Detox: What’s Real, What’s Not, What’s Useful, What’s Dangerous?
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Detox: What’s Real, What’s Not, What’s Useful, What’s Dangerous?
Out of the subscribers who engaged in the poll, it looks like we have a lot of confidence in at least some detox approaches being useful!
Celery juice is most people’s go-to, and indeed it was the only one to get mentioned in the comments added. So let’s take a look at that first…
Celery juice
Celery juice is enjoyed by many people, with many health benefits in mind, including to:
- reduce inflammation
- lower blood pressure
- heal the liver
- fight cancer
- reduce bloating
- support the digestive system
- increase energy
- support weight loss
- promote good mental health
An impressive list! With such an impressive list, we would hope for an impressive weight of evidence, so regular readers might be wondering why those bullet-pointed items aren’t all shiny hyperlinks to studies backing those claims. The reason is…
There aren’t any high-quality studies that back any of those claims.
We found one case study (so, a study with a sample size of one; not amazing) that observed a blood pressure change in an elderly man after drinking celery juice.
Rather than trawl up half of PubMed to show the lacklustre results in a way more befitting of Research Review Monday, though, here’s a nice compact article detailing the litany of disappointment that is science’s observations regards celery juice:
Why Are People Juicing Their Celery? – by Allison Webster, PhD, RD
A key take-away is: juicing destroys the fiber that is celery’s biggest benefit, and its phytochemicals are largely unproven to be of use.
If you enjoy celery, great! It (when not juiced) is a great source of fiber and water. If you juice it, it’s a great source of water.
Activated Charcoal
Unlike a lot of greenery—whose “cleansing” benefits mostly come from fiber and disappear when juiced—activated charcoal has a very different way of operating.
Activated charcoal is negatively charged on a molecular level*, and that—along with its porous nature—traps toxins. It really is a superpowered detox that actually works very well indeed.
But…
It works very well indeed. It will draw out toxins so well, that it’s commonly used to treat poisonings. “Wait”, we hear you say, “why was that a but”?
It doesn’t know what a toxin is. It just draws out all of the things. You took medicine recently? Not any more you didn’t. You didn’t even take that medication orally, you took it some other way? Activated charcoal does not care:
- The effect of activated charcoal on drug exposure following intravenous administration: A meta-analysis
- Activated charcoal for acute overdose: a reappraisal
Does this mean that activated charcoal can be used to “undo” a night of heavy drinking?
Sadly not. That’s one of the few things it just doesn’t work for. It won’t work for alcohol, salts, or metals:
The Use of Activated Charcoal to Treat Intoxications
*Fun chemistry mnemonic about ions:
Cations are pussitive
Anions (by process of elimination) are negative
Onions taste good in salad (remember also: Cole’s Law)
Bottom line on detox foods/drinks:
- Fiber is great; juicing removes fiber. Eat your greens (don’t drink them)!
- Activated charcoal is the heavy artillery of detoxing
- Sometimes it will remove things you didn’t want removed, though
- It also won’t help against alcohol, sadly
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Ghanaian Red Bean & Sweet Potato Groundnut Stew
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This is a dish popular in principle throughout West Africa. We say “in principle” because that’s a big place, and there is a lot of regional variation. The archetypal peanut stew is from Senegal (as maafe) or Mali (as tigadèguèna), but for its more balanced nutritional profile we’ve chosen one from Ghana—and since there are regional variations within Ghana too, we should specify that this one is from the south.
If you are allergic to nuts, you can substitute a seed butter (or tahini) for the nut butter, and omit the nuts—this will work in culinary terms and be fine healthwise, but we can’t claim it would be the same dish, having lost its defining ingredient. If your allergy is solely to peanuts, then substituting with any oily nut would work. So, not almonds for example, but cashews or even walnuts would be fine.
You will need
- 1½ lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into ½” cubes
- 2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
- 2 cans kidney beans, drained, cooked, and rinsed (or 2 cups same; cooked, drained, and rinsed)
- 1 can chopped tomatoes
- ½ cup unsalted dry-roasted peanuts
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 red bell pepper, deseeded and chopped
- ¼ bulb garlic, finely chopped
- 2 heaped tbsp unsalted peanut butter, minimal (ideally: no) additives
- 2 tsp white miso paste
- 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp black pepper
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- ½ tsp coarsely ground nigella seeds
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat some oil in a sauté pan, or other pan suitable for both frying and fitting the entire stew in. Fry the onions until softened, turn the heat down low, and add the garlic, ginger, red bell pepper, cumin, cayenne, black pepper, and MSG/salt.
2) Add ¼ cup of the vegetable stock, and the sweet potato, and turn the heat back up, on high for about 30 seconds to get it to temperature, and then take it down to a simmer.
3) Stir in the miso paste and chopped tomatoes.
4) Add most of the rest of the vegetable stock, keeping ¼ cup aside. Simmer for about 20 minutes.
5) Stir in the kidney beans, and simmer for about 30 minutes more—the sweet potato should be soft now; if it isn’t, let it simmer a while longer until it is.
6) Combine the peanut butter with the remaining ¼ cup vegetable stock, and blend until smooth. Stir it into the stew.
7) If the stew is looking more like a soup than a stew, take out 1 cup and blend this 1 cup to a purée, adding it back in.
8) Add half the peanuts unto the stew. Taste, and adjust the seasonings if necessary.
9) Crush the remaining peanuts using a pestle and mortar; not too much though; you want them broken into bits, not pulverised.
10) Garnish with the crushed nuts and nigella seeds, and serve.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits? ← we used 4/5 today!
Take care!
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The Bates Method for Better Eyesight Without Glasses − by Dr. William Bates
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This is a very popular book and method, albeit not a very new one. It was first published in 1920; self-published by Dr. Bates, as the American Medical Association (AMA) considered it quackery.
Of course, our understanding of eyesight has improved a lot in the past 100 years, so, with the benefit of an extra century of ophthalmological research, who was on the right side of history?
As it turns out, all of Dr. Bates’ ideas have been firmly disproven, and eyes simply do not work the way he thought they do (for example, he believed that rather than adjusting the lens for focus, the muscles around the eye elongate the eyeball; this absolutely is not how focusing works, and while how much those muscles squeeze the eye does vary depending on some physiological factors, there are no known exercises that can change them).
Nevertheless, for the interested, his techniques include such things as:
- putting pressure on one’s eyes with one’s hands (which can increase glaucoma risk)
- visualization, rather than actual viewing, of an eye chart (this is ironic, because the book cover promises that an eye chart is included; it is not; perhaps it was hoped that we would visualize it more vividly and thus see it?)
- sunning, which is not only directly looking at the sun, but also using a burning glass to increase the focus of the sunlight onto one’s eye (please do not do this under any circumstances)
His primary thesis in this work, though, is that eyesight problems of all kinds (from short- and long-sightedness, to more serious things like cataracts and glaucoma) are caused by the tension produced by reading books, so relaxation exercises are his prescription for this.
The style is characteristic of its era and then some; bold claims are made with no evidence, there are no references, and the text is (ironically, given his opinions on tension being produced by reading books) quite dense. It certainly doesn’t lend itself well to skimming, for example, because something critical can easily be buried in a wall of text of what is, honestly, mostly waffle.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your eyesight and reduce your dependency on glasses, then we absolutely cannot recommend this book, and would direct you instead to Vision for Life, Revised Edition – by Dr. Meir Schneider, which is much more consistent with actual science.
Click here if you are, nonetheless, curious about Dr. Bates’ book and wish to check it out!
PS: Dr. Bates certainly was an interesting fellow; he disappeared mysteriously, but was found working as a medical assistant a few weeks later by his wife, whom he now claimed to not recognize. Then he disappeared again two days later (his wife never found him, this time, despite trying for many years), only to show up again, 13 years later, shortly after his wife’s death, whereupon he remarried (to his long-time personal assistant). None of this has anything to do with his fascinating opinions on eyesight, but it’s a story worth mentioning.
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What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast – by Laura Vanderkram
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First, what this is not:this is not a rehash of “The 5AM Club”, and nor is it a rehash of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.
What it is: packed with tips about time management for real people operating here in the real world. The kind of people who have non-negotiable time-specific responsibilities, and frequent unavoidable interruptions. The kind of people who have partners, families, and personal goals and aspirations too.
The “two other short guides” mentioned in the subtitle are her other books, whose titles start the same but instead of “…before Breakfast”, substitute:
- …on the Weekend
- …at Work
However, if you’re retired (we know many of our subscribers are), this still applies to you:
- The “weekend” book is about getting the most out of one’s leisure time, and we hope you have that too!
- The “work” book is about not getting lost in the nitty-gritty of the daily grind, and instead making sure to keep track of the big picture. You probably have this in your personal projects, too!
Bottom line: if, in the mornings, it sometimes seems like your get-up-and-go has got up and gone without you, then you will surely benefit from this book that outstrips its competitors in usefulness and applicability.
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The Many Faces Of Cosmetic Surgery
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Cosmetic Surgery: What’s The Truth?
In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you your opinion on elective cosmetic surgeries, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 48% said “Everyone should be able to get what they want, assuming informed consent”
- About 28% said “It can ease discomfort to bring features more in line with normalcy”
- 15% said “They should be available in the case of extreme disfigurement only”
- 10% said “No elective cosmetic surgery should ever be performed; needless danger”
Well, there was a clear gradient of responses there! Not so polarizing as we might have expected, but still enough dissent for discussion
So what does the science say?
The risks of cosmetic surgery outweigh the benefits: True or False?
False, subjectively (but this is important).
You may be wondering: how is science subjective?
And the answer is: the science is not subjective, but people’s cost:worth calculations are. What’s worth it to one person absolutely may not be worth it to another. Which means: for those for whom it wouldn’t be worth it, they are usually the people who will not choose the elective surgery.
Let’s look at some numbers (specifically, regret rates for various surgeries, elective/cosmetic or otherwise):
- Regret rate for elective cosmetic surgery in general: 20%
- Regret rate for knee replacement (i.e., not cosmetic): 17.1%
- Regret rate for hip replacement (i.e., not cosmetic): 4.8%
- Regret rate for gender-affirming surgeries (for transgender patients): 1%
So we can see, elective surgeries have an 80–99% satisfaction rate, depending on what they are. In comparison, the two joint replacements we mentioned have a 82.9–95.2% satisfaction rate. Not too dissimilar, taken in aggregate!
In other words: if a person has studied the risks and benefits of a surgery and decides to go ahead, they’re probably going to be happy with the results, and for them, the benefits will have outweighed the risks.
Sources for the above numbers, by the way:
- What is the regret rate for plastic surgery?
- Decision regret after primary hip and knee replacement surgery
- A systematic review of patient regret after surgery—a common phenomenon in many specialties but rare within gender-affirmation surgery
But it’s just a vanity; therapy is what’s needed instead: True or False?
False, generally. True, sometimes. Whatever the reasons for why someone feels the way they do about their appearance—whether their face got burned in a fire or they just have triple-J cups that they’d like reduced, it’s generally something they’ve already done a lot of thinking about. Nevertheless, it does also sometimes happen that it’s a case of someone hoping it’ll be the magical solution, when in reality something else is also needed.
How to know the difference? One factor is whether the surgery is “type change” or “restorative”, and both have their pros and cons.
- In “type change” (e.g. rhinoplasty), more psychological adjustment is needed, but when it’s all over, the person has a new nose and, statistically speaking, is usually happy with it.
- In “restorative” (e.g. facelift), less psychological adjustment is needed (as it’s just a return to a previous state), so a person will usually be happy quickly, but ultimately it is merely “kicking the can down the road” if the underlying problem is “fear of aging”, for example. In such a case, likely talking therapy would be beneficial—whether in place of, or alongside, cosmetic surgery.
Here’s an interesting paper on that; the sample sizes are small, but the discussion about the ideas at hand is a worthwhile read:
Does cosmetic surgery improve psychosocial wellbeing?
Some people will never be happy no matter how many surgeries they get: True or False?
True! We’re going to refer to the above paper again for this one. In particular, here’s what it said about one group for whom surgeries will not usually be helpful:
❝There is a particular subgroup of people who appear to respond poorly to cosmetic procedures. These are people with the psychiatric disorder known as “body dysmorphic disorder” (BDD). BDD is characterised by a preoccupation with an objectively absent or minimal deformity that causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning.
For several reasons, it is important to recognise BDD in cosmetic surgery settings:
Firstly, it appears that cosmetic procedures are rarely beneficial for these people. Most patients with BDD who have had a cosmetic procedure report that it was unsatisfactory and did not diminish concerns about their appearance.
Secondly, BDD is a treatable disorder. Serotonin-reuptake inhibitors and cognitive behaviour therapy have been shown to be effective in about two-thirds of patients with BDD❞
~ Dr. David Castle et al. (lightly edited for brevity)
Which is a big difference compared to, for example, someone having triple-J breasts that need reducing, or the wrong genitals for their gender, or a face whose features are distinct outliers.
Whether that’s a reason people with BDD shouldn’t be able to get it is an ethical question rather than a scientific one, so we’ll not try to address that with science.
After all, many people (in general) will try to fix their woes with a haircut, a tattoo, or even a new sportscar, and those might sometimes be bad decisions, but they are still the person’s decision to make.
And even so, there can be protectionist laws/regulations that may provide a speed-bump, for example:
Take care!
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Lower Cholesterol Naturally
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Lower Cholesterol, Without Statins
We’ll start this off by saying that lowering cholesterol might not, in fact, be critical or even especially helpful for everyone, especially in the case of women. We covered this more in our article about statins:
…which was largely informed by the wealth of data in this book:
The Truth About Statins – by Dr. Barbara H. Roberts
…which in turn, may in fact put a lot of people off statins. We’re not here to tell you don’t use them—they may indeed be useful or even critical for some people, as Dr. Roberts herself also makes makes clear. But rather, we always recommend learning as much as possible about what’s going on, to be able to make the most informed choices when it comes to what often might be literally life-and-death decisions.
On which note, if anyone would like a quick refresher on cholesterol, what it actually is (in its various forms) and what it does, why we need it, the problems it can cause anyway, then here you go:
Now, with all that in mind, we’re going to assume that you, dear reader, would like to know:
- how to lower your LDL cholesterol, and/or
- how to maintain a safe LDL cholesterol level
Because, while the jury’s out on the dangers of high LDL levels for women in particular, it’s clear that for pretty much everyone, maintaining them within well-established safe zones won’t hurt.
Here’s how:
Relax
Or rather, manage your stress. This doesn’t just reduce your acute risk of a heart attack, it also improves your blood metrics along the way, and yes, that includes not just blood pressure and blood sugars, but even triglycerides! Here’s the science for that, complete with numbers:
What are the effects of psychological stress and physical work on blood lipid profiles?
With that in mind, here’s…
How To Manage Chronic Stress (Even While Chronically Stressed)
Not chemically “relaxed”, though
While relaxing is important, drinking alcohol and smoking are unequivocally bad for pretty much everything, and this includes cholesterol levels:
Can We Drink To Good Health? ← this also covers popular beliefs about red wine and heart health, and the answer is no, we cannot
As for smoking, it is good to quit as soon as possible, unless your doctor specifically advises you otherwise (there are occasional situations where something else needs to be dealt with first, but not as many some might like to believe):
Addiction Myths That Are Hard To Quit
If you’re wondering about cannabis (CBD and/or THC), then we’d love to tell you about the effect these things have on heart health in general and cholesterol levels in particular, but the science is far too young (mostly because of the historic, and in some places contemporary, illegality cramping the research), and we could only find small, dubious, mutually contradictory studies so far. So the honest answer is: science doesn’t know this one, yet.
Exercise… But don’t worry, you can still stay relaxed
When it comes to heart health, the most important thing is keeping moving, so getting in those famous 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise is critical, and getting more is ideal.
240 minutes per week is a neat 40 minutes per day, by the way and is very attainable (this writer lives a 20-minute walk away from where she does her daily grocery shopping, thus making for a daily 40-minute round trip, not counting the actual shopping).
See: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, And Move More
If walking is for some reason not practical for you, here’s a whole list of fun options that don’t feel like exercise but are:
Manage your hormones
This one is mostly for menopausal women, though some people with atypical hormonal situations may find it applicable too.
Estrogen protects the heart… Until it doesn’t:
See also: World Menopause Day: Menopause & Cardiovascular Disease Risk
Here’s a great introduction to sorting it out, if necessary:
Dr. Jen Gunter: What You Should Have Been Told About Menopause Beforehand
Eat a heart-healthy diet
Shocking nobody, but it has to be said, for the sake of being methodical. So, what does that look like?
What Matters Most For Your Heart? Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure
(it’s fiber in the #1 spot, but there’s a list of most important things there, that’s worth checking out and comparing it to what you habitually eat)
You can also check out the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) edition of the Mediterranean diet, here:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
As for saturated fat (and especially trans-fats), the basic answer is to keep them to minimal, but there is room for nuance with saturated fats at least:
Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?
And lastly, do make sure to get enough omega 3 fatty-acids:
What Omega-3s Really Do For Us
And enjoy plant sterols and stanols! This would need a whole list of their own, so here you go:
Take These To Lower Cholesterol! (Statin Alternatives)
Take care!
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Foods for Stronger Bones
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It’s Q&A Day!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! 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
Q: Foods that help build stronger bones and cut inflammation? Thank you!
We’ve got you…
For stronger bones / To cut inflammation
That “stronger bones” article is about the benefits of collagen supplementation for bones, but there’s definitely more to say on the topic of stronger bones, so we’ll do a main feature on it sometime soon!
Don’t Forget…
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