Apple vs Pear – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apple to pear, we picked the pear.
Why?
Both are great! But there’s a category that puts pears ahead of apples…
Looking at their macros first, pears contain more carbs but also more fiber. Both are low glycemic index foods, though.
In the category of vitamins, things are moderately even: apples contain more of vitamins A, B1, B6, and E, while pears contain more of vitamins B3, B9, K, and choline. That’s a 4:4 split, and the two fruits are about equal in the other vitamins they both contain.
When it comes to minerals, pears contain more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. A resounding victory for pears, as apples are not higher in any mineral.
In short, if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, a pear should keep the doctor away for about a day and a half, based on the extra nutrients ← this is slightly facetious as medicine doesn’t work like that, but you get the idea: pears simply have more to offer. Apples are still great though! Enjoy both! Diversity is good.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples To Bees, And High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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Lupus Sex Differences Are Not What You Might Think
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This is Dr. Seyhan Yazar, a medical scientist and Research Fellow, whose lab (the Yazar Lab) “focuses on uncovering the complex interplay between genetic susceptibility and environmental triggers in autoimmune diseases”, of which, lupus is one.
So, what does she want us to know?
Sex? It’s not about the X
First, a recap on how lupus works: lupus is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks its own tissues, causing inflammation and organ damage (to oversimplify it in very few words).
Next, how lupus is currently treated: mostly with immunosuppressant drugs, which reduce symptoms but have significant side effects, not least of all the fact that your immune system will be suppressed, leaving you vulnerable to infections, cancer, aging, and the like. So, there’s really a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect here (because untreated lupus will run your immune system into the ground with its chronic inflammation, which will also leave you vulnerable to the aforementioned things).
See also: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Finally, onto the new science from Dr. Yazar: while it’s well-known that lupus disproportionately affects women (with women’s lupus risk being 9x that of men’s, all other things being equal), it hasn’t been known entirely what’s going on with that and how, but Dr. Yazar’s work shines new light on this!
She and her team analyzed over a million (for the curious: 1,267,758) individual immune cells from 982 healthy people, to identify sex-specific genetic switches that shape male and female immune systems differently.
In the immune cell analysis, women had higher levels of B cells and regulatory T cells, with immune activity more strongly biased towards inflammatory pathways, creating a more vigilant immune system that will often better fight infections, but at a cost: it also raises the risk of “friendly fire” against healthy tissues, and that’s what happens in the case of lupus.
On the flipside, men had more monocytes and immune activity focused more on cellular maintenance rather than inflammation, which will tend to reduce autoimmune risk but at its own cost: it raises the risk (and severity) of infections and some cancers.
Notably, these results showed that the sex-specific immune differences aren’t driven by X or Y chromosomes as often assumed, but instead by autosomes—the non-sex chromosomes shared by all sexes.
This is very consistent with what we know of many sex-related disease risk factors being hormonally mediated, rather than mediated by genes.
You can read Dr. Yazar’s paper on all of this, here: The impact of sex on the immune system explored at the single-cell level
As for what can be done about this, the same principle applies as we talked about in Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear but the opposite way around, meaning the solution may be the same as what we talked about in The Hormone Therapy That Reduces Breast Cancer Risk & More.
But! That last part is not yet proven, and is rather more simply a promising avenue for the next leg of the research, so please don’t take that as medical advice.
Want to learn more?
For a much more in-depth treatment of lupus management, you might like this excellent book we reviewed a while back:
The “et al.” in question? Jemima Albayda, MD; Divya Angra, MD; Alan N. Baer, MD; Sasha Bernatsky, MD, PhD; George Bertsias, MD, PhD; Ashira D. Blazer, MD; Ian Bruce, MD; Jill Buyon, MD; Yashaar Chaichian, MD; Maria Chou, MD; Sharon Christie, Esq; Angelique N. Collamer, MD; Ashté Collins, MD; Caitlin O. Cruz, MD; Mark M. Cruz, MD; Dana DiRenzo, MD; Jess D. Edison, MD; Titilola Falasinnu, PhD; Andrea Fava, MD; Cheri Frey, MD; Neda F. Gould, PhD; Nishant Gupta, MD; Sarthak Gupta, MD; Sarfaraz Hasni, MD; David Hunt, MD; Mariana J. Kaplan, MD; Alfred Kim, MD; Deborah Lyu Kim, DO; Rukmini Konatalapalli, MD; Fotios Koumpouras, MD; Vasileios C. Kyttaris, MD; Jerik Leung, MPH; Hector A. Medina, MD; Timothy Niewold, MD; Julie Nusbaum, MD; Ginette Okoye, MD; Sarah L. Patterson, MD; Ziv Paz, MD; Darryn Potosky, MD; Rachel C. Robbins, MD; Neha S. Shah, MD; Matthew A. Sherman, MD; Yevgeniy Sheyn, MD; Julia F. Simard, ScD; Jonathan Solomon, MD; Rodger Stitt, MD; George Stojan, MD; Sangeeta Sule, MD; Barbara Taylor, CPPM, CRHC; George Tsokos, MD; Ian Ward, MD; Emma Weeding, MD; Arthur Weinstein, MD; Sean A. Whelton, MD
The reason we mention this is to render it clear that this isn’t one man’s opinions (as happens with many books about certain topics), but rather, a panel of that many doctors all agreeing that this is correct and good, evidence-based, up-to-date (as of the publication of this latest revised edition all so recently) information.
Want to learn less?
If the aforementioned 848-page opus seems a little too overwhelming, then you might prefer:
The Lupus Solution – by Dr. Tiffany Caplan & Dr. Brent Caplan ← a much slimmer tome; just 182 pages 🙂
Take care!
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5 types of ‘wellness woo’ that borrow from mainstream medicine
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What we consider “fringe” or “mainstream” changes over time. That applies to health and medicine too.
For instance, massage was once considered a fringe therapy but in the 19th century it morphed into what we know today as physiotherapy.
Likewise, Swiss doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner wasn’t taken seriously when he said we should eat oats and fruit for breakfast. But he was onto something: he invented muesli.
There has also been traffic in the other direction. Legitimate medical therapies have turned up in the weird health borderland of beauty and “wellness”.
When untrained or barely trained people use these therapies, they can do real harm.
Here are five examples of wellness trends that borrow from mainstream medicine.
SimpleImages/Getty 1. Ozone therapy
Ozone (O₃) is a form of oxygen. Ordinary oxygen (O₂), sometimes with ozone added, can be applied to wounds via a bag or sealed chamber to help them heal. It does this by helping the body fight infection and form collagen.
But “ozone therapy” – the weird, unlicensed version – puts ozone, or ozone and oxygen, directly into the person’s body. It can go in via the lungs, or via intravenous injection, or it can be pumped into the rectum or vagina.
Practitioners claim it can reduce inflammation, or even treat cancer or HIV/AIDS, despite no evidence for such health benefits.
It can also cause fatal air embolisms – bubbles of gas in the bloodstream that can block blood flow to vital organs.
2. Vitamin drips
If you don’t get enough of a certain vitamin or mineral through your diet, you can take a supplement. But if that doesn’t work, in some cases, you might need to go to hospital or a doctor’s surgery to get a medically supervised infusion that’s delivered into the vein (an IV infusion).
For instance, iron infusions help people with serious iron deficiencies.
But celebrity endorsements have helped fuel the rise of “vitamin drips” at wellness centres and therapy lounges. These drips promise all sorts of outcomes, from boosting your immune system, to treating pain or depression.
IV needles in untrained hands can be dangerous. They can cause phlebitis (inflammation of the vein) and infiltration (when the IV fluid or medication leaks into the surrounding areas). They can also lead to infection.
And unlike therapeutic vitamin IV infusions administered in hospital, these non-traditional treatments are not regulated by Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration. So you might also not be getting the magic IV potion you’re paying for.
3. Botox
The bacterium Clostridium botulinum produces a neurotoxin – a poison that affects nerves. For decades, it’s been used therapeutically to treat excess sweating and migraine, among other conditions. Today, we call this neurotoxin Botox.
Since about the 1990s, health professionals have been injecting it into people’s faces to temporarily paralyse the muscles that cause wrinkles.
It’s legal, it’s a registered product, and in trained hands it’s safe to use.
But as of September 2 this year, it’s been wrapped in an extra layer of regulation.
People who deliver any non-surgical cosmetic procedures – including Botox – will now be required to demonstrate higher skill levels under tougher policies.
This comes after several cases where nurses allegedly imported injectables from overseas. But these products weren’t registered for use in Australia and may not have been safe to use.
4. Apheresis
Apheresis is the process of separating blood into its component parts by spinning it at high speed in a special machine.
Clinicians use this process to separate out and remove specific molecules or antibodies in some diseases – what’s called “selective apheresis”.
For example, if a person has very high cholesterol that doesn’t respond to normal treatments, they can undergo lipid apheresis to “wash out” harmful lipoproteins from their blood.
It’s easy to see how the idea of “washing” your blood could be misunderstood and misapplied.
English actor Orlando Bloom announced earlier this year that he’d undergone apheresis to remove microplastics from his blood.
Microplastics in the body are a cause for concern – but there’s no evidence to suggest apheresis can cleanse human blood of them.
5. Hyperbaric therapy
When a diver gets “the bends” from too much nitrogen forming in their body, they can be treated in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, where they receive 100% oxygen in a pressurised chamber.
But hyperbaric therapy is also touted as a treatment for autism, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, strokes, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
There isn’t enough good science to back up any of these claims. There also isn’t enough science to suggest it makes your skin look younger.
The key message?
The history of medicine is full of stories about when mainstream forms of medicine have harmed instead of healed.
Humans have also always wanted to manage their own health. This has been going on for centuries, with both risks and benefits.
But just because a therapy has been used in a hospital for one reason doesn’t necessarily mean it works in a wellness clinic for another.
People can be easily convinced by aggressively marketed wellness therapies, which can be magnified by social media and celebrity endorsements.
However these therapies can come with a lack of evidence to support their wider uses, and they may harm.
Caveat emptor – let the buyer beware.
Philippa Martyr, Lecturer, Pharmacology, Women’s Health, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Western Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Stop Cancer 20 Years Ago
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Get Abreast And Keep Abreast
This is Dr. Jenn Simmons. Her specialization is integrative oncology, as she—then a breast cancer surgeon—got breast cancer, decided the system wasn’t nearly as good from the patients’ side of things as from the doctors’ side, and took to educate herself, and now others, on how things can be better.
What does she want us to know?
Start now
If you have breast cancer, the best time to start adjusting your lifestyle might be 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now. We realize our readers with breast cancer (or a history thereof) probably have indeed started already—all strength to you.
What this means for those of us without breast cancer (or a history therof) is: start now
Even if you don’t have a genetic risk factor, even if there’s no history of it in your family, there’s just no reason not to start now.
Start what, you ask? Taking away its roots. And how?
Inflammation as the root of cancer
To oversimplify: cancer occurs because an accidentally immortal cell replicates and replicates and replicates and takes any nearby resources to keep on going. While science doesn’t know all the details of how this happens, it is a factor of genetic mutation (itself a normal process, without which evolution would be impossible), something which in turn is accelerated by damage to the DNA. The damage to the DNA? That occurs (often as not) as a result of cellular oxidation. Cellular oxidation is far from the only genotoxic thing out there, and a lot of non-food “this thing causes cancer” warnings are usually about other kinds of genotoxicity. But cellular oxidation is a big one, and it’s one that we can fight vigorously with our lifestyle.
Because cellular oxidation and inflammation go hand-in-hand, reducing one tends to reduce the other. That’s why so often you’ll see in our Research Review Monday features, a line that goes something like:
“and now for those things that usually come together: antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and anti-aging”
So, fight inflammation now, and have a reduced risk of a lot of other woes later.
See: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Don’t settle for “normal”
People are told, correctly but not always helpfully, such things as:
- It’s normal to have less energy at your age
- It’s normal to have a weaker immune system at your age
- It’s normal to be at a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, etc
…and many more. And these things are true! But that doesn’t mean we have to settle for them.
We can be all the way over on the healthy end of the distribution curve. We can do that!
(so can everyone else, given sufficient opportunity and resources, because health is not a zero-sum game)
If we’re going to get a cancer diagnosis, then our 60s are the decade where we’re most likely to get it. Earlier than that and the risk is extant but lower; later than that and technically the risk increases, but we probably got it already in our 60s.
So, if we be younger than 60, then now’s a good time to prepare to hit the ground running when we get there. And if we missed that chance, then again, the second-best time is now:
See: Focusing On Health In Our Sixties
Fast to live
Of course, anything can happen to anyone at any age (alas), but this is about the benefits of living a fasting lifestyle—that is to say, not just fasting for a 4-week health kick or something, but making it one’s “new normal” and just continuing it for life.
This doesn’t mean “never eat”, of course, but it does mean “practice intermittent fasting, if you can”—something that Dr. Simmons strongly advocates.
See: Intermittent Fasting: We Sort The Science From The Hype
While this calls back to the previous “fight inflammation”, it deserves its own mention here as a very specific way of fighting it.
It’s never too late
All of the advices that go before a cancer diagnosis, continue to stand afterwards too. There is no point of “well, I already have cancer, so what’s the harm in…?”
The harm in it after a diagnosis will be the same as the harm before. When it comes to lifestyle, preventing a cancer and preventing it from spreading are very much the same thing, which is also the same as shrinking it. Basically, if it’s anticancer, it’s anticancer, no matter whether it’s before, during, or after.
Dr. Simmons has seen too many patients get a diagnosis, and place their lives squarely in the hands of doctors, when doctors can only do so much.
Instead, Dr. Simmons recommends taking charge of your health as best you are able, today and onwards, no matter what. And that means two things:
- Knowing stuff
- Doing stuff
So it becomes our responsibility (and our lifeline) to educate ourselves, and take action accordingly.
Want to know more?
We recently reviewed her book, and heartily recommend it:
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons
Enjoy!
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Super Joints – by Pavel Tsatsouline
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For those of us for whom mobility and pain-free movement are top priorities, this book has us covered. So what’s different here, compared to your average stretching book?
It’s about functional strength with the stretches. The author’s background as a special forces soldier means that his interest was not in doing arcane yoga positions so much as being able to change direction quickly without losing speed or balance, get thrown down and get back up without injury, twist suddenly without unpleasantly wrenching anything (of one’s own, at least), and generally be able to take knocks without taking damage.
While we are hopefully not having to deal with such violence in our everyday lives, the robustness of body that results from these exercises is one that certainly can go a long way to keep us injury-free.
The exercises themselves are well-described, clearly and succinctly, with equally clear illustrations.
Note: the paperback version is currently expensive, probably due to supply and demand, but if you select the Kindle version, it’s much cheaper with no loss of quality (because the illustrations are black-on-white line-drawings and very clear; perfect for Kindle e-ink)
The style of the book is very casual and conversational, yet somehow doesn’t let that distract it from being incredibly information dense; there is no fluff here, just valuable guidance.
Bottom line: if you would like to be more robust with non-nonsense exercises, then this book is a fine choice.
Click here to check out Super Joints, and make yours flexible and strong!
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Can We Edit Parkinson’s Disease?
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…and other items from this week’s health news:
A new approach for treating Parkinson’s?
In Parkinson’s, a protein (α-synuclein) clumps together in brain cells, causing damage, analogous to that of β-amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s.
Researchers used brain cells made from stem cells of Parkinson’s patients and exposed them to harmful forms of α-synuclein. This triggered immune responses and activated an enzyme (ADAR1) that edits RNA. Normally, ADAR1 helps control immune responses during infections, but in Parkinson’s, this study shows that it becomes overly active in genes linked to inflammation.
What this means in practical terms is that ADAR1 could be a new target for treatments, offering a fresh way to tackle brain inflammation in Parkinson’s disease.
Read in full: Editing Parkinson’s disease—discovery of an inflammatory RNA editing enzyme
Related: Norepinephrine vs Alzheimer’s Disease
In the summertime, when the weather is high…
…then people might also be, depending on drug use—a team of researchers in Japan found that metabolism of many drugs (including prescription and recreational ones, and notably including alcohol) varies by season. This was an animal study, using close primate cousins of ours, but importantly: they have the same genes when it comes to the genes that are affected by this:
❝Their analysis, reported in Nature Communications, identified multiple “seasonally variable genes” from a comprehensive gene expression map of more than 54,000 genes expressed in 80 tissues.
The study identified seasonal fluctuations in genes responsible for drug metabolism, particularly CYP2D6 and CYP2C19, which affect a quarter of common medications. Several widely used pharmaceuticals may be affected by these seasonal variations, including treatments for cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, psychiatric conditions, hormonal therapies, and immunosuppressants used in organ transplantation.❞
As for alcohol, by the way: it’s tolerated better in winter, with intoxication in summer being quicker in its onset, and slower in recovery—in other words, alcohol’s effects are stretched out at both ends in summer.
The researchers note that this may also explain why hospitalizations for alcohol overdose are much more common in summer, despite people drinking just as heavily if not more heavily (based on alcohol sales) in winter.
Read in full: Seasonal changes affect alcohol tolerance and your waistline
Related: An Unexpected Extra Threat Of Alcohol
The end to the biological arms race between pathogens and vaccines?
Since the invention of the vaccine, humans and pathogens have been locked in an ongoing biological arms race, as each tries to outdo the other. From the pathogens’ side, of course this is completely unthinking and without malice, just a case of mutating and thus finding versions that aren’t “unnaturally deselected” by the previous round of vaccines. And, while this race hasn’t showed signs of slowing, the fact that the battle is being fought, has saved millions of lives.
However! One thing that’s critical is rolling vaccines out as soon as they’re ready. Yes, they have safety checks first of course, but once they’re good to go, they need to be out there not only saving people, but also reducing the infection rate by virtue of herd immunity (which occurs when most people are vaccinated).
The latest plan from the US Health & Human Services department is to require placebo testing of all new vaccines. Placebo trials typically last for months or years, depending on what it is. In the case of vaccines, then what’s being tested would be “is this vaccine more effective than placebo at stopping infection” so we’d need to wait until infection numbers roll in, tally how many get infected on each side, how many die on each side, and then if the numbers support its use (which based on pretty much any vaccine’s historic stats, they will) it’ll be rolled out to the general populace.
However, this means that (for example) when flu season rolls around, scientists will develop the appropriate vaccine, but instead of getting rolled out after safety testing, it’ll go into placebo trials instead, and be rolled out sometime the following year. Which is just not how a helpful response to “flu season” goes; it’d be like if your house were on fire so they send the fire crew out next week.
Read in full: US government to require placebo testing of all new vaccines: How will it affect updated COVID shots?
Related: Vaccine Mythbusting
Take care!
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Singledom & Healthy Longevity
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Statistically, those who live longest, do so in happy, fulfilling, committed relationships.
Note: happy, fulfilling, committed relationships. Less than that won’t do. Your insurance company might care about your marital status for its own sake, but your actual health doesn’t—it’s about the emotional safety and security that a good, healthy, happy, fulfilling relationship offers.
We wrote about this here:
Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!
But that’s not the full story
For a start, while being in a happy fulfilling committed relationship statistically adds healthy life years, being in a relationship that falls short of those adjectives certainly does not. See also:
Relationships: When To Stick It Out & When To Call It Quits
But also, life satisfaction steadily improves with age, for single people (the results are more complicated for partnered people—probably because of the range of difference in quality of relationships). At least, this held true in this large (n=6,188) study of people aged 40–85 years:
❝With advancing age, partnership status became less predictive of loneliness and the satisfaction with being single increased. Among later-born cohorts, the association between partnership status and loneliness was less strong than among earlier-born cohorts. Later-born single people were more satisfied with being single than their earlier-born counterparts.❞
Note that this does mean that while life satisfaction indeed improves with age for single people, that’s a generalized trend, and the greatest life satisfaction within this set of singles comes hand-in-hand with being single by choice rather than by perceived obligation, i.e., those who are “single and not looking” will generally be the most content, and this contentedness will improve with age, but for those who are “single and looking”, in that case it’s the younger people who have it better, likely due to a greater sense of having plenty of time.
For that matter, gender plays a role; this large survey of singles found that (despite the popular old pop-up ads advising that “older women in your area are looking to date”), in reality older single women were the least likely to actively look for a partner:
See: A Profile Of Single Americans
…which also shows that about half of single Americans are “not looking”, and of those who are, about half are open to a serious relationship, though this is more common under the age of 40, while being over the age of 40 sees more people looking only for something casual.
Take-away from this section: being single only decreases life satisfaction if one doesn’t enjoy being single, and even then, and increases it if one does enjoy being single.
But that’s about life satisfaction, not longevity
We found no studies specifically into longevity of singledom, only the implications that may be drawn from the longevity of partnered people.
However, there is a lot of research that shows it’s not being single that kills, it’s being socially isolated. It’s a function of neurodegeneration from a lack of conversation, and it’s a function of what happens when someone slips in the shower and is found a week later. Things like that.
For example: Is Living Alone “Aging Alone”? Solitary Living, Network Types, and Well-Being
What if you are alone and don’t want to be?
We’ve not, at time of writing, written dating advice in our Psychology Sunday section, but this writer’s advice is: don’t even try.
That’s not nihilism or even cynicism, by the way; it’s actually a kind of optimism. The trick is just to let them come to you.
(sample size of one here, but this writer has never looked for a relationship in her life, they’ve always just found me, and now that I’m widowed and intend to remain single, I still get offers—and no, I’m not a supermodel, nor rich, nor anything like that)
Simply: instead of trying to find a partner, just work on expanding your social relationships in general (which is much easier, because the process is something you can control, whereas the outcome of trying to find a suitable partner is not), and if someone who’s right for you comes along, great! If not, then well, at least you have a flock of friends now, and who knows what new unexpected romance may lie around the corner.
As for how to do that,
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Take care!
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