medications that need to be taken with food” schedule) does not suit IF.
And now for the blood…
A rising trend in health enthusiasts presently is the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), which do exactly what is sounds like they do: they continually monitor glucose. Specifically, the amount of it in your blood.
Of course, these have been in use in diabetes management for years; the technology is not new, but the application of the technology is.
A good example of what benefits a non-diabetic person can gain from the use of a CGM is Jessie Inchauspé, the food scientist of “Glucose Revolution” and “The Glucose Goddess Method” fame.
By wearing a CGM, she was able to notice what things did and didn’t spike her blood sugars, and found that a lot of the things were not stuff that people knew/advised about!
For example, much of diabetes management (including avoiding diabetes in the first place) is based around paying attention to carbs and little else, but she found that it made a huge difference what she ate (or didn’t) with the carbs. By taking many notes over the course of her daily life, she was eventually able to isolate these patterns, showed her working-out in The Glucose Revolution (there’s a lot of science in that book), and distilled that information into bite-size (heh) advice such as:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
That’s great, but since people like Inchauspé have done the work, I don’t have to, right?
You indeed don’t have to! But you can still benefit from it. For example, fastidious as her work was, it’s a sample size of one. If you’re not a slim white 32-year-old French woman, there may be some factors that are different for you.
All this to say: glucose responses, much like nutrition in general, are not a one-size-fits-all affair.
With a CGM, you can start building up your own picture of what your responses to various foods are like, rather than merely what they “should” be like.
This, by the way, is also one of the main aims of personalized health company ZOE, which crowdsourced a lot of scientific data about personalized metabolic responses to standardized meals:
Not knowing these things can be dangerous
We don’t like to scaremonger here, but we do like to point out potential dangers, and in this case, blindly following standardized diet advice, if your physiology is not standard, can have harmful effects, see for example:
Diabetic-level glucose spikes seen in non-diabetic people
Where can I get a CGM?
We don’t sell them, and neither does Amazon, but you can check out some options here:
The 4 Best CGM Devices For Measuring Blood Sugar in 2024
…and if your doctor is not obliging with a prescription, note that the device that came out top in the above comparisons, will be available OTC soon:
The First OTC Continuous Glucose Monitor Will Be Available Summer 2024
Take care!
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Artichoke vs Asparagus – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing artichoke to asparagus, we picked the artichoke.
Why?
Both are great and it was close!
In terms of macros, artichoke has a little more protein and around 3x the carbs and fiber: the ratio there means that both vegetables have an identical glycemic index, so we’ll go with the “most food per food” reckoning of nutritional density, and call it for the artichoke.
When it comes to vitamins, artichoke has more of vitamins B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline, while asparagus has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, E, and K. Both very respectable nutritional sets, but artichoke gets a marginal 6:5 win on strength of numbers.
In the category of minerals, artichoke has more calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium, while asparagus has more iron, selenium, and zinc. A clearer 6:3 win for artichoke this time.
Once again, both of these are great foods, so by all means enjoy either or both. But if you’re looking for the nutritionally densest option, it’s the artichoke!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Take care!
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Being Mortal – by Dr. Atul Gawande
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Maybe you want to “live forever or die trying”, and that’s an understandable goal… But are you prepared for “or die trying” being the outcome?
This is not a cheerful book, if you’re anything like this reviewer, you will need a little towel or something to mop up the tears while you read. But it’s worth it.
Dying is one thing; fighting for life is even generally considered a noble endeavor. Suffering alone isn’t fun, losing independence can feel humiliating, and seeing someone who was always a tower of strength, now a frail shadow of their former self, reduced to begging for something that they’re “not allowed”, can be worse.
Do we want that for ourselves? For our loved ones? Can there be a happy medium between that, and the alternative to indeed “go gentle into that good night”?
Dr. Gawande, a surgeon well-acquainted with death and dying, thinks so. But it involves work on our part, and being prepared for hard decisions.
- What is most important to us, and what tradeoffs are we willing to make for it?
- What, even, is actually an option to us with the resources available?
- Can we make peace with a potentially bad lot? And… Should we?
- When is fighting important, and when is it self-destructive?
These (and others) are all difficult questions posed by Dr. Gawande, but critical ones.
We don’t usually quote other people’s reviews when reviewing books here, but let’s consider the following words from the end of a long review on Amazon:
❝If “dying as we lived” is some kind of standard for how we should go, then maybe alone and medicalized makes some sense right now after all.❞
Bottom line: we all deserve better than that. And if we don’t take the time to think about what’s most important, then time will take it from us. This very insightful book may not have all the answers, but it has the questions, and it can help a lot in exploring them and deciding what matters most to us in the end, really.
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Healing Arthritis – by Dr. Susan Blum
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We previously reviewed another book by this author, her Immune System Recovery Plan, and today it’s more specific: healing arthritis
Of course, not all arthritis is rooted in immune dysfunction, but a) all of it is made worse by immune dysfunction and b) rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease, affects 1% of the population.
This book tackles all kinds of arthritis, by focusing on addressing the underlying causes and treating those, and (whether it was the cause or not) reducing inflammation without medication, because that will always help.
The “3 steps” mentioned in the subtitle are three stages of a plan to improve the gut microbiome in such a way that it not only stops worsening your arthritis, but starts making it better.
The style here is on the hard end of pop-science, so if you want something more conversational/personable, then this won’t be so much for you, but if you just want the information and explanation, then this does it just fine, and it has frequent references to the science to back it up, with a reassuringly extensive bibliography.
Bottom line: if you have arthritis and want a book that will help you to get either symptom-free or as close to that as is possible from your current condition (bearing in mind that arthritis is generally degenerative), then this is a great book for that.
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The Oxygen Advantage – by Patrick McKeown
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You probably know to breathe through your nose, and use your diaphragm. What else does this book have to offer?
A lot of the book is aimed at fixing specific problems, and optimizing what can be optimized—including with tips and tricks you may not have encountered before. Yet, the offerings are not bizarre either; we don’t need to learn to breathe through our ears while drinking a glass of water upside down or anything.
Rather, such simple things as improving one’s VO₂Max by occasionally holding one’s breath while walking briskly. But, he advises specifically, this should be done by pausing the breath halfway through the exhalation (a discussion of the ensuing physiological response is forthcoming).
Little things like that are woven throughout the book, whose style is mostly anecdotal rather than hard science, yet is consistent with broad scientific consensus in any case.
Bottom line: if you’ve any reason to think your breathing might be anything less than the best it could possibly be, this book is likely to help you to tweak it to be a little better.
Click here to check out The Oxygen Advantage, and get yours!
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