What Does Kaempferol Do, Anyway?
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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 😎
❝In the this or that article, you said kampeferol was a famously good flavonol on a par with quercetin, does it do the same thing or does it do something different, and is it worth supplementing?❞
So, this will be in reference to a This-or-That from last week:
Cantaloupe vs Cucumber – Which is Healthier?
Let’s break down your question into parts:
- Is it comparable to quercetin?
- Does it have special properties of its own?
- Is it worth supplementing?
Is it comparable to quercetin?
They are both flavonols, and potent ones at that. Similarities include that they’re found in many of the same plants, and that (like most if not all polyphenols) they have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits, which in turn usually translate to anti-aging and anticancer benefits too.
You can read more about quercetin here: Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin
You can read more about polyphenols in general here: 21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them ← quercetin and kaempferol are #1 and #2 on this list, respectively
Does it have special properties of its own?
Yes it does!
❝Epidemiological studies have shown an inverse relationship between kaempferol intake and cancer.
Kaempferol may help by augmenting the body’s antioxidant defense against free radicals, which promote the development of cancer.
At the molecular level, kaempferol has been reported to modulate a number of key elements in cellular signal transduction pathways linked to apoptosis, angiogenesis, inflammation, and metastasis.
Significantly, kaempferol inhibits cancer cell growth and angiognesis and induces cancer cell apoptosis, but on the other hand, kaempferol appears to preserve normal cell viability, in some cases exerting a protective effect.❞
Read in full: A review of the dietary flavonoid, kaempferol on human health and cancer chemoprevention
It is also particularly good for the gut:
❝Most recently, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated the significance of kaempferol in the regulation of intestinal function and the mitigation of intestinal inflammation❞
Read in full: A Critical Review of Kaempferol in Intestinal Health and Diseases
This also means it is particularly efficacious against food allergies:
❝we screened food ingredients with the expectation of finding dietary compounds that exert beneficial effects on intestinal immune tolerance and identified kaempferol, a flavonoid, as the compound that most effectively increased Aldh1a2 mRNA levels❞
(that’s good)
That one’s a bit scientifically denser than we usually try to find when citing sources here, so here’s a pop-science article about the same thing, which explains in more words than we have room to here:
Flavonoid kaempferol could offer natural relief for food allergies ← much lighter reading, but still very informative
Kaempferol (like quercetin, granted) is also a potent neuroprotective agent, not least of all because its anti-inflammatory powers extend to reducing neuroinflammation (not everything does, because not everything we ingest can pass the blood-brain barrier to affect what goes on in the brain):
…and more:
❝it may be used to treat numerous acute and chronic inflammation-induced diseases, including intervertebral disc degeneration and colitis, as well as post-menopausal bone loss and acute lung injury. In addition, it has beneficial effects against cancer, liver injury, obesity and diabetes, inhibits vascular endothelial inflammation, protects the cranial nerve and heart function, and may be used for treating fibroproliferative disorders, including hypertrophic scar.❞
Read in full: Recent progress regarding kaempferol for the treatment of various diseases
Is it worth supplementing?
If you eat a lot of leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, and/or citrus fruits, and/or drink tea (true teas from tea plants, not miscellaneous herbal infusions), then you probably get a good dose of kaempferol already.
However, if you want to supplement, hawthorn berry is not a bad one to go with, like this example product on Amazon 😎
We wrote about this before, here: Hawthorn For The Heart (& More)
As for teas, if you’re wondering about the merits of black, white, green or red, check out:
Black, White, Green, Red: Which Kind Of Tea Is Best For The Health, According To Science? ← this covers many factors
Enjoy!
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The Diet Myth – by Dr. Tim Spector
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Why are we supposed to go low-carb, but get plenty of whole grains? Avoid saturated fat, but olive oil is one of the healthiest fats around? Will cheese kill us or save us? Even amongst the well-informed, there’s a lot of confusion. This book addresses these and many such topics.
A main theme of the book is howa lot of it relates to the state of our gut microbiome, and what is good or bad for that. He also discusses, for example, how microbes predict obesity better than genes, and the good news is: we can change our microbes a lot more easily than we can change our genes!
In the category of criticism, he repeats some decades-old bad science in some areas outside of his field (i.e. unrelated to nutrition), so that’s unfortunate, and/but doesn’t detract from the value of the book if we keep to the main topic.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand better the physiology and microbiology behind why dieting does work for most people (and how to do it better), then this is a great book for that.
Click here to check out The Diet Myth, and learn the science behind the confusion!
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The Better Brain – by Dr. Bonnie Kaplan and Dr. Julia Rucklidge
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
We’ve reviewed books about eating for brain health before, but this is the first time we’ve reviewed one written by clinical psychologists.
What does that change? Well, it means it less focus on, say, reducing beta amyloid plaques, and more on mental health—which often has a more immediate impact in our life.
In the category of criticisms, the authors do seem to have a bit of a double-standard. For example, they criticise psychiatrists prescribing drugs that have only undergone 12-week clinical trials, but they cite a single case-study of a 10-year-old boy as evidence for a multivitamin treating his psychosis when antipsychotics didn’t work.
However, the authors’ actual dietary advice is nonetheless very respectable. Whole foods, nutrients taken in synergistic stacks, cut the sugar, etc.
Bottom line: if you’d like to learn about the impact good nutrition can have on the brain’s health, ranging from diet itself to dietary supplements, this book presents many avenues to explore.
Click here to check out “The Better Brain”, and eat for the good health of yours!
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The Joy of Saying No – by Natalie Lue
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Superficially, this seems an odd topic for an entire book. “Just say no”, after all, surely! But it’s not so simple as that, is it?
Lue looks into what underpins people-pleasing, first. Then, she breaks it down into five distinct styles of people-pleasing that each come from slightly different motivations and ways of perceiving how we interact with those around us.
Lest this seem overly complicated, those five styles are what she calls: gooding, efforting, avoiding, saving, suffering.
She then looks out how to have a healthier relationship with our yes/no decisions; first by observing, then by creating healthy boundaries. “Healthy” is key here; this isn’t about being a jerk to everyone! Quite the contrary, it involves being honest about what we can and cannot reasonably take on.
The last section is about improving and troubleshooting this process, and constitutes a lot of the greatest value of the book, since this is where people tend to err the most.
Bottom line: this book is informative, clear, and helpful. And far from disappointing everyone with “no”, we can learn to really de-stress our relationships with others—and ourselves.
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How Useful Is Hydrotherapy?
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Hyyyyyyydromatic…
Hydrotherapy is a very broad term, and refers to any (external) use of water as part of a physical therapy. Today we’re going to look at some of the top ways this can be beneficial—maybe you’ll know them all already, but maybe there’s something you hadn’t thought about or done decently; let’s find out!
Notwithstanding the vague nature of the umbrella term, some brave researchers have done a lot of work to bring us lots of information about what works and what doesn’t, so we’ll be using this to guide us today. For example:
Scientific Evidence-Based Effects of Hydrotherapy on Various Systems of the Body
Swimming (and similar)
An obvious one, this can for most people be a very good full-body exercise, that’s exactly as strenuous (or not) as you want/need it to be.
It can be cardio, it can be resistance, it can be endurance, it can be high-intensity interval training, it can be mobility work, it can be just support for an aching body that gets to enjoy being in the closest to zero-gravity we can get without being in freefall or in space.
See also: How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Depending on what’s available for you locally (pool with a shallow area, for example), it can also be a place to do some exercises normally performed on land, but with your weight being partially supported (and as a counterpoint, a little resistance added to movement), and no meaningful risk of falling.
Tip: check out your local facilities, to see if they offer water aerobics classes; because the water necessitates slow movement, this can look a lot like tai chi to watch, but it’s great for mobility and balance.
Water circuit therapy
This isn’t circuit training! Rather, it’s a mixture of thermo- and cryotherapy, that is to say, alternating warm and cold water immersion. This can also be interspersed with the use of a sauna, of course.
See also:
- Ice Baths: To Dip Or Not To Dip?
- Saunas: Health Benefits (& Caveats)
- The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)
this last one is about thermal shock-mediated hormesis, which sounds drastic, but it’s what we’re doing here with the hot and cold, and it’s good for most people!
Pain relief
Most of the research for this has to do with childbirth pain rather than, for example, back pain, but the science is promising:
Post-exercise recovery
It can be tempting to sink into a hot bath, or at least enjoy a good hot shower, after strenuous exercise. But does it help recovery too? The answer is probably yes:
Effect of hot water immersion on acute physiological responses following resistance exercise
For more on that (and other means of improving post-exercise recovery), check out our previous main feature:
How To Speed Up Recovery After A Workout (According To Actual Science)
Take care!
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7 Invisible Eating Disorders
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It’s easy to assume that anyone with an eating disorder can be easily recognized by the resultantly atypical body composition, but it’s often not so.
Beyond the obvious
We’ll not keep them a mystery; the 7 invisible eating disorders discussed by therapist Kati Morton in this video are:
- OSFED (Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder): a catch-all diagnosis for those who don’t meet the criteria for more specific eating disorders but still have significant eating disorder behaviors.
- Atypical Anorexia: characterized by all the symptoms of anorexia nervosa (especially: intense fear of gaining weight, and body image distortion) except that the individual’s weight remains in a normal range.
- Atypical Bulimia: similar to bulimia nervosa, but the frequency or duration of binge-purge behaviors does not meet the usual diagnostic criteria and thus can fly under the radar.
- Atypical Binge-Eating Disorder: has episodes of consuming large amounts of food without compensatory behaviors (e.g. purging), but the episodes are less frequent and/or intense than typical binge-eating disorder.
- Purging Disorder: purging behaviors such as self-induced vomiting or laxative abuse without having binge-eating episodes (thus, this not being binging, and nothing obvious is happening outside of the bathroom).
- Night Eating Syndrome: consuming excessive amounts of food during the night while being fully aware of the nature of the eating episodes, which disrupts sleep and leads to guilt.
- Rumination Disorder: repeatedly regurgitating food, which may be rechewed, reswallowed, or spat out, without nausea or involuntary retching, often as a self-soothing mechanism.
For more on each of these, along with a case study-style example of each, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Eating Disorders: More Varied (And Prevalent) Than People Think
Take care!
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Healthy Habits for Managing & Reversing Prediabetes – by Dr. Marie Feldman
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
The book doesn’t assume prior knowledge, and does explain the science of diabetes, prediabetes, the terms and the symptoms, what’s going on inside, etc—before getting onto the main meat of the book, the tips.
The promised 100 tips are varied in their application; they range from diet and exercise, to matters of sleep, stress, and even love.
There are bonus tips too! For example, an appendix covers “tips for healthier eating out” (i.e. in restaurants etc) and a grocery list to ensure your pantry is good for defending you against prediabetes.
The writing style is very accessible pop-science; this isn’t like reading some dry academic paper—though it does cite its sources for claims, which we always love to see.
Bottom line: if you’d like to proof yourself against prediabetes, and are looking for “small things that add up” habits to get into to achieve that, this book is an excellent first choice.
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