Basil vs Parsley – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing basil to parsley, we picked the parsley.
Why?
You may be thinking: these are just herbs; we don’t eat enough of these for the nutritional values to be relevant!
And to this we say: there’s nothing stopping you :p Herbs are full of flavor and goodness and there is really no reason to deny yourself. On this note, check out the sabzi khordan (traditional Levantine herb platter), linked below. You’ll start thinking about herbs in new ways, and you can thank us later!
So, onwards to the comparisons…
In terms of macros, they are similar aside from that parsley has 2x the fiber, and this scores a first-round win.
In the category of vitamins, basil has more of vitamin B6, while parsley has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B7, B9, C, E, and K, winning easily in this round too.
Looking at minerals next, basil has more copper, manganese, and selenium, while parsley has more iron, potassium, and zinc, for a tie in this category.
In other considerations, both are good sources of polyphenols, but parsley has more, so that’s another point in parsley’s favor.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for parsley, but by all means do enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
- Holy Basil: What Does (And Doesn’t) It Do? ← this is not culinary basil, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless
- 21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them
- Invigorating Sabzi Khordan (A Traditional Levantine Platter Of Herbs & Accompaniments)
Enjoy!
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The Emperor’s New Klotho, Or Something More?
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Unzipping The Genes Of Aging?
Klotho is an enzyme encoded in humans’ genes—specifically, in the KL gene.
It’s found throughout all living parts of the human body (and can even circulate about in its hormonal form, or come to rest in its membranaceous form), and its subgroups are especially found:
- α-klotho: in the brain
- β-klotho: in the liver
- γ-klotho: in the kidneys
Great! Why do we care?
Klotho, its varieties and variants, its presence or absence, are very important in aging.
Almost every biological manifestation of aging in humans has some klotho-related indicator; usually the decrease or mutation of some kind of klotho.
Which way around the cause and effect go has been the subject of much debate and research: do we get old because we don’t have enough klotho, or do we make less klotho because we’re getting old?
Of course, everything has to be tested per variant and per system, so that can take a while (punctuated by research scientists begging for more grants to do the next one). Given that it’s about aging, testing in humans would take an incredibly long while, so most studies so far have been rodent studies.
The general gist of the results of rodent studies is “reduced klotho hastens aging; increased klotho slows it”.
(this can be known by artificially increasing or decreasing the level of klotho expression, again something easier in mice as it is harder to arrange transgenic humans for the studies)
Here’s one example of many, of that vast set of rodent studies:
Suppression of Aging in Mice by the Hormone Klotho
Relevance for Alzheimer’s, and a science-based advice
A few years ago (2020), an Alzheimer’s study was undertaken; they noted that the famous apolipoprotein E4 (apoE4) allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s, and that klotho may be another. FGF21 (secreted by the liver, mostly during fasting) binds to its own receptor (FGFR1) and its co-receptor β-klotho. Since this is a known neuroprotective factor, they wondered whether klotho itself may interact with β-amyloid (Aβ), and found:
❝Aβ can enhance the ability of klotho to draw FGF21 to regions of incipient neurodegeneration in AD❞
In other words: β-amyloid, the substance whose accumulation is associated with neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease, is a mediator in klotho bringing a known neuroprotective factor, FGF21, to the areas of neurodegeneration
In fewer words: klotho calls the firefighters to the scene of the fire
Read more: Alignment of Alzheimer’s disease amyloid β-peptide and klotho
The advice based on this? Consider practicing intermittent fasting, if that is viable for you, as it will give your liver more FGF21-secreting time, and the more FGF21, the more firefighters arrive when klotho sounds the alarm.
See also: Intermittent Fasting: What’s the truth?
…and while you’re at it:
Does intermittent fasting have benefits for our brain?
A more recent (2023) study with a slightly different (but connected) purpose, found results consistent with this:
Longevity factor klotho enhances cognition in aged nonhuman primates
…and, for that matter this (2023) study that found:
Associations between klotho and telomere biology in high stress caregivers
…which looks promising, but we’d like to see it repeated with a sounder method (they sorted caregiving into “high-stress” and “low-stress” depending on whether a child was diagnosed with ASD or not, which is by no means a reliable way of sorting this). They did ask for reported subjective stress levels, but to be more objective, we’d like to see clinical markers of stress (e.g. cortisol levels, blood pressure, heart rate changes, etc).
A very recent (April 2024) study found that it has implications for more aspects of aging—and this time, in humans (but using a population-based cohort study, rather than lab conditions):
Can I get it as a supplement?
Not with today’s technology and today’s paucity of clinical trials, you can’t. Maybe in the future!
However… The presence of senescent (old, badly copied, stumbling and staggering onwards when they should have been killed and eaten and recycled already) cells actively reduces klotho levels, which means that taking supplements that are senolytic (i.e., that kill those senescent cells) can increase serum klotho levels:
Orally-active, clinically-translatable senolytics restore α-Klotho in mice and humans
Ok, what can I take for that?
We wrote about a senolytic supplement that you might enjoy, recently:
Fisetin: The Anti-Aging Assassin
Want to know more?
If you have the time, Dr. Peter Attia interviews Dr. Dena Dubal (researcher in several of the above studies) here:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically
Enjoy!
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Orange vs Watermelon – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing orange to watermelon, we picked the orange.
Why?
In terms of macros, oranges have nearly 5x the fiber for only slightly more carbs. Now, the glycemic load of watermelon is still low (that’s a good thing), so that’s not a bad point for watermelon, but it does mean that oranges win this round easily by the numbers.
In the category of vitamins, oranges have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, and choline, while watermelon has more of vitamins A and K. Another win for oranges!
When it comes to minerals, oranges have more calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while watermelon has more iron, manganese, and zinc. A more modest 4:3 win this time for oranges.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for oranges, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Enjoy!
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Is white rice bad for me? Can I make it lower GI or healthier?
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Rice is a culinary staple in Australia and around the world.
It might seem like a given that brown rice is healthier than white and official public health resources often recommend brown rice instead of white as a “healthy swap”.
But Australians definitely prefer white rice over brown. So, what’s the difference, and what do we need to know when choosing rice?
Dragne Marius/Unsplash What makes rice white or brown?
Rice “grains” are technically seeds. A complete, whole rice seed is called a “paddy”, which has multiple parts:
- the “hull” is the hard outer layer which protects the seed
- the “bran”, which is a softer protective layer containing the seed coat
- the “germ” or the embryo, which is the part of the seed that would develop into a new plant if was germinated
- the “endosperm”, which makes up most of the seed and is essentially the store of nutrients that feeds the developing plant as a seed grows into a plant.
Rice needs to be processed for humans to eat it.
Along with cleaning and drying, the hard hulls are removed since we can’t digest them. This is how brown rice is made, with the other three parts of the rice remaining intact. This means brown rice is regarded as a “wholegrain”.
White rice, however, is a “refined” grain, as it is further polished to remove the bran and germ, leaving just the endosperm. This is a mechanical and not a chemical process.
What’s the difference, nutritionally?
Keeping the bran and the germ means brown rice has more magnesium, phosphorus, potassium B vitamins (niacin, folate, riboflavin and pyridoxine), iron, zinc and fibre.
The germ and the bran also contain more bioactives (compounds in foods that aren’t essential nutrients but have health benefits), like oryzanols and phenolic compounds which have antioxidant effects.
Brown rice is cleaned and dried and the hard hulls are removed. Sung Min/Shutterstock But that doesn’t mean white rice is just empty calories. It still contains vitamins, minerals and some fibre, and is low in fat and salt, and is naturally gluten-free.
White and brown rice actually have similar amounts of calories (or kilojoules) and total carbohydrates.
There are studies that show eating more white rice is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. But it is difficult to know if this is down to the rice itself, or other related factors such as socioeconomic variables or other dietary patterns.
What about the glycaemic index?
The higher fibre means brown rice has a lower glycaemic index (GI), meaning it raises blood sugar levels more slowly. But this is highly variable between different rices within the white and brown categories.
The GI system uses low (less than 55), medium (55–70) and high (above 70) categories. Brown rices fall into the low and medium categories. White rices fall in the medium and high.
There are specific low-GI types available for both white and brown types. You can also lower the GI of rice by heating and then cooling it. This process converts some of the “available carbohydrates” into “resistant starch”, which then functions like dietary fibre.
Are there any benefits to white rice?
The taste and textural qualities of white and brown rices differ. White rice tends to have a softer texture and more mild or neutral flavour. Brown rice has a chewier texture and nuttier flavour.
So, while you can technically substitute brown rice into most recipes, the experience will be different. Or other ingredients may need to be added or changed to create the desired texture.
Removing more of the outer layers may also reduce the levels of contaminants such as pesticides.
We don’t just eat rice
You’ll likely have vegetables and protein with your rice. Chay_Tee/Shutterstock Comparing white and brown rice seems like an easy way to boost nutritional value. But just because one food (brown rice) is more nutrient-dense doesn’t make the other food (white rice) “bad”.
Ultimately, it’s not often that we eat just rice, so we don’t need the rice we choose to be the perfect one. Rice is typically the staple base of a more complex dish. So, it’s probably more important to think about what we eat with rice.
Adding vegetables and lean proteins to rice-based dishes can easily add the micronutrients, bioactives and fibre that white rice is comparatively lacking, and this can likely do more to contribute to diet quality than eating brown rice instead.
Emma Beckett, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Dietetics & Food Innovation – School of Health Sciences, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How Many Heartbeats Do You Have Left?
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Our life is, of course, not literally measured in heartbeats—or at least not usefully so (since there are many other factors). However, there is a strong inverse correlation between resting heartrate and healthy longevity! That is to say, the slower your heart beats, the longer you’ll live.
Caveat: this is a generalization, and applies to a low resting heart rate that is the result of good cardiac health. It does not mean you should, for example, take up the use of heroin for its heartbeat-slowing effects. That will not help you to live longer!
Where’s the science?
Lest our opening claim there sound like popular wisdom rather than something backed by good science, let’s tend to that before moving on to the main thing today. There are, in fact, many papers to back up this claim, but here’s a good one:
It’s a 30-year longitudinal cohort study with 5,070 participants and baseline (as with most longitudinal studies, not everyone survived for the entire duration), and why we particularly like this one is not just its strong statistical significance, but also, because rather than simply looking at average resting heartrate and longevity, it also looked at changes in average resting heartrate and longevity, which makes the case for the link being causal much stronger.
❝In this study, we examined the association between resting heart rate and lifespan using linear regression in the Paris Prospective Study I, the Whitehall I Study, and the Framingham Heart Study. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to relate changes in heart rate over years to mortality risk.
We observed a statistically significant association between increases in resting heart rate over a 5-year period and risk of mortality in the Paris Prospective Study I (HR mortality per 10 bpm increase over time: 1.20; 95% CI: 1.13 to 1.27) and over an 8-year period in the Framingham Heart Study (HR: 1.13; 95% CI: 1.07 to 1.19 for men and HR: 1.09; 95% CI: 1.04 to 1.15 for women), after adjusting for classical risk factors and resting heart rate.
Our study shows that men and women who increase their resting heart rate over time increase their risk of mortality.❞
You may be wondering: why did we say 30 years, if the abstract is citing 5 years and 8 years?
And the answer is: it has to do with the statistical modeling used; the participants were followed for up to 30 years, but the statistical analysis allows us to look at what difference a change in resting heartrate makes over the course of 5 or 8 years, which is more illustrative for most people than “this is what will probably happen when you are [your age plus another 30 years]” statements. Indeed, the very fact that we can see a statistically significant change in mortality risk in just 5 years, makes it clear how big that risk is.
And how big is the risk? Translating the hazard ratios into percentages, we’re looking at, per 10 bpm increase over time, a 20% increase in mortality risk in the 5-year period per the Paris Prospective Study, or a 10%-ish increase in mortality risk in the 8-year period per the Framingham Heart Study. As for why the 5-year period has a bigger risk than the 8-year period, it’s likely down to a slightly different methodology and what other risk factors were controlled for.
One final note: about that “…and resting heart rate”, lest that seem confusing, we will mention that this too was controlled for because the primary input variable being looked at was the change in resting heartrate, not the resting heartrate itself.
In summary: if your resting heartrate increases, so does your mortality risk, at a rate of 10–20% over 5–8 years, for every 10 bpm increase (in other words: that stacks!).
So, what’s this about how many heartbeats we have left?
Based on the above, we can infer that since a change in heartrate is associated with an inverse change in longevity, the total number of heartbeats may often not change much, it’s just that the shorter-lived people squoze more heartbeats into less time.
With that in mind, a “common sense” logic tells us that we should conserve our heartbeats in order to live longer. This is somewhat consistent with the ideas behind some meditative practices.
However, while in a sense that’s not wrong (and such meditative practices can indeed help extend healthy lifespan), this presents an apparent paradox:
Should we avoid exercise, because it accelerates our heartrate while we are exercising?
And the robust answer is no, as some recent science by Dr. Kristel Janssens et al. shows clearly.
How it works: while exercise indeed speeds up the heartrate while exercising, it also lowers one’s resting heartrate by a sufficient amount (per metabolic equivalent of task minutes), that when all’s said and done, the hearts of those who regularly exercise beat fewer times per day than those who do not regularly exercise—and the difference isn’t small:
❝Athletes had an average heart rate of 68 beats per minute (bpm), while non-athletes had 76bpm. That translates to a total of 97,920 beats per day for athletes and 109,440 beats per day for non-athletes – around 10 percent less.❞
Note: that’s average heartrate, not average resting heartrate*. So it’s still counting all the heartbeats that happened during exercise, too. The athletes’ hearts were simply beating slowly enough the rest of the time to more than compensate.
*This is also worth bearing in mind because 68 bpm would be an astonishingly high resting heartrate for a very fit person.
Read the paper in full, here: Balancing Exercise Benefits Against Heartbeat Consumption in Elite Cyclists
Want to do more for your heart?
Check out:
How To Improve Your Heart Rate Variability
…for another thing to bear in mind (and helpfully, it’ll usually lower your resting heartrate, too).
Enjoy!
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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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The Cancer Code − by Dr. William Fung
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We have previously reviewed, by the same author, “The Obesity Code” and “The Diabetes Code”, so, what does this one offer that’s new?
Mostly, it’s just a new focus, because the dietary approach is basically the same (because all three are fundamentally metabolism-related), with some small tweaks for cancer-specificity. If you’ve read one or more of the other books, you can probably comfortably get away with skipping this one, unless you or a loved one presently has cancer and you’re doing your best to squeeze out any extra 1% of anticancer potential.
Indeed, the former two books assumed that you are affected by obesity or diabetes, respectively, and this one assumes you are at least particularly concerned by cancer—he doesn’t assume you have it (although he does cover that too); he assumes however that you perhaps have a known risk factor or some other similar reason to be focusing on this.
To oversimplify a lot, the dietary approach recommended involves practising intermittent fasting, and also adjusting one’s diet to reduce fasting blood sugar levels and postprandial (after eating) blood sugar and insulin levels. Shocking nobody, he advocates for a lot of plants; he does however recommend a moderately low-carb diet (e.g. legumes are fine but maybe skip the fries).
The style is on the hard end of pop-science, while still quite readable provided one takes one’s time, and there are more than 30 pages of scientific references.
Bottom line: if you’d like to make your diet as anticancer as possible, this book will show you how.
Click there to check out The Cancer Code, and eat to beat cancer!
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