Avocado vs Olives – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing avocado to olives, we picked the avocado.

Why?

Both are certainly great! And when it comes to their respective oils, olive oil wins out as it retains many micronutrients that avocado oil loses. But, in their whole form, avocado beats olive:

In terms of macros, avocado has more protein, carbs, fiber, and (healthy) fats. Simply, it’s more nationally-dense than the already nutritionally-dense food that is olives.

When it comes to vitamins, olives are great but avocados really shine; avocado has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7 B9, C, E, K, and choline, while olives boast only more vitamin A.

In the category of minerals, things are closer to even; avocado has more magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while olives have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, and selenium. Still, a marginal victory for avocado here.

In short, this is another case of one very healthy food looking bad by standing next to an even better one, so by all means enjoy both—if you’re going to pick one though, avocado is the more nutritionally dense.

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

Avocado Oil vs Olive Oil – Which is Healthier? ← when made into oils, olive oil wins, but avocado oil is still a good option too

Take care!

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  • How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

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    How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

    A subscriber recently requested:

    ❝Request: more people need to be aware of suicidal tendencies and what they can do to ward them off❞

    …and we said we’d do that one of these Psychology Sundays, so here we are, doing it!

    First of all, we’ll mention that we did previously do a main feature on managing depression (in oneself or a loved one); here it is:

    The Mental Health First Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need

    Now, not all depression leads to suicidality, and not all suicide is pre-empted by depression, but there’s a large enough crossover that it seems sensible to put that article here, for anyone who might find it of use, or even just of interest.

    Now, onwards, to the specific, and very important, topic of suicide.

    This should go without saying, but some of today’s content may be a little heavy.

    We invite you to read it anyway if you’re able, because it’s important stuff that we all should know, and not talking about it is part of what allows it to kill people.

    So, let’s take a deep breath, and read on…

    The risk factors

    Top risk factors for suicide include:

    • Not talking about it
    • Having access to a firearm
    • Having a plan of specifically how to commit suicide
    • A lack of social support
    • Being male
    • Being over 40

    Now, some of these are interesting sociologically, but aren’t very useful practically; what a convenient world it’d be if we could all simply choose to be under 40, for instance.

    Some serve as alarm bells, such as “having a plan of specifically how to commit suicide”.

    If someone has a plan, that plan’s never going to disappear entirely, even if it’s set aside!

    (this writer is deeply aware of the specifics of how she has wanted to end things before, and has used the advice she gives in this article herself numerous times. So far so good, still alive to write about it!)

    Specific advices, therefore, include:

    Talk about it / Listen

    Depending on whether it’s you or someone else at risk:

    • Talk about it, if it’s you
    • Listen attentively, if it’s someone else

    There are two main objections that you might have at this point, so let’s look at those:

    “I have nobody to talk to”—it can certainly feel that way, sometimes, but you may be surprised who would listen if you gave them the chance. If you really can’t trust anyone around you, there are of course suicide hotlines (usually per area, so we’ll not try to list them here; a quick Internet search will get you what you need).

    If you’re worried it’ll result in bad legal/social consequences, check their confidentiality policy first:

    • Some hotlines can and will call the police, for instance.
    • Others deliberately have a set-up whereby they couldn’t even trace the call if they wanted to.
      • On the one hand, that means they can’t intervene
      • On the other hand, that means they’re a resource for anyone who will only trust a listener who can’t intervene.

    “But it is just a cry for help”—then that person deserves help. What some may call “attention-seeking” is, in effect, care-seeking. Listen, without judgement.

    Remove access to firearms, if applicable and possible

    Ideally, get rid of them (safely and responsibly, please).

    If you can’t bring yourself to do that, make them as inconvenient to get at as possible. Stored securely at your local gun club is better than at home, for example.

    If your/their plan isn’t firearm-related, but the thing in question can be similarly removed, remove it. You/they do not need that stockpile of pills, for instance.

    And of course you/they could get more, but the point is to make it less frictionless. The more necessary stopping points between thinking “I should just kill myself” and being able to actually do it, the better.

    Have/give social support

    What do the following people have in common?

    • A bullied teenager
    • A divorced 40-something who just lost a job
    • A lonely 70-something with no surviving family, and friends that are hard to visit

    Often, at least, the answer is: the absence of a good social support network

    So, it’s good to get one, and be part of some sort of community that’s meaningful to us. That could look different to a lot of people, for example:

    • 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.

    Some bonus ideas…

    If you can’t live for love, living for spite might suffice. Outlive your enemies; don’t give them the satisfaction.

    If you’re going to do it anyway, you might as well take the time to do some “bucket list” items first. After all, what do you have to lose? Feel free to add further bucket list items as they occur to you, of course. Because, why not? Before you know it, you’ve postponed your way into a rich and fulfilling life.

    Finally, some gems from Matt Haig’s “The Comfort Book”:
    • “The hardest question I have been asked is: “How do I stay alive for other people if I have no one?” The answer is that you stay alive for other versions of you. For the people you will meet, yes, but also the people you will be.”
    • “Stay for the person you will become”
    • “You are more than a bad day, or week, or month, or year, or even decade”
    • “It is better to let people down than to blow yourself up”
    • “Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up”
    • “You are here. And that is enough.”

    You can find Matt Haig’s excellent “The Comfort Book” on Amazon, as well as his more well-known book more specifically on the topic we’ve covered today, “Reasons To Stay Alive“.

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  • A drug that can extend your life by 25%? Don’t hold your breath

    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.

    Every few weeks or months, the media reports on a new study that tantalisingly dangles the possibility of a new drug to give us longer, healthier lives.

    The latest study centres around a drug involved in targeting interleukin-11, a protein involved in inflammation. Blocking this protein appeared to help mice stave off disease and extend their life by more than 20%.

    If only defying the ravages of time could be achieved through such a simple and effort-free way – by taking a pill. But as is so often the case, the real-world significance of these findings falls a fair way short of the hype.

    Halfpoint/Shutterstock

    The role of inflammation in disease and ageing

    Chronic inflammation in the body plays a role in causing disease and accelerating ageing. In fact, a relatively new label has been coined to represent this: “inflammaging”.

    While acute inflammation is an important response to infection or injury, if inflammation persists in the body, it can be very damaging.

    A number of lifestyle, environmental and societal drivers contribute to chronic inflammation in the modern world. These are largely the factors we already know are associated with disease and ageing, including poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity, stress, lack of sleep, lack of social connection and pollution.

    While addressing these issues directly is one of the keys to addressing chronic inflammation, disease and ageing, there are a number of research groups also exploring how to treat chronic inflammation with pharmaceuticals. Their goal is to target and modify the molecular and chemical pathways involved in the inflammatory process itself.

    What the latest research shows

    This new interleukin-11 research was conducted in mice and involved a number of separate components.

    In one component of this research, interleukin-11 was genetically knocked out in mice. This means the gene for this chemical mediator was removed from these mice, resulting in the mice no longer being able to produce this mediator at all.

    In this part of the study, the mice’s lives were extended by over 20%, on average.

    Another component of this research involved treating older mice with a drug that blocks interleukin-11.

    Injecting this drug into 75-week old mice (equivalent to 55-year-old humans) was found to extend the life of mice by 22-25%.

    These treated mice were less likely to get cancer and had lower cholesterol levels, lower body weight and improved muscle strength and metabolism.

    From these combined results, the authors concluded, quite reasonably, that blocking interleukin-11 may potentially be a key to mitigating age-related health effects and improving lifespan in both mice and humans.

    Why you shouldn’t be getting excited just yet

    There are several reasons to be cautious of these findings.

    First and most importantly, this was a study in mice. It may be stating the obvious, but mice are very different to humans. As such, this finding in a mouse model is a long way down the evidence hierarchy in terms of its weight.

    Research shows only about 5% of promising findings in animals carry over to humans. Put another way, approximately 95% of promising findings in animals may not be translated to specific therapies for humans.

    Second, this is only one study. Ideally, we would be looking to have these findings confirmed by other researchers before even considering moving on to the next stage in the knowledge discovery process and examining whether these findings may be true for humans.

    We generally require a larger body of evidence before we get too excited about any new research findings and even consider the possibility of human trials.

    Third, even if everything remains positive and follow-up studies support the findings of this current study, it can take decades for a new finding like this to be translated to successful therapies in humans.

    Until then, we can focus on doing the things we already know make a huge difference to health and longevity: eating well, exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing stress and nurturing social relationships.

    Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

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

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  • The Distracted Mind – by Dr. Adam Gazzaley and Dr. Larry Rosen

    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.

    Yes, yes, we know, unplug once in a while. But what else do this highly-qualified pair of neuroscientists have to offer?

    Rather than being a book for the sake of being a book, with lots of fluff and the usual advice about single-tasking, the authors start with a reframe:

    Neurologically speaking, the hit of dopamine we get when looking for information is the exact same as the hit of dopamine that we, a couple of hundred thousand years ago, got when looking for nuts and berries.

    • When we don’t find them, we become stressed, and search more.
    • When we do find them, we are encouraged and search more nearby, and to the other side of nearby, and near around, to find more.

    But in the case of information (be it useful information or celebrity gossip or anything in between), the Internet means that’s always available now.

    So, we jitter around like squirrels, hopping from one to the next to the next.

    A strength of this book is where it goes from there. Specifically, what evidence-based practices will actually keep our squirrel-brain focused… and which are wishful thinking for anyone who lives in this century.

    Bringing original research from their own labs, as well as studies taken from elsewhere, the authors present a science-based toolkit of genuinely useful resources for actual focus.

    Bottom line: if you think you could really optimize your life if you could just get on track and stay on track, this is the book for you.

    Click here to check out The Distracted Mind, and get yours to focus!

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Related Posts

  • Cherries vs Blackberries – Which is Healthier?
  • The Lymphatic System Against Cancer & More

    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.

    Ask Not What Your Lymphatic System Can Do For You…

    Just kidding; we’ll cover that first, as it’s definitely not talked about enough.

    The lymphatic system is the system in the body that moves lymph around. It’s made of glands, nodes, and vessels:

    • The glands (such as the tonsils and the adenoids) and nodes filter out bacteria and produce white blood cells. Specific functions may be, well, specialized—beyond the scope of today’s article—but that’s the broad function.
    • The vessels are the tubes that allow those things to be moved around, suspended in lymph.

    What’s lymph? It’s a colorless water-like liquid that transports immune cells, nutrients (and waste) around the body (through the lymphatic system).

    Yes, it works alongside your vasculature; when white blood cells aren’t being deployed en masse into your bloodstream to deal with some threat, they’re waiting in the wings in the lymphatic system.

    While your blood is pumped around by your heart, lymph moves based on a variety of factors, including contractions of small specialized lymphatic muscles, the pressure gradient created by the combination of those and gravity, and the movements of your body itself.

    Here’s a larger article than we have room for, with diagrams we also don’t have room for:

    Modelling the lymphatic system

    To oversimplify it in few words for the sake of moving on: you can most of the time: think of it as an ancillary network supporting your circulatory system that unlike blood, doesn’t deal with oxygen or sugars, but does deal with a lot of other things, including:

    • water and salt balance
    • immune cells and other aspects of immune function
    • transports fats (and any fat-soluble vitamins in them) into circulation
    • cleans up stuff that gets stuck between cells
    • general detoxification

    There’s a lot that can go wrong if lymph isn’t flowing as it should

    Too much to list here, but to give an idea:

    • Arthritis and many autoimmune diseases
    • Cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome
    • Obesity, diabetes, and organ failure
    • Alzheimer’s and other dementias
    • Lymphadenitis, lymphangitis, and lymphedenopathy
    • Lymphomas and Hodgkin’s disease (both are types of lymphatic cancer)
    • Cancers of other kinds, because of things not being cleaned up where and when they should be

    Yikes! That’s a lot of important things for a mostly-forgotten system to be taking care of protecting us from!

    What you can do for your lymphatic system, to avoid those things!

    Happily, there are easy things we can do to give our lymph some love, such as:

    Massage therapy (and foam rolling)

    This is the go-to that many people/publications recommend. It’s good! It’s certainly not the most important thing to do, but it’s good.

    You can even use a simple gadget like this one to help move the lymph around, without needing to learn arcane massage techniques.

    Exercise (move your body!)

    This is a lot more important. The more we move our body, the more lymph moves around. The more lymph moves around today, the more easily it will move around tomorrow. A healthy constant movement of lymph throughout the lymphatic system is key to keeping everything running smoothly.

    If you pick only one kind of exercise, make it High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT):

    How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)

    If for some reason you really can’t do that, just spend as much of your waking time as reasonably possible, moving, per:

    Exercise Less; Move More

    For ideas on how to do that, check out…

    No-Exercise Exercise!

    Get thee to a kitchen

    This is about getting healthy food that gives your body’s clean-up crew (the lymphatic system) an easier time of it.

    Rather than trying to “eat clean” which can be a very nebulous term and it’s often not at all clear (and/or hotly debated) what counts as “clean”, instead, stick to foods that constitute an anti-inflammatory diet:

    Eat To Beat Inflammation

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • The Worst Cookware Lurking In Your Kitchen (Toxicologist Explains)

    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.

    Dr. Yvonne Burkart gives us a rundown of the worst offenders, and what to use instead:

    Hot mess

    The very worst offender is non-stick cookware, the kind with materials such as Teflon. These are the most toxic, due to PFAS chemicals.

    Non-stick pans release toxic gases, leach chemicals into food, and release microplastic particles, which can accumulate in the body.

    One that a lot of people don’t think about, in that category, is the humble air-fryer, which often as not has a non-stick cooking “basket”. These she describes as highly toxic, as they combine plastic, non-stick coatings, and high heat, which can release fumes and other potentially dangerous chemicals into the air and food.

    You may be wondering: how bad is it? And the answer is, quite bad. PFAS chemicals are linked to infertility, hypertension in pregnancy, developmental issues in children, cancer, weakened immune systems, hormonal disruption, obesity, and intestinal inflammation.

    Dr. Burkart’s top picks for doing better:

    1. Pure ceramic cookware: top choice for safety, particularly brands like Xtrema, which are tested for heavy metal leaching.
    2. Carbon steel & cast iron: durable and safe; can leach iron in acidic foods (for most people, this is a plus, but some may need to be aware of it)
    3. Stainless steel: lightweight and affordable but can leach nickel and chromium in acidic foods at high temperatures. Use only if nothing better is available.

    And specifically as alternatives to air-fryers: glass convection ovens or stainless steel ovens are safer than conventional air fryers. The old “combination oven” can often be a good choice here.

    For more on all of these, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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  • 80-Year-Olds Share Their Biggest Regrets

    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.

    Notwithstanding the title, some of these people are a little younger than 80, but this adds to the interest a little as we see the different regrets / learned wisdoms at different stages of later life!

    If we could turn back the time…

    There are dozens of life regrets / wishes / retroactive advices shared in this video; here are some highlights:

    • “My regret was I had a dysfunctional family and I wish I would have learned not to take responsibility.”
    • “In my 30s, when I started drinking very heavily, I wish I hadn’t done that because it escalated to drug abuse.”
    • “When my parents were old ages, I was working very hard… I didn’t have time to take care of them, not even spend the time with them. That’s my biggest regret.”
    • “Live life to the fullest because none of us have any assurance on how old we’re going to be when we’re going to die.”
    • “If I could do it over, I would have called home more and realized what my brother was going through.”
    • “Spent a lot of years being concerned about what other people thought of me.”
    • “You got to be careful what you say to your children because it means a lot.”

    For the rest, enjoy:

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    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: