Bitter Melon vs Winter Melon – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing bitter melon to winter melon, we picked the bitter.
Why?
Did you remember the “bitter is better” dictum that goes for most plant-based foods? It certainly stands in this case!
A note on nomenclature before we begin: these two fruits are also known as the bitter gourd and the wax gourd, respectively (amongst many other names for each), but we went with what seems to be their most common names.
In terms of macros, the bitter melon has more than 13x the protein (and actually adding up to a meaningful amount, at 5.3g/100g), as well as more fiber for the same carbs, making it the better choice all around.
When it comes to vitamins, the bitter melon has a lot more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, and C, while the winter melon boasts only more vitamin B5. As in, the vitamin that’s in all foods (even its scientific name means “from everywhere”) and in which it’s pretty much impossible to be deficient unless literally starving. All in all, an easy and clear win for bitter melon.
In the category of minerals, we see a similar story: the bitter melon has very much more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while the winter melon has a modest double-dose of zinc—hardly comparable to, say, bitter melon having over 100x the potassium content, and indeed, in all minerals except zinc, bitter melon had 4x–100x more. Another clear and overwhelming win for the bitter melon.
Looking up polyphenols, we see that the bitter melon also wins in that regard, shocking nobody, with an impressive polyphenolic profile, especially rich in luteolins and catechins of various kinds.
In short, enjoy either or both, but there’s a clear winner here, and it’s the bitter melon.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
Enjoy!
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Before You Reach For That Tylenol…
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First, on names: we’ve titled this with “Tylenol” because that’s a well-known brand name, but the drug name is paracetamol or acetaminophen:
- paracetamol is the drug name used by the World Health Organization, and thus also most countries.
- acetaminophen is the drug name used in Canada, Colombia, Iran, Japan, US, and Venezuela.
They are absolutely the same drug.
Firstly, obviously, do avoid overdose
The safe dosage described on the packet is generally accurate (usually around 4g/day, spaced out at 1g per 4 hours), and the dose required for toxicity is generally about 10g, or 200mg/kg body weight, whichever is lower. Since a single dose usually contains 2x 500mg = 1g, that makes overdose all too easy.
The amount required for toxicity can be misleading too, because that’s assuming…
- a healthy liver
- no other health problems
- no other medications that interact or add to the toxicity
- no medications that strain the liver (as with many pro-drugs, and drugs in general that are metabolized by the liver, which is lots).
Which is a lot of assumptions! Especially given that the liver can only process so much at once, meaning that if your liver has a lot of things to do, it can get a backlog, and you think “I’m not taking anything with this painkiller that I shouldn’t” but your liver is still metabolizing the last of last night’s glass of wine and one of your regular medications from this morning, because previously it was still metabolizing things from the day before yesterday, and so on.
See also: How To Regenerate Your Liver ← the liver is an incredible organ that does an amazing job, but it can’t do that if you don’t do this
Please don’t overdose deliberately either. Intentional overdoses make up a very large portion of acetaminophen overdoses (exact figures vary from year to year and place to place, but it’s always high), and what a lot of people doing that don’t realize is:
- it’s a very unpleasant way to die. You’ll take it, you might get some initial symptoms within the first hours or you might not, then you’ll probably feel better, and then the next day or so, you’ll enter the organs-shutting-down stage that usually will take most of a week to kill you slowly and painfully. Often your kidneys will go first but it’ll usually be liver necrosis that deals the final blow.
- it’s very difficult to treat. Stomach-pumping might work if you get it within 1 hour of overdose, and activated charcoal might help if you get it within 2 hours. Acetylcysteine may reduce the toxicity if you get it within the 8–48 hour window (depending on the speed of gastric emptying), but whether or not that will help depends on the severity of the overdose and other factors, so this is not something to bet on. After 48 hours, a liver transplant is the last resort, without which, mortality is around 95%.
Unfortunately, this means that a lot of people who do not intend to die horribly, and hoped to either die peacefully or else be saved, die horribly instead.
Ok, that was not a cheerful topic but it is important, before moving on, we’ll just put this here for anyone it may benefit:
How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To) ← this is about suicidality, in yourself or others
Secondly, that dosage is for occasional use only
The problem often starts like this:
❝Due to its perceived safety, paracetamol has long been recommended as the first line drug treatment for osteoarthritis by many treatment guidelines, especially in older people who are at higher risk of drug-related complications❞
People with chronic pain, whether high or low on the pain level of that chronic pain, can very easily get into a habit of “I’ll just take this to take the edge off”, for example when getting up in the morning (often a trigger for pain starting) or going to bed at night (one needs to sleep and the pain is a barrier to that).
But… Those events, getting up and going to bed, it means that taking the drug also becomes part of one’s morning/evening routine—with many people even metering the doses out into pill organizers for the week, with this in mind.
A large (n=582,961) study looked at two groups of people, all aged 65+:
- 180,483 people who had been prescribed paracetamol repeatedly (≥2 prescriptions within six months)
- 402,478 people of the same age who had never been prescribed paracetamol repeatedly
The findings? Bearing in mind that “≥2 prescriptions within six months” is not something generally considered excessive…
❝Acetaminophen use was associated with an increased risk of peptic ulcer bleeding (aHR 1.24; 95% CI 1.16, 1.34), uncomplicated peptic-ulcers (aHR 1.20; 95% CI 1.10, 1.31), lower gastrointestinal-bleeding (aHR 1.36; 95% CI 1.29, 1.46), heart-failure (aHR 1.09; 95% CI 1.06, 1.13), hypertension (aHR 1.07; 95% CI 1.04, 1.11), and chronic kidney disease (aHR 1.19; 95% CI 1.13, 1.24).❞
The researchers concluded:
❝Despite its perceived safety, acetaminophen is associated with several serious complications. Given its minimal analgesic effectiveness, the use of acetaminophen as the first-line oral analgesic for long-term conditions in older people requires careful reconsideration.❞
You can see the study itself here: Incidence of side effects associated with acetaminophen in people aged 65 years or more: a prospective cohort study using data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink
What to use instead?
It’s been established that taking aspirin regularly isn’t great either:
See: Low-Dose Aspirin & Anemia and Aspirin, CVD Risk, & Potential Counter-Risks
And as for ibuprofen, we don’t have an article about that yet, but it’s gut-unhealthy (harms your microbiome), and besides, anything it can do, ginger can do as well or better (in head-to-head trials; we’re not speaking hyperbolically here):
Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think ← in fact, it was even found as effective as the combination of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and caffeine
There are other options though, and as pain is complicated and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, we’ve compiled the following:
- Dial Down Your Pain
- Stop Pain Spreading
- Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
- The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief ← when painkillers aren’t helping, these things might
Take care!
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Mediterranean Diet Book Suggestions
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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
❝What is Mediterranean diet which book to read?❞
We did a special edition about the Mediterranean Diet! So that’s a great starting point.
As to books, there are so many, and we review books about it from time to time, so keep an eye out for our daily “One-Minute Book Review” section. We do highly recommend “How Not To Die”, which is a science-heavy approach to diet-based longevity, and essentially describes the Mediterranean Diet, with some tweaks.
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The Comfort Zone – by Kristen Butler
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Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin. Funny, how being comfortable can be a good starting point, then we are advised “You have to get out of your comfort zone”.
And yet, when we think of our personal greatest moments in life, they were rarely uncomfortable moments. Why is that?
Kristen Butler wants us to resolve this paradox, with a reframe:
The comfort zone? That’s actually the “flow” zone.
Just as “slow and steady wins the race”, we can—like the proverbial tortoise—take our comfort with us as we go.
The discomfort zone? That’s the stress zone, the survival zone, the “putting out fires” zone. From the outside, it looks like we’re making a Herculean effort, and perhaps we are, but is it actually so much better than peaceful consistent productivity?
Butler writes in a way that will be relatable for many, and may be a welcome life-ring if you feel like you’ve been playing catch-up for a while.
Is she advocating for complacency, then? No, and she discusses this too. That “complacency zone” is really the “burnout zone” after being in the “survival zone” for too long.
She lays out for us, therefore, a guide for growing in comfort, expanding the comfort zone yes, but by securely pushing it from the inside, not by making a mad dash out and hoping it follows us.
Bottom line: if you’ve been (perhaps quietly) uncomfortable for a little too long for comfort, this book can reframe your approach to get you to a position of sustainable, stress-free growth.
Click here to check out The Comfort Zone, and start building yours!
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From eye exams to blood tests and surgery: how doctors use light to diagnose disease
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This is the next article in our ‘Light and health’ series, where we look at how light affects our physical and mental health in sometimes surprising ways. Read other articles in the series.
You’re not feeling well. You’ve had a pounding headache all week, dizzy spells and have vomited up your past few meals.
You visit your GP to get some answers and sit while they shine a light in your eyes, order a blood test and request some medical imaging.
Everything your GP just did relies on light. These are just some of the optical technologies that have had an enormous impact in how we diagnose disease.
megaflopp/Shutterstock 1. On-the-spot tests
Point-of-care diagnostics allow doctors to test patients on the spot and get answers in minutes, rather than sending samples to a lab for analysis.
The “flashlight” your GP uses to view the inside of your eye (known as an ophthalmoscope) is a great example. This allows doctors to detect abnormal blood flow in the eye, deformations of the cornea (the outermost clear layer of the eye), or swollen optical discs (a round section at the back of the eye where the nerve link to the brain begins). Swollen discs are a sign of elevated pressure inside your head (or in the worst case, a brain tumour) that could be causing your headaches.
The invention of lasers and LEDs has enabled many other miniaturised technologies to be provided at the bedside or clinic rather than in the lab.
Pulse oximetry is a famous example, where a clip attached to your finger reports how well your blood is oxygenated. It does this by measuring the different responses of oxygenated and de-oxygenated blood to different colours of light.
Pulse oximetry is used at hospitals (and sometimes at home) to monitor your respiratory and heart health. In hospitals, it is also a valuable tool for detecting heart defects in babies.
See that clip on the patient’s finger? That’s a pulse oximeter, which relies on light to monitor respiratory and heart health. CGN089/Shutterstock 2. Looking at molecules
Now, back to that blood test. Analysing a small amount of your blood can diagnose many different diseases.
A machine called an automated “full blood count analyser” tests for general markers of your health. This machine directs focused beams of light through blood samples held in small glass tubes. It counts the number of blood cells, determines their specific type, and reports the level of haemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells that distributes oxygen around your body). In minutes, this machine can provide a snapshot of your overall health.
For more specific disease markers, blood serum is separated from the heavier cells by spinning in a rotating instrument called a centrifuge. The serum is then exposed to special chemical stains and enzyme assays that change colour depending on whether specific molecules, which may be the sign of a disease, are present.
These colour changes can’t be detected with the naked eye. However, a light beam from an instrument called a spectrometer can detect tiny amounts of these substances in the blood and determine if the biomarkers for diseases are present, and at what levels.
Light shines through the blood sample and tells us whether biomarkers for disease are present. angellodeco/Shutterstock 3. Medical imaging
Let’s re-visit those medical images your GP ordered. The development of fibre-optic technology, made famous for transforming high-speed digital communications (such as the NBN), allows light to get inside the body. The result? High-resolution optical imaging.
A common example is an endoscope, where fibres with a tiny camera on the end are inserted into the body’s natural openings (such as your mouth or anus) to examine your gut or respiratory tracts.
Surgeons can insert the same technology through tiny cuts to view the inside of the body on a video screen during laparoscopic surgery (also known as keyhole surgery) to diagnose and treat disease.
Doctors can insert this flexible fibre-optic tube with a camera on the end into your body. Eduard Valentinov/Shutterstock How about the future?
Progress in nanotechnology and a better understanding of the interactions of light with our tissues are leading to new light-based tools to help diagnose disease. These include:
- nanomaterials (materials on an extremely small scale, many thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair). These are being used in next-generation sensors and new diagnostic tests
- wearable optical biosensors the size of your fingernail can be included in devices such as watches, contact lenses or finger wraps. These devices allow non-invasive measurements of sweat, tears and saliva, in real time
- AI tools to analyse how blood serum scatters infrared light. This has allowed researchers to build a comprehensive database of scatter patterns to detect any cancer
- a type of non-invasive imaging called optical coherence tomography for more detailed imaging of the eye, heart and skin
- fibre optic technology to deliver a tiny microscope into the body on the tip of a needle.
So the next time you’re at the GP and they perform (or order) some tests, chances are that at least one of those tests depend on light to help diagnose disease.
Matthew Griffith, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow and Director, UniSA Microscopy and Microanalysis Facilities, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How White Is Your Tongue?
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.
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
❝So its normal to develop a white sort of coating on the tongue, right? It develops when I eat, and is able to (somewhat) easily be brushed off❞
If (and only if) there is no soreness and the coverage of the whiteness is not extreme, then, yes, that is normal and fine.
Your mouth has a microbiome, and it’s supposed to have one (helps keep the conditions in your mouth correct, so that food is broken down and/but your gums and teeth aren’t).
Read more: The oral microbiome: Role of key organisms and complex networks in oral health and disease
The whiteness you often see on a healthy tongue is, for the most part, bacteria and dead cells—harmless.
Cleaning the whiteness off with your brush is fine. You can also scrape off with floss is similar if you prefer. Or a tongue-scraper! Those can be especially good for people for whom brushing the tongue is an unpleasant sensation. Or you can just leave it, if it doesn’t bother you.
By the way, that microbiome is a reason it can be good to go easy on the mouthwash. Moderate use of mouthwash is usually fine, but you don’t want to wipe out your microbiome then have it taken over by unpleasantries that the mouthwash didn’t kill (unpleasantries like C. albicans).
There are other mouthwash-related considerations too:
Toothpastes and mouthwashes: which kinds help, and which kinds harm?
If you start to get soreness, that probably means the papillae (little villi-like things) are inflamed. If there is soreness, and/or the whiteness is extreme, then it could be a fungal infection (usually C. albicans, also called Thrush), in which case, antifungal medications will be needed, which you can probably get over the counter from your pharmacist.
Do not try to self-treat with antibiotics.
Antibiotics will make a fungal infection worse (indeed, antibiotic usage is often the reason for getting fungal growth in the first place) by wiping out the bacteria that normally keep it in check.
Other risk factors include a sugary diet, smoking, and medications that have “dry mouth” as a side effect.
Read more: Can oral thrush be prevented?
If you have any symptoms more exciting than the above, then definitely see a doctor.
Take care!
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The Obesity Code – by Dr. Jason Fung
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Firstly, if you have already read Dr. Fung’s other book, The Diabetes Code, which we reviewed a little while ago, you can probably skip this one. It has mostly the same information, presented with a different focus.
While The Diabetes Code assumes you are diabetic, or prediabetic, or concerned about avoiding/reversing those conditions, The Obesity Code assumes you are obese, or heading in that direction, or otherwise are concerned about avoiding/reversing obesity.
What it’s not, though, is a weight loss book. Will it help if you want to lose weight? Yes, absolutely. But there is no talk here of weight loss goals, nor any motivational coaching, nor week-by-week plans, etc.
Instead, it’s more an informative textbook. With exactly the sort of philosophy we like here at 10almonds: putting information into people’s hands, so everyone can make the best decisions for themselves, rather than blindly following someone else’s program.
Dr. Fung explains why various dieting approaches don’t work, and how we can work around such things as our genetics, as well as most external factors except for poverty. He also talks us through how to change our body’s insulin response, and get our body working more like a lean machine and less like a larder for hard times.
Bottom line: this is a no-frills explanation of why your body does what it does when it comes to fat storage, and how to make it behave differently about that.
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