A New Tool For Bone Regeneration
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When it comes to rebuilding bones, one of the tools in the orthopedic surgeon’s toolbox is bone grafts. This involves, to oversimplify it a bit, gluing particles of bone to where bone needs rebuilding. However, this comes with problems, most notably:
- that the bone tissue and the adhesive “glue” need to be prepared separately and mixed in situ, which is fiddly, to say the least
- that the resultant mixture mixed in situ will usually be unevenly mixed, resulting in weak bonding and degradation over time
- having any more of one part or the other in any given site means that bone regeneration and adhesion become a “pick one” matter, when both are critically needed
You may be wondering: why can’t they mix them before putting them in?
And the answer is: because then either the glue will set the bone prematurely (and now we have a clump of bone outside of the body which is not what we wanted), or else the glue will have issues with setting in situ, and now we have bone tissue running down the inside of someone’s leg and setting somewhere else, which is also not what we want.
These kinds of problems may seem a little more “arts and crafts” than “orthopedic surgery”, but they are the kind of nitty-gritty real-life real challenges that actually get in the way of healing patients’ bones.
The new solution
Biomaterial research scientists have developed an injectable hydrogel (containing all the necessary ingredients* that uses light to achieve cross-linking of bone particles and mineralization without any of the above being necessary. In again oversimplified terms: they inject the hydrogel where it’s needed, and then irradiate the site with harmless visible light which instantly sets it in place. As to how the light gets in there: it’s just very shiny, like candling an egg to see inside, or like how you can still approximately see bright light even with your eyes closed.
*alginate (natural polysaccharide derived from brown algae), RGD peptide-containing mussel** adhesive protein, calcium ions, phosphonodiols, and a photoinitiator.
**unclear whether this would trigger a shellfish allergy. Probably kosher per “פיקוח נפש” and Talmud Yoma 85b, but we are a health science newsletter, not Talmudic scholars, so please talk to your Rabbi. Probably halal per Qur’an 5:4 and failing that, the same principle as previously mentioned, expressed in Qur’an 5:3 and 6:119, but once again, your humble writer here is no Mufti, so please talk to your Imam. As for if you are vegetarian or vegan, then that is for you to decide whether to take a “medications with animal ingredients are unfortunate but necessary” stance, as most do. This vegan writer would (she’d grumble about it, though, and at least try to find an acceptable alternative first).
Back to the more general practicalities…
How it works, in less oversimplified terms:
❝The coacervate-based formulation, which is immiscible in water, ensures that the hydrogel retains its shape and position after injection into the body. Upon visible light irradiation, cross-linking occurs, and amorphous calcium phosphate, which functions as a bone graft material, is simultaneously formed. This eliminates the need for separate bone grafts or adhesives, enabling the hydrogel to provide both bone regeneration and adhesion.❞
“That’s great, but I was hoping for something I can do right now, ideally at home”
If getting glued back together was not on your bucket list, that’s understandable. There’s still a lot you can do for bone density; here’s a quick overview:
- Get it checked. Yes, this first, if you haven’t already! You want a basis for comparison later. Book a bone density scan. See for example this case study with bone density scans at each end: 21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, It’s Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!)
- Enjoy a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D yes, but be aware that you can have too much of a good thing, and doing so will result in more harm than good, including (paradoxically) for your bones. See: Vitamin D + Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing?
- Enjoy a diet rich is phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium, which things are also necessary for bone health, and in which people are much more likely to be deficient (especially magnesium). If you’re going to supplement, then there are very big difference in the efficacy of different kinds of magnesium supplement (brace yourself; the cheapest and most common kind barely does anything at all). See: Which Magnesium? (And: When?)
- Enjoy a diet rich in high quality protein—collagen is very useful, but if you want a plant-based approach, don’t worry, our body can and will make it for yourself if you give it a hand—and vitamin C to help its absorption, as well as glycine if you’re going the no-animals route. See: Collagen For Bones: We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of and: The Sweet Truth About Glycine: Making Your Collagen Work Better
- Consider medication, if your bone density is already lower than what it should be. There are meds to stop further deterioration, and different meds to encourage your body to rebuild bone. However, there are downsides to each of them: Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?
- While we’re on the topic of medications, consider bioidentical HRT if you are female and not otherwise producing your own estrogen and progesterone in adequate quantities to maintain your skeletal integrity: HRT: A Tale Of Two Approaches
- Look after your gut too! So much starts there: Is Your Gut Leading You Into Osteoporosis? Bacterioides Vulgatus & Bone Health
- Lastly, exercise, but exercise right, because with insufficient resistance exercise your bones will not “think” they need to remain strong, and with the wrong kind of resistance exercise, you could break/compress your bones if they are already weak, so check out: Osteoporosis & Exercises: Which To Do (And Which To Avoid)
Too much information?
If that was too much information all at once, then we recommend this as your one-stop article:
The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
Want more information?
We are but a humble newsletter and can only include so much per day, but we highly recommend this book we reviewed a little while back, which goes into everything in a lot more detail than we can here:
Enjoy!
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Nutritional Profiles to Recipes
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.
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
❝I like the recipes. Most don’t seem to include nutritional profile. would lilke to see that. Macro/micro world…. Thank you❞
We’re glad you’re enjoying them! There are a couple of reasons why we don’t, but the reasons can be aggregated into one (admittedly rare) concept: honesty
To even try to give you these figures, we’d first need to use the metric system (or at least, a strictly mass-based system) which would likely not go well with our largely American readership, because “half a bulb of garlic, or more if you like”, and “1 cucumber” or “1 cup chopped carrot” could easily way half or twice as much, depending on the sizes of the vegetables or the chopping involved, and in the case of chopped vegetables measured by the cup, even the shape of the cup (because of geometry and the spaces left; it’s like Tetris in there). We can say “4 cups low-sodium broth” but we can’t say how much sodium is in your broth. And so on.
And that’s without getting into the flexibility we offer with substitutions, often at a rate of several per recipe.
We’d also need to strictly regulate your portion sizes for you, because we (with few exceptions, such as when they are a given number of burger patties, or a dessert-in-a-glass, etc) give you a recipe for a meal and leave it to you how you divide it and whether there’s leftovers.
Same goes for things like “Extra virgin olive oil for frying”; a recipe could say to use “2 tbsp” but let’s face it, you’re going to use what you need to use, and that’s going to change based on the size of your pan, how quickly it’s absorbed into the specific ingredients that you got, which will change depending on how fresh they are, and things like that.
By the time we’ve factored in your different kitchen equipment, how big your vegetables are, the many factors effecting how much oil you need, substitutions per recipe per making something dairy-free, or gluten-free, or nut-free, etc, how big your portion size is (we all know that “serves 4” is meaningless in reality)… Even an estimated average would be wildly misleading.
So, in a sea of recipes saying “500 kcal per serving” from the same authors who say you can caramelize onions in 4–5 minutes “or until caramelized” and then use the 4–5 minutes figure for calculating the overall recipe time… We prefer to stay honest.
PS: for any wondering, caramelizing onions takes closer to 45 minutes than 4–5 minutes, and again will depend on many factors, including the onions, how finely you chopped them, the size and surface of your pan, the fat you’re using, whether you add sugar, what kind, how much you stir them, the mood of your hob,
and the phase of the moon. Under very favorable circumstances, it could conceivably be rushed in 20 minutes or so, but it could also take 60. Slow-cooking them (i.e. in a crock pot) over 3–4 hours is a surprisingly viable “cheat” option, by the way. It’ll take longer, obviously, but provided you plan in advance, they’ll be ready when you need them, and perfectly done (the same claim cannot be made if you budgeted 4–5 minutes because you trusted a wicked and deceitful author who wants to poop your party).Take care!
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Fruit & Veg In The Fridge: Pros & Cons
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.
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
❝What effect does refrigeration have on the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables??❞
It’s difficult to give a single definitive answer, because naturally there are a lot of different fruits and vegetables, and a lot of different climates. The answer may be different for tomatoes in Alaska vs bananas in Arizona!
However, we can still generalize at least somewhat
Refrigeration will generally slow down any degradation process, and in the case of fruit and vegetables, that can mean slowing down their “ripening” too, as applicable.
However…
Refrigeration will also impede helpful bioactivity too, and that includes quite a list of things.
Here’s a good study that’s quite illustrative; we’d summarize the conclusions but the rather long title already does that nicely:
So, this really is a case of “there are pros and cons, but probably more cons on balance”.
In practical terms, a good take-away from this can be twofold:
- don’t keep fruit and veg in the fridge unless the ambient temperature really requires it
- if the ambient temperature does require it, it’s best to get the produce in fresh each day if that’s feasible, to minimize time spent in the fridge
An extra thing not included there: often when it comes to the spoilage of fruit and veg, the problem is that it respires and oxidizes; reducing the temperature does lower the rate of those, but often a far better way is to remove the oxygen. So for example, if you get carried away and chop too many carrot batons for your hummus night, then putting them in a sealed container can go a long way to keeping them fresh.
See also: How Does the Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables Change Over Time?
Enjoy!
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7 Days Of Celery Juice: What’s The Verdict?
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.
Laura “Try” tries many popular trends, and reports on the benefits (or problems, or both). In this case, it’s 7 days of celery juice… Not as a fast, though, i.e. she doesn’t just have celery juice for 7 days, but rather, it’s how she kicks off each morning, with half a liter (16oz) on an empty stomach.
What she found
First, she bought a masticating juicer and organic celery. So, those are expenses to consider, especially the one-off expense of the juicer, and the ongoing expense of organic celery—estimated $90/month).
In terms of taste, she was surprised it wasn’t as bitter as expected, but from the second day onwards, she did use the juicer’s filter to remove the frothy sludge, and she also switched to juicing only the stalks, not the leaves—which are more bitter.
10almonds note: the leaves are more bitter because that’s where the polyphenols are more densely concentrated. The leaves are better for you than the stalks. Enjoy the leaves. Really: if you chop them finely you can use them as herbs in your cooking, and if you’re making a salad, just chop them into that too.
The reason she picked the quantity of half a liter is because this is what she found recommended to coat the stomach lining—on the promise of increased stomach acid production, reduced bacteria overgrowth, as well as antiviral, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties. As she’s just one woman without a personal lab, she couldn’t test and thus verify any of these though—but she did still have benefits to report:
She did experience clearer skin, more energy, and better sleep after a few days.
Ultimately, she decided to continue to do it just at the weekends, due to its positive effects, despite the cost and time consumption.
For more personal insights, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
Take care!
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How To Plan For The Unplannable
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.
How To Always Follow Through
❝Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference:
Now my socks are wet.❞~ with apologies to Robert Frost
The thing is, much like a different Robert wrote, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”, and when we have a plan and the unexpected occurs, we often find ourselves in a position of “well then, now what?”
This goes for New Year’s Resolutions that lasted until around January the 4th, and it goes for “xyz in a month” plans of diet, exercise, or so forth.
We’ve written before on bolstering flagging motivation when all is as expected but we just need an extra boost:
How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!
…but what about when the unexpected happens?
First rule: wear a belt and suspenders
Not literally, unless that’s your thing. But you might have heard this phrase from the business world, and it applies to healthful practices too:
If your primary plan fails, you need a second one already in place.
In business, we see this as “business continuity management”. For example, your writer here, I have backups for every important piece of tech I own, Internet connections from two different companies in case one goes down, and if there’s a power cut, I have everything accessible and sync’d on a fully-charged tablet so I can complete my work there if necessary. And yes, I have low-tech coffee-brewing equipment too.
In health, we should be as serious. We all learned back in 2020 that grocery stores and supply chains can fail; how do we eat healthily when all that is on sale is an assortment of random odds and ends? The answer, as we now know because hindsight really is 2020 in this case, is to keep a well-stocked pantry of healthy things with a long shelf life. Also a good stock of whatever supplements we take, and medicines, and water. And maintain them and rotate the stock!
And what of exercise? We must not rely on gyms, we can use and enjoy them sure, but we should have at least one good go-to routine for which we need nothing more than a bit of floorspace at home.
If you’re unsure where to start with that one, we strongly recommend this book that we reviewed recently:
Science of Pilates: Understand the Anatomy and Physiology to Perfect Your Practice – by Tracy Ward
Second rule: troubleshoot up front
With any given intended diet or exercise regime or other endeavor, we must ask ourselves: what could prevent me from doing this? Set a timer for at least 10 minutes, and write down as many things as possible. Then plan for those.
You can read a bit more about some of this here, the below article was written about facing depression and anxiety, but if you can enact your plans when unmotivated and fearful, then you will surely be able to enact them when not, so this information is good anyway:
When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)
Third rule: don’t err the same way twice
We all screw up sometimes. To err is, indeed, human. So to errantly eat the wrong food, or do so at the wrong time, or miss a day’s exercise session etc, these things happen.
Just, don’t let it happen twice.
Once is an outlier; twice is starting to look like a pattern.
How To Break Out Of Cycles Of Self-Sabotage, And Stop Making The Same Mistakes
Enjoy!
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Melatonin: A Safe, Natural Sleep Aid?
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Melatonin: A safe sleep supplement?
Melatonin is a hormone normally made in our pineal gland. It helps regulate our circadian rhythm, by making us sleepy.
It has other roles too—it has a part to play in regulating immune function, something that also waxes and wanes as a typical day goes by.
Additionally, since melatonin and cortisol are antagonistic to each other, a sudden increase in either will decrease the other. Our brain takes advantage of this, by giving us a cortisol spike in the morning to help us wake up.
As a supplement, it’s generally enjoyed with the intention of inducing healthy, natural, restorative sleep.
Does it really induce healthy, natural, restorative, sleep?
Yes! Well, “natural” is a little subject and relative, if you’re taking it as a supplement, but it’s something your body produces naturally anyway.
Contrast with, for example, benzodiazepines (that whole family of medications with names ending in -azopan or -alozam), or other tranquilizing drugs that do not so much induce healthy sleep, but rather reduce your brain function and hopefully knock you out, and/but often have unwanted side effects, and a tendency to create dependency.
Melatonin, unlike most of those drugs, does not create dependency, and furthermore, we don’t develop tolerance to it. In other words, the same dose will continue working (we won’t need more and more).
In terms of benefits, melatonin not only reduces the time to fall asleep and increases total sleep time, but also (quite a bonus) improves sleep quality, too:
Meta-Analysis: Melatonin for the Treatment of Primary Sleep Disorders
Because it is a natural hormone rather than a drug with many side effects and interactions, it’s also beneficial for those who need good sleep and/but don’t want tranquilizing:
Any other benefits?
Yes! It can also help guard against Seasonal Affective Disorder, also called seasonal depression. Because SAD is not just about “not enough light = not enough serotonin”, but also partly about circadian rhythm and (the body is not so sure what time of day it is when there are long hours of darkness, or even, in the other hemisphere / other time of year, long hours of daylight), melatonin can help, by giving your brain something to “anchor” onto, provided you take it at the same time each day. See:
- Is seasonal affective disorder a disorder of circadian rhythms?
- The circadian basis of winter depression: the case for low-dose melatonin use
As a small bonus, melatonin also promotes HGH production (important for maintaining bone and muscle mass, especially in later life):
Anything we should worry about?
Assuming taking a recommended dose only (0.5mg–10mg per day), toxicity is highly unlikely, especially given that it has a half-life of only 40–60 minutes, so it’ll be eliminated quite quickly.
However! It does indeed induce sleepiness, so for example, don’t take melatonin and then try to drive or operate heavy machinery—or, ideally, do anything other than go to bed.
It can interfere with some medications. We mentioned that melatonin helps regulate immune function, so for example that’s something to bear in mind if you’re on immunosuppressants or otherwise have an autoimmune disorder. It can also interfere with blood pressure medications and blood thinners, and may make epilepsy meds less effective.
As ever, if in doubt, please speak with your doctor and/or pharmacist.
Where to get it?
As ever, we don’t sell it (or anything else), but for your convenience, here is an example product on Amazon.
Enjoy!
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Black Forest Chia Pudding
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This pudding tastes so decadent, it’s hard to believe it’s so healthy, but it is! Not only is it delicious, it’s also packed with nutrients including protein, carbohydrates, healthy fats (including omega-3s), fiber, vitamins, minerals, and assorted antioxidant polyphenols. Perfect dessert or breakfast!
You will need
- 1½ cups pitted fresh or thawed-from-frozen cherries
- ½ cup mashed banana
- 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 tbsp chia seeds, ground
- Optional: 2 pitted dates, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes and then drained (include these if you prefer a sweeter pudding)
- Garnish: a few almonds, and/or berries, and/or cherries and/or cacao nibs
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Blend the ingredients except for the chia seeds and the garnish, with ½ cup of water, until completely smooth
2) Divide into two small bowls or glass jars
3) Add 1 tbsp ground chia seeds to each, and stir until evenly distributed
4) Add the garnish and refrigerate overnight or at least for some hours. There’s plenty of wiggle-room here, so make it at your convenience and serve at your leisure.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Cherries’ Very Healthy Wealth Of Benefits!
- If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out
- Cacao vs Carob – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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