Artichoke vs Onion – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing artichoke to onion, we picked the artichoke.
Why?
It wasn’t close:
In terms of macros, artichoke has more than 3x the fiber, more than 3x the protein, and about the same carbs. An easy first-round win for artichoke.
In the category of vitamins, artichoke has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B7. B9, C, E, and K, while onions are not higher in any vitamins, though they do at least equal artichoke for vitamin B6. In any case, an overwhelming win for artichokes in this round.
Looking at minerals next, artichokes have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while onions have more selenium, yielding an 8:1 victory to artichokes here.
In other considerations, artichokes are much higher in polyphenols, so that’s another point in their favor.
Adding up the sections makes for a very clear overall win for artichoke, but by all means enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Enjoy!
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How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)
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How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)
We’ve talked before about how to recover more quickly after a workout, especially if you overdid it. There are a lot of tips in that article, so by all means check it out if you didn’t catch it at the time!
That was very specific to recovering from exercise, though. Today we’re looking at something a little different, a little more holistic.
You’re busier than you think
Maybe your life is an obvious blur of busy-ness. Maybe it’s not. But either way, you’re almost certainly busier than you think. Especially on a cellular level.
Your resting metabolic rate (RMR), or how many calories you burn while at rest (i.e., calories used just to keep you alive) will depend on various factors including age, sex, weight, body composition, and other things.
That said, it’ll probably be between 1000 and 2000 calories per day. You can get a rough idea of what it might be for you, using this calculator:
How Many Calories Do You Burn a Day at Rest (Doing Nothing)?
So if ever you wonder why you feel so exhausted, despite having done nothing, it could be that your body was busy:
- Metabolizing, generally (did you have a big meal?)
- Fighting an illness (bacterial or viral infection, for example)
- Fighting an imaginary illness and creating a real one in the process (stress, inflammation, etc)
- Recovering/rebuilding from something you did yesterday or even before that
- Thinking (your brain is your largest organ by mass, and consumes the most calories by far)
Your brain does not get a free pass on being part of your body! Just like if a certain muscle group were working out constantly for 16 hours you’d be feeling pretty tired, the same goes for the organ that is your brain, if it’s been working out constantly.
Your body is a composite organism—take advantage of that
Dolphins can shut down half of their brain at once, to let each hemisphere of the brain sleep independently in shifts. We (except in the case of split brain patients, where the corpus callosum has been severed) can’t do that, but we can let different parts of the organism that is our body work in shifts.
This is the real meaning of “a change is as a good as a rest”:
If you’ve been doing cognitive work (at your desk perhaps, maybe managing a spreadsheet, say), then taking a break to do crosswords will not, actually, give you break. Because you’re still sitting manipulating letters and numbers. As far as your brain (still having to do work!) is concerned, it’s basically the same. Nor will checking out social media; you’re still sitting examining a screen.
Instead, time to get physically active. Literally just doing the washing up would be a better break! Some yoga or Pilates would be perfect.
In contrast, if you’ve been doing a vigorous bit of gardening, then for example taking a break to lift weights isn’t going to be a break, because again you just switched to a similar task.
Better to pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read, or the crosswords we mentioned earlier. Or just lounge in your nicely-gardened garden.
The important thing is: to not require the same resources from the body (including the brain, it’s still part of the body) that you have been.
For more specific tips than we have room for here today, check out:
How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research
Give your metabolism a break too
Not completely—you don’t need to be put into cryostasis or anything.
But, give your metabolism a rest, in relative terms. Intermittent fasting is great for precisely this; it lets your body rest and reset.
See: Intermittent Fasting: we sort the science from the hype!
So does the practice of meditation, by the way. You don’t have to get fancy with it, either:
Check out: No Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
Enjoy, and rest well!
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Can’t Do The Middle Splits? Two Anatomy Tricks To Get You Deeper In Seconds
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Flexibility coach Aleks Brzezinska—who first got flexible as an adult herself—explains how:
To the floor
First, understand four factors that affect how easy or hard the middle splits will be:
- Muscles: flexibility partly depends on inherent muscle stretchability, which varies between individuals. Stretching regularly works for everyone, but heavy weightlifting can hinder flexibility progress.
- Ligaments: ligament length and mobility affect joint flexibility. Longer ligaments offer more mobility but less stability, increasing injury risk. Hypermobile people tend to progress faster in flexibility. Ligaments can be stretched over time, though excessive stretching without strengthening can reduce joint stability, so it’s important to do both.
- Hormones: estrogen makes connective tissue more flexible, improving flexibility in women.
- Bone Structure: the biggest limitation in achieving full middle splits can be bone structure, particularly hip socket depth and femur shape. Shallower sockets and longer femur necks generally allow more movement. Children have more cartilage in the hips, which does aid flexibility if trained early, but it’s not too late for the rest of us, either.
Now, the two tips:
- Arch your back while attempting the split. This can help you slide deeper into the position regardless of your current level.
- Conversely, round your back and sit your hips backward. This shifts the stretch from the inner thighs to the hamstrings and mimics a wide pancake position, helping those whose hip anatomy prevents full middle splits.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Test For Whether You Will Be Able To Achieve The Splits
Take care!
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Tourette’s Syndrome Treatment Options
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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
❝Is there anything special that might help someone with Tourette’s syndrome?❞
There are of course a lot of different manifestations of Tourette’s syndrome, and some people’s tics may be far more problematic to themselves and/or others, while some may be quite mild and just something to work around.
It’s an interesting topic for sure, so we’ll perhaps do a main feature (probably also covering the related-and-sometimes-overlapping OCD umbrella rather than making it hyperspecific to Tourette’s), but meanwhile, you might consider some of these options:
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Stop Making These Body Care & Hair Removal Mistakes
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Dr. Shereene Idris, dermatologist, advises:
Summer skin
After an interesting choice of intro spiel (we have never before encountered a dermatologist so unhappy to see people’s skin), the mistakes she advises us to avoid are:
- At-home hair reduction: the person who gets paid if people go into her clinic (so, slight conflict of interests there) advises us to avoid at-home devices, as IPL is less precise than laser and thus for some people may raise burn risk.
- Harsh exfoliation for rough bumps: aggressive scrubbing can worsen keratosis pilaris by inflaming your skin barrier rather than clearing plugged follicles, so she instead recommends chemical exfoliants like glycolic or lactic acid, moisturizers with urea, retinoids, or hair removal approaches that reduce follicle reactivity.
- Overlooking body acne triggers: back, chest, and butt acne often worsen with sweat, friction, tight clothing, hair product residue, and heavy lotions, so she recommends to wash your body after hair care, shower soon after sweating, change out of workout clothes quickly, and if necessary, use targeted treatments like benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid rather than relying only on standard body wash.
- Poor towel hygiene: reusing damp towels too long can encourage bacterial or fungal overgrowth that can worsen skin issues, so it’s advisable to change body towels at least once every few uses, and enjoy fresh face towels daily.
- Sun protection over-optimism: sunscreen works best when applied strategically to exposed areas based on clothing and activities, including oft-missed spots like your ears, scalp, feet, hands, nose edges, and neck; daily morning application may be enough for mostly indoor days, but day-long outdoor exposure calls for reapplication plus added protection like hats, visors, sunglasses, and so forth.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
What Is Your Skin Barrier, And Why Should You Care?
Take care!
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Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
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Social Media, But Healthy
Social media has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It’s calculated to trick you into doomscrolling and rage-posting, and it encourages you to compare your everyday life to other people’s carefully-curated highlight reels.
Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)
But it doesn’t have to be so.
Find your community
One of the biggest strengths social media has going for it is that it can, if used well, be a powerful tool for community. As for why that’s important from a health perspective, see:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Loneliness & isolation do, of course, kill people. By:
- Accidents, e.g. household fall but nobody notices for a week
- Depression and resultant decline (and perhaps even active suicidality)
- Cognitive decline from a lack of social contact
Read more:
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
- How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)
- The Five Key Traits Of Healthy Aging
So, what’s “community” to you, and to what extent can you find it online? Examples might include:
- A church, or other religious community, if we be religious
- The LGBT+ community, or even just a part of it, if that fits for us
- Any mutual-support oriented, we-have-this-shared-experience community, could be anything from AA to the VA.
Find your people, and surround yourself with them. There are more than 8,000,000,000 people on this planet, you will not find all the most compatible ones with you on your street.
Grow & nurture your community
Chances are, you have a lot to contribute. Your life experiences are valuable.
Being of service to other people is strongly associated “flourishing”, per the science.
Indeed, one of the questions on the subjective wellness scale test is to ask how much one agrees with the statement “I actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others”.
See: Are You Flourishing? (There’s a Scale)
So, help people, share your insights, create whatever is relevant to your community and fits your skills (it could be anything from art to tutorials to call-to-action posts or whatever works for you and your community)
As a bonus: when people notice you are there for them, they’ll probably be there for you, too. Not always, sadly, but there is undeniable strength in numbers.
Remember it’s not the boss of you
Whatever social media platform(s) you use, the companies in question will want you to use it in the way that is most profitable for them.
Usually that means creating a lot of shallow content, clicking on as many things as possible, and never logging off.
Good ways to guard against that include:
- Use the social media from a computer rather than a handheld device
- Disable “infinite scroll” in the settings, if possible
- Set a timer and stick to it
- Try to keep your interactions to only those that are relevant and kind (for the good of your own health, let alone anyone else’s)
On that latter note…
Before posting, ask “what am I trying to achieve here?” and ensure your action is aligned with your actual desires, and not just reactivity. See also:
A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Self-Compassion – by Dr. Kristin Neff
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A lot of people struggle with self-esteem, and depending on one’s surrounding culture, it can even seem socially obligatory to be constantly valuing oneself highly (or else, who else will if we do not?). But, as Dr. Neff points out, there’s an inherent problem with reinforcing for oneself even a positive message like “I am smart, strong, and capable!” because sometimes all of us have moments of being stupid, weak, and incapable (occasionally all three at once!), which places us in a position of having to choose between self-deceit and self-deprecation, neither of which are good.
Instead, Dr. Neff advocates for self-compassion, for treating oneself as one (hopefully) would a loved one—seeing their/our mistakes, weaknesses, failures, and loving them/ourself anyway.
She does not, however, argue that we should accept just anything from ourselves uncritically, but rather, we identify our mistakes, learn, grow, and progress. So not “I should have known better!”, nor even “How was I supposed to know?!”, but rather, “Now I have learned a thing”.
The style of the book is quite personal, as though having a heart-to-heart over a hot drink perhaps, but the format is organized and progresses naturally from one idea to the next, taking the reader to where we need to be.
Bottom line: if you have trouble with self-esteem (as most people do), then that’s a trap that there is a way out of, and it doesn’t require being perfect or lowering one’s standards, just being kinder to oneself along the way—and this book can help inculcate that.
Click here to check out Self-Compassion, and indeed be kind to yourself!
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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