Do we need animal products to be healthy?
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Do we need animal products to be healthy?
We asked you for your (health-related) perspective on plant-based vs anima-based foods, and got the above-pictured spread of answers.
“Some or all of us may need small amounts of animal products” came out on top with more votes than the two more meat-eatery options combined, and the second most popular option was the hard-line “We can all live healthily and happily on just plants”.
Based on these answers, it seems our readership has quite a lot of vegans, vegetarians, and perhaps “flexitarians” who just have a little of animal products here and there.
Perhaps we should have seen this coming; the newsletter is “10almonds”, not “10 rashers of bacon”, after all.
But what does the science say?
We are carnivores and are best eating plenty of meat: True or False?
False. Let’s just rip the band-aid off for this one.
In terms of our anatomy and physiology, we are neither carnivores nor herbivores:
- We have a mid-length digestive tract (unlike carnivores and herbivores who have short and long ones, respectively)
- We have a mouthful of an assortment of teeth; molars and premolars for getting through plants from hard nuts to tough fibrous tubers, and we have incisors for cutting into flesh and (vestigial, but they’re there) canines that really serve us no purpose now but would have been a vicious bite when they were bigger, like some other modern-day primates.
- If we look at our closest living relatives, the other great apes, they are mostly frugivores (fruit-eaters) who supplement their fruity diet with a small quantity of insects and sometimes other small animals—of which they’ll often eat only the fatty organ meat and discard the rest.
And then, there’s the health risks associated with meat. We’ll not linger on this as we’ve talked about it before, but for example:
- Processed Meat Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Constraints of Current Evidence from Epidemiological Studies
- Red Meat Consumption (Heme Iron Intake) and Risk for Diabetes and Comorbidities?
- Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies
- Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality
- Meat consumption: Which are the current global risks? A review of recent (2010-2020) evidences
If we avoid processed and/or red meat, that’s good enough: True or False?
True… Ish.
Really this one depends on one’s criteria for “good enough”. The above-linked studies, and plenty more like them, give the following broad picture:
- Red and/or processed meats are unequivocally terrible for the health in general
- Other mammalian meats, such as from pigs, are really not much better
- Poultry, on the other hand, the science is less clear on; the results are mixed, and thus so are the conclusions. The results are often barely statistically significant. In other words, when it comes to poultry, in the matter of health, the general consensus is that you can take it or leave it and will be fine. Some studies have found firmly for or against it, but the consensus is a collective scientific shrug.
- Fish, meanwhile, has almost universally been found to be healthful in moderation. You may have other reasons for wanting to avoid it (ethics, environmentalism, personal taste) but those things are beyond the scope of this article.
Some or all of us may need small amounts of animal products: True or False?
True! With nuances.
Let’s divide this into “some” and “all”. Firstly, some people may have health conditions and/or other mitigating circumstances that make an entirely plant-based diet untenable.
We’re going light on quotations from subscriber comments today because otherwise this article will get a bit long, but here’s a great example that’s worth quoting, from a subscriber who voted for this option:
❝I have a rare genetic disease called hereditary fructose intolerance. It means I lack the enzyme, Aldolase B, to process fructose. Eating fruits and veggies thus gives me severe hypoglycemia. I also have anemia caused by two autoimmune diseases, so I have to eat meat for the iron it supplies. I also supplement with iron pills but the pills alone can’t fix the problem entirely.❞
And, there’s the thing. Popular vegan talking-points are very good at saying “if you have this problem, this will address it; if you have that problem, that will address it”, etc. For every health-related objection to a fully plant-based diet there’s a refutation… Individually.
But actual real-world health doesn’t work like that; co-morbidities are very common, and in some cases, like our subscriber above, one problem undermines the solution to another. Add a third problem and by now you really just have to do what you need to do to survive.
For this reason, even the Vegan Society’s definition of veganism includes the clause “so far as is possible and practicable”.
Now, as for the rest of us “all”.
What if we’re really healthy and are living in optimal circumstances (easy access to a wide variety of choice of food), can we live healthily and happily just on plants?
No—on a technicality.
Vegans famously need to supplement vitamin B12, which is not found in plants. Ironically, much of the B12 in animal products comes from the animals themselves being given supplements, but that’s another matter. However, B12 can also be enjoyed from yeast. Popular options include the use of yeast extract (e.g. Marmite) and/or nutritional yeast in cooking.
Yeast is a single-celled microorganism that’s taxonomically classified as a fungus, even though in many ways it behaves like an animal (which series of words may conjure an amusing image, but we mean, biologically speaking).
However, it’s also not technically a plant, hence the “No—on a technicality”
Bottom line:
By nature, humans are quite versatile generalists when it comes to diet:
- Most of us can live healthily and happily on just plants if we so choose.
- Some people cannot, and will require varying kinds (and quantities) of animal products.
- As for red and/or processed meats, we’re not the boss of you, but from a health perspective, the science is clear: unless you have a circumstance that really necessitates it, just don’t.
- Same goes for pork, which isn’t red and may not be processed, but metabolically it’s associated with the same problems.
- The jury is out on poultry, but it strongly appears to be optional, healthwise, without making much of a difference either way
- Fish is roundly considered healthful in moderation. Enjoy it if you want, don’t if you don’t.
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Brain Health Action Plan – by Dr. Teryn Clarke
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The author is a physician and neurologist, and she brings a lot of science with her when she sets out to Alzheimer’s-proof our brains:
- She talks about brain nourishment, and what things in contrast sabotage our brains, and how.
- She talks intermittent fasting, and optimal scheduling when it comes to food, sleep, exercise, and more.
- She talks about how the rest of our health affects our brain health, and vice versa.
The “action plan” promised by the title includes all of those elements, plus such matters as ongoing education, cognitive stimulation, stress management, dealing with depression, and other mostly-brain-based factors.
As such, it’s not just a “for your information” book, and Dr. Clarke does outline suggested goals, tasks, and habits, advises the use of a streak tracker, provides suggested recipes, and in all ways does what she can to make it easy for the reader to implement the information within.
Bottom line: if you’d like to dodge dementia, this book is quite a comprehensive guide.
Click here to check out Brain Health Action Plan, and enact yours!
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The Reason You’re Alone
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If you are feeling lonely, then there are likely reasons why, as Kurtzgesagt explains:
Why it happens and how to fix it
Many people feel lonely and disconnected, often not knowing how to make new friends. And yet, social connection strongly predicts happiness, while lack of it is linked to diseases and a shorter life.
One mistake that people make is thinking it has to be about shared interests; that can help, but proximity and shared time are much more important.
Another stumbling block for many is that adult responsibilities and distractions (work, kids, technology) often take priority over friendships—but loneliness is surprisingly highest among young people, worsened by the pandemic’s impact on social interactions.
And even when friendships are made, they fade without attention, often accidentally, impacting both people involved. Other friendships can be lost following big life changes such as moving house or the end of a relationship. And for people above a certain advanced age, friendship groups can shrink due to death, if one’s friends are all in the same age group.
But, all is not lost. We can make friends with people of any age, and old friendships can be revived by a simple invitation. We can also take a “build it and they will come” approach, by organizing events and being the one who invites others.
It’s easy to fear rejection—most people do—but it’s worth overcoming for the potential rewards. That said, building friendships requires time, patience, caring about others, and being open about yourself, which can involve a degree of vulnerability too.
In short: be laid-back while still prioritizing friendships, show genuine interest, and stay open to social opportunities.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Take care!
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An Elegant Defense – by Matt Richtel
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In a way, Richtel got the best and worst of the publication date lottery. This book, which he’d obviously been working on for however long, was published in March 2020. Yes, that March 2020. So, it obviously got a huge boost in sales that launced it to bestseller status, and/but it doesn’t actually discuss COVID at all.
What it does discuss, is—as one might expect—the immune system. Or really, the immune systems, plural, several systems working alongside each other. How we got to have such, how our immune functions work, where all the various immune cells come from and what part they play. What pathogens can do to fight and/or confuse (or even co-opt) our immune response, and what modern medicine can do to counteract the pathogens’ anti-countermeasure countermeasures. And how it can still go wrong.
The “Four Lives” promised in the subtitle are stories, and Richtel explains the immune system through specific people’s specific battles. In particular, a friend of his who had quite a remarkable battle against cancer, which was of course terrible for him, but illustrative for us.
The style of the book is very readably journalistic. The author is a Pulitzer-winning NYT journalist, and not normally a science writer. Here at 10almonds, “we like big bibliographies and we cannot lie”, and we didn’t get to enjoy that in this case. The book contained no bibliography (nor appropriate inline citations, nor equivalent footnotes). Maybe a future addition will include this.
Bottom line: there’s a lot of “science for the lay reader” here. While the lack of references is a big oversight, the book does give a very good overview of what both sides (immune response and pathogenic invasion) bring to the battle of your body.
Click here to check out Elegant Defense, and demystify immunology!
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7 Ways To Boost Mitochondrial Health To Fight Disease
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Fatigue and a general lack of energy can be symptoms of many things, and for most of them, looking after our mitochondrial health can at least help, if not outright fix the issue.
The Seven Ways
Dr. Jonas Kuene suggests that we…
- Enjoy a good diet: especially, limiting simple sugars, reducing overall carbohydrate intake, and swapping seed oils for healthier oils like avocado oil and olive oil.
- Take supplements: including coenzyme Q10, alpha-lipoic acid, and vitamins
- Decrease exposure to toxins: limit alcohol consumption (10almonds tip: limit it to zero if you can), avoid foods that are likely high in heavy metals or pesticides, and check you’re not being overmedicated (there can be a bit of a “meds creep” over time if left unchecked, so it’s good to periodically do a meds review in case something is no longer needed)
- Practice intermittent fasting: Dr. Kuene suggests a modest 16–18 hours fast per week; doing so daily is generally considered good advice, for those for whom this is a reasonable option
- Build muscle: exercise in general is good for mitochondria, but body composition itself counts for a lot too
- Sleep: aiming for 7–9 hours, and if that’s not possible at night, add a nap during the day to make up the lost time
- Get near-infrared radiation: from the sun, and/or made-for-purpose IR health devices.
For more info on these (including the referenced science), enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Coenzyme Q10 From Foods & Supplements
- How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
- Intermittent Fasting: What’s the truth?
- Build Muscle (Healthily!)
- Red Light, Go!
Take care!
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What Happens To Your Body When You Stop Drinking Alcohol
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Immediately after we stop drinking is rarely when we feel our best. But how long is it before we can expect to see benefits, instead of just suffering?
Timeline
After stopping drinking alcohol for…
- Seconds: the liver starts making progress filtering out toxins and sugars; ethanol starts to leave the system
- 1 hour: fatigue sets in as the body uses a lot of energy to metabolize and eliminate alcohol. However, sleep quality (if one goes to sleep now) is low because alcohol disrupts the brain patterns required for restful sleep
- 6–12 hours: the immune system starts recovering from the suppression caused by alcohol
- 24 hours: immune system is back to normal; withdrawal symptoms may occur in the case of heavy drinkers
- 3–5 days: resting blood pressure begins to drop, as stress levels decrease (alcohol may seem anxiolytic, but it is actually anxiogenic; it just masks its own effect in this regard). Also, because of insulin responses improving, appetite reduces. The liver, once it has finished dealing your last drinking session (if you used to drink all the time, it probably had a backlog to clear), can now begin to make repairs on itself.
- 1 week: skin will start looking better, as antidiuretic hormone levels neutralize, leading to a healthier maintenance of hydration
- 2 weeks: cognitive abilities improve as the brain begins to make progress in repairing itself. At the same time, kidneys start to heal.
- 3–4 weeks: the liver begins to regenerate in earnest. You may wonder what took it so long given the liver’s famous regenerative abilities, but in this case, the liver was also the organ that took the most damage from drinking, so its regeneration gets off to a slow start (in contrast, if the liver had “merely” suffered physical trauma, such as being shot, stabbed,
or eaten by eagles,it’d start regenerating vigorously as soon as the immediate wound-response had been tended to). Once it is able to pick up the pace though, overall health improves, as the liver can focus on breaking down other toxins. - 1–2 months: the heart is able to repair itself, and start to become stronger again (dependent on other lifestyle factors, of course).
- 3 months and more: bodily repairs continue (for example, the damage to the liver is often so severe that it can take quite a bit longer to recover completely, and repairs in the brain are always slow, for reasons beyond the scope of this article). Looking at the big picture, at this point we also see other benefits, such as reduced cancer risks.
In short… It’s never too soon to stop, but it’s also never too late, unless you are going to die in the next few days. So long as you’ll be in the land of the living for a few days yet, there’s time to enjoy the benefits of stopping.
Most importantly: the timeline for the most important repairs is not as long as many people might think, and that itself can be very motivating.
For more detail on much of the above, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Can We Drink To Good Health?
- How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
- Addiction Myths That Are Hard To Quit
- How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
Take care!
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Dyslexia Test
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(and it’s mostly not about reading/writing!)
More than just shuffled letters
This video provides a self-test based on the Bangor Dyslexia Test (BDT). The BDT is 94% accurate in identifying dyslexia, and it includes 9 parts, with a mix of questions and tasks. Answering “yes” or struggling with tasks indicates possible dyslexia. Collecting 4+ indicators suggests dyslexia, but of course is not a replacement for official diagnosis.
It’s best to watch the video if you can, but here’s what to expect:
- Left-Right confusion: point your left hand to your right/left shoulder.
- Family history: any family members with dyslexia or struggles with reading/writing?
- Repeating numbers (order): repeat a given sequence of numbers in order.
- Letter confusion (e.g. b/d): do you confuse letters like “b” and “d” beyond age 8?
- Times tables: recite the 6, 7, and 8 times tables.
- Word manipulation: replace the letters in a word to create a new word, e.g. change “slide” (s ⇾ g) to “glide.”
- Repeating numbers (reversed): repeat a given sequence of numbers in reverse order.
- Months in reverse: recite the months of the year in reverse order.
- Subtraction: do you struggle with subtraction, e.g. 44-9 or 55-12?
Writer’s anecdote: I am not dyslexic, and/but I have an impressive level of dyscalculia (the purely numerical equivalent), to the point I’ll sometimes use a calculator to do single-digit calculations, and I am so bad at calculating ages or other differences between dates (I will have to count on my fingers or else run the severe risk of out-by-one errors). I have also been known to make mistakes counting down from 10, which really ruins dramatic tension.
In contrast, the left-right thing is interesting, because when I was first learning Arabic, I had no trouble reading/writing right-to-left, but I initially struggled so much to remember which way the “backspace” key would take me (in Arabic the backspace key backspaces to the right, despite still pointing to the left).
Anyway, for the test itself, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Reading, Better (Reading As A Cognitive Exercise)
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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