Almonds vs Pecans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing almonds to pecans, we picked the almonds.
Why?
In terms of macros, almonds have more protein, carbs, and fiber, as well as the lower glycemic index. A strong start for almonds here, though pecans have more fat (and the healthy blend of fats is quite comparable from one nut to the other).
In the category of vitamins, almonds have more of vitamins B2, B3, B9, E, and choline, while pecans have more of vitamins A, B1, B5, B6, and K. Numerically that’s a tie, though the biggest margins of difference are for vitamins A and E, respectively, and we might want to prioritize almonds’ extra vitamin E, over pecans’ extra vitamin A, given that vitamin A is more easily found in large quantities in many foods, whereas vitamin E is not quite so abundant generally. So in short, either a tie or a slight win for almonds here.
When it comes to minerals, both contain a lot of goodness, but almonds have more calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while pecans have more copper, manganese, and zinc. A clear win for almonds, though as we say, pecans are also great for this, just not as great as almonds.
As a side-note, both of these nuts have been found to have anticancer properties against breast cancer cell lines. In all likelihood this means they help against other cancers too, but breast cancer is what the extant research has been for.
So, naturally, enjoy either or both (in fact, both is ideal). But if you want to choose one for nutritional density, it’s almonds.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
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Yoga Nidra Made Easy – by Dr. Uma Dinsmore-Tuli and Nirlipta Tuli
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We’ve reviewed books about yoga before, and about sleep. This one’s different.
It’s about a yogic practice that can be used to promote restful sleep—or just be a non-sleeping exercise that nonetheless promotes relaxation and recuperation.
While yoga nidra is as somatic as it is psychological, its corporeal aspects are all explored in a lying-down-on-one’s-back state. This isn’t a book of stretches and poses and such—those are great, but are simply not needed for this practice.
The authors explain, step-by-step, simply and clearly, how to practice yoga nidra, and get out of it what you want to (there are an assortment of possible outcomes, per your preference; there are options to choose along the way).
A lot of books about yoga, even when written in English, contain a lot of Sanskrit terms. This one doesn’t. And, that difference goes a long way to living up to the title of making this easy, for those of us who regrettably don’t read even transliterated Sanskrit.
Bottom line: if ever you struggle to relax, struggle to sleep, or struggle to find your get-up-and-go, this book provides all you need to engage in this very restorative practice!
Click here to check out Yoga Nidra Made Easy, and learn this restorative tool for yourself!
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The Ultimate Booster
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Winning The Biological Arms Race
The human immune system (and indeed, other immune systems, but we are all humans here, after all) is in a constant state of war with pathogens, and that war is a constant biological arms race:
- We improve our defenses and destroy the attackers; the 1% of pathogens that survived now “know” how to counter that trick.
- The pathogens wreak havoc in our systems; the n% of us that survive now have immune systems that “know” how to counter that trick.
Vaccines are a mighty tool in our favor here, because they’re the technology that stops our n% from also being a very low number.
With vaccines, we can effectively pass on established defenses onto the population at large, as this cute video explains very well and very simply in 57 seconds:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
The problem with vaccines
The problem is that this accelerates the arms race. It’s like a chess game where we are able to respond to every move quickly (which is good for us), and/but this means passing the move over to our opponent sooner.
That problem’s hard to avoid, because the alternative has always been “let people die in much larger numbers”.
Traditional vs mRNA vaccines
A quick refresher before we continue to the big news of the day:
- Traditional vaccines use a disabled version of a pathogen to trigger an immune response that will teach the body to recognize the pathogen ready for when the full version shows up
- mRNA vaccines use a custom-made bit of genetic information to tell the body to make its own harmless fake pathogen and then respond to the harmless fake pathogen it made.
Note: this happens independently of the host’s DNA, so no, it does not change your DNA
See also: The Truth About Vaccines
Here’s a more detailed explainer (with a helpful diagram) using the COVID mRNA vaccine as an example:
Genome.gov | How does an mRNA vaccine work?
However, this still leaves us “chasing strains”, because as the pathogen (in this case, a virus) adapts, the vaccine has to be updated too, hence all the boosters.
This is a lot like a security update for your computer’s antivirus software. They’re annoying, but they do an important job.
No more “chasing strains”
The press conference soundbite on this sums it up well:
❝Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.❞
Read in full: Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains
You may be wondering: what makes this one effective against any strain?
❝What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad.
It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.
Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this.❞
Importantly, this means it can be applied not just to one disease, let alone just one strain of COVID. Rather, it can be used for a wide variety of viruses that have similar viral functions—COVID / SARS in general, including influenza, and even viruses such as dengue.
How it does this: the above article explains in more detail, but in few words: it targets tiny strings of the genome that are present in all strains of the virus.
Illustrative example: if you wanted to block 10almonds (please don’t), you could block our email address.
But if we were malicious (we’re not) we could be sneaky and change it, so you’d have to block the new one, and the cycle repeats.
But if you were block all emails containing the tiny string of characters “10almonds”, changing our email address would no longer penetrate your defenses.
Now imagine also blocking strings such as “One-Minute Book Review” and “Today’s almonds have been activated by” and other strings we use in every email.
Now multiply this by thousands of strings (because genomes are much larger than our little newsletter), and you see its effectiveness!
Great! How can I get this?
It’s still in the testing stages for now; this is “breaking news” science, after all.
The study itself
…is paywalled for now, sadly, but if you happen to have institutional access, here it is:
Take care!
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Why is cancer called cancer? We need to go back to Greco-Roman times for the answer
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One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, developed a cancer between his groin and scrotum. As the cancer spread, Satyrus had ever greater pains. He was unable to sleep and had convulsions.
Advanced cancers in that part of the body were regarded as inoperable, and there were no drugs strong enough to alleviate the agony. So doctors could do nothing. Eventually, the cancer took Satyrus’ life at the age of 65.
Cancer was already well known in this period. A text written in the late fifth or early fourth century BC, called Diseases of Women, described how breast cancer develops:
hard growths form […] out of them hidden cancers develop […] pains shoot up from the patients’ breasts to their throats, and around their shoulder blades […] such patients become thin through their whole body […] breathing decreases, the sense of smell is lost […]
Other medical works of this period describe different sorts of cancers. A woman from the Greek city of Abdera died from a cancer of the chest; a man with throat cancer survived after his doctor burned away the tumour.
Where does the word ‘cancer’ come from?
Why does the word ‘cancer’ have its roots in the ancient Greek and Latin words for crab? The physician Galen offers one explanation. Pierre Roche Vigneron/Wikimedia The word cancer comes from the same era. In the late fifth and early fourth century BC, doctors were using the word karkinos – the ancient Greek word for crab – to describe malignant tumours. Later, when Latin-speaking doctors described the same disease, they used the Latin word for crab: cancer. So, the name stuck.
Even in ancient times, people wondered why doctors named the disease after an animal. One explanation was the crab is an aggressive animal, just as cancer can be an aggressive disease; another explanation was the crab can grip one part of a person’s body with its claws and be difficult to remove, just as cancer can be difficult to remove once it has developed. Others thought it was because of the appearance of the tumour.
The physician Galen (129-216 AD) described breast cancer in his work A Method of Medicine to Glaucon, and compared the form of the tumour to the form of a crab:
We have often seen in the breasts a tumour exactly like a crab. Just as that animal has feet on either side of its body, so too in this disease the veins of the unnatural swelling are stretched out on either side, creating a form similar to a crab.
Not everyone agreed what caused cancer
The physician Erasistratus didn’t think black bile was to blame. Didier Descouens/Musée Ingres-Bourdelle/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA In the Greco-Roman period, there were different opinions about the cause of cancer.
According to a widespread ancient medical theory, the body has four humours: blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile. These four humours need to be kept in a state of balance, otherwise a person becomes sick. If a person suffered from an excess of black bile, it was thought this would eventually lead to cancer.
The physician Erasistratus, who lived from around 315 to 240 BC, disagreed. However, so far as we know, he did not offer an alternative explanation.
How was cancer treated?
Cancer was treated in a range of different ways. It was thought that cancers in their early stages could be cured using medications.
These included drugs derived from plants (such as cucumber, narcissus bulb, castor bean, bitter vetch, cabbage); animals (such as the ash of a crab); and metals (such as arsenic).
Galen claimed that by using this sort of medication, and repeatedly purging his patients with emetics or enemas, he was sometimes successful at making emerging cancers disappear. He said the same treatment sometimes prevented more advanced cancers from continuing to grow. However, he also said surgery is necessary if these medications do not work.
Surgery was usually avoided as patients tended to die from blood loss. The most successful operations were on cancers of the tip of the breast. Leonidas, a physician who lived in the second and third century AD, described his method, which involved cauterising (burning):
I usually operate in cases where the tumours do not extend into the chest […] When the patient has been placed on her back, I incise the healthy area of the breast above the tumour and then cauterize the incision until scabs form and the bleeding is stanched. Then I incise again, marking out the area as I cut deeply into the breast, and again I cauterize. I do this [incising and cauterizing] quite often […] This way the bleeding is not dangerous. After the excision is complete I again cauterize the entire area until it is dessicated.
Cancer was generally regarded as an incurable disease, and so it was feared. Some people with cancer, such as the poet Silius Italicus (26-102 AD), died by suicide to end the torment.
Patients would also pray to the gods for hope of a cure. An example of this is Innocentia, an aristocratic lady who lived in Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia) in the fifth century AD. She told her doctor divine intervention had cured her breast cancer, though her doctor did not believe her.
Innocentia from Carthage, in modern-day Tunisia, believed divine intervention cured her breast cancer. Valery Bareta/Shutterstock From the past into the future
We began with Satyrus, a tyrant in the fourth century BC. In the 2,400 years or so since then, much has changed in our knowledge of what causes cancer, how to prevent it and how to treat it. We also know there are more than 200 different types of cancer. Some people’s cancers are so successfully managed, they go on to live long lives.
But there is still no general “cure for cancer”, a disease that about one in five people develop in their lifetime. In 2022 alone, there were about 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million cancer deaths globally. We clearly have a long way to go.
Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Thinking of trying a new diet? 4 questions to ask yourself before you do
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We live in a society that glorifies dieting, with around 42% of adults globally having tried to lose weight. Messages about dieting and weight loss are amplified on social media, with a never-ending cycle of weight loss fads and diet trends.
Amid often conflicting messages and misinformation, if you’re looking for diet advice online, it’s easy to become confused and overwhelmed.
So before diving into the latest weight loss trend or extreme diet, consider these four questions to help you make a more informed decision.
PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock 1. Is the diet realistic?
Have you considered the financial cost of maintaining the diet or lifestyle, and the time and resources that would be required? For example, do you need to purchase specific products, supplements, or follow a rigid meal plan?
If the diet is coming from someone who is trying to sell you something – such as a particular weight-loss product you need in order to follow the diet – this could be a particular red flag.
Many extreme diet recommendations come from a place of privilege and overlook food access, affordability, cooking skills, where you live, or even your culture and ethics.
If the diet has these sorts of issues it can lead to frustration, stress, stigmatisation and feelings of failure for the person trying to adhere to the diet. But the problem may be with the diet itself – not with you.
Many diets promoted online will be expensive, or require a lot of time and resources. artem evdokimov/Shutterstock 2. Is there evidence to support this diet?
Self-proclaimed “experts” online will often make claims focused on specific groups, known as target populations. This might be 30- to 50-year-old men with diabetes, for example.
In some cases, evidence for claims made may come from animal studies, which might not be applicable to humans at all.
So be aware that if research findings are for a group that doesn’t match your profile, then the results might not be relevant to you.
It takes time and a lot of high-quality studies to tell us a “diet” is safe and effective, not just one study. Ask yourself, is it supported by multiple studies in humans? Be critical and question the claims before you accept them.
For accurate information look for government websites, or ask your GP or dietitian.
3. How will this diet affect my life?
Food is much more than calories and nutrients. It plays many roles in our lives, and likewise diets can influence our lives in ways we often overlook.
Socially and culturally, food can be a point of connection and celebration. It can be a source of enjoyment, a source of comfort, or even a way to explore new parts of the world.
So when you’re considering a new diet, think about how it might affect meaningful moments for you. For example, if you’re going travelling, will your diet influence the food choices you make? Will you feel that you can’t sample the local cuisine? Or would you be deterred from going out for dinner with friends because of their choice of restaurant?
4. Will this diet make me feel guilty or affect my mental health?
What is your favourite meal? Does this diet “allow” you to eat it? Imagine visiting your mum who has prepared your favourite childhood meal. How will the diet affect your feelings about these special foods? Will it cause you to feel stressed or guilty about enjoying a birthday cake or a meal cooked by a loved one?
Studies have shown that dieting can negatively impact our mental health, and skipping meals can increase symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Many diets fail to consider the psychological aspects of eating, even though our mental health is just as important as physical health. Eating should not make you feel stressed, anxious, or guilty.
So before starting another diet, consider how it might affect your mental health.
Moving away from a dieting mindset
We’re frequently told that weight loss is the path to better health. Whereas, we can prioritise our health without focusing on our weight. Constant messages about the need to lose weight can also be harmful to mental health, and not necessarily helpful for physical health.
Our research has found eating in a way that prioritises health over weight loss is linked to a range of positive outcomes for our health and wellbeing. These include a more positive relationship with food, and less guilt and stress.
Our research also indicates mindful and intuitive eating practices – which focus on internal cues, body trust, and being present and mindful when eating – are related to lower levels of depression and stress, and greater body image and self-compassion.
But like anything, it takes practice and time to build a positive relationship with food. Be kind to yourself, seek out weight-inclusive health-care professionals, and the changes will come. Finally, remember you’re allowed to find joy in food.
Melissa Eaton, Accredited Practising Dietitian; PhD Candidate, University of Wollongong; Verena Vaiciurgis, Accredited Practising Dietitian; PhD Candidate, University of Wollongong, and Yasmine Probst, Associate Professor, School of Medical, Indigenous and Health Sciences, University of Wollongong
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Borderline Personality Disorder Workbook – by Dr. Daniel Fox
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Personality disorders in general get a bad rep. In part, because their names and descriptions often focus on how the disorders affect other people, rather than how they affect the actual sufferer:
- “This disorder gives you cripplingly low self-esteem; we call it Evil Not-Quite-Human Disorder”
- “This disorder makes you feel unloveable; we call it Abusive Bitch Disorder”
- …etc
Putting aside the labels and stigma, it turns out that humans sometimes benefit from help. In the case of BPD, characterized by such things as difficult moods and self-sabotage, the advice in this book can help anyone struggling with those (and related) issues.
The style of the book is both textbook, and course. It’s useful to proceed through it methodically, and doing the exercises is good too. We recommend getting the print edition, not the Kindle edition, so that you can check off boxes, write in it (pencil, if you like!), etc.
Bottom line: if you or a loved one suffers from BPD symptoms (whether or not you/they would meet criteria for diagnosis), this book can help a lot.
Click here to check out the BPD Workbook, and retake control of your life!
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Falling vaccination rates put children at risk of preventable diseases. Governments need a new strategy to boost uptake
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Child vaccination is one of the most cost-effective health interventions. It accounts for 40% of the global reduction in infant deaths since 1974 and has led to big health gains in Australia over the past two decades.
Australia has been a vaccination success story. Ten years after we begun mass vaccination against polio in 1956, it was virtually eliminated. Our child vaccination rates have been among the best in the world.
But after peaking in 2020, child vaccination in Australia is falling. Governments need to implement a comprehensive strategy to boost vaccine uptake, or risk exposing more children to potentially preventable infectious diseases.
Yuri A/Shutterstock Child vaccination has been a triumph
Thirty years ago, Australia’s childhood vaccination rates were dismal. Then, in 1997, governments introduced the National Immunisation Program to vaccinate children against diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, and measles.
Measures to increase coverage included financial incentives for parents and doctors, a public awareness campaign, and collecting and sharing local data to encourage the least-vaccinated regions to catch up with the rest of the country.
What followed was a public health triumph. In 1995, only 52% of one-year-olds were fully immunised. By 2020, Australia had reached 95% coverage for one-year-olds and five-year-olds. At this level, it’s difficult even for highly infectious diseases, such as measles, to spread in the community, protecting both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
By 2020, 95% of children were vaccinated. Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock Gaps between regions and communities closed too. In 1999, the Northern Territory’s vaccination rate for one-year-olds was the lowest in the country, lagging the national average by six percentage points. By 2020, that gap had virtually disappeared.
The difference between vaccination rates for First Nations children and other children also narrowed considerably.
It made children healthier. The years of healthy life lost due to vaccine-preventable diseases for children aged four and younger fell by nearly 40% in the decade to 2015.
Some diseases have even been eliminated in Australia.
Our success is slipping away
But that success is at risk. Since 2020, the share of children who are fully vaccinated has fallen every year. For every child vaccine on the National Immunisation Schedule, protection was lower in 2024 than in 2020.
Gaps between parts of Australia are opening back up. Vaccination rates in the highest-coverage parts of Australia are largely stable, but they are falling quickly in areas with lower vaccination.
In 2018, there were only ten communities where more than 10% of one-year-old children were not fully vaccinated. Last year, that number ballooned to 50 communities. That leaves more areas vulnerable to disease and outbreaks.
While Noosa, the Gold Coast Hinterland and Richmond Valley (near Byron Bay) have persistently had some of the country’s lowest vaccination rates, areas such as Manjimup in Western Australia and Tasmania’s South East Coast have recorded big declines since 2018.
Missing out on vaccination isn’t just a problem for children.
One preprint study (which is yet to be peer-reviewed) suggests vaccination during pregnancy may also be declining.
Far too many older Australians are missing out on recommended vaccinations for flu, COVID, pneumococcal and shingles. Vaccination rates in aged care homes for flu and COVID are worryingly low.
What’s going wrong?
Australia isn’t alone. Since the pandemic, child vaccination rates have fallen in many high-income countries, including New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Globally, in 2023, measles cases rose by 20%, and just this year, a measles outbreak in rural Texas has put at least 13 children in hospital.
Alarmingly, some regions in Australia have lower measles vaccination than that Texas county.
The timing of trends here and overseas suggests things shifted, or at least accelerated, during the pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy, fuelled by misinformation about COVID vaccines, is a growing threat.
This year, vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr was appointed to run the US health system, and Louisiana’s top health official has reportedly cancelled the promotion of mass vaccination.
In Australia, a recent survey found 6% of parents didn’t think vaccines were safe, and 5% believed they don’t work.
Those concerns are far more common among parents with children who are partially vaccinated or unvaccinated. Among the 2% of parents whose children are unvaccinated, almost half believe vaccines are not safe for their child, and four in ten believe vaccines didn’t work.
Other consequences of the pandemic were a spike in the cost of living, and a health system struggling to meet demand. More than one in ten parents said cost and difficulty getting an appointment were barriers to vaccinating their children.
There’s no single cause of sliding vaccination rates, so there’s no one solution. The best way to reverse these worrying trends is to work on all the key barriers at once – from a lack of awareness, to inconvenience, to lack of trust.
What governments should do
Governments should step up public health campaigns that counter misinformation, boost awareness of immunisation and its benefits, and communicate effectively to low-vaccination groups. The new Australian Centre for Disease Control should lead the charge.
Primary health networks, the regional bodies responsible for improving primary care, should share data on vaccination rates with GPs and pharmacies. These networks should also help make services more accessible to communities who are missing out, such as migrant groups and disadvantaged families.
State and local governments should do the same, sharing data and providing support to make maternal child health services and school-based vaccination programs accessible for all families.
Governments can communicate better about the benefits of vaccination. Yuri A/Shutterstock Governments should also be more ambitious about tackling the growing vaccine divides between different parts of the country. The relevant performance measure in the national vaccination agreement is weak. States must only increase five-year-old vaccination rates in four of the ten areas where it is lowest. That only covers a small fraction of low-vaccination areas, and only the final stage of child vaccination.
Australia needs to set tougher goals, and back them with funding.
Governments should fund tailored interventions in areas with the lowest rates of vaccination. Proven initiatives include training trusted community members as “community champions” to promote vaccinations, and pop-up clinics or home visits for free vaccinations.
At this time of year, childcare centres and schools are back in full swing. But every year, each new intake has less protection than the previous cohort. Governments are developing a new national vaccination strategy and must seize the opportunity to turn that trend around. If it commits to a bold national plan, Australia can get back to setting records for child vaccination.
Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute and Wendy Hu, Associate, Health Program, Grattan Institute
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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