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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Fasting Cancer – by Dr. Valter Longo
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Longo’s “The Longevity Diet”, and whereas that one was about eating, this one is (superficially, at least) about not eating. Nor is this any kind of dissonance, because, in fact, it’s important to do both!
That said, he discusses not just fasting per se, but also the use of a personalized fast-mimicking diet, to accomplish the same goal of not overloading the metabolism—as overloading the metabolism results in metabolic disease, and cancer is, ultimately, a metabolic disease of immune dysfunction with genetic disorder*—which makes for quite a deadly trifecta.
*not in the sense of “hereditary”, though certainly genes can influence cancer risk, but rather, in the sense of “your gene-copying process becomes disordered”.
The first three chapters (after the introduction, which we’ll comment on shortly) are devoted to explaining the principles at hand:
- Fasting cancer while feeding patients
- Genes, aging, and cancer
- Fasting, nutrition, and physical activity in cancer prevention
In those chapters, he details a lot of the science for exactly how and why it is possible to “feed the patient and starve the cancer” at the same time.
After that, the rest of the book—another nine chapters, not counting appendices etc—are given over to fasting and nutrition in the context of nine main types of cancer, one chapter per type. These are not hyperspecific, though, and are rather categorizations, such as “blood cancers”, and “gynecological cancers” and so forth. It’s comprehensive, and while it could be argued that it may mean chapters feel irrelevant to some people (à la “I have never smoked and have no pressing concern about my lung cancer risk” etc), the reality is that it’s good to know how to avoid them all, because if nothing else, it’d be super embarrassing to get a cancer you “thought you couldn’t get”. So, it’s honestly worth the time to read each chapter.
In the category of criticism, he did open the introduction with a handful of anecdotes to defend the consumption of (well-established group 1 carcinogens) red meat and alcohol as “secondary concerns that might not be such a big deal”, even discussing how surprised his colleagues in the field are that he has this view. Suffice it to say, it’s contrary to the overwhelming body of evidence, and reads suspiciously like a man who simply doesn’t want to give up his steak and wine despite his own longevity diet forswearing them.
The style is self-indulgently autobiographical and very complimentary, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) it can be tedious to wade through that to get to the science, but at the end of the day, his self-accolades might be needless fluff, but they don’t actually remove anything from the science in question.
Bottom line: as you can see, there are good and bad things to say about this book, but the information contained in the good makes it well worth reading through the stylistically questionable to get it.
Click here to check out Fasting Cancer, and starve cancer cells while nourishing your healthy ones!
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We analysed almost 1,000 social media posts about 5 popular medical tests. Most were utterly misleading
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When Kim Kardashian posted on Instagram about having had a full-body MRI, she enthused that the test can be “life saving”, detecting diseases in the earliest stages before symptoms arise.
What Kardashian neglected to say was there’s no evidence this expensive scan can bring benefits for healthy people. She also didn’t mention it can carry harms including unnecessary diagnoses and inappropriate treatments.
With this post in mind, we wanted to explore what influencers are telling us about medical tests.
In a new study published today in JAMA Network Open, we analysed nearly 1,000 Instagram and TikTok posts about five popular medical tests which can all do more harm than good to healthy people, including the full-body MRI scan.
We found the overwhelming majority of these posts were utterly misleading.
C-R-V/Shutterstock 5 controversial tests
Before we get into the details of what we found, a bit about the five tests included in our study.
While these tests can be valuable to some, all five carry the risk of overdiagnosis for generally healthy people. Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of a condition which would have never caused symptoms or problems. Overdiagnosis leads to overtreatment, which can cause unnecessary side effects and stress for the person, and wasted resources for the health system.
As an example, estimates suggest 29,000 cancers a year are overdiagnosed in Australia alone.
Overdiagnosis is a global problem, and it’s driven in part by healthy people having tests like these. Often, they’re promoted under the guise of early screening, as a way to “take control” of your health. But most healthy people simply don’t need them.
These are the five tests we looked at:
The full-body MRI scan claims to test for up to 500 conditions, including cancer. Yet there is no proven benefit of the scan for healthy people, and a real risk of unnecessary treatment from “false alarm” diagnoses.
The “egg timer” test (technically known as the AMH, or anti-mullarian hormone test) is often falsely promoted as a fertility test for healthy women. While it may be beneficial for women within a fertility clinic setting, it cannot reliably predict the chance of a woman conceiving, or menopause starting. However, low results can increase fear and anxiety, and lead to unnecessary and expensive fertility treatments.
Multi-cancer early detection blood tests are being heavily marketed as the “holy grail of cancer detection”, with claims they can screen for more than 50 cancers. In reality, clinical trials are still a long way from finished. There’s no good evidence yet that the benefits will outweigh the harms of unnecessary cancer diagnoses.
The gut microbiome test of your stool promises “wellness” via early detection of many conditions, from flatulence to depression, again without good evidence of benefit. There’s also concern that test results can lead to wasted resources.
Testosterone testing in healthy men is not supported by any high-quality evidence, with concerns direct-to-consumer advertising leads men to get tested and take testosterone replacement therapy unnecessarily. Use of testosterone replacement therapy carries its own risk of potential harms with the long-term safety in relation to heart disease and mortality still largely unknown.
Multi-cancer early detection blood tests are heavily marketed. Yuri A/Shutterstock What we found
Together with an international group of health researchers, we analysed 982 posts pertaining to the above tests from across Instagram and TikTok. The posts we looked at came from influencers and account holders with at least 1,000 followers, some with a few million followers. In total, the creators of the posts we included had close to 200 million followers.
Even discounting the bots, that’s a massive amount of influence (and likely doesn’t reflect their actual reach to non-followers too).
The vast majority of posts were misleading, failing to even mention the possibility of harm arising from taking one of these tests. We found:
- 87% of posts mentioned test benefits, while only 15% mentioned potential harms
- only 6% of posts mentioned the risk of overdiagnosis
- only 6% of posts discussed any scientific evidence, while 34% of posts used personal stories to promote the test
- 68% of influencers and account holders had financial interests in promoting the test (for example, a partnership, collaboration, sponsorship or selling for their own profit in some way).
Further analysis revealed medical doctors were slightly more balanced in their posts. They were more likely to mention the harms of the test, and less likely to have a strongly promotional tone.
The vast majority of posts we looked at were misleading. DimaBerlin/Shutterstock As all studies do, ours had some limitations. For example, we didn’t analyse comments connected to posts. These may give further insights into the information being provided about these tests, and how social media users perceive them.
Nonetheless, our findings add to the growing body of evidence showing misleading medical information is widespread on social media.
What can we do about it?
Experts have proposed a range of solutions including pre-bunking strategies, which means proactively educating the public about common misinformation techniques.
However, solutions like these often place responsibility on the individual. And with all the information on social media to navigate, that’s a big ask, even for people with adequate health literacy.
What’s urgently needed is stronger regulation to prevent misleading information being created and shared in the first place. This is especially important given social media platforms including Instagram are moving away from fact-checking.
In the meantime, remember that if information about medical tests promoted by influencers sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Brooke Nickel, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, University of Sydney; Joshua Zadro, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Sydney Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney, and Ray Moynihan, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine, Bond University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Mediterranean Air Fryer Cookbook – by Naomi Lane
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There are Mediterranean Diet cookbooks, and there are air fryer cookbooks. And then there are (a surprisingly large intersection of!) Mediterranean Diet air fryer cookbooks. We wanted to feature one of them in today’s newsletter… And as part of the selection process, looked through quite a stack of them, and honestly, were quite disappointed with many. This one, however, was one of the ones that stood out for its quality of both content and clarity, and after a more thorough reading, we now present it to you:
Naomi Lane is a professional dietician, chef, recipe developer, and food writer… And it shows, on all counts.
She covers what the Mediterranean diet is, and she covers far more than this reviewer knew it was even possible to know about the use of an air fryer. That alone would make the book a worthy purchase already.
The bulk of the book is the promised 200 recipes. They cover assorted dietary requirements (gluten-free, dairy-free, etc) while keeping to the Mediterranean Diet.
The recipes are super clear, just what you need to know, no reading through a nostalgic storytime first to find things. Also no pictures, which will be a plus for some readers and a minus for others. The recipes also come complete with nutritional information for each meal (including sodium), so you don’t have to do your own calculations!
Bottom line: this is the Mediterranean Diet air fryer cook book. Get it, thank us later!
Get your copy of “Mediterranean Air Fryer Cookbook” on Amazon today!
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Food for Life – by Dr. Tim Spector
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This book is, as the author puts it, “an eater’s guide to food and nutrition”. Rather than telling us what to eat or not eat, he provides an overview of what the latest science has to say about various foods, and leaves us to make our own informed decisions.
He also stands firmly by the “personalized nutrition” idea that he introduced in his previous book which we reviewed the other day, and gives advice on what tests we might like to perform.
The writing style is accessible, without shying away from reference to hard science. Dr. Spector provides lots of information about key chemicals, genes, gut bacteria, and more—as well as simply providing a very enjoyable read along the way.
Bottom line: if you’d like a much better idea of what food is (and isn’t) doing what, this book is an invaluable resource.
Click here to check out Food for Life, and make the best decisions for you!
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Vaccines and cancer: The myth that won’t die
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Two recent studies reported rising cancer rates among younger adults in the U.S. and worldwide. This prompted some online anti-vaccine accounts to link the studies’ findings to COVID-19 vaccines.
But, as with other myths, the data tells a very different story.
What you need to know
- Baseless claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer have persisted online for several years and gained traction in late 2023.
- Two recent reports finding rising cancer rates among younger adults are based on pre-pandemic cancer incidence data. Cancer rates in the U.S. have been on the rise since the 1990s.
- There is no evidence of a link between COVID-19 vaccination and increased cancer risk.
False claims about COVID-19 vaccines began circulating months before the vaccines were available. Chief among these claims was misinformed speculation that vaccine mRNA could alter or integrate into vaccine recipients’ DNA.
It does not. But that didn’t prevent some on social media from spinning that claim into a persistent myth alleging that mRNA vaccines can cause or accelerate cancer growth. Anti-vaccine groups even coined the term “turbo cancer” to describe a fake phenomenon of abnormally aggressive cancers allegedly linked to COVID-19 vaccines.
They used the American Cancer Society’s 2024 cancer projection—based on incidence data through 2020—and a study of global cancer trends between 1999 and 2019 to bolster the false claims. This exposed the dishonesty at the heart of the anti-vaccine messaging, as data that predated the pandemic by decades was carelessly linked to COVID-19 vaccines in viral social media posts.
Some on social media cherry-pick data and use unfounded evidence because the claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer are not true. According to the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society, there is no evidence of any link between COVID-19 vaccines and an increase in cancer diagnosis, progression, or remission.
Why does the vaccine cancer myth endure?
At the root of false cancer claims about COVID-19 vaccines is a long history of anti-vaccine figures falsely linking vaccines to cancer. Polio and HPV vaccines have both been the target of disproven cancer myths.
Not only do HPV vaccines not cause cancer, they are one of only two vaccines that prevent cancer.
In the case of polio vaccines, some early batches were contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40), a virus that is known to cause cancer in some mammals but not humans. The contaminated batches were discovered, and no other vaccine has had SV40 contamination in over 60 years.
Follow-up studies found no increase in cancer rates in people who received the SV40-contaminated polio vaccine. Yet, vaccine opponents have for decades claimed that polio vaccines cause cancer.
Recycling of the SV40 myth
The SV40 myth resurfaced in 2023 when vaccine opponents claimed that COVID-19 vaccines contain the virus. In reality, a small, nonfunctional piece of the SV40 virus is used in the production of some COVID-19 vaccines. This DNA fragment, called the promoter, is commonly used in biomedical research and vaccine development and doesn’t remain in the finished product.
Crucially, the SV40 promoter used to produce COVID-19 vaccines doesn’t contain the part of the virus that enters the cell nucleus and is associated with cancer-causing properties in some animals. The promoter also lacks the ability to survive on its own inside the cell or interact with DNA. In other words, it poses no risk to humans.
Over 5.6 billion people worldwide have received COVID-19 vaccines since December 2020. At that scale, even the tiniest increase in cancer rates in vaccinated populations would equal hundreds of thousands of excess cancer diagnoses and deaths. The evidence for alleged vaccine-linked cancer would be observed in real incidence, treatment, and mortality data, not social media anecdotes or unverifiable reports.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Could Just Two Hours Sleep Per Day Be Enough?
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Polyphasic Sleep… Super-Schedule Or An Idea Best Put To Rest?
What is it?
Let’s start by defining some terms:
- Monophasic sleep—sleeping in one “chunk” per day. For example, a good night’s “normal” sleep.
- Biphasic sleep—sleeping in two “chunks” per day. Typically, a shorter night’s sleep, with a nap usually around the middle of the day / early afternoon.
- Polyphasic sleep—sleeping in two or more “chunks per day”. Some people do this in order to have more hours awake per day, to do things. The idea is that sleeping this way is more efficient, and one can get enough rest in less time. The most popular schedules used are:
- The Überman schedule—six evenly-spaced 20-minute naps, one every four hours, throughout the 24-hour day. The name is a semi-anglicized version of the German word Übermensch, “Superman”.
- The Everyman schedule—a less extreme schedule, that has a three-hours “long sleep” during the night, and three evenly-spaced 20-minute naps during the day, for a total of 4 hours sleep.
There are other schedules, but we’ll focus on the most popular ones here.
Want to learn about the others? Visit: Polyphasic.Net (a website by and for polyphasic sleep enthusiasts)
Some people have pointed to evidence that suggests humans are naturally polyphasic sleepers, and that it is only modern lifestyles that have forced us to be (mostly) monophasic.
There is at least some evidence to suggest that when environmental light/dark conditions are changed (because of extreme seasonal variation at the poles, or, as in this case, because of artificial changes as part of a sleep science experiment), we adjust our sleeping patterns accordingly.
The counterpoint, of course, is that perhaps when at the mercy of long days/nights at the poles, or no air-conditioning to deal with the heat of the day in the tropics, that perhaps we were forced to be polyphasic, and now, with modern technology and greater control, we are free to be monophasic.
Either way, there are plenty of people who take up the practice of polyphasic sleep.
Ok, But… Why?
The main motivation for trying polyphasic sleep is simply to have more hours in the day! It’s exciting, the prospect of having 22 hours per day to be so productive and still have time over for leisure.
A secondary motivation for trying polyphasic sleep is that when the brain is sleep-deprived, it will prioritize REM sleep. Here’s where the Überman schedule becomes perhaps most interesting:
The six evenly-spaced naps of the Überman schedule are each 20 minutes long. This corresponds to the approximate length of a normal REM cycle.
Consequently, when your head hits the pillow, you’ll immediately begin dreaming, and at the end of your dream, the alarm will go off.
Waking up at the end of a dream, when one hasn’t yet entered a non-REM phase of sleep, will make you more likely to remember it. Similarly, going straight into REM sleep will make you more likely to be aware of it, thus, lucid dreaming.
Read: Sleep fragmentation and lucid dreaming (actually a very interesting and informative lucid dreaming study even if you don’t want to take up polyphasic sleep)
Six 20-minute lucid-dreaming sessions per day?! While awake for the other 22 hours?! That’s… 24 hours per day of wakefulness to use as you please! What sorcery is this?
Hence, it has quite an understandable appeal.
Next Question: Does it work?
Can we get by without the other (non-REM) kinds of sleep?
According to Überman cycle enthusiasts: Yes! The body and brain will adapt.
According to sleep scientists: No! The non-REM slow-wave phases of sleep are essential
Read: Adverse impact of polyphasic sleep patterns in humans—Report of the National Sleep Foundation sleep timing and variability consensus panel
(if you want to know just how bad it is… the top-listed “similar article” is entitled “Suicidal Ideation”)
But what about, for example, the Everman schedule? Three hours at night is enough for some non-REM sleep, right?
It is, and so it’s not as quickly deleterious to the health as the Überman schedule. But, unless you are blessed with rare genes that allow you to operate comfortably on 4 hours per day (you’ll know already if that describes you, without having to run any experiment), it’s still bad.
Adults typically need 7–9 hours of sleep per night, and if you don’t get it, you’ll accumulate a sleep debt. And, importantly:
When you accumulate sleep debt, you are borrowing time at a very high rate of interest!
And, at risk of laboring the metaphor, but this is important too:
Not only will you have to pay it back soon (with interest), you will be hounded by the debt collection agents—decreased cognitive ability and decreased physical ability—until you pay up.
In summary:
- Polyphasic sleep is really very tempting
- It will give you more hours per day (for a while)
- It will give the promised lucid dreaming benefits (which is great until you start micronapping between naps, this is effectively a mini psychotic break from reality lasting split seconds each—can be deadly if behind the wheel of a car, for instance!)
- It is unequivocally bad for the health and we do not recommend it
Bottom line:
Some of the claimed benefits are real, but are incredibly short-term, unsustainable, and come at a cost that’s far too high. We get why it’s tempting, but ultimately, it’s self-sabotage.
(Sadly! We really wanted it to work, too…)
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