Are Supplements Worth Taking?

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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 😎

❝There seems to be a lot of suggestions to take supplements for every thing, from your head to your toes. I know it’s up to the individual but what are the facts or stats to support taking them versus not?❞

Short answer:

  • supplementary vitamins and minerals are probably neither needed nor beneficial for most (more on this later) people, with the exception of vitamin D which most people over a certain age need unless they are white and getting a lot of sun.
  • other kinds of supplement can be very beneficial or useless, depending on what they are, of course, and also your own personal physiology.

With regard to vitamins and minerals, in most cases they should be covered by a healthy balanced diet, and the bioavailability is usually better from food anyway (bearing in mind, we say vitamin such-and-such, or name an elemental mineral, but there are usually multiple, often many, forms of each—and supplements will usually use whatever is cheapest to produce and most chemically stable).

However! It is also quite common for food to be grown in whatever way is cheapest and produces the greatest visible yield, rather than for micronutrient coverage.

This goes for most if not all plants, and it goes extra for animals (because of the greater costs and inefficiencies involved in rearing animals).

We wrote about this a while back in a mythbusting edition of 10almonds, covering:

  • Food is less nutritious now than it used to be: True or False?
  • Supplements aren’t absorbed properly and thus are a waste of money: True or False?
  • We can get everything we need from our diet: True or False?

You can read the answers and explanations, and see the science that we presented, here:

Do We Need Supplements, And Do They Work?

You may be wondering: what was that about “most (more on this later) people”?

Sometimes someone will have a nutrient deficiency that can’t be easily remedied with diet. Often this occurs when their body:

  1. has trouble absorbing that nutrient, or
  2. does something inconvenient with it that makes a lot of it unusable when it gets it.

…which is why calcium, iron, vitamin B12, and vitamin D are quite common supplements to get prescribed by doctors after a certain age.

Still, it’s best to try getting things from one’s diet first all of all, of course.

Things we can’t (reasonably) get from food

This is another category entirely. There are many supplements that are convenient forms of things readily found in a lot of food, such as vitamins and minerals, or phytochemicals like quercetin, fisetin, and lycopene (to name just a few of very many).

Then there are things not readily found in food, or at least, not in food that’s readily available in supermarkets.

For example, if you go to your local supermarket and ask where the mimosa is, they’ll try to sell you a cocktail mix instead of the roots, bark, or leaves of a tropical tree. It is also unlikely they’ll stock lion’s mane mushroom, or reishi.

If perchance you do get the chance to acquire fresh lion’s mane mushroom, by the way, give it a try! It’s delicious shallow-fried in a little olive oil with black pepper and garlic.

In short, this last category, the things most of us can’t reasonably get from food without going far out of our way, are the kind of thing whereby supplements actually can be helpful.

And yet, still, not every supplement has evidence to support the claims made by its sellers, so it’s good to do your research beforehand. We do that on Mondays, with our “Research Review Monday” editions, of which you can find in our searchable research review archive ← we also review some drugs that can’t be classified as supplements, but mostly, it’s supplements.

Take care!

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  • Our ‘food environments’ affect what we eat. Here’s how you can change yours to support healthier eating

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    In January, many people are setting new year’s resolutions around healthy eating. Achieving these is often challenging – it can be difficult to change our eating habits. But healthy diets can enhance physical and mental health, so improving what we eat is a worthwhile goal.

    One reason it’s difficult to change our eating habits relates to our “food environments”. This term describes:

    The collective physical, economic, policy and sociocultural surroundings, opportunities and conditions that influence people’s food and beverage choices and nutritional status.

    Our current food environments are designed in ways that often make it easier to choose unhealthy foods than healthy ones. But it’s possible to change certain aspects of our personal food environments, making eating healthier a little easier.

    Unhealthy food environments

    It’s not difficult to find fast-food restaurants in Australian cities. Meanwhile, there are junk foods at supermarket checkouts, service stations and sporting venues. Takeaway and packaged foods and drinks routinely come in large portion sizes and are often considered tastier than healthy options.

    Our food environments also provide us with various prompts to eat unhealthy foods via the media and advertising, alongside health and nutrition claims and appealing marketing images on food packaging.

    At the supermarket, unhealthy foods are often promoted through prominent displays and price discounts.

    We’re also exposed to various situations in our everyday lives that can make healthy eating challenging. For example, social occasions or work functions might see large amounts of unhealthy food on offer.

    Not everyone is affected in the same way

    People differ in the degree to which their food consumption is influenced by their food environments.

    This can be due to biological factors (for example, genetics and hormones), psychological characteristics (such as decision making processes or personality traits) and prior experiences with food (for example, learned associations between foods and particular situations or emotions).

    People who are more susceptible will likely eat more and eat more unhealthy foods than those who are more immune to the effects of food environments and situations.

    Those who are more susceptible may pay greater attention to food cues such as advertisements and cooking smells, and feel a stronger desire to eat when exposed to these cues. Meanwhile, they may pay less attention to internal cues signalling hunger and fullness. These differences are due to a combination of biological and psychological characteristics.

    These people might also be more likely to experience physiological reactions to food cues including changes in heart rate and increased salivation.

    Two young women sitting on a couch eating chips.
    It’s common to eat junk food in front of the TV.
    PR Image Factory/Shutterstock

    Other situational cues can also prompt eating for some people, depending on what they’ve learned about eating. Some of us tend to eat when we’re tired or in a bad mood, having learned over time eating provides comfort in these situations.

    Other people will tend to eat in situations such as in the car during the commute home from work (possibly passing multiple fast-food outlets along the way), or at certain times of day such as after dinner, or when others around them are eating, having learned associations between these situations and eating.

    Being in front of a TV or other screen can also prompt people to eat, eat unhealthy foods, or eat more than intended.

    Making changes

    While it’s not possible to change wider food environments or individual characteristics that affect susceptibility to food cues, you can try to tune into how and when you’re affected by food cues. Then you can restructure some aspects of your personal food environments, which can help if you’re working towards healthier eating goals.

    Although both meals and snacks are important for overall diet quality, snacks are often unplanned, which means food environments and situations may have a greater impact on what we snack on.

    Foods consumed as snacks are often sugary drinks, confectionery, chips and cakes. However, snacks can also be healthy (for example, fruits, nuts and seeds).

    Try removing unhealthy foods, particularly packaged snacks, from the house, or not buying them in the first place. This means temptations are removed, which can be especially helpful for those who may be more susceptible to their food environment.

    Planning social events around non-food activities can help reduce social influences on eating. For example, why not catch up with friends for a walk instead of lunch at a fast-food restaurant.

    Creating certain rules and habits can reduce cues for eating. For example, not eating at your desk, in the car, or in front of the TV will, over time, lessen the effects of these situations as cues for eating.

    You could also try keeping a food diary to identify what moods and emotions trigger eating. Once you’ve identified these triggers, develop a plan to help break these habits. Strategies may include doing another activity you enjoy such as going for a short walk or listening to music – anything that can help manage the mood or emotion where you would have typically reached for the fridge.

    Write (and stick to) a grocery list and avoid shopping for food when hungry. Plan and prepare meals and snacks ahead of time so eating decisions are made in advance of situations where you might feel especially hungry or tired or be influenced by your food environment.The Conversation

    Georgie Russell, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN), Deakin University and Rebecca Leech, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Passion Fruit vs Persimmon – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing passion fruit to persimmon, we picked the passion fruit.

    Why?

    You may be wondering: “what is this fruit passionate about?” and the answer is: delivering nutrients of many kinds!

    Looking at the macros first, passion fruit has a little more protein and a lot more fiber, while persimmon has more carbs. This means that while persimmon’s glycemic index isn’t bad, passion fruit’s glycemic index is a lot lower.

    In terms of vitamins, passion fruit has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B9, E, K, and choline, while persimmon has more vitamin C. For the record passion fruit is also a good source of vitamin C, with a cup of passion fruit already giving a day’s daily dose of vitamin C, but persimmon gives twice that. Still, that’s a 8:1 win for passion fruit.

    When it comes to minerals, passion fruit has more copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while persimmon has more calcium and iron, meaning a 6:2 win for passion fruit.

    Adding up the three convincing individual victories shows a clear overall win for passion fruit.

    Enjoy (passionately, even)!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

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  • Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

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    Resistance Is Useful!

    At 10almonds we talk a lot about the importance of regular moderate exercise (e.g. walking, gardening, housework, etc), and with good reason: getting in those minutes (at least 150 minutes per week, so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) is the exericise most consistently linked to better general health outcomes and reduced mortality risk.

    We also often come back to mobility, because at the end of the day, being able to reach for something from a kitchen cabinet without doing oneself an injury is generally more important in life than being able to leg-press a car.

    Today though, we’re going to talk about resistance training.

    What is resistance training?

    It can be weight-lifting, or it can be bodyweight exercises. In those cases, what you’re resisting is gravity. It can also be exercises with resistance bands or machines. In all cases, it’s about building and/or maintaining strength.

    Why does it matter?

    Let’s say you’re not an athlete, soldier, or laborer, and the heaviest thing you have to pick up is a bag of groceries. Strength still matters, for two main reasons:

    • Muscle strength correlates to bone strength. You can’t build (or maintain) strong muscles on weak bones, so if you take care of your muscles, then your body will keep your bones strong too.
      • That’s assuming you have a good diet as well—but today’s not about that. If you’d like to know more about eating for bone health though, do check out this previous article about that!
    • Muscle strength correlates to balance and stability. You can’t keep yourself from falling over if you are physically frail.

    Both of those things matter, because falls and fractures often have terrible health outcomes (e.g., slower recovery and more complications) the older we get. So, we want to:

    • Ideally, not fall in the first place
    • If we do fall, have robust bones

    See also: Effects of Resistance Exercise on Bone Health

    How much should we do?

    Let’s go to the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research on this one:

    ❝There is strong evidence to support the benefits of resistance exercise for countering many age-related processes of sarcopenia, muscle weakness, mobility loss, chronic disease, disability, and even premature mortality.

    In addition, this Position Statement provides specific evidence-based practice recommendations to aid in the implementation of resistance exercise programs for healthy older adults and those with special considerations.

    While there are instances where low-intensity, low-volume programs are appropriate (i.e., beginning programs for individuals with frailty or CVDs), the greatest benefits are possible with progression to moderate to higher intensity programs.❞

    ~ Fragala et al

    Read the statement in full:

    Resistance Training for Older Adults: Position Statement From the National Strength and Conditioning Association

    There’s a lot of science there and it’s well worth reading if you have the time. It’s particularly good at delineating how much is not enough vs how much is too much, and the extent to which we should (or shouldn’t) train to exhaustion.

    If you don’t fancy that, though, and/or just want to start with something accessible and work your way up, the below is a very good (and also evidence-based) start-up plan:

    Healthline’s Exercise Plan For Seniors—For Strength, Balance, & Flexibility

    (it has a weekly planner, step-by-step guides to the exercises, and very clear illustrative animations of each)

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  • Can We Drink To Good Health?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Can we drink to good health?

    We asked you for your thoughts on alcohol and heart health, and we got quite an even spread of results!

    If perchance that’s too tiny to read, the figures were:

    • 32% voted for “Alcohol is a relaxant, reduces stress, and can contain resveratrol too. It’s good for the heart!”
    • 32% voted for: “Moderate alcohol consumption can be at least neutral for the health, if not positive ⚖️”
    • 36% voted for: “Alcohol is bad for pretty much everything, including heart health ✋”

    One subscriber who voted for “Alcohol is a relaxant, reduces stress, and can contain resveratrol too. It’s good for the heart!” added the following thoughts:

    ❝While it isn’t necessary to consume alcohol, moderate amounts can be beneficial and contribute to well-being through social activity, celebrations, etc.❞

    That’s an interesting point, and definitely many people do see alcohol that way! Of course, that does not mean that one will find no social activities, celebrations, etc, in parts of the world where alcohol consumption is uncommon. Indeed, in India, wedding parties where no alcohol is consumed can go on for days!

    But, “we live in a society” and all that, and while we’re a health newsletter not a social issues newsletter, it’d be remiss of us to not acknowledge the importance of socialization for good mental health—and thus the rest of our health too.

    So, if indeed all our friends and family drink alcohol, it can certainly make abstaining more of a challenge.

    On that note, let’s take a moment to considerThe French Paradox” (an observation of a low prevalence of ischemic heart disease despite high intakes of saturated fat, a phenomenon accredited to the consumption of red wine).

    As it happens, a comprehensive review in “Circulation”, a cardiovascular health journal, has suggested the French Paradox may not be so paradoxical after all.

    Research suggests it has more to do with other lifestyle factors (and historic under-reporting of cardiovascular disease by French doctors), which would explain why Japan has lower rates of heart disease, despite drinking little wine, and more beer and spirits.

    So, our subscriber’s note may not be completely without reason! It’s just about the party, not the alcohol.

    One subscriber who voted for “Moderate alcohol consumption can be at least neutral for the health, if not positive ⚖️” wrote:

    ❝Keeping in mind, moderate means one glass of wine for women a day and two for men. Hard alcohol doesn’t have the same heart benefits as wine❞

    That is indeed the guideline according to some health bodies!

    In other places with different guiding advisory bodies, that’s been dropped down to one a day for everyone (the science may be universal, but how government institutions interpret that is not).

    About that wine… Specifically, red wine, for its resveratrol content:

    While there are polyphenols such as resveratrol in red wine that could boost heart health, there’s so little per glass that you may need 100–1000 glasses to get the dosage that provides benefits in mouse studies. If you’re not a mouse, you might even need more.

    To this end, many people prefer resveratrol supplementation. ← link is to an example product, but there are plenty more so feel free to shop around

    A subscriber who voted for “Alcohol is bad for pretty much everything, including heart health ✋” says:

    ❝New guidelines suggest 1 to 2 drinks a week are okay but the less the better.❞

    If you haven’t heard these new guidelines, we’ll mention again: every government has its own official bodies and guidelines so perhaps your local guidelines differ, but for example here’s what that World Health Organization has to say (as of January this year):

    WHO: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

    So, whom to believe? The governments who hopefully consider the welfare of their citizenry more important than the tax dollars from alcohol sales, or the World Health Organization?

    It’s a tough one, but we’ll always err on the side of the science.

    Don’t Forget…

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  • The Telomere Effect – by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel

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    Telomeres can be pretty mystifying to the person with a lay interest in longevity. Beyond “they’re the little caps that sit on the end of your DNA, and longer is better, and when they get short, damage occurs, and aging”, how do they fit into the big picture?

    Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel excel at explaining the marvelous world of telomeres…

    • how they work
    • what affects them
    • and how and why

    …and the extent to which changes are or aren’t reversible.

    For some of us, the ship has sailed on avoiding a lot of early-life damage to our telomeres, and now we have a damage-mitigation task ahead. That’s where the authors get practical.

    Indeed, the whole third part of the book is titled “Help Your Body Protect Its Cells“, and indeed covers not just “from now on” protection, but undoing some of the damage already done (yes, telomeres can be lengthened—it gets harder as we get older, but absolutely can be done).

    In short: if you’d like to avoid further damage to your telomeres where possible, and reverse some of the damage done already, this book will set you on the right track.

    Order your copy of The Telomere Effect from Amazon today!

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  • When Carbs, Proteins, & Fats Switch Metabolic Roles

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Strange Things Happening In The Islets Of Langerhans

    It is generally known and widely accepted that carbs have the biggest effect on blood sugar levels (and thus insulin response), fats less so, and protein least of all.

    And yet, there was a groundbreaking study published yesterday which found:

    Glucose is the well-known driver of insulin, but we were surprised to see such high variability, with some individuals showing a strong response to proteins, and others to fats, which had never been characterized before.

    Insulin plays a major role in human health, in everything from diabetes, where it is too low*, to obesity, weight gain and even some forms of cancer, where it is too high.

    These findings lay the groundwork for personalized nutrition that could transform how we treat and manage a range of conditions.❞

    ~ Dr. James Johnson

    *saying ”too low” here is potentially misleading without clarification; yes, Type 1 Diabetics will have too little [endogenous] insulin (because the pancreas is at war with itself and thus isn’t producing useful quantities of insulin, if any). Type 2, however, is more a case of acquired insulin insensitivity, because of having too much at once too often, thus the body stops listening to it, “boy who cried wolf”-style, and the pancreas also starts to get fatigued from producing so much insulin that’s often getting ignored, and does eventually produce less and less while needing more and more insulin to get the same response, so it can be legitimately said “there’s not enough”, but that’s more of a subjective outcome than an objective cause.

    Back to the study itself, though…

    What they found, and how they found it

    Researchers took pancreatic islets from 140 heterogenous donors (varied in age and sex; ostensibly mostly non-diabetic donors, but they acknowledge type 2 diabetes could potentially have gone undiagnosed in some donors*) and tested cell cultures from each with various carbs, proteins, and fats.

    They found the expected results in most of the cases, but around 9% responded more strongly to the fats than the carbs (even more strongly than to glucose specifically), and even more surprisingly 8% responded more strongly to the proteins.

    *there were also some known type 2 diabetics amongst the donors; as expected, those had a poor insulin response to glucose, but their insulin response to proteins and fats were largely unaffected.

    What this means

    While this is, in essence, a pilot study (the researchers called for larger and more varied studies, as well as in vivo human studies), the implications so far are important:

    It appears that, for a minority of people, a lot of (generally considered very good) antidiabetic advice may not be working in the way previously understood. They’re going to (for example) put fat on their carbs to reduce the blood sugar spike, which will technically still work, but the insulin response is going to be briefly spiked anyway, because of the fats, which very insulin response is what will lower the blood sugars.

    In practical terms, there’s not a lot we can do about this at home just yet—even continuous glucose monitors won’t tell us precisely, because they’re monitoring glucose, not the insulin response. We could probably measure everything and do some math and work out what our insulin response has been like based on the pace of change in blood sugar levels (which won’t decrease without insulin to allow such), but even that is at best grounds for a hypothesis for now.

    Hopefully, more publicly-available tests will be developed soon, enabling us all to know our “insulin response type” per the proteome predictors discovered in this study, rather than having to just blindly bet on it being “normal”.

    Ironically, this very response may have hidden itself for a while—if taking fats raised insulin response without raising blood sugar levels, then if blood sugar levels are the only thing being measured, all we’ll see is “took fats at dinner; blood sugars returned to normal more quickly than when taking carbs without fats”.

    You can read the study in full here:

    Proteomic predictors of individualized nutrient-specific insulin secretion in health and disease

    Want to know more about blood sugar management?

    You might like to catch up on:

    Take care!

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