Body Scrubs: Benefits, Risks, and Guidance
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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
❝I was wondering whether I should be using a body scrub in the shower, rather than just soap. What should guide me in the choice of a body scrub, and are there any risks to be aware of?❞
Body scrubs are great for giving skin a healthy glow, but are best used sparingly—over-exfoliation leads to the opposite effect (unhappy skin, premature skin aging, etc).
As for contents:
- microplastics are now banned in most places, but you might want to check any products (and their containers!) are BPA-free, pthalate free, etc.
- fragrances in body scrubs are usually a bad idea, and many essential oils have been shown to be endocrine-disruptors, which you do not want:
About the microplastics, harmful artificial chemicals in general, and what constitutes “etc”:
About the fragrances’ (including “natural” essential oils’) endocrine-disrupting shenanigans:
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals: an Endocrine Society scientific statement
So, what might you want to use instead?
If you’re feeling adventurous, you might like to try treating yourself to a pineapple-based mask instead (a muslin cloth soaked in pineapple juice will work just fine; please don’t waterboard yourself though), as the bromelain enzymes (found very generously in pineapple juice) break down dead cells without the need for scrubbing.
Another option is a homemade salt- or sugar-scrub. Put your salt or sugar into a jar, add enough warm water to cover it, leave it for about a day, adding more water if it seems in danger of drying out, until it recrystallizes with a high water content keeping it malleable to the touch; congratulations, you now have a very simple scrub. This should still not be used more than, say, once per week, though.
Last but not least, you might consider investing in a konjac sponge; they gently remove dead skin without damaging living skin. Here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience
For more on gentle-yet-effective skincare, you might like to read:
Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less
Enjoy!
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Want To Age More Slowly? These 4 Social Factors Count The Most
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You probably know that social connection is vital for good health, and perhaps even that loneliness and isolation literally kill.
Indeed, “a lonely lifestyle” vs “family visit frequency” made it into the list of The Lifestyle Factors That Matter >8 Times More Than Genes
In the case of social connection, it:
- Maintains the parts of our brains needed for language and processing social cues
- Brings us social support in a way that will generally be protective against depression
- Means that when all goes wrong, we more likely have material support too
In the case of loneliness and isolation, it:
- Allows important parts of our brain to atrophy
- Will tend towards promoting depression, which can lead to suicidality (and at the very least a decline of physical health, even without suicidality)
- Means that if we slip in the shower, someone will find our body a month later
We wrote about some of these things, here: How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Cumulative social advantages
Researchers (Dr. Laura Kubzansky et al.) looked into biomarkers of epigenetic aging and systemic inflammation (which latter thing promotes many kinds of biological aging), and how they are affected by social factors.
Four key areas stood out:
- The warmth and support you received from your parents growing up
- How connected you feel to your community and neighborhood
- Your involvement in religious or faith-based communities
- The reliability of ongoing emotional support from friends and family
They hypothesized—correctly—that these factors would be inversely associated with the pro-aging epigenetic pathways and inflammatory biomarkers for which they were testing.
However, what surprised them was that this effect was cumulative over time, and had no significant associations with short-term stress markers (like cortisol, for example).
Now, some of these things are not modifiable—we can’t do much about our childhoods (alas).
Others are much more attainable for most people, like community involvement.
Religiousness… Well, we are a health science publication and don’t cover theology here, but it’s well-established that faith generally has benefits for social and mental health. It may or may not be something that a person can choose whether to have or not (any more than we can decide whether to believe the sky is green), but if you have some faith, there’s a fair argument for leaning into that rather than away from it, and by making your religious practice communal rather than solitary, if your circumstances allow.
As for that last item, the ongoing emotional support from friends and family, sometimes it can be difficult, for example, we wrote about Family Estrangement & How To Fix It.
But even without family, friends should be an option for anyone. Even if we are physically isolated, for example: Human Connection In An All-Too-Busy World ← this covers, amongst other things, how to get the most out of the options afforded to us by technology, allowing tech to enhance, rather than detract from, our social lives.
And while we’re at it, you might also want to Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health, Rather Than Against It ← spoiler: no, it’s not about setting app timers!
Anyway, to read the paper in full, enjoy: Cumulative social advantage is associated with slower epigenetic aging and lower systemic inflammation
Want to learn more?
Check out this excellent book that we reviewed a while back:
…and, for that matter, for those of us who are for one reason or another unpartnered and for one reason or another intend to stay that way now:
The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen
…and for anyone who wants/needs it, do also check out our main feature: Singledom & Healthy Longevity
Enjoy!
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Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold
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Curcumin (Turmeric) is worth its weight in gold
Not financially! But, this inexpensive golden spice has an impressive list of well-studied health benefits, for something so freely available in any supermarket, and there’s a reason it gets a place in “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”, right up there with things like “leafy greens” and “berries” when it comes to superfoods.
Let’s do a quick run-down:
- It fights inflammation, and thus helps fight many diseases where inflammation is a factor (ranging from atherosclerosis to arthritis to Alzheimer’s and more)
- It has powerful antioxidant effects too
- It boosts brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and thus improves memory and attention
- It helps protect against heart disease…
- …and can give a 65% decreased risk of experiencing a heart attack
- It can help prevent cancer, and reduce cancerous lesions by 40%
- It’s also good against depression
- It even slows aging
In short, it’s—like we said—worth its weight in gold.
Quick advice though before we move on…
If you take curcumin with black pepper, it allows your body to use the curcumin around 2,000% better. This goes whether you’re cooking with both, or take them as a supplement (they’re commonly sold as a combo-capsule for this reason).
Want to get some?
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Treat Your Own Back – by Robin McKenzie
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A quick note about the author first: he’s a physiotherapist and not a doctor, but with over 40 years of practice to his name and 33 letters after his name (CNZM OBE FCSP (Hon) FNZSP (Hon) Dip MDT Dip MT), he seems to know his stuff. And certainly, if you visit any physiotherapist, they will probably have some of his books on their own shelves.
This book is intended for the layperson, and as such, explains everything that you need to know, in order to diagnose and treat your back. To this end, he includes assorted tests to perform, a lot of details about various possible back conditions, and then exercises to fix it, i.e. fix whatever you have now learned that the problem is, in your case (if indeed you didn’t know for sure already).
Of course, not everything can be treated by exercises, and he does point to what other things may be necessary in those cases, but for the majority, a significant improvement (if not outright symptom-free status) can be enjoyed by applying the techniques described in this book.
Bottom line: for most people, this book gives you the tools required to do exactly what the title says.
Click here to check out Treat Your Own Back, and treat your own back!
PS: if your issue is not with your back, we recommend you check out his other books in the series (neck, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle) 😎
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The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)
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The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)
This is Dr. Elissa Epel, whose work has for the past 20 years specialized in the effect of stress on aging. She’s led groundbreaking research on cortisol, telomeres, and telomerase, all in the context of aging, especially in women, as well as the relationship between stress and weight gain. She was elected member of the National Academy of Medicine for her work on stress pathways, and has been recognized as a key “Influencer in Aging” by the Alliance for Aging Research.
Indeed, she’s also been named in the top 0.1% of researchers globally, in terms of publication impact.
What’s that about stress and aging?
In her words,
❝Women with the highest levels of perceived stress have telomeres shorter on average by the equivalent of at least one decade of additional aging compared to low stress women❞
Source: Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress
We say “in her words”, as she is the top-listed author on this paper—an honour reserved for the lead researcher of any given study/paper.
However, we’d be remiss not to note that the second-listed author is Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn. What a team! Maybe we’ll do a spotlight feature on Dr. Blackburn’s work one of these days, but for now, back to Dr. Epel…
What does she want us to do about it?
She has the following advice for us:
Let go of what we can’t control
This one is simple enough, and can be as simple as learning how to set anxiety aside, and taking up the practice of radical acceptance of what we cannot control.
Be challenged, not afraid
This is about eustress, and being the lion, not the gazelle. Dr. Epel uses the example of how when lions are hunting gazelles, both are stressed, but both are feeling the physiological effects of that stress in terms of the augmentation to their immediate abilities, but only one of them is suffering by it.
We’ll let her explain how to leverage this:
TED ideas | Here’s how you can handle stress like a lion, not a gazelle | Dr. Elissa Epel
Build resilience through controlled discomfort
Don’t worry, you don’t have to get chased by lions. A cold shower will do it! This is about making use of hormesis, the body’s ability to build resilience to stressors by small doses of controlled cortisol release—as for example when one undergoes thermal shock, which sounds drastic, but for most people, a cold shower (or even an ice bath) is safe enough.
You can read more about this here:
A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away
Connect with nature
You don’t have to hug a tree, but you do have get to a natural (or at least, natural-seeming) environment once in a while. Simply put, we did not evolve to be in the urban or even suburban settings where most of us spend most of our time. Getting to be around greenery with at least some kind of regularity is hugely beneficial. It doesn’t have to be a national park; a nice garden or local park can suffice, and potted plants at home are better than nothing. Even spending time in virtual reality “nature” is an option:
(you can see an example there, of the kind of scenery this study used)
Breathe deeply, and rest deeply
Mindful breathing, and good quality sleep, are very strongly evidence-based approaches to reduce stress, for example:
Practice gratitude to build optimism
Optimism has a huge positive impact on health outcomes, even when other factors (including socioeconomic factors, pre-existing conditions, and general reasons for one person to be more optimistic than another) are controlled for.
Read: Optimism and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study
There are various ways to increase optimism, and practising gratitude is one of them—but that doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning realism, either:
How To Practise (Non-Toxic) Positivity
There are other ways too, though, and Dr. Epel discusses some with her friend and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, here:
Want to learn more from Dr. Epel?
We reviewed one of her books, The Telomere Effect, previously. It’s about what we can do to lengthen our telomeres (a key factor in health aging; effectively, being biologically younger). You also might enjoy her newer book, The Stress Prescription, as well as her blog.
Enjoy!
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Cabbage vs Celery – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing cabbage to celery, we picked the cabbage.
Why?
In terms of macros, cabbage has nearly 2x the fiber for nearly 2x the carbs and nearly 2x the protein, winning in this category.
In the category of vitamins, cabbage has more of vitamins B1, B6, B9, C, and K, while celery has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, and E. Superficially, that’s a 5:5 tie, but it’s worth noting that cabbage has 10x more vitamin C and is an excellent source of that, which can arguably break the tie to put cabbage in the lead in this round.
Looking at minerals, cabbage has more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, while celery has more copper, potassium, and selenium, yielding a 6:3 win to cabbage.
In other considerations, cabbage is modestly higher in polyphenols, especially flavonoids, especially flavonols such as kaempferol and quercetin. So that’s an extra point in cabbage’s favor too.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for cabbage, but by all means enjoy either or both, as diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
- Are You Getting The Right Kinds Of Flavonoids?
- What Does Kaempferol Do, Anyway?
- Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin
Enjoy!
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When Did You Last Have a Cognitive Health Check-Up?
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When Did You Last Have a Cognitive Health Check-Up?
Regular health check-ups are an important part of a good health regime, especially as we get older. But after you’ve been prodded, probed, sampled and so forth… When did you last have a cognitive health check-up?
Keeping on top of things
In our recent Monday Research Review main feature about citicoline, we noted that it has beneficial effects for a lot of measures of cognitive health.
And that brought us to realize: just how on top of this are we?
Your writer here today could tell you what her sleep was like on any night in the past year, what her heart rate was like, her weight, and all that. Moods too! There’s an app for that. But cognitive health? My last IQ test was in 2001, and I forget when my last memory test was.
It’s important to know how we’re doing, or else how to we know if there has been some decline? We’ve talked previously about the benefits of brain-training of various kinds to improve cognition, so in some parts we’ll draw on the same resources today, but this time the focus is on getting quick measurements that we can retest regularly (mark the calendar!)
Some quick-fire tests
These tests are all free, quick, and accessible. Some of them will try to upsell you on other (i.e. paid) services; we leave that to your own discretion, but the things we’ll be using today are free.
Test your verbal memory
This one’s a random word list generator. It defaults to 12 words, but you can change that if you like. Memorize the words, and then test yourself by seeing how many you can write down from memory. If it gets too easy, crank up the numbers.
Test your visual memory
This one’s a series of images; the test is to click to say whether you’ve seen this exact image previously in the series or not.
Test your IQ
This one’s intended to be general purpose intelligence; in reality, IQ tests have their flaws too, but it’s not a bad metric to keep track of. Just don’t get too hung up on the outcome, and remember, your only competition is yourself!
Test your attention / focus
This writer opened this and this three other attention tests (to get you the best one) before getting distracted, noting the irony, and finally taking the test. Hopefully you can do better!
Test your creativity
This one’s a random object generator. Give yourself a set period of time (per your preference, but make a note of the time you allow yourself, so that you can use the same time period when you retest yourself at a later date) in which to list as many different possible uses for the item.
Test your musical sense
This one’s a pitch recognition test. So, with the caveat that it is partially testing your hearing as well as your cognition, it’s a good one to take and regularly retest in any case.
How often should you retest?
There’s not really any “should” here, but to offer some advice:
- If you take them too often, you might find you get bored of doing so and stop, essentially burning out.
- If you don’t take them regularly, you may forget, lose this list of tests, etc.
- Likely a good “sweet spot” is quarterly or six-monthly, but there’s nothing wrong with testing annually either.
It’s all about the big picture, after all.
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