Brussels Sprouts vs Spirulina – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing Brussels sprouts to spirulina, we picked the sprouts.
Why?
Pitting these two well-known superfoods against each other, we get the following:
Looking at the macros first, spirulina has a little more protein, while sprouts have more carbs and nearly 10x the fiber. So, we call this a win for sprouts.
In terms of vitamins, sprouts have a lot more of vitamins A, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while spirulina has a little more of vitamins B1, B2, and B3. An easy win for sprouts.
In the category of minerals, sprouts have more calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while spirulina has more copper and iron. Another clear win for sprouts.
Adding up the sections makes the winner very clear: Brussels sprouts enjoy a well-earned victory.
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Men have a biological clock too. Here’s what’s more likely when dads are over 50
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We hear a lot about women’s biological clock and how age affects the chance of pregnancy.
New research shows men’s fertility is also affected by age. When dads are over 50, the risk of pregnancy complications increases.
Data from more than 46 million births in the United States between 2011 and 2022 compared fathers in their 30s with fathers in their 50s.
While taking into account the age of the mother and other factors known to affect pregnancy outcomes, the researchers found every ten-year increase in paternal age was linked to more complications.
The researchers found that compared to couples where the father was aged 30–39, for couples where the dad was in his 50s, there was a:
- 16% increased risk of preterm birth
- 14% increased risk of low birth weight
- 13% increase in gestational diabetes.
The older fathers were also twice as likely to have used assisted reproductive technology, including IVF, to conceive than their younger counterparts.
Steven van Loy/Unsplash Dads are getting older
In this US study, the mean age of all fathers increased from 30.8 years in 2011 to 32.1 years in 2022.
In that same period, the proportion of men aged 50 years or older fathering a child increased from 1.1% to 1.3%.
We don’t know the proportion of men over 50 years who father children in Australia, but data shows the average age of fathers has increased.
In 1975 the median age of Australian dads was 28.6 years. This jumped to 33.7 years in 2022.
How male age affects getting pregnant
As we know from media reports of celebrity dads, men produce sperm from puberty throughout life and can father children well into old age.
However, there is a noticeable decline in sperm quality from about age 40.
Female partners of older men take longer to achieve pregnancy than those with younger partners.
A study of the effect of male age on time to pregnancy showed women with male partners aged 45 or older were almost five times more likely to take more than a year to conceive compared to those with partners aged 25 or under. More than three quarters (76.8%) of men under the age of 25 years impregnated their female partners within six months, compared with just over half (52.9%) of men over the age of 45.
Pooled data from ten studies showed that partners of older men are also more likely to experience miscarriage. Compared to couples where the male was aged 25 to 29 years, paternal age over 45 years increased the risk of miscarriage by 43%.
Older men are more likely to need IVF
Outcomes of assisted reproductive technology, such as IVF, are also influenced by the age of the male partner.
A review of studies in couples using assisted reproductive technologies found paternal age under 40 years reduced the risk of miscarriage by about 25% compared to couples with men aged over 40.
Having a male under 40 years also almost doubled the chance of a live birth per treatment cycle. With a man over 40, 17.6% of treatment rounds resulted in a live birth, compared to 28.4% when the male was under 40.
How does male age affect the health outcomes of children?
As a result of age-related changes in sperm DNA, the children of older fathers have increased risk of a number of conditions. Autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and leukaemia have been linked to the father’s advanced years.
A review of studies assessing the impact of advanced paternal age reported that children of older fathers have increased rates of psychiatric disease and behavioural impairments.
But while the increased risk of adverse health outcomes linked to older paternal age is real, the magnitude of the effect is modest. It’s important to remember that an increase in a very small risk is still a small risk and most children of older fathers are born healthy and develop well.
Improving your health can improve your fertility
In addition to the effects of older age, some chronic conditions that affect fertility and reproductive outcomes become more common as men get older. They include obesity and diabetes which affect sperm quality by lowering testosterone levels.
While we can’t change our age, some lifestyle factors that increase the risk of pregnancy complications and reduce fertility, can be tackled. They include:
- smoking
- recreational drug taking
- anabolic steroid use
- heavy alcohol consumption.
Get the facts about the male biological clock
Research shows men want children as much as women do. And most men want at least two children.
Yet most men lack knowledge about the limitations of female and male fertility and overestimate the chance of getting pregnant, with and without assisted reproductive technologies.
We need better public education, starting at school, to improve awareness of the impact of male and female age on reproductive outcomes and help people have healthy babies.
For men wanting to improve their chance of conceiving, the government-funded sites Healthy Male and Your Fertility are a good place to start. These offer evidence-based and accessible information about reproductive health, and tips to improve your reproductive health and give your children the best start in life.
Karin Hammarberg, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Severe Complications for Pregnant Veterans Nearly Doubled in the Last Decade, a GAO Report Finds
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ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Series: Post-Roe America:Abortion Access Divides the Nation
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly 50 years of federal protection for abortion, some states began enforcing strict abortion bans while others became new havens for the procedure. ProPublica is investigating how sweeping changes to reproductive health care access in America are affecting people, institutions and governments.
Over the past decade, the rate of veterans suffering severe pregnancy complications has risen dramatically, a new federal report found.
Veterans have raced to the hospital with dangerous infections, kidney failure, aneurysms or blood loss. They’ve required hysterectomies, breathing machines and blood transfusions to save their lives. Between 2011 and 2020, 13 veterans died after such complications.
The report found that among people getting health care benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, the rate of severe complications nearly doubled during that time, from about 93 per 10,000 hospitalizations in 2011 to just over 184 per 10,000 hospitalizations in 2020. Black veterans had the highest rates.
The report, which was put together by the Government Accountability Office, also made recommendations for reducing the problem, which focus on conducting more routine screenings throughout pregnancy and in the postpartum period.
“It is imperative that the VA help ensure veterans have the healthiest pregnancy outcomes possible,” the report said, highlighting the increasing number of veterans using the agency’s maternity benefits as well as the troublesome complication rates faced by Black women.
The report’s findings are an unfortunate trend, said Alyssa Hundrup, director of health care at the GAO. The office analyzed data on 40,000 hospitalizations related to deliveries paid for by the VA. It captures a time period before 21 states banned or greatly restricted abortion and the military was thrust into a political battle over whether it would pay for active service members to travel for abortion care if a pregnancy was a risk to their health.
Hundrup, who led the review, said the analysis included hospital records from days after delivery to a year postpartum. The report was mandated after Congress passed a law in 2021 that aimed to address the maternal health crisis among veterans. The law led to a $15 million investment in maternity care coordination programs for veterans.
The report recommended that the VA analyze and collect more data on severe complications as well as data on the mental health, race and ethnicity of veterans who experience complications to understand the causes behind the increase and the reasons for the disparity. The report also states that oversight is needed to ensure screenings are being completed.
Studies show there’s a connection between mental health conditions and pregnancy-related complications, VA officials said.
The report recommended expanding the screening questions that providers ask patients at appointments to glean more information about their mental health, including anxiety and PTSD symptoms. It urged the VA to review the data more regularly.
“You don’t know what you don’t measure,” Hundrup said in an interview with ProPublica.
The VA health system, which historically served a male population, does not provide maternity care at its facilities. Instead, the agency has outsourced maternity care. But when patients were treated by those providers, the VA failed to track whether they were getting screened for other health issues and mental health problems.
Officials hope the improved data collection will help the VA study underlying issues that may lead to complications. For example, do higher rates of anxiety have a connection to rates of high blood pressure in pregnant people?
VA officials are working with a maternal health review committee to monitor the data as it is gathered. The agency recently conducted its first review of data going back five years about pregnancy-related complications, said Dr. Amanda Johnson, acting head of the VA’s Office of Women’s Health, who is overseeing the implementation of the report’s recommendations.
The VA has created a dashboard to monitor pregnant veterans’ health outcomes. The VA’s data analysis team will also examine the impact of veterans’ ages on complications and whether they differ for people who live in urban and rural areas.
VA officials will begin to review mental health screenings conducted by maternal care coordinators in March. The coordinators advocate for veterans, helping them between health care visits, whether their providers are inside or outside the VA.
Johnson said that reducing racial and ethnic disparities is a priority for the agency. In 2018, ProPublica published “Lost Mothers,” a series that shed light on the country’s maternal health crisis. Studies have shown that in the general population, Black women are three times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications. While deaths made up only a small portion of the bad outcomes for Black veterans cited in the report, VA care could not spare them from elevated rates of severe complications. Johnson said the maternal health crisis also persists within the VA.
“There is a disparity,” Johnson said. “We are not immune to that.”
Research shows pregnant people who have used the VA’s coverage have higher rates of trauma and mental conditions that can increase their risks of complications and bad outcomes.
This may be because many people who join the military enter it having already faced trauma, said Dr. Laura Miller, a psychiatrist and the medical director of reproductive mental health at the VA.
She said veterans with PTSD have higher rates of complications such as preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition related to high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and postpartum depression. If untreated during pregnancy, depression also increases the likelihood of preterm birth and lingering problems for babies.
Hundrup said she hopes this proactive work will improve maternal health.
“We want these numbers trending in the other direction,” Hundrup said.
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The 5 Resets – by Dr. Aditi Nerurkar
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What this book isn’t: an advice to go on a relaxing meditation retreat, or something like that.
What this is: a science-based guide to what actually works.
There’s no need to be mysterious, so we’ll mention that the titular “5 resets” are:
- What matters most
- Quiet in a noisy world
- Leveraging the brain-body connection
- Coming up for air (regaining perspective)
- Bringing your best self forward
All of these are things we can easily lose sight of in the hustle and bustle of daily life, so having a system for keeping them on track can make a huge difference!
The style is personable and accessible, while providing a lot of strongly science-backed tips and tricks along the way.
Bottom line: if life gets away from you a little too often for comfort, this book can help you keep on top of things with a lot less stress.
Click here to check out “The 5 Resets”, and take control with conscious calm!
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Why do I poo in the morning? A gut expert explains
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No, you’re not imagining it. People really are more likely to poo in the morning, shortly after breakfast. Researchers have actually studied this.
But why mornings? What if you tend to poo later in the day? And is it worth training yourself to be a morning pooper?
To understand what makes us poo when we do, we need to consider a range of factors including our body clock, gut muscles and what we have for breakfast.
Here’s what the science says.
H_Ko/Shutterstock So morning poos are real?
In a UK study from the early 1990s, researchers asked nearly 2,000 men and women in Bristol about their bowel habits.
The most common time to poo was in the early morning. The peak time was 7-8am for men and about an hour later for women. The researchers speculated that the earlier time for men was because they woke up earlier for work.
About a decade later, a Chinese study found a similar pattern. Some 77% of the almost 2,500 participants said they did a poo in the morning.
But why the morning?
There are a few reasons. The first involves our circadian rhythm – our 24-hour internal clock that helps regulate bodily processes, such as digestion.
For healthy people, our internal clock means the muscular contractions in our colon follow a distinct rhythm.
There’s minimal activity in the night. The deeper and more restful our sleep, the fewer of these muscle contractions we have. It’s one reason why we don’t tend to poo in our sleep.
Your lower gut is a muscular tube that contracts more strongly at certain times of day. Vectomart/Shutterstock But there’s increasing activity during the day. Contractions in our colon are most active in the morning after waking up and after any meal.
One particular type of colon contraction partly controlled by our internal clock are known as “mass movements”. These are powerful contractions that push poo down to the rectum to prepare for the poo to be expelled from the body, but don’t always result in a bowel movement. In healthy people, these contractions occur a few times a day. They are more frequent in the morning than in the evening, and after meals.
Breakfast is also a trigger for us to poo. When we eat and drink our stomach stretches, which triggers the “gastrocolic reflex”. This reflex stimulates the colon to forcefully contract and can lead you to push existing poo in the colon out of the body. We know the gastrocolic reflex is strongest in the morning. So that explains why breakfast can be such a powerful trigger for a bowel motion.
Then there’s our morning coffee. This is a very powerful stimulant of contractions in the sigmoid colon (the last part of the colon before the rectum) and of the rectum itself. This leads to a bowel motion.
How important are morning poos?
Large international surveys show the vast majority of people will poo between three times a day and three times a week.
This still leaves a lot of people who don’t have regular bowel habits, are regular but poo at different frequencies, or who don’t always poo in the morning.
So if you’re healthy, it’s much more important that your bowel habits are comfortable and regular for you. Bowel motions do not have to occur once a day in the morning.
Morning poos are also not a good thing for everyone. Some people with irritable bowel syndrome feel the urgent need to poo in the morning – often several times after getting up, during and after breakfast. This can be quite distressing. It appears this early-morning rush to poo is due to overstimulation of colon contractions in the morning.
Can you train yourself to be regular?
Yes, for example, to help treat constipation using the gastrocolic reflex. Children and elderly people with constipation can use the toilet immediately after eating breakfast to relieve symptoms. And for adults with constipation, drinking coffee regularly can help stimulate the gut, particularly in the morning.
A disturbed circadian rhythm can also lead to irregular bowel motions and people more likely to poo in the evenings. So better sleep habits can not only help people get a better night’s sleep, it can help them get into a more regular bowel routine.
A regular morning coffee can help relieve constipation. Caterina Trimarchi/Shutterstock Regular physical activity and avoiding sitting down a lot are also important in stimulating bowel movements, particularly in people with constipation.
We know stress can contribute to irregular bowel habits. So minimising stress and focusing on relaxation can help bowel habits become more regular.
Fibre from fruits and vegetables also helps make bowel motions more regular.
Finally, ensuring adequate hydration helps minimise the chance of developing constipation, and helps make bowel motions more regular.
Monitoring your bowel habits
Most of us consider pooing in the morning to be regular. But there’s a wide variation in normal so don’t be concerned if your poos don’t follow this pattern. It’s more important your poos are comfortable and regular for you.
If there’s a major change in the regularity of your bowel habits that’s concerning you, see your GP. The reason might be as simple as a change in diet or starting a new medication.
But sometimes this can signify an important change in the health of your gut. So your GP may need to arrange further investigations, which could include blood tests or imaging.
Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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No Equipment Muscle Gain Routine for Ages 50+
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Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass commonly associated with aging, can be a big problem as it leaves us vulnerable to injury (and also isn’t great for the metabolism—keeping adequate muscle mass ensures keeping the metabolism ticking over nicely). Will Harlow, over-50s specialist physiotherapist, is here to share a routine that works without weights:
Where it counts
There’s a fair amount of emphasis here on the lower body and core. That’s because in practical terms, this is what matters more for our health than having bulging biceps:
- First exercise: donkey calf raises to build strength in the calves using a chair.
- Second exercise: single-leg elevated lunge to work the quads and glutes, using a step or books for elevation.
- Third exercise: slow sit-to-stand for quads, glutes, and core strength, focusing on a slow descent.
- Fourth exercise: wall press-up to strengthen the chest, shoulders, and arms, with a variation using towels for increased resistance.
- Final exercise: shoulder raises using bottles or similar weights to target the shoulders and rotator cuffs.
Ok, so that last one was a slight cheat on his part as it does require grabbing a weight, but it’s not specialist equipment at least, and can just be something you grabbed at home. It’s also the least important of the five exercises, and can be skipped if necessary.
For more on all of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
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Cori Lefkowith, of “Redefining Strength” and “Strong At Every Age” fame, is back to help us keep our hips in good order:
These tips don’t lie
It’s less about stretching, and more about range of motion and “use it or lose it”:
- Full range of motion in lifting exercises enhances joint mobility and stability, whereas strengthening muscles through a limited range of motion (e.g., half squats) can cause tightness.
- Lifting through a larger range of motion may result in faster strength gains too, so that’s a bonus.
- Customize your range of motion based on your body type and capability, but do try for what you reasonably can—don’t give up!
- Lower weights and focus on deeper movements like split squats or single-leg squats, but work up slowly if you have any difficulties to start with.
- Using exercises like the Bulgarian split squat and deficit split squat can improve hip mobility and strength (you’ll really need to see the video for this one)
- Fully controlling the range of motion is key to progress, even if it means going lighter; prioritize mobility over brute strength. Strength is good, but mobility is even more critical.
- Adding instability, such as raising the front foot in lunges, challenges muscles and increases mobility. Obviously, please be safe while doing so, and slowly increase the range of motion while maintaining control, avoiding reliance on momentum.
- Final tip that most don’t consider: try starting exercises from the bottom position to ensure proper form and muscle engagement!
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