Edamame vs Soybeans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing edamame to soybeans, we picked the soybeans.
Why?
You may be thinking: aren’t edamame soybeans? And yes, yes they are. But just like our many instances of pitting Brassica oleracea vs Brassica oleracea (one species, many cultivars e.g. broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, etc), there are still differences. In this case, edamame and soybeans aren’t even different cultivars, what are conventionally called edamame are just the young beans of the plant, while what are conventionally called soybeans are the mature beans of the plant.
The main nutritional difference is: as they get older, they lose vitamins and gain minerals. More on that later. But first, “main difference” isn’t “only difference”, so…
In terms of macros, edamame have more carbs, while soybeans have a little more fiber and a lot more protein. An easy win for the mature soybeans.
In the category of vitamins, edamame have more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B5, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while soybeans have more of vitamins B2 and B6. A clear win for edamame, this time.
When it comes to minerals, the nutritional tables are turned, and edamame have more manganese and zinc, while soybeans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium. An easy win for soybeans.
Adding up the sections makes for a two-to-one victory for soybeans, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Enjoy!
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What is PMDD?
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Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a mood disorder that causes significant mental health changes and physical symptoms leading up to each menstrual period.
Unlike premenstrual syndrome (PMS), which affects approximately three out of four menstruating people, only 3 percent to 8 percent of menstruating people have PMDD. However, some researchers believe the condition is underdiagnosed, as it was only recently recognized as a medical diagnosis by the World Health Organization.
Read on to learn more about its symptoms, the difference between PMS and PMDD, treatment options, and more.
What are the symptoms of PMDD?
People with PMDD typically experience both mood changes and physical symptoms during each menstrual cycle’s luteal phase—the time between ovulation and menstruation. These symptoms typically last seven to 14 days and resolve when menstruation begins.
Mood symptoms may include:
- Irritability
- Anxiety and panic attacks
- Extreme or sudden mood shifts
- Difficulty concentrating
- Depression and suicidal ideation
Physical symptoms may include:
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
- Headaches
- Changes in appetite
- Body aches
- Bloating
- Abdominal cramps
- Breast swelling or tenderness
What is the difference between PMS and PMDD?
Both PMS and PMDD cause emotional and physical symptoms before menstruation. Unlike PMS, PMDD causes extreme mood changes that disrupt daily life and may lead to conflict with friends, family, partners, and coworkers. Additionally, symptoms may last longer than PMS symptoms.
In severe cases, PMDD may lead to depression or suicide. More than 70 percent of people with the condition have actively thought about suicide, and 34 percent have attempted it.
What is the history of PMDD?
PMDD wasn’t added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 2013. In 2019, the World Health Organization officially recognized it as a medical diagnosis.
References to PMDD in medical literature date back to the 1960s, but defining it as a mental health and medical condition initially faced pushback from women’s rights groups. These groups were concerned that recognizing the condition could perpetuate stereotypes about women’s mental health and capabilities before and during menstruation.
Today, many women-led organizations are supportive of PMDD being an official diagnosis, as this has helped those living with the condition access care.
What causes PMDD?
Researchers don’t know exactly what causes PMDD. Many speculate that people with the condition have an abnormal response to fluctuations in hormones and serotonin—a brain chemical impacting mood— that occur throughout the menstrual cycle. Symptoms fully resolve after menopause.
People who have a family history of premenstrual symptoms and mood disorders or have a personal history of traumatic life events may be at higher risk of PMDD.
How is PMDD diagnosed?
Health care providers of many types, including mental health providers, can diagnose PMDD. Providers typically ask patients about their premenstrual symptoms and the amount of stress those symptoms are causing. Some providers may ask patients to track their periods and symptoms for one month or longer to determine whether those symptoms are linked to their menstrual cycle.
Some patients may struggle to receive a PMDD diagnosis, as some providers may lack knowledge about the condition. If your provider is unfamiliar with the condition and unwilling to explore treatment options, find a provider who can offer adequate support. The International Association for Premenstrual Disorders offers a directory of providers who treat the condition.
How is PMDD treated?
There is no cure for PMDD, but health care providers can prescribe medication to help manage symptoms. Some medication options include:
- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of antidepressants that regulate serotonin in the brain and may improve mood when taken daily or during the luteal phase of each menstrual cycle.
- Hormonal birth control to prevent ovulation-related hormonal changes.
- Over-the-counter pain medication like Tylenol, which can ease headaches, breast tenderness, abdominal cramping, and other physical symptoms.
Providers may also encourage patients to make lifestyle changes to improve symptoms. Those lifestyle changes may include:
- Limiting caffeine intake
- Eating meals regularly to balance blood sugar
- Exercising regularly
- Practicing stress management using breathing exercises and meditation
- Having regular therapy sessions and attending peer support groups
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
If you or anyone you know is considering suicide or self-harm or is anxious, depressed, upset, or needs to talk, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. For international resources, here is a good place to begin.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Rise And (Really) Shine!
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Q&A with 10almonds Subscribers!
Q: Would love to hear more ideas about effective first thing in the morning time management to get a great start on your day.
A: There are a lot of schools of thought about what’s best in this regard! Maybe we’ll do a main feature sometime. But some things that are almost universally agreed upon are:
- Prepare your to-do list the night before
- Have some sort of buffer between waking up and getting to productivity.
- For me (hi, your writer here) it’s my first coffee of the day. It’s not even about the caffeine, it’s about the ritual of it, it’s a marker that separates my night from the day and tells my brain what gear to get into.
- Others may like to exercise first thing in the morning
- For still yet others, it could be a shower, cold or otherwise
- Some people like a tall glass of lemon water to rehydrate after sleeping!
- If you take drinkable morning supplements such as this pretty awesome nootropic stack, it’s a great time for that and an excellent way to get the brain-juices flowing!
- When you do get to productivity: eat the frog first! What this means is: if eating a frog is the hardest thing you’ll have to do all day, do that first. Basically, tackle the most intimidating task first. That way, you won’t spend your day stressed/anxious and/or subconsciously wasting time in order to procrastinate and avoid it.
- Counterpart to the above: a great idea is to also plan something to look forward to when your working day is done. It doesn’t matter much what it is, provided it’s rewarding to you, that makes you keen to finish your tasks to get to it.
Have a question you’d like to see answered here? Hit reply to this email, or use the feedback widget at the bottom! We always love to hear from you
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What Your Doctor Wants You to Know to Crush Medical Debt – by Dr. Virgie Ellington
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First things first: this one’s really only of relevance to people living in the US. That’s most of our readership, but if it’s not you, then apologies, this one won’t be of interest.
For the US Americans, though, Dr. Ellington starts strong with “you got a bill—now get the right bill”, and then gives a step-by-step process for finding the mistakes in your medical bills, fixing them, dealing with insurers who do not want to live up to their part of the bargain, and how to minimize what you need to pay, when you actually arrive at your final bill.
The biggest strength of this book is the wealth of insider knowledge (the author has worked as a primary care physician as well as as a health insurance executive), and while this information won’t stay current forever, its relatively recent publication date (2022) means that little has changed since then, and once you’re up to speed with how things are now, it’ll be easy to roll with whatever changes may come in the future.
Bottom line: if you’re living in the US and would like to not be ripped off as badly as possible when it comes to healthcare costs, this book is a very small, very powerful, investment.
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Gentle Nutrition – by Rachel Hartley, RD, LD
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The subtitle here claims “a non-diet approach”, but doesn’t everything, nowadays? Even books titled “The such-and-such Diet” tend to also assure us “it’s not actually a diet; it’s just a way of eating”, as if a diet is not—by definition—a way of eating. Usually what they want to communicate is that it’s not a restrictive diet, usually meaning not restrictive in quantity, or not restrictive in food type (rarely both).
This book is about intuitive eating, which is about as non-restrictive as any dietary approach can be, since it doesn’t restrict food type at at all, and it doesn’t restrict quantity in advance—rather, we learn to pay closer attention to our full signals.
No wait, we don’t. This time, it’s not about “full”, it’s about “satisfied”. This comes in two forms:
- A principle somewhat akin to the “eat until 80% full” idea
- A principle of ensuring the good is culinarily satisfying
This latter is important, if we want to have a good relationship with eating, and it also helps reduce portion sizes, when we truly take the time to mindfully savor a tasty morsel, rather than wolf down a plate of mediocre food.
The style is one that balance being encouraging with delivering science to back up that encouragement. This not only means encouragement to take up this dietary approach, but also, encouragement to let go of things like calorie-counting and BMI.
The recipes arranged per meal type, and indeed include things not found in many healthy eating books, such as gyoza dumplings, gnocchi, wontons, and shortbread. The recipes are mostly not, by default, vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, or such. So if you have your own food restriction(s), the number of usable recipes will be diminished, barring any substitutions you can make yourself.
Bottom line: this is more about about how to go about intuitive eating, than it is a book with a lot of nutritional information (though there is some of that too). If you’d like to get going with intuitive eating, then this book can help.
Click here to check out Gentle Nutrition, and nourish gently!
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Alzheimer’s: The Bad News And The Good
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Dr. Devi’s Spectrum of Hope
This is Dr. Gayatri Devi. She’s a neurologist, board-certified in neurology, pain medicine, psychiatry, brain injury medicine, and behavioral neurology.
She’s also a Clinical Professor of Neurology, and Director of Long Island Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, and we could continue all day with her qualifications, awards and achievements but then we’d run out of space. Suffice it to say, she knows her stuff.
Especially when it comes to the optimal treatment of stroke, cognitive loss, and pain.
In her own words:
❝Helping folks live their best lives—by diagnosing and managing complex neurologic disorders—that’s my job. Few things are more fulfilling! For nearly thirty years, my focus has been on brain health, concussions, Alzheimer’s and other dementias, menopause related memory loss, and pain.❞
Alzheimer’s is more common than you might think
According to Dr. Devi,
❝97% of patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease don’t even get diagnosed in their internist offices, and half of patients with moderate Alzheimer’s don’t get diagnosed.
What that means is that the percentage of people that we think about when we think about Alzheimer’s—the people in the nursing home—that’s a very, very small fraction of the entirety of the people who have the condition❞
As for what she would consider the real figures, she puts it nearer 1 in 10 adults aged 65 and older.
Source: Neurologist dispels myths about Alzheimer’s disease
Her most critical advice? Reallocate your worry.
A lot of people understandably worry about a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s, especially if an older relative died that way.
See also: Alzheimer’s, Genes, & You
However, Dr. Devi points out that under 5% of Alzheimer’s cases are from genetics, and the majority of Alzheimer’s cases can be prevented be lifestyle interventions.
See also: Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
Lastly, she wants us to skip the stigma
Outside of her clinical practice and academic work, this is one of the biggest things she works on, reducing the stigma attached to Alzheimer’s both publicly and professionally:
Alzheimer’s Disease in Physicians: Assessing Professional Competence and Tempering Stigma
Want more from Dr. Devi?
You might enjoy this interview:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
And here’s her book:
Enjoy!
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Starfruit vs Soursop – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing starfruit to soursop, we picked the soursop.
Why?
First, by starfruit, we also mean carambola, which is a different name for the same fruit, and by soursop we also mean graviola/guyabano/guanábana, which are different namers for the same fruit. Now, as for their health qualities:
In terms of macros, the soursop has more carbs and fiber, the ratio of which also give it the lower glycemic index. So, a win for soursop here.
When it comes to vitamins, starfruit has more of vitamins A, B5, C, and E, while soursop has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, and K. Another win for soursop.
In the category of minerals, starfruit has slightly more copper, manganese, and zinc, while soursop has much more calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium. One more win for soursop!
Adding up the sections makes for a clear and overwhelming win for soursop, but let’s address to quick safety considerations while we’re here:
- Soursop extract has been claimed to be an effective cancer treatment. It isn’t. There is no evidence for this at all; just one unscrupulous company that spread the claims.
- Soursop contains annonacin, a neurotoxin. That sounds scary, but much like with apple seeds and cyanide, the quantities you’d have to consume to suffer ill effects are absurd. Remember how capsaicin (as found in hot peppers) is also a neurotoxin, too and has many health benefits. Humans have a long and happy tradition of enjoying things that are toxic at high doses, but in small doses are neutral or even beneficial. Pretty much all things we can consume (including oxygen, and water) are toxic at sufficient doses.
In short, both of these fruits are fine and good, neither will treat cancer, but both will help to keep you in good health. As for nutritional density, the soursop wins in every category.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer ← soursop has no special cancer treatment properties, but actual evidence shows these fruits are beneficial (being good as a preventative, and also definitely a worthy adjunct to—but not a replacement for—mainstream anticancer therapies if you have cancer).
Take care!
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