Apricots vs Peaches – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apricots to peaches, we picked the apricots.
Why?
Both are great! But there’s a clear winner:
In terms of macros, apricots have more fiber and, which is less important because the numbers are small, more protein. Apricots do also have more carbs, and/but carbs from whole fruit are not a problem for most people (especially because of the fiber), unless undertaking a very carb-controlled diet.
When it comes to vitamins, apricots sweep with more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B5, B6, B9, C, E, & K. Peaches meanwhile boast more vitamin B3, and that only marginally, as well as more choline.
In the category of minerals, apricots sweep again with more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. Peaches are not higher in any minerals.
Finally, if we consider polyphenols, apricots sweep yet again. The flavonols that peaches have, apricots have more of, and apricots have a long list of flavonols that peaches don’t.
Outside of flavonols, there is one (1) phenolic acid that peaches have more of (it’s 3-Caffeoylquinic acid), and it’s only slightly more, and it’s mostly in the skin which isn’t included if you buy your fruit ready-chopped. So in those cases, apricots would have the higher 3-Caffeoylquinic acid content anyway.
All in all, with their higher content of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols, apricots easily win the day.
Enjoy both, though! Diversity is healthy!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Dried Apricots vs Dried Prunes – Which is Healthier?
- Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same? ← we know we link this one a lot, but we think it’s important for everyone to know how fruit is good and juice isn’t (and why, less that seem bizarrely arbitrary)
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Want to sleep longer? Adding mini-bursts of exercise to your evening routine can help – new study
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Exercising before bed has long been discouraged as the body doesn’t have time to wind down before the lights go out.
But new research has found breaking up a quiet, sedentary evening of watching television with short bursts of resistance exercise can lead to longer periods of sleep.
Adults spend almost one third of the 24-hour day sleeping. But the quality and length of sleep can affect long-term health. Sleeping too little or waking often in the night is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Physical activity during the day can help improve sleep. However, current recommendations discourage intense exercise before going to bed as it can increase a person’s heart rate and core temperature, which can ultimately disrupt sleep.
Nighttime habits
For many, the longest period of uninterrupted sitting happens at home in the evening. People also usually consume their largest meal during this time (or snack throughout the evening).
Insulin (the hormone that helps to remove sugar from the blood stream) tends to be at a lower level in the evening than in the morning.
Together these factors promote elevated blood sugar levels, which over the long term can be bad for a person’s health.
Our previous research found interrupting evening sitting every 30 minutes with three minutes of resistance exercise reduces the amount of sugar in the bloodstream after eating a meal.
But because sleep guidelines currently discourage exercising in the hours before going to sleep, we wanted to know if frequently performing these short bursts of light activity in the evening would affect sleep.
Activity breaks for better sleep
In our latest research, we asked 30 adults to complete two sessions based in a laboratory.
During one session the adults sat continuously for a four-hour period while watching streaming services. During the other session, they interrupted sitting by performing three minutes of body-weight resistance exercises (squats, calf raises and hip extensions) every 30 minutes.
After these sessions, participants went home to their normal life routines. Their sleep that evening was measured using a wrist monitor.
Our research found the quality of sleep (measured by how many times they woke in the night and the length of these awakenings) was the same after the two sessions. But the night after the participants did the exercise “activity breaks” they slept for almost 30 minutes longer.
Identifying the biological reasons for the extended sleep in our study requires further research.
But regardless of the reason, if activity breaks can extend sleep duration, then getting up and moving at regular intervals in the evening is likely to have clear health benefits.
Time to revisit guidelines
These results add to earlier work suggesting current sleep guidelines, which discourage evening exercise before bed, may need to be reviewed.
As the activity breaks were performed in a highly controlled laboratory environment, future research should explore how activity breaks performed in real life affect peoples sleep.
We selected simple, body-weight exercises to use in this study as they don’t require people to interrupt the show they may be watching, and don’t require a large space or equipment.
If people wanted to incorporate activity breaks in their own evening routines, they could probably get the same benefit from other types of exercise. For example, marching on the spot, walking up and down stairs, or even dancing in the living room.
The key is to frequently interrupt evening sitting time, with a little bit of whole-body movement at regular intervals.
In the long run, performing activity breaks may improve health by improving sleep and post-meal blood sugar levels. The most important thing is to get up frequently and move the body, in a way the works best for a person’s individual household.
Jennifer Gale, PhD candidate, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago and Meredith Peddie, Senior Lecturer, Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Sweet Dreams Are Made of THC (Or Are They?)
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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’m one of those older folks that have a hard time getting 7 hrs. I know a lot of it my fault…like a few beers at nite…🥰am now trying THC gummies for anxiety, instead of alcohol……less calories 😁how does THC affect our sleep,? Safer than alcohol…..I know your next article 😊😊😊😊❣️😊alot of us older kids do take gummies 😲😲😲thank you❞
Great question! We wrote a little about CBD gummies (not THC) before:
…and went on to explore THC’s health benefits and risks here:
For starters, let’s go ahead and say: you’re right that it’s safer (for most people) than alcohol—but that’s not a strong claim, because alcohol is very bad for pretty much everything, including sleep.
So how does THC measure up when it comes to sleep quality?
Good news: it affects the architecture of sleep in such a way that you will spend longer in deep sleep (delta wave activity), which means you get more restorative and restful sleep!
See also: Alpha, beta, theta: what are brain states and brain waves? And can we control them?
Bad news: it does so at the cost of reducing your REM sleep, which is also necessary for good brain health, and will cause cognitive impairment if you skip too much. Normally, if you are sleep-deprived, the brain will prioritize REM sleep at the cost of other kinds of sleep; it’s that important. However, if you are chemically impaired from getting healthy REM sleep, there’s not much your brain can do to save you from the effects of REM sleep loss.
See: Cannabis, Cannabinoids, and Sleep: a Review of the Literature
This is, by the way, a reason that THC gets prescribed for some sleep disorders, in cases where the initial sleep disruption was because of nightmares, as it will reduce those (along with any other dreams, as collateral damage):
One thing to be careful of if using THC as a sleep aid is that withdrawal may make your symptoms worse than they were to start with:
Updates in the use of cannabis for insomnia
With all that in mind, you might consider (if you haven’t already tried it) seeing whether CBD alone improves your sleep, as while it does also extend time in deep sleep, it doesn’t reduce REM nearly as much as THC does:
👆 this study was paid for by the brand being tested, so do be aware of potential publication bias. That’s not to say the study is necessarily corrupt, and indeed it probably wasn’t, but rather, the publication of the results was dependent on the company paying for them (so hypothetically they could have pulled funding from any number of other research groups that didn’t get the results they wanted, leaving this one to be the only one published). That being said, the study is interesting, which is why we’ve linked it, and it’s a good jumping-off-point for finding a lot of related papers, which you can see listed beneath it.
CBD also has other benefits of its own, even without THC:
CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say?
Take care!
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Rise And (Really) Shine!
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Q&A with 10almonds Subscribers!
Q: Would love to hear more ideas about effective first thing in the morning time management to get a great start on your day.
A: There are a lot of schools of thought about what’s best in this regard! Maybe we’ll do a main feature sometime. But some things that are almost universally agreed upon are:
- Prepare your to-do list the night before
- Have some sort of buffer between waking up and getting to productivity.
- For me (hi, your writer here) it’s my first coffee of the day. It’s not even about the caffeine, it’s about the ritual of it, it’s a marker that separates my night from the day and tells my brain what gear to get into.
- Others may like to exercise first thing in the morning
- For still yet others, it could be a shower, cold or otherwise
- Some people like a tall glass of lemon water to rehydrate after sleeping!
- If you take drinkable morning supplements such as this pretty awesome nootropic stack, it’s a great time for that and an excellent way to get the brain-juices flowing!
- When you do get to productivity: eat the frog first! What this means is: if eating a frog is the hardest thing you’ll have to do all day, do that first. Basically, tackle the most intimidating task first. That way, you won’t spend your day stressed/anxious and/or subconsciously wasting time in order to procrastinate and avoid it.
- Counterpart to the above: a great idea is to also plan something to look forward to when your working day is done. It doesn’t matter much what it is, provided it’s rewarding to you, that makes you keen to finish your tasks to get to it.
Have a question you’d like to see answered here? Hit reply to this email, or use the feedback widget at the bottom! We always love to hear from you
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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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Meditations for Mortals – by Oliver Burkeman
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We previously reviewed this author’s “Four Thousand Weeks”, but for those who might have used a lot of those four thousand weeks already, and would like to consider things within a smaller timeframe for now, this work is a 28-day daily reader.
Now, daily readers are usually 366 days, but the chapters here are not the single page chapters that 366-page daily readers usually have. So, expect to invest a little more time per day (say, about 6 pages for each daily chapter).
Burkeman does not start the way we might expect, by telling us to take the time to smell the roses. Instead, he starts by examining the mistakes that most of us make most of the time, often due to unexamined assumptions about the world and how it works. Simply put, we’ve often received bad lessons in life (usually not explicitly, but rather, from our environments), and it takes some unpacking first to deal with that.
Nor is the book systems-based, as many books that get filed under “time management” may be, but rather, is simply principles-based. This is a strength, because principles are a lot easier to keep to than systems.
The writing style is direct and conversational, and neither overly familiar nor overly academic. It strikes a very comfortably readable balance.
Bottom line: if you’d like to get the most out of your days, this book can definitely help improve things a lot.
Click here to check out Meditations For Mortals, and live fulfilling days!
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Black Bean Hummus Panini
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A recipe for a sandwich? Try it once, and you’ll see why. Welcome to your new favorite!
You will need
- 1 cup cooked-and-rinsed black beans (canned is fine)
- ⅓ cup hummus (you can use our Hero Homemade Hummus recipe)
- 4 thin slices of eggplant (or more if you like it meaty)
- 4 sun-dried tomatoes
- 2 slices of your favorite bread (you can use our Delicious Quinoa Avocado Bread recipe)
- A little olive oil, ideally sprayable
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Grill the eggplant slices until soft.
2) Spread hummus generously on one side of both slices of bread.
2) Add the black beans on top of one slice (the hummus will help them stay in place), followed by the sun-dried tomatoes and then the eggplant. Top with the other slice of bread, hummus-side down.
3) Coat (carefully, please) the inside of the panini press (both interior sides) with olive oil. If you don’t have sprayable oil, using a sheet of kitchen roll to apply the oil is a good way to do it without making a mess.
4) Grill the assembled sandwich, until the bread starts to brown and the insides are warm; this should take about 4 minutes.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Three Daily Servings of Beans?
- Chickpeas vs Black Beans – Which is Healthier?
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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